Merde melancholic…

The campaign against my dysthymia goes on. The ‘ups’ are more frequent, and on the whole, the norm. However, they’re differentiating from the ‘downs’, so much so that I’m starting to get an idea of what circumstances precipitate my occasional bouts of depression.

Not surprisingly, these are for the most part, things that touch tangentially upon topics I’ve raised before. In the interests of my sanity, and your patience, I’ll try not to be too repetitive in this catalogue of frustrations.

Allow me to regale you with a few observations…

***

Excessive self-regard. In 2003, I took part in the protests against the Iraq War, not because I thought that Saddam was alright, not because I hate America, and not because I thought it would match a bohemian wardrobe. Truth be told, my father was in palliative care at the time, and died quite soon after – I had other things on my mind.

So, taking time out from seeing my father, to attend to something else I thought more immediate and serious, what did I come across?

I remember this horrid, rent-a-crowd lady, appointing herself as the natural leader of a newfound throng of protesters, instigating an impromptu ‘Altogether now! All we are saying…!’ I’m glad to say that rather than enable her self-importance, those in earshot were in an appropriately sombre mood, and rebuked her celebratory command with stern expressions.

Indeed, this is actually the clearest memory I have of the march.

Yet I got the impression that most people in attendance were of the view that the cluster-bombing of Iraq, and the interruptions to utilities, would take a terrible toll on the Iraqis, and that on balance, this was too high a price for the removal of Saddam. The ‘woo look at me! I’m so moral! I’m taking a stand!’ crowd, while loud, seemed thankfully minimal.

Cluster-bombs aren’t a cause for celebration.

I feel much the same way about, and think as much of, people who take advantage of any other cause to promote themselves. I distinctly remember an incident on Twitter, where a self-declared ‘activist’ gave the kind of patronising advocacy for mental health that only someone who didn’t know anything about it could give – followed by a celebration of how he (not the issue) was trending.

(Seriously, it was about as ill-thought-out as telling someone with depression to ‘cheer up’. And the dude wants recognition as an ‘activist’. Fark!)

Observation: Twitter needs an #UnfollowFriday for these parasites, and anyone foolish enough to enable them.

It doesn’t always work out for people who have to live with depression, but the really important thing is that depression works out well for ‘activists’, right? (Sarcasm doesn’t depress me).

***

Grandstanding ignoramuses. So, you want to lecture people? You want to deliver exposition in the most didactic method possible? How about you do a little reading first, eh?

I was at a gathering of poets at Gawler the other weekend, when some bloke recited an ‘Ode To America’. I don’t normally mind the phrase ‘you just don’t get it’, at least not above and beyond its status as clichéd, but this guy was supererogating supererogation in his overuse and overemphasis of the phrase.

Moreover, in his list of crimes committed by America (a good number of which I’m not happy about myself), there were factual errors – such as Saddam’s regime being largely created by US support. If you’re going to address a gathering of people as if you’re capable of schooling them, you first need to do enough homework to be able to safely assume you know better than them.

Having an uniformed opinion, and bleating on about it as if you’re some kind of guru is cheap and easy, and I guess, easily accessible to stupid and lazy people. I found the poem more depressing that a shit sandwich served up as gourmet appétit.

(Yeah, I was supposed to be supportive, so I clapped two fingers together).

I have a similar, related response to self-aggrandizing conspiracy theorists, who in being infallible, what with their ‘evidence’ always being unavailable, manage to expect to be taken seriously while at the same time shifting the burden of proof to their audience. What arrogance!

It’s not just paranoid, or credulous, it’s totally devoid of work-ethic; ignorance elevated to the stature of philosophy, with the maximum of taking one’s self too seriously as a source of wisdom.

***

People who cultivate a troglodytic public image in the hope of adoration. It’s not enough for me to say that I don’t like being expected to play along with the game of treating misogyny as a defining trait of masculinity. I mean, I do encounter lads who are okay with my not joining in, but still expect me to be somehow vaguely impressed.

This usually occurs with the out group being belittled isn’t in attendance. I’m treated as if my opposition to misogyny is just an act to be entertained, there for the benefit of ‘the girls’, or ‘the Abos’, or whoever else.

As soon as my ‘act’ is supposedly over, I’m expected to be a supportive mate, so much so that whatever I seem to say, gets contorted into words of praise via some of the most conceited of mental gymnastics I’ve ever seen.

I guess they’re projecting their own two-facedness onto the rest of the ‘blokes’ (it’s usually guys, but not always). My mistake perhaps, is in being too specific, analytic, and measured in my responses, in the hope that they would be less defensive, and more able to learn from criticism.

It doesn’t seem to ever work, and it’s just stressing me out.

And laughing at them, because I think they’re pathetic, always seems easily misconstrued with laughing with them. Even when I explicitly mention that I think the point of contention is pathetic.

‘Go fuck yourself, racist/sexist/misogynist’ is gradually working my way to a permanent position at the tip of my tongue. If they aren’t going to learn, that’s their own responsibility, and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to take responsibility for their self-esteem.

Really, is it reasonable to expect, that on top of whatever other damage they’re doing to whoever else, I should pay a price in depression just so they can feel better about themselves? My patience shouldn’t, and can’t be endless.

***

People who monopolise group spaces for their personal, comparatively trivial, shit. You could have someone wanting to talk about being tortured, or raped, or mutilated, or beaten, or whatever else, and there’ll be some selfish arse who comes along to whine about their own existential crisis that arises out of some non-trauma. Often, it’ll be the same existential crisis the same time, over and fucking over, like a broken record (apologies if I’m doing this – in my defence, I have been tortured before, not that I really want to talk about it).

Look, I don’t have a problem with their expressing their issues per se. It’s just that in a shared, finite space, priority is a necessity every responsible adult in a group needs to consider. If some things won’t be able to be talked about, then you’d better get the serious stuff done in short order.

‘Whaaa! My father once mocked my collecting of baseball cards! Am I really a man?’

Please, spare me.

***

The list goes on, but there’s one I’m anticipating from those who can’t read the signs, or listen to the warnings. Eventually, when depression isn’t as much of a dampener to action for me as it is now, I’m going to be more aggressive about these things.

I suspect inevitably I’ll be up against a tirade of ‘well why didn’t you say something?’ / ‘I thought you were a friend!’ / ‘BETRAYAL!’

Yeah well, I think I’ve spelled it out well enough, at least for anyone smart enough to know better, or anyone smart enough to deserve my attention in the first place.

I’ll not be handing out tissues. I’ll not be doing much mourning over lost friendships.

This is shit, up with which I shall not put.

~ Bruce

Digression via vertiginy

Preface

This little piece is in a sense, a spiritual (I hate that word – note: replace) successor to The Loser, which I wrote back in early 2011 and published this year. A unifying principle between this and more recent thoughts, is one I expressed in September…

I hope to unsettle, to induce doubt in misogynists (and racists, and ablists, and racists, and homophobes, and so on), through short fiction, poetry and satire, directed at the commonplace. I want to implicitly suggest uncomfortable questions, and yes, I will enjoy watching certain types of people squirm as they doubt themselves.

This can be generalised, of course, to include people who aren’t misogynists, or racists, or homophobes, or so on. If I can induce a little discomfort more generally where people are a little too comfortable (the wealthy?), so as to induce a little reflection, then that’s useful as well.

The following piece is intended to challenge genuine misogynists, through to those who may be a little too casual with their use of a certain reference to female genitalia. I can’t help but think that using sexual references in the negative, is a little too puritan as well – sex is awesome.

I hope to polish things a little in future, in preparation for ambushing an open-mic, or a poetry reading session or two. It’s possibly too long for a slam, although I haven’t rehearsed it yet.

[Note: References to genitalia over the fold, to keep the censors happy. Paraphrases an actual conversation that may trigger some people, so there’s that as well.]

Continue reading “Digression via vertiginy” →

…assuming the mantle.

I didn’t get it, and I haven’t got it for most of the time. I’m only just getting it – the faux-masculine shibboleths that I’m expected to observe, in order to be ‘one of the guys’.

Especially the degradation of women as rite of passage.

Don’t get me wrong…

I’m nobody’s knight in shining armour (I think this will be the last time I repeat this for some time), and I don’t believe in chivalry towards women – chivalry, as opposed to decency, assumes that women are frail objects to be protected like delicate porcelain in a world they’re not equipped to deal with. Women are no such thing.

I’ve got an interest in this. If pseudo, and actual misogyny, are used as defining criteria for what it is to be masculine, then I consider that an imposture. I don’t want that group identity lumped on me, and moreover, I’m willing, if imposed upon, to fight for my stake in masculine culture to the exclusion of other men.

Gentlemen, if you’re going to make an asshole out of yourself in the first instance, I’m not going to take much notice when you make squeals of indignation, when you get a little comeuppance. That is unless, I find it justifiable, useful, and entertaining, to laugh at you.

Seriously though, some men really shit me. The things that some of you expect me to take on board as normal, or healthy, or unappealing-but-otherwise-not-rebarbative.

[Trigger warning: There isn’t anything explicit beyond this point, but the subject matter is rather dark, delving into the dank, unsanitary world of misogyny, as it does].

***

Continue reading “…assuming the mantle.” →

Vegan yellow curry

While the intent wasn’t to make something vegan (rather just vegetarian), this would be the result of my gastronomic exploits one night during a recent weekend. The aim was to produce a curry (Indian or Thai), that I could whip up for both my meat-eating brother, and my vegetarian self, to share during a movie marathon (while leaving left-overs for the next few days).

I started at a base-notion, after asking a few friends on Facebook for inspiration, with the idea of a Massaman (aka Mussaman, aka Mosselman, aka Matsaman, etc.) curry. The lore goes that the Massaman curry started out as a curry cooked by Thai Muslims, originating in the 16th century, arising out of Persian influences.

(So this adapted version, I guess, is some kind of yellow infidel curry?)

Naturally, being vegetarian, shrimp paste and halal beef (or any halal meat) is off the menu for me, so further modification was needed in that respect at least. It’s worth mentioning at this point, in the mentioned Facebook discussion, I admitted a need, and was urged to try giving up on substituting meat all-together (more on this later).

***

Continue reading “Vegan yellow curry” →

…The Expert of Everything

Years of preparation have gone into breeding The Perfect Expert of Everything. Unfettered and unimpaired by having had to have read anything, but adept at entering into every domain and every conversation, the Expert of Everything threatens to make everyone else redundant, in their relentless quest to have things their own way.

Why do readings at University, when they’d only be re-inventing the wheel – they already know what it’s about, which is why they dominate discussion in tutorials.

This time has been better spent, by The Expert, honing their skills, lawyering Dungeons and Dragons games to their own advantage, and chairing debates on who would win out of Superman and The Hulk.

These skills, they then bring to every meeting, of every kind, for these skills are infinitely transferable. The Expert, can be identified through their use of earthy, common phrases, used to keep ‘in-touch’ with the laity.

***

‘Political correctness’: This phrase lets you know just what a dissident, and critical thinker you’re dealing with.

‘It stands to reason’, or ‘it just stands to reason’: The Expert, is reasonable in all things, including their most hastily adopted assumptions.

‘I’d argue that…’: The Expert doesn’t need to read, to keep up with the discussion (see ‘re-inventing the wheel’).

‘Aha!’: The Expert has encountered something like this before, and it was silly.

‘Haha!’: You have reminded The Expert of one of their past intellectual conquests, friend!

‘Hmmm…’: The Expert could say something, but doesn’t want to embarrass you.

‘Yes, but…’: This is how The Expert lets you know, mid-sentence, the you’re argument is going to go awry. The Expert already knows what you are thinking, and doesn’t want you to embarrass yourself.

‘X is often misunderstood’: Misunderstood by laypersons like you, not by The Expert, who doesn’t even need to read about these things (again, see ‘re-inventing the wheel’).

‘It seems like…’: The Expert is charitably allowing you to join the dots.

‘I can’t imagine…’: Logically impossible, despite what you may think you can reasonably imagine.

‘Hah hah haaa! [wink]’ (that’s three ‘haa’s with a key change in the middle, and a wink at the end): The Expert knows that you think they are charming, but are too modest to let you know.

Never under any circumstances, allow the commonality of this language lead you to believe that The Expert has nothing new to teach you, nor assume that any of their wisdom is borrowed…

***

Other, less definitive signs that you have an Expert of Everything in front of you are; possible beard ownership; likely penis ownership (even if diminutive), and an almost universal penchant for exaggerated or grandiose hand gestures.

(In rare cases, ‘tosser’s wrist’ – a symptom of compulsive twenty-sided dice rolling, often resembling a masturbatory gesture – may present itself to the observer).

***

The ecology of The Expert of Everything is that they often gravitate towards rationalist social groups; atheists, ‘Skeptics’, humanists, and so on. Intellectual and organisational resources are monopolised as competing minds are made redundant by The Expert’s sheer charisma, wit and genius.

While this may give mere mortal members a reprieve, such monocultures are inherently unstable.

The Expert may through a sheer act of will and self-approval, achieve ‘Mission Accomplished’ status for their social group, rendering the group purposeless. The Expert may see beyond the horizons of the group, and bring new purposes beyond the ken of ordinary members, thus unavoidably excluding them (this process may involve peanuts, imported Cherry Coke, and ‘character sheets’.)

Most likely though, is that the normal means of operation will atrophy while the group is dependent on The Expert, for everything. At some point when The Expert is needed elsewhere (which they always are), their dedication to a group will have to wane, leaving an unprepared people to fend for themselves.

You would be selfish and keep The Expert all to yourself?

***

If you don’t want to destabilise you Expert-friendly group, or you wish to attract an Expert of Everything to your existing, expertise-devoid, group, there are realities to observe.

By all means question The Expert (they’ll tell you all about that), but don’t undermine them, or waste their time with contrarian clap-trap. They have finite time on this Earth, and they are used of their opponents being self-evidently wrong, as this is always the case.

Make sure peanuts and beer are at hand, and if not that, then cheesy-puffy-things, and cola. The mind of an Expert of Everything doesn’t run on nothing – that would defy the Laws of Thermodynamics (which they’ll tell you about)!

Remember to disregard all evolutionary psychology as just-so-stories, unless they allow The Expert to justify their sexual proclivities, or their need for cheesy-puffy-things, or to explain the inherent attractiveness of their non-deodorized body. These things are self-evident, and hence need no empirical substantiation, ergo evolutionary psychology is true in these respects, Q.E.D.

In all other respects, if in doubt, don’t ask – you’ll be told. Unless you’re told to ask, in which case I’m wrong – I’m not an Expert of Everything.

~ Bruce

See also: Neckbeard.

Releasing The Beast…

I’m neither a hateful, nor an angry person (so say I), yet I’m coming to the conclusion that a good part of my engine, as a writer, has been designed to be fuelled by anger. Hate, naturally produces an abundance of anger (along with other by-products), yet around fifteen years ago, while still not hateful, I certainly had a super-abundance of anger.

What a word count I was capable of then. Mind you, most of it was shit, utter and complete. Indeed, a lot of it was insane. Alien.

But I ran out of bona fide anger a long time ago, and for years, certainly longer than I’ve been blogging, I’ve been having to work myself into a state – partially in character as my earlier self – just to fuel my writing.

Ultimately, I don’t think this worked. While in some sense I tried to cultivate this in my old Devils’ Advocate on Steroids (DAoS) posts, I consider these to be poorly-written failures. The faux-‘anger’, conspired to confuse the reader as to my intent, even when explicitly stated, and the effort involved in stoking the fires entailed a certain derailing of my ability to concentrate.

Further, it’s just stopped working. I find it much harder to adopt an angry stance now, and certainly not for the amount of time required to churn out a piece of work. Even on those occasions when I do get angry, I just can’t stay angry for long enough.

I make this all sound quite calculated. While there was some decision making in this direction, it’s more the case that this state of affairs was systematically perpetuated without effort or consideration. I’d go as far as saying it was a self-perpetuated cycle of literary self-harm; an implicit auto-bibliographical self-mutilation.

I comment now with the benefit of hindsight and anti-depressants.

On occasion though, lately, some things have come quickly and with lucidity. And importantly, with outrage.

I’ve still got outrage to run on. The downside of this, though, is that while I’ve got a lot of it, it doesn’t mix easily with sarcasm or any other form of wit I’m fond of. Outrage is so incredibly serious.

The trick is to get the right mix, and to get the words down in a timely fashion.

This is probably a good part of why I came to love the work of Christopher Hitchens, disagreements with many of his arguments not withstanding. Hitchens could juggle white-hot condemnation, with subtle-wit, at a frightening pace, while rarely misjudging a throw.

Sadly, literarily speaking, I’m no Christopher Hitchens, and my outrage at intellectual dishonesty, social injustices, self-centred, short-sighted apathy and more, waits to be properly unlocked. It’s more than just a little frustrating.

I suspect the key will have something to do with talking down to malicious fools in positions of relative power, all while making a point, and not getting too pretentious about it. Knowing this, and fully understanding it, though, are two different things, and I lack the latter faculty.

The chains are getting looser though, and my Inner Beast is hungry.

~ Bruce

When can philosophy be mistaken for passive-aggression?

When it’s dealing with issues of human interaction, that is. Civics. How to be a good friend… etc.

When attempting to generalise and de-personalise an issue, when most everyone suspects the same insinuated examples, does philosophy become passive aggressive, or does it unintentionally approximate it? How do you know which is which, when they are genuinely different? Can they be both?

I could come up with examples of what I’m talking about, but I’m trying to generalise.

So, no examples, no names, no argy-bargy over Internet specifics. When can philosophy be mistaken for passive-aggression?

~ Bruce

P.S. Now I’ve got to move on to write on to write a short post about bullying online, and then I can get back to writing the stuff I want to write. Hooray! It’s good to be back!

Fostering Bad Relations…

Back in 1999, I think it was, there was a book launch by an Aunt of mine, of a piece of genealogy called Fostering Good Relations. It even goes into a little biography on my family nucleus (odd, considering I was never interviewed about the details), and I contributed an illustration.

There’s a particularly deceptive piece of photography in the book, of me with my family, smiling the family smile. You wouldn’t realise that my late father and I had had a dust-up just prior. My mother has this recurrent false-memory that the dust-up was after the photo. I suspect the cognitive dissonance caused, is just a little much.

A dust-up after the photo would merely make it ironic, whereas before – this would call family history into question, by implication. But of course, this is the truth; we were all smiling faces right after the fight. Happy families.

Oh the kinds of things in my life that never made it into the book.

In 1992, after a hellish 1991 in Port Lincoln, South Australia, I escaped to Adelaide, into the company of the Buckland clan. The Bucklands, being the family between the Fosters (of Fostering Good Relations fame) and I.

Or at least, I thought it was an escape.

***

If there’s one thing anyone needs to know about The Bucklands, it’s about how they gossip; if the gossip isn’t true, it’ll still persist without anyone checking the facts, and if it is true, nobody will act on it because nobody’s checked the facts. Gossip, gossip, gossip. I’m sick of it.

The thing of it is, where there should be a historicity of The Bucklands, there’s just more gossip …and agendas …and grudges. In fact, it’s hard to make a contribution, or a criticism, without it being seen through the prism of a grudge.

If you try to help, you’re either attacking, or trying to upstage someone, yet you needn’t even know who, or what for. Others will make that part of the story up for you. And the slightest infelicity is always blown completely out of proportion, even before its permutations, from gossiper to gossiper.

***

As you’d expect, with so little inclination towards finding the truth, and acting on it, problems don’t get dealt with, and they accumulate.

I was informed, recently, or at least late last year, that a certain Buckland who for the sake of the peace, will go unnamed, was a dirty, dirty, man. As in, sexually harasses underage girls, dirty. Dirty by today’s standards at least – this dirty man was dirty back in the dirty seventies.

I don’t have standing to press charges, obviously, and I don’t want to prejudice anything like that, but I’m pretty sure I could name the guy without fear of an accusation defamation. There are enough witnesses to the truth, and enough things said over the years that are tantamount to a confession.

On the one hand, this is risky. Why let this kind of situation fester in secrecy? How does this get managed in a family if nobody admits it happens?

On the other hand, it’s not fair to the dirty old man himself. People are free to embellish the story, in even a damaging manner, if they are sufficiently discrete in the way they deploy their rumours.

A funny thing happens when you allude to things like this, amongst The Buckland’s; people either think you’re talking about someone else, from a different incident, or you’ll discover they’re talking about someone else. ‘You mean there’s more than one of them?’

The Bucklands are, it seems, safe hosts for dirty old men.

***

It’s not that there’s been no change over the years. The patriarch of the clan, the late George Buckland, was the archetypal image of male privilege. He wouldn’t even have men serve salad in his house, if he’d had his way; that’s what women were for (apparently).

‘NO GRAMPS! IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT ANYMORE!’

The thing is, nobody keeps secrets about salad issues, so it’s easy to get this stuff out in the air. But if it’s dirty old men, or child beating, then The Bucklands, cowards that they are, couch their queries in equivocal, inoffensive terms, if they air them to the offender at all.

With exceptions… Dissidents.

Try being a dissident in The Bucklands, I dare you. You’ll be punished. As if to re-enforce each other’s self-respect in the face of their own moral turpitude, dissidents, if they dare speak plainly and truly about an awkward truth, will be rounded upon, and lied about.

‘Nicely’, at first, with the pretence of sympathy, when the family consensus becomes clear, enough courage will be mustered by the herd to charge. The lies become bolder and bolder, and more and more public.

I was told a few bold lies, about a dissident Buckland (who is outspoken about being abused as a child), recently. Utterly ridiculous lies, actually, I had to double-check the facts just because I could believe how bad the lies were.

But there you had it; the lies were as bad as they were, which was very, very bad, concerning who had made what demand in respect of the estate of a deceased loved one. It served as a warning – ‘speak out, and it can happen to you.’

With as much respect as it deserves, as I can muster – I don’t care!

***

Of course, I got my dose of the venom early on in 1992. You see, I’m an Everett, not fully naturalised as a Buckland, or of the wrong generation, or something like that; whatever I am I’m not family-politic. If a Buckland walks in on a heated conversation between myself, and someone who is family politic, well…

Bucklands gossip, and gossip goes around, and eventually, if you’re gossiped about, you’ll hear it; usually from someone with a grudge about the person doing the gossiping (they don’t necessarily give a rat’s arse about you).

Gossip can be fact checked, of course, so you can get a lay of the land – which I needed to do, being new in Adelaide back in the day. But now I don’t give a shit about the details, and I know the lay of the land, and it’s the lay of the land I don’t like.

Between the mentioned dissident being lied about at great lengths over the years, my own track-record of being lied about in-family, my own family-history supressed, and now, the passive-aggression in a recent saga that’s come to an end (a whole story in itself), I’m really quite fed up with The Bucklands.

The lengths people will go to, just to prevent you from rocking the boat… Self-defeating, cowardly, dishonest lengths.

Dissidence starts in your head, at home, and if you want to write as any kind of dissident, with sincerity, your writing environment and family should reflect this. This is pretty much the something that’s been eating away behind my eyes for the better part of the last two years, making it harder to write. This is what I need to get over.

So I’m getting over bad relations with The Bucklands by leaving them behind. I can honestly say, they’ve been given more than a few good, unprejudiced chances. No more chances. Goodbye.

With all but a couple of exceptions, I disown them.

Maybe I’ll write about it in detail some day (dibs on ‘Fostering Bad Relations’)!

~ Bruce

Murray Bridge…

Okay. I’ve got a 3000 word draft in the bomb-bay, so I thought while I’m waiting for editorial decisions, I thought I’d post a picture on the same topic, that being my recent trip to Melbourne.

This is from my crossing of the Murray River, at the aptly named Murray Bridge, in South Australia. The birds you can see are pigeons (introduced) wheeling around the bridge, while below, there’s an old paddle steamer.

I’ve never been on one, so I can’t comment on what it’s like, but maybe I should give it a try – a paddle steamer that is, not a pigeon (which I haven’t been on either, incidentally).

The photo is taken looking downstream.

~ Bruce

GAC coverage, parts IV & V

Part IV of my coverage of the Global Atheist Convention (and fringe) has been viewable online over here at B&W for a few days. Apologies for the late update, I’ve been quite busy away from the computer in my spare time, owing to something being put down a toilet that didn’t belong there…

Part V has just gone live over here, in the past few hours. Now there’s just the redux post left to finish off…

…then it’s on to media meta-analysis (kidding… or maybe not).

Enjoy. Open-mouthed smile

~ Bruce