Originally uploaded by fifikins
Wow. So hard to believe that the months with single digits are down! 3 months to go and I am yet to miss a day!
September has been a great month. I have noticed huge personal change in my thinking and some practices. Hard to put into words.
I am also really pleased with quite a few of the photos, especially the racing ones, the lounge, Green Island, and of course the LED light one! Roll on October I say!
I am down in Brisbane for a Workplace Health and Safety course. Extremely glad I got a good night’s sleep last night as I’m sure if I hadn’t the temptation to fall asleep during this afternoon’s session would have been too great. Legislation is dry at the best of times, but still…
So tonight I dragged myself off to the movies. MIML™ would be the first to admit he hates chick flicks, and to a certain extent so do I- the stupid premise that girl meets boy, falls in love, something happens, they work it out and live happily ever after… Usually with a message that love is worth it, or hurts, but usually everything is alright in the end…
But I had been told that 500 Days of Summer was different. And to an extent it was.
It opened with a Regina Spektor track (Us) which I thought, hmmm… could be a great film with an awesome soundtrack… And to an extent the soundtrack was awesome!
And there were some great inventive cinematic moments- the stupid dance with the bluebird spoof, and the movie scene spoof where Tom has fallen asleep come to mind. But the message… I think somewhere along the line it got a bit lost. Boy meets girl, falls madly in love, she doesn’t believe in love but… well without spoiling it, views change.
And I suppose to fully expose my discomfort with the film would involve spoilers so, perhaps if you haven’t seen it and want to, go away now… and I’ll even give you some spoiler space…
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see- this is like bulletin boards!
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(remember them- people always put lots and lots of lines and declared it to be spoiler space!)
~.-.~ (or squiggles like this!)
Enough space? have you gone yet?
No… well Summer doesn’t believe in love and wants a casual relationship but shows signs of really caring for Tom only to break up with him and then a couple of months later announces that she is engaged… Then Tom realises that there is no fate and admits there is perhaps coincidence…
I dunno… it just didn’t sit right. I know I am no relationship guru, but the relationships portrayed in the film seemed flawed. perhaps that was the message overall. Well except the co-worker who has found love as an older person…
I think that it was the sort of film that as a teacher you would want to mark in two parts- story and the rest. I mean the story did not get the message across, or if it did it didn’t do it adequately. The ideas behind the film though- with the quirky dance scene and the movie spoof/dream scene and the soundtrack were great. Perhaps for this you could grade it as a B-, but again it just didn’t sit well.
Have you seen it? What did you think? Is it a genre thing where I just don’t get ‘relationship’ dramas, or perhaps see through the syrupy messages Hollywood tries to give with happy ever afters and even though 500 Days wasn’t totally like this, it had enough of those elements to make me want to poke my eyes out with knitting needles…
6.25/10
You know that social just rant I was having yesterday… Well I suppose it extends to values too.
I have no problems with my kids being online. They know what is acceptable and what is not. They know that the router restricts their use and they can’t access the net after 8pm. They know that if they watch too much youtube we get shaped and that makes Mummy very very very very very angry!
They also know to be honest and careful about divulging information.
Immy would love facebook, twitter and youtube accounts. Then some of her friends found twitter and thought it was dumb. I suspect they thought Miley Cyrus would actually talk to them… So she has decided she can wait for twitter. Facebook and YouTube require you to be over 13 to register an account. Immy is 11. Going on 17 mind you…
So we talked about what would happen if she lied about her age. And we talked about why Facebook and YouTube have age restrictions. And we talked about internet pollution! And she still wanted to make and upload videos.
Thus a compromise was reached. I created a new YouTube account for both kids (she is not happy about this!) and before they upload something it is run by me.
This went up yesterday: (yes, come over from your feed readers to look at it!)
I actually think she is a little clever and who knows- one day she might be the new Spielberg. Oh and if you can, please wander over to YouTube and leave a comment- that would make her day!
I have been on a bit of a bent lately about social justice. Poor MIML™ has been copping it left, right and centre!
Lots of things have been angering me- a woman standing trial over an abortion, ongoing racism in South Africa (from both blacks and whites), footy club members being denied tickets to Grand Finals over corporate sponsors… Well maybe the last one isn’t that important in the scheme of things, but still…
But the thing that has been angering me the most is how people are getting away with what I term IQism, or perceived intellectual superiority. People think nothing of leaving facebook comments (for instance!) saying ‘dumb people shouldn’t be allowed to breed’ or ‘dumb people piss me off.’ But replace the dumb with black or white or Christian or Muslim or Athiest…
There has been some research on intelligence and genetics. Not every child will have the intelligence level of their parents. I know! Hard to believe, isn’t it! And it goes both ways.
Some people do make dumb decisions. And they need to have these decisions pointed out to them. But they don’t need to be ridiculed. They don’t need their children to be tarred with the same brush. They don’t need to be told they should be sterilised.
Interesting isn’t it that a woman can be charged with aborting an unwanted embryo or foetus because she made a decision that she was not ready to become a parent and is now facing trial, yet if she had not made that decision and brought an unwanted child into the world and not coped as a parent she would have been told she shouldn’t have bred.
You know those blog posts that you want to write and know you have so much to say and then for a few days you just mull and try and work out what to say… well this is one of them.
I don’t really watch tv news any more. I listen to Triple J radio more often than not which has 3 minute news bulletins, but otherwise I gain most of my news online.
I have never been a fan of News Limited publications, however I have found that news.com.au (not even going to hyperlink it!) has a good iPhone layout in safari. So most days I flick through some news. I have it set up to show top stories, breaking news, most popular news, Queensland news, technology top stories, IT top stories, sport top stories and afl. Usually I just skim over the headlines and if there is something there I am really interested in I might read it.
I suspect that only reading News Limited headlines gives a false view of reality too, but really, I couldn’t give a damn about Hugh Heffner’s divorce, or the lotto number predictor who is going to reveal secrets.
But on Tuesday there was an article that I read. It was an opinion piece. Perhaps because it was on a news site, it struck home more than it might have on a blog. Yet that is the wrong attitude to have, I know. I suspect if it had been on a blog, I would have just either ignored it, perhaps commented and then moved on.
But this article has stayed with me for 2 days now.
When I first read it I was angry. Saying that most women over size 14 are unhealthy is a bit of a gross generalisation. I thought of a former colleague. She has 4 children, goes to the gym at least 5 times per week (usually for a couple of hours) and is super skinny. Yet I know her breakfast consists of coffee, morning tea is more coffee, lunch is often an apple (with a cup of coffee), perhaps a bag of chips for afternoon tea and a cup of coffee and she eats the kids scraps off their plates for dinner. Hardly healthy.
Apparently there is some douchebag radio announcer in Sydney that people actually listen to. He hooks 14 year old girls up to lie detectors to interogate them about their sexual experiences and stuff… This week he said that Magda Szubanski needed to lose more weight and would do so in a concentration camp. Again the idea that a woman who has lost a quarter of her body weight and dropped 6 dress sizes is unhealthy because she is still a size 14.
But back to the article. A lot of what Susie O’Brien has to say makes sense. Perhaps this is why it angered me so much. Yes, it is extremely difficult to find nice clothes to wear as a size 18/20. However I do believe that if there was no clothing to fit those of us this size, people would complain at the nudity.
Yet the opposite is also true. Why do clothing manufacturers keep making minus size clothes? Wouldn’t it be better for these super skinny grossly underweight people to just wear sacks that hid their boney sinewy bodies?
But let’s get back to what is healthy. You know those BMI charts? The ones put out by the World Health Organisation? These are the ones used by almost everyone to say how morbidly obese you are. Well…
Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet devised the equation in 1832 in his quest to define the “normal man” in terms of everything from his average arm strength to the age at which he marries. This project had nothing to do with obesity-related diseases, nor even with obesity itself. Rather, Quetelet used the equation to describe the standard proportions of the human build—the ratio of weight to height in the average adult. Using data collected from several hundred countrymen, he found that weight varied not in direct proportion to height (such that, say, people 10 percent taller than average were 10 percent heavier, too) but in proportion to the square of height. (People 10 percent taller than average tended to be about 21 percent heavier.) [see more here!]
You see, some of us who need to wear big clothes are relatively healthy. I have low cholesterol, normal to low blood pressure and exercise 3-4 times per week. And I shouldn’t have to try and justify myself here. I could go round and round in circles. We shouldn’t worry about how we look, yet we do. I want to wear clothes that suit my figure. I want to look nice. I want to be attractive. Inside I have both attractive and ugly traits. I am trying to identify them. I don’t need people who have never had a weight issue (having 3 kids and having to buy a gym membership- yikes, how awful!) understand. Just as I don’t really understand how hard it is to quit smoking.
I went to the races last weekend. My photo was taken for the local paper and published on their website. Yet another News Limited publication… I felt beautiful and in some eyes I was. I bought a cheap dress on eBay and paid more to have my hair done than I spent on my dress and shoes combined!
Curves and all. Trying to be healthy and not needing to be judged by others, let alone myself.
I think Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen had it wrong.
Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You cant have one without the other.
Well perhaps half wrong. See I do believe you can have love without marriage.
It’s something I have been reflecting on a lot lately. Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-marriage… some of my best friends are married!
Now I have reflected on love before, and I am not going back there today, however marriage is a different story.
I was married for a very long time. Officially from 1992 until 2007, with the divorce coming through last January. The reality was though it was a marriage with a warped view of love.
Marriage was something that was expected. And I had romantic ideas. And religious ones too. But times change and people change too.
I have been to a number of beautiful weddings. The bride and groom have looked gorgeous. The flowers have been stunning. Beautiful music with an awesome party afterwards. Guests dressed up. Champagne corks popped and presents given.
But a wedding does not make a marriage. Japs keeps telling me I have to get married because he wants to ride in a limo! I have told him that he can ride in a limo without me getting married, but he has the association of groovy cars and weddings.
A relationship is a commitment and not one that you make on one day wearing a gorgeous dress with flowers and a party and friends and family surrounding you. It is a commitment you make to each other every day of your life.
The concept of marriage is both legal and religious. I don’t have any religious reasons to believe in marriage and I would like to think I can look after myself. I am getting back on my feet financially.
I adore having a gorgeous man in my life and we are an awesome team. We have commitment and friendship and we care deeply for each other. There is space in our togetherness. And it is great.
Fiona | 
09 30th, 2009| 