Monsters, CCNA, Work, Gaming, Politics

[tcpip]

Monsters 1: Lordi wins Eurovision. Surprised to see many people on my flist making a big deal of this. Let's face it, their lyrics suck and musically they're as competent as KISS or Twisted Sister (i.e., not at all). Basically, they're a crap band in glam monster outfits.

Monsters 2: A gaggle of g*ths wander through Melbourne dressed up as zombies. I find myself wondering what's the point? Sure we love to frock up and apply makeup in new and interesting ways, but I could only think that said participants are competing with Malaysian beggars (I actually saw I guy like this in Indonesia).

Monsters 3: Dracorex hogwartsia, "The Dragon King of Hogwarts", has been discovered. Hat-tip to ozraptor4 with whom caseopaya and I are going to the Melbourne zoo tonight for a presentation by a wild animals vet graduate from Murdoch Uni.

CCNA: (Re)sat my semester 2 theory exam on Tueday. Despite feeling like death warmed up I finished with 30 minutes to spare. Instead of doing the sensible thing and checking some of my answers I submitted. Shouldn't have worried; 91.3%; pleased with that result.

Work: I have a lot of it at the moment. Was given at the start of the week a sixty page website to finish by today. No, I haven't been doing much else.

Gaming: Three new faces at GURPS Australian Noir last Sunday; we're going to have to break up into two groups and a two week cycle. Thinking GURPS, retro AD&D, Using HARP, MERP or Rolemaster for Thieves World (artbroken's ears prick up) and possibly Call of Cthulhu. Would be great if someone would run a SF game; like Paranoia or Cyberpunk.

Politics: Back to the medieval fiefdoms as Montenegro declares independence. Want to reduce teenage pregnancies and STDs? Provide sex education and treat them like the adults they are. Duh. Will someone please pay for the externalities? Global warming may exceed predictions - as in six degrees hotter.

Comments

[omnot.livejournal.com]

"A gaggle of g*ths wander through Melbourne dressed up as zombies. "

Erm. We're not all g (astersik) ths. At least, nobody has called me as a goth before, least of all me. Maybe I am and just never knew. Hmmm.

Oh, - the point? Fun. It now comes in different flavours! :-D

(Sorry for necro-commenting, but given the topic, it seems kind of apt.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Maybe I am and just never knew. Hmmm.

Real g*ths don't admit it ;-)

Oh, - the point? Fun. It now comes in different flavours! :-D

What is the point of such fun when there are people whose physical condition resembles the makeup? Unless it's mockery.

I have to admit...

[omnot.livejournal.com]

I have to admit to feeling rather uneasy about that aspect myself. My personal presentation for the shuffle was as dead rather than maimed. As usual, I'm caught between feeling that it is wrong to parody death and mutilation when there is genuine suffering occurring, and my desire to thumb my nose at such taboos. Rather than people setting out to mock people with deformities, I got more of a sense of the shuffle being akin to the festivals lauding death that are cultural institutions in many places. Established traditions of dressing like the dead are not as offensive because the makeup is more abstract, I suppose.

As Halloween falls in our Spring, we don't have a thematic celebration that punctuates the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the Winter with it's cold and dark and implied privation. I feel the lack. Ditto for midwinter and Spring. If I garland myself with flowers and dance barefoot on the village green in late October, would that make me a stealth goth or anti-goth?

I find myself wondering if you object to the whole zombie movie genre? It is along the same 'death and mutilation as entertainment' line as the zombie shuffle was.

Re: I have to admit...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I find myself wothendering if you object to the whole zombie movie genre?

Depends on the depth (and breadth) of the narrative I suppose. I sincerely don't mean this as a cop-out. Institutions like the Mexican "Day of nthe Dead" parade really delve deeply into "absent friends and family" side of live. Some movies do that as well (even sometimes those with a great deal of humour in them).

The more I think about this the more it really was a question of "what's the point?". If the point was to say "hey, some people in the world really do look like this and it's their means of deriving an income" or "we are your friends and family post-nuclear/biochemical etc war" or "Honour those who have passed away" I probably would have been very enthusiastic about the event.

I'm tagging you btw...

Re: I have to admit...

[omnot.livejournal.com]

The event was more flash-mob style absurdism than well thought out commentary, I believe. A kind of 'death could come to us as unexpectedly as encountering a rabble of pseudo-zombies in inner city Melbourne' feel was as coherent a message as I could divine. More thought would be appropriate in future, to my mind, but it may be that some participants find the very zombie-like lack of thought to be a large part of the appeal. I know that for me, there was a kind of grateful abandonment of the question 'why?' in deciding to participate in the shuffle, which probably says more about my own level of accountability fatigue than any lack of compassion for the suffering of others. Only on reflection did I closely question the 'point' and appropriateness of what was being done, so my comparison to death-celebrations is most likely a dodgy post facto psychological auto-immune defence against the discomfort of my conscience. Still, wryly, I stubbornly defy regretting it, as it was done in innocence.

Tagging reciprocated. Though I do multi-blog, and this is my newer and perhaps more salient blog.