Today I heard some year eight son of a bitch saying to his friend 'Do you know how to tell if someone's gay? Their hole is red! Get it? Get it?'
Yeah, I get it, asshole. But I don't think it's very funny.
I personally don't know anyone who's openly gay - I go to school, and schools are extremely conservative, especially a goody two-shoes school like mine. Even year twelves having sex, and with the year twelves being seventeen this is really no big deal, is a massive scandal. Any guy who went to my school who was gay would be bashed up by one clique or another.
I've always said that my school should do better screening when they select students to attend what is supposed to be an exclusive academic facility. You get people who simply aren't interested in learning - which is fine, but they're not really appropriate for our school. You get hooligans and idiots we're all trying to escape from, but a dumbass who has a high IQ is such a tragic story they really shouldn't be let in either. And then you get people who make these gay jokes, sexist jokes, or go around asking agressively 'ARE YOU A FEMINIST?'
Nobody should make a sexist or a rascist or a joke based on sexual orientation, even just for fun, even if you don't think you are a sexist or a rascist or a homophobe. This is where the root of the problem is - Hitler's crazy Holocaust and anti-Jew policies was sparked from a a random disparaging remark about rich Jews. People don't understand the power of the word.
The school is not doing enough to ensure that we get what we ask for. Every time the principal speaks she makes it like we all live happily in a happy little nerddom and we're all gonna mate and spawn more happy little nerds. It's not like that.They can't just judge us on a test. Some of the world's greatest tyrants are also some of the world's smartest people, but they don't belong here. Every time something stupid comes out of their uncivilized mouths it's like sparks emitting in a pile of firewood. Sooner or later we're gonna have a bushfire - and blood - on our hands.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Blood is Blood
You do not do what you do not do,
You said you were my armour,
But you're really my cage,
You said I was your friend,
But I'm really your slave.
Blood is blood,
But hate is hate.
You do not know what you do not know,
Tears of blood in the river of love,
You're the axe in our family tree.
All I want is all I crave,
Blood is blood,
But hate is hate.
You do not see what you do not see,
Next time you point your finger,
I'll point it to the mirror,
I hope it's not too late for you to be saved,
But blood is blood,
And hate is hate.
I'd say 'I love' if you said it too,
I'd say 'I love' even if I meant 'I lie',
I love you,
I really do,
But
Love is love,
Blood is blood,
And hate is hate.
You said you were my armour,
But you're really my cage,
You said I was your friend,
But I'm really your slave.
Blood is blood,
But hate is hate.
You do not know what you do not know,
Tears of blood in the river of love,
You're the axe in our family tree.
All I want is all I crave,
Blood is blood,
But hate is hate.
You do not see what you do not see,
Next time you point your finger,
I'll point it to the mirror,
I hope it's not too late for you to be saved,
But blood is blood,
And hate is hate.
I'd say 'I love' if you said it too,
I'd say 'I love' even if I meant 'I lie',
I love you,
I really do,
But
Love is love,
Blood is blood,
And hate is hate.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Abortion.
I've often said that you're never too young for anything.
Perhaps you can be too young to have your say in things you know nothing about, though.
Recently Justin Bieber gave an interview with Rolling Stone and spoke out against abortion, being the whole goody-goody angel he supposedly is. When asked what his opinion of abortion was in the case of rape, he said that 'some things happen for a reason'.
This kid is what, sixteen? He's openly too virginal to be human. He doesn't even have a publicly-acknowledged girlfriend. He's a boy who sings like a girl. What the hell would he know about abortions?
I don't really have an opinion of abortion. As much as I'm pro-life, the rights of the mother must also be considered, especially in cases of rape. So I won't say that I'm a pro-life person, but I won't say that I advocate abortions either. It's a complicated business and a sixteen year old who plainly knows nothing about the dramas of sex for women should keep out of it.
I'm tired of celebrity know it alls, or celebrities who say really stupid shit, as though they've never been to school. Recently Kanye West complained on twitter how expensive abortions are and that women who got pregnant by rich people were golddiggers because abortions cost 100 grand or something stupid like that. What the crap does he know? He probably doesn't know a baby from a can of soup, or a pregnant lady from the President.
All my opinions are based on personal experience or research. These opinions? They're just based on stupidity.
Perhaps you can be too young to have your say in things you know nothing about, though.
Recently Justin Bieber gave an interview with Rolling Stone and spoke out against abortion, being the whole goody-goody angel he supposedly is. When asked what his opinion of abortion was in the case of rape, he said that 'some things happen for a reason'.
This kid is what, sixteen? He's openly too virginal to be human. He doesn't even have a publicly-acknowledged girlfriend. He's a boy who sings like a girl. What the hell would he know about abortions?
I don't really have an opinion of abortion. As much as I'm pro-life, the rights of the mother must also be considered, especially in cases of rape. So I won't say that I'm a pro-life person, but I won't say that I advocate abortions either. It's a complicated business and a sixteen year old who plainly knows nothing about the dramas of sex for women should keep out of it.
I'm tired of celebrity know it alls, or celebrities who say really stupid shit, as though they've never been to school. Recently Kanye West complained on twitter how expensive abortions are and that women who got pregnant by rich people were golddiggers because abortions cost 100 grand or something stupid like that. What the crap does he know? He probably doesn't know a baby from a can of soup, or a pregnant lady from the President.
All my opinions are based on personal experience or research. These opinions? They're just based on stupidity.
Many people don't realize that lots of discrimation is caused, directly or indirectly, by the victim himself, or by the 'same kind' of the victim.
For example, lots of Asians complain that there is anti-Asian rascism rampant in society. I am one of them.
But I have met some truly godawful Asians - like, not the slightly irritating nannies, but the ones that make you want to bleach your skin and dye your hair and pretend you're from the othe side of the world. They're mean, stingy, calculative, and completely lack class and social skills. They're the kind of people who force their kids into bad clothes, smelly and impractical alternative therapy and endless amounts of tuition. The kind of Asian that doesn't understand the concept of privacy, queueing, decency, hygiene...anything, really. It takes someone, or a group of people, to be pretty goddamn atrocious to influence someone's perception of the whole race in general.
And it's not fair on us who do know how to behave, understand human rights and don't treat a fifty dollar note like their first-born son, because we're automatically judged as one of these psychotic people who are probably mentally affected by the pollution in China. I like to think that normal Asians outnumber crazy Asians, just like I like to think that good men outnumber backstabbing ,break-heart redneck bastards who think either through their stomach, their wallet or their, um, you know. That thing.
People judge me on how I judge men. I know I may seem like a dowdy blue stocking, but seriously, women have to do a lot for men. From the moment we are born there is an emphasis on looking good. As you get older this explodes into dieting, forcing yourself into that size eight even though you know with all your heart you're a size twelve, obsessively zit-squeezing and eyebrow-plucking, endless amounts of shaving, waxing, and various other forms of pain we have invented to inflict upon the female body, hairspray, to perm or not to perm, hair irons, makeup, etc.
And guys are awfully hypocritical about this. They say that it's ridiculous when women wear about a foot of makeup or go under the knife to look like that airbrushed celebrity on the cover of a glossy gossip magazine, but subconciously (or sometimes conciously) they push us into looking like that. If you look at all the celebrity chefs chances are most of the male ones are grossly overweight, greying or balding or both, and ugly as the rear end of a cow. Wherelse the female ones, which are much less numerous, are manicured to perfection.
And has anyone bothered to tell guys how bloody annoying periods are? They're bloody unpredictable, and you have to hide everything to do with them, pretend they don't exist - which means we have to find pretty ingenious ways of hiding a spare pair of undies and pants, pads, tampons and wipes, in a bag that boys habitually raid for food. They're painful as hell, like being repeditively punched in the gut for about a week, and they come every freaking month. You never catch a break, man.
Boys have been conditioned, by media and also by how women are pressured into looking these days, into thinking that all women are hairless from their perfectly plucked eyebrows down, that they're all really booby but skinny, and have perfect hair 24/7.
The average woman looks as awful as an average man does. If we eat, we get fat. If we don't eat, we die. Yep, the same basic rule applies to us, too. Isn't that news? The bigger your boobs are, the bigger your waist is going to be. If you don't wear makeup, people call you ugly. If you wear makeup, you get zits and then people still call you ugly. If you don't complain about your weight yourself people do it for you; if you do complain about it people call you a moaner.
Men stare at everything - boobs, bulging waistlines, unflattering clothes, greasy hairlines, smudgy makeup, that mysterious red stain on the seat of your pants, unshaven legs, hairy underarms, a runaway tampon - seriously, everything. Meanwhile, most of them have all of the above, with the possible exception of smudgy makeup and mysterious red stains - but, with all this metrosexual crap and the male tendancy to shockingly abuse ketchup, we see these things on the other gender too.
This is my idea of men based on the men I know. You may have surmised that the men I know aren't all that nice. The only nice men really are the teachers, but most of them are married, and it's kinda illegal for them to be too nice to us anyway. But for the most part, most of the so-called men I know are smelly, cheating, lazy, hypocritical boys with ridiculously high standards on women and ridiculously low standards on themselves.
You really can't blame me on my stance of men. This is really all that I know. The men I know in my life aren't really that nice. If you come from a place where all of your men are Mr Darcys, then I envy you. But you have no right to call me sexist. I'm that poor white dude who has no choice but to judge a bunch of crazy Asians.
Stereotyping is natural and unavoidable. I'm going on raw scientific data here, and if I do, then based on the evidence I've got, all men are fat, lazy, bad at school, have mouldy sandwiches in the bottom of your bag and will cheat on you or dump you within the week. You can't say otherwise, because anyone really would jump to that conclusion of they were me.
I'm still waiting on someone to break the stereotype. I'm not going to lie through my teeth and say otherwise about men until I actually get to know someone who isn't like this. I'm still convinced that they're out there, but they're not here, and here is where I am now, fighting my ticking biological clock just so I can get through another day without mascara-stained tissues and endless amounts of ice cream.
Your biological clock is a stupid thing. When you're way too young it tells you that you gotta find someone now now now, and men aren't ready for that. And it leads to all this frustration because men have no reason to rush life but women...women have too many reasons.
In the good ol' days men were taught to be respectful and courteous and chivalrous and gentlemanly towards women. They stood up and bowed when a lady entered the room, held open doors and helped them onto horses and into carriages. These days boys spit in your face, break your heart, slam doors in your face and call you a whiny bitch about pretty much everything. What happened to proper parenting?
People say it goes against a boy's nature to not be like that, but that's not true. When I was a younger I knew an exception - a South African boy who had impeccable manners. He wasn't effeminate or gay or anything else derogatory we can associate with good behaviour in boys - he was good at sport, athletic, all of that - but he was always polite. I can remember that because he stands out amongst all the ill-bred Aussie boys I've grown up with.
So it can happen. Men can pull their weight in this world, too.
For example, lots of Asians complain that there is anti-Asian rascism rampant in society. I am one of them.
But I have met some truly godawful Asians - like, not the slightly irritating nannies, but the ones that make you want to bleach your skin and dye your hair and pretend you're from the othe side of the world. They're mean, stingy, calculative, and completely lack class and social skills. They're the kind of people who force their kids into bad clothes, smelly and impractical alternative therapy and endless amounts of tuition. The kind of Asian that doesn't understand the concept of privacy, queueing, decency, hygiene...anything, really. It takes someone, or a group of people, to be pretty goddamn atrocious to influence someone's perception of the whole race in general.
And it's not fair on us who do know how to behave, understand human rights and don't treat a fifty dollar note like their first-born son, because we're automatically judged as one of these psychotic people who are probably mentally affected by the pollution in China. I like to think that normal Asians outnumber crazy Asians, just like I like to think that good men outnumber backstabbing ,break-heart redneck bastards who think either through their stomach, their wallet or their, um, you know. That thing.
People judge me on how I judge men. I know I may seem like a dowdy blue stocking, but seriously, women have to do a lot for men. From the moment we are born there is an emphasis on looking good. As you get older this explodes into dieting, forcing yourself into that size eight even though you know with all your heart you're a size twelve, obsessively zit-squeezing and eyebrow-plucking, endless amounts of shaving, waxing, and various other forms of pain we have invented to inflict upon the female body, hairspray, to perm or not to perm, hair irons, makeup, etc.
And guys are awfully hypocritical about this. They say that it's ridiculous when women wear about a foot of makeup or go under the knife to look like that airbrushed celebrity on the cover of a glossy gossip magazine, but subconciously (or sometimes conciously) they push us into looking like that. If you look at all the celebrity chefs chances are most of the male ones are grossly overweight, greying or balding or both, and ugly as the rear end of a cow. Wherelse the female ones, which are much less numerous, are manicured to perfection.
And has anyone bothered to tell guys how bloody annoying periods are? They're bloody unpredictable, and you have to hide everything to do with them, pretend they don't exist - which means we have to find pretty ingenious ways of hiding a spare pair of undies and pants, pads, tampons and wipes, in a bag that boys habitually raid for food. They're painful as hell, like being repeditively punched in the gut for about a week, and they come every freaking month. You never catch a break, man.
Boys have been conditioned, by media and also by how women are pressured into looking these days, into thinking that all women are hairless from their perfectly plucked eyebrows down, that they're all really booby but skinny, and have perfect hair 24/7.
The average woman looks as awful as an average man does. If we eat, we get fat. If we don't eat, we die. Yep, the same basic rule applies to us, too. Isn't that news? The bigger your boobs are, the bigger your waist is going to be. If you don't wear makeup, people call you ugly. If you wear makeup, you get zits and then people still call you ugly. If you don't complain about your weight yourself people do it for you; if you do complain about it people call you a moaner.
Men stare at everything - boobs, bulging waistlines, unflattering clothes, greasy hairlines, smudgy makeup, that mysterious red stain on the seat of your pants, unshaven legs, hairy underarms, a runaway tampon - seriously, everything. Meanwhile, most of them have all of the above, with the possible exception of smudgy makeup and mysterious red stains - but, with all this metrosexual crap and the male tendancy to shockingly abuse ketchup, we see these things on the other gender too.
This is my idea of men based on the men I know. You may have surmised that the men I know aren't all that nice. The only nice men really are the teachers, but most of them are married, and it's kinda illegal for them to be too nice to us anyway. But for the most part, most of the so-called men I know are smelly, cheating, lazy, hypocritical boys with ridiculously high standards on women and ridiculously low standards on themselves.
You really can't blame me on my stance of men. This is really all that I know. The men I know in my life aren't really that nice. If you come from a place where all of your men are Mr Darcys, then I envy you. But you have no right to call me sexist. I'm that poor white dude who has no choice but to judge a bunch of crazy Asians.
Stereotyping is natural and unavoidable. I'm going on raw scientific data here, and if I do, then based on the evidence I've got, all men are fat, lazy, bad at school, have mouldy sandwiches in the bottom of your bag and will cheat on you or dump you within the week. You can't say otherwise, because anyone really would jump to that conclusion of they were me.
I'm still waiting on someone to break the stereotype. I'm not going to lie through my teeth and say otherwise about men until I actually get to know someone who isn't like this. I'm still convinced that they're out there, but they're not here, and here is where I am now, fighting my ticking biological clock just so I can get through another day without mascara-stained tissues and endless amounts of ice cream.
Your biological clock is a stupid thing. When you're way too young it tells you that you gotta find someone now now now, and men aren't ready for that. And it leads to all this frustration because men have no reason to rush life but women...women have too many reasons.
In the good ol' days men were taught to be respectful and courteous and chivalrous and gentlemanly towards women. They stood up and bowed when a lady entered the room, held open doors and helped them onto horses and into carriages. These days boys spit in your face, break your heart, slam doors in your face and call you a whiny bitch about pretty much everything. What happened to proper parenting?
People say it goes against a boy's nature to not be like that, but that's not true. When I was a younger I knew an exception - a South African boy who had impeccable manners. He wasn't effeminate or gay or anything else derogatory we can associate with good behaviour in boys - he was good at sport, athletic, all of that - but he was always polite. I can remember that because he stands out amongst all the ill-bred Aussie boys I've grown up with.
So it can happen. Men can pull their weight in this world, too.
My Prize
He ran a few short yards of brown green grass.
He wasn't
Running for his life, but for a prize.
His prize
Was that blue ribbon I wanted.
What use
Is a blue ribbon to a boy who ran a few short yards of
Brown green grass?
She plucked a few hairs off her face
Covered with
Colours of all unnatural kinds.
I don't
Know what she looks like, really
But
That's the point.
Her prize
Was that boy I wanted.
What use
Is a boy to a girl who doesn't even know
What she looks like?
My consolation for running with that boy
Across those
Few short yards of brown green grass is a
Sticker
An unsatisfactory piece of paper.
My consolation
For trying to be that girl is watching her
And her boy
Kiss when they say that they think that
No-one is
Looking but they both know that we all
Are.
My prize
In this race of speed and this
Contest of beauty is a locker on the top floor.
Blue, like the
Ribbon.
Blue, like the eyes of the
Boy.
He wasn't
Running for his life, but for a prize.
His prize
Was that blue ribbon I wanted.
What use
Is a blue ribbon to a boy who ran a few short yards of
Brown green grass?
She plucked a few hairs off her face
Covered with
Colours of all unnatural kinds.
I don't
Know what she looks like, really
But
That's the point.
Her prize
Was that boy I wanted.
What use
Is a boy to a girl who doesn't even know
What she looks like?
My consolation for running with that boy
Across those
Few short yards of brown green grass is a
Sticker
An unsatisfactory piece of paper.
My consolation
For trying to be that girl is watching her
And her boy
Kiss when they say that they think that
No-one is
Looking but they both know that we all
Are.
My prize
In this race of speed and this
Contest of beauty is a locker on the top floor.
Blue, like the
Ribbon.
Blue, like the eyes of the
Boy.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Needed: A Francophone.
I need a Francophone.
I'm embarking on a rather interesting experiment called 'Lost in Translation'. I want to write a story based purely on the correspondance of an Australian girl and a French boy by email, but as neither speaks the other language, they have to rely on the bad translations of the internet. Each letter is written in three different versions: the original, the translation into the other language, and the literal translation back into the original language.
I would be asking a lot of this Francophone. Basically, they would need to:
1. Receive my emailed letter, which will be written in English in character as Jane.
2. Use babelfish to translate the letter into French.
3. From this translation, translate it word-for-word back into English
4. Respond to my translated letter in French in character as Jacques.
5. Translate your letter word-for-word into English.
I'll be Jane. Will you be my Jacques?
So. Wanted: a Francophone.
Bonne Chance to me.
I'm embarking on a rather interesting experiment called 'Lost in Translation'. I want to write a story based purely on the correspondance of an Australian girl and a French boy by email, but as neither speaks the other language, they have to rely on the bad translations of the internet. Each letter is written in three different versions: the original, the translation into the other language, and the literal translation back into the original language.
I would be asking a lot of this Francophone. Basically, they would need to:
1. Receive my emailed letter, which will be written in English in character as Jane.
2. Use babelfish to translate the letter into French.
3. From this translation, translate it word-for-word back into English
4. Respond to my translated letter in French in character as Jacques.
5. Translate your letter word-for-word into English.
I'll be Jane. Will you be my Jacques?
So. Wanted: a Francophone.
Bonne Chance to me.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Outside
Oh I've loved you a long time,
Your sweet smile,
It's a magnet to my heart on my sleeve.
Oh I've loved you a long time,
But I don't know if or when you'll ever love me.
But I feel like God
Because we're never in the same place,
But we're always together, somehow
I'm alone,
On the other side of a locked door.
And I'm cold, here,
But people don't seem to care anymore.
I see you warm and safe in this room of society
And I smile,
Even though I'm freezing here on the outside.
Oh I've tried to fit in for a long time,
But there are some things where I gotta draw the line.
For a friend I'd give up my life, but
I'd never be prepared to give up my soul.
Oh I've tried to fit in but somehow,
I'm a triangle in a circle hole.
But I feel left out
Because I'm always here and you,
You're always there
I'm alone,
On the other side of a locked door.
And I'm cold, here
But people don't seem to care anymore.
I see you warm and safe in this room of society
And I smile,
Even though I'm freezing here on the outside.
Sometimes I start to cry,
Because I think that it's not a case of bad memory.
It's not my fault I'm so shy,
But their bad intentions get the better of me.
I find words for you,
But they get lost in the cold.
I'd love to go in,
But I'm okay watching you grow comfortably old.
I feel like I'm missing out,
Because I've been drowned out
By people who are competing with me
For you.
I'm alone,
On the other side of a locked door.
And I'm cold, here
But people don't seem to care anymore,
I see you warm and safe in the room of society,
And I wish I was with you.
But instead I'm dying here on the outside.
Inspired by 'The Outside' by Taylor Swift
Your sweet smile,
It's a magnet to my heart on my sleeve.
Oh I've loved you a long time,
But I don't know if or when you'll ever love me.
But I feel like God
Because we're never in the same place,
But we're always together, somehow
I'm alone,
On the other side of a locked door.
And I'm cold, here,
But people don't seem to care anymore.
I see you warm and safe in this room of society
And I smile,
Even though I'm freezing here on the outside.
Oh I've tried to fit in for a long time,
But there are some things where I gotta draw the line.
For a friend I'd give up my life, but
I'd never be prepared to give up my soul.
Oh I've tried to fit in but somehow,
I'm a triangle in a circle hole.
But I feel left out
Because I'm always here and you,
You're always there
I'm alone,
On the other side of a locked door.
And I'm cold, here
But people don't seem to care anymore.
I see you warm and safe in this room of society
And I smile,
Even though I'm freezing here on the outside.
Sometimes I start to cry,
Because I think that it's not a case of bad memory.
It's not my fault I'm so shy,
But their bad intentions get the better of me.
I find words for you,
But they get lost in the cold.
I'd love to go in,
But I'm okay watching you grow comfortably old.
I feel like I'm missing out,
Because I've been drowned out
By people who are competing with me
For you.
I'm alone,
On the other side of a locked door.
And I'm cold, here
But people don't seem to care anymore,
I see you warm and safe in the room of society,
And I wish I was with you.
But instead I'm dying here on the outside.
Inspired by 'The Outside' by Taylor Swift
Intruder
Take what is not yours,
Where's your dignity?
Take everything,
Leave me bleeding in shattered glass.
Take what is mine,
You've taken a piece of my heart,
You've taken more than you think,
You've got more of me than you bargained for,
Soul snatcher.
You're an intruder
Hearth and home,
Mine, not yours.
If you're God's sick twisted servant,
Then my Gods don't pity you.
A black heart is a death wish in the afterworld.
Your jokes have gone wrong,
Your humour's turned black,
Can't you see there's no laughing in the crowd?
There's no other way to put it,
I'm the victim now.
I thought we as a race
Were better than this.
Apparently I'm wrong.
Must we be martyrs
To do what is right?
Is evil still lurking
Like an intruder in the night?
Where's your dignity?
Take everything,
Leave me bleeding in shattered glass.
Take what is mine,
You've taken a piece of my heart,
You've taken more than you think,
You've got more of me than you bargained for,
Soul snatcher.
You're an intruder
Hearth and home,
Mine, not yours.
If you're God's sick twisted servant,
Then my Gods don't pity you.
A black heart is a death wish in the afterworld.
Your jokes have gone wrong,
Your humour's turned black,
Can't you see there's no laughing in the crowd?
There's no other way to put it,
I'm the victim now.
I thought we as a race
Were better than this.
Apparently I'm wrong.
Must we be martyrs
To do what is right?
Is evil still lurking
Like an intruder in the night?
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Ignorance is your new best friend.
A song from a couple of years ago from my favourite band, Paramore:
Lyrics:
If I'm a bad person, you don't like me
Well, I guess I'll make my own way
It's a circle, a mean cycle
I can't excite you anymore
Where's your gavel? Your jury?
What's my offense this time?
You're not a judge but if you're gonna judge me
Well, sentence me to another life
Don't wanna hear your sad songs
I don't wanna feel your pain
When you swear it's all my fault
'Cause you know we're not the same
No, we're not the same, oh, we're not the same
We're the friends who stuck together
We wrote our names in blood
But I guess you can't accept that the change is good
It's good, it's good
Well, you treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
You treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
Ignorance is your new best friend
Ignorance is your new best friend
This is the best thing that could've happened
Any longer and I wouldn't have made it
It's not a war, no, it's not a rapture
I'm just a person but you can't take it
The same tricks that, that once fooled me
They won't get you anywhere
I'm not the same kid from your memory
Well, now I can fend for myself
Don't wanna hear your sad songs
I don't wanna feel your pain
When you swear it's all my fault
'Cause you know we're not the same
No, we're not the same, oh, we're not the same
Yeah, we used to stick together
We wrote our names in blood
But I guess you can't accept that the change is good
It's good, it's good
Well, you treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
Well, I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
You treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
Well, I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
Ignorance is your new best friend
Ignorance is your new best friend
Ignorance is your new best friend
Ignorance is your new best friend
Well, you treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
Well, I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
You treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
...you see why I like it? It reminds me a bit of my poems 'March of Solitude' and 'Against the Tide'.
Lyrics:
If I'm a bad person, you don't like me
Well, I guess I'll make my own way
It's a circle, a mean cycle
I can't excite you anymore
Where's your gavel? Your jury?
What's my offense this time?
You're not a judge but if you're gonna judge me
Well, sentence me to another life
Don't wanna hear your sad songs
I don't wanna feel your pain
When you swear it's all my fault
'Cause you know we're not the same
No, we're not the same, oh, we're not the same
We're the friends who stuck together
We wrote our names in blood
But I guess you can't accept that the change is good
It's good, it's good
Well, you treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
You treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
Ignorance is your new best friend
Ignorance is your new best friend
This is the best thing that could've happened
Any longer and I wouldn't have made it
It's not a war, no, it's not a rapture
I'm just a person but you can't take it
The same tricks that, that once fooled me
They won't get you anywhere
I'm not the same kid from your memory
Well, now I can fend for myself
Don't wanna hear your sad songs
I don't wanna feel your pain
When you swear it's all my fault
'Cause you know we're not the same
No, we're not the same, oh, we're not the same
Yeah, we used to stick together
We wrote our names in blood
But I guess you can't accept that the change is good
It's good, it's good
Well, you treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
Well, I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
You treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
Well, I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
Ignorance is your new best friend
Ignorance is your new best friend
Ignorance is your new best friend
Ignorance is your new best friend
Well, you treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
Well, I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
You treat me just like another stranger
Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
I guess I'll go, I best be on my way out
...you see why I like it? It reminds me a bit of my poems 'March of Solitude' and 'Against the Tide'.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
2011 Canterbury Earthquake
My heart goes out to our brothers who lost their lives in the Canterbury earthquake in New Zealand today. I pray that our neighbours across the Tasman find the courage to find peace and move on.
"We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death"
- David Sarnoff
Monday, February 21, 2011
Good Life Guilty
People, especially people who think that they've suffered so much more than others, think that depression is only justifiable in people who have been through really drastic things, like the Holocaust or something.
And sure, those people would be perfectly justified in suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress or whatever. But people have to remember that all people, from all walks of life, can suffer from depression, and they shouldn't be dismissed because their life seems so charmed.
Life is hard, whether you're starving in a lean-to in Afghanistan or if you're one of the world's richest, life is hard. Living through every day is a small miracle, and I think we're so out of touch with the fact. Every life, no matter the when and where, has its own set of challenges.
Often we judge the challenges of someone's life rather than the person living that life: something that one person can do blindfolded with their eyes closed is excruciatingly difficult for another. It's not about why you don't rise to the occasion, it's about if you can.
I know my life may seem charmed to most people. I'm young, I don't worry about taxes, and I live my life knowing that I'll always have food on my plate, a roof over my head and a bed to sleep on. I'm entitled to twelve years free education. I'm smart. The list goes on, blah blah blah.
And so people often say 'so what?' to my issues. They say that I'm being petty, that I don't try hard enough, I'm emo, ungrateful, blah blah blah. But as I've said over and over, nobody can truly put themselves into my shoes and tell me that every time I have cried myself to sleep was for naught. The only thing worse when you're young and vulnerable and feeling like your heart is going to explode out of your chest is when you're young and vulnerable and feeling like your heart is going to explode out of your chest and people are saying 'Get over it'. It was like they thought that if something was worse than what I was going through, it made my situation so much better. It doesn't. The presence of worse doesn't make bad any more tolerable. When I was scared about my operations, they'd tell me about really sick kids who had twenty a year and were still going to die. When I had my heart broken, they told me about people dying of AIDS in Africa. When I was being bullied they would tell me about students who had been thrown down stairs and spat on until they jumped off the roof. Pretty soon I felt like jumping off a roof, too.
It's a waste of time trying to tell people you think have it so good about the people starving in Africa or how bad your life is in the days before iPods and running water. At best you'll just irritate the crap out of them, and at worst they'll suffer from what I call 'good life guilty' - when you feel bad, then you feel bad about feeling bad. It's a bit like people who say to new mothers that they have no right to be depressed after childbirth because they're blessed with new life, they've brought a new person into the world, they're lucky their child is healthy and normal, blah blah blah. Post-partum depression, like all forms of depression, can spring out of nowhere and in the most unlikely of circumstances and people.
We are all human beings. All human beings have the right to be...human.
And sure, those people would be perfectly justified in suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress or whatever. But people have to remember that all people, from all walks of life, can suffer from depression, and they shouldn't be dismissed because their life seems so charmed.
Life is hard, whether you're starving in a lean-to in Afghanistan or if you're one of the world's richest, life is hard. Living through every day is a small miracle, and I think we're so out of touch with the fact. Every life, no matter the when and where, has its own set of challenges.
Often we judge the challenges of someone's life rather than the person living that life: something that one person can do blindfolded with their eyes closed is excruciatingly difficult for another. It's not about why you don't rise to the occasion, it's about if you can.
I know my life may seem charmed to most people. I'm young, I don't worry about taxes, and I live my life knowing that I'll always have food on my plate, a roof over my head and a bed to sleep on. I'm entitled to twelve years free education. I'm smart. The list goes on, blah blah blah.
And so people often say 'so what?' to my issues. They say that I'm being petty, that I don't try hard enough, I'm emo, ungrateful, blah blah blah. But as I've said over and over, nobody can truly put themselves into my shoes and tell me that every time I have cried myself to sleep was for naught. The only thing worse when you're young and vulnerable and feeling like your heart is going to explode out of your chest is when you're young and vulnerable and feeling like your heart is going to explode out of your chest and people are saying 'Get over it'. It was like they thought that if something was worse than what I was going through, it made my situation so much better. It doesn't. The presence of worse doesn't make bad any more tolerable. When I was scared about my operations, they'd tell me about really sick kids who had twenty a year and were still going to die. When I had my heart broken, they told me about people dying of AIDS in Africa. When I was being bullied they would tell me about students who had been thrown down stairs and spat on until they jumped off the roof. Pretty soon I felt like jumping off a roof, too.
It's a waste of time trying to tell people you think have it so good about the people starving in Africa or how bad your life is in the days before iPods and running water. At best you'll just irritate the crap out of them, and at worst they'll suffer from what I call 'good life guilty' - when you feel bad, then you feel bad about feeling bad. It's a bit like people who say to new mothers that they have no right to be depressed after childbirth because they're blessed with new life, they've brought a new person into the world, they're lucky their child is healthy and normal, blah blah blah. Post-partum depression, like all forms of depression, can spring out of nowhere and in the most unlikely of circumstances and people.
We are all human beings. All human beings have the right to be...human.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Sorted.
I'm far from reliable, but I like the reliable things in life. I hate it, for example, when one of my teachers skivs off and we get some substitute who hasn't the faintest idea what they're doing. It's a waste of my time.
And I'm a food girl. I like good, hot, comforting, reliable food.
If I had as good a relationship with a man as I had with, I don't know, my favourite pasta or dim sum, I would be a very happy woman indeed. There's something comforting about the fact that no matter how bad school (and school lunches) get, there'll be a dinner that isn't disgusting/expensive/served in a foil bowl with plastic sporks/designed to kill waiting for me at home.
There's something really delish about home-cooked food. I'm still a ramen girl, but I'm not really a huge fan of junk food, with the exception of my early teen ice cream binges. I don't really like lollies or chocolate, and I'll only eat doughnuts if they're really good, which they're not, here in medieval Perth. Really, my only junk food weakness is ramen.
I am strongly against people, especially children, eating junk food on a regular basis as a substitute for proper meals. The occasional after-school french fry fix isn't so bad, but junk food for dinner five nights a week is appalling. Dinner, at the very least, should be home-cooked or from a decent restaurant. Take out, fast food and food stalls are often unhygienic and unhealthy.
It's really not that hard to produce decent grub on a daily basis. Proof: sorted food. This is the brit hub for good, fast, healthy food. I don't actually cook myself, with the exceptions of the standard pathetic schoolgirl's cooking knowledge (instant noodles, porridge, tea, coffee, french toast, normal toast and jaffles) although I do bake occasionally during the holidays, but seriously, this stuff (and the chef) got my mouth watering. Good food garnished with hot chef, sorted.
And I'm a food girl. I like good, hot, comforting, reliable food.
If I had as good a relationship with a man as I had with, I don't know, my favourite pasta or dim sum, I would be a very happy woman indeed. There's something comforting about the fact that no matter how bad school (and school lunches) get, there'll be a dinner that isn't disgusting/expensive/served in a foil bowl with plastic sporks/designed to kill waiting for me at home.
There's something really delish about home-cooked food. I'm still a ramen girl, but I'm not really a huge fan of junk food, with the exception of my early teen ice cream binges. I don't really like lollies or chocolate, and I'll only eat doughnuts if they're really good, which they're not, here in medieval Perth. Really, my only junk food weakness is ramen.
I am strongly against people, especially children, eating junk food on a regular basis as a substitute for proper meals. The occasional after-school french fry fix isn't so bad, but junk food for dinner five nights a week is appalling. Dinner, at the very least, should be home-cooked or from a decent restaurant. Take out, fast food and food stalls are often unhygienic and unhealthy.
It's really not that hard to produce decent grub on a daily basis. Proof: sorted food. This is the brit hub for good, fast, healthy food. I don't actually cook myself, with the exceptions of the standard pathetic schoolgirl's cooking knowledge (instant noodles, porridge, tea, coffee, french toast, normal toast and jaffles) although I do bake occasionally during the holidays, but seriously, this stuff (and the chef) got my mouth watering. Good food garnished with hot chef, sorted.
I've always considered myself as a somewhat philosophical person, even if I did dismally in philosophy at school.
The main reason for this is that my opinions and beliefs are somewhat unorthodox and controversial. This is a product of a rather unusual childhood: my medical condition, the difficulties of being the product of two cultures placed into another, radically different one, my unusual talents and my abnormal shortcomings, and something else...put it this way: I've never been officially diagnosed with a mental illness, but for some time now I've come to terms with the fact that I am not quite right in the head.
I've always prided myself in my ability to defy convention, defy Fate and God, if either exist, and take my life into my own hands. When one is a legal child such opportunities are few and far between, and often discouraged, but I jump at every chance to be different, a better person. In fact, my proudest achievement is my sound manipulation of the education system. Like Frankie said, I did it my way.
But my operations, which are few and far between yet still quite monumental and numerous for someone of my age, I feel as if we are defying both Fate and my innate desire to be in control of my personal affairs. For the most part, my operations are life-saving and I would almost certainly be dead if I did not go through with them, but there is something unethical about it - I always feel wrong as I go through with it, as if someone somewhere had intended for something to happen, or for things not to happen, but we defy them without fully knowing the consequences. A first thing that I have always found grating is that my parents and my doctors often speak of my operations as if I am not there, and until very recently I had no say as to what ungodly procedures they did to my body which I should rightfully claim as my own. In my latest operation I put my foot down at the doctor's suggestion of a rather major and risky operation in favour of a smaller, less invasive one. In an attempt to sate my rebellious teenage attitude at the prospect of being unwillingly cut into pieces, the surgeon invited me to sign my consent, but it was an empty gesture - there was no official reason for me to sign, and therefore there was no designated place on the form for me to sign, and in any case, even if I refused to sign it, what happened wouldn't have been much different. It is during these dreaded times of hospital stays, endless amounts of painkillers and anaesthesia I feel the most vulnerable, and the most robbed of my rights. What kind of fourteen year old would contemplate an ethical death over a legally-valid life? I would. I may not believe in God, but I do have a sense of right and wrong, even if it is slightly warped.
There is no prospect of me refusing an operation (with legal consequences) until I am at least eighteen, and in any case, I would break my mother's heart if I refused any, even if she were one hundred years old and approaching death and I were seventy and not far from joining her. But perhaps this right I hope I will eventually have, to deny myself the unnatural preservation of my life, I can use later as a form of voluntary suicide, when I am old and sick and weary of life. It is a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. But I often feel as though I am living out of borrowed time, time that is not mine - as if I was born intended for the grave but I cheated Death before I even knew I was doing so. I also feel resentful that I was not born with the unconditional right to life as others are.
There are very few things in this world that I am certain of. I try and avoid complacency at all costs, and one valuable thing I learned in philosophy (which goes completely against mathematical reasoning, which I love) is that even though the sun rose today and yesterday and every other day, it may not rise tomorrow. My lack of understanding of the most basic scientific phenomenon has undermined my ability to trust fully in them. In fact, perhaps the only thing that I have believed in all my life is my mother's unconditional and uncompromising love for me. I was a difficult child and I am an equally disagreeable teenager, and my strong and uncompromising character has brushed people up the wrong way, and people often do not comprehend what I am, and many do not even bother to, even those who are closest to me - my mother, in all her sweetness and her ability to accept difficult characters such as I her daughter, seems mostly above this, which is why she is my only and dearest friend, although even she does not fully understand who I am and how things affect me. All other institutions of love or intimacy or friendship have broken time and time again, due to flimsy allegiances and phony charades of comraderie, but this one thing is the only unbreakable thing in my life. Perhaps I will go mad without it.
Am I mad? I think so. My inability to respond appropriately to acts of kindness and gratitude, my suspicion and contempt of most forms of amicability or friendship (although this is heavily influenced by some personal experiences) and my strong love of solititude confirms in the very least I am not your average fifteen year old. I am amazingly contradictory: I want to be different, but I want to be loved for it. I often cry out of loneliness, but for some reason I cannot summon the effort or will to maintain friendships. Other percieved abnormalities and shortcomings of my character I think are simply the limitations of culture: people, mostly white people, often criticize my apparent lack of humility, but I think that is a bit of a one-dimensional reading of my character. I lack the ability to pretend that I am average and mediocre in all things, and I would have thought it quite natural to be proud of my achievements and ashamed of my faults, but apparently it isn't acceptable. Such is the profound effect of this social double standard that for quite some time now I have battled some unforgiving and often underestimated bouts of depression. My distinct knowledge of my impressive strengths and my dismal failures has been enormously helpful in my often risky decisions regarding my eduation and other aspects of my life, but it has cost me almost everything: friends, a place in society, and the ever-elusive goal of love.
My preoccupation with love, I think, transcends average teenage infatuations. I love sometimes for no reason, or for the most trivial of reasons, and my love is almost always both unconditional and largely unreciprocated. It's a foolish pastime, love, especially in high school, but it's some kind of addiction - and as always, when one wakes up, it's a heartbreaking experience. In regards to the dismal business that is K, I think now, reflecting on it, the hardest part was not my obvious foolishness nor his apparent betrayal or my feeling of wretched worthlessness, but the fact that sometimes I could not extract any feeling or emotion from him. It frustrated me to no end - because the whole business sapped the life and strength out of me, and to him it seemed to be something of no consequence. So in truth, that was the largest cause of my pain. Had he hated me as passionately as I loved him, I would be emotionally satisfied. But when one has such strong emotions and receives little of that in return, you seem out of balance, and you get criticized for it. Really, it seems you get criticized for everything.
I've come to terms with most of what I am. I've learned to live with it, and manipulated it to my advantage. I've learned to love what I am. But the problem is...have you?
The main reason for this is that my opinions and beliefs are somewhat unorthodox and controversial. This is a product of a rather unusual childhood: my medical condition, the difficulties of being the product of two cultures placed into another, radically different one, my unusual talents and my abnormal shortcomings, and something else...put it this way: I've never been officially diagnosed with a mental illness, but for some time now I've come to terms with the fact that I am not quite right in the head.
I've always prided myself in my ability to defy convention, defy Fate and God, if either exist, and take my life into my own hands. When one is a legal child such opportunities are few and far between, and often discouraged, but I jump at every chance to be different, a better person. In fact, my proudest achievement is my sound manipulation of the education system. Like Frankie said, I did it my way.
But my operations, which are few and far between yet still quite monumental and numerous for someone of my age, I feel as if we are defying both Fate and my innate desire to be in control of my personal affairs. For the most part, my operations are life-saving and I would almost certainly be dead if I did not go through with them, but there is something unethical about it - I always feel wrong as I go through with it, as if someone somewhere had intended for something to happen, or for things not to happen, but we defy them without fully knowing the consequences. A first thing that I have always found grating is that my parents and my doctors often speak of my operations as if I am not there, and until very recently I had no say as to what ungodly procedures they did to my body which I should rightfully claim as my own. In my latest operation I put my foot down at the doctor's suggestion of a rather major and risky operation in favour of a smaller, less invasive one. In an attempt to sate my rebellious teenage attitude at the prospect of being unwillingly cut into pieces, the surgeon invited me to sign my consent, but it was an empty gesture - there was no official reason for me to sign, and therefore there was no designated place on the form for me to sign, and in any case, even if I refused to sign it, what happened wouldn't have been much different. It is during these dreaded times of hospital stays, endless amounts of painkillers and anaesthesia I feel the most vulnerable, and the most robbed of my rights. What kind of fourteen year old would contemplate an ethical death over a legally-valid life? I would. I may not believe in God, but I do have a sense of right and wrong, even if it is slightly warped.
There is no prospect of me refusing an operation (with legal consequences) until I am at least eighteen, and in any case, I would break my mother's heart if I refused any, even if she were one hundred years old and approaching death and I were seventy and not far from joining her. But perhaps this right I hope I will eventually have, to deny myself the unnatural preservation of my life, I can use later as a form of voluntary suicide, when I am old and sick and weary of life. It is a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. But I often feel as though I am living out of borrowed time, time that is not mine - as if I was born intended for the grave but I cheated Death before I even knew I was doing so. I also feel resentful that I was not born with the unconditional right to life as others are.
There are very few things in this world that I am certain of. I try and avoid complacency at all costs, and one valuable thing I learned in philosophy (which goes completely against mathematical reasoning, which I love) is that even though the sun rose today and yesterday and every other day, it may not rise tomorrow. My lack of understanding of the most basic scientific phenomenon has undermined my ability to trust fully in them. In fact, perhaps the only thing that I have believed in all my life is my mother's unconditional and uncompromising love for me. I was a difficult child and I am an equally disagreeable teenager, and my strong and uncompromising character has brushed people up the wrong way, and people often do not comprehend what I am, and many do not even bother to, even those who are closest to me - my mother, in all her sweetness and her ability to accept difficult characters such as I her daughter, seems mostly above this, which is why she is my only and dearest friend, although even she does not fully understand who I am and how things affect me. All other institutions of love or intimacy or friendship have broken time and time again, due to flimsy allegiances and phony charades of comraderie, but this one thing is the only unbreakable thing in my life. Perhaps I will go mad without it.
Am I mad? I think so. My inability to respond appropriately to acts of kindness and gratitude, my suspicion and contempt of most forms of amicability or friendship (although this is heavily influenced by some personal experiences) and my strong love of solititude confirms in the very least I am not your average fifteen year old. I am amazingly contradictory: I want to be different, but I want to be loved for it. I often cry out of loneliness, but for some reason I cannot summon the effort or will to maintain friendships. Other percieved abnormalities and shortcomings of my character I think are simply the limitations of culture: people, mostly white people, often criticize my apparent lack of humility, but I think that is a bit of a one-dimensional reading of my character. I lack the ability to pretend that I am average and mediocre in all things, and I would have thought it quite natural to be proud of my achievements and ashamed of my faults, but apparently it isn't acceptable. Such is the profound effect of this social double standard that for quite some time now I have battled some unforgiving and often underestimated bouts of depression. My distinct knowledge of my impressive strengths and my dismal failures has been enormously helpful in my often risky decisions regarding my eduation and other aspects of my life, but it has cost me almost everything: friends, a place in society, and the ever-elusive goal of love.
My preoccupation with love, I think, transcends average teenage infatuations. I love sometimes for no reason, or for the most trivial of reasons, and my love is almost always both unconditional and largely unreciprocated. It's a foolish pastime, love, especially in high school, but it's some kind of addiction - and as always, when one wakes up, it's a heartbreaking experience. In regards to the dismal business that is K, I think now, reflecting on it, the hardest part was not my obvious foolishness nor his apparent betrayal or my feeling of wretched worthlessness, but the fact that sometimes I could not extract any feeling or emotion from him. It frustrated me to no end - because the whole business sapped the life and strength out of me, and to him it seemed to be something of no consequence. So in truth, that was the largest cause of my pain. Had he hated me as passionately as I loved him, I would be emotionally satisfied. But when one has such strong emotions and receives little of that in return, you seem out of balance, and you get criticized for it. Really, it seems you get criticized for everything.
I've come to terms with most of what I am. I've learned to live with it, and manipulated it to my advantage. I've learned to love what I am. But the problem is...have you?
Saturday, February 19, 2011
You know that nightmare where every single day is Valentine's Day?
I'm living it, right now.
You know, I didn't do too badly on Valentine's Day. I didn't spend half an hour banging my head against my locker (although admittedly, when one is a year eleven, one doesn't even have thirty seconds to spare, let alone thirty minutes), I didn't eat chocolate or ice cream (at all. I knew once I started I wouldn't stop) and I basically spent the day avoiding taken people and hanging out too much with the Untakens. And I didn't send myself anything. That would be the epitome of loser. I am proud to say I have never sunk to that level, even when...oh, never mind.
But now Valentine's Day seems pretty much eternal, and it's getting pretty damn annoying.
There are people kissing in the ice rink. Like, on the ice. It's really, really gross. If you're cold you wear a sweater, not your boyfriend. And do you know how hard it is to dodge couples who are randomly making out/holding hands and staring into each other's eyes/skating with various body parts linked together/spontaneously having sex? Pretty damn hard, I tell you.
The year elevens make out at the lockers. Not very convenient when you're late for English and you've got a couple plastered over your locker, and the five lockers surrounding your locker. They also hog all the study tables on the top floor, because apparently it's not very romantic to sit on the floor like the other mortals do. I know year eleven is stressful, but surely, surely it is possible to survive it without random staring competitions with signficant others, excessive hand holding and spontaneous hugs at the door to the girl's toilets/the drink fountain/the bottom of the staircase. The year tens are even worse. One dude bought his gf ten roses. That's thirty dollars. I could have bought a steak with that.
Seeing year eights all coupled up is weird, too. Don't get me wrong, we all had our first boyfriends when we were eleven, but when you're in the sixth grade of a seven-grade school, you're pretty grown up. Year eights are like babies. It's very...odd.
Teenage boys seem incapable of anything but sport and study, and sometimes only one and sometimes neither. Call me sexist, but try and prove me wrong. Those who don't fit this sad stereotype are the Mr Bingleys, chasing the Jane Bennets of the world. They say that men aren't born romantic or with a parental instinct, but surely that would be necessary to continue our species? All parental duty shouldn't rely on one sex.
Girls learn about unconditional love from a very young age. It is natural - I give you, so you give me. For boys love is more like you give me, and I might give you just a little. Love from boys seems very conditional. In the good ol' days of the times when women were treated more like animals than humans, the condition was 'I'll love you if you take the place of my wife, my mother, my slave and my dog'. Now the condition is 'I'll love you if you're pretty' or 'I'll love you if you're perfect' or 'I'll love you if you let me fuck around...but don't you get any ideas!' The only time this is swapped is if the girl is impossibly hot and the boy is a sad, lonely, fat nerd.
There are too many standards for women to live up to, and they're so contradictory, hypocritical. We're 'giving in' if we get too skinny, but we're simply intolerable if we're voluptuous. Men have different ideas of what is curvy, and what is fat, etc. We pick on each other too much, too - girls can be massive bitches, even to their friends - and we pick on ourselves too much, too. Men? They meet the occasional intimidating beefcake, but all to often I have seen a girl painted and manicured to perfection with a guy wearing what appears to be a football jersy with his pajama pants, emmitting a foul odour of hamburgers, cigarettes and beer.
Hot girl, fug dude. Non-hot girl, still a fug dude. I hope that when they and I are older they will see past these superficial standards that make up much of teenage love. Until then, I'll do the Darcy swoon. When one's dating prospects are as bad as this, fictional characters are not such a bad option after all.
I'm living it, right now.
You know, I didn't do too badly on Valentine's Day. I didn't spend half an hour banging my head against my locker (although admittedly, when one is a year eleven, one doesn't even have thirty seconds to spare, let alone thirty minutes), I didn't eat chocolate or ice cream (at all. I knew once I started I wouldn't stop) and I basically spent the day avoiding taken people and hanging out too much with the Untakens. And I didn't send myself anything. That would be the epitome of loser. I am proud to say I have never sunk to that level, even when...oh, never mind.
But now Valentine's Day seems pretty much eternal, and it's getting pretty damn annoying.
There are people kissing in the ice rink. Like, on the ice. It's really, really gross. If you're cold you wear a sweater, not your boyfriend. And do you know how hard it is to dodge couples who are randomly making out/holding hands and staring into each other's eyes/skating with various body parts linked together/spontaneously having sex? Pretty damn hard, I tell you.
The year elevens make out at the lockers. Not very convenient when you're late for English and you've got a couple plastered over your locker, and the five lockers surrounding your locker. They also hog all the study tables on the top floor, because apparently it's not very romantic to sit on the floor like the other mortals do. I know year eleven is stressful, but surely, surely it is possible to survive it without random staring competitions with signficant others, excessive hand holding and spontaneous hugs at the door to the girl's toilets/the drink fountain/the bottom of the staircase. The year tens are even worse. One dude bought his gf ten roses. That's thirty dollars. I could have bought a steak with that.
Seeing year eights all coupled up is weird, too. Don't get me wrong, we all had our first boyfriends when we were eleven, but when you're in the sixth grade of a seven-grade school, you're pretty grown up. Year eights are like babies. It's very...odd.
Teenage boys seem incapable of anything but sport and study, and sometimes only one and sometimes neither. Call me sexist, but try and prove me wrong. Those who don't fit this sad stereotype are the Mr Bingleys, chasing the Jane Bennets of the world. They say that men aren't born romantic or with a parental instinct, but surely that would be necessary to continue our species? All parental duty shouldn't rely on one sex.
Girls learn about unconditional love from a very young age. It is natural - I give you, so you give me. For boys love is more like you give me, and I might give you just a little. Love from boys seems very conditional. In the good ol' days of the times when women were treated more like animals than humans, the condition was 'I'll love you if you take the place of my wife, my mother, my slave and my dog'. Now the condition is 'I'll love you if you're pretty' or 'I'll love you if you're perfect' or 'I'll love you if you let me fuck around...but don't you get any ideas!' The only time this is swapped is if the girl is impossibly hot and the boy is a sad, lonely, fat nerd.
There are too many standards for women to live up to, and they're so contradictory, hypocritical. We're 'giving in' if we get too skinny, but we're simply intolerable if we're voluptuous. Men have different ideas of what is curvy, and what is fat, etc. We pick on each other too much, too - girls can be massive bitches, even to their friends - and we pick on ourselves too much, too. Men? They meet the occasional intimidating beefcake, but all to often I have seen a girl painted and manicured to perfection with a guy wearing what appears to be a football jersy with his pajama pants, emmitting a foul odour of hamburgers, cigarettes and beer.
Hot girl, fug dude. Non-hot girl, still a fug dude. I hope that when they and I are older they will see past these superficial standards that make up much of teenage love. Until then, I'll do the Darcy swoon. When one's dating prospects are as bad as this, fictional characters are not such a bad option after all.
There's a reason why I don't like democracy.
Democracy is about the ignorant masses voting for dumb old arseholes who are sexist, rascist, conservative pigs who try to save the world from feminists and boat people.
Boat people.
Why do we call them 'boat people'? Do we call each other 'house people'? Do we call students 'school people'? Do we call prisoners 'jail people'? Do we call babies 'womb people?' No.
What do we think it is, the bloody Spanish Armada? We are Australia, big, powerful, wealthy Australia, and we're terrified of a couple of boats.
Here's news for you, Tony Abbot and John Howard and everyone else who say 'boat people' in the same way we say 'diarrhoea' - boat people are real people, just like you and me. Boat people have families, lives, cultures, that we ignore when we look at them, poor and dirty, in boats that look like a blind six year old made them, and call them 'boat people'.
Someone wise once said that all men are entitled to the unalienable rights of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. But how many men actually get that? And what do our dear politicians who go home to a hero-worshipping wife and perfect blond children and a comfortable house and good food know about what life is like in war-torn places of the world where these so-called boat people come from? Try pursuing happiness in Afghanistan, where you'll more likely get blown up than anything else.
Australian media portrays it like there are millions of people swamping in to Australia on dinghies and have come to eat the steak and bangers right off our plates and soak up all our hard-earned taxes as Centrelink payments whilst they slog around doing nothing eating funny food and speaking funny languages. C'mon guys, we've never even had a proper Yellow Peril, so why fuss about what, 2000 people coming on a boat per year? We have nearly 23 million people. If the Australian government didn't make it like all of Asia is coming in to drown Australia in soy sauce, you really wouldn't notice.
We are so inconsiderate of the less fortunate. None of us here can even fathom what life would be like in wartime or poverty. We moan over our measly $67,000 incomes, well, try living on less than 67. Dollars. Yeah.
We take starving children and desperate people and treat them like criminals, there is no way to sugar coat this. We lock them up for as long as we like - even murderers know when they're going to get out. Barbed wire, this is how we treat victims of war and famine. And if a boat crashes, what does the Australian government do? 'Oopsies!' Members of the opposition even wanted funerals of the victims from the recent Christmas Island disaster to take place on Christmas Island, with family members having to finance their expenses to say farewell to loved ones. Disgraceful. You don't even treat a dog like that.
Why don't we care about the people who come here hoping for a better life? Australia has so much to offer, yet what we do offer is beyond pathetic. Why are we so backwards and rascist, and why do we make all attempts to hide this? If the boat people were white and not Middle Eastern or Asian, you'd treat them with more respect. Immigrants in Australia are some of the most hard working, honest, upright and intelligent people you will ever meet, yet whether they're boat people or born and bred Australians, we're still treated with blatant condescension and disrespect. They told us all the White Australia and One Australia crap was over, but it's not. The proof? Detention centres.
Put murderers in jail, not innocent people. You hear stories of people getting away with horrific crimes with a mere two years in prison, yet people who have done nothing wrong can spend years, decades in barbed wire hell. We deny them their basic rights and liberties, they have no identity, and you still expect us to say that the Australian government is liberal and the people are generous. They're not. Australian spirit means nothing if it does not exist.
Democracy is about the ignorant masses voting for dumb old arseholes who are sexist, rascist, conservative pigs who try to save the world from feminists and boat people.
Boat people.
Why do we call them 'boat people'? Do we call each other 'house people'? Do we call students 'school people'? Do we call prisoners 'jail people'? Do we call babies 'womb people?' No.
What do we think it is, the bloody Spanish Armada? We are Australia, big, powerful, wealthy Australia, and we're terrified of a couple of boats.
Here's news for you, Tony Abbot and John Howard and everyone else who say 'boat people' in the same way we say 'diarrhoea' - boat people are real people, just like you and me. Boat people have families, lives, cultures, that we ignore when we look at them, poor and dirty, in boats that look like a blind six year old made them, and call them 'boat people'.
Someone wise once said that all men are entitled to the unalienable rights of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. But how many men actually get that? And what do our dear politicians who go home to a hero-worshipping wife and perfect blond children and a comfortable house and good food know about what life is like in war-torn places of the world where these so-called boat people come from? Try pursuing happiness in Afghanistan, where you'll more likely get blown up than anything else.
Australian media portrays it like there are millions of people swamping in to Australia on dinghies and have come to eat the steak and bangers right off our plates and soak up all our hard-earned taxes as Centrelink payments whilst they slog around doing nothing eating funny food and speaking funny languages. C'mon guys, we've never even had a proper Yellow Peril, so why fuss about what, 2000 people coming on a boat per year? We have nearly 23 million people. If the Australian government didn't make it like all of Asia is coming in to drown Australia in soy sauce, you really wouldn't notice.
We are so inconsiderate of the less fortunate. None of us here can even fathom what life would be like in wartime or poverty. We moan over our measly $67,000 incomes, well, try living on less than 67. Dollars. Yeah.
We take starving children and desperate people and treat them like criminals, there is no way to sugar coat this. We lock them up for as long as we like - even murderers know when they're going to get out. Barbed wire, this is how we treat victims of war and famine. And if a boat crashes, what does the Australian government do? 'Oopsies!' Members of the opposition even wanted funerals of the victims from the recent Christmas Island disaster to take place on Christmas Island, with family members having to finance their expenses to say farewell to loved ones. Disgraceful. You don't even treat a dog like that.
Why don't we care about the people who come here hoping for a better life? Australia has so much to offer, yet what we do offer is beyond pathetic. Why are we so backwards and rascist, and why do we make all attempts to hide this? If the boat people were white and not Middle Eastern or Asian, you'd treat them with more respect. Immigrants in Australia are some of the most hard working, honest, upright and intelligent people you will ever meet, yet whether they're boat people or born and bred Australians, we're still treated with blatant condescension and disrespect. They told us all the White Australia and One Australia crap was over, but it's not. The proof? Detention centres.
Put murderers in jail, not innocent people. You hear stories of people getting away with horrific crimes with a mere two years in prison, yet people who have done nothing wrong can spend years, decades in barbed wire hell. We deny them their basic rights and liberties, they have no identity, and you still expect us to say that the Australian government is liberal and the people are generous. They're not. Australian spirit means nothing if it does not exist.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
L.O.V.E.
Would you want someone who'll
See your face as a price tag for your
Heart?
Could you want someone who
Won't say they love you from the
Start?
Think about it
I'd love you 'till the day I die,
I'd hold you 'till your tears run dry,
I'd make you laugh until you cry.
I'd love you more than life itself,
You won't be just another book on my shelf,
Would anyone love you like I could?
Could anyone love you like I would?
I would want someone who'll
Hold me through the
Night.
I could want someone who'll
Stay with me for all my
Life.
Wouldn't you?
Think about it
I'd love you 'till the day I die,
I'd hold you 'till your tears run dry,
I'd make you laugh until you cry.
I'd love you more than life itself,
You won't be just another book on my shelf,
Could anyone love you like I would?
Would anyone love you like I could?
I can see us one day living in our own little
World.
Can you see me being your favourite
Girl?
Think about it
I'd love you 'till the day I die,
I'd hold you 'till your tears run dry,
I'd make you laugh until you cry.
I'd love you more than life itself,
You won't be just another book on my shelf,
Could anyone love you like I would?
Would anyone love you like I could?
Could you love me 'till the day I die,
Could you hold me 'till my tears run dry,
Could you make me laugh until I cry?
Would you love me more than life itself,
Or would I just be another book on your shelf,
Could you love me like I would?
Would you love me like I could?
I could,
I would,
I'd be
Anything,
For you.
See your face as a price tag for your
Heart?
Could you want someone who
Won't say they love you from the
Start?
Think about it
I'd love you 'till the day I die,
I'd hold you 'till your tears run dry,
I'd make you laugh until you cry.
I'd love you more than life itself,
You won't be just another book on my shelf,
Would anyone love you like I could?
Could anyone love you like I would?
I would want someone who'll
Hold me through the
Night.
I could want someone who'll
Stay with me for all my
Life.
Wouldn't you?
Think about it
I'd love you 'till the day I die,
I'd hold you 'till your tears run dry,
I'd make you laugh until you cry.
I'd love you more than life itself,
You won't be just another book on my shelf,
Could anyone love you like I would?
Would anyone love you like I could?
I can see us one day living in our own little
World.
Can you see me being your favourite
Girl?
Think about it
I'd love you 'till the day I die,
I'd hold you 'till your tears run dry,
I'd make you laugh until you cry.
I'd love you more than life itself,
You won't be just another book on my shelf,
Could anyone love you like I would?
Would anyone love you like I could?
Could you love me 'till the day I die,
Could you hold me 'till my tears run dry,
Could you make me laugh until I cry?
Would you love me more than life itself,
Or would I just be another book on your shelf,
Could you love me like I would?
Would you love me like I could?
I could,
I would,
I'd be
Anything,
For you.
Frost, Spark and Axe.
Another poem I managed to write today. I'm on a roll!
Frost, Spark and Axe
We are but sheep
Following the shepheard of convention,
In the paddock of society.
Ever fearing
Frost,
Spark
and
Axe.
We are but martyrs,
We are but prisoners,
We are but soldiers,
Ever fearing
Frost,
Spark
and
Axe.
I am but a woman,
I am but a girl,
I am but a person,
Ever fearing
Frost,
Spark
and
Axe.
Frost, Spark and Axe
We are but sheep
Following the shepheard of convention,
In the paddock of society.
Ever fearing
Frost,
Spark
and
Axe.
We are but martyrs,
We are but prisoners,
We are but soldiers,
Ever fearing
Frost,
Spark
and
Axe.
I am but a woman,
I am but a girl,
I am but a person,
Ever fearing
Frost,
Spark
and
Axe.
Ink.
Three tests today...but I still had some time to write some verse:
Ink.
A testament,
A statement,
A monument.
It will say:
I was here.
I lived,
I breathed.
I loved,
Hated,
Cried.
I was me
And now all I will ever be is
Ink
Black on white,
Sometimes smeared,
But always here.
Ink.
Now dried,
When I die,
All I will be is
Ink.
A stain,
A mark,
A masterpiece.
I will be
Ink.
Ink.
A testament,
A statement,
A monument.
It will say:
I was here.
I lived,
I breathed.
I loved,
Hated,
Cried.
I was me
And now all I will ever be is
Ink
Black on white,
Sometimes smeared,
But always here.
Ink.
Now dried,
When I die,
All I will be is
Ink.
A stain,
A mark,
A masterpiece.
I will be
Ink.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Lady Solitaire
To be honest, I think Lady Renegade is dying. Lady Solitaire is being born. I wll introduce her soon.
One of the hardest things to accept about me, indeed, one of the hardest things for me to accept about myself, is my solitude. I like being alone. I like my own company. I think I'm an interesting person. When I'm with myself it's one interesting person meeting another. I love exploring my own psyche, my own abilities, my own possibilites, my own little world of me, myself and I. I would go insane, for example, if this blog wasn't managed entirely by me, Lady Renegade and Lady Solitaire. When people see me sometimes I may seem kind of irritated - it's because they've interrupted some train of thought, broken into a private and sacred world that is writing. Sometimes I walk in a daze, and I forget trifle things like 'hello' and 'how are you'. In my mind, I'm silently, privately, conquering the world.
I also don't like people intruding, as they always do, and I don't like people trampling all over my opinions. I'm also very OCD - I have my coloured fineliners in a particular order, and I follow that order religiously when I write my notes, and so I get extremely annoyed when I drop them or someone mixes them up.
There are many misconceptions about solitary people. Solitary people do get lonely. I mean, solitary people enjoy their own company a lot more than other people do, but it doesn't mean we don't crave society like the rest of you - humans are social beings. It's very hard to form friendships when one is a loner like myself - and when I find myself in times when I really need a shoulder to cry on, willing shoulders are few and far between. Solitary people don't rely on people less; they just rely on themselves more - so in a way, solitary people are quite needy.
Sometimes all I want is to curl up under a tree with a good book and doze. Sometimes all I want to do is blog, blog, blog, and I hate it when I get interrupted. But sometimes I need company. It's like the law of gravity - there's only so long I can defy the physics. Sometimes I need someone to catch me, there are times when I simply cannot support myself and the many burdens of life. Sometimes I just need someone to accept me for what I am: a loner, alone and lonely, and love me nonetheless. Sometimes I just need...friends.
But they're never there.
One of the hardest things to accept about me, indeed, one of the hardest things for me to accept about myself, is my solitude. I like being alone. I like my own company. I think I'm an interesting person. When I'm with myself it's one interesting person meeting another. I love exploring my own psyche, my own abilities, my own possibilites, my own little world of me, myself and I. I would go insane, for example, if this blog wasn't managed entirely by me, Lady Renegade and Lady Solitaire. When people see me sometimes I may seem kind of irritated - it's because they've interrupted some train of thought, broken into a private and sacred world that is writing. Sometimes I walk in a daze, and I forget trifle things like 'hello' and 'how are you'. In my mind, I'm silently, privately, conquering the world.
I also don't like people intruding, as they always do, and I don't like people trampling all over my opinions. I'm also very OCD - I have my coloured fineliners in a particular order, and I follow that order religiously when I write my notes, and so I get extremely annoyed when I drop them or someone mixes them up.
There are many misconceptions about solitary people. Solitary people do get lonely. I mean, solitary people enjoy their own company a lot more than other people do, but it doesn't mean we don't crave society like the rest of you - humans are social beings. It's very hard to form friendships when one is a loner like myself - and when I find myself in times when I really need a shoulder to cry on, willing shoulders are few and far between. Solitary people don't rely on people less; they just rely on themselves more - so in a way, solitary people are quite needy.
Sometimes all I want is to curl up under a tree with a good book and doze. Sometimes all I want to do is blog, blog, blog, and I hate it when I get interrupted. But sometimes I need company. It's like the law of gravity - there's only so long I can defy the physics. Sometimes I need someone to catch me, there are times when I simply cannot support myself and the many burdens of life. Sometimes I just need someone to accept me for what I am: a loner, alone and lonely, and love me nonetheless. Sometimes I just need...friends.
But they're never there.
And it's guys like that that keep the fire alive.
If you haven't figured out I'm a Taylor Swift fan then you are an idiot.
Sorry.
But seriously, if you didn't pick it up, please go see a doctor.
Part of the reason why I'm a Taylor Swift fan because when I listen to songs, being the writaholic I am, I look at lyrics. How are they written? Do they 'flow'? Do they match the music? And, most importantly, can I relate to them?
Yes seems to be the answer, for the most part. Here is a very long sample on how Taylor Swift has helped me get through the tears and trials of life:
But the reason why I am writing this post is that within this song there is a small proof that there are boys out there who aren't cheaters or losers or douchebags or taken or heartbreakers or unparticular about hygiene. There are Mr Darcys out there, even if they are only celebrities who like pretty people. They're still out there.
Enchanted, one of the tracks on Taylor Swift's album 'Speak Now', is written about her meeting Adam Young of Owl City. On Valentine's Day, he posted this on his site:
Dear Taylor
by Adam Young
One blustery evening last October, I waited impatiently until the clock tolled midnight and then promptly bought Taylor Swift’s new record on iTunes. I played it in the kitchen, I played it in the car, I played it at the studio, I played it on flights to Japan and back; I just couldn’t keep away from it. Speak Now was the indisputable leader of my “top 5″ record list of 2010, which is slightly ironic because the other four albums were abstract experimental/post-rock/ambient works.
I always love decoding the sneaky secret messages hidden in Taylor’s written lyrics, so naturally the day Speak Now came out, I played the whole thing from top to bottom as I added up the capital letters per each song’s set of lyrics.
As track 8 came to a close and the album switched over to track 9 (a breathtaking song called Enchanted and one of my favorites on the entire record), something began to feel curiously “familiar.”
I couldn’t put my finger on it. Why did the song feel so personal? Why was it ringing a bell? Perhaps it was merely the word “wonderstruck” that indeed struck a sweet chord, but before the second chorus hit, I’d already added up the letters:
A-D-A
And then it hit me like a freight train. I didn’t even need to find that last letter “M.” A colorful swirl of memories flashed before my eyes as it all added up. My jaw hit the floor.
The track is absolutely gorgeous and I’m so tremendously honored that Taylor would write such an elegant song and thereby offer a gracious nod in my direction. Needless to say, I was lost for words and utterly smitten. I couldn’t stop smiling.
I figured such an eloquent gesture should be reciprocated by the most polite, heartfelt and respectful response I could possibly muster. It’s no secret that I’m a bit shy, so naturally music was the most articulate way of attempting such a sincere endeavor. How does one respond to such a personal outpouring of emotion and sentiment? I tossed and turned over that one.
They say “timing is everything” and that brings us to now. Today is Valentine’s Day.
And thus, here is my reply…
Listen to the song here:
http://owlcitymusic.com/vday
Dearest Taylor,
I’ll be the first to admit I’m a rather shy boy and since music is the most eloquent form of communication I can muster, I decided to record something for you — as sort of a “reply” to the breathtaking song on your current record. This is what I wanted so badly to tell you in person but could never quite put into words:
Everything about you is beautiful. You’re an immensely charming girl with a wonderful heart and more grace and elegance than I know how to describe. You are a true princess from a dreamy fairy tale; a modern Cinderella. I’m terribly sorry it’s taken me such a long time to reply but I figured Valentine’s Day was the perfect time to write this note to you and simply say… I was enchanted to meet you too.
Love,
Adam
Complete with a link to a cover of 'Enchanted', done in true experimental rock/techno style that is Owl City (Fireflies).
It is every girl's dream that a guy will write a song for you, but it's every writer's dream that every song, every poem and every story you've written about that special someone is appreciated. A tall order, but hey, I have to make up for being a measly 5'2" somehow :P
Sorry.
But seriously, if you didn't pick it up, please go see a doctor.
Part of the reason why I'm a Taylor Swift fan because when I listen to songs, being the writaholic I am, I look at lyrics. How are they written? Do they 'flow'? Do they match the music? And, most importantly, can I relate to them?
Yes seems to be the answer, for the most part. Here is a very long sample on how Taylor Swift has helped me get through the tears and trials of life:
- Teardrops on My Guitar (he's the reason for the teardrops on my guitar/the only one who's got enough of me to break my heart/he's the song in the car I keep singing/don't know why I do)
- Picture to Burn (state the obvious/I didn't get my perfect fantasy/I realize you love yourself more than you could ever love me),
- A Place in this World (I'm alone/on my own/and that's all I know/I'll be strong/I'll be wrong/Oh, but life goes on/Oh, I'm just a girl/Trying to find a place in this world)
- Cold as You (And I start a fight cause I need to feel something/And you do what you want 'cause I'm not what you wanted...And you walk away with a great little story of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you)
- White Horse (I'm not your princess/this ain't a fairytale/I'm gonna find someone some day who might actually treat me well)
- You Belong With Me (I know your favourite songs/and you tell me 'bout your dreams/think I know where you belong/think I know it's with me)
- Breathe (I can't breathe without you/but I have to)
- You're Not Sorry (looking so innocent/I might believe you if I didn't know/Could've loved you all my life, baby/if you hadn't left me waiting out in the cold)
- Forever & Always (see I was there when you said forever and always/you didn't mean it baby/you said forever and always)
- Change (these things will change/I can see it now/these walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down)
- I'd Lie (and I can tell you his favourite colour's green/he likes to argue/born on the seventeenth/his sister's beautiful/he has his father's eyes/and if you asked me if I loved him/I'd lie)
- Sparks Fly (I could wait patiently but I really wish you would/drop everything now/meet me in the pouring rain/kiss me on the sidewalk/take away the pain)
- Dear John (dear John/I see it all now that you're gone/don't you think thirteen's too young to be played by your dark twisted games/when I loved you so/I should've known)
- Mean (someday I'll be living in a big old city/and all you're ever gonna be is mean/some day I'll be big enough so you can't hit me/and all you're ever gonna be is mean/why you gotta be so mean?)
- The Story of Us (I'd tell you I miss you/but I don't know how/and I've never heard silence quite this loud)
- Never Grow Up (oh, honey don't you ever grow up/don't you ever grow up/just stay this little/oh, honey don't you ever grow up/don't you ever grow up/it could stay this simple)
- Enchanted (please don't be in love with someone else/please don't have somebody waiting on you)
- Better than Revenge (she came along/got him along/and let's hear the applause/she took him faster than you could say 'sabotage')
- Haunted (come on, come on/don't leave me like this/I thought I had you figured out/can't breathe whenever you're gone/can't turn back now/I'm haunted)
- Last Kiss (all I know is I don't know how to be something you miss)
- If This Was A Movie (Last night I heard my own heart beating/sounding like footsteps on my floor/six months gone and I'm still waiting/even though I know you're not there)
But the reason why I am writing this post is that within this song there is a small proof that there are boys out there who aren't cheaters or losers or douchebags or taken or heartbreakers or unparticular about hygiene. There are Mr Darcys out there, even if they are only celebrities who like pretty people. They're still out there.
Enchanted, one of the tracks on Taylor Swift's album 'Speak Now', is written about her meeting Adam Young of Owl City. On Valentine's Day, he posted this on his site:
Dear Taylor
by Adam Young
One blustery evening last October, I waited impatiently until the clock tolled midnight and then promptly bought Taylor Swift’s new record on iTunes. I played it in the kitchen, I played it in the car, I played it at the studio, I played it on flights to Japan and back; I just couldn’t keep away from it. Speak Now was the indisputable leader of my “top 5″ record list of 2010, which is slightly ironic because the other four albums were abstract experimental/post-rock/ambient works.
I always love decoding the sneaky secret messages hidden in Taylor’s written lyrics, so naturally the day Speak Now came out, I played the whole thing from top to bottom as I added up the capital letters per each song’s set of lyrics.
As track 8 came to a close and the album switched over to track 9 (a breathtaking song called Enchanted and one of my favorites on the entire record), something began to feel curiously “familiar.”
I couldn’t put my finger on it. Why did the song feel so personal? Why was it ringing a bell? Perhaps it was merely the word “wonderstruck” that indeed struck a sweet chord, but before the second chorus hit, I’d already added up the letters:
A-D-A
And then it hit me like a freight train. I didn’t even need to find that last letter “M.” A colorful swirl of memories flashed before my eyes as it all added up. My jaw hit the floor.
The track is absolutely gorgeous and I’m so tremendously honored that Taylor would write such an elegant song and thereby offer a gracious nod in my direction. Needless to say, I was lost for words and utterly smitten. I couldn’t stop smiling.
I figured such an eloquent gesture should be reciprocated by the most polite, heartfelt and respectful response I could possibly muster. It’s no secret that I’m a bit shy, so naturally music was the most articulate way of attempting such a sincere endeavor. How does one respond to such a personal outpouring of emotion and sentiment? I tossed and turned over that one.
They say “timing is everything” and that brings us to now. Today is Valentine’s Day.
And thus, here is my reply…
Listen to the song here:
http://owlcitymusic.com/vday
Dearest Taylor,
I’ll be the first to admit I’m a rather shy boy and since music is the most eloquent form of communication I can muster, I decided to record something for you — as sort of a “reply” to the breathtaking song on your current record. This is what I wanted so badly to tell you in person but could never quite put into words:
Everything about you is beautiful. You’re an immensely charming girl with a wonderful heart and more grace and elegance than I know how to describe. You are a true princess from a dreamy fairy tale; a modern Cinderella. I’m terribly sorry it’s taken me such a long time to reply but I figured Valentine’s Day was the perfect time to write this note to you and simply say… I was enchanted to meet you too.
Love,
Adam
Complete with a link to a cover of 'Enchanted', done in true experimental rock/techno style that is Owl City (Fireflies).
It is every girl's dream that a guy will write a song for you, but it's every writer's dream that every song, every poem and every story you've written about that special someone is appreciated. A tall order, but hey, I have to make up for being a measly 5'2" somehow :P
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Gate To Paradise
This is a poem from a couple of years ago, when I was about thirteen, as part of my work with the Red Room Company's 'Sea Things' poetry project. For more information see here.
I lost this work a little while ago, somewhere between USBs, my home computer and the school's complex and largely malfunctional computer system. But I found it on the Red Room Company's flickr stream, incorrectly labelled, but my childish labour of love nonetheless. So here it is, as I sent it, edited heavily by my scrupulous teacher (hence the many semi-colons). I have removed some slightly strangely-placed commas.
The fierce sea wind blows away my pain,
I lost this work a little while ago, somewhere between USBs, my home computer and the school's complex and largely malfunctional computer system. But I found it on the Red Room Company's flickr stream, incorrectly labelled, but my childish labour of love nonetheless. So here it is, as I sent it, edited heavily by my scrupulous teacher (hence the many semi-colons). I have removed some slightly strangely-placed commas.
Gate to Paradise:
I'm eager to leave civilization behind,
The highway I must cross is a cruel reminder of what we have done to this world;
And what the world has done to me.
I race down the glistening sand path,
The sand glittering like crushed diamonds.
I can sense myself getting closer to paradise,
The world's own version of nirvana;
Because with every step,
The air gets fresher,
Cleaner;
And tears turn into smiles.
The fierce sea wind blows away my pain,
The cool water soothes my fiery anger,
And it is here,
Alone on the beach,
Just me, the sun and the sea;
I feel at peace.
The beach is a land of goddesses,
The glorious sun,
The magnificent sea.
I am nothing compared to this glorious magnificence,
This magnificent glory;
But I don't mind.
The sea seems to be above such trifle things
Such as love, or hate, or guilt.
It loves unconditionally,
It kills indiscriminately,
And each wave remembers centuries of happiness and pain.
I don't want to walk back
To civilization,
To society;
Where rules impose an endless sea of pain,
Frustration,
Emptiness.
But as the sun goes down,
And the sea turns black,
I walk back into the game of life,
Where everyone plays until the bitter end.
by L.R. edited by M.H.
So what do you think? How does it compare to the poems I compose now? It's a little snapshot of the past - fascinating, isn't it? Many things have changed since I wrote this poem, but many things stay the same - the tide comes in, comes out, the waves crash, and the beach continues to amaze and terrify me.
I remember writing this vividly; being completely stuck, as I spend very little time around the beach compared to many Australians. Then we went to the beach, as a family, which for us is just down the road and across a horrendously busy highway - and I walked up the path of crushed diamonds (I tastefully ommited the piles of doggy doo that were on this crushed diamond corridor) and then to the wild and beautiful sea, all but abandoned, with the fiery sun scorching the sky a beautiful rosy hue before sinking gracefully into the mighty expanse of the sea. It was truly magnificent. The moment I got home and brushed the sand off my legs I wrote the poem, pretty much as is. Impulse writing is my speciality, and indeed, a poem written in the heat of the moment helped me gain entrance to my school.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Judge.
Me.
Who are you to judge?
You've got no wig,
Just an evil mask.
Hurt.
Me.
Who am I to cry?
I'm just a little girl,
Breaking inside.
Hold.
Me.
Who am I to ask you now?
I'm a human,
Talking to another human,
That's the theory, anyhow.
Love.
Me.
Who are you to refuse my cry?
I'd never wrong you,
I'd just hold you,
Until we say goodbye.
Me.
Who are you to judge?
You've got no wig,
Just an evil mask.
Hurt.
Me.
Who am I to cry?
I'm just a little girl,
Breaking inside.
Hold.
Me.
Who am I to ask you now?
I'm a human,
Talking to another human,
That's the theory, anyhow.
Love.
Me.
Who are you to refuse my cry?
I'd never wrong you,
I'd just hold you,
Until we say goodbye.
2011 Love Resolutions
1. I will not hide my ultra nerdiness just to impress the cute boy in my Year 11 Lit class. In a time when love is so unreliable, there is one thing that is not: A grades.
2. I will not kick myself every time I giggle in the wrong time or forget to wear makeup or show up to school with a slightly greasy hairline. I must not give the impression that I am not human.
3. I will stop dreaming about weddings and babies.
4. I will not have anymore 'Teardrops on My Guitar' moments - unnattainable boys are heartbreaking enough, without the addition of them being taken.
5. Whenever I am tempted to think about a boy of the flesh, I will think about Mr. Darcy, a nice, safe, fictional character who is also out of my league.
6. I will stop reading those incredibly lame and sexist 'How to Get a Boyfriend' articles, even just for fun.
7. I will not go out with a guy who has just been dumped, spends too much time playing sport, has mouldy sandwiches at the bottom of his bag and does not pay proper attention to personal hygiene. Even nerds must have standards.
8. I will not be ashamed of who and what and why I love. It is a part of who I am.
9. I will not be afraid to be myself, regardless of anything or anyone.
10. I will love life. A love life will come later.
2. I will not kick myself every time I giggle in the wrong time or forget to wear makeup or show up to school with a slightly greasy hairline. I must not give the impression that I am not human.
3. I will stop dreaming about weddings and babies.
4. I will not have anymore 'Teardrops on My Guitar' moments - unnattainable boys are heartbreaking enough, without the addition of them being taken.
5. Whenever I am tempted to think about a boy of the flesh, I will think about Mr. Darcy, a nice, safe, fictional character who is also out of my league.
6. I will stop reading those incredibly lame and sexist 'How to Get a Boyfriend' articles, even just for fun.
7. I will not go out with a guy who has just been dumped, spends too much time playing sport, has mouldy sandwiches at the bottom of his bag and does not pay proper attention to personal hygiene. Even nerds must have standards.
8. I will not be ashamed of who and what and why I love. It is a part of who I am.
9. I will not be afraid to be myself, regardless of anything or anyone.
10. I will love life. A love life will come later.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Itrytobepolite
There's a girl on the stage,
Itrytobepolite,
Even though she's always there,
And my times in the limelight are
few and far between.
There's a girl blushing and bowing,
Itrytobepolite,
Even though I wish she was
Me.
There's a girl over there,
Itrytobepolite,
Even though it's hard not to stare.
And my times in a lover's arms are
few and far between.
There's a girl blushing and smiling,
Itrytobepolite,
Even though I wish she was
Me.
There's a girl over there,
Itrytobepolite,
Even though she's always there,
I know that these times for me will be
few and far between.
Itrytobepolite,
But,
Ialwaysstarttothink,
Why
not
me?
Itrytobepolite,
Even though she's always there,
And my times in the limelight are
few and far between.
There's a girl blushing and bowing,
Itrytobepolite,
Even though I wish she was
Me.
There's a girl over there,
Itrytobepolite,
Even though it's hard not to stare.
And my times in a lover's arms are
few and far between.
There's a girl blushing and smiling,
Itrytobepolite,
Even though I wish she was
Me.
There's a girl over there,
Itrytobepolite,
Even though she's always there,
I know that these times for me will be
few and far between.
Itrytobepolite,
But,
Ialwaysstarttothink,
Why
not
me?
Saturday, February 12, 2011
New Name
I solemnly swear that I will try and keep this name for as long as I can bear. I will only change it if I can think of something reaallly cool.
I couldn't change it to The Secret World of a Misunderstood Writer. When you're fifteen looking at the product of your twelve-year-old self's mind, everything is kind of lame. Anyway, it's a nightmare to type and even worse to say.
A pariah is, essentially, an exotic word for the very unexotic state of being a social outcast/loser/freak of nature. Since skipping to year eleven I have some pretty solid proof that that is what I am. People hide things less when things are official. Like you don't pick on a criminal until he's in jail, that sort of thing.
I couldn't change it to The Secret World of a Misunderstood Writer. When you're fifteen looking at the product of your twelve-year-old self's mind, everything is kind of lame. Anyway, it's a nightmare to type and even worse to say.
A pariah is, essentially, an exotic word for the very unexotic state of being a social outcast/loser/freak of nature. Since skipping to year eleven I have some pretty solid proof that that is what I am. People hide things less when things are official. Like you don't pick on a criminal until he's in jail, that sort of thing.
Friday, February 11, 2011
I believe that you should never judge someone for what they do if it does not directly impact you, because a) it's none of your business, b) you don't know their motives, their background or whatever and c) it's still none of your farking business. It's so true that we don't know what we don't know, and oh, how often we forget it.
For the last couple of years I have been through some pretty serious depression. We judge people who are suicidal or depressed, when we have no right to - they're not giving up on life, they're not pathetic and ungrateful, they're just pushed by whatever it is to the edge of whatever they at the edge of. I should know. Depression is not something that needs to be fully justified or reasoned - it shouldn't be. It's like when you take a sicky from school you provide a note, not a detailed analysis of your family's medical history. I was depressed because I was sad and lonely and socially inept and struggling with what I wanted as opposed to what I got. And I had a lousy love life. Try as you may to convince me that I'm too young for it, it's not up to society to decide the when and who and why of love. It happened, and I was pressured not only by bullies but by people I trusted, people I thought cared about me to just move on, as if one can blink their eyes and their worries away.
Some things I went through were deeply private and personal, and yes, edited versions of them are on this blog. But some people took it and ridiculed me for it. I can't help feeling sad sometimes, and believe you me, there are heaps of girls (most of them the ones who mocked me) who get plenty upset over pretty trivial things. People don't have the right to judge my behaviour when one was as young as unhappy as I was. Nobody can ever say that they ever know what I went through, because they don't. I'm not saying that my life is Auchwitz terrible, but I am me, these things happened to me, and I dealt with them as best as I could. That's all you can ask of anyone.
Nowadays I am much happier, in theory. I'm still plagued by my oftentimes irrational behavior, which I'm afraid to say you're just going to have to forgive and forget. Perhaps nineteen out of twenty could deal with my problems much better than I did, but I never pretended to be one of those nineteen. Everyone has their weaknesses, and to have your weaknesses assaulted time and time again over a period of two or three years is a bit more than I could handle, on top of life and school and everything.
Don't think I'm blind to it - I know I was a right pain in the ass sometimes. I was almost bipolar in my behavior, swinging from hyper to depressive every six seconds, with only a few glimmers of normal. Perhaps I was more than people are used to. But everyone makes mistakes, everyone goes through rough patches, and nobody can be friends with everyone. I tried my best to grin and bear it, and you know what? I'm still crippled from all the times I denied myself the right to cry. I was only a little kid. Little kids cry.
I'm sorry if I've pissed anyone off or rubbed someone up the wrong way or cried someone to boredom over the last couple of years. I really shouldn't have to say this. It's bad enough that I was so sad and depressed, and now I have to apologise for it. Life is what it is - beautiful, unpredictable, etc.
Who are you to jump to conclusions, judge me by something you don't understand? Perhaps my life and trials seem pathetic to you, but believe you me, there are a lot of things that I find pathetic about your life, and I don't point out how dumb you are every time you trip over the same pothole. A person has no right to judge another human being. I used to think that perhaps people would be more understanding if they knew what it's like to cry yourself to sleep, to pine over what you don't have, and to feel guilty whilst doing so, but they'll never understand, and even if they did they'd still be hypocritical. There is no pleasing this world.
Private judgements are normal and necessary human behavior. It is how we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. But think twice before you make a public criticism. You don't know anyone fully, or better than they know themselves. You may know their situation, but you don't know exactly how they reat to it or how it effects them. To judge someone as yourself is wrong on all levels. I am me, and I will not be judged by anyone, by any standards. I am not one of those people who could travel to hell and back and smile on the journey, and I never pretended to be. I am, after all, merely human. Try and remember that.
For the last couple of years I have been through some pretty serious depression. We judge people who are suicidal or depressed, when we have no right to - they're not giving up on life, they're not pathetic and ungrateful, they're just pushed by whatever it is to the edge of whatever they at the edge of. I should know. Depression is not something that needs to be fully justified or reasoned - it shouldn't be. It's like when you take a sicky from school you provide a note, not a detailed analysis of your family's medical history. I was depressed because I was sad and lonely and socially inept and struggling with what I wanted as opposed to what I got. And I had a lousy love life. Try as you may to convince me that I'm too young for it, it's not up to society to decide the when and who and why of love. It happened, and I was pressured not only by bullies but by people I trusted, people I thought cared about me to just move on, as if one can blink their eyes and their worries away.
Some things I went through were deeply private and personal, and yes, edited versions of them are on this blog. But some people took it and ridiculed me for it. I can't help feeling sad sometimes, and believe you me, there are heaps of girls (most of them the ones who mocked me) who get plenty upset over pretty trivial things. People don't have the right to judge my behaviour when one was as young as unhappy as I was. Nobody can ever say that they ever know what I went through, because they don't. I'm not saying that my life is Auchwitz terrible, but I am me, these things happened to me, and I dealt with them as best as I could. That's all you can ask of anyone.
Nowadays I am much happier, in theory. I'm still plagued by my oftentimes irrational behavior, which I'm afraid to say you're just going to have to forgive and forget. Perhaps nineteen out of twenty could deal with my problems much better than I did, but I never pretended to be one of those nineteen. Everyone has their weaknesses, and to have your weaknesses assaulted time and time again over a period of two or three years is a bit more than I could handle, on top of life and school and everything.
Don't think I'm blind to it - I know I was a right pain in the ass sometimes. I was almost bipolar in my behavior, swinging from hyper to depressive every six seconds, with only a few glimmers of normal. Perhaps I was more than people are used to. But everyone makes mistakes, everyone goes through rough patches, and nobody can be friends with everyone. I tried my best to grin and bear it, and you know what? I'm still crippled from all the times I denied myself the right to cry. I was only a little kid. Little kids cry.
I'm sorry if I've pissed anyone off or rubbed someone up the wrong way or cried someone to boredom over the last couple of years. I really shouldn't have to say this. It's bad enough that I was so sad and depressed, and now I have to apologise for it. Life is what it is - beautiful, unpredictable, etc.
Who are you to jump to conclusions, judge me by something you don't understand? Perhaps my life and trials seem pathetic to you, but believe you me, there are a lot of things that I find pathetic about your life, and I don't point out how dumb you are every time you trip over the same pothole. A person has no right to judge another human being. I used to think that perhaps people would be more understanding if they knew what it's like to cry yourself to sleep, to pine over what you don't have, and to feel guilty whilst doing so, but they'll never understand, and even if they did they'd still be hypocritical. There is no pleasing this world.
Private judgements are normal and necessary human behavior. It is how we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. But think twice before you make a public criticism. You don't know anyone fully, or better than they know themselves. You may know their situation, but you don't know exactly how they reat to it or how it effects them. To judge someone as yourself is wrong on all levels. I am me, and I will not be judged by anyone, by any standards. I am not one of those people who could travel to hell and back and smile on the journey, and I never pretended to be. I am, after all, merely human. Try and remember that.
Blood.
Blood for the moon,
Blood for the earth,
Blood for the river,
Blood for the world.
Blood for the taking,
Blood gone to waste,
Blood we have forsaken,
And now it's too late.
Blood is our timekeeper,
Our housekeeper,
Our nurse.
Blood is our fortune,
Our livelihood,
Our purse.
The iron perfume
The scarlet dye,
Spills forth when we love,
Spills forth when we die,
As time goes by,
Our patience grows thin,
Our desperation increases,
Men do not understand,
Our time frame before we
Drip
drip
drip
away...
Blood for the earth,
Blood for the river,
Blood for the world.
Blood for the taking,
Blood gone to waste,
Blood we have forsaken,
And now it's too late.
Blood is our timekeeper,
Our housekeeper,
Our nurse.
Blood is our fortune,
Our livelihood,
Our purse.
The iron perfume
The scarlet dye,
Spills forth when we love,
Spills forth when we die,
As time goes by,
Our patience grows thin,
Our desperation increases,
Men do not understand,
Our time frame before we
Drip
drip
drip
away...
History's blackest mark.
"What an amazing man Hitler must have been...one cannot help but be in awe of a small, obscure man with such a dislikeable disposition who conquered Germany, and indeed the world. It seems extraordinary that he succeeded purely out of his impressive oratory skills, his "fanatical eyes" and fearsome presence - his book, with the absence of the voice that delutded a nation, is proof of how narrow-minded and ugly his vision, policy and philosophy really was. He was a drug that a tired, wearied, disillusioned population became addicted to, a drug that drove them blindly to the most inhumane and disgusting lengths to reach their twisted ideal, an artificial nirvana of the most appalling kind. And with all drugs come side effects, consequences - one man's voice shook the nation, and, alas, I have neither his talent nor the weary population needed for such a great, if terrible, revolution."
- On Hitler, L.R.
Imagine if Hitler had used his strengths, his great talents in capturing a nation and making it do as he bid, like a master to a dog - he would be more revered than President Lincoln or Martin Luther King. We cannot fathom what could drive a man to become something so terrible, to do such terrible things - as we sit comfortably in our comfortable homes, with good food and such abundant luxuries, we cannot contemplate the terror of war, of the Holocaust, of the mass killings, of the Night of the Long Knives, even the simple absence of a fair and democratic government we so take for granted. It seems impossible that one man, of insignificant means, could take the world nad turn it on its head, that every time we see the most gruesome pictures of Jews perishing in ghettos and concentration camps we can attribute this to one man, and one sick, twisted idealogy. And Hitler was not some crazy warlord of Ancient times - less than a hundred years ago he was the tyrant of the day.
People these days no longer have what Hitler had - a loving, adoring people, who were either brainwashed or forced into obedience, a tired, hungry, humiliated, war-weary population, willing to drink his lies and relish in what promises they brought. We cannot rouse such passions, such desperations, such rebellion and revolution in people now - for just causes, and for otherwise.
We are too complacent these days, too trusting of the flimsy protection democracy supposedly gives us - one must never forget that the Nazis rose to power during the Weimar Republic, which was supposedly democratic. We must never think that the Holocaust can never be repeated, because if we continue this complacency, this blatant disregard for politics or the deep, dark, frightening causes some people pledge themselves to, even now, today.
I know in my heart I would never be able to survive the horror and cruelty victims of concentration camps were subjected to. Even without my physical defects, even if I was fit and strong and a man, I would never be able to. I would poison myself with the sheer injustice of it all, pollute my mind with angry bitter thoughts of hate and sadness and self-pity and despair. It is in this that makes the Holocaust survivors true heroes - whilst we are often ignorant to the horrors humans can inflict upon one another, we are even more ignorant of the great courage it takes to know of it, but to ignore it nonetheless.
I know it's lame, but I cling on to his every word,
Even though it's really nothing that I haven't heard.
When we walk down the hall sometimes he smiles and talks to me,
And I can't help but laugh because it's so damn funny,
That stupid joke 'bout the Jews,
Hitler and concentrated orange juice,
It would be so dumb if it was anyone but him,
The unnatainable prize in this game I cannot win.
I make excuses about my crazy stupid heart,
But to me it's just one painful unamusing farce,
It's so hard to say one thing and feel another,
I hate how we lie to each other,
But that's what I have to do.
She's just so beautiful,
That girl he just asked out,
And she's got everything that I have to live without.
Sometimes I get lost in fantasies,
But I know he would never like a girl like me,
I'm too loud,
I'm too bold,
I'm too young,
I'm too everything.
And so I walk with my head down,
The same tired, lonely nerd,
I try to remember that I don't need boys,
And I shouldn't be one of their many toys,
But sometimes it's so hard to be a girl,
Trying to find a place in this world.
Even though it's really nothing that I haven't heard.
When we walk down the hall sometimes he smiles and talks to me,
And I can't help but laugh because it's so damn funny,
That stupid joke 'bout the Jews,
Hitler and concentrated orange juice,
It would be so dumb if it was anyone but him,
The unnatainable prize in this game I cannot win.
I make excuses about my crazy stupid heart,
But to me it's just one painful unamusing farce,
It's so hard to say one thing and feel another,
I hate how we lie to each other,
But that's what I have to do.
She's just so beautiful,
That girl he just asked out,
And she's got everything that I have to live without.
Sometimes I get lost in fantasies,
But I know he would never like a girl like me,
I'm too loud,
I'm too bold,
I'm too young,
I'm too everything.
And so I walk with my head down,
The same tired, lonely nerd,
I try to remember that I don't need boys,
And I shouldn't be one of their many toys,
But sometimes it's so hard to be a girl,
Trying to find a place in this world.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Mean girls.
They don't know what it feels like to
Walk alone.
They don't know how bad it feels to
Cry all the way home.
They don't know how angry I feel when they
Laugh at me.
And get all those boys I like to
Laugh with them.
All they do is point out my
Flaws.
I know they're there but I try and look like I
Don't care.
I sit in front of them but I can still feel them
Stare.
They don't understand me and I don't understand
Them.
They don't have real names to me they're just
Hate
Mean
Jealous
Spite
Bitch
That's all they are.
But they still hurt me because I'm still just a
Little girl.
Alone in this world.
Cross my heart and hope to die,
Poke a needle in my eye,
If I die before I wake
I pray that all their hearts will break,
Like they broke mine.
I hope they turn as ugly as they made me out to be,
I hope that nothing turns out for them the way they wanted it to be,
I hope with all my heart they die unhappy,
Amen.
They don't know what it feels like to
Walk alone.
They don't know how bad it feels to
Cry all the way home.
They don't know how angry I feel when they
Laugh at me.
And get all those boys I like to
Laugh with them.
All they do is point out my
Flaws.
I know they're there but I try and look like I
Don't care.
I sit in front of them but I can still feel them
Stare.
They don't understand me and I don't understand
Them.
They don't have real names to me they're just
Hate
Mean
Jealous
Spite
Bitch
That's all they are.
But they still hurt me because I'm still just a
Little girl.
Alone in this world.
Cross my heart and hope to die,
Poke a needle in my eye,
If I die before I wake
I pray that all their hearts will break,
Like they broke mine.
I hope they turn as ugly as they made me out to be,
I hope that nothing turns out for them the way they wanted it to be,
I hope with all my heart they die unhappy,
Amen.
men's rights.
It may seem strange, but I am a feminist and a men's right activist.
You see, much of my hatred towards the male sex is focused at a somewhat small (or, at least, not the majority) percentage of the sex, the ones I am most often faced with. If you had to go to school and attempt to date the boys I know, then believe me, it would be very easy to turn into the man-hater I appear to be.
When I go on my anti-male rants, you must understand that some things some certain boys have done has really hurt me to the core. I am racked by anger that someone could even contemplate doing things that they do, and that they don't even care, don't feel guilty, or obliged to say sorry. I am racked by shame, too, that I fell for those farked up bastards. It is natural to feel bitter, hate the whole sex, when one is a woman of my age, increasingly frustrated by the failings of the much ballyhooed state of love, and the disappointing mindsets of the men that supposedly come with the nirvana of romance. Feminist or no, it is every little girl's dream to fall in love, have a big white wedding and a husband who you're s'posed to live 'happily ever after' with. Even when you get older and your dreams and expectations get a bit more realistic, all you get are unsympathetic dumpings online, blantant cold rejections to your face, and endless rumours routinely calling you a slut, then a frigid bitch, a man-hating feminist and then back to a slut again. When one is called a whore so often by society you imagine that there are a lot of men behind that, and you hate them too.
but I haven't given up my optimism. I like to think that boys at high school are so derogatory, so disgusting in their habits and manners because they lack the finesse that education brings, and because they lack the crazy-stringent social conventions women must adhere to in primary school, they slack off, become arseholes, until several hookers and 'shock! horror! she rejected me! she rejected me!' moments jolt them back to reality. Or of those who are nice, they start seeing that pretty girls aren't always the right girls. That sort of thing. I like to think that despite everything, there are nice men out there who aren't trying to rape and pillage and plunder and rob us of our rights. And as nice as they are, men's rights are a little behind the ball too.
For example, victims of rape who are male are laughing stock, and I don't understand why. Sure, woman-on-man rape is a little hard to wrap our hands around, but it happens, and these poor souls hardly deserve to be laughed at - rape is a shameful experience as it is, and it's worse when a society doesn't take it easily. Men too can be victims of domestic violence, etc. Men are not always the macho characters imposed on them, the manly men they pretend to be. Men have vulnerabilities too, and instead of laughing at them we have to help them swallow their pride and let us help them, but as of yet that help is so far away.
Human rights, men's rights, women's rights, children's rights - they're so behind time I often wonder what we boast of, as a world, as a nation. What is so good about being a woman in Australia? Nothing, only you're better off than the Burqa clad people in Afghanistan. But should our so called life of luxury be compared to such shocking standards as that? No! Just as I say that women's rights are so much behind men's rights, men's rights aren't too sunny either. We have no rights, that's what I'm saying, for both sexes. We live in an endless cycle of misconception, of wrong conclusions. Just because some people have it a whole lot worse doesn't mean that we can't have it a whole lot better. Everyone, regardless of sex, race, age, need better rights.We're too content with so little. Think about it, if we fought harder, we could achieve so much, for everyone.
I get so frustrated with the world. I want to meet men who can prove that the whole sex isn't as bad as I know them to be. I want to go to some nonexistant place of equality. I want to be things, see things, know things, to tell me that this world isn't as disappointing, as anticlimatic, as it seems to me now. I'm grateful for what I've got, but I'm so frustrated because I want, and deserve, so much more, as do we all.
You see, much of my hatred towards the male sex is focused at a somewhat small (or, at least, not the majority) percentage of the sex, the ones I am most often faced with. If you had to go to school and attempt to date the boys I know, then believe me, it would be very easy to turn into the man-hater I appear to be.
When I go on my anti-male rants, you must understand that some things some certain boys have done has really hurt me to the core. I am racked by anger that someone could even contemplate doing things that they do, and that they don't even care, don't feel guilty, or obliged to say sorry. I am racked by shame, too, that I fell for those farked up bastards. It is natural to feel bitter, hate the whole sex, when one is a woman of my age, increasingly frustrated by the failings of the much ballyhooed state of love, and the disappointing mindsets of the men that supposedly come with the nirvana of romance. Feminist or no, it is every little girl's dream to fall in love, have a big white wedding and a husband who you're s'posed to live 'happily ever after' with. Even when you get older and your dreams and expectations get a bit more realistic, all you get are unsympathetic dumpings online, blantant cold rejections to your face, and endless rumours routinely calling you a slut, then a frigid bitch, a man-hating feminist and then back to a slut again. When one is called a whore so often by society you imagine that there are a lot of men behind that, and you hate them too.
but I haven't given up my optimism. I like to think that boys at high school are so derogatory, so disgusting in their habits and manners because they lack the finesse that education brings, and because they lack the crazy-stringent social conventions women must adhere to in primary school, they slack off, become arseholes, until several hookers and 'shock! horror! she rejected me! she rejected me!' moments jolt them back to reality. Or of those who are nice, they start seeing that pretty girls aren't always the right girls. That sort of thing. I like to think that despite everything, there are nice men out there who aren't trying to rape and pillage and plunder and rob us of our rights. And as nice as they are, men's rights are a little behind the ball too.
For example, victims of rape who are male are laughing stock, and I don't understand why. Sure, woman-on-man rape is a little hard to wrap our hands around, but it happens, and these poor souls hardly deserve to be laughed at - rape is a shameful experience as it is, and it's worse when a society doesn't take it easily. Men too can be victims of domestic violence, etc. Men are not always the macho characters imposed on them, the manly men they pretend to be. Men have vulnerabilities too, and instead of laughing at them we have to help them swallow their pride and let us help them, but as of yet that help is so far away.
Human rights, men's rights, women's rights, children's rights - they're so behind time I often wonder what we boast of, as a world, as a nation. What is so good about being a woman in Australia? Nothing, only you're better off than the Burqa clad people in Afghanistan. But should our so called life of luxury be compared to such shocking standards as that? No! Just as I say that women's rights are so much behind men's rights, men's rights aren't too sunny either. We have no rights, that's what I'm saying, for both sexes. We live in an endless cycle of misconception, of wrong conclusions. Just because some people have it a whole lot worse doesn't mean that we can't have it a whole lot better. Everyone, regardless of sex, race, age, need better rights.We're too content with so little. Think about it, if we fought harder, we could achieve so much, for everyone.
I get so frustrated with the world. I want to meet men who can prove that the whole sex isn't as bad as I know them to be. I want to go to some nonexistant place of equality. I want to be things, see things, know things, to tell me that this world isn't as disappointing, as anticlimatic, as it seems to me now. I'm grateful for what I've got, but I'm so frustrated because I want, and deserve, so much more, as do we all.
we are all fools in love.
The reason why men are fools in love is because men in highschool are not really men at all, still boys, and they'll remain ignorant, arrogant, immature boys, for the most part, until they're well into their 20's or 30's. They don't understand women, heck, they don't understand themselves. You know how children are so self-obsessed, everything's me me me? I'm not being sexist, but that's how most boys act when they're fifteen or sixteen, which they are now, in my year eleven classes. They don't give a toss that girls have to worry about looks and hair and clothes and periods and getting pregnant and all that, all they care about is how much attention is being paid to them, why they're not getting enough, and pretending they don't like it. The few who break this mould, the perfect, perfect Mr Darcys, the ones that are kind and elegant and handsome and all that turn into Mr Bingleys at the last minute, preferring Miss Pretty-Face Jane to the feisty Lizzy we all think we are.
The reason why women are fools in love is because we fail to recognise that men are neither suitable nor prepared for love when we are all ready to go charging in to the gory world that is french kissing and Valentine's day. Even if we do see it, like I do, we can't resist it. We have hormones and romance novels and bad chick flicks pushing us to do what will inevitably end in a mess of mascara puddles and endless amounts of ice cream.
You can't blame either sex, although to be honest, we all hate men for not freaking growing up when they're s'posed to. Sometimes I think their blatant immaturity, their selfish disdain for the feelings of others and the 'coolness' of the trend to be blantantly disrespectful towards, well, anybody, has less to do with hormones and more to do with the fact that it is simply acceptable in a way that it is and was never acceptable for women to behave in such a manner. There was once a day and age when men were expected to stand up and bow to a lady when she entered a room, be courteous and chivalrous, ladies first, all of that. And because it was expected, few breached it. We are nothing more than sheep following the shepherd of convention.
It's evidence of the sexism of this world. Women are expected to dress up, pluck this, hide that, and men can be basically whatever they want. Sure, we want them to be tanned and ripped to perfection, Mr Darcy and all, but it's okay if you're a farked up asshole who devestates innocent teenage hearts like the Americans bombed Hiroshima, everyone's okay with that, because they'll say that you're 'being a boy' and we're overreacting. Sure, we'll take it. We'll take anything.
As if.
The reason why women are fools in love is because we fail to recognise that men are neither suitable nor prepared for love when we are all ready to go charging in to the gory world that is french kissing and Valentine's day. Even if we do see it, like I do, we can't resist it. We have hormones and romance novels and bad chick flicks pushing us to do what will inevitably end in a mess of mascara puddles and endless amounts of ice cream.
You can't blame either sex, although to be honest, we all hate men for not freaking growing up when they're s'posed to. Sometimes I think their blatant immaturity, their selfish disdain for the feelings of others and the 'coolness' of the trend to be blantantly disrespectful towards, well, anybody, has less to do with hormones and more to do with the fact that it is simply acceptable in a way that it is and was never acceptable for women to behave in such a manner. There was once a day and age when men were expected to stand up and bow to a lady when she entered a room, be courteous and chivalrous, ladies first, all of that. And because it was expected, few breached it. We are nothing more than sheep following the shepherd of convention.
It's evidence of the sexism of this world. Women are expected to dress up, pluck this, hide that, and men can be basically whatever they want. Sure, we want them to be tanned and ripped to perfection, Mr Darcy and all, but it's okay if you're a farked up asshole who devestates innocent teenage hearts like the Americans bombed Hiroshima, everyone's okay with that, because they'll say that you're 'being a boy' and we're overreacting. Sure, we'll take it. We'll take anything.
As if.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Lighting Fires.
Waiting,
waiting,
In restless, endless, impatience.
Starved, parched, craving.
Always at another man's whim.
Here I stand, a pile of tinder,
No flame.
Come now,
My love,
Let's light fires.
Fire frightens with ferocity,
Terror and sheer velocity,
But it sates my curiousity,
No flame.
Come now,
My love,
Let's light fires.
You don't know my frustration,
Spark after spark,
Yet no flame to warm my chilled soul,
Frostbitten heart.
I strike,
I strike,
I strike again,
In desperation, thirst for flame.
And then a cold wind,
Or cruel rain,
Snuffs out what I've made.
No flame.
Come now,
My love,
Let's light fires.
I fear colder times,
Harder times,
With no light in the chill of midnight,
The sun is going down,
down.
down.
I crave my fire now.
I want warmth,
Heat,
Burn,
Anything.
Anything to save me from this unrelenting freeze.
No flame.
Come now,
My love,
Let's light fires.
waiting,
In restless, endless, impatience.
Starved, parched, craving.
Always at another man's whim.
Here I stand, a pile of tinder,
No flame.
Come now,
My love,
Let's light fires.
Fire frightens with ferocity,
Terror and sheer velocity,
But it sates my curiousity,
No flame.
Come now,
My love,
Let's light fires.
You don't know my frustration,
Spark after spark,
Yet no flame to warm my chilled soul,
Frostbitten heart.
I strike,
I strike,
I strike again,
In desperation, thirst for flame.
And then a cold wind,
Or cruel rain,
Snuffs out what I've made.
No flame.
Come now,
My love,
Let's light fires.
I fear colder times,
Harder times,
With no light in the chill of midnight,
The sun is going down,
down.
down.
I crave my fire now.
I want warmth,
Heat,
Burn,
Anything.
Anything to save me from this unrelenting freeze.
No flame.
Come now,
My love,
Let's light fires.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Against the tide.
I'm going against the flow,
I'm part of another tide now.
I'm not part of your 'wave' anymore,
You never liked it when I was, anyhow.
It's harder against the wind,
But the currents don't always take you to the right destination,
I want to live life now,
Don't want to waste anymore time on procrastination.
I've always gone against the flow,
I've always been part of my own tide,
There's never been any crew to my captain,
I've always run a one-woman show.
I've had so called 'allies' before,
More like pirates,
Always gunned me down.
But I'll follow my own path,
Maybe it'll turn my life around.
Against the tide,
Against the odds,
Dangerous, I know.
But when you've got a life to live
You have to live your life,
No point taking things slow.
I'm part of another tide now.
I'm not part of your 'wave' anymore,
You never liked it when I was, anyhow.
It's harder against the wind,
But the currents don't always take you to the right destination,
I want to live life now,
Don't want to waste anymore time on procrastination.
I've always gone against the flow,
I've always been part of my own tide,
There's never been any crew to my captain,
I've always run a one-woman show.
I've had so called 'allies' before,
More like pirates,
Always gunned me down.
But I'll follow my own path,
Maybe it'll turn my life around.
Against the tide,
Against the odds,
Dangerous, I know.
But when you've got a life to live
You have to live your life,
No point taking things slow.
this is the year everyone has been dreading/anticipating.
It's the big one. Year eleven.
You know how at the beginning of every year teachers say 'forget all your last years, this is the year that counts'? Well, this is the year when that is finally true.
There are the inevitable perks of being in year eleven - you get a locker which you can, with a fair amount of, um, 'encouragement', stuff your entire school bag into, and you get the last period of Monday off, whilst the poor buggers in junior school slog away at math problems you'll never have to touch again. People move out of your way, treat you with more respect. The teachers straighten up, take you seriously. You can be more bossy and picky about, well, everything. Now we have another excuse apart from PMS to be crabby - study, study, study.
But then there are the downsides - it's unbearably hot, and eight periods of non-stop reading, note taking, lecturing reduces my brain into a melted soup. There are people who don't take kindly to me in the class, for one reason or another - which is why you sit at the front, because then you can't see them. People stare at you, ask questions, doubt your choices. But it's alright. I knew what I signed up for.
I've only had two days of year eleven and I'm exhausted/exhilarated. Life hasn't gotten easier, but it seems to have more meaning now. That's what counts.
You know how at the beginning of every year teachers say 'forget all your last years, this is the year that counts'? Well, this is the year when that is finally true.
There are the inevitable perks of being in year eleven - you get a locker which you can, with a fair amount of, um, 'encouragement', stuff your entire school bag into, and you get the last period of Monday off, whilst the poor buggers in junior school slog away at math problems you'll never have to touch again. People move out of your way, treat you with more respect. The teachers straighten up, take you seriously. You can be more bossy and picky about, well, everything. Now we have another excuse apart from PMS to be crabby - study, study, study.
But then there are the downsides - it's unbearably hot, and eight periods of non-stop reading, note taking, lecturing reduces my brain into a melted soup. There are people who don't take kindly to me in the class, for one reason or another - which is why you sit at the front, because then you can't see them. People stare at you, ask questions, doubt your choices. But it's alright. I knew what I signed up for.
I've only had two days of year eleven and I'm exhausted/exhilarated. Life hasn't gotten easier, but it seems to have more meaning now. That's what counts.
I wish.
I see your sad face,
Your sad smile,
Sittin' alone whilst the boys run around.
And I don't know how it ended like this,
But I don't think I'm the only victim now.
I wish you knew how much you hurt me,
I wish you knew what it would mean if you just said sorry,
I wish you knew that I'll always be your friend.
I wish I knew why you never let me forgive you,
I wish I knew exactly what I ever meant to you,
I wish you knew what I knew,
And I wish I knew what you knew.
I see your eyes stare without really seeing,
I wonder what you're thinking of.
I'd tell you I miss you but I don't know how,
And I've never heard silence quite this loud.
I'm dying to know if it's killing you like it's killing me.
I wish you knew how much it kills me,
How easy it seems for you to forget me,
I wish you knew just a little of my pain.
I wish I knew what's hurting you,
I wish I knew how to make you smile again.
I wish I knew how to let us talk again.
There's a wall between us,
Of indecision,
Of misunderstanding,
Of wounds we don't want to open again.
There's something that stops me from running up to you,
Hold you,
Laugh with you,
Like I used to.
I wish I could break through...
I wish you knew what I knew,
I wish I knew what you knew.
Your sad smile,
Sittin' alone whilst the boys run around.
And I don't know how it ended like this,
But I don't think I'm the only victim now.
I wish you knew how much you hurt me,
I wish you knew what it would mean if you just said sorry,
I wish you knew that I'll always be your friend.
I wish I knew why you never let me forgive you,
I wish I knew exactly what I ever meant to you,
I wish you knew what I knew,
And I wish I knew what you knew.
I see your eyes stare without really seeing,
I wonder what you're thinking of.
I'd tell you I miss you but I don't know how,
And I've never heard silence quite this loud.
I'm dying to know if it's killing you like it's killing me.
I wish you knew how much it kills me,
How easy it seems for you to forget me,
I wish you knew just a little of my pain.
I wish I knew what's hurting you,
I wish I knew how to make you smile again.
I wish I knew how to let us talk again.
There's a wall between us,
Of indecision,
Of misunderstanding,
Of wounds we don't want to open again.
There's something that stops me from running up to you,
Hold you,
Laugh with you,
Like I used to.
I wish I could break through...
I wish you knew what I knew,
I wish I knew what you knew.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
The Ten Virtues of Being a Single Woman
1. The absence of a significant other means that I can divide my time quite comfortably between study, eating and The Big Bang Theory. My study schedule is so crowded that really, there is not much else that can fit in my life for the next two years. A boyfriend would ruin my plans quite nicely.
2. As I am not the Virgin Mary, I will not have to worry about teenage pregnancy. Or STI, for that matter.
3. As a single woman I can spend a good deal of my time guiltlessly perving on people I will never meet online. From my limited experience I know that Google Imaging Sam Worthington and Eric Bana is uncomfortable when one is in a relationship - the closest I will come to cheating, I suppose.
4. In the absence of a boyfriend I can watch as much Pride & Prejudice as I like, and I do not have to endure films that are not in English, badly dubbed and involve excessive amounts of bad kungfu.
5. I spend a good deal of my time in my pyjamas with no makeup, my hair unwashed and eating like a pig. One can only do this when one is single or happily married with tiresome kids as an excuse for this slovenly behaviour.
6. I love wearing lipstick, and lipgloss. Apparently boys don't like either.
7. The only time that I have religiously shaved my legs every day is during the brief periods of 'dating'. Imagine having to actually shave your legs every day. Bleurgh.
8. Being single when one is as young as I am gives men the opportunity to grow up (this takes roughly thirty-forty years) with as little heartbreak whilst waiting as possible.
9. If I got a boyfriend who wasn't about a foot taller than me, I would never, ever get to wear my new black stilettos. Screw Romeo and Juliet, no stilettos is a proper tragedy.
10. I can be me, not a Mrs, or the girlfriend of. Just me.
2. As I am not the Virgin Mary, I will not have to worry about teenage pregnancy. Or STI, for that matter.
3. As a single woman I can spend a good deal of my time guiltlessly perving on people I will never meet online. From my limited experience I know that Google Imaging Sam Worthington and Eric Bana is uncomfortable when one is in a relationship - the closest I will come to cheating, I suppose.
4. In the absence of a boyfriend I can watch as much Pride & Prejudice as I like, and I do not have to endure films that are not in English, badly dubbed and involve excessive amounts of bad kungfu.
5. I spend a good deal of my time in my pyjamas with no makeup, my hair unwashed and eating like a pig. One can only do this when one is single or happily married with tiresome kids as an excuse for this slovenly behaviour.
6. I love wearing lipstick, and lipgloss. Apparently boys don't like either.
7. The only time that I have religiously shaved my legs every day is during the brief periods of 'dating'. Imagine having to actually shave your legs every day. Bleurgh.
8. Being single when one is as young as I am gives men the opportunity to grow up (this takes roughly thirty-forty years) with as little heartbreak whilst waiting as possible.
9. If I got a boyfriend who wasn't about a foot taller than me, I would never, ever get to wear my new black stilettos. Screw Romeo and Juliet, no stilettos is a proper tragedy.
10. I can be me, not a Mrs, or the girlfriend of. Just me.
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