Jack Mullaly

How to Save the World

2008-10-19T00:46:09Z

The world* is in a big bloody mess.

We are at war, but we refuse to admit it. Let me say that again: Western civilisation is at war now. What is at stake is not only our very survival, but our entire way of life - the forms of 'democracy' we have, capitalism, the freedoms, opportunities and possibilities we have developed over the last few centuries.

If the fundamentalists and second and third worlds - a.k.a. the "New Barbarians" - win, it's all over, red rover. There will be a new Dark Age. I mean a dark age in the sense that knowledge, liberties and opportunities will disappear, not to mention the coming waste of resources and downfall of technology.

It's a new sort of war, one the West is unfamiliar with and does not know how to fight or win, despite the several skirmishes we've already fought starting in Vietnam to the current ones in Iran and Afghanistan. In a sense, we are re-fighting the Vietnam War on a global scale, and everyone knows what happened there. Our governments refuse to allocate the resources necessary to win this war, and are still trying to fight it as if it was an old-style war, say a re-run of WWII. It is _not_. Most of our governments even refuse to acknowledge the scale of it, apart from the Americans who call it the "War on Terror". But they don't know how to fight or win it.

Apart from that, of course, which has been ongoing since the fall of Stalinism and the end of the Cold War (which, incidentally, we _won_ resoundingly), greed and stupidity have messed up the western world. I won't dwell on that - the stupidity of making or taking "sub-prime" loans is self-evident, and credit, consumerism, indulgence - sheer greed and stupidity with no thought for the future we leave our children, has messed us and our lives and ways of thinking up beyond recognition. (I admit to being as guilty of this as the next dupe. Until last year, I did not use credit in any form for twenty years. In the space of a year I've messed things up with greed and stupidity quite well, thank you very much. I just forgot or refused to think it through as I used to.)

Now that I've stated the problem, what's my solution? In a word:

WAR!

We need to take these simple (but not easy) steps:

Acknowledge the extent of the war and all that's at stake.

Have the *will* to win.

Allocate the resources needed to win. This means putting our entire civilisation on a war footing.

_Learn_ how to fight - and win - the new style of war.

I won't dwell on how to do this, or why it will work - anyone with a little knowledge of the last century will see that. All I need say is that, done properly, this strategy will not only save our civilisation, way of life, liberties etc. for coming generations, it will fix up the financial mess we find ourselves in.

* When I say "the world" I mean the Western World. The rest is pretty messed up too, but that's immaterial to us.

Please note, there is a *lot* involved in fighting and winning the war. To me, the steps are pretty clear, but if anyone wants to know more, please ask. If necessary I can go into more detail in another article. Also note, this is not the only way to save ourselves, but I believe it is the simplest way. The other ways involve far more intelligence, rationality, hard-headedness and lucidity than I am willing to grant any civilisation acting collectively.

One more note. In one sense, the current war is a revolutionary, guerrilla war. There’s nothing new in that. The novelty is the technology, the methods and mostly, the scale. This war is global and borderless.

I’ll stop now.

Thank you and have a good day!

Barbarians at the Gates?

2006-11-12T22:28:36Z

Some friends and I were talking about world politics the other day, and this is an idea I came up with.

As you may know, I think a lot about the Fall of Rome. Most recently I've read Peter Heather's new book "The Fall of Rome: A New History" about it - highly recommended if this topic interests you. The point he makes is that it was the Barbarians who were the ultimate, proximate cause of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Yes, there were other failures, systemic and inherent in the Roman system and Army, but none of these weakened the state to the extent that a 'fall' was inevitable. This may seem like stating the bleeding obvious, but for centuries now - since Gibbon at least - historians have been trying to find other, tricky reasons for the Fall. Historians can be a funny bunch.

So, it was the Barbarians who caused the Fall of Rome. How is this relevant today? Of course, no two periods are exactly alike, but similarities can and do exist. I'll start by pointing out some similarities between the Late Antique period and today:

· There is one dominant economic and cultural system in the known world, i.e. Western civilisation.
· Outside of the dominant system (the 'haves') there are many nations of 'have nots' i.e. the First and Third Worlds. The Third World can be equated to the Barbarians of Late Antiquity.
· The Third World has been more or less deliberately suppressed and exploited by the First World for centuries.
· The Third World is jealous of the First World and wants what they have: wealth, technology, access to resources and food.
· Immigrants from the Third World, e.g. former colonies or Eastern states since the fall of the Iron Curtain, are coming to the First World in increasing numbers.
· The Third World is heavily armed (since the end of the Cold War in 1989 cheap weapons have flooded the markets) and in large part trained by the First World.
· The First World is under attack by the Third World. This is mostly manifested by Third World extremists and terrorists, but it is an expression of the rage and frustration felt by all the 'have nots' at the 'haves'.

If we concentrate on these similarities, we have to ask what happened in a comparable period i.e. Late Antiquity? In a nutshell, the Barbarians overthrew and destroyed Roman power and established states of their own which in time became the modern European states. Could this happen today? I believe it could.

There are some signs that the contemporary world is similar to Late Antiquity; as well as those listed above, increasingly there is one centre of civilisation - Washington D.C., which may be compared to ancient Rome. There are other signs that our Western civilisation is in danger of collapse. I won't go into this in detail - that is a whole other essay - but some off the top of my head are: collapse of the (nuclear) family; increasing instability and local wars, especially since the end of the Cold War era; and increasing international tension over any number of issues such as peacekeeping, nuclear weapons, terrorism and the 'war' against it.

I don't intend this very seriously, and I could just as easily come up with another theory tomorrow, but I think it bears thinking about. As a thought exercise, it demonstrates clearly the core value of History; we learn from the past to inform the present.

Immigration disgrace

2006-03-09T01:33:02Z

In the latest of Australian Immigration fuck-ups, Robert Jovovic - a 39 year old man who spent almost all his life in Australia - today returned after being deported 18 months ago to Serbia for being of "bad character". He was born in France of Serbian parents and arrived here when he was 2 years old. He committed some robberies to support a drug habit, thus the "bad character". This man was, to all intents and purposes, Australian, surely a de facto permanent resident, and needed help. Instead he was deported. This is typical of the sort of appalling mistakes our Dept. of Immigration regularly makes. There was Cornelia Rau, a citizen apparently suffering from schizophrenia, who was incarcerated in an Immigration "detention centre" (read concentration camp) by mistake. There was an Australian citizen from the Philipines who was deported in error. I won't even mention the completely illegal practice of imprisoning refugees and asylum seekers, which no other Western country does to my knowledge.

One reason this case grabs my attention is - it could have been me. I was born in England and was not naturalised until about ten years ago. I had what you could call a "troubled" adolescence, marred by mental disease, and could easily have ended up an addict or on the wrong side of the law in some way myself. Would I have been deported in such a case, despite having lived here since I was four or five months old?

The immigration system in this country is a shambles. Mistakes are common, mistakes which ruin lives. Robert Jovovic, and the others I mentioned, suffered badly at the hands of our Government. Last week an Iranian child was awarded $400,000 damages and legal costs from the Government for mental damage and suffering perpetrated by the government at one of the Immigration Depts. concentration camps. It's appalling, it's inhuman and it MUST STOP.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/i-should-not-have-been-removed/2006/03/09/1141701599885.html

Grand-standing

2006-01-31T15:59:29Z

Geoff Gallop, former Premier of Western Australia, resigned a couple of weeks ago saying he was suffering depression and needed to get over it, thank you very much and leave me alone now. Boo hoo. It was lauded by the Australian press and public as a tremendously brave and inspiring thing to do, it was said it will help "ordinary Australians" suffering depression to seek help etc., etc.

What a load of bullshit.

Almost everyone will suffer at least one episode of clinical depression in their lives, then get over it. Not me. I suffer it at least once a year (when I was a teenager it was at least two or three times a year). Roughly one in a hundred people is lucky enough to be manic-depressive, and as many as one in five of them die from it. Not because it's a deadly disease - it isn't - but simply because it's unbearable. (The figures vary from 15% to 20% depending where you get the statistics, and the rate goes up with a previous attempt.) That I am still alive is a small miracle, but not one that I have any great hope will last.

But I am seriously offended by all the fuss about Gallop. Here is a man in a position of power, almost as powerful as one can get in Australia, having one episode of depression and giving up. What about a factory worker going through a divorce who get depressed? Can he give up work and expect a pat on the back for it? No, he can expect the dole and the run-around from a shitty health system. The man in the street who gets depressed has to keep going, he has to silently suffer though it with his head down. He can't expect any sympathy or special treatment from employers or friends. And what of the one in a hundred to whom this happens regularly (not to mention the sheer delight of mania)? Do we get press conferences and editorials praising us? Of course not. We get a choice - put up and keep going, no matter that you will never get anywhere - which I did for a long long time - or resign yourself to living below the poverty line. We get to enjoy a disease with no cure, social stigma, a plethora of drugs of questionable effectiveness and massive side-affects, maybe even ECT if we're lucky enough, as I have been. The total ruin of one's life goes without mention.

So Mr Gallop, all I have to say is this: suck it up.

Tricks for Young Players

2005-12-01T05:47:52Z

An Australian is about to die in Singapore.

The facts of his case are simple, and Singaporean law is clear. Van Nguyen tried to take almost 400gm of heroin through Singapore, and the penalty is death by hanging. There is no dispute about it. Of course, my country is in an uproar.

It's very hard to know what to think. I have two separate experiences of Singaporean people, those I have met and those I have 'known' on internet chat. For the most part, those I have spoken to on chat seem ... well, how do I say it? They are stupid. Those I have met, however, are not stupid. I have not spoken to any of those I know about this case. Frankly, I do not know what I could say to them - why should their government spare a foreigner when their own countrymen are routinely executed for the same or similar offences? Why should the mother of Van Nguyen be allowed to hug her son before he dies when the mothers of their own sons or daughters are not allowed the same privilege?

On the one hand, I am opposed to a death penalty on principle - it has not been shown to deter murder, for instance, in the USA. But then - any Australian who tries to take drugs through South-East Asia knows the risk he is taking, and has at least since Barlow and Chambers were executed in 1986. To use a good old Aussie phrase: "It's their own lookout."

All the same, an Australian is to be hanged in Singapore tomorrow.

Vale, Van Nguyen.

"The Last Samurai" review etc.

2005-11-30T05:38:08Z

The Last Samurai

Directed by Edward Zwick, story and screenplay by John Logan.
Ken Watanabe, Tom Cruise, Billy Connolly.

Seen 25th January, 2004

Tom Cruise plays Captain Nathen Algren, a Civil War veteran who leads a precarious life selling rifles at a carnival, drinking heavily to drown the memory of the horrors he's seen in war. Billy Connolly, his former sergeant, tees up a job for him for a Japanese merchant, Omura, who is attempting to modernise Japan for the young Emperor Meiji but is hampered by a Samurai rebellion. The job is to train a regiment of Japanese in modern warfare, and lead them in battle against the Samurai, led by General Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe).

Algren starts training the regiment, but is flung into battle against the Samurai (who refuse to use firearms) before they are ready. The result is predictable - the regiment is completely routed, Connolly's character is killed and Algren is captured. This first battle is filmed superbly - the regiment forms up in a misty forest (God alone knows why) and the Samurai slowly coalesce out of the mist, their fantastically shaped armour making them look like monsters or ancient gods appearing through the foggy trees.

Algren is taken to the Samurai leader's home village for the winter, where he is lodged with the wife of the man he killed. After he heals from his wounds, he slowly takes in the Japanese culture around him, occasionally talking to Katsumoto and eventually even learning Ken-do (Japanese sword fighting). It is here that he begins to face up to the horrors in his past, especially a massacre he was ordered to carry out, and which he objected to - but in the end took part in.

When Katsumoto is offered safe passage to Edo to see the Emperor, Algren accompanies him and is released. He returns to his regiment, but cannot fit in - he is now a man caught between two worlds. The Emperor is persuaded to ban the Samurai and the two swords, and Katsumoto is arrested and condemned to death. Omura has Algren followed, and after he intervenes in the beating of a young Samurai - Katsumoto's son (Nobutada, played by Shin Koyamada) with whom he has formed a bond of respect - Omura orders an attack on him, fearing he is now a traitor. Although unarmed, Algren defeats five or six assassins using his new knowledge of Ken-do. Frankly, this scene stretches the bounds of credibility but is nonetheless done well.

The die is now cast. Algren cannot continue to train the regiment, and so he throws his lot in with the Samurai. They rescue Katsumoto and escape. Then they must gather their army of for a last battle against the regiment, now fully trained and armed with artillery and even Gatling guns.

The final battle is reminiscent of "Brave Heart" in some ways, such as the ruses the Samurai come up with to defeat their modern enemy. It is, however, spectacular - especially the gorgeous Samurai armour. Shooting flames, ambushes and hails of arrows - the action is a little predictable but it does look great. After defeating more than half of the infantry in this way, the remaining Samurai charge the regiment on horse - an obviously futile gesture but hopelessly brave and romantic. Of course they are all mown down by artillery and Gatling guns before they even reach the enemy lines, all except for - wait for it! - Tom Cruise!

After that, the movie is over. They tie up some loose ends and leave themselves room for a sequel: "No one knows what became of him..." and that's it.

If you're looking for meaning or even a decent plot, you won't find it here. On the other hand, the cinematography is superb, the attention to detail meticulous and the costuming is brilliant - the Samurai armour is obviously well researched and authentic and looks beautiful and frightening, as it is meant to. Cruise, as always, puts in a solid performance, as does Watanabe. The script is mostly good, though it tends to be over-dramatic at times - they are always trying to make memorable bon motts but never quite doing it. There are moments of genuine drama, though they sometimes seem pained and artificial, but thankfully no sex.

I give this six and a half out of ten.

-----------------------

I wrote the above review shortly after seeing the film on first (Australian) release in January 2004. I have recently seen the DVD version and the accompanying features and documentaries. According to them, the film does a very good job of portraying the Japan of the 1870s, a period of transition and accommodation between the old culture and the new, imported Western ways the Japanese actively sought out. The film is loosely based on a real rebellion, the Satsuma Rebellion, which was led by a former Samurai advisor to the young Emperor Meiji. (Incidentally, Shichinosuke Nakamura puts in a wonderful performance as the Emperor Meiji, growing visibly in confidence and maturity as the film progresses.) I don't know much about the Satsuma Rebellion and so don't know how true to it this film is, but that it is based in reality is at least reassuring.

-JM 30/11/2005

(Idil, I expect a read receipt please.)

I am ...

2005-10-31T06:01:13Z

I am Jack's despair.
I am Jack's loneliness.
I am Jack's empty promise.

In Nomini Patri, Et Fili, Et Spiritu Sancti.

medrawt @ 2004-04-23T02:02:00

2004-04-22T16:03:54Z

And I am watching you ALL.

medrawt @ 2004-04-23T01:59:00

2004-04-22T16:00:31Z

I am alive.

medrawt @ 2003-08-03T14:18:00

2003-08-03T04:18:36Z

I watched "The Thin Red Line" last night for the second time (I think). It's still a weird, surreal movie but I liked it better this time around. One day I must watch it alone so no bastard is talking over the voice-over ... the bits of it I caught sounded interesting. "Where does it come from? Is there an animal inside every man?" Stuff like that ... maybe light-weight, cheap philosophy, maybe not - as I said I didn't catch enough of it to tell. Probably a bit of both.

I also watched "Saving Private Ryan" again. And I cried at the end of it - again. That movie does it to me every damn time. It's got flaws, there's no perfect flick, but it's so incredibly powerful.

I should get my own VCR one of these days. Bugger it, I should get a TV that works. :)

Cheers!

medrawt @ 2003-08-01T11:45:00

2003-08-01T01:45:39Z

Australian etiquette:

When drinking a flagon of port around the campfire with a mob of Aborigines, should you wipe the bottle with your sleeve when it's passed to you? (No-one else does.)

My Moslem next-door neighbour today lent me a book called "Islamic Fundamentalism: the New Global Threat".

medrawt @ 2003-07-09T04:17:00

2003-07-08T18:18:26Z

I've been having a wonderful time lately but I'm now going though an anti-social period. You get that.

Not happy

2003-05-11T05:31:17Z

I've decided not to go to Europe after all. It hasn't made anyone involved happy, me least of all - but I had no choice. All the attendant stress has already made me ill, it's been ruined before it happened - mostly by Mum. I'm not feeling terribly charitable towards her at the moment, but at least she seems to have finally worked out that I don't want to talk to her.

Bills are crushing me at the moment, I had a fire in the kitchen last week that wasn't a lot of fun, all sorts of things are going wrong. I'm losing my normal phenomenal tolerance for the BS I have to cop on IRC. Oddly enough though, when I can just live in the moment - take a walk on a crisp clear bright-starred night as I did last night - I feel happy enough. Until I remember again.

On Easter Sunday I found out something I've long suspected - my sister and brother-in-law moved from Sydney to get away from Mum. He gave me a lift home and told me; he even turned down a good job in Sydney so they could do it. So that's both my siblings were smart enough and able to get away from her, and I'm the patsy. I feel so stupid. Then they have the nerve to get mad at me when I blew her up for one of her usual tricks. I feel so angry. Of course they never talked back or stood up to her - I'm the only one in the whole damn family who's ever done that. Maybe that's why she feels she can dismiss what I say - no-one else has the guts to tell her. The only thing to do is get away and I don't see how I can do that - despite it all, despite how much I hate her, I find it hard to be mean to her. When I am it's because she pushes me too far and I lose my temper; no-one else can do that to me the way she does, she seems to know instinctively what buttons to push.

Argh! Enough ranting on that, it only makes me feel worse. It's a beautiful day here, I might go for a walk soon ... or when it gets dark, it'll probably be another beautiful night.

Flat.

2003-04-27T16:01:18Z

This is very raw. Enter at you're own risk.

2003-04-01T19:56:41Z

Unedited journal entries from last week. Very raw, very harsh.

.LOG
5:52 PM 26/03/03

It's Wenesday and I've been in Canberra with Mum since Sunday. I hate her. I want her dead. There is no way I can travel with her. Why did Dad have to marry such a fucking retard of a woman? She drives me insane. This morning I just walked out of the house, I couldn't handle it. I have severe hangovers every damn morning from my pills and there was Mum being a cretin at me. It happens constantly and it always has and it's more than I can bear.

So how on earth can I go to Europe with her with this going on? I can't see a way to do it. I could ask her to go easy on me in the mornings but I'd have to tell her every fucking day because she never listens to anyone at all. And that would drive me even more insane.

Elizabeth is turning into a worse version of her father. Not only is she arrogant and superior, she's a brat. She's got no looks or particular brains going for her, so I guess she'll be a mediocrity like her Dad is and her Mum was. Of course she'll be a mediocrity with a chance to succeed, unlike me and again like her parents. I envy her.

I don't envy Mum much. Luckily for her sho's so self-centred she never notices how embarassingly stupid she is. I do though, as does anyone who comes in contact with her. Why, oh why did Dad marry this pathetic and inferior excuse for a human? Even though all the things that have made my life a misery came from Dad and not Mum, I'd give anything for a mother with more intelligence than it takes to tie her own shoelaces.

I want more than anything else (accept maybe a cure) to go to Europe later in the year. I don't give a rat's about Stevie's wedding - except to feel sorry for Rachel - but I want to see Turkey, Idil, Split, Hadrian's Wall and some of the otehr Roman sites in Britain. But HOW can I do it if I have to go with this woman?!? I can't walk out on her in a foreign country. She will annoy me with her crass stupidity and general obnoxiousness many times every day, as sure as the sun rises. How can I stand travelling with her? I've been trying to work this out all day and I can't see a way. Help!!!

Lizzy wants the computer now and I've nothing but gloom and vitriol here.

12:23 AM 27/03/03

We're going home today. If I can survive 4 hours in the car with that woman I'm free again. It doesn't seem to matter what my mood or state of mind is, I can never ever stand her. I've never been able to. Sometimes I can tolerate her better than other times - that's the best I can say. And the only way I even do that is by biting my tongue.

Sitting under a tree this morning, smoking, I almost cried. (Yes I bought a pack of smokes - I left in such a hurry I hadn't put on a nicotine patch and I was furious, tense, shaking ... it was not good.) I could see my dream of seeing Europe faling apart in front of my eyes.

I know I'm shaking her confidence and self-esteem. I know she has no-one left to boost it now that Dad and Cathy are dead. Stevie is in England as much to get away from Mum as for any other reason. Though why they ever built up her house of cards when they knew as well as I do what a sham she is, I'll never know. Re-inforcing her in her ignorance for so long makes it impossible to break through now. Sometimes I'm tempted to just keep battering away until I destroy her. Break her will and her health, kill her in effect. Then I'd inherit some money and be able to have a comfortable life for at least a little while until I kill myself. There is no longer any doubt in my mind I will die by my own hand. Of course a more effective way to destroy her would be to kill myself first ... and that's very very likely. But where's the fun in that?

I feel evil coming over me with thoughts such as these. I could rationalise it and say I'm not well - and undoubtedly it's the truth - but my warped sense of personal responsibilty won't let me do that. I'm evil, not sick. I can't apply to myself the same standards I want others to apply to me. But I truly believe that the evil and the illness are intertwined. The MDP - more specifically, the things I've done when ill - has progressively eroded my morals until I AM an evil person. What can I do about it? I've no idea. There is no cure, there is no effective treatment.

I loathe my brother. I loathe him for all the reasons I've always loathed him - for being weak and pathetic and just generally ... I don't know what the word is. I loathe him more for leaving me to deal with this monstrous woman alone. It's very easy for him to talk to her on the phone from the other side of the world. He can hang up and forget about her and continue enjoying himself. I can't. Thank God I don't live with the monster.

Aticipation.

2003-02-13T17:46:57Z

Things are goodish at the moment. It makes me scared.

I'm going to Europe later this year and trying to save for it - which is difficult when my income is below the poverty line. All the same I am going and I will save the money for it. There's people and places I want to see - my brother's wedding is incidental, an excuse. He's a fuckstick anyway and once Mum is dead I doubt I'll ever talk to him again except maybe through lawyers. It's almost a pity his fiance is such a nice chick ... but who can account for tastes?

Istanbul - the palace of Constantine, Sancta Sophia, the Golden Horn, the Greek ruins on the Agean coast and Idil (my best friend ... whom I've never met - and my Turkish tour guide. I hope she'll show me Smyrna and Ildiri :) - Rome - Split (Diocletians Palace - oh man how I want to see that!).

There's so much I want to see ... the Rhine and Danube 'limes' of the Roman Empire - the forts and frontier remains ... Hadrians Wall and the Housesteads Cohort Fort - the Pennine unit forts, Caer Leon , Verulamium/St Albans, Colcheser and the Temple of Augustus that caused the rebellion of Boidicia. Just to see all this stuff which I've been reading about all my life - it's hard to describe how it will feel, and I cannot describe it until I see and feel it. But I feel the anticipation of it now, it's been a hunger in me for well over half my life. To make all - or some - of this stuff real, to see it ...

It's all coming real now, at last. I am doing it, this year. I could go on about how good it feels but I think I've covered that now. To coin a phrase - it's a dream come true.

medrawt @ 2003-01-11T12:08:00

2003-01-11T01:13:15Z

Quite a bit better now.

Christmas and New Year went a lot better than I expected, I had a good time with the family and didn't fight with my brother. Christmas was just the four of us - me, Mum, Steve and Rachel his girlfriend. Nice day, very peaceful, in the afternoon we went for a bushwalk then had a few beers (while Mum was having a nap :). New Years Eve I went to a party on the harbour. When the fireworks started I was out in the garden next to Kirribilli wharf, just around the point from the Harbour Bridge. It was spectacular, made me feel good.

Since then (before actually) I've been feeling better and better, I now feel more or less normal and am getting out more and all that stuff. It's nice to feel kinda human again.

medrawt @ 2002-12-26T16:50:00

2002-12-26T05:50:35Z

A bit better now.

medrawt @ 2002-11-13T12:36:00

2002-11-13T01:37:32Z

No feelings at the moment except depression. Nothing at all makes a dent in the bleakness, the total lack of feeling. It's terrifying. I'm not sleeping well, it's hard to know what day it is when I'm awake all night and asleep all day half the time, I'm losing track of time. I'm seeing the doctor this arvo for all the good it'll do. There's nothing to do but wait it out, drugs are no use. My balcony scares me and gives me hope at the same time.

To those of you who've been reaching out to me lately, thanks. I'm sorry if I seem to be pushing you away at the moment or responding weirdly, it's a thing I do when I'm depressed. Sort of a vicious circle, I feel bad and everything I do or don't do makes me feel worse.

Kerfuffle and feelings

2002-10-07T05:12:35Z

So on Monday afternoon a week ago, I suddenly found my internet connection wouldn't route. I couldn't get mail or web. The next morning I half solved the problem by putting the mailservers in my hosts file, then called Tech Support at Speednet. I hate calling tech support but I've had to do it 2 or 3 times now for Speednet, which is more times than in all my years before on the net. They're a crap ISP.

Back to the point. Speednet told me it was a known problem with Windows 2000 and the only way to fix it was to reinstall DUN/RAS. So I tried, but there doesn't seem to be a way to uninstall it seperately. OK, so I went to reinstall win2k altogether. Did that, there were more problems such as NIC and modem not picked up properly or at all. Ok, so I stuck a spare hdd on, backed up my data and tried again, re-installing 'over the top'. Still didn't work. Ok, so I decided on a complete fresh reinstall, but had trouble formatting the hdd. Ok, so I installed Linux temporarily to format it (Linux and KDE look great on a big screen). BUT - I didn't think to unplug my backup hdd, it just did't occur to me and didn't seem necessary. To be frank it still doesn't. BUT when I reinstalled win2k on a blank drive, it couldn't read my backup drive, saw it as 'unallocated'. To cut an already long story short, I lost a lot of data, some dating back 6 or 7 years. Writing, uni work, web pages, contact details, all sorts of shit. I was not a happy camper.

I went to sleep at 4pm that day and slept for about 16 hours. The week before I read an article about some woman who'd lost all her email and contacts and how upset she was. I thought it was a bit silly, then it happened to me. It *is* upsetting. BUT when I woke up the next day, I thought to myself "There's two ways I can look at this. I can be upset I lost all that data, or I can be happy I got the machine working properly." I decided to be happy.

***********************************

I've always believed that feelings are decisions, not things that come upon you leaving you no choice but to go along with them. Feelings are not facts. I try to base my life and my decisions on facts. I value reason and rationality. I believe I can decide how to feel about any given situation or person. And yet I have a severe mood disorder - manic-depressive psychosis (MDP). This is an imbalance in my brain chemistry that afflicts me with severe and chronic mood swings from time to time. I get depressed or manic for no apparrent reason and there's nothing I can do about it. It goes against what I believe, but it still happens to me. So there's a paradox at the core of my being. (Sounds good doesn't it?) Under normal circumstances, when I'm not ill, I can generally control my feelings fairly well.

I think this works even with falling in love. There's always a point where you see what's happening and have the choice whether to be in love or not. Perhaps most people don't do it consciously, which is why they feel they have no choice. All it takes is the realisation that you DO have control.

So I never use the excuse "I can't help how I feel," and I'm reluctant to accept it from others.

Hope

2002-09-19T02:08:20Z

In the winter and spring sky there is a star, brighter than Sirius and only second to the Moon. Every evening I see it shining magnificently. It gives me joy and hope, and it has become a sort of symbol for me. It's the International Space Station. I look up at it and wonder, I think 'We did that!' and I think there may be hope for humanity amidst all the chaos and fear on this lonely forlorn planet.

From Sydney, it's in the North-west, visible till about midnight. It doesn't seem to resolve to a point like other stars, and I'm sure that even a low powered scope or high powered binoculars would show some details of the thing. It's continuously manned now, and it's our first step into the Universe. One day, I believe, mankind will break the bounds of Earth and spread to other worlds, and the Milky Way - that shining band of stars across the night sky - will be our home.

In times like these - the scariest times I've lived through yet - I cling to the hope the bright new star gives me.

So far, so good

2002-08-25T17:26:21Z

Oh what a hectic thing life can be sometimes. A lot has happened since my last post but I'll stick to the point. Early am Tuesday she finally came online. I'd been talking myself up to tell her how I felt for a few days - then before I got the chance, she told me she'd got herself a boyfriend. Then she told me a bit about him. Let me tell you, people, it didn't sound good (him, I mean). I was sitting there with tears streaming down my face, trying to type calmly and nicely, but finally I had to just get up and leave. She immediately called me - from Turkey - and I turned my phone off. I was way too distraught to talk to anyone.

Next day, she tells me she's broken up with him - because I was so upset about it. I'll be honest, I wasn't too upset - I was upset I'd caused her pain, but not upset she'd broken up with a guy I knew would be pain to her. The next day, she wanted to know what the hell I was so upset about, what the problem was. I am NOT going to tell anyone I am in love with them via SMS. She was upset all over - and who can blame her?

Tonight I called her and we spoke for almost an hour. I screwed up my courage and told her how I feel. It wasn't easy to do - but after that, it was easier to talk. She said neither yay nor nay to my declaration of love, but I didn't really expect her to - I just needed to say it to her.

********************

People think I'm strange because I care about different things than most of them. All the things I care about, I care about for a reason - not everyone gets my reasons but I believe in them. I don't care about pollution or global warming because I believe the earth is a self-sustaining system that can and has survived much worse than anything humans will inflict on her. I don't believe much in democracy because I don't think it works well in large populations like most of the 'first world'. For example, in my country - Australia - we exercise our democracy every four years at election times, and the rest of the time our 'elected representatives' follow party lines and pretty well ignore what their constituents want. I don't care too much about species becoming extinct, because that has been happening forever - and as often as not in the past, it's been humans causing it. The large mammal extinctions in the Americas and in Australia were both caused by humans - who mourns the American camel these days? Or the snub-nosed giant kangaroo? I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

One thing I do care about, intensely - though as an historian I see no end to it - is man's inhumanity to man. War, poverty, famine, torture - these are evil things that I hate. I don't truly know if there is any prospect of an end to these evils - I hope so, and I do see some promising signs in the world - but I hate them and I care about them and I will do what little I can to stop them.

Enough ranting for tonight.

So silly - and so good

2002-08-19T13:12:06Z

I've gone and done a thing I swore I'd never do again. I've fallen in love with a woman I haven't met and may never meet. I didn't really see it coming, I thought I was fore-warned - I did this a couple times early on in my 'net career and it didn't work. But there you have it.

I'll post more when I've sorted out my feeling about all this a bit better.

Fridges.

2002-07-19T11:33:06Z

The first thing I did when I moved into this place was stick pizza menus all over the fridge. That's what they're for isn't it? Oh I know some people use 'em to store food in - pfft! I use mine to rot food in. I go to the supermarket and think to myself "mmmmm that cabbage will rot nicely in my fridge," or "Those snags should go real slimey in a couple weeks if I just whack 'em in the fridge and forget about 'em."

That's what fridges are for.

Harry Potter

2002-07-16T14:32:55Z

.
Oh by the way, I saw 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' the other day at a friends place. Here's a review:

'Harry Potter' is the most cynical piece of cinema trash I've ever seen.