Things I don't understand

There are many, many things that I don't understand in the world.

Last Monday our premier investigative news program Four Corners exposed the unspeakable horrors inflicted on live Australian cattle sent to Indonesian abattoirs.

I didn't watch it. Just reading about it before the show was plenty disturbing enough for me.

I have for a long time been opposed to the live export of cattle, sheep and camels. Stories of incredibly tortuous journeys for terrified animals, only to be dispatched in an incredibly inhumane manner make me very angry.

OK, so I'm a vegetarian that's a personal choice but I doubt there would be many meat eaters who would want their food to be terrified and tortured and die an agonising death before they eat it. And I know that cattle farmers are by and large furious that their livestock has been treated this way.

So the finger pointing has commenced. How did this happen? There are guidelines and inspections, methodologies and payments. Which department is responsible? Who knew what and did nothing?

Australia has temporarily halted shipments to the abattoirs that were the subject of the investigation. Indonesia has responded by saying that while there are laws protecting animals, there is no penalty for transgression and so no reason to adhere to them.

The reason that live animals are sent to Indonesia is so that they can be assured a Halal slaughter. As I understand, Halal killing is much like Kosher killing. The animal must be alive (that is, you cannot eat carrion), the executioner must recite a prayer before slitting the throat and the body must not be touched until after exsanguination. Treating an animal the way that has been exposed here before death would result in the meat being Haraam or forbidden.

Clearly all the checks and balances, forms and departments of doing this and that have failed. If these barbaric atrocities are going on in the11 abattoirs that were filmed by Four Corners, then what comfort can we have that the same thing isn't going on all over the world at the final destinations for our livestock? 

Since animal rights guidelines in the countries are not going to change practices, I think more Muslims worldwide need to come out and publicly condemn this horror as being Haraam (some in Australia have already said this). If the meat is deemed unclean by clerics, just watch how quickly humane practices are introduced.

Unless that happens, we should not send any live animals overseas.

Please sign the petition at Get Up! HERE

ps. sorry for the still of the poor wretched creature in the video at the link. Watch the video if you aren't convinced and have a stronger constitution than I do. Or, if you're like me put your hand over the left-hand side of your screen!

Frenemies

Small girl friendships can be "complicated".

Astrid's BEST friend (I'm going to call her Lucy) is, according to Astrid, a "frenemy". Last year, which was forever ago, they were not friends. Astrid said she was bossy and mean and sang rude songs about snot and farts. Don't get me wrong, Astrid is quite partial to songs about snot and farts, but these particular songs were not to her liking.

This year they are "in LOVE". Last week Astrid received a note, "I love you because you're pretty and have shiny hair"...five year old girls are very superficial.

But it appears there is a decidedly uncomfortable dimension to this friendship, a Single White Female component.

Lucy insists that Astrid play only with her at all times. She must even eat her lunch bite for bite with her, wear her hair the same and woe betide any child who talks to Astrid. Astrid is not a shrinking violet and so when Lucy tries to enforce these rules, a loud disagreement ensues.

Astrid and Lucy are not the only fraught relationship in her class (it's just the girls though, boys are far less complex) and so their teacher is trying to shake things up by forcibly separating the pairs. Time will tell whether this direct action works or backfires...

If I'm to be completely honest, all of this suits me perfectly as it absolves me of any suspicion of social engineering. I was feeling a little squeamish about my meddling in the friendship. "Why don't we have Alice or Amy or Wendy over to play instead of Lucy", I'd say . You see, while Lucy is fine (despite the Jennifer Jason Leigh-ness) her dad kind of gives me the creeps. You know, when the hairs stand up at the back of your neck but you're not really sure why? He is disheveled, sadly not in a Tim Roth/Robert Downey Jr sort of way, but in a park-bench-trench-coat-what's underneath kind of way and he told me my shoes were "pretty" last time I saw him.....creepy.

So, I went jeans shopping...yes, thanks for your sympathy, I've almost gotten over the experience.

The sheer volume of choices that you have to make completely does your head in: skinny bogan legs, wide flower-child legs, low/mid/armpit rise waist, curve, length, colour, weird little faux crease marks etc etc. AND that's even before you go through the soul destroying fitting room experience, where the lights are 2000 Watt and artfully designed to make your pudgy bits look like enormous globs of congealed pure white porridge. Just how that's supposed to sell jeans is beyond me.

I'm not really a big fan of jeans (not solely because of the buying and trying). I appreciate their usefulness but they are so conformist and I have an annoyingly ingrained tendency to try to be "different". It's been with me for as long as I remember.

I hate being part of a crowd.

When everyone around me was getting tatts, wearing and dying their hair black, I wore turquoise and bleached my hair white...and, thankfully, I was dithering on the design of my prospective tattoo for so long, that they became mainstream and I decided it was more alternative to not have one. 

It's probably why I don't Facebook, dislike the latest, big label Avett Brothers' album and I have never seen E.T.!

I know how stupid it is, but it's ingrained, like I said. It's me.

Tara recently mentioned "mum (mom) jeans" and while I now understand, thanks to some helpful advice, what they are (highpants), the mums that I come into daily contact with at Linus and Astrid's school do not wear them. These mums are size 10 and below and get about in a uniform of designer jeans and pony tails.

Due to lack of time and the issues with hairdressers I've discussed before, I currently sport a bloody ponytail and...now, a new pair of jeans......I feel like I'm becoming a new millennium version of a Stepford wife.

Chocolate - a Really Guilty Pleasure

It's so hard to do the right thing all the time isn't it? Sometimes it's ignorance and sometimes it's selective remembering but when confronted with the truth of something that is really wrong, we try to do the right thing.

We're Atheists. I don't know why that word seems so aggressive but it does. I sometimes say we're Humanists as it sounds less confrontational. The point is, we don't believe in God (or any god). We also don't think you need a religious ideology in order to be ethical. It's perfectly fine with us if you do, we're not going to light flaming torches, go crusading and bop you over the head till you join the fold! See, completely non-threatening fluffy Atheists here.

It's Easter and, as with Christmas, there are issues to contend with when you have small enquiring minds who ask probing questions. We're not about to let them miss out on the fun parts of both occasions. We're Atheists not Sadists. Fortunately for us the Christians co-opted other earlier celebrations to do with Spring and the Winter Solstice so we can tell them, "Some people believe...and others believe..." and still find a reason to have the Easter Bunny visit and eat chocolate that doesn't feel too hypocritical. Although our stance is made more tricky by being in the Southern Hemisphere and so the whole new life, spring celebration thing is a hard sell.

We focus on the being with family, enjoying life and each other, and eating chocolate angle.

Well, that was till the child slave labour thing! So, I'm off to Oxfam to buy fair trade chocolate and I'll be filling these adorable old school cardboard eggs with something that hopefully hasn't abused the rights and body of a child somewhere in the world.

Zen and the LOL

I was going to post about my outrage that the OED has accepted LOL and OMG into its latest revision. But then I realised I actually don't really care enough to be outraged. Although I prefer LOL as an acronym for Little Old Lady and I doubt that when people write ROFLMAO, that they actually are, or we'd have funny shaped jeans everywhere.

I will remain a conscientious objector and, apart from the above occurrences, I will continue not to use either. People can transmogrify nouns into verbs (gift, access) or stick superfluous prefixes on words (irregardless) and I still don't care. I will not be ruffled. I have newly honed reserves of patience toward people who aren't me.


Oh, but please don't use commas as apostrophes..............my new Zen outlook doesn't allow for that trangression.


PEACE

OUT.

So much despair and tragedy. Some good news is always nice.

Bring Out Your Dead

Many years ago we did a road trip through western parts of the US. As we were approaching Las Vegas I was reading to the Historian the entry in the Lonely Planet book. It said that even the most jaded person can't help but feel lucky as they crest the final hill and see the twinkling lights of Vegas laid out before them. It was true. We felt "lucky" but we're not insane gamblers or wealthy by any means and not about to blow money. 

Vegas was hilarious to us, everything was funny. So glittery and gaudy and "ping-ping whoop" over the top. The lights! the carpets!! We laughed a lot and after two days of playing the 5c slots and living on free popcorn, $1 frozen margaritas and all you can eat seafood buffets at 5pm with the flocks of old age pensioners (the Historian went back for 5ths of dessert and we had to sit in the car like boa constrictors digesting a very large animal afterwards),  we came out completely even but with a fantastic adventure to show for it. We may not have won the jackpot but we were very "lucky" indeed.

We've recently had a council bulk rubbish collection here, A.K.A "Bring out your Dead". Bring our your Dead gives me that same feeling. An irrational "lucky" feeling that I'm going to hit the jackpot and find the perfect antique oak hall table that I'm looking for discarded on the neighbour's front verge. Sadly, it doesn't usually live up to it's promise. Hordes of "professional" rubbish fossickers patrol the streets and anything remotely "good" is snapped up very quickly. It's a true demonstration of the idiom, "one man's trash is another man's treasure" as even the hideous burnt orange glass and gold 70's style chandelier we removed from our dining room was grabbed by the neighbour across the road while still in my hand as I was putting it out on our pile of rubble - yoik! The council no doubt banks on this helpful recycling as by the time they come to collect the stuff there is a mere fraction of it left.

Because I find it slightly (well, very) unseemly to be blatantly cruising up and down the roads of our neighbourhood with a trailer and picking through mounds of detritus in broad daylight. I have to wait till the cover of night and grab whatever I have just happened upon in my normal movements. Still, I feel that lucky feeling against such high odds that the perfect thing will be right there for me and this year I did manage to find a fantastic sofa and chair at different locations. They obviously weren't considered "good" by the professionals and were still there when we hurriedly crammed them in the back of our car while no-one was watching.

They need work but they have so much potential and they're destined to be our new "lounging area" on our deck. We can see ourselves snuggled up on them reading books this winter...now to finish a few billion other jobs before I can get stuck in to restoring them. 

Gustav doesn't think we should bother, they're perfect as is!