Knee deep in Quokka Crap

That's me on the left - as you can see Quokkas are huge.


Going on camp tomorrow and thought I'd throw this together before anyone else read the previous blog and, well, contacted the authorities.

Rottnest island will be our destination with the 70, actually maybe 80, year 12 students. I'm running some seminars on stuff like happiness.

Here's an extract from the second seminar, just in case you thought you were missing out on somin'k.

Social isolation, the breakdown of community, has lead to sadness becoming pathological. Modern technologies and materialism ain’t doing much to help.

I came across an article that grabbed my attention, and while I didn’t entirely agree with the theory, the central tenets did address some of the things that I felt had gone wrong.

The article in question was from the Time magazine, written by the Evolutionary Psychologist Richard Wright. Evolutionary Psychology is as it sounds, an analysis of the way humans have developed and the way they best function within their environment. A lot of currency has been put into looking into the ancestral conditions humans found themselves.

In his article “Evolution of Despair”, Richard Wright describes his work as the “study of maladies resulting from contrasts between the modern environment and the “ancestral environment”, something he suggests being called ‘mismatch theory’.

Wright puts forward that we are designed for social cooperation, as it improves our chances of survival; natural selection has imbued our minds with an infrastructure for friendship; including affection, gratitude and trust.

Anxiety has a role to play in that having unpleasant feelings gets us into the next generation. Feeling ashamed or disappointed for actions taken that are not condoned by society are useful in causing us to stop and think. Bad feelings are natural.

What is not natural is going crazy: sadness to linger into debilitating depression, for anxiety to become chronic and paralyzing – these are diseases of the modern world.

IN trying to reconstruct the ancestral environment evolutionary psychologists have turned to technologically primitive society. One astonishing thing discovered was the low levels of cortisol (a by-product of anxiety) and when a Western Anthropologist tried to study depression amongst the Kaluli of New Guinea, he couldn’t find any.

The thing that turns sadness or dejection into pathology is social isolation.

It is tough living with social transparency. However the

Anthropologist Phillip Walker studied bones of more than 5000 children over a period of reaching back to 4000BC – he could find no evidence of scattered bone bruises. In modern society such bruises would be found on more that 1 in 20 children who die between the ages of 1-4. In the ancestral environment there is little mystery about what went on behind closed doors, because there simply weren’t any.

It is not urbanization that has so much been the problem, but suburbanization. The combination of transience and residential isolation leaves many people feeling along. The suburbs have been especially hard on women with young children. The Anthropologist Marjorie Shostak writing about life in an African hunter gatherer village that she did not come across isolated, bored mothers.

Evolutionary Psychology explains why modern feminist movement got it’s start after the suburbanization of the 1950s.

The 1963 book The Feminine Mystique apparently grew out of a conversation that the Betty Friedman with a stay at home mother in which the woman spoke with quiet desperation about the anger and the despair that Friedman came to call the problem with no name, and doctors came to call the housewife’s syndrome.

Harvard Professor Robert Putnam notes that the ultimate in isolating technology is the television. 28 hours (the average – which is highly likely to be more these days) in front of the TV is a lot of time bonding that you’re not doing.

Randolph Nesse, another evolutionary psychologist, points out that “Television can distort our self perception”. It is a fact that we compare ourselves with others, but now, we compete with the fantasy lives we see on television. Our own wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters can seem profoundly inadequate by comparison. So we are dissatisfied with them and even more so with ourselves.p.67

Timothy Miller in How to want what you have writes “The pursuit of more can keep us from better knowing our neighbors, better loving our kin – in general, from cultivating the warm affirmative side of human nature…People spend their lives honestly believing that they have almost enough of whatever they want. Just a little bit more will put them over the top; then they will be happy forever.”

The Worried Well

We are medicating our depression without asking why it is there. Gail Bell examines some of the factors, while Guy Rundle assesses the questionable values we have subscribed to.

Part of Gail Bell’s answer lies in re-examining the role that depression plays. Guy Rundle (executive producer of ABC arts) puts it well in his published response to Bell’s essay:

“Much of what is currently called ‘depression’ is a new and real social – psychological disorder, produced by widespread transformations of Western societies in the past three decades. In response to these transformations - in shorthand, the media revolution, and the changes to work and home life, and social space and culture – many of us have become more vulnerable to the onset of feelings that selfhood, existence and connection to others have been pulverized, and that meaning and contentment are not only absent, but impossible. ”p83

Rundle goes on to say

“ Our culture…has become one in which strength, aggressiveness, selfishness and hardness have become the cardinal virtues. The hard bodied ethos of the gym, the competitive nature of the contractual and outsourced work, the visibility of enormous wealth, the surgically enhanced standards of beauty, and the theme of social life as competition (a la Big Brother) have become central motifs. Even in areas of public emotional life – pop music, TV shows like Oprah – the ‘touchy feely’ content is frequently subsumed under the idea of shaping oneself for maximum success…(We are)…one step on from “greed is good” – it is not money per se, but power, recognition and the capacity to “make a mark” that one shapes oneself towards…What could be worse than admitting something is wrong”p.86

Richard Wright would say that it is social isolation, the breakdown of community that has created an environment of despair.

Gail Bell, and further Guy Rundle put it down in part to the changes of our values that are unsustainable in light of the destruction they are causing.

Ok... move on now, go watch some Beat Takeshi or listen to Arcade Fire...

Eating people is wrong I think

I convinced my Year Nine students that there was nothing wrong with eating human flesh….

No, really.

It all started innocently enough. I wanted to challenge their world view and they wandered into my classroom with something that smelt a lot like ambivalence.

I smell it when I walk to work past the dog kennels after it has rained.

But yes, we talked about the values present in other cultures and someone rolled their eyes. Eye rolling is the equivalent of someone producing a small side arm and firing it at heavily armed militia.

I proceeded as one who stood little to lose.

“Yes… well, seeing we are merely a sophisticated animal, and people eat animals, I can’t see the harm of eating a human being.”

Laughter.

“No really, I wouldn’t kill a human being, like murder someone and proceed to eat them. But you know, just eating them.”

Less laughter, but nevertheless laughter.

“No, like if they wanted to be euthanized or painlessly removed from this life then sure I’d eat them. Why waste perfectly good flesh.”

Almost silence now. I’m wondering when I will stop.

Student: What do people taste like?

“Well (clearly I have no intention of stopping until I’m sitting before a disciplinary committee), contrary to what some people will tell you, human flesh tastes like really salty pork.”

I screw up my face at this point.

“But I’ve found that if you soak it, or better yet stew it, it comes up ok.”

And now to really drive home the horror. I start by laughing quietly.

“Of course, the wonderful thing is I can say all of this to you and you won’t believe me. Then again even if you did believe me what are you going to do about it? You’re Westerners. You’ll listen, be morally outraged and then wander off to the next thing that distracts you. You won’t actually do anything. Will you?”

There is no laughter. Someone shifts uncomfortably in their chair, and my slightly glazed eyes roll over to them whence upon a leer a slight smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t eat any of you. You’re fee paying students… Of course, you go and get yourselves expelled then all bets are off… but I’m just saying, until that day comes... and I trail off. Heck, some of the students even debated quietly amongst themselves whether or not it was illegal to eat another human being. I did not get the last laugh though. I had a gander at the student’s journal writing after my class. This particular entry was written by a quaint little red headed girl.

"If you/people want to eat other people that would be alright, just don't tell anyone"

Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about the things I’ve done. Sometime.

White Trash and Dogs

Tanya has also got into mud wrestling. That may come as a surprise to many of you as I could imagine as you might see it as improper or trashy. But you’ve got to understand that “White Trash” is really big at the moment. Pole Dancing, Speed Dating, Crystal Meth, heck if it’s good enough for Kate Moss… (though she did coke) Of course it’s not real mud. It’s that health spa stuff, and the rules are basically 1. “Don’t pull hair” 2. “Stop if the other person ceases to move”, except they don’t use the word ‘cease’ because it confuses some of the participants. Instead the instructors use phrases like “please stop if you think the other person is dead”.

Actually this is all a lie. She does go to the gym though. And some of the people she knows do pole dancing. And some of those people do it on the grounds that it’s for fitness. And please don’t write to me about using a conjunction at the start of a sentence because it’s all the rage with White Trash.

And now to mistakes. We were sitting round with some friends who were talking about buying a dog. During the discussion they mentioned that one of the pups they had seen was going to be put down because it suffered from a slipping patella. It was a Fox Terrier pup worth $600, getting chucked out because of a dodgy knee. Hope these people never open a nursing home. Anyway, these folk were going to give the dog away if someone would take care of him. Have I mentioned that Fox Terriers are bred to kill foxes. Anyway I went to check him out. My friend directed my attention to this cute little dog, actually handed it to me to hold. We bonded immediately. My friend, Giff, and I sat amongst the two pups that were left. This dog seemed absolutely fantastic, much better than the other idiot pup that lumbered around like Frankenstein’s monster - tearing the place up. Damn thing also took a piece out of my thumb – idiot. I expressed my satisfaction with the animal to the owners and my surprise that no one liked it. I was promptly handed Frankenstein’s monster. The damn thing one. The idiot.

There was an awkward silence. Followed by another.

The desire to express the thought that perhaps destroying him was for the best was left unspoken and Giff and I proceeded home with Frankenstein's monster; just to see if he got on with everyone. He stayed the night and the new dog and our old dog (car accident survivor veteran) got on quite well. What I omit to mention is what stands as substantially more significant. My wife and the new dog did not get on quite well. Ollie (short for Oliver – my daughter’s idea) couldn’t speak English at all and never understood what Tanya meant by “I hope he doesn’t dig up the plants”. Of course if he did understand I could only put it down to the fact his knee was causing him terrible pain and he didn’t wish to live any longer. Suffice to say he should be called a tree/shrub terrier In hindsight I should have given him a couple of foxes to tear up.

The other intriguing thing is Ollie is quite vengeful when it comes to reticulation. Something about the way they jump out the ground when he least expects it and wets him. Just him, not the grass, or the trees, or the house or the other dog. Just him. So he waits until everything goes quite and then he digs up the reticulation. Every other morning I wake up to the tirade of abuse my wife directs at Ollie about some such thing. These vary now. Clothes pulled off the line, barking rudely, jumping up on a fresh cleaned pair of pants, eating something he shouldn’t, not being dead. But the reticulation was the stone end. I thought “Right, he needs to be set straight”.

Tanya had left the house and I smashed a window.

That’s a bit of a jump in the story, but I’m worried I am going on, so I thought I would get to the point. I walked out to the sight of Ollie tearing up reticulation. Coffee in hand I yelled out "Oi". Ollie did not respond to my clearly articulated requests to desist. So I tapped the window with my shoe/boot.

Glass, pretty lame stuff really. Who would have thought? Great to look through, not that resilient. Dog stopped digging though. Getting showered in glass kind of got his attention. It was like an action movie. The only thing missing was a bad guy getting tossed through the window. That happened later when Tanya heard my story. Sure, I come out looking like a lunatic. “So, you got angry at the dog and smashed the window?”

“Not in that order, but yes.”

Shop Girl - Dodgy Old Men

Don't want this to turn into a 'film blog' but I really have to write a little note on this amazing film.

The girl who rented this to me mentioned that it left her a little lost and that it was a weird film. I totally connected with this film ( and please watch all of it, don't march over and turn it off - slowly realizing that Limb is a pervert) and found it to be a thing of beauty.

It is a brave move for Steve Martin because it leaves him not looking so great. That, for me was part of the beauty. In what starts off looking like an exercise in self aggrandizement spirals into something quite the opposite. I won't say much more other than Claire Danes is beautiful. Watch it to see someone who can act - portraying so much through very subtle facial change. Of course there are not so subtle moments - but it is a film that lingers. the soundtrack plays a huge part in that.

I have to warn some of you that if you decide to watch this film, be prepared to have your values challenged. It is a love story between a 26 year old and a 50 year old, and yes I most assuredly cringed. There's a whole lot of in your face stuff here - but as the film draws to it's conclusion I thought the insights about Lust and Love what we think we want and what we need are beautifully portrayed. It is heartbreaking to see Martin's self inflicted isolation as the revelation dawns on him. So many men in his position - well, maybe not anywhere as rich. The voice over jars and I don't think it is necessary but then what are you gonna do. And yeah you can tear the film apart. But this is my blog, and I'll cuddle bags of poo if I so please.

One day I'll go on about Miller's Crossing. Watched it again the other night and it still sits there as my all time favorite film. And you care because....

International Incident at BBQ

So much irrelevant stuff goes through my head that it becomes difficult to decide what to put in to my blog. As a result next to nothing goes into my blog. I read some blogs and I wonder what the hell people were thinking. Does anyone else really care about your cactus collection. Surely not others amongst the cactus fraternity. They would look upon your cactus photos and quaint anecdotes with either contempt or scorn. Contempt, because your cactus collection was woefully inadequate compared to theirs and quite frankly your unapologetic gushing is embarrassing. Scorn, because your cactus collection is better than theirs and not being able to compete with your ‘hilarious cactus growing out of the clown pot like a spiky penis’ means they degenerate into personal attacks. And lets face facts here. Anyone with a cactus blog site is going to be way open to critique. Unless it’s peyote. Then you’re not going to give a damn. In fact, you will probably let them live because you are a benevolent god.

So, I’m not going to write about cacti.

Went down to the Perth foreshore for a family get to together for my sister law and husband who are soon to travel to Geneva. Recently acquired husband actually, but that’s not really something worth going into because only two of the four people that read this will know who Leah is. So Leah got married. Ian, Leah got married. Linc… you knew that. Moving on. Actually Ian… you probably knew that as well. Well we were having a BBQ.

Stop.

No, see that’s the thing. We turn up, my wife, two kids and it dawns on me that others were privy (for there was a considerable gathering of family and friends) to an important piece of information. Reason I thought something was up was everyone bought cold food. Only a couple of us bought sausages. Turns out the Perth foreshore has two (2) BBQs. So I walk over to the BBQs. One is occupied by a lovely couple of girls cooking the entire Asian contents of what they could muster up out of their kitchen. Fine. Weird…. and fine. What was not fine was the British chap that had obviously been here a very brief period and had no idea about BBQ etiquette.

No…. idea.

I don’t usually mind the British, I work with one and my ancestors were British… but I can understand why a few of them got speared in the early days. It is highly likely they didn’t know how to share BBQs. So I’m standing there as this guy cleans the BBQ. He’s got it into his head that he can clean burnt grease with water. So he’s putting water on and then scraping, scraping, scraping. He repeats this process three times all the time growing increasingly anxious about the fact that I’m quietly standing there looking into the distance feeling really stupid, waiting to find out WHAT THE HELL THIS LOON WAS DOING. In Australia, what you are meant to do is walk up to BBQ, crank it up, have a vague go at cleaning the damn thing while all the time hoping it’s hot enough to kill off the bacteria from the urine that has caked up on the plate over the course of the night… although anyone stupid enough to have a BBQ breakfast will have dealt with that problem. But after the essentially symbolic process of cleaning you throw your meat on, and so does everyone else who is standing around and you use every last inch on the hot plate so that you end up balancing your sausages on end. In fact it is a never ending process of people coming and going. No one ever gets a hotplate to themselves so that this sort of incident can occur. That is what I was waiting for, the invitation. For the guy to stop cleaning like a deranged lab mouse. All the time standing in awkward silence.

Actually, actually no. I remember.

I walked up and said “Hey, how you going?” The man looked at me in horror. Like, the sort of horror you get when you stand too close to a person and make a salubrious comment about his wife, or worse, him. That’s what tipped me off that we were all in for some sort of cultural misunderstanding. So yeah, then we had silence that went on until he asked if I was right. Yes, I was fine. “Where are you sitting?” I outlined as clearly as I could where we were. Then he told me he would be twenty minutes and then he would come and get me. He told me to go away. He… the British tourist… told me…. A 7^th generation Australian…. To go the hell away…. For twenty minutes… and that he….. the tourist…. Would come and get me. I stood there… gob smacked. He was getting testy. Angry even…. Protective of his new found hot plate. Hot, clean…… his. Me being me wanted just a little bit more time to find out if he was indeed… mad. I wanted to see what he was actually going to put on the hotplate. Because then I could put the six (6) sausages I had down. Ian (new brother in law) came across to see what was going on. He is use to dealing with foreigners. He peers into what the girls are doing – now a seething primordial marvel of noodles, alfoil and whatever else they decided to utilize in their insatiable quest to cook every fowl known to the human race, and politely engages in light conversation by telling them that he hopes they enjoy cooking on the BBQs that he has preheated. People produce firearms and a gun fight ensues. Food is inevitably wasted as nobody wants to really eat after they’ve taken human life. Plus a lot of blood got on the chicken. No… the truth is I obligingly went and waited as our conquering hero cooked his three course meal. Got to say I did want to ceremonially pitch his big British bald head into the sizzling delicacies and bury a spear in his kidney for good measure. Hoping as he fell, it was onto a clown with a cactus for it’s penis.

What are you gonna do

Been in something of a hiatus of late. I like to call it a melt down. It’s probably some form of depression. Seems to be an annual event where I hit the wall after a year of teaching. It involves turning into a recluse, putting on weight, waking up every morning with a pang of guilt about something, although I’m never sure what, making promises to myself about getting to the gym and returning back to work after the break with a muscular bronzed body that people can’t help casting admiring glances at. It also involved watching five seasons of Sopranos back to back.

Needless to say I identified strongly with Tony. I got fat, depressed, irritable and thought it might be cool to… well… you know, strangle someone with length of electrical cable and get myself a Gomare.

Tony got me through though. Often echoing my own internal struggles with moral quandaries about things. Of course his involved the mounting burden on his conscience of all the murders that took place at his bidding. But SYMBOLICALLY the struggles are kind of similar. You know, the demands of suburban life on the 21 century man. It does gnaw at me a little that his is a downward spiral fueled by drug, food, alcohol and sex binges and fits of pique that result in someone's death. I am careful these days not to break any eggs though.

So now, I’m back at school and life is returning to normal. Normal…. I wish I could tell you what goes through my head though when someone disappoints me.

DO NOT LEAVE ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT LYING AROUND

This all dates from last year. Just found it looking through a few photos. They tell the story.












Ok... this is me telling my daughter to quit taking photos of me. She was five at the time. There are far, far less flattering photos of me.