Ozwitch

The fear of fear

Every now and then you read a sentence of such devastating simplicity it just rocks you back on your heels. You know, the old lightbulb exploding trick.

Chapomatic quotes Jason from Just Another Soldier and his (emailed) article on the Tao of Soldiering. I'd read Jason once before, but forgotten him. So glad I went back and read it. Thanks to Chap for the tip.
Jason talks about war, and fear, and what suffering means from a soldier's viewpoint. He talks simply, and eloquently, and he gets his feelings across in a very readable fashion. This para in particular struck me:

It is not necessary for the novitiate to buy into any of this. But when he’s into the twelfth mile of a forced road march carrying nearly his own body weight in gear, he learns that there is a landscape of pain he never knew existed. Once you’ve learned that there is no real limit to what you can endure, you’re on your way to understanding that you can do just about anything so long as you allow yourself to have the will to do it.

That's the trick, isn't it. Allowing yourself the will to do it. So many things we think we can do, but at the last hurdle, we fail to muster up the will to try. What defeats us is not our capabilities, but our willpower.

I know this is not revelatory. It's basic life stuff. But sometimes you surround yourself with complications, things that make decisions seem more difficult and complex than they really are. It's another way of procrastinating so you stay in that safe zone where things can't go wrong because you don't allow them the chance to.

Away

Off to pot rabbits in the Grampians. Back Wednesday.

Sometimes you wonder if you're sane

Two things happened to me yesterday, and I've realized that middle age is slowly but inexorably approaching. I dyed my hair a brilliant red, and I decided to go on a pig shoot next year in Darwin. Of the two, I'm not sure which is the more horrendous.

My traffic light hair will diminish over time, hopefully. However the Redneck Adventure of a Lifetime will only loom larger as each month passes. It's one of those exploits that you sign up for after drinking too many red wines, which sound thrilling and daring and make you feel invincible at the time, but in the cold light of the next day can't be seen as anything other than grossly stupid.

I'll be up there with my husband and a bunch of other Blokes, chasing wild pigs through swamps, avoiding menacing buffalo with huge horns and tempers to match, and fishing from the lagoon while trying not to catch a crocodile. You take your rifle when you go to the toilet. That kind of place. It's a guided hunt, and it costs a bit, but top value.

This doesn't, upon reflection, really sound like me. But it's a week of driving through South Australia, past the opal mines of Coober Pedy and on through Alice Springs and the Rock, and so to the Top End, where the scenery is glorious and the silence is deafening, and you have the entire world to yourself, or so it seems. During the day it's hot enough to bake eggs on the stones. At night it gets frosty, and the Milky Way comes down to the horizon, so bright and close you could touch it. I'll take my 8-inch telescope along for the ride if it will fit. We'll camp out along the way, take photos of spiky vegetation, hot red earth and weird-looking reptiles, and if charging through the swamps after angry pigs doesn't in the end do it for me, I can always fish. The barramundi are to die for up there.

I'll be with experienced and professional hunters, and I'll surely learn a lot from them about hunting, shooting, even skinning and quartering your beast when you've shot it. A skill every woman needs, no doubt. Living off the land, going back to the primal in each of us. I wonder if the reality will match the imagery in my head. I wonder if I've bitten off more than I can chew.

Eight months away. A lot can happen in eight months. But if I don't do it now, I never will.

Does it sound crazy?

UPDATE: Husband says he'll buy me a 308 LTR. Aren't husbands just awesome?

Of course I'm in for some serious payback, but it'll be worth it.

And now there will be no going back.

Sundries

In 1994, Victoria's road toll stood at 378. Ten years later, it's at 280 for 2004 and counting. Despite all the speed cameras, drink-driving regulations, horror TAC advertisements and humungous fines, we still manage to kill ourselves regularly on the road. So you have to conclude that the campaigns are not working.

What to do about it? My solution: more police on the roads. Visibly. In dayglow orange cars. It's amazing how well-behaved drivers become with a cop car in the vicinity. Instead of setting up radar cameras behind trees so the motorist doesn't even know they've copped a fine until it arrives in the post three weeks later and they've forgotten all about it - get police out there and driving around. Stop concentrating on the revenue from speed cameras and help prevent traffic offences from happening in the first place. Get serious. Make that your legacy, Mr. Bracks.

Australia's lack of a second spinner and Shane Warne's lack of a wrong-un is going to cost us the second Test against India. Unless the pitch completely breaks up - and it's showing no signs of doing so.

Navy got hammered by Notre Dame. Again. There's always next century.

Mark Philippoussis has been seeing Someone Else and Delta is heartbroken. Apparently. Move on, girl. He's not in your league.

It's another glorious spring day and my son's last day at high school. Ever. He's been at Eltham College for six years - it's rather sad to say goodbye (at least I'm sad - he's cheering.) So today he goes to school in pyjamas and ceremonially burns his uniform or something. Whatever they do these days (insert appropriate hmmrph womfle never-did-that-in-my-day comment.) Still, it's a bit of an epoch in his life even if he doesn't want to acknowledge that at present.

Bought him his first suit the other day. Feeling very proud and a bit sad.

Great column from Paul Sheehan in the SMH today about the politics of hate

Late breaking: a bomb detonated at a cafe in Baghdad today, just near the Australian embassy. There are fatalities - not known if any Australians involved, but obviously locals are. Apparently it's a known danger spot.

It should only make us more determined, not less.

It should.

Inveterate Western-hater Alexander Lukashenko looks likely to win the referendum abolishing set terms for Belarus's leaders - via a highly dubious voting result.

In the months leading up to this referendum, Lukashenko has effectively banned Opposition members from having a seat in Parliament, closed nine newspapers unfriendly to his Government's dictatorialism, ended the campaign of Lyudmila Krasnoselskaya by charging her with tax fraud, and taken a swipe against Western diplomats by accusing them of rampant prostitution, encouraging drugs and 'spreading homosexuality' while on official business in Belarus.

He looks set to stay for as long as he wants.

1. Mark Steyn 2. My strange life

1. I got mentioned on Steyn Online! Which is very cool.
But this also means serious readers will now zoom on over to my site to see what I'm made of, and this feels kind of intimidating. I've never really thought of myself as a bigthink blogger, as I'm sure the handful of my regular readers will attest. I just randomly select what interests me at home and abroad, and put it out there, mainly because of my irresistible urge to babble.

So the spike in today's readership is quite exciting, but I know it won't last. Thanks for coming anyway.

2. I really should explain the previous post. I lead a rather strange life at times. My husband flies for QANTAS so he's away a lot, up to ten days at a time. So I'm mostly a QANTAS widow. During a two-month bid period, he's away for half of it. Which means that when he comes home for a break of say, five days, he gets a LOT of priority. Blogging goes down the drain (I'm sure you understand.)

Back at work

Bleah. After three weeks off. Not that I don't enjoy my work, I actually do, it's an interesting field (International education).

But posts will be more sporadic - i.e. when I get home at the end of the day.

I opened my mailbox at work yesterday and found 846 unread messages. Of those 846, 810 were spam. That translates to 40 per day, about five times my normal quota.
I was puzzled by this. Why such a huge increase?

Then it was pointed out that I had my automatic Out of Office message turned on.

[Bangs head]. I was replying to all those spammers and legitimizing my email address.

Damm. So it's a choice of being rude to your genuine enquirers by not answering them for 3 weeks, or being inundated by close to a thousand spammers.

My University has a spam detector which can automatically delete suspected spam messages but it also deletes a lot of genuine enquiries from overseas countries, which because students use a generic account from Yahoo or wherever, or use words in the subject line such as 'money' and 'hi' and 'help.'

A friend of mine who is a doctor also has the same problem. He gets thousands of viagra spammers each day because he can't ignore genuine e-mailers who want to discuss their infertility problems.

[Sigh.] If anybody has any suggestions I'd love to hear from them.

Shallow Oz

Still feeling lousy, brain won't work either, so today's post is completely shallow:

What makes me glad today

It's raining again, and the dams are at 56.7%. That might not sound like much, but when last year's levels at this time were 50.8%, it means we've had a good winter and there is more on the way. It'll still take years of rain and conservation by Victorians to have anything like healthy levels of water storage, but it's sweet to see dams full again on the farms.

Reading blogs like Rachel Lucas. What a joyous thing is the blogosphere.

What makes me sad

The weekend road toll. More families left shattered.

Jeanne's legacy of destruction.

What makes me mad

People who still hose down their driveways in the middle of a drought.

Animated menus. Sheesh, just play the damn DVD already.
(Actually last night when I couldn't sleep, I stuck a DVD in the player and went to make a cup of tea, like you do when you're waiting for the Dolby ad to run, the commercials for other DVDs to finish, the menus to set themselves up and play little snippets etc etc. When I got back from the kitchen, the movie had *gasp* already started. I had to chapter rewind. Amazing. It was Clint Eastwood High Plains Drifter btw. What you tend to watch at 3.30 am.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, and Network Ten yanking NCIS off the air with 5 episodes to go and no explanation of when or whether it will be back. Isn't free-to-air wonderful.

UPDATE 2: All is forgiven (almost.) Back on 3 October with Dead Man Talking. They could have just told us that last week tho.

What makes me ambivalent

Lesbian kisses on commercial tv. I really don't care who's kissing whom on tv, but the rash of 'em lately strikes me as pretty cynical telecasting. Funny how it's always girls that get to break the pink ice on family soap. Because men kissing at 6.30 pm weeknights would be offensive, wouldn't it?
Now if All Saints and/or Neighbours or Home and Away want to introduce two good looking gay fellas smooching away, I might just watch.
Not that they're going to address any real issues facing homosexual couples. Let's just stick with superficial stereotyping, and pat ourselves on the back for how tolerant we are.

Sorry

Not well today. No blogging. Apologies.

Something a bit lighter, and funnier

Wish I could write as well as this:

You're right, it's the pump attendant's fault

"You could not be more correct when you come storming into the store, furious that it cost you $50 to fill up when it used to cost you $45.42, and snarl to the attendant, i.e. me, "You're ripping me off." Indeed I am. Yes, little did you know that all the profits taken from petrol actually go straight into the pocket of the attendant, not to the oil companies or the Government."

Read the rest for a good chuckle.

Kudos to Cameron. Great writing. And a well-aimed lesson in manners.

You've got to be kidding me

Jeanne and Ivan re-group for another assault

IT. JUST. ISN'T. FAIR.

All my hopes and wishes to Floridians and Alabamans preparing for yet another battering. I can't imagine what you must be going through.