Forgive me, gods of plain-speaking, for I have sinned; I have created something which I called a “matrix” for the first time at work.
I know not how to atone. It can only be downhill from here.
Apophenia
Apophenia: “The spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things; seeing patterns where none, in fact, exist.” I have a word for my favourite way to waste time!
No Hero
Bang, Bang
Gunshots have a way of being capital B bangs. They might even be in all capitals, but that never looks right.
Two gunshots, and the silence that followed was so absolute, pin-dropping would have constituted a racket. It was the kind of silence where you could hear the reverb rattling around in people’s heads as their brain scrambled to shift gears, the right gear for this new situation thrust upon them unasked for.
Scientists chase an elementary quantam particle called, ridiculously enough, the Higgs Boson, whose existence is so short the mayfly considers it rushed. If watches measured time so minutely, you can bet solicitors would bill by the boson-second. Scientists don’t ever actually see a Higgs Boson, they just sort of assume it’s there because that’s how you explain what’s left behind afterwards. Even light considers a boson to be snappy about its business.
The silence which followed the gunshots lasted about three quarters of a boson-second. And yet it stretched out in every human mind, ballooned to such proportions as thoughts queued up to Be Thought, orders issued for the body. A lot of which involved screaming for no reason in particular, mostly because that was the Done Thing.
Colin was no woman, so it would be somewhat undignified to join in the screaming. It wasn’t the Done Thing for a man. A man… was supposed to step in, protect the women and the weak, fight, not flight.
On the other hand, Colin was no hero. You can’t be a hero with a name like Colin. It doesn’t even work as a secret identity name. Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, Clark Kent – those were hero names. Even if Clark Kent always sounded a bit like a shoe brand, and Peter Parker like a special type of expensive pen.
Not to mention how daft naming your kid Bruce would be. Imagine calling your 4 year old Bruce. “Bruce, don’t you dare stuff that crayon up your nose!” See? You’d just think of an old man going senile.
Continue reading “No Hero”
Selfish
There was a jumper at Kingsgrove station today.
We were delayed 25 minutes or so, but even within the first 2 minutes people were getting impatient. We were told that we were waiting for police and emergency services to arrive so that they could take care of it, rather than have someone jump onto the train or the tracks. The gaurd opened his door to allow people out if needed, and suddenly there was a rush on. People from 4 carriages down came up and out, and I wondered: for what?
20 minutes later, the jumper was taken away in a stretcher. I’ve no idea what exactly happened, as I stayed inside, but I’m fairly certain there was no jump. The train moved and there was a mad rush to get back on.
Strangers joined in abuse of the gaurd, the police, everyone they could conceive of causing the delay. I heard one lady say “oh there’s one every month,” I’ve caught the same train more or less for 6 months and never had it once. “it’s pathetic, always delays me by half an hour,” she continued to moan to total strangers.
It disgusts me to think how selfish these people are.
New Year
A night of wine, women and song on the water, the middle of the harbour under the stars and surrounded by old friends and new… Well, that may be exaggerating a bit, what with less wine and more vodka, but ’twas a wonderful night. And now another year begins…
It’s strange to think that nearly 10 years to the day, I moved to Sydney from the countryside. Year 7 would start in a few weeks, and in many ways, I was in transition. Nearly 6 years ago, I moved to Melbourne, no longer the country boy but equally lost and in transition. Each time I have moved, I’ve grown in more than just the physical sense, gaining abilities to adapt I believe serve me well. Last year, it was fiscal responsibility and discipline that I had to learn, along with a host of survival and organisational skills.
2006 all up was a good year, there’s no doubt about that. I never set resolutions because I react far more than I plan, but I always set long-term goals at regular intervals, and 2006 had me filling in many boxes. So, my list made in 2002 has now been by and large fulfilled, and within my schedule too.
Thus, I must ask myself: What now?
I find myself at something of a crossroads. It would be easy to settle in here and let life take me where it would. But that would be passive, too straightforward. I must set my goals again, renew my commitment to those last few left unfilled and create new stars to reach for. Push the sky, the upper limit on my capabilities so that I continue to grow.
But most of all, I must thank you all once more for being there in 2006, not to mention for being there in the years before. Knowing you have a social network to count on is everything once you leave the controlled environments of university or school, and I’ve got a great bunch of friends.
Onwards!
Darwin Awards 2006
Happy New Year! Here’s some Darwin awards to laugh at :)
Electric Sheep
Ever found something that you’d always heard about, but never managed to track down for real? A feeling of satisfaction fills you as you realise that now, finally, you can find out exactly what everyone was blabbing about all these years. You might even expect it to be good, because, well, everyone talks about it, don’t they?
You even feel a little guilty, because once you pretended you knew, and while you got away with it, you wanted to be sure next time they couldn’t catch you on the hop.
So: now you’ve found it. And naturally, you’re going to indulge yourself, because if it’s as good as everyone has said it is – and that’s a lot of people, so the effect is cumulative even – it doesn’t matter how much time, money or effort it takes. Finally, you too can join the all-knowing club. Satisfaction is imminent!
But when you, it falls flat. In fact, it falls so short of the hyped impression you had you wonder if you got the right one. No, the packet says it’s the right one, the core bits show it’s the right one, but…. oh dear. You’ve fallen into the hype trap!
In fact, it’s so bad, you’re now inclined to go back to those very people, the hyping majority, those overpowering sheep, and throw it right back at ’em. Argue! Disagree! Dispel the myth!
Find out if one of them has been lying about it themselves!
Blade Runner? That’s the one for me. Bah, silly waste of time.
Making Resolutions
100 Things We Learnt in 2006
The BBC lists 100 things we learnt in 2006: The Egg Came First.
6 Lists of 6 for ’06
6 Movies You Really Should Have Watched This Year
- Hoodwinked
- Casino Royale
- An Inconvenient Truth
- The Departed
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
- Thank You For Smoking
(n.b. yet to see Babel but expect it to be most excellent)
6 Songs I Played Much Too Much
- Frou Frou – Let Go
- Youth Group – Forever Young
- Fort Minor – Cigarettes
- Pussycat Dolls – Don’t Cha
- Yoko Kanno – Christmas In the Silent Forest
- Hinouchi Emi – Crying
6 Women I Fell In Love With This Year
- That one I met right at the start
- The one I met kinda randomly and found we had much in common
- The one that’s “off-limits” (it’s complicated)
- The one I didn’t meet until just before she went back
- The one I slowly grew to like more & more
- Aishwarya Rai
(it was London, she was beautiful, and… ah you had to be there)
6 Things That Made Me Smile This Year
- My sister getting 98.2. Damn she worked hard for it.
- Moving my stuff in to the Sydney house
- Turning up at work on that first day
- Getting that first paycheque. DAAAMN that felt good
- Getting on that plane to London
- Seeing a whole bunch of my friends at my 21st. Thanks again, y’all.
6 Things I Really Should Have Done This Year But Never Got Around To
- Properly redesign my site
- Remember birthdays… on time
- Signing up for the gym
- Finishing FFX
- Leaning how to play the guitar
- Making a 6th List of 6 for ’06