So anyway…

It’s another blog called so anyway…. I always find it kind of cool to come across another blog with that title (I’ve seen a few come and go; I usually link to them when I find them, too!)

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I haven’t got a lot of faith in humanity, generally speaking. I am aware that people sometimes do very generous things, and I do know people who have devoted their entire lives to helping others, to helping make the world a better place. Those people, of course, are exceptions, and not the rule, but I try to always remember them when I’m making a general assessment of humanity. I do tend to be cynical, some would say pessimistic (though I’m better than I used to be in that area).

Anyway, I just got a phone call from the service desk at Melbourne Central, which is not only a large urban shopping centre, it’s also a big train station (but not the “central” one; that’s just the name of the shopping centre, which has the train station below it, so they called the station after the centre; it used to be Museum Station because it’s right across the street from what used to be the Museum but which is now the State Library and not a museum at all, and longtime Melburnians still sometimes call it Museum Station but, as usual, I digress).

It seems that Andrew managed to lose a few items from his briefcase today, including a cheque from our health insurance fund and a package he needs to post, and probably some other stuff. The good thing is that he’s very near the station/centre (works just a couple blocks away) and, the purpose of this blog entry, someone was honest and kind enough to turn them in.

So, to the unknown person or persons who did that, thank you very much, and may your kindess return to you tenfold. It’s greatly appreciated, in more ways than one.

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I love figure skating. Before I left the States, I followed it regularly, knew all the up-and-coming stars, the actual stars, the retire-before-you-burn-out skaters, all of that. Watched it pretty much whenever I knew it was on. It’s a lovely sport.

Australians don’t seem to care much for it. Oh, sure, they’re all excited about the Aussie girl who’s there now and all, but you never, ever see figure skating on television (well, probably on cable, but we haven’t got cable tv). You only see a couple of forms of footy (football, Gaelic and rugby, etc., not American gridiron, which is just as well because I can’t stand American gridiron), cricket out the arse, swimming, tennis (at least during the Australian Open), and the occasional soccer match. Australia has (or had, last time I checked), the world champion women’s cricket team, by the way, but I’ve never seen them play. They never televise the games. WORLD CHAMPIONS, mind you, but, nope. Not gonna show that. It’s not blokes, it’s traditional to have blokes in sport! Good on the sheilas, of course, but we’re not putting that on the telly, no sir!

Anyway, the only time I get to see some of the winter sports that I like is on the winter Olympics. And last night was figure skating, yay! And it was followed by…. HOCKEY!

Now, I’m not the biggest fan of hockey, but I can appreciate the game. It’s fast paced, the rules are pretty clear, and it’s better than a lot of team sports I could name. But totally aside from that, one of the announcers was Canadian, or an American from way up North. I haven’t heard that accent in a very long time (I hear American accents all the time on television because Australia imports a lot of American tv, but not that distinctive Northern accent). I was listening to the game and very much enjoying that distinctive accent.

It’s funny the things that I find enjoyable sometimes. Who would have thought I’d come to associate chili dogs with being comfort food? Or that I’d get such tremendous pleasure from listening to a North American announce a hockey game? Now if I can just find a way to get baseball reliably….

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Well, the rose quartz bangle bracelet that I got and couldn’t get off (well, I could have, if I’d worked at it and greased by hand a little, etc.) is now off. Permanently. I found a unique way to remove it: I shattered it.
It was, of course, accidental. I was at the dinner table and Zoë was being difficult and I wanted to get her attention and make her stop what she was doing (which happened to be carrying the milk jug away from the table because she didn’t want milk and couldn’t work out that Miranda did want it), and I banged my hand on the table a few times to get her attention and the bracelet just shattered.
I wouldn’t say it was a problem with the workmanship or anything. It’s just that natural stone has little flaws and internal bubbles and such and I managed to whack the thing in just such a way that it caused one of those little flaws to give way and it just shattered.
Ah, well. Easy come, easy go. If breaking an inexpensive rose quartz bangle is the worst thing that happens to me this year, I’ll be in pretty good shape.

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This isn’t exactly “moronic”, it’s just really weird and random, and I just felt like commenting on it. Perhaps I’ll put this on the unicorn site in some form. The name, IP address, email address, and other identifying aspects of the writer will not be revealed, of course. Here’s the message, though:

If unicorns exist we need prove or everione will think your sayng something that is not true. Take a photo.

First of all, why should anything, including a unicorn, be obliged to prove it exists?

Secondly, saying something that’s “not true” is pretty shaky ground when it comes to certain topics. How do we define “truth” anyway? Truth can be metaphorical, allegorical, it can be literal, it can be fact-dependent, it can depend on other factors. Is “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Anderson “the truth”? Well, no, it’s a work of fiction, and it’s not even true that most ugly ducklings grow up to be swans (most of us grow up to be ugly ducks), but is it some sort of lie? No, and why would anyone think that it is?

What is truth when it comes to fiction? I’ve heard that Mario Puzzo’s “The Godfather” is very close to the actual lifestyle of the Mafia of the era in which it was set, that it “rings true” even though it’s a work of fiction. Is it therefore “the truth”?

There’s a big difference between being truthful and being literal, and sometimes one has nothing to do with the other.

As for photos, well, I’m pretty good with Photoshop. I could probably take a photo of a horse or a goat and combine it with a couple other things or hand paint some bits and get a reasonably convincing “unicorn” out of it. Photos don’t mean anything. There are photos of Bigfoot, too, and even film footage, and there’s a photo of the Loch Ness Monster, but they prove nothing. There’s nothing about photographs that are particularly “truthful”.

Anyway, I’m not sure what point the writer was trying to make, but it’s pretty sure that s/he missed all the points I was trying to make.

And not for the first time and probably not for the last, I think I’ll just add that it’s probably not necessary to take the contents of a personal website on the topic of unicorns too seriously. Just because it’s on the World Wide Web doesn’t mean it means anything. After all, anybody with a computer and a connection to the net can publish whatever they want on the web. Or write anything they want in their personal weblog…

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The flashback has subsided. I feel better. I’m not feeling hopeless any more, thank goodness. That’s such a horrible feeling, it’s like being smothered in a big, thick, blanket. It’s hard to believe I used to feel like that every, single, solitary, day, all the time.
Well, I’m not useless. I’m not hopeless. I’m not evil. I’m not bad. I’m not especially selfish. I’m just human. That’s all.

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A man was today sentenced to 180 hours’ community service for threatening police with a didgeridoo after shouting: “Come on then. I’ll have you,” in the traditional British style.

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“Don’t work too hard,” wrote a colleague in an e-mail today. Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know (sarcastic), but I’m probably wrong.
According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.
“That’s how flame wars get started,” says psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, who conducted the research with Justin Kruger of New York University. “People in our study were convinced they’ve accurately understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their odds are no better than chance,” says Epley.
(And this was a secret?)

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