The Vanguard

You know how crocodiles are patient little fuckers and wait for the right moment to strike before they attack their prey?

Well, let me tell you a story. Sobek, dear beloved Father, has been trying in vain to get me into heavy metal for years. It’s never been my thing, or so I thought, so I figured He’d stopped pestering me about it because He had accepted He’d never win me over.

Apparently not. -_-

Now, this story requires some past history, so bear with me. I have this weird instinct where I just *know* if I’ll like a certain band or artist, usually just from hearing a few songs. This instinct has rarely been wrong, so I tend to listen to it when it calls.
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Happy 2010? Hope it’s decent. Hope it’s better than last year, which, by many accounts, was kinda shithouse.

Anyway. I figured I’d start posting here again, since, you know, I bothered to renew my domains and shit. Might as well use them. I am aware I kinda stopped posting late last year. I blame uni/NaNoWriMo and a general lack of intellectual thought process with which to write entries with.

I figured I’d loosen the format (wait, I have a format?) a little. Maybe not bother with trying to make super-epic formal intelekshual entries and just write something. Anything. Even if it’s me bitching about assignments. Any entry is better than none, I suppose.
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I was linked to a column by Julia Baird on twitter about silence and why we need it, and it got me thinking. Finally, I know, right? Because I’ve neglected this place a little — too much work for uni, not enough brain space to generate more than a couple of cynical paragraphs about refugee wank and how I’m totally over it.

I’ve had a thought for quite some time now that I would probably cope quite well if I was a nun. I don’t seem to have the same issues with silence that other people do; in fact, given a choice between a noisy party and a quiet home, I’ll take the quiet home kthnx. Why? I don’t like being in noisy places. I can’t think clearly and it makes me withdraw somewhat.

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I’ve swung back into agnostic territory again. I keep looking at my religious beliefs and wondering if I’m not just going through the motions. Fact is, I’ve never been very … what’s the word … expressive? My spirituality is very practical in nature. I’m not interested in high ritual and ceremony. I find it distracting from the heart of what religion is all about. That said, sometimes I wished I had a little more care for it, because at least then I’d feel like I was doing something, rather than just existing without showing my faith much.

While I am Kemetic Orthodox, and I like the Senut ritual, it’s too much for me to do every day. Again, I’m feeling a need to go back to my simpler morning ritual of greeting the Gods each morning with prayer, lighting some incense, and spending a moment in Their presence. Which, I know, Senut is a more detailed version of, but it’s not what I want. I find Senut very difficult to perform when others are in the house. I had no issues with my own little ritual, but because Senut can take me upwards of an hour, and I need to be in the right frame of mind, it just… I just end up putting it off.

Perhaps I need to write some more prayers to say in the morning and make it my habit to recite prayers, burn incense, and just be with Them after I get up, rather than speed to the computer and get coffee. I feel I need something to make me feel like I’m doing something.
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This post isn’t necessarily about one incident or one religion or whatever. It’s more of a general post about a variety of things that I’ve observed, mostly within pagan groups. It’s just annoying me at the moment, and it’s all I can think about to post here, since I neglected to post last weekend. Sorry! Was very busy. >.<

(As an aside, I’m also posting this over at Per Sebek, due to relevance.)

Now, I know religion can be a touchy subject for some, and for those who are Pagan of some sort, it can be a subject they are unwilling to talk about due to a fear of harrassment. I get it. However, I don’t think that can really justify the notion that all these little pagan groups need to cut themselves off from anyone who doesn’t agree with them, as if somehow an alternative experience or view point might be the cause of the apocalypse.

‘They’re just a troll, ignore them’. I find this excuse somewhat pathetic. Sure, some might be genuine trolls, and fair enough, if they’re genuine trolls, so be it. But if it’s more of an issue of someone saying something you don’t like, or maybe expressing a belief that’s not necessarily one you hold, I am not inclined to call troll. I don’t think cutting yourself off from alternative perspectives helps anyone, and I think it gives the perception of a closed community, one that is conformist and not accepting of differing views.
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Dodgy subject line is dodgy.

For once, I don’t have anything in particular I want to talk about this week. Nothing is itching at me to rant about, there’s nothing pressing I haven’t talked about already. I’m quite… content, if that’s the right word. And also sneezing my nose off. Bloody hayfever I refuse to believe I have. XD

That said, it is a nice state to be in every once in a while. Being angry and frustrated takes energy and sometimes I just can’t be fucked. What can I say? I’m lazy.

So, in light of me not feeling like talking about anything in particular after spending the morning trying to find a prompt that caught my attention, I’m just going to post a video I found on TVtropes a few days ago.
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I haven’t been writing much of late. It is, perhaps, the dawning realisation that I have two weeks to write a politics essay about a topic I don’t particularly have much interest in. Ahh, fuck it, we’ll do the one about democracy. I can ramble about that for 1500 words.

Anyway. I suppose it’s been nice not feeling the urge to write so much. I mean, sometimes you need some space to just let ideas gel and emerge and form themselves into a coherent form, and sometimes that doesn’t happen when all you’re doing is writing.

Other writers might call this spate of not being able to write ‘writer’s block’. But I don’t see it that way. I’m not blocked, I’m just giving space to ideas. For me, in spite of my feeling that I would die if I couldn’t write, I don’t spend most of my time writing. I sleep, I shower, I eat, I watch TV and videos, I game, I go to class, I study, I spend time on public transport, I occasionally work. When I have the time, I write. When the muses prod me enough, I write. When I absolutely can’t keep the words in any longer, I write.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about community and identity lately; blame uni for this – one of my units started banging on about ideas of community and nationhood, and as you’d expect, it’s kinda stuck in my mind. I’ve never really given my ancestry as much importance as perhaps others might’ve. For most of my life, I’ve considered myself Australian. As I’ve gotten older, and fallen more in love with Britain and the UK and learnt more about where my family comes from, other than Australia, I’ve had a growing sense that ‘Australian’ just doesn’t quite complete me. My British ancestry isn’t from, say, three generations ago. It comes straight from my mother. I can get a British passport because my mother was born in Liverpool.

I still remember her telling me once to go home, home meaning the UK. I’ve never forgotten that, and I suppose that’s when I had this dawning sense of being half-English. Okay, if I’m honest, a third Australian, a third British, and a third Welsh. Mum’s mother’s family are Welsh, and Granddad carried a Welsh flag when he used to march with the Normandy vets in the ANZAC Day marches.
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Kinda on a dodgy 80s movies kick right now. It’s epic. XD Anyway, just watched Electric Dreams (ZOMG ), and it got me thinking, because I have a habit of crying when AI computers ‘die’. See: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Silent Running (1972), and Electric Dreams (1984) – yes, I have cried during all three, for HAL, for the three ickle droids, and for Edgar. ;_;

(As an aside, if you haven’t watched Silent Running, you should – it’s… haunting and incredibly sad. It stays with you. Srsly.)

I’m not one who likes writing hard sci-fi. I tend to stick to dystopia. This doesn’t stop me reading hard sci-fi though, and empathising with these AI computers. And it’s this ability to empathise with these AI computers that got me wondering what sort of ethics humans will need to adhere to if/when we get to a point in the future where AI computers are widespread.

Why do I say that we’ll need ethics? They’re just machines, right?
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For a long time now, I’ve wondered why it is that some writers prefer to write to instrumental music as opposed to music with lyrics, and why I’m the total opposite.

As much as I adore music, it’s written in a totally different language and my brain can’t interpret it or understand it. Now, music with lyrics, on the other hand, because there are words, written words, I can cling to them and understand them as if they’re a translation of the music. This is why instrumental music is often boring to me. There’s nothing to hold my interest and nothing to tell me what’s going on.

So while for some, music with lyrics is distracting because the lyrics distrupt their writing, for me it’s the opposite. Music with lyrics I find far easier to write to than instrumental music because it’s music I can understand. It’s like the difference between me watching a film in Cantonese (which I don’t speak), without subtitles, to watching the same film with subtitles. One I can understand, the other I can’t. Visuals aren’t enough for me to interpret what’s going on; I need the words to translate those visuals into something I can understand.
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