Aww, true love prevails.

Posted on November 29, 2012 by borysSNORC

After having yet another domestic with my partner resulting in someone pulling a knife on me, threatening to get a gun and shoot me and ending up in a brawl on the lawn of Parliament House at the indigenous ‘tent embassy’ and ultimately hightailing it out of town… I like to relax by sharing hateful and abusive messages about my now ‘ex’, aka Fuckin’Fuckhead, on the internet. You know, calling her a dirty whore, telling her she’ll never see her toddler son again, accusing her father and grandfather of abuse and incest, those sort of ‘fun for the whole family’ relaxing activities.

Then when I’m several hundred kilometers away I like to start posting pictures of the toddler I practically kidnapped so my ex will start to realize what has happened… with the added benefit that it might lure her back.

Bingo. There she is suddenly ‘liking’ his posts after he called her a Daddyfuckingwhore all over the internet just a few days ago, and his daughter and friends were chiming in telling DYC that him and baby were better off without her.

No! Dickhead Dale went to a shrink! Lord knows he needs serious help with anger management and impulse control amongst other psychoses. Or did he just park out front and check in to make Fuckin’Fuckhead think he was working on getting help with his ‘problems’?? And then the ever so predictable turn around. He’s done a complete 180 from ‘C U in court’ and ‘I’ll go to jail before I let you take our boy’ to sucking up to FF. Don’t fall for it Janita, you’re too smart for that shi… oh no wait. :S

Oh dear God. That poor little kid. He’s going to be pushed from pillar to post his whole life, dragged between one good for nothing parent to the other, used as bait and guilt trip material and growing up thinking that Daddy beats on Mommy but really deep down he loves her very much…

Many abused women go back to their tormenters, hell, we watched her for nearly ten months putting up with his abuse, and not only that, but defending him over it. Unfortunately this is nothing new. It’s just so sad to think of the little ones stuck in the middle of it all. 🙁

You don’t say – You just don’t.

Posted on November 26, 2012 by borysSNORC

When people say to you ‘How are you?’ do they really want to know how you are or are they just going through the motions of being polite?

I know it’s mostly just a social nicety but more and more I’m starting to feel like I’ve spent two decades deflecting from answering this question honestly with a ‘Good thanks, how are you?’ response, and have recently wondered why we go around effectively lying to each other so much. It’s so ingrained that I walk in to see my doctor at his clinic, and he says ‘How are you?’ and I reply with the same banal response… ‘Good thanks, how are you?’, when quite patently I wouldn’t be there if I was actually good?!?

Why do we do that? Do we think our friends and family don’t want to know how we actually are? Do we not want to bring people down with our worries and problems? Do we not want to look weak to the people we know and love… and even less so to the people we don’t know or don’t care for? Do we not trust people to react well if we tell them how we are really doing? Are we ultimately scared that no one really gives a shit and that if we give an honest answer we’re going to become that person that no one wants to talk to because something is always wrong?

I worked with a woman once, Sheryl… she was a typical govt OHS officer, floor fire warden, local union representative, long time public servant type who spent more of her time updating the evacuation response plan for the building than doing her actual job. When we first started together she’d walk in at 9:30-10:00am (I on the other hand was an 8am starter) and say ‘Good morning, how are you today?’. I would invariably bite my tongue and not mutter ‘Good afternoon’, but would reply instead with a civil ‘Good thanks, how are you?’ I hadn’t worked there a month when I started realizing this was a very loaded question and as a general proposition a very bad plan. Most days she would reply with an equally banal ‘Not bad thanks, etc, etc’. But as we got to know each other better… she started actually telling me how she was.

‘Hi Sheryl, how are you?’… Oh, absolutely horrid, the cat threw up all over the carpet this morning and I had to spend an hour scrubbing the vomit off the floor so I missed my train. Eww.

‘Hi Sheryl, how are you?’… Mostly okay, but I have this abscess up here (holds open mouth and retracts lips) on my left molar which is all black and weeping yucky tasting stuff in my mouth so I have to go to the dentist. Ewwww! Overshare!

‘Hi Sheryl, how are you?’ … Dreadful! I had this huge uncomfortable boil on crack of my bottom and I had to go to the doctor to have it lanced, which was okay, but I couldn’t reach to change the bandgage and now it’s all infected and… Ewwwwww! STFU woman!

Needless to say I rapidly got to the point where she would walk in and say ‘Good morning, how are you?’ and I’d respond with ‘Fine thanks. There’s some purchase orders on your desk that need quotes and I’m just popping out for a cuppa.’

I wonder if this is why we are all trained into the going through the motions with the social niceties when people enquire how we are, and rarely actually tell people what we are thinking, how we are doing and what’s going on in our lives? Because ultimately when some people start telling you what’s going on in their lives… no one actually gives a shit. :S

If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.

Posted on November 25, 2012 by borysSNORC

Went to see Anna Karenina last night at the Palace Barrack theatre last night as part of the gala closing for the Brisbane International Film Festival (worst facility ever btw… only bathrooms in the place are down two levels from the actual cinemas?). Anyway, it was directed by Joe Wright and starred Keira Knightley (I think they did that Pride and Prejudice where the Bennetts lived on a farm? and Atonement as well) on what I imagine was intended to be a huge elaborate adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina but somewhere along they way, their epic saga took a wrong turn and ended up in Baz Lurhman’s Moulin Rouge… or so it felt.

The movie is visually quite stunning with elaborate and unusually theatrical set designs; hence the Lurhmanesque feel. The costumes, whilst not being strictly period are both beautifully done and exquisitely detailed with luxurious jewels all bringing together the decadent heights of Russian aristocracy. The cast is excellent, full of fantastic British actors from the phenomenally famous to the frustratingly familiar, who put in some fabulous performances.

For the most part the screenplay sticks to the story – but not enough to satisfy Tolstoy purists/traditionalists, and the truncation doesn’t appear to condense the story in a manner congruous with allowing the characters enough depth to engage people who’ve never read the book… so it actually gets (I’m reluctant to say this), a bit boring in parts, and you don’t really care what happens to most of the characters.

Keira Knightley plays the angst ridden Anna, the 19th century Russian aristocrat who is married to Count Alexi Alexandrovich Karenin, a high ranking government minister (Jude Law) who in the book seems largely indifferent and even cold to his much younger wife Anna, and has ‘interesting’ ideas about love… but in this adaptation he is the model of a victim worthy of our sympathy. Following the book, she finds herself in love with the soldier Count Vronsky and subsequently socially ostracized (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who looks familiar but I have no idea who he is). Meanwhile, the Konstantin “Kostya” Dmitrievich Levin and Princess Ekaterina “Kitty” Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya affair is played out by Domhnall Gleeson and Alicia Vikander in a manner that seems almost wholly unconnected to the main story.

All the characters have upper class British accents to denote their aristocratic social status, which annoyed the hell out of me given French was the preferred language of the Russian aristocracy at the time… so if they didn’t want them sporting thick Russian accents and sounding like the peasants, why not try on the slightly more accurate French accents…. yeah nit picking I know. But it does seem if someone, anyone, is supposed to be well born in a movie they MUST speak with a British accent whether it’s set in Chicago or ancient Rome! Grrr. Hollywood.

I have no idea who wrote the adapted screenplay (Google it, if you care) but the entire production was extremely theatrical… and by that I don’t mean ‘over the top’, but rather, set in a theatre and as a play staged within a movie, with ‘behind the curtains’ type scenes that served for alleyways and backrooms which flicked back and forth between traditional movie sets and an operatic looking theatre? It was quite bizarre and somewhat hard to comprehend what the hell they were attempting to communicate in using this unusual and awkward cinematic device that added nothing to the story and in many ways distracted and even detracted from it? It made no sense to me right up to the very end. It also has an interesting dichotomy in it’s visual aesthetic as it blends aristocratic luxury with a strange decrepitude – though for the live of me I can’t figure out why? All I can come up with is it’s an allusion to the impending social reform that led to the demise of the Russian aristocracy.

At the end of the day though, Anna comes off looking ‘psycho hose beast’ jealous or manic-depressive or something, Karenin comes out like a kind hearted, misused victimised cuckolded husband, and Vronsky pulls up exasperated and a bit bobble-headed, shallow and ill explained. Somehow the film completely fails to convey any real sexual tension or excitement. The depth of emotional turmoil and maternal angst experienced by Anna is pretty much absent, the social inequity, potential ruin for all involved that the book is packed to the gills with, is also likewise not adequately conveyed.

Such opportunity for truly epic cinematic drama and suffering – no one does suffering, real suffering… like the Russian industrialists. All gone to waste. Now why water all that down? Bit disappointing really.

Our parents worried about music lyrics.

Posted on November 24, 2012 by borysSNORC

Something is seriously wrong with the world, I read a news article recently out of Atlanta Georgia –

13-year-old accused of stabbing 2-year-old sister to death

Police in DeKalb County have charged a 13-year-old girl in the stabbing death of her 2-year-old sister.

The young girl was stabbed multiple times and her body was found by her father behind the family’s townhome on Monday, DeKalb County police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said Tuesday.

Police are withholding the name of the 13-year-old who was taken into custody. A court hearing was set for Tuesday afternoon.

“She’s gone on to glory now,” the child’s father, Shelton Ray, told WSB-TV.

“Now it’s up to me to make it to where she is,” he said. “Like I tell all my children, they have to get themselves into heaven. I have to get myself into heaven.”

The toddler had multiple stab wounds, police said.

The girl’s siblings, all under the age of 5, were home at the time of the incident, authorities said. Parish says the toddler was attacked inside of the house and investigators do not believe the other children witnessed the slaying.

Published November 21, 2012 – Associated Press

Anyway, I sent it to a friend with a “WTF is this father on? He’s either on crack or religion… or both!” comment attached. Mind just a sec, while I just step over the indignation of anyone offended by my backhanded swipe at religious nutters, and feel free to lambast me for the inappropriateness of that comment later after I’ve gotten on with my point.

My friend read the article and then expressing the expected incredulousness followed by: “Makes me wonder if the kid was confused when the 2 year old didn’t respawn”.

Respawn? Respawn? I think that might literally be the most alarming thing I have ever heard regarding the potential impact of computer gaming on children. The idea that video games could be so pervasive in children’s lives as to blur the lines of reality so badly as to cloud a child’s ability to perceive consequences to MURDEROUS actions is just beyond scary and disconcerting. Even if it were nothing to do with the case study above, the very concept of children being so immersed in gaming and so unable to identify reality is truly shocking and absolutely horrifying.

Unfortunately for the Small Child when I picked him up after school on Friday, the first thing out of his mouth was a request to play a video game called Just Cause II which, like most of them, I have never heard of, and don’t have the time or inclination to investigate its suitability for his age group etc. Last week’s obsession was Dark Siders II and prior to that it was Team Fortress II (don’t know where we were when the original release of all these games come out but everything he is into seems to be into its sequel at the moment).

We had a conversation, one which reoccurs from time to time about having balance in your life and not becoming obsessed by computer gaming and having other things to do with your time. When gaming comes up I always like to have a chat with him about my intense dislike for the over exaggerated reliance on violence in these computer games for entertainment and my concern that they densensitize kids, like himself, to real violence. I also frequently reiterate my refusal to allow first person shooter games for an 11 year old and do my best to keep him away from those, taking every opportunity to point out that guns are not toys, shooting at people in computer games is not fun nor is it funny, and as such I believe it should not be considered ‘entertainment’. He’s a pretty switched on kid and I strongly doubt that he would ever fail to distinguish between reality and gaming…. but as a parent, you worry about how extremely impressionable and malleable their young brains are – and input indubitably affects development and output – how can it not?

How to deal with it though? So many games, so little time, a new title to obsess over every week, so little inclination on my part to get bogged down in the minutiae of each game to determine appropriateness for a child of his age and maturity?!? Did I mention that I don’t really consider myself a gamer? I’ve played a couple of SuperMario games on Nintendo from beginning to end, and there was a flitration with Banjo-Kazooie and a short lived Donkey Kong thing for a while, but the closest thing I played for any real length of time was Farmville for ages as a ‘zone out, I’m on a heat pack’ distraction from chronic back pain a few years ago. Note how ‘cutesy’ all these are. And the complete lack of weaponry, death, destruction, red mist and shoot ’em all goals of these games. I just don’t understand the appeal of a game that wants you to annihilate other characters, human or otherwise and he said “None of it’s real anyway, Mum.”

Ok, so it sounds like I don’t really have to worry about the Small Child blurring the lines of reality and fantasy worlds he engages with in computer games. But you know, being a Mom, it’s kinda my job to worry.

I Blame Squish

Posted on November 22, 2012 by borysSNORC

I’ve become hooked on Jimmy Carr videos. He’s a study in diametric opposition – an interesting juxtaposition of crude, coarse, common and vulgar in a Saville Row suit with a baby face and a smooth British accent. He looks just like the sort of guy you could take home to tea and scones with your Gran… until he opens his mouth, whereupon he drops more C-bombs per minute than any other TV personality or comedian I’ve ever seen. God, he’d give Daleyacunt and Fuckin’Fuckhead a run for their money in the potty mouth stakes without blinking.

His humour is crass and inappropriate and nothing is sacred – incest, pedophilia, necrophilia, your mom – he’s one of those quick witted and pithy comedians, deals with hecklers with shrewd and unbelievably insulting come backs that are so disproportionate in their response that the offender himself often ends up laughing his arse off at the verbal evisceration he just endured. He says the most outlandish and offensive things… and even though you know what he is saying is not only socially unacceptable it’s often absolutely reprehensible and therefore should not be amusing – you can’t help yourself but laugh with complete incredulity if nothing else.

Anyway, saw this image today on Facebook… and it made us think of Jimmy Carr immediately!