Redefining his identity

Atty: "Daddy, you don't know my name"
Me: "Yes I do, I gave it to you"
Atty: "What is it then?"
Me: "It's Atty!"
Atty: "No, it's not. It's Superguy... Dragon"
Me: "Hi there, Superguy Dragon"
Atty: "Hi"

Not how I remember it...

This was seriously not the take-home message I got from listening to Holst's The Planets.

The Book of Skulls

Just finished reading The Book of Skulls, by Robert Silverberg. It's quite an amazing book - technically in the Fantasy genre, but more an exploration of the minds of four young men. Definitely one of the better books I've read recently. I'd definitely recommend it, and I'll certainly read more Silverberg in the future.

I found a great book shop in Tea Gardens when we holidayed there. It's just a shed in a guy's back yard, but it's wall-to-wall with books (all in plastic zip-loc bags to keep the bugs and sea air out), all at good prices. I get annoyed with all the second hand book shops around that seem to charge 80% of the book's original price - when I grew up we were often at markets and garage sales, and the price of second-hand books was a dollar or two. The books in this shop were mostly $3-$6, so we ended up getting nearly $100 worth. It's on the main street of tea gardens, the one you drive through town on to get to Hawks Nest. If you're in Hawks Nest and like books, go visit it.

The Delta of Venus

I recently read the Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin - it was a re-released version in the old-style penguin orange cover, so I bought it out of curiosity. We were on holiday up in Hawks Nest, so I was doing a lot of reading. I find I get a lot of reading done on holiday, away from the distractions of housework and computers and so on. I should read at home more often, like that.

The book was quite an eye opener. I've never read "literary erotica" before; I've never really read erotica. I found it quite an odd experience, gratuitous smut that would normally make for a dodgy X-rated movie, but couched in elegant language, some of it beautifully written, and often of the most degraded scenarios imaginable. The first story (it is a collection of occasionally linked short stories), "The Hungarian Adventurer", was a rollicking, sordid tale of lust out of control, and left me rather stunned and lost for words at the end. Nin states in the preface that her model for writing was the existing erotic literature that she had access to, written by men for men, but the characters that actually come across as real people with real desires were the women.

It was an illuminating read, and it has certainly broadened my horizons. Nearing the end of the book, I recall thinking about the book, and realising that a certain perversion hadn't yet been written about, only to find it lovingly described several pages later.

Nifty app

Found Reader Notifier, a handy little tool that sits in your menubar and tells you when you have new items to read in your Google Reader.

Awesome

This is awesome.

Also, The List (see earlier post) seems to have died. I'm not sure why. Maybe I'll be able to revive it over my christmas break.

The News

This is going to be a rather intense rant about the news and humanity, so if you're not in the mood, feel free to skip this posting. It's also pretty sweary.

Since becoming a parent, I've started to notice a couple of things about myself: I'm starting to accept that ratings on things regarding adult content are a Good Thing; and I tend to get a lot more upset about some of the things I see on the news.

First things first: our eldest son is, like most seven year old boys, fascinated by violence. We try to keep a reasonably strong leash on his viewing, because he'd love to be watching all of the hideously violent sci-fi action films that come out these days. So many sci fi franchises (I'm looking at you, Star Wars and Transformers) that were formerly kid-friendly are starting to release M-rated films. Poor Eldest Son doesn't get to watch M-rated films, so he's missing out. The worst of it is that most of his friends are taken to watch them by their parents, leaving our poor boy a social pariah who only learns the content of movies by rumour. He's pretty good at explaining the plot of several movies he's never seen, simply because a lot of these films are Required Watching in his social milieu.

What really gives me the shits, however, is the 6 o'clock news. If the content of the news was made into a film, it would typically be M-rated, and frequently R. It's basically What's Happening In The Wars, plus the Daily Pedophile Update. Often with a side dose of gang rape. While I want my kids to be wary of the dangers adults can pose, They Don't Fucking Need To Know Specifically How Many Pedophiles Are Out There And What They Did. I don't get why they can't have a decent news update at 6pm, saying at the worst "25 more soldiers dead", with no details, and then the full R-rated parade of humanity's hideous monstrosity after 9pm. It would be so easy. I mean, really, news of one pedophile is not something that everyone in the country needs to know.

It wouldn't be a problem for me, except that we frequently have dinner with my in-laws, who insist on the daily news being watched. I frequently find myself cringing through the more horrifying news reports, talking loudly and hoping the kids aren't listening to the news. How do you answer the question "Daddy, what does 'rape' mean?" from a little boy who hasn't yet been taught the birds and the bees? Trust me, it isn't easy.

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My second, related, issue, is personal sensitivity to the events in the world. I used to be quite jaded about things - I watch sci-fi, fantasy, and horror films, and enjoy a good dose of violence and nastiness in them. But since having kids, the distinction between fiction and reality has been emphasised, and I often find myself close to tears or wanting to go and kill someone after reading the news. Some people are fucking savages, and deserve brutal, swift and harsh punishment.

I mean, fuck, there's this. Don't read it if you are sensitive to cruelty to small children. It put me off my lunch today, and it was all I could do not to break down in tears in the restaurant (I had Thai). The guy who did it is an obscene parody of a human being, and if someone told me they were starting a mob to go and kick him to death, I'd sign up straight away. I guess I lose my pacifist cred by saying that, but really, people like that don't deserve to be treated with the dignity normally accorded to human beings or animals.

And there was this. Again, not something to read if hideous injustice and inhumanity upsets you. It certainly did me. It's things like this that make me want to ban religions, simply because they give wondrously convenient excuses to psychopaths wanting to hurt and kill innocent people. I'm aware that Somalia is a basket case, and pretty much needs someone to go there, put every fucker holding a gun in jail forever, and to have the African Union peacekeepers run the place for fifty years until there are a couple of generations of people not completely shattered by the turmoil and horror that fills the place now, who can actually set up a civilised government. But even so, I can't imagine a better case study for the separation of church and state than the above. "Cautious Agnostic" should be a requirement on CVs of anyone seeking a position of authority.

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Well, I think I've got that out of my system for now. I should add a disclaimer that I'm absolutely against the death penalty. Just because someone doesn't deserve to live, doesn't mean you've a right to kill them. There's just a part of me that would join in on some mob justice now and then, when small children have been tortured to death.

Also, I'm not against Islam. Evil psychopaths crop up anywhere there are Rules Which Must Be Obeyed, and mechanisms for adding to those rules. Christianity, Communism, Fascism, and any number of other dogmas have exactly the same potential for evil; it's just that the current geopolitical situation means that those in Islam are getting the most press these days.