Jumping Beans
Posted on August 26, 2007
Thought this was a great quote from author Ray Bradbury on the topic of generating ideas:
“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well feed, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.”
I know the feeling but he’s probably not responsible for ‘feeding’ and cleaning up after other people which is more mind-numbing than mind-stuffing! Actually I’ve learned over the years to think productively regardless of what I’m doing, actually some of the best ideas creep up on you when you’re hooked up to a mop or stirring a pot and just day-dreaming.
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People Who Care?
Posted on August 20, 2007
Only a few kilometers from where I live and a less than a kilometer from where hundreds children go to school is a company called Unomedical who sterilise medical equipment.
It turns out that for the past 9 years this company has been pumping untreated ethylene oxide, a carcinogen, into the air. The Sydney Morning Herald turned up about ten cancer patients in the area but the authorities are now saying it’s no big deal, that’s a normal cancer figure. The company is not even going to be fined - it’s apparently the government’s fault for not forcing them to install a catalytic converter.
Surely the company knew the gas was dangerous? They apparently hadn’t installed a converter because they weren’t obliged to by law - and they are very expensive. Our local council was just as pathetic taking months after the gas emission was reported to do anything about it whatsoever, leaving it to the company to self-regulate.
Forget the bloody law! The lack of social and ethical responsibility for the health of their local community makes a mockery of the Unomedical slogan ‘People Who Care’ - what a joke!
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Brats
Posted on August 6, 2007
I’m not a big television fan but Brat Camp gets me in every time. It’s interesting to see that when these aboslutely horrible British teenagers, who all spit venom at their mothers, find themselves up against it in a Utah boot camp, the thing they want the most is their mum.
It’s a revelation for any parent of teenagers to see that all of the bad behaviour; screaming, violence, drinking, drug abuse etc is these guys acting out the pain they are feeling with the tools they have available to them.
There was a scene last week with Ed, a tough faced 15 year old who had been stealing from his family and dealing drugs to the point that his mother had to evict him from home. In a rather clumsy bit of exposition the camp shrink is told by Ed’s mother that his father died when he was 8 years old. So when the brats are sitting in their big sharing caring circle the shrink asks him how he felt about his father’s death and the first word that pops out is ‘Ashamed’ with a look on his hard little face of a vulnerable 8 year old. She asked him to tell each of the group that he didn’t have to be ashamed anymore and as he went around the group he began to say ‘My dad died and I’m proud of him’. By this point I was just bawling as was the rest of his group.
In a brief session with the nightcam he simply said ‘I feel different’. Interesting to see what happens next for this boy, my heart really went out to him.
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Plum Job
Posted on August 2, 2007
Heard on the news this morning that plumbing is now one of the highest paid professions with plumbers commanding up to $1500 a day for their services. Not sure whether this is just Sydney or nationwide but apparently there is a shortage.
I know there is a shortage of young guys going into all trades, everyone wants to be a lawyer or dotcom millionare. I have always thought ‘tradies’ had the best life of anyone. There are loads of them around where I live and utes and vans are thick in the ground when they all head off around 6-7am.
The reason they live around here is that, unlike lawyers and dotcomers, they all finish between 3 and 4pm and head off to the beach for a surf or a fish or to the pub for a beer. They seem to have the most relaxing lives, with constant work available and not that much stress.
Not only that but plumbers in particular seem to enjoy their work. I had a plumber here for a blocked toilet a few weeks ago and he so enjoyed discussing the ins and outs of the slight installation problem that was contributing to the blockage that I had trouble getting rid of him.
So there you go - the ideal career, low stress, high pay, time to relax and when a plumber sorts out a particulalry ugly sewage problem - you could just hug him.