Friday, 31 August 2012
Everything You Think has been Thought Before
... including the title statement. (thank you VW Goethe)
Much of what we often think or say has also been put into song lyrics. To use the above example, see the opening line of Three Dimensions by Something for Kate: "you're not the first to think that everything has been thought before". Yep- right they are.
If the Beatles didn't prove that almost anything can be a song lyric with "Googoogatube", Nirvana explored torture and murders in song with "Polly" (I think she wants some water.. to put out the blowtorch), then Regurgitator explored interesting new ground of what can constitute the basis of a song with "I Piss Alone [because I don't want nobody to know that I haven't got the pressure of some of the other boys- they make a noise, it scares me so...]" . One day I'll attempt the 100% song lyrics blog post.
The bizarre, drug addled or comical aside, most people have probably had a moment when they hear a song lyric where it really hits home, and you feel as though the band/ artist is singing directly to you- Even if it's Pink singing "I've had a shit day" (although I do prefer the Kevin Bloody Wilson way of putting it "I've had an absolute cunt of a day.."), yet we still sometimes feel as though no one would understand the thoughts or feelings expressed at those times.
I love music for this reason. There's something fantastic about putting on some tunes you relate to or that pick you up with a combination of their lyrics and melodies- music which matches your mood or the moment.
With travels in my near future I'm again drawn to music which makes me think of it, like "I'm in London still" by the Waifs, thinking of the fantastic experiences while living and travelling overseas, but the knowledge that in gaining that experience you leave behind friends and other parts of your life. You only know its time to come home when "Every Fucking City [looks the same]" by Paul Kelly is the song most resonating with you.
Thursday, 16 August 2012
The Girl With Colitis Goes By
Many comedians would be proud to write an original song lyric like "the girl with colitis goes by" (though, in way, that event itself would probably also be quite musical). The Beatles hopefully got a good giggle out of one of the oft- misheard song lyrics from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
"Excuse me while I kiss this guy" is another one that gets bandied about, and tends to arouse a chortle on mention.
It can also be a way to have fun with people. Two that have been tried around me:
"Tickle ya cunt with a feather?" [and, when people look shocked and generally ask what did they say] "Typical country weather!"
The second was used by a couple of Irish guys in a loud bar: "Would you like to join us for a gang bang?". I guess they weren't so much hoping on it being mistaken for something else, as girls just not understanding, and nodding in agreement to be polite.
One that goes all the way back to primary school is whispering or mouthing "colourful", which looks remarkably like "I love you".
I'm not sure if its my tendency for my mind to roll downhill and wind up in the gutter, warped transmission of signals as they enter my brain, or a hearing defect, but I frequently mishear things. More often than not I think people say something incredibly inappropriate, and have to repress my urge to giggle while trying to tell myself they probably didn't just say that.
Sometimes other factors interfere- once I thought a guy said the 3 words "I love you". I really wasn't sure if I'd heard right, and then thought, if I ask if he just said that, and he didn't, then I've just introduced a whole bag of awkward into the situation.
I thought of trying to bring it up in a way to mention it, without mentioning it... if that's possible.
I never got the opportunity though, and then he was gone. So maybe it'll always remain one of those mysteries.
"Excuse me while I kiss this guy" is another one that gets bandied about, and tends to arouse a chortle on mention.
It can also be a way to have fun with people. Two that have been tried around me:
"Tickle ya cunt with a feather?" [and, when people look shocked and generally ask what did they say] "Typical country weather!"
The second was used by a couple of Irish guys in a loud bar: "Would you like to join us for a gang bang?". I guess they weren't so much hoping on it being mistaken for something else, as girls just not understanding, and nodding in agreement to be polite.
One that goes all the way back to primary school is whispering or mouthing "colourful", which looks remarkably like "I love you".
I'm not sure if its my tendency for my mind to roll downhill and wind up in the gutter, warped transmission of signals as they enter my brain, or a hearing defect, but I frequently mishear things. More often than not I think people say something incredibly inappropriate, and have to repress my urge to giggle while trying to tell myself they probably didn't just say that.
Sometimes other factors interfere- once I thought a guy said the 3 words "I love you". I really wasn't sure if I'd heard right, and then thought, if I ask if he just said that, and he didn't, then I've just introduced a whole bag of awkward into the situation.
I thought of trying to bring it up in a way to mention it, without mentioning it... if that's possible.
I never got the opportunity though, and then he was gone. So maybe it'll always remain one of those mysteries.
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Relating to Dexter's Darkness
Since the end of Dexter Series 7 in December 2011, I have gone through withdrawals. Breaking Bad was an entertaining interlude, but all series combined could not satisfy my Dexter-lust. I suppose I should be ashamed of having been a TV whore, and get on and read the books for my fix.
As explored in my first post on Dexter, the character has many traits I relate to as having been a social outcast, and the feelings of dislocation from "normal" society.
Here are some more excerpts:
" I just know there's something dark in me. I hide it. Certainly don't talk about it. But it's there. Always. This … Dark Passenger. How when he's driving, I feel … alive. Half-sick with the thrill, complete wrongness. I don't fight him. I don't want to. He's all I've got. Nothing else could love me, not even … especially not me. Or is that just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me? Because, lately, there are these moments that I feel connected to something else. Someone. It's like … the mask is slipping, and things, people, that never mattered before, are suddenly starting to matter. It scares the hell out of me."
As previously discussed, the darkness has strong synergies with experiences and descriptions of depression: that feeling that someone can see through your carefully constructed exterior, the shell that hides what you're ashamed of; a shift of your focus [the unfamiliar feeling of having a connection with a person] can shake the sense of security and leave you exposed and vulnerable; unaware of how to act in foreign territory.
___________________________________________________
Miguel: "It doesn't have be this way"[with Dexter killing you!]
Dexter: "But it always does. I had high hopes for you, but I guess I just have to accept that I will always be alone."
As friendships, or even having a basic connection with a person is such an alien concept, it is easier to rationalise the situation as a blip in what is experienced as "normal". In order to cope, instead of becoming saddened or distressed at the conflict or loss of a friend (okay, it doesn't have to be through killing them, as in Dexter, but through an argument etc) by assimilating this information with the internal construction of self that "I am a loner, and will always be/ am better off alone", it is easier to cope with.
___________________________________________________
[Enter hope] DM Monologue: "The Dark Passenger has been fighting against it, to keep me all to himself. But it is my turn now, to get what I want. To embrace my family. And maybe one day not so long from now, I’ll be rid of the Dark Passenger. It all begins with a getaway. Time away from the old me. Life doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be lived"...[Dexter finds Rita's dead body] "But it doesn't matter what I do, what I choose... I'm what's wrong. This is fate."
Having battled depression for most of my life, I can't begin to explain how many times I've felt like this. I don't mean having someone murdered, but that, on finding hope, something happens to take that hope away, and you internalise its cause:
"What just happened is not only my fault [even when due to external/ uncontrollable circumstances] but happened because I innately deserve it [ie it's fate/karma etc because I'm a bad person] ".
When internalising self as the root cause of all things bad which occur, this further transforms into not only "bad things always happen to me", but "bad things will always continue to happen to me, purely because I am me, and I deserve it".
It seems incredibly irrational when you say it out loud, or analyse it with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time it feels like an inescapable and endless hopeless situation.
___________________________________________________
Dexter monologue: "Lumen said I gave her her life back... a reversal of my usual role. Well the fact is, she gave me mine back too.... Eyes that saw me, finally, for who I really am. And a certainty that nothing... nothing is set in stone. Not even darkness. While she was here, she made me think for the briefest moment I might even have a chance to be human. But wishes, of course, are for children. "
There are so many glimpses of hope- of a life that could be- but so suffocated by the world he knows, when Dexter fails to realise them he is quick to dismiss such thoughts as fleeting fantasies, and therefore unrealistic aspirations.
This is not uncommon in life. A common scenario:
1- Having a fulfilling relationship
2- losing that fulfilling relationship
Then there are the options of how to deal with this:
3a [the depressed self]- resolving the loss of relationship into something which correlates with the damaged self-concept by rationalising it as having never been a realistic possibility i.e. "I am not worthy of a relationship; should not have fooled myself into believing it was a possibility; therefore the loss was inevitable, even though I didn't foresee it previously". In a way it is the less painful way to deal with things as, although it may appear to some to be an incredibly sad thing- to write yourself and any hope you had off, by negating the thought that the relationship was a genuine chance in the first place, all that is left to deal with is feeling a bit foolish about having believed you had hope in the first place.
or
3b [the rational self?]- challenging the self and potentially risking descending into conflict, depression, and issues which are harder and more complex to resolve- i.e. dealing with the actual loss itself.
As explored in my first post on Dexter, the character has many traits I relate to as having been a social outcast, and the feelings of dislocation from "normal" society.
Here are some more excerpts:
" I just know there's something dark in me. I hide it. Certainly don't talk about it. But it's there. Always. This … Dark Passenger. How when he's driving, I feel … alive. Half-sick with the thrill, complete wrongness. I don't fight him. I don't want to. He's all I've got. Nothing else could love me, not even … especially not me. Or is that just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me? Because, lately, there are these moments that I feel connected to something else. Someone. It's like … the mask is slipping, and things, people, that never mattered before, are suddenly starting to matter. It scares the hell out of me."
As previously discussed, the darkness has strong synergies with experiences and descriptions of depression: that feeling that someone can see through your carefully constructed exterior, the shell that hides what you're ashamed of; a shift of your focus [the unfamiliar feeling of having a connection with a person] can shake the sense of security and leave you exposed and vulnerable; unaware of how to act in foreign territory.
___________________________________________________
Miguel: "It doesn't have be this way"[with Dexter killing you!]
Dexter: "But it always does. I had high hopes for you, but I guess I just have to accept that I will always be alone."
As friendships, or even having a basic connection with a person is such an alien concept, it is easier to rationalise the situation as a blip in what is experienced as "normal". In order to cope, instead of becoming saddened or distressed at the conflict or loss of a friend (okay, it doesn't have to be through killing them, as in Dexter, but through an argument etc) by assimilating this information with the internal construction of self that "I am a loner, and will always be/ am better off alone", it is easier to cope with.
___________________________________________________
[Enter hope] DM Monologue: "The Dark Passenger has been fighting against it, to keep me all to himself. But it is my turn now, to get what I want. To embrace my family. And maybe one day not so long from now, I’ll be rid of the Dark Passenger. It all begins with a getaway. Time away from the old me. Life doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be lived"...[Dexter finds Rita's dead body] "But it doesn't matter what I do, what I choose... I'm what's wrong. This is fate."
Having battled depression for most of my life, I can't begin to explain how many times I've felt like this. I don't mean having someone murdered, but that, on finding hope, something happens to take that hope away, and you internalise its cause:
"What just happened is not only my fault [even when due to external/ uncontrollable circumstances] but happened because I innately deserve it [ie it's fate/karma etc because I'm a bad person] ".
When internalising self as the root cause of all things bad which occur, this further transforms into not only "bad things always happen to me", but "bad things will always continue to happen to me, purely because I am me, and I deserve it".
It seems incredibly irrational when you say it out loud, or analyse it with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time it feels like an inescapable and endless hopeless situation.
___________________________________________________
Dexter monologue: "Lumen said I gave her her life back... a reversal of my usual role. Well the fact is, she gave me mine back too.... Eyes that saw me, finally, for who I really am. And a certainty that nothing... nothing is set in stone. Not even darkness. While she was here, she made me think for the briefest moment I might even have a chance to be human. But wishes, of course, are for children. "
There are so many glimpses of hope- of a life that could be- but so suffocated by the world he knows, when Dexter fails to realise them he is quick to dismiss such thoughts as fleeting fantasies, and therefore unrealistic aspirations.
This is not uncommon in life. A common scenario:
1- Having a fulfilling relationship
2- losing that fulfilling relationship
Then there are the options of how to deal with this:
3a [the depressed self]- resolving the loss of relationship into something which correlates with the damaged self-concept by rationalising it as having never been a realistic possibility i.e. "I am not worthy of a relationship; should not have fooled myself into believing it was a possibility; therefore the loss was inevitable, even though I didn't foresee it previously". In a way it is the less painful way to deal with things as, although it may appear to some to be an incredibly sad thing- to write yourself and any hope you had off, by negating the thought that the relationship was a genuine chance in the first place, all that is left to deal with is feeling a bit foolish about having believed you had hope in the first place.
or
3b [the rational self?]- challenging the self and potentially risking descending into conflict, depression, and issues which are harder and more complex to resolve- i.e. dealing with the actual loss itself.
Thursday, 9 August 2012
Pat Robertson- Pushing the Limits of Stupidity
Pat Robertson, and American televangelist, has come out and said some pretty ignorant, hateful things in his time. For example (this one is so ignorant it's actually funny):
"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." - 1992 (Wikiquotes).
The frightening part is that to remain on television, he must be earning money and hence some people actually follow this utter dribble he spouts forth, which doesn't bode well for [certain subsets of poorly educated, older, white, American] society.
In recent events, some random psychopath picked up a gun, went into a Sikh temple and shot a bunch of people.
While most people would say (inside the USA) "That guy was possibly influenced by the Batman shootings, and is a random psychopath" (outside USA) "This is more evidence as to why there should be tighter gun control laws in the US", Pat Robertson has gone for the hate and blame game approach. See his dribble on the shooting incident here: http://www.examiner.com/video/pat-robertson-blames-atheists-for-sikh-temple-shooting
“What is it? Is it satanic? Is it some spiritual thing, people who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God? And they are angry with the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshiping God.”
In retort, one author put it so beautifully: "For the record, atheists neither love nor hate god, for the simple reason that god does not exist.".
(http://www.examiner.com/article/pat-robertson-blames-atheists-for-sikh-temple-massacre?cid=rss )
I think I love this guy (no, no- not Robertson- the other guy). Blunt, sees it like it is, and recognises a total arsehat when he sees one.
Robertson's diatribe against athiests is clearly ill-informed, and shbows more evidence in support of the theory that extreme conservatives have lower intelligence ( http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html).
It could be a matter of not having the educational opportunities, though, so we've been here before, but will say it again. Atheism is not a hatred of a God, deity or theology. It is an absence of belief.
Let's provide some context, and compare it to something he may be able to comprehend:
Compare unicorns to ponies. A child may believe in and love unicorns, or believe in and love ponies. Chances are, though, they have seen, and possibly touched a pony, as it is not a figment of their imagination. When you grow up and learn the difference between real and imaginary, most rational people don't start to hate unicorns or resent anyone who ever led them to believe they might be real.
"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." - 1992 (Wikiquotes).
The frightening part is that to remain on television, he must be earning money and hence some people actually follow this utter dribble he spouts forth, which doesn't bode well for [certain subsets of poorly educated, older, white, American] society.
In recent events, some random psychopath picked up a gun, went into a Sikh temple and shot a bunch of people.
While most people would say (inside the USA) "That guy was possibly influenced by the Batman shootings, and is a random psychopath" (outside USA) "This is more evidence as to why there should be tighter gun control laws in the US", Pat Robertson has gone for the hate and blame game approach. See his dribble on the shooting incident here: http://www.examiner.com/video/pat-robertson-blames-atheists-for-sikh-temple-shooting
“What is it? Is it satanic? Is it some spiritual thing, people who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God? And they are angry with the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshiping God.”
In retort, one author put it so beautifully: "For the record, atheists neither love nor hate god, for the simple reason that god does not exist.".
(http://www.examiner.com/article/pat-robertson-blames-atheists-for-sikh-temple-massacre?cid=rss )
I think I love this guy (no, no- not Robertson- the other guy). Blunt, sees it like it is, and recognises a total arsehat when he sees one.
Robertson's diatribe against athiests is clearly ill-informed, and shbows more evidence in support of the theory that extreme conservatives have lower intelligence ( http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html).
It could be a matter of not having the educational opportunities, though, so we've been here before, but will say it again. Atheism is not a hatred of a God, deity or theology. It is an absence of belief.
Let's provide some context, and compare it to something he may be able to comprehend:
Compare unicorns to ponies. A child may believe in and love unicorns, or believe in and love ponies. Chances are, though, they have seen, and possibly touched a pony, as it is not a figment of their imagination. When you grow up and learn the difference between real and imaginary, most rational people don't start to hate unicorns or resent anyone who ever led them to believe they might be real.
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