On the Up?

Things continue to go from bad to worse on the work front.


Personally though, things have remained fairly static with a very slight elevation.

A week ago I got massive laughs during a stand-up set, which I pretty much winged. While much of the material had bee written before I tried loads of new stuff and it worked. Always a good thing. My next gig is at 8pm on 7th September at the Comedy Court on George Street, Sydney, in case you’re interested.

The last weekend was fun and after lots of fun in the garden I feel like I actually want to sort sh*t out on the home front. It’s been a while since I actually wanted to do anything that related to keeping my environment clean and tidy, but despite being exhausted when I get home from my work day, I do a little something that may, in the long run contribute to a cleaner home space.

My veggie patch has started to produce food. Yay! For the next six months I’ll be able to go into the garden and pluck sustenance from the ground. I’m sorry, but there really is no better feeling than eating freshly picked produce. For the last three days I’ve been able to use my home grown greens in my dinner and also eggs laid by the Pink Ladies in omelettes, scrambled and poached.

With the better weather comes more vitamin D which in turn makes you feel better generally, so hopefully, there will be less depression and more happiness in my future.

Now please enjoy this picture of my dinner from last night. Everything is from the garden except the Holumi cheese (and the tiny bit of fresh ground pepper) :-)

Down

While my small creamy coloured dog has been missing I have found the big black one barking at the back door and paws on the window sill on many occasions. My attempts to scare him away have only succeeded in getting him out of the garden and my near vicinity.

This morning he got in and landed on the bed with a thud. Pinning me down.

I’m not sure how he got in, but I think the cracks have expanded over the last few weeks while I have been wrestling with a couple of issues. These cracks have clearly been ignored by me as I’ve focused on trying to think my way through my problems.

While in the grander scheme of things that effect the wider world, my problems are meaningless and insignificant, but one thing I’ve learned, when you’re dealing with things alone, they can often become all consuming to the exclusion of all others.

I find myself trying to claw my way through financial worries, still. My attempts to bring it all to a speedier conclusion seem to be ticking along, but a little support would be nice.

My work situation is interesting to say the least and the least said the better.

Which bring me to the overarching issue: companionship. As much as I love my fur family I find it really hard to ask them to help out about the place. When I have to change a light bulb, if I was to fall off the step ladder and broke my neck, they would be pretty useless at calling the emergency services. They are crap at helping move logs in and even worse at doing any kind of housework.

I discovered this when I had a kidney stone and spent several days in hospital alone until someone came to visit. The chicken shed I’ve had for nearly a year that has been partially erected (yes, kiddies I said erected), the fact that I still haven’t seen Batman 3 because I have no one to go with. Actually I haven’t been to the movies in months and I love the movies. What’s the point of going if you come out with that urge to discuss but turn to empty air?

People laugh at me when I say I’m learning the recorder…I do that so I’m not sitting at home alone, it gives me a focus.

When people criticise my choice to be a Tupperware Lady, I do that because a, I love the product and genuinely believe it’s great but b, so I can get out of the house, meet people and as an added bonus make a little cash. I’ve been told ‘You’re better than that’ but has it every occurred to people that I do actually enjoy it and would rather not wait tables or pull pints in shift work.

When people ask why I drive to Canberra to perform 10 minutes of stand-up comedy, it’s because no one comes to see me in Sydney and people actually do when I go to Canberra. The weird thing is, people have actually been to see me multiple times in Canberra…they even get to see my new material.

When people say I should only photograph things that pay…that’s nice if I never actually wanted to photograph anything and I didn’t do it to get out of the house.

When people say to me I should stop looking for my missing dog. When the dreams of vivisection, abuse and overfeeding stop and I know what happened to her, I’ll stop looking. A need to know her fate drives me to do the things I do, with little or no physical or emotional support. Would you give up looking for your loved one if they went missing, and NO, it’s no different because she isn’t ‘ just a dog’.

I do things that get me out of the house and interacting with human beings. As much as I hate the general public it sometimes feels better to be alone in company than alone, alone.

I shall have three days of companionship this weekend then it will be over for another undisclosed period of time. Time to move on I think, the hope that it will lead to more has hit a point in reality that I don’t like, but I need to start living my life with a view to the future. Cold turkey. Rip the band-aid off and visit the doctor for more brain numbing drugs. While I should be looking forward to this brief time of fun, laughter and adventure, I find myself half dreading it because I know it will be over before it’s even begun.

A long term future with some genuine human companionship would be a rather pleasant thing I feel. I do still feel.

fingerfriend hugs by FCImages

Karma?

I’ve grown up hearing the names Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. Their images are instantly recognizable to me, just as I could tell you who Pope John Paul II, Clint Eastwood and James Cagney are.
They are famous, or should I say infamous, murderers and rapists from 1960s England.

Like all people of infamy they have been glamourised by some, but for the most part vilified as they rightly deserve. Between them they sexual assaulted and tortured five children (that they admitted and where convicted of, but unofficial numbers are higher) between July 1963 and October 1965. They were convicted in 1966. Before I was even born, but their names often popped up.

In the mid 80s they gained a tremendous amount of press when they returned to scene of their crime to find the graves of their victim, but could only find one.

In 1995, Hindley was in the news again, but this time for her mugshot being used as the basis for a portrait painted by Marcus Harvey using children sized hand prints.

Hindley died at the age of 60 in 2002 in jail.
Today I saw the name Ian Brady in the paper and though, surely he’s dead now, but apparently not.

I read this story and felt hope for the family of Keith Bennett.

It was the last line of the story was what caught my eye and brought out a very rare, extreme, non-humane reaction from me.

‘The tribunal was to consider Brady's application to be transferred to a Scottish prison and be allowed to die. He has been tube-fed since refusing food 12 years ago.’

My immediate reaction to this was ‘Let the f*cker suffer!’
Then I reconsidered.  At 72, is it right that he be allowed to die or should he be forced to continue to suffer?  Does that make his captors as bad as he?

I know say, let him die and maybe, just maybe his name will cease to reoccur in our lives to remind us of the evil he and his girlfriend perpetrated forty odd years ago.

    NOTE: the image was taken form here and the copyright belongs to them, not me.

Social Media

I love social media. I would happily stand up in a Social Media Support group and say, ‘My name is Jodie and I am a Social Media-aholic’.

I have a Facebook and a Twitter account. I’m also on Instagram. I have a blog, but you know about that because you’re reading it. I’m resisting Flicka and Pinterest, just because I think I have enough.

I have a few pages and both my dogs have their own Facebook accounts, but I have to say they post more than me.

It’s not just the sharing of the details of my life in the vein hope that someone else actually gives a damn about what I’m up too; it about when I die, alone in my house, and have my face eaten by the cats that someone might notice my lack of posts and therefore come looking for me, that I like, it's other random posts from strangers that appear on my wall.

Today…I saw a post from such a random to pop starlet Nicki Minaj and it appeared on my wall because one of my friends had seen fit to add her voice to the 59,000 other comments.

It was a somewhat vitriolic post that included the phases ‘it makes me want to punch my cat’, ‘it has been proven that you can catch Aids from watching her music videos’ and ‘it’s (her music) cancerous to the earth’. Actually, if you look at the message as a whole there is some rather amusing imagery conquered up. It is still cruel and unnecessary.

If you don’t like her music, change channel and stop buying it from iTunes.

The starting message itself is interesting but some of the comments are hilarious, if not cruel in themselves!

Some comments were full of admiration for the original post and they agree with the sentiment (typed as they appear on the posting*):
‘Dude that kid gor balls…but no brains’ Jordan S-P
‘I think I love you, sir’ Naomi H.
‘Fu*k that b*tch nicki keep doing u boo…’ Ashley A.
There was more to that last one, but it became so unintelligible I couldn’t tell if it was supportive or abusive.

The religious and lifestyle ones always make me smile

‘That’s not very Christian’ Jesse G
‘(posters name), if you were Greek, you’d be Zeus.’ Jake M
‘Lolsomeone is pi*sed they don’t make the money she makes :)’ Billy S.
‘Ur gay’ Joe O.
‘2 words…STOP HATING’ Dsire B
‘If u think shes hurt by this u dimb as hell’ Tatiana FW. Do I hear the pot calling the kettle names?

Invariably though someone brings up the age old debate that haunts all forms of social media, and with good reason. Most people fire of comments and posts without a thought to the content and how it will appear. We’re all guilty of it, some more so than others. I know I’m not perfect, but at least I put a little effort in.

In this case I only saw Milo S’s attempt to set the world straight on the matter, but you just know there would have been others amongst the fifty nine thousand other comments. ‘Wow, most of these comments either have bad spelling or improper grammar. What a world where people can’t spell, at all.’

In some way I wish I was a researcher. I’d love to examine the way people are affected by social media. What would happen if it was to go away over night? What would happen to those that have grown up knowing no other way to communicate.

The days before mobile telephones when there was one telephone in the house and your dad had put a lock on it. When you made plans and stuck to them because there was no way to punk out at the last minute. When you physically had to invite everyone you wanted to come to your party because there was no ‘wall event’ capability.

‘Didn’t you get my wall invite?’
‘No, I haven’t looked at Facebook for weeks’
Sound familiar?


Most of all though how would they cope not being able to hurl abuse anonymously at all and sundry just because they felt like it and it was free?

Would they sit down with a pen and paper and write out the words ‘I don’t come to you respectfully as I don’t think you even deserve to be treated with sincerity’ (another line from the NM post means) and other nasty, down right mean spirited comments, fold it neatly, pop it into an envelope, put a stamp on it and place it into a letter box, after they had spent an age finding an address to send it too? Most likey the ‘Fan Club’.

I really don’t think they would bother.

I love social media. I really do. It’s helping me spread the word about my missing dog. It’s helping get word out about my business. It helps me stay in touch with family and friends who live overseas and far away places. It has even introduced me to many people I may not have otherwise come across.
In the words of Uncle Ben from Spiderman (2002) ‘With great power comes great responsibility’.
Please think before you press send.



* Swear words did not have * in them, they appeared in full in the original comments, but I'm a senstive soul that likes to have some modicum of manners :-)
Picture of telephone lock from here