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.

Enter silverchair and The Prodigy. I first fell in love with these bands when I was a wee teenager. It was that instinct again, see? But mother was not a fan of this sort of music, and I’m a nice sort of kid, so I didn’t rock the boat. My time would come. And when I did begin buying their albums years later in my 20s? Lo, I did fall in love with them. My instinct was right.

Now, enter Black Sabbath. This requires a little more explanation. I’ve had a flirtation with this band for years. YEARS, people. Now, maybe it was my Christian upbringing, maybe it was because mother would not have approved at all, but I always kept Sabbath at a distance. That instinct of mine was there, but I always said no. Even though Ozzy Osbourne is fucking adorable, I still said no. I think part of me was slightly afraid at how much I would like it, as if it was my ‘dark side’ or something.

Now, enter rage and The Chaser guest progamming for NYE 2007. What did I get out of that epic experience? I fell in love with ELO, of course. And Pink Floyd to a certain extent. It aged my music collection certainly. (In an unrelated note, I also fell in love with of Montreal and The Decemberists, but that’s another story.)

ELO are actually a terrible enabler. The effect they’ve had on my music collection is rather significant, and there are some people I would never have bothered listening to otherwise. Also, Roy Wood? Fucking nuts, and also fucking awesome. <3 …It’s an ‘epic hair’ and a ‘boys in make-up’ thing. XD

(Also, the impact ELO has had on my writing is rather extraordinary and should be discussed at length elsewhere.)

Now, enter rage again their ‘rage gets hairy’ special. Now, I like a bloke with long hair, as I’ve mentioned, bonus points for leather and/or chest pr0n. So, naturally, it’s quite a good special. Twisted Sister come onto my radar and I like what I see and hear. Twisted Sister, of course, have come onto my radar in the past from my love of No Doubt.

I have also recently fallen in love with Led Zeppelin, and not just because of Go! and other assorted coincidences.

I feel there are more than three coincidences here and I ought to have twigged this was leading to some sort of clue-by four. But, of course, I’m somewhat dense to these sorts of things, so naturally, I was left slightly without warning.

Now, when I happened across a charming blog that offered bootlegs recently, and happened to offer ELO bootlegs to boot, well, I couldn’t resist, so I downloaded them. I was not looking for said bootlegs, but I found them. Now, I happened to scroll down to see what other bands they had, and lo, there was Led Zep and Black Sabbath.

How does ELO link to Black Sabbath? Well, quite easily. You see, I remembered from reading Bev Bevan’s blog that he had toured with Black Sabbath in 1983 (which I will point out is the year I was born? XD). (Listening to his radio show for months has also been awesomefuntimes and has kinda made me fall in love with other artists, but that’s another story.) This piece of knowledge had always intrigued me because going from ELO to Black Sabbath sounds so… weirdly awesome, so I checked to see if there were any Sabbath bootlegs from that particular tour. There were. I downloaded them both. I discovered my instinct had been right. Again. XD

Now, the ABC has been showing this ‘Seven Ages of Rock’ series of late. Well done, it’s an awesome series. Cue tonight’s show. Topic? Heavy metal.

So they start with Sabbath, of course, move to Judas Priest and Motley Crue and in between all this I’m hit across the head with a combination of epic hair, leather, and fucking awesome guitar. The whole Birmingham thing doesn’t help either. Cue my instinct popping up and suggesting I might rather like Sabbath and Judas Priest and Motley Crue, if I bothered to listen to them properly.

Now, earlier in the afternoon, I had written a rather pr0ny piece of fiction involving an anthropomorphised Foxtel seducing the fuck out of Charles Firth in a rather kinky and awesome fashion.

After watching ‘Seven Ages of Rock’ tonight, I feel pretty much like Charles did after Foxtel was done with him: like I’d been seduced by a rather enchanting Dom in leather who had left me rather exhausted and desperate for more by the time he was done with me.

Cue Sobek, that smarmy croc God of mine, smirking contentedly. Yes, crocodiles have an infinite amount of patience. He was just waiting for the right moment. I believe He has won this round fair and square.

Okay, I surrender, already, happy now?

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.

Summer so far as been slow. I survived Christmas, my birthday, and the New Year, and have come out the other side slightly tired but ready for other things. Uni starts again in three weeks as well. That’ll keep me out of trouble. I have afternoon classes this semester to, which will be lovely.

This also means it’s time for stationery shopping, which, it has to be said, is one of my favourite past-times. I will take myself shopping next week and purchase some books and pencils and shit. Things will be good.

My current music playlist has somewhat diversified lately, as well. I don’t know, I seem to have a knack for knowing when I’ll like a particular band/album/artist/etc. This has not let me down very often. Current obsessions are The Darkness, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Daft Punk, Depeche Mode, and Cyndi Lauper. Why, yes, I am awesome. Thanks for noticing.

I have been writing this month though, which has been nice. Got a few ideas for original fiction I’m developing, amongst other things. One involves space pixies and terrestrial fairies and is apparently going to be a trilogy. More on this when it’s more than just a list of what I’d like it to include.

Apart from that, not much else has been happening. I like that January is somewhat slow. I feel like I need it, after the chaos that was November and December. Kinda took a lot out of me. But at least I’m still here, and in one piece, so yes. Might leave this here or I’ll end up rambling for another three hundred words.

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.

My favourite time of the day is about 10pm – 2am at night. After the madness of prime time and before the infomercials. I know, TV rules my life, yes? We’ve established this before, I believe. It’s quiet. There’s a stillness about that time of night that I adore. Usually I’m the only one awake, and with that still silence, I can think, I can write, and I can do things I can’t normally do during the day. Most of the artwork I’ve done has been done late at night, with the TV on as background noise.

I’m not really a morning person. It takes me a while to wake up. I’m not the sort who can get up instantly, at least, not very often. Is it possible to be addicted to the night? Because I think that’s what I’ve become. The night is most conducive to my mind, so I tend to embrace it. I’m not as nocturnal as I used to be. I’ve had to compromise my need to be up early enough for work and my need to go to bed after midnight. That hasn’t stopped a few 3am bedtimes though.

Also, rage has become a staple of my Friday and Saturday night. The effect of this has been that a lot of music (and music videos) is just better at night. Some clips only make sense at 2am when you’re half-asleep. XD But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Even if my interest in triple j wanes (which it has, because I found a better radio station to listen to – sorry, Marieke), rage will always be there to start my weekend.

Perhaps it’s because I spent the first half of my life without the internet, I am somewhat wary of it taking over everything. There are times when I don’t want to be connected to everyone. I just want to shut it all down, and spend some time with myself, and my Gods, if I’m in the mood. There just isn’t enough time for people to do that these days. Everyone rushes about at a hundred miles an hour, and barely has time to think for themselves. We’ve lost the ability to just sit still and think, we’ve always got to have our mobile or laptop or mp3 player or whatever. But these things are not essential. I think we’d all be better off if we could find that silence again, and not be afraid of it, but to fall into its loving embrace, and find ourselves again.

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.

I probably doesn’t help that I’m not good in the morning, but if I could manage it during high school, I can manage it now. I might also do some more work on redoing my ‘book of shadows’ as I had intended to do earlier. Because I feel I need to readjust where I am and properly set down my beliefs and practices, rather than just pretend I’m a whole bunch of things without being able to point to why. So maybe we’ll do that this arvo or something.

I suppose it’s hard at the moment, saying prayers, as the Gods on my shrine and in my life are somewhat varied and I’m not sure how to approach Them all in the right way. Then again, maybe that’s just an excuse to procrasatinate. Perhaps it’s time to stop being lazy about my faith and make it part of my life again, instead of it just being statues on a shelf. :/

Oh, fuck, and now I just want to redo my bloody shrine again because Sobek and Heru-sa are prodding. FFS. How many Gods can you fit on a shrine? As many as They desire, apparently. :/

Okay, so this is a little shorter than normal, but I’ve got this need to do things again, so I’ll leave this as it is and go do something while I”ve got the desire to, otherwise it’ll pass and I’ll end up doing nothing at all. >.<

(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.

This is something that irritates the shit out of me. Just because they don’t see your God in the same way doesn’t mean their experience is any less valid. It just causes animosity and frustration and the sort of energy that says ‘you should conform to the way we see the Gods’.

As an example, one argument I remember seeing over and over again on a certain pagan forum was the whole Aset/Isis debate about whether They were separate Gods or not. (Don’t get me started on it; I am sick of these kinds of arguments.) I could also lump into this all the other threads about experiences with varying Gods and who It might be and such. There were times when people were told it can’t be X because X doesn’t appear/behave/talk/etc that way (with or without ín my opinion’ disclaimer).

I just… Gods are not so simple. We experience Them in ways that we will understand. It’s a very personal and individual relationship. The face They show me might not be the same face They show another. Who are we to say whose experience is invalid because their experience with a certain God doesn’t add up to the way you see Them? They’re not characters from a TV show. They’re Gods, ffs. Get some perspective. >.<

I also think it’s rather dangerous to immediately dismiss someone who’s had a different experience than you. It can lead to isolationism and a definite fear of Others who think differently. You can say you’re protecting yourself from abuse, but it’s a hollow excuse and I don’t buy it.

Djehuty once told me that wisdom can be found anywhere. I agree with Him, and I appreciate the freedom both He and Sobek have given me to explore my own spirituality wherever I happen to wander to.

Learning about another faith, or even talking to someone who believes different things to you, can teach you shitloads about your own faith, and I think that’s far better than running away or outright ignoring someone because someone says something that doesn’t agree with your view of X.

You can’t grow spiritually if you don’t question your own faith and occasionally hear stuff you don’t like. Spirituality is not supposed to be easy. Challenges build you up and strengthen your character, and your own beliefs. Seeing something in a different light can often be what you need to grow, even if it goes against what you currently believe. If it hurts, so be it. Earn your faith, don’t just accept it and expect it to remain unchanged, as if you’re merely babysitting an electronic pet. Take the hits, deal with the consequences, and perhaps there’d be more understanding between differing groups rather than bitching and animosity.

So says me, apparently channeling Set. >.<

There. I’m done now.

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.

It’s a trailer for a film called ‘The Apple’ (1980). A troper described it as ‘a disco musical about the futuristic world of 1994 that’s also an allegory for the book of revelations.’

IMDb lists its tagline as “A Funky Fantasy That’ll Rock Your World!”

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m excited. I love that someone thought this needed to be made. Anyway. Just watch the trailer. It needs to be seen to be believed.

I’ve subsequently found the whole movie online, posted in nine parts. Part one is here; watch it if you’re curious/masochistic/etc. I don’t have time to watch it now, but I will at some point and tell you if it will eat your soul or not. It looks fabulously atrocious. XD

And in light of that, whatever the fuck it was, I bid you adieu, and head off to find something else to write. Or, you know, do some study. Or something.

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.

Being a writer is a strange thing for some people to understand. Just like I don’t really grasp what it’s like to be a musician, so non-writers don’t get writers and why we do what we do, and how. I always have words singing in my head. They’re like… little scrappy ideas. Sometimes, they don’t take long to be fully formed, sometimes they take much longer, and some don’t get written at all.

So sometimes an idea needs to float around in my brain until it’s ready to be written, and to me, just because I’m not physically writing words on paper doesn’t mean I suddenly have writer’s block because I’m still thinking about writing and those little ides that wanted more time to develop. That time to develop can mean the difference between something getting finished and something remaning as a little scrappy idea I thought was interesting at the time. If you looked at my hard drive and my inbox, you’ll find many ideas that I wrote down as they came to me and subsequently went nowhere after that.

There are weeks when I’m struggling to think of something to write here, and certainly university aids in giving me suitable material on which to ruminate until some sort of idea forms in my head enough to write about it. If anything, this blog is full of little scrappy ideas I could use for other things if I wanted to develop them further. If, you know, I had the time and inspiration to do so. Which I don’t. So there.

I’m an inherently disorganised person. I always have been. I’m also in no rush to get things done. I finish things in my own time and in my own way. I have infinite patience with life. Things happen when they happen. Why hurry? Life’s too short to rush through it at breakneck speed. You’ll miss all the good things that need time to be seen, rather than glanced at and forgotten.

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.

I suppose part of my ignorance/apathy towards the British side of my ancestry was that I didn’t particularly see them as vastly different cultures, even though I know intellectually that they are. Okay, so I’ve always had a love of Britain and British things and the UK is somewhere I have wanted to visit for years. Still, I never really saw it as a second ‘home’ like I do now.

It was in this realisation that I figured out where I sat on the republican/monarchist side with regards to Australia, and the British side of me won. In spite of the fact that Australia is rather much like a republic anyway, cutting ties with Britain would, to me, feel really wrong. It’s not a rational, fact-based argument for me. It’s tied in with my identity, and my half-Englishness. Both Britain and Australia are my home.

It’s funny, I remember my mum telling me that my (paternal) gran didn’t like mum because she was too English, and she felt she was bringing up her grandkids to be British rather than Australian. I suppose I was doomed from the beginning. Even later, I felt gran wasn’t as keen on me as much as my brother because I was too like my mum.

You could argue that identification has stuck in my mind and I’ve grown into it over the years. I mean, shit, even I’ve noticed my vowels are becoming more British.

And yet… I have such an attachment to Australia and the places I’ve grown up here that it would be impossible for me to cut ties with Australia. I’m still wholeheartedly and proudly Australian. If you live on the same land long enough, you become part of it. No matter how much I might yearn for other pastures, I grew up on this land and I’ve lived most of my life here. I know the plants, the seasons, the animals, the way the year progresses. I have a connection to this land and cutting ties with that would feel the same as cutting ties with Britain. Both are important to me.

I think the internet has vastly changed the way humans perceive the notion of ‘community’ and ‘nationality’. Nations are not just bound by physical borders; Indeed, I’d argue that a nation is only as big as the people who belong to it, whether by self-identification or by acceptance by the wider community. The internet allows for people to belong to communities or ‘nations’ in a way they might not’ve been able to do before.

I think even more now than before there has become a need to label and identify yourself, to announce/declare to the world who, where and with what you identify. You, as a person, are judged based on your identification before anyone gets to know you. I realise this has always been the case, that people judge before they get to know someone, but my point is the internet makes it stupidly easy to merely list every group or affiliation or identity we hold, and reduce ourselves to a group of words on a profile. I think in doing this we are selling ourselves short, and turning complete people into tiny little bits of information. The different groups we identify with are not seen as smaller parts of the whole, they are seen as separate things, separate sides, and we have to juggle these differeing sides so that one group doesn’t find out about the others.

I’m doing it all the time, juggling my queer, pagan side with my other sides. Every time I join a new group, I’m constantly trying to judge how much and what information to tell them. Which side do I show to them? Which would they be most accepting of? Which groups am I willing for them to know about? Which ones will I hide? I think it causes more fractures than anything.

*sighs* I think I have run out of thoughts. But at least I got this out. I don’t think I can use this for the unit I was thinking of using these thoughts for, but I’ll have to find some sort of angle I can use that I’m interested enough to research. I am not convinced my tutor will be as open to my strange ideas as the tutor I had last semester who allowed me to interpret an essay question in such a way that it allowed me to discuss God, religion, alien/UFO cults and the Mongolian Empire. But we’ll see. I’ve got the week to find some angle that might interest me so I’ll leave it for now and head to bed.

(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?

Well, I don’t see it that way. Humans have a bad tendency to personify. It already happens with current technology. People give their gadgets and computers names, and talk about them as if they had distinct personalities. How attached do you think we’ll get when computers not only have names, but can talk and interact with us as if they were alive?

Would we consider them alive? What if they can create, independent of human intervention, like Edgar did? Would we respect their claims for ownership of their creations? Or will we claim they are our creations because they’re just machines and can’t create?

I wonder if we even have a right to give machines human-like intelligence and them claim total control over them, that we have some sort of right to decide if they live or die, insomuch as computers can live or die. If they are similar to sentient beings, if we kill them, does it become murder? Or would we end up justifying it the way we justify euthanasing animals? Could you argue those computers would have a ‘right to life’?

This is where my own opinions about this get muddled. I honestly can’t find a position because I can see all the alternatives and options and ideas and none stand out as being ‘the right choice’.

This is especially true for me with the issue of euthanasia. On the one hand, I can sympathise with wanting to end the misery for someone with a terminal illness who wishes to die. However, I can also see it as murder. I also can’t see why we can justify euthanasing animals as being ‘humane’ and ‘putting them out of their misery’, and yet applying the same thing to humans is somehow wrong. It’s not like the animals can consent to being euthanised. Indeed, there would be some terminal patients who might not be able to consent. There are also patients who do consent and wish to die, and somehow we think we know better than they do in allowing them to live and drawing out their suffering because ending their life is seen as wrong.

I know there’s a counter argument that, well, animals and people are different, but are they really? Animals feel pain. They get sick. They love us. We look after them. They might not have the same intellectual capabilities or ’sentience’ as we do, but I doubt that means they are mindless robots. There are different forms of intelligence and ways to communicate.

Still, we feel we have guardianship over our pets and animals because we feel they can’t make decisions for themselves. We have power of attorney for people who can’t make decisions for themselves. There are people who have ‘do not resuscitate’ things. And yet…

I don’t know. I’m feeling a little morbid today. I might go get some coffee once this is done and do some assignments instead of procrastinating further. I doubt I’ve solved anything in this entry, apart from articulate some thoughts on similar yet different issues. I think I had more to say, but the words aren’t there anymore, so I’ll save them for later when I can think of more to say.

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.
I always have a frustratingly awesome time writing musicians though, because in some ways, I can understand them and their relationship to music, but in other ways it’s an utterly foreign way of thinking and being. I am not a musician, I am a writer. I live, breathe and think in words. Not music, not pictures, not poetry. Straight prose. Words. Wordswordswords. That is how I understand the world. It’s difficult for me to grasp how a non-writer experiences the world. All I have to draw on are my own experiences, and that isn’t always helpful.

I often wonder if other creative people are like this too, that they can’t quite ‘get’ other ways of thinking/creating and in some way require a translator.

Apologies if I’m not being clear. I’m doing my best to explain something that’s not easy to explain. It’s like… writing, words, the urge to write, it’s instinctive, like breathing, living, everything. .It’s in every fibre of my being. I can’t comprehend not writing, or not being able to write. I’m somewhat more scared of losing my ability to write than of dying. Everyone dies. But if I lost the ability to write… It scares me. I need to be able to write. I think I would die if I didn’t or couldn’t write. It’s not something I can just switch on and off, some sort of hobby. It’s an impulsive urge that is difficult to ignore. When the muses strike, nothing else matters, just getting the stor down before the muses go away again.

Okay. I would like to admit to a little clandestine drawing on the side, which I indulge in occasionally. I don’t see myself as an artist, and most of the art I do is to complement my own writing. I do my own fanart, basically. XD So there are some areas of visual art I understand, and I’m good with abstract symbols, but it’s mostly an art form I do not understand and tend to have little interest in.

But I think I’ve written enough for the moment. I appear to have hit a dead end. I’ll probably write more on this later when I get a chance to think on it some more. I’m all out of thoughts now.