Monday 26 January 2009

Things I have learnt during my short time living


1) You will never be more beautiful than you are as god intended, so fucking around with creams, colours, chemicals and other crap will not make any difference.

Don’t get me wrong, a bit of blush and some mascara can enhance your face, but painting out all the colour only to paint it back on over top is pointless and ultimately a mask more than makeup. Sure, cover up a spot, who wouldn’t? Don’t cover up your face; you might as well be a Geisha. Its insecurity plain and simple, it would be easier to wear a veil, the most amazing thing to me is when someone will wake up fresh faced and grimaces at the mirror, they will then spend 20 minutes painting on concealer, foundation, powder ,bronzer, blusher and not look any different. The real tragedy here is that they can’t see that they were beautiful before.

2) Men are all the same, no matter how keen they are at the beginning, once they get what they want, you won’t see them for dust.

You can have as many rules as you like, as many conditions, the fact is that During the 1700’s a man called Casanova showed men that they can behave like animals and be admired for it; oh, and how they learned. They are now adept at our tricks, they will text everyday, they will tell us that we are beautiful/stunning/gorgeous, and the experienced can even spin lines like ‘you make me feel something I haven’t felt in years’. Then once they have got you in bed it will change, they will become distant, or generate ‘issues’ until they have wriggled free and we are left as used and discarded as the condom from the night before.

3) Being attractive does not make dating any easier, if anything, it makes it harder.

I have often queried my lack of luck with men and have come up with the following disappointing reasons.
My standards are too high – um, standards? As someone who has a disappointing love life at best, when a guy takes the trouble to ask me out, I am inclined to give him a chance at bat. I may not go on a second date, but I would accept a first. So this I don’t believe, it’s not like I am turning down offers.
I intimidate them - I ask you, how silly is that? Suffering from a shyness at times that can be quite incapacitating, I am fully sympathetic to the plights of men and the stigma that they should make the first move, but shyness is not something that most men suffer from. If nothing else it is beaten out of them during their school years. So shyness not withstanding, I have been told that most men will not approach beautiful women for fear of being rejected, it’s only the egoistical losers that will have a go and this is because they no longer fear rejection. For starters, I do not believe that I am that attractive as to inspire some awe inducing fear. I’m just a girl who scrubs up fairly well, so the idea that a man would look at me, like what he sees, but then think better of it, is frankly disheartening.

4) People in positions of power are not always deserving of it, you are just as likely to get a manager who is an idiot as you are one who is intelligent.


I think the less said about this the better, lets just say that during my time as a working woman I have noticed that my superiors haven’t always been what you would wish them to be. Some of them are lazy, judgmental, inexperienced and inept. Of course, their human as well though, aren’t they?

5) Experience counts, but not for everything.

I think one of the most important things people need to learn is that Pride is the enemy and that there isn’t always just the one way of doing things. You may have been doing something one way for a long time but that does not mean it is the only way, and if a fresh face comes along and wants to try another way, let them. People’s brains don’t always work in the same way so what seems logical to you might not be seen the same way by someone else, the worst thing you can do is close your mind and not listen to someone with less experience than you, they may be wrong, but you will never know until you listen.

I will update you further as my lesson's in life move forward. :)

Wednesday 21 January 2009

Dreams


Just in case there were any residual doubts about me being a normal person, I can now tell you with a large degree of certainty that ship has definitely sailed.

For the last two nights in a row I have woken up at some ungodly hour in the morning having had a nightmare. Yeah, Yeah, 22 going on 6... The most unsettling part of the experience, I feel, is trying to put together the slipping shards of the night before and coming to the sad conclusion that I am cracking up! Losing my marbles! A few ants short a picnic!

Let’s examine together, shall we?

Monday Night - I am living by myself in some sort of seaside village with my three children, two very large black boys and a little girl, who is white. (I can feel you warming up your psychoanalysis already.) Anyway, the beginning of the dream is kind of hazy, but some how my oldest son goes away, I think he is either murdered or commits murder and is put away, either way it ends up being just the three of us. Unfortunately my two children do not get on; in fact I begin to fear my little girl may be in danger from my remaining son. So I make the decision that my son would remain living in the village while I took the little girl off with me to live on a boat, the deal being that I would abandon her in exactly 8 years time to come back and live with my son. So for the first part of the dream I am happily bobbing along on some house boat type thing with a small child that doesn't age the whole time. She stays about 5 years old the whole 8 years, strange huh? Anyway thing start to go wrong when the 8 years are up, and being the dutiful mother I am, I promptly abandon the little girl, leaving her on the boat and swim to the village, I literally jump off the side while she is asleep. In the mean time my son has grown into a monster of a man, towering above me, a great hulking figure. The problem is my daughter is a tenacious little thing, and somehow ends up at the village too and is looking for me; she turns up at our house. My son, thinking i have rescinded on the deal goes crazy, and once again I am afraid for my little girl. So we escape, touching this sudden emotion I have for the child I abandoned, and get back on the boat. Clearly I am just thinking that I am safe when my son turns up on the boat, there is a struggle and all three of us end up over board. We are all swimming towards the boat when my son goes for my daughter again, impeding her in the water. I, in order to let her get free, begin to struggle with him, and am holding him under the water....

... Then I wake up! To be clear, i don't think I killed my son, because in my dreams I can never kill the bad guy, they just keep coming. The things I notice from this?

1) I am a terrible parent
2) I am a slut, because there were at least two different fathers
3) The irony that the man grows up but the little girl doesn't.
4) Although I briefly abandon the little girl I always choose her in the end.

Tuesday Night - Please note first of all, that I actually am in a Pantomime called Dick Whittington at the moment. Ok, so a friend picks me up and first we go for breakfast, I am late for rehearsals apparently, but we still have time for breakfast in some sort of cafe. During the breakfast I am informed that we are doing rehearsals in a new place today, and sure enough when we leave, we rock up to what can only be described as a church. Although upon reflecting on this I am told it is not a church, but it sure does look like one. This is when the tone of the dream changes, we are all attacked during rehearsals by a huge, bright green pterodactyl. He is also in little trousers. Now this may strike you as weird but I have since realised where this little character of my subconscious comes from, I am ashamed to admit he bears a striking resemblance to an X-Men character which I used to watch when I was younger. It's funny what you can have buried in the back of your head isn't it? In case anyone cares I have found a picture of him for your amusement. Anyway, for the next part of the dream I spend a terrifying time watching members of the cast get eaten by this thing, and in true nightmare style I spend a lot of time running and hiding although never actually getting anywhere. I also spend a lot of time re-jigging the script so that we can continue the pantomime even though cast members are being brutally murdered... as you do... As the dream comes to its climax, basically the show is close to being abandoned because there are so few of us left and I find myself at the mercy of the beast with nowhere to run to. So I ask the creature, who thank God speaks English, why he is doing this, and am informed that he doesn't not like the pantomime Dick Whittington because in the end (in the dream version) a large beast is killed and he finds it offensive. I offer to do Cinderella instead, and the situation is resolved. Some point after that I wake up. The End!

Things I have noticed:
1) I spend far too many years in my youth watching dodgy marvel cartoons.
2) I am a complete coward as not once did I try to help anyone else.
3) In my dreams the story of Dick Whittington is completely different to that of it in real life.
4) Even my monsters have some sort of self righteous cause.

So as you can see, I am going completely bonkers…any minute now I am going to fly into some lack of sleep induced rage and require masses of therapy. Ah well…

Tuesday 20 January 2009

Drama Queen


Be careful what you wish for...

I know that people say that you should be careful what you wish for, it's an oldie but a goodie, and to be honest I never really payed attention to it, until now! Ok Ok, listen I'm not lazy as such but in my job I have gotten used to being told what to do - then doing it! Radical, I know. Now, I have had this fancy promotion (although same salary) and all these extra responsibilities, ay there's the rub. The problem is all of a sudden instead of 'Siobhan, go do the filing' now I'm getting ' Siobhan, can you devise a new method for our filing system and present it to me in one week at our Project Update Meeting.' Yikes! This is not what I am used to, all of a sudden my cushy, Log 'em and Flog 'em job now requires me to think outside of the box, Hell the fact that it requires me to think at all is a new step.

Yes, ok, alright, I did use to moan about being seen as unimportant, a little fish in a big pond so to speak, and now all of a sudden I have been thrown in the fast lane and told to sink or swim. (too many metaphors?) Sigh, I now find myself in a situation where I need to pull my finger out and engage the little gray cells... what's a girl to do?

I'll keep you posted...

Thursday 8 January 2009

A Big Question

I heard once that there is no good or evil, there is only Power. Human's are born with Free Will, and born of that are the choices we make and their effects and it is said that it is our choices that determine out character. In most religions we are encouraged to choose to be good and follow a faith in order to gain our salvation, so, in accordance with this, if we make choices perceived as evil than we are choosing to be evil. So thinking along these lines it's about choice and perception that's creates good and evil, but is that true. Firstly, who decided what perception we were supposed to accept? Who decided what was evil and what wasn't? You could argue religion. You could also argue that people are born with a sense of morality, and at the same time some people aren't, which is why they do evil.

Thus far we have established that good and evil is bourn out of the choices we make, if we choose to harm things or take lives we are perceived as evil. A child, on a sunny day, with a magnifying glass and an ant hill; lives are being taken and harm is being done but would we call that evil? He is choosing to kill the ants by burning them alive but I doubt very much if it would be called evil. It could be argued that he does not realise the full implications of what he is doing. On a larger scale a serial killer who burns his victims alive would more likely be called evil, his awareness of the pain he is inflicting and the reality of his actions give weight to the argument. So is the difference awareness? Or is it Power? The child with the magnifying glass would not be able to kill hundreds of people the way he does with the ants, he does not have the strength, ability or intelligence to do it, he does not have the power, but who's to say he wouldn't? If we lived in some sort of Stephen King style universe and the child had the ability to start fires with his mind maybe he would use his pyrokinetic powers to set people alight? Would we call him evil then? Remembering that the child does not know what he is doing, they are not aware of the implications of their actions, they have a power or things but they do not understand it.

So, good and evil is not just a choice, is the awareness and understanding of that choice as well. To be evil you need to be consciously committing evil, but does that mean we forgive all those who do it unknowingly? If someone commits a crime which leads to a death but they do it unknowingly is it now evil? An accidental evil? If they repent should their ignorance be forgiven? A bank robber who handcuffs the manager to the table, in order to collect the money, then knocks over a lit cigarette onto a stack of papers as he leaves resulting in the Manager being burnt alive in the vault because he cannot escape, his actions resulted in the mans death but it was unintentional and without his knowledge. Was it an evil act? Would we forgive his ignorance? I'm sure he would be sorry, but a man would still be dead, his last few monuments spent on this earth in panic and agony, the outcome is awful enough but there was no intent. You could argue that stealing is a sin as well so the man was evil anyway but that would open up a whole new set of conditions and circumstances. The difference between Murder and Manslaughter is intent, legally without intent there is no malevolence, only an accident; which although still punishable, is less so. This lends to the conclusion, without intent there is no evil.

To be evil you need a conscious action, awareness and intent, but do you also need the power to do it. An Agoraphobia sufferer who lives alone, cannot venture outside of his abode, and shuns all human contact; but desires, with all of his black little heart to kill and murder all the people who have ever crossed him in any way. He spend his days mentally killing and maiming anyone he has every perceived as wronging him but does not have the power to do so because he cannot leave his house. He has awareness and intent but lacks the power to complete the evil, therefore is there no evil? His anger and malevolence will never harm anyone else, but it is still there, the evil in his heart. It's the proverbial tree in the forest, the evil is there but there is no one harmed from it, so is there really evil?

The final criteria are power then, there has to be the power to complete the evil, but can the level of power differentiate between an act and an evil act? The child with the magnifying glass is not evil but a fully gown man with a blow torch is because the level of power is different, the devastation is more far reaching therefore it graduates to evil. In films and science fiction books more advanced alien races often come to earth with the plot line of exterminating our race in order to live on our planet, not having one of their own. For dramatic emphasis they are usually portrayed as 'the bad guys'; the idea of killing off the human race to make room for their own inhabitation is seen by us as evil. The aliens are seen as evil because of their intentions and because they have the power to do it, it's the big guy picking on the little guy! So by that standard are we, as a race evil? Let’s face it we expand and murder thousands of species every day; cutting down rain forests, damming rivers, expanding our cities, is that not the same thing? We know what we are doing, they are conscious acts with understood intentions, but we lack the power to create the devastation that our fictional counterpart can do, we cannot wipe out an entire planet continent by continent, but does that make us any better?

Maybe awareness, intention and power have nothing to do with it at all; maybe it is all to do with perception. We justify to ourselves our actions everyday; evil, not evil; good, not good; but it's only those with power who get noticed and judged by us as a whole. Julius Caesar was perceived as a hero but he Romans when he conquered Gaul, but I'm sure they saw him as a ruthless tyrant. We remember the straight roads and the democracy that the empire created, but others might mention the wars, the murders and the debauchery. We justify the cutting down of rainforests by planting new trees, but tell that to the millions of creature who will die as a result of it, they will not benefit from the newly planted trees.

It seems that perception is the key, you have to pick a side, 'There is no Good or Evil, there is only Power.' Well I don't think that is strictly true, there is Power of varying degrees, everyone has a certain amount of Power, some less than others, and they make choices with that Power. The choices and actions resulting from it are they perceived by everyone else and categorised - Right or Wrong. Our perceptions are guided by different things, our emotions, religion, our own morale compass, our up-bringing, or our life circumstances; and it is with these things that we sort the grey into black or white. We use awareness, intent and the level of damage cause to determine the evil, but whether or not it is evil is still a decision made, a perceived idea, there is no fool proof test.

There is Good, and there is Evil but only you have the Power to choose.

Tuesday 6 January 2009

Christmas

Well, let put it this way, I’m beginning to think that Scrooge had the right idea.

I have officially got to the stage of my life where I understand how much work goes into it. The shopping and the drinking, and the socialising. The food, the cooking of the food, cleaning the house, decorating, Christmas cards, Christmas emails. Even dressing in the morning is harder, ‘oh I can’t wear that I need to look nice!’ It’s funny how an outfit that is suitable for the rest of the year is now suddenly not so suitable. It’s exhausting!

In addition to all this you have the examination of your life that is suddenly thrown into focus. Your family want to know about work, work want to know about your family. Everyone wants to know what your plans are, will you be with that certain someone or relegated back to Mummy and Daddy’s. Maybe you are the Mummy or Daddy in which case your Christmas planning skills are looked into. How good is your family Christmas? Do you have a boyfriend yet? When’s the wedding? Kids? How’s your job? Where are you living? Questions! Questions! QUESTIONS!!! Christmas is the time when everyone and anyone seem to think they entitled to an insight into your life, whether it is a pushy relative or a nosey colleague.

So you can imagine, dealing with all of this stress levels are already high. Come Christmas day, it’s like putting it all in a big pressure cooker and waiting it to go off with pretty red and green sparks. Of course by pressure cooker I mean The Family.

(Family + Alcohol) x Enclosed Space = Stress

You can picture it, I’m sure; the cooks are snippy because the prep is boring, repetitive and tiring. The place is a mess, there is stuff everywhere: cards, decorations, gifts, wrapping paper. Worst of all is the ‘Christmas’ mentality. You feel obliged to all stay together, as it would un-christmassy to go to you room, as a result everyone is milling around, bored, making small talk and drinking.

There’s the father I barely speak to asking bland questions and making bad jokes; the return of the prodigal son with solutions and pompous advice a plenty; finally the mother, with plenty of stress induce bitchiness. Clearly the only solution is to drink, and drink copiously, things are easier to handle when everything is a little fuzzy around the outside.

Finally as one last grievance, in my opinion the only way to eat turkey is with mayo in a sandwich. In a roast dinner, it’s dry and tasteless. Who decided that every year you should have turkey, I have no idea, it was probably a man, they always go for size over everything else.

That’s it, I’ve decided, next year Christmas IS CANCELLED!