Aromatherapy candles plus cabin fever. Whee...

Dec 15, 2001

I’ve not been updating as often this month. I could smudge the truth a little, and say it’s recovery from NaNoWriMo last month. I could smudge the truth a LOT, and say that my gift shopping is eating up all my time. (I’m perhaps a little over-organised: I got all my shopping done somewhere around August.) It’s a combination of a lot of things: taking a month off to just relax, doing a periodic inventory of my life in general (much easier to deal with when done in small doses), planning out content, thinking and writing, having the odd bit of fun, and dealing with cabin fever.

Y’see, the Stormy Season has hit with a vengeance. Rain 20 hours out of every 24. Winds clocked at 80km/hr, gusting up to 100km/hr.

My normal routine has been thrown out of whack. I like rain just fine…but true pouring rain makes my daily walks, part of which uses unpaved trails, a bit more accident-prone than I like. I’ve been stuck indoors for four days now, and I’m starting to go somewhat bugfuck. Yes, I’m a computer person, but while I don’t have the Home Gymnasium from Hell or go to a fitness club, I’m not sedentary. I go on hour-long walks (halfway between a power walk and a hike) almost every day. I need to do this, or I either sink into lethargy or start to get rabbitty. (If I’m really lucky, I do first one, then the other…truly a joy and a bliss.) I’ve got ideas chasing themselves around in my head, running in circles and completely wasting themselves before I can write them down. So today I tried structuring my surroundings a little. I did some tai chi, took an extra-long shower, drank some tea (no coffee), had a purposefully slow breakfast. The plan was to light some candles (I find them soothing), turn on a CD, read for a while, then fire up the computer and see how many ideas I could commit to data before my brain vapourlocked. It was a good plan. It was a nice plan. It was a plan that had proper table manners.

Problem is, the candle that I lit was a scented candle, a gift from my downstairs neighbour. It was peppermint-scented. Peppermint, for those not familiar with aromatherapy, is a stimulating, envigorating scent.

Okay, so pitch that “soothing” adjective from the scenario…and now I’m almost as twitchy as if I’d drunk four cups of coffee.

And it’s still pouring outside.

Permalink

Blogger Insider was a fairly good mixer-meme...so of course it had to die.

Dec 14, 2001

...for one thing, the Blogger Insider project won’t ever throw feces at you.

Seriously, it sounds like fun. Sign up, interview another blogger every two weeks. Be as inventive as possible. Use a No. 2 keyboard, fill in all circles completely.

Permalink

H'mmm...someone didn't get the Red Ryder BB Gun when they were a tyke

Nov 26, 2001

Kids like this aren’t nerds. They aren’t dweebs. They aren’t “fairy dorkfaces”. They’re KIDS.

I’d be far more concerned if I saw this behaviour in a large swath of the adult population. (Or maybe I’d be relieved for a while. It would stop them from playing with bombs.)

Besides, as the article’s author points out, the four Harry Potter books can only last for so long. That’s a trend with a rather short shelf life (unlike, oh, say, Pokemon, Beanie Babies, Tamagochi, Star Wars, Star Trek, or golf.)

Permalink

Abuse is such a flexible word...sadly enough.

Nov 26, 2001

All these Internet porn laws really make my teeth itch. In broad principle, they’re rather nice: do something to make the Internet a less child-unfriendly place. But how do you define “child-unfriendly”? What is porn, and what is not? Who gets to decide? And when did groups like the Southern Baptist Convention get the right to decide how other people’s children will be raised?

It seems to me that this really is a two sided problem, though. On one side, yes, the folks who send all the porn-smut through the email should be tracked down and more harshly penalised (like, oh, I don’t know, banned from using any Internet-connected computer for a minimum of five years is a start). And yes, the folks who use the teaser-images on porn sites should be forced to follow similar signage laws as real-world sex shows and shops, with like penalties for breaking the law. However, these outraged parents have to take responsibility for teaching their children how to build a value system. Sooner or later, children leave home. Some of them REALLY leave (i.e., moving from a town of 26,500 to a metro area of 1.4 million). If parents don’t equip their children to make their own judgements, stand up for their principles, and adhere to their own moral code, then parents haven’t done as well as they could. It seems to me that parents have a near-prime opportunity when their child views Internet porn. The kids are surrounded by a stable, supportive atmosphere. They are warm and dry. They have food to eat. They know that the people in their home love them (or they should…but that’s another rant). They’re not trying to eke out a living on the streets, spending each night hungry and cold. They’re not being physically attacked every day (again…another rant). They haven’t done anything that will get them thrown in jail. They haven?t even, technically, done anything that anyone else will ever know about. It’s a relatively consequence-free zone, so the children can concentrate on the lessons that the parents teach them.

Think about it: when would you rather discuss drugs with your child, around the dinnertable one day or one evening at the local police station? When would you rather discuss sex, in in your living room after school or in the hospital or police station after your child has been raped? If parents keep abnegating their rights, other people will raise their children. (To the troglodyte sitting at the screen while their children dismember the family dog “in fun”: That’s you, screwhead.)

Related entry: Isn’t Child Abuse Illegal?
Permalink