But, you see, they were. At least fifty of them, hanging on his every indifferent word. Such is the metooism of the Internet, deserving of its proper-noun-capitalisation as one would capitalise the title of any film of the ‘my-life-is-falling-apart-and-oh-I-hope-something-interesting-would-happen-to-substantiate-sales’ variety. These days, however, not even all such films declare themselves worthy of said capitalised status. The deliciously ambivalent “definitely, maybe” sports no such accoutrements common to film, and, you know, things with names – but its name provides for fascinating displays of nothingness in all kinds of contexts, so it can perhaps be forgiven. I sat across from a workstation preparing the launch of this and other films in this country on Monday, and listened, enthralled, as the male lead declared he was thrilled to hear “definitely, maybe is releasing in Australia”. Well, that is a non-announcement, now, isn’t it? (Launching on V-day… vacuous?)

Still, when even our most influential and award-winning actors and directors lament the dearth (or, perhaps simply the death) of cinema’s golden age, we must pause to consider what is being achieved by the broad spectrum of media before us. All the trends of Internet media cannot save us from its dubious creative potential in the face of browser limitations (I have recently been working myself into a lather over the indefinite lag between multi-touch reaching the Internet compared to the rest of consumer technology — let it be noted, mobile client-side is the future?). All the films in the world cannot save us from the mediocrity of their scriptwriters, as all the blogs in the world cannot save us from trends of buzzwords and analysis and not a single real client or solved problem in sight. Neither can google (that not requiring proper-noun-capitalisation as it is used synonymously with ‘search’) save us, investing its vast resources into online platform advances. Platforms are not content. Content drives growth. Enough of that. Clooney says we should all watch TV, because that’s where the innovation is going on these days. I struggle to come to terms with that, somewhat. Part of me would (honestly) be quite content to sit and watch endless episodes of whichever series is available on DVD. DVD, because, as much as I occasionally enjoy advertising, I have absolutely no desire to see the same commercial over again fifteen times over the course of a single episode — get your bloody ads on YouTube and if they make consumers care enough, they’ll find you… nothing wrong with democratising TV advertising values, except, ironically, the potentially diminishing production values of such ads in light of the decreased expenditure on production — yeah, that’s what I thought.

The other part of me finds it’s all much the same. We all know The Simpsons is brilliant, because it pushes boundaries and made certain people in the 1990s acutely uncomfortable. Family Guy fills the void, now, only without the coherency. Its near-absurdist “we-don’t-actually-expect-you-to-get-this” irreverent take on pretty much anything is funny, but not for reasons we can comprehend. And it’s hardly going to stand the test of time. An animated analogue to The Chaser’s War on Everything, only less coherent. But let’s look at The Chaser for a moment — it is the news. Oh, wait, The Colbert Report used that line first. At any rate, The Chaser made international media before Stephen Colbert, for the audacity of — wait for it — actions beyond mere commentary.

And there we find it. The matter in which the public’s interest is held is not the simpering-yet-somehow-hostile satire, but in the violation of the sole sanctified role of government, the defence of its citizens. The noteworthiness of this act came not in the violation of this responsibility for security, but the triviality by which this breach took place. Such is the Leviathan in whom we are collectively engaged by social contract: without defence against the status hominum naturalis, bellum omnium contra omnes as Hobbes rightly presumes it, if we consider ‘nature’ after the fall.

The implication, of course, is that our government is powerless — or, at the very least, powerless to enact that which it is its duty to. C.S. Lewis expresses it thus:

“As a result, classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good — anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name ‘leaders’ for those who were once ‘rulers’. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business.” (C.S. Lewis, “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State”, in ESSAY COLLECTION: Literature, Philosophy and Short Stories)

One might argue this is merely the impact of democratisation of governance. That, as the Leviathan power is somewhat more dynamic in its headship in this present society, it will necessarily reflect ‘leadership’ over lives in ways unprecedented in history, as the will of the individual is closer to that of the state. What pluralist absurdity: the existence of democracy itself demarks the necessity of compromise, the inability of man to, independent of the state, agree. Democracy is responsive to and guarantees the persistent disparity of the will of the individual and the State.

The role of the state, therefore, should be constrained to that of arbiter and defender alone. Anything beyond that is an unnecessary infringement of the rights of the individual. Yet our political clime is such that we assume this necessary, and, historically, this is true. We accept the mediocrity of humanity, celebrate it even. There is nothing new under the sun.

And we still trust in our ‘leaders’ for potential change. Hello, Kevin, hello, Obama. You are mere men. Your revolutions will fade. Hello, those leaders who have come before them. Your names are not remembered.

Make poverty history, cry the same people who decry government-sanctioned discrimination against the poor, the indigenous, the homosexual. Their voices are not alone. Make poverty history, cry the same people who decry government-sanctioned secularisation and interest-rate-driven threats to their comfortably prosperous ‘but-not-too-much’ upper-middle class ‘christian’ existence. Their agenda is not that of the Christ.

“A hungry man thinks about food, not freedom”, Lewis continues in that same essay. What then, do we consider? We are hungry, though not for food. We are hungry for meaning that is not forthcoming. Hungry for the righting of wrongs in our eyes; wrongs that are plain to all, but persistent because of… well, how would you finish that sentence?

Let me find your grace in the valley
Let me find your life in my death
Let me find your joy in my sorrow
Your wealth in my need
That you’re near with every breath
In the valley

There is only one meaning, one absolute reality, one Lord, one faith, and one God worth trusting because he is over all and sustains all. Without him, the meaninglessness of this earth’s seemingly-perpetual ability to decay should have us surrender to that entirely. Instead, we are to surrender to Him, or embrace that ambivalent indifference so ultimately characteristic of the endeavours of humankind.

What on earth is a life centred on two bits of wood hurriedly nailed together and stained crimson? Do people worship symbols on particularly sugary buns?

I think this website is a measure of discontentment. I rarely post when there is nothing to grumble about, because good news is apparently boring. This website makes me feel guilty. It’s one big occasionally-ugly mirror. I don’t look into it when things are good, and pour the bad into it the rest of the time interspersed with geeky things… a slightly acquisitive load of rubbish designed to obfuscate and create a false set of values that improve (in the eye of the beholder, for a time) the reflection. It’s easy to forget these things.

At any rate, blogs are a useless journal medium. Too much happens in any given day. Yesterday, I installed QuickBooks and realised that absolute morons are able to run their own businesses with good reason and it needn’t be so hard afterall. *insert rant about software*

Tax is predictably boring stuff, though, so when Claud suggested we go see Becoming Jane (contrary to rumours I dragged her along — though if she hadn’t, I would have done… we enjoyed it for different reasons, I maintain!) I was there in a matter of… well, about an hour. Somewhere in the middle we went shopping for food & ate lunch. *insert rant about the film, about the wonderful speed-distraction medium that IM is, and maybe others*

Spent a lazy-enough afternoon at her house until a phone call promised poker and food of the barbecued variety at Gareth’s place, which ended in two particularly dim-witted hands, and some interesting reading of Time magazine’s global warming issue. Some of the 51 ideas printed were on the mark, others seemed a little less so (energy efficient lighting was one I know enough about to take issue with, hybrid cars were thankfully nowhere that I could see). *insert rant about global warming bandwagon*

Later, I started contributing more carbon by trying to drive Budd’s car (a manual, I’d only drive a manual lawnmower in the past) as he listened to his clutch slowly being torn to shreds. *insert rant about manual/auto transmission and licensing and the like*

There are other funny stories to be shared within that, but each of those comprises an entire post of its own. I have no interest in chronicling my life with that degree of detail. Perhaps if I were a Dickinson–esque recluse I’d have time enough to write and little enough to write about that I might write more. But thankfully I’m not.

The idea of vodkajelly is a simple one: get drunk as quickly as you can, by eating a food most commonly found at young children’s birthday parties.

The basic recipe is just that — very basic. Make up a packet of jelly, using between a quarter and half of the amount of water suggested. Top up with as much vodka as you like (or can handle).

Trust the Brits ;-)

Sounds worth trying sometime, though… probably not something to leave in a family-friendly fridge, and probably not with that sort of ratio… ½ Vodka jelly might be a bit much for those of us who would prefer not to get totally sloshed whilst eating dessert.

Sessions about architecture to creative strategies to the theology of “promotion” (which we don’t call marketing for fear of stirring the controversy pot) to a rather helpful copyright session (albeit one raising more questions than it answered), as well as great food, a comfortable venue, and generally excellent organisation, etc.

Go along next year.

And, now that positive recommendation is cemented firmly without mention of the web…

I did, however, take great exception to the web strategy speaker, who I am tempted to pour out all manner of vitriolic utterances against but will attempt to refrain. He essentially said that footer keyword-stuffing was fine, as was spamming meta tags (though, thankfully, he acknowledged search engines pay “less attention” to them these days — I would put that closer to “insignificant attention and not worth the markup bloat they so often are”). Everything he had to say about content for the web could be surmised in the keyword, “keywords”, paying no attention to the different copy-writing demands of web media and the flow-on effects of organic keyword enhancement. Further, he managed to suggest online games for youth and prize competitions as legitimate marketing tactics, which, to me, seems brain-dead — perhaps I should just say “an unproductive use of time”. The entire presentation appeared to have been repurposed from a very basic web 1001 presentation to small businesses, without much (or any) regard for audience feedback.

For example, he asked questions at the beginning to get an indication of where the audience was at in terms of web presence (I would say well over 90% had a website, with probably half of that being maintained in some capacity — yes, our website is getting touched up soon… heh, in all my free time) and then proceeded to completely ignore that (although he did act very surprised at the number of hands that went up) and tell everyone about how to get online in the first place. Complete with the worst in Powerpoint presentation technique.

Definitely not a highlight of the day!

Anyway, that aside, I went home feeling pretty motivated to GetStuffDone™ and started on the three gazillion changes pending for the Matthias site… then gave up when Budd called saying Borat was on. I’ve generally had a great evening, though — a few hours with a glass of red wine and a sense of accomplishment as content takes shape, then a conversation about using Google Maps to plot some 2,100 retail outlets effectively (no consensus as to how to achieve this yet, because that’s 2,100 points to be rendered client-side as an overlay, which would probably crash some browsers, if not make them run hideously slowly — but the brain is churning over), then watching that crazy movie. Yeah, you’ve got to laugh at it, but… gosh. Really hope they went back and explained it was satire to some of those people, if not apologising outright. Having said that, I think he’s reached the limits of the persona; it really got a bit repetitive and predictable (but still evoking laughter for shock value) in parts. I still laughed loudly.

Anyway. More to come soon.

Good food and even better steak knives. The knives are spectacular. Some fun was had stabbing lambs but we shortly desisted upon realising how much noise we were making as the knives sailed through the flesh and loudly collided with the plate beneath. Scared yet? ;-) I like knives :-)

When I’m in significant pain (be that massive headaches/migraines w/ various assoc. symptoms, or general other illness… vomiting etc., or specific physical pain) my first motive to “alleviate” it is simply distraction. I’ll start by hopping between thoughts as rapidly as possible because every thought I land on somehow I manage to link back to the problem at hand (i.e. pain), and I can only avoid coming back to that by randomly jumping between thoughts before following them to their “logical” (read: present circumstantial) conclusion. This is, inevitably, pretty useless… and when I finally give up on finding disconnected thoughts I settle for patterns. If it’s not a headache (i.e. I don’t mind my eyes being open) I’ll trace lines on whatever surfaces I can see, or, if I can’t see (/don’t want to open eyes), I’ll invent patterns/logical problems. Which I can never remember afterwards but am aware occurred. And proceed to solve compulsively until the pain disappears (generally where replaced with sleep).

The thing is, these are usually strategies I semi-consciously employ after recognising pain. Today it was different.

I would close my eyes at work, trying to focus on an aspect of a rather gnarly CSS situation (web-geek stuff, to demystify/ungeek this post) , and suddenly the various symbols in the game would be re-arranging themselves (or, I would be controlling them but without even thinking of the game) in my [perceived field-of-view? is there a word for imagined vision once you close your eyes? I take it that’s normal… it’s not imagination and it’s not synesthesia, so… I think that it’s normal]. Normally I can feel headaches coming, but sometimes I’ll just have a really dull one from staring at a screen for too long… it doesn’t particularly bug me and, if anything, I was pretty good with screen-time-focus today. Anyway, I leave work and go to bible study at Ant and Sarah’s flat, and am completely fine (if remarkably full of food following dinner and Ant’s, err, “21st” cake) until we’re praying… at which point I shut my eyes again and am completely unable to concentrate on what’s going on around me. I’m more aware of a headache when I open my eyes again, but it’s not significant.

Later, Gem is driving back home (for which I’m so thankful, because, as will become clear, I really shouldn’t have been driving) and I shut my eyes for a moment — you know that moment, as a passenger at night where you can just lean your head back and enjoy darkness, momentary rest? Then, by the time I open them again (two seconds later, max), everything is that much worse. I really want to go back to puzzles in my head to distract from (now apparently oncoming) migraine.

This is all really strange. These things aren’t meant to happen on their own, its some weird reflex that’s meant to happen when you’re allowed to shut your eyes and clench your teeth to respond to headaches, not before… time to crash. Speaking of which, that’s what I’m going to do now. *rearranges puzzles/sleeps*

How do people who wear glasses all the time manage hot drinks? I’m not that blind, only wearing reading glasses for longish stints and/or when headaches exist on the verge of consciousness. However, when negotiating a cup of tea, I find it suddenly rather difficult to see:

Anyway. Last banana(s). I saw one of them that went in and it looked really good… what a shame! (Yes… natural disasters have ramifications other than bananas, and that’s bad too… we’ll take that as implicit!) So yes, that was a good drink. If you want banana smoothies or muffins or whatever else banana-related go hunt them down sooner rather than later… prices/KG have already gone up by lots in shops, so it’s only going to be a matter of time before cafes and the like either stop selling them or make products with them in really expensive.

And I don’t have a “food” category to post this in. Ah well!

Sunday saw a trip to the day/night cricket semi-final between Australia and Sri Lanka (I say that like I know what’s going on, but I had to ask Dad who was playing that morning. ’twas purely a social thing for me!) with various friends from church.

It was pretty good times, but I managed to get burnt despite putting sunscreen on every hour (it was 4hr SPF30+ cream!). I think I missed part of my arms (the underside!) in the first hour, and by the second hour they’d already been sufficiently damaged to start turning bright red (it was about 2pm… yeah, easy to burn here in Oz). The Sri Lankans (spelling?) lost, but looked like they were having the most fun of anyone in the ground regardless!

So yeah, it’d rock to be Sri Lankan!

Anyway, I ate some horrendously-overpriced-sport-venue food, probably didn’t QUITE drink enough water (probably drank about 3L at the cricket alone, but was sitting in full sun, so…), and hadn’t been sleeping terribly well for the past week (or two). I’d been sticking my hand up for a few too many things some weeks back and it all finally started to come unravelled last week, I guess. Hopefully things will get better from here, we’ll see. So yeah, various factors… I got home and inside okay (albeit with a massive massive headache), went upstairs, and lost nearly everything I’d eaten that day. I got to bed but only for fourty minutes or so before I woke up again… found I apparently had more food left in my stomach! Doh.

I didn’t go to work yesterday, and spent most of the day in bed… reading Harry Potter (because I still hadn’t read book 5 and a whole day is time enough to finish pretty much any book). The headache had mostly subsided and stomach was fine by the end of the day, but I’ve got a cold now… shrug. Tis very odd. I was at work today but felt kind of lethargic + not that productive… but it was better getting some stuff done than spending another day in bed doing nothing (mind you, it would have been back to Great Expectations followed by North and South if I’d stayed home… hmm…). We’ve got a whole bunch of exciting stuff lined up for the Sunrise Family website which is getting rolled out soon, but obviously don’t waste your time looking if you don’t watch the show (I know I wouldn’t! Once various features launch I’ll probably post geeky details here… we’re looking at social media stuff especially (which shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who know Yahoo!‘s acquisition patterns, but seeing as 7 is very much MSM it’s pretty exciting), integration with products from Yahoo!‘s stable, etc.

So yeah, that’s what’s been happening. Consider blogging un-slipped.

Four jobs I have had

1. IT support/troubleshooting guy
2. Westfield Christmas decorations assembler at some signage place
3. Web… something. Designer/markup guru/accessibility consultant/CSS wizard/JavaScript mangler extraordinaire. That’s really a job title.
4. I’m all out, I think. Can I do “Three things” instead?

Four movies I can watch over and over again

1. The Matrix (and ONLY the Matrix, not :Reloaded or :Revolutions, because they sucked bigtime)
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Underworld :D If anyone (in Sydney) wants to go see the sequel sometime let me know…
4. Ice Age

Four places I have lived

1. Lat: 33:54:24S (-33.9067) Lon: 151:13:01E (151.2169)
2. Lat: 33:54:44S (-33.9122) Lon: 151:12:50E (151.2139)
3. Lat: 33:54:23S (-33.9063) Lon: 151:13:30E (151.2249)
4. Lat: 33:55:09S (-33.9190) Lon: 151:14:14E (151.2373)

Four TV shows I love

1. Um. Wrong person. I’m going to tag Steve at the end of this post, which should be most amusing. Hopefully he’ll name a podcast instead!

Four places I’ve vacationed

1. New Zealand
2. A boat. A big boat.
3. Mansfield, VIC
4. Tea Gardens/Hawks Nest, NSW :)

Four of my favorite dishes

1. I hate this question.
2. I can’t even choose food in a restaurant, from a menu.
3. Let alone with out any guidance in some forever-bounced-around-the-blogosphere meme.
4. This is my answer. My favourite dish is indecision.

Four sites I visit daily

1. Google. Duh.
2. Quirksmode, but rarely not-through Google.
3. My comment-spam moderation page :-/
4. whisper.joahua.com, for music playback. I’ll post about this sometime.

Four places I would rather be right now

This isn’t really a valid question seeing I’m doing this on a weekend. Not fair.

1. Bed.
2. Floating in a pool somewhere. Not normally me, but for some reason that has enormous appeal right now.
3. On a couch, reading a book (without thinking “I’ve got so much other stuff to do! I haven’t got time to read!”)
4. Making engaging rich media for the web. Scheduled for later today. One of several exciting things coming soon!

Four bloggers I’m tagging

1. Steve
2. Ben
3. LTTD, mostly because I want to see how a collective weblog would deal with this whole… blogging equivalent of chain-mail thing.
4. I can’t think of anyone else (who hasn’t already been tagged/done it) I’d want to inflict this on :P

This is interesting, because I once completely shunned that whole ‘e-mail survey’ thing, but now recognise it as a not-entirely-neccessary not-entirely-evil neccessary evil. Having said that, still not a huge fan :P

Hmm. Aside from that, of course, other things have been happening. Yesterday was my brother’s 8th birthday — I would say happy birthday, but he doesn’t read this, so there we go. :P We went out to Juanita’s, a great Mexican restaruant in Kensington, and… umm… ate food. As you do.

The rest yesterday was spent on a variety of things, from frantically editing CSS and the occasional graphic (all visual design work, thankfully — I’ve decided that I shouldn’t make a habit of programming, as it’s something I regularly fall flat on my face trying!) for an upcoming website, to reading Henrik Ibsen’s 1877 play, A Doll’s House.

I’m struggling to decide which was more enjoyable, too… this website features some rather well implemented gimmicky elements of design, and it’s immensely satisfying to watch come together, from paper mockup to digital reality (haha, I’d never noticed the irony in that before — funny how us web people turn even the concept of “reality” itself on its head, hey?). At the same time, A Doll’s House was an excellent play. I think a comparison of which is more “enjoyable” is truistic, because the play is certainly not enjoyable, even if it was incredibly worthwhile reading.

The website is currently chock-full of proprietry –moz CSS extensions, which is part of a new strategy I’m trying to cut development time. Basically, the thought behind it goes “Josh sucks when working with the GIMP”, so the idea is I use Mozilla controls to achieve visually what I want in an electronic form, such that what I wish to achieve is evident on screen already, and then simply go about converting that to a static graphical form. Of particular use, at least for what I’d envisaged for this design, is the Opacity property… it’s not a perfect representation of what I’ll end up with, as it effects the contents of the element it’s applied to (i.e. not JUST the background of an element), but it’s close enough for all intents and purposes.

Further into this website, I’ll post estimates as to just how much time this has saved… it’s something of an intangible, but hey, you get that.

Today’s the last day of my holidays! Ahhhhh! This has honestly been one of the shorter holiday periods of my life… ah well. I think I’m going to go and buy some more film and RAM for this computer today… I’m sick of seeing it 30% into swap, and physical usage sitting at 98%!

P.S. Mandy Moore’s song “Only Hope” is suprisingly good — I’d written her off as another pop queen, but I’d cite that song as proof she can sing!

That said, we ran out of dough by the end of it, so a quick trip was made down to Coles to buy some dodgy el-cheapo bases… everyone was pretty much stuffed full by this time, anyway, so it didn’t matter much — we ended up eating mostly from these bases, but all the girls got fed the good stuff, which was the aim of the evening so all was good. ;-)

It was Rachael’s birthday, so desert was something of a no-brainer: a fairly safe mud-cake was bought from a cake shop, and Matt Pettett brought a pavlova he’d made earlier. I think it all went down fairly well, although I wasn’t feeling that hungry by that point. I have no idea why, I’d only eaten one slice of pizza, but apparently being around that much food makes you less hungry, or something. The air was pretty thick, perhaps that was edible enough.

We didn’t even over-cater by much! About thirty to fourty people were fed, and we only had enough slices for one pizza left over at the end, which was sweet… apparently Pete Campbell was going to eat it for breakfast, although this rumour has yet to be substantiated.

It was a pretty good turn out, which we like to attribute to the fact that everyone knew it was going to be excellent food, although the reality is probably something more like “Wow, guys are cooking?! Hahaha, I have to see this!” — not that I’d ever be so cynical as to suggest it, of course.

Yay, I finally have an intranet page for myself which I’m happy with!  I’ve got an RSS reader in a floating DIV on the left, and my links down the right, all of which feature handy dandy accesskey codes (I can press “Alt+I” and goto my system status page, or “Alt+G” and go to my Gallery, things like that).  Woohoo.  What’s changed from my previous intranet incarnations?  This time around, I’ve added my RSS reader, stripped links to the bare essentials only, and added accesskey attributes to the links.  So that’s ocol.

I went and saw the dentist yesterday.  I resisted the temptation of running up yet another WAP bill, because last month was sort of expensive (and that was a month sans dentist visits!).  Fired a few messages off all over the place, though ;)  So yeah.  I was there getting two preventative fillings, whatever that is.  Something about a hole that isn’t really a hole and isn’t really there because of decay, but has the potential to become a problem because food could get lodged in there and stuff.  Sounds like an excuse for them to get $300, to me.  But hey!  I got trippy numbing stuff injected into my gums, so that was all good.

Because the fillings were plastic and UV treated (well, I think it was UV… they had this insano torch which they seemed to be baking my teeth with, whilst shielding themselves from the evidently harmful radiation the ray gun was emitting… so it mightn’t be UV, but it was some kind of lightish stuff that glowed), I could eat as soon as I wanted.  Yay!  So I went home, and did the Milo thang.

Note to self:  BAD IDEA!!! NEVER AGAIN!!!

…on with the story!  Yeah.  Milo with numbed gums and reduced-mobility lips is fun.  The fact that I couldn’t say “provisioning” should have been a bad sign — alas, I didn’t let anything stand between me and the Milo!

Now, I’m one of those people who’ll fill a glass up halfway (so it’s half EMPTY, folks)… with Milo.  And then the milk starts going in.  And then it’s stirred slightly, and the Milo rises to the top, and it is CONSUMED!!! Muwhahahahaha.  Yes, it’s a food-drink.  Not a food, not a drink.  (Aside: Well, occasionally a food, rarely a drink.)  Eating half-dampened (by milk) Milo is an intricate procedure, involving extreme mobility of the upper lip.

Firstly, the person who is to devour the Milo (hereafter: “the Devourer”) must carefully load the eating device (“the Spoon”) with Milo from the cup, taking care not to lose any of the precious substance in the process.

Secondly, the Spoon must be raised to the mouth of the Devourer, placing it inside with great precision.

Next, the spoon must be removed from the mouth, scraping against the upper lip in order to dislodge Milo from the spoon into the mouth.

*insert record slowing to stop sound here*

Using your upper lip is fun when it’s pumped full of miscellaneous numbing drugs.  That has to have been THE most challenging Milo I’ve ever eaten!

Moral of this story?  You’ve got to be made of Milo.  But just avoid if for a few hours if you’re drugged.

Which only serves to further disappoint, it’d seem — there are some productions where there is little or no dependance on technical resources… but this wasn’t one of them.  Then there are productions that suck so much because of the performance that technical can’t suck more.  But this wasn’t one of them, either.

I could blame it on a whole heap of things.  Lack of monitor, or even open windows the day prior (we couldn’t hear, so we didn’t know cues for performances).  In the end, we didn’t get monitor even on the night, which was just frogging marvellous for trying to cue things (we were running the show from CD, because there wasn’t time to rip tracks to my laptop — I got there at about 4:15, having left Sydney Uni at 4:00, and we were in rehearsals from then until the show started).  Dinner?  Pfft!  Fast food isn’t fast enough!

Yeah.  There’s my justification for it.  The real story is that our communications sucked, and logistically, it was impossible to have the right people for the right show.  That, and authoratiarian control over everything right down to the bloody locks on the windows (which, might I add for future reference, WILL be broken if the show is about to start and they’re still shut, regardless to the cost or inconvenience incurred to the Dictators of SACS) certainly didn’t help matters.

Yeah, I’m angry, bitter and twisted.  What’re you going to do?  I’m not doing the show tonight, and I’m kind of glad.  Maybe it’ll suck less.  Maybe communication will happen.  Maybe venue difficulties won’t be so prohibitive.

That said, there’ll still be no monitor audio, and the one guy with access to all required resources (and the one guy on payroll to do this stuff) has decided that it’s not convenient for him to be there.  Good luck, Ben.

To year 12: Sorry, I’m glad you’re not getting marked on Technical.

Outdoor activities were generally acknowledged to have been good, something which I agree with — we were really blessed with the weather we got — whilst it rained a bit, it didn’t affect the activities much at all (exception of perhaps people doing ropes courses, which aren’t always that great in the wet due to the whole slippage (and subsequent ropeburn) factor — lowropes would have been okay, but I didn’t get to try highropes), which was very cool indeed.

It wasn’t long enough, and now I feel like another weekend, but hey, life goes on (albeit somewhat more tiredly).

In terms of the actual “leadership” side of rehabilit… err… the retreat, the house sessions were IMHO far better structured than peer support training ever was — it was more directed (if a little more repetitive), and generally flowed better.  So yeah, was fairly happy with that… of course, it’s kind of depressing, thinking that a house is (going to be) dependent on my yeargroup for leadership and direction — that’s not me being elitist or anything, I consider myself included fully in that statement.

Which brings me to another point, I suppose.  On Monday evening (well, there was only one evening, it only went overnight), our year was addressed by the chaplain, Tim Bowden and headmaster, Mr. Heath.  I’ve already whinged to a few people about this, with mixed responses, but for the sake of permanency (haha, such as my websites have been in the past, I suppose) and accessibility, I shall write here regardless.

Tim Bowdens talk (yes, there was only ONE talk — apparently very different to last years’ Retreat) was solid, if a little full of rhetoric (but that is just his means of communicating and getting the point accross, I think), however I took issue with something Mr. Heath has said in the past, and again, using the Retreat as an opportunity, repeatedly rammed this down our ears:

The school cannot surpass Year 12.  Year 12 set the tone for the school.

Which is something that I believe to be one of the bigger lies I’ve ever heard from our headmaster.  Prior to my entry into the senior school, my contact with ANYONE in year 12 was restricted to that which occurred through the house system (and look what has happened there — split tutorials, chapel and various other means of further segregating the house).  I simply did not know anyone in years above me — until year 8, I did not have any friends in years senior to my own, and even then, this only extended to the year immediately above me.

Later that year, by an extra-curricular programme conducted by the school, I came to know Justin Sweeting and Greg Lockwood (Class of ’03), and through other extra-curricular activities in Year 10, I came to know Katy Cracknell, of the same year group.  Thus, I’d say that if there were to be ANY influence on my activity within the school (as well as overall opinions, beliefs, behaviours, mannerisms, and anything else that shapes me as a person) imparted by the senior year of SACS, the FIRST year in which this may have occurred was last year.

Some may argue that attitudes shall permeate downwards through the yeargroups, thus affecting the attitudes (and therefore achievements) of the entire school.  Okay, so I’ll admit — I do know people in the year below me.  What I won’t admit to, however, is sharing attitudes (or even discussing more than in passing) regarding the school, or activities within this.  IMHO, school assemblies more effectively demonstrate how people are (and can be) involved in school life than anything spoken in passing by yours truly.  This is not because I actively avoid talking of such things — it just never arises.

So, if I do know people in years below me, what of people who do not?  A dead end in this theoretical propagation of ideologies, assuming, of course, that people who do communicate with those younger than them redistribute such ideas anyway.

I spoke this afternoon to two people on the current student leadership team (briefly) about their response to this idea, and received a response which affirmed Mr. Heaths statement — at first glance.

No direct quotes, because I wasn’t taking notes whilst talking, but something I remember with clarity simply by its opposition to what I’d been told for the past two days is this — the actions of the leadership team do not go un-noticed by the younger years… because they are important.  Not neccessarily a statement of arrogance, however this was said not of the yeargroup as a whole, but of the leadership team (i.e. school officers, etc.) as a separate entity.  Maybe a slipup, maybe a genuine belief — something that I’d certainly say is more true, at any rate.  Not to say that Year 12 generally cannot assume a ROLE of leadership — of course it can — leadership is not solely about influence, which seems to be the core quality behind setting a “standard” which cannot be surpassed.

But if a standard were to be set, surely this standard would need to be evident to the rest of the school!  My problem is not “does this standard exist?” but rather “how do these influence the rest of the school?”.  By the leadership team, certainly — they are in the public view of the school, and if anyone is to have contact with people in younger years, then it is them.  However, the unquestioned importance (i.e. without exception) of the senior yeargroup as a whole in terms of the influence their attitudes hold upon the rest of the school is something which I don’t believe in.

The school CAN rise above its senior year.  It can even rise above its leadership team — although not neccessarily in the capacity of leadership itself.  Involvement within the school is not fostered by year 12 as a whole, but by the addresses and publicly viewed behaviours of the school officers.  Most of year 12 isn’t involved in sport — yet this year St. Andrews has seen a suprising improvement not only in sport itself, but also in the support of this — the latter of which is not neccessarily something facilitated by the support of year 12 as a whole, either — rather, by a select number of students who CHOOSE to attend such things and encourage others to do the same!  This support does not come from the whole of year 12, and any assertations suggesting that attitudes held by the school cannot surpass that of that senior year are plainly incorrect.

p.s. sorry about the size of this rant — I’ve actually cut it back a bit, it was a rant-inspiring topic ;)