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Diary: Month of February: Dungeon, Films, interview, stuff
Went down Dungeon every Saturday this month, along with a Friday that was too quiet to bother with in retrospect.
I noticed in the first week that I'd managed to max out my overdraft, which was a bit depressing as I was worried I wouldn't be able to go out for the rest of the month but I managed to sort it out with the job centre. They hadn't actually given me any cash since last year as I'd been told that my job seekers allowance had run out and I'd been only attending for the National Insurance contributions. I'd put through an application for income-based job seekers but heard nothing about it.
I had to ring up the Totton office to check on the progress but there was no record of the application, which was annoying. The woman who I gave it to at the office was also the one that was fairly condescending and also tried to sell me on the importance of getting a qualification that's outdated and been replaced with a qualification that I already have an equivalent too, so I suppose I should have been sceptical from the start. When I finally managed to sort the whole thing out, it turned out that it should have all been transferred over from the start.
On the plus side, it did mean getting a big bulk of money all at once.
I had one quick and relatively painless interview with the NHS for a transport admin position. It was for the blood bank department and the interview went fairly well but despite having pretty much all the qualifications for the job, I've never worked in a position connected with transport before. There's 89 other applicants, so if any of them have good admin skills and transport experience, I suspect they're get it. Oh well. :o/
Dungeon itself was mostly okay although with a few dull nights.
On one I ended up listening to a tedious conversation involving someone trying way too hard to impress everyone with his abilities at various computer games. I don't like people bragging in general, it never comes off well even if it's about something especially remarkable... okay, so you have lots of degrees, good for you, but bragging about it just makes you seem pretentious and smug... okay, so you've got a good high-paying job but bragging about it just makes you sound materialistic... okay, so you've done lots of charity work, very good, but bragging about it makes it seem like you did it for the wrong reasons.
Bragging about computer games is just pathetic though. I enjoy computer games, I think they can be lots of fun, but what they are not is a source of self-worth or a means by which to impress other people. I shouldn't expect much else though, first time I saw this was at a LARP where he was trying to impress people by the amount of influence his character had collected in the game (no one cares! It does not make you a more likeable, respectable or impressive person!)
Still, better than the people I saw on the way home in the Kebab shop. Three girls came rushing in and needed to borrow the phone and their preferred method of persuading the people working their was basically high pitch squealing, was embarrassing to watch. The worst thing is that it worked and not only did they use the phone, they ended up wondering around on the other side and doing 'oh, look at me, how funny, I'm helping' type stuff with the male staff, who looked inordinately pleased with themselves for merely having these thin blondes being friendly to them, which is probably more pathetic than the squealing was - even if they were my type, there's no way I'd demean myself my looking smug just because someone I thought was pretty was talking to me.
Spent my Sundays at LittleCyberAlex's losing at Risk and Settlers.
Lacuna_Raze came over to visit on the last weekend of the month where we celebrated a belated Valentines and caught up on Lost. We finally got to exchange Valentines Cards, which was very nice obviously :o) Was the same weekend that we dragged out Luke with us to Dungeon and tortured Bert between us. Also skipped LittleCyberAlex's for once to give me and Lacuna_Raze a chance to spend more time together :o)
I found out my younger brother is looking into kidney donoring, which hasn't occurred to me before although sounds like a good idea. It was quite a few web searches and phone calls to work out where to start though; turns out that Portsmouth Hospital is the nearest place that does it.
I got all the leaflets and booklets on all the testing I'd have to do near the beginning of the month. and my brother worked out that I was looking into it too when he phoned with very similar details and confused the person on the other end :oP He's always been into blood donation, being on the organ donor list and is registered to donate bone marrow, etc, as well. Neither of us really understand why people wouldn't donate after death; I think the new opt-out scheme will be very good.
I watched a documentary about mummification once where they mummified someone who had donated his body to science and apparently they're now looking for new volunteers for something similar, which would sound interesting if it didn't seem so important to donate organs instead. I think it would be a fair deal though if I get a sarcophagus and a little pyramid, perhaps with a little pit-with-spikes trap to protect my remains etc. I'd also want my kidney back to be preserved in a jar once the person I donated it too is done with it *nods* :o) It's much more likely that I'll just give up whatever bits of me the hospital wants and the rest will be burnt, which seems to be the way most people in my family want things to be done. My parents were talking recently about how you can be burnt in a more eco-friendly cardboard coffin these days, which seems like a good idea.
I haven't donated blood since 2003 or something; I got out of habit and found that I bled slowly anyway. My brother mentioned he was going locally so it was a good excuse to get back into it. Had to update my address when I got there as I must have not been since before I moved back in and then spent an hour waiting and fifteen minutes donating. For the first time, I actually felt dizzy afterwards, although probably only because I got up too soon.
The forms for me and my brother's kidney donations came through in the second week of the month, along with the first dates for the check-ups. It was a bit annoying that the dates were decided on without consulting us as they're supposed to organise them around our commitments. If they had we'd probably have tried to organise them to coincide so he could give me a lift.
I watched a few different films during the month.
Surrogates an interesting concept (everyone lives through their lives through remarkable life-like robots) but it's not set nearly far enough in the future to be feasible given that the vast majority of people use them and they are just so very life-like. (Spoiler) I didn't like the anti-science attitude either, not only do I not like the conclusion that such a way of life is essentially bad, I think it should be an individual choice so the lead character making that decision for everyone was really not justified. Also, it completely ignores the massive level of chaos and devastation (that would inevitably lead to loss of human life) that such a decision should have had. It's also interesting to bear in mind that the film can be taken as an analogy for the Internet and online identities.
I'd seen trailers of '9' and it looked interesting but it lost me towards the end. Nice aesthetics but the ending was bizarre. The ending I thought they were going to go for wasn't going to be brilliant but would have at least made sense, whilst this ending was just bizarre and silly. Spoilers, when I first saw the 2's soul get ripped out through the talisman, I half expected the twist to be that the machine was now controlled by 2's soul. I got a little confused when it turned out that my instinct about the talisman was right (that it did transfer souls) so I thought that maybe the goal was going to be to get all the souls in the machine to 'complete' it and humanise it, not a great Hollywood ending but it would make sense. To find out that the machine was just stealing souls (for no apparent reason) and that the ending would be to get them back, release the dead souls (that wouldn't have ever been lost without the talisman) and that doing so would in some inexplicable way cause rain to fall that (it is implied) will perhaps heal the world... that wasn't satisfying.
I did wonder whether that the 'completing' of the machine was the original ending intended that had been scrapped for a nicer one but when wikiing it (linky) I discovered that 9 (2009) is based on a short animation from 2005 by Shane Acker and the storyline focuses solely on soul stealing - linky. In many ways, the story is more satisfying as a ten minute animation... :o/ End spoilers
I watched Coraline during the week and was surprised to see that it lived up to the hype, which was nice. :o) Very creepy and in an interesting way.
The last of Season II of Being Human was brilliant. Spoilers I like the fact that it's got a lot darker since the first season. I do sometimes like the comedic elements but I think I generally have more enthusiasm for dark and serious drama and Being Human has really started to deliver on that front; everything has gone bleak and not only morally dubious but actually invites you to condemn the characters for their behaviour. I liked how we saw a lot more of the back story for Mitchell too, I think it's important so as to remind us that he's not human. Oh, and the fact that next season looks like we'll find out a lot more about the show's ideas about the afterlife sounds like it's going to be really interesting. :oD
Diary: Month of March: Films and tests
Still finding myself a bit bored quite often, so kept myself entertained by a mixture of watching yet more films and playing Gears of War II with my brother. (okay game, plot line is weird).
District 9 is quite good, I liked it a lot although the tone of the film changes half way through. (mild spoilers) It starts off very much in a documentary style and then drifts more and more into a typical action movie but still seems good. It seems to be a commentary on apartheid but with aliens. That probably makes it more surprising how negative the portrayal of Nigerians are. I can appreciate that the Nigerians we see are supposed to be a specific group of criminals and that apparently can mirror the position of many Nigerian immigrants in South Africa (enough to say it's not fabricated apparently) but the whole cannibalism sub-plot was really seeming to stretch realism and move quickly into the area of racist stereotypes.
Watchman was very good. It's nice to see a super-hero show that's really gritty. The new Batman films are nice for the added realism (as far as is possible with that kind of show) and that it's on the dark side but Watchman goes further and allows the protagonists to be flawed and all too human characters, to the extent of being dislikeable. I read that the ending was changed but, by the sounds of it, the film ending is better.
Also finally watched Iron Man. Was very dubious to begin with as the film tried to impress me with the protagonist's billionaire lifestyle. I appreciate that it was supposed to be self-indulgent and shallow but the whole thing still managed to feel like it was aimed at people who thought that kind of lifestyle was in some way enviable. I'm not saying that I wouldn't appreciate that amount of money but the whole fast cars and one night stands with models type lifestyle just doesn't impress me in the slightest and just ends up feeling more like what I'd expect a not particularly bright adolescent to think was 'cool'. That being said, there are much worse examples of films that try to do this and it did pick up once the plot moved along. I was really glad that I didn't turn it off on the credits and thus noticed the end scene with Samual L Jackson. :o)
I finished reading the Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle, which at first read exactly like the film but with worse dialogue but towards the second half of the book introduced some more interesting scenes that could have worked well. The ending is better described too. There's an attempt to try to create a live-action version of the book, which would be brilliant - linky
Early in the month, my mother gave me a lift up to the Queen Anne's hospital in Portsmouth for all the tests I have to do to check whether I'm eligible for being a Kidney Donor. The first thing they did was smother gel on me to give me an ultrasound and check that I did actually have two kidneys, which I do (good start). I was then X-rayed, had six vials of blood taken, two urine samples and some weird test using charcoal covered sticks to test for some kind of superbug. The strangest bit though was the ECG and having electrodes attached and wires connected to me all over the place. I won't know the results until a week after though.
I hear that you can get between £30-70,000 for a kidney on the black market but it's illegal in most western nation of course, I hear it's easiest to do in the USA. Even if I didn't want to donate a kidney anyway, that kind of money would tempt me :oP Travelling elsewhere to sell a kidney seems like too much hard work to make a charitable act self-interested though and I'm not sure on the legality. Apparently, selling a kidney (even if you have the surgery outside of the UK) is punishable by three years in prison and a fine. :o/
Now, when looking at how organ trading goes on in places like India, I can understand why it's so frowned upon in the west - it's an abuse of the poor, who often don't get the right medical checks and treatment and thus end up with their own kidney problems later in life. That's not right at all. That being said, I think I feel about it in the same way I do prostitution - the sex industry in many places, including parts of the sex industry in the UK, seems to be really horrible but I don't think criminalisation is the way forward.
Obviously, we don't want people being taken advantage of due to either being seriously ill or being poor but criminalising the trade all together leaves the ill person still ill and the poor person still poor. Sending them to prison for attempting a trade clearly does no one any good either. That of course is the same problem with criminalising prostitution, any sex workers who are such because of bad economic positions are still in those positions and criminalising their method of dealing with that has not helped them in any way.
And I suppose the solution is similar as well. Anyone donating a kidney should still have to go through all the same tests and after-care treatment as altruistic donators do now but I don't think allowing a payment would really reduce us to conditions as seen in less scrupulous areas of the world.
I got the call back about my tests a week later and everything looks like it should still be going on. My white blood cell count is apparently a bit low but everything else is normal, so it's all good. I tested positive for exposure to both chicken pox and glandular fervour but that only matters if the recipient hasn't ever had those, which most people have. :o)
With Lacuna_Raze away for most of this month, I've been going down Dungeon twice a week, on the Fridays and the Saturdays, but I'm starting to get a bit fed up about it. Maybe it's because the people I know better aren't coming out as much, which means that I spend most of my time with people I haven't known for very long and a lot of whom are more acquaintances rather than friends. Perhaps I'm just becoming over-familiar with the place and thus it's not easy to look forward to etc. I probably should make an effort to try to find something to occupy myself with that isn't clubbing. I still do gaming on Sundays, usually at LittleCyberAlex's but lately at _pheonixrising's, but that's only one day a week. Need to keep myself more busy :o)
My younger brother seems to be coming out a lot more often now, which is doing something to liven up Dungeon etc (we also seem to be ending up at other people's homes or down Edge more too)
Thoughts: When not to help others
I tend to think that trying to be a good person is not only about trying to help people but knowing how and when to try to help people.
A few road related examples have really driven this home for me lately.
Now, if you're driving down the road and you have to stop in a queue of traffic, then it seems good-mannered to leave a space so people in the side road can pull out. If the side-road is on the side of the road that you're driving on then that's actually part of the Highway Code in Britain, although I hear it's not everywhere. It offers a practical benefit to others at little to no cost to yourself. Even things that don't make a practical difference, like waving/acknowledging other road users who have been courteous to you, are good.
What I've also noticed, however, is that some people are so keen to be seen to be courteous and caring that they forget the end-goal and actually can make things more awkward for users. A few times now I've been in a side-road wanting to pull out and the road I'm pulling out into is entirely clear except for one car who then decides to stop and 'let me out'. There's nothing in front of this car and nothing behind it. If the driver had carried on driving then the road would have been clear and left me with an empty road to pull out into in my own good time. All they've achieved by stopping is wasting their own time and making the situation more awkward.
Now, that's just on the road but I've seen people do similar things in social situations too; people who are so keen to be seen to be helpful and caring that they end up making a problem themselves or at least making one worse. Of course, after creating more drama than there already way (if there was any anyway) they're always the type to go around telling everyone about it or blogging about it to make sure everyone knows what a caring person they are, often with complaints about how dramatic other people are (when usually they're the only ones being dramatic in the first place).
I've found there are a few ways people do this.
There's the sort of person that sees something dramatic going on and, rather than calmly assassin the situation and making a sensible judgement about what they can do to help, decide the best solution is to wade into the middle of things and act as dramatically as the people already involved, which is just throwing wood on an already burning fire.
There's the sort of person that really wants to counsel people on their problems even when not invited. For someone who is just trying to have a good time or even just get on with their life, having someone constantly try to turn the conversation to problems that are none of their business can really be irritating, particularly when it comes with unrequested and patronising levels of pity and 'comfort' not asked for. Yet there is that sort of person who will wonder through life constantly on look-out for the barest sniff of drama that they can dig at to try to drag to the surface, all the time pretending to that it's just them being caring.
Then there's always the sort of person who basically gossips lots about things they have no real knowledge about under the pretence of 'being worried', the only effect of which is to start lots of completely unfounded rumours that said person has to then dispel every time they're brought up.
None of this is to say that a person can't try to 'be there' for people who may want someone to be there, it's just about attitude.
If I see a close friend that looks sad or I think might want to talk about something then I'll likely go over to them and ask how they are. I won't make a fuss and I'm not even likely to ask if there is a problem; I'll just give them the opportunity to talk to me about anything bothering them. If they don't want to talk to me about their problems then I won't press them; they're adults and can make their own decisions.
If I see someone I don't know well who looks down or like they're having problems then I'm not likely to bother them myself; chances are that they won't want to talk to a stranger and I might just be misreading the situation. What I'm more likely to do is say to someone who knows them better 'so and so looks a bit down, you think he's okay?' and then I'll let them make a judgement about how best to deal with the situation.
In some cases, I'll do nothing; sometimes people just want to be left alone. If I'm not asked to help then I won't help. Is sometimes the best option.
In many ways it's like the idiots who see someone who looks sad and shout 'Smile!' at them. Perhaps some of them are deluded enough to think that this is a helpful and nice thing to do. Personally, I find it very rude; most of the time I'm not actually sad or upset, which makes it just obnoxious. Other times I might actually be sad about something and some idiot commanding me to be happy isn't going to solve my problems. Better they just keep their mouths shut really.
Thoughts: Feminist Jargon
I've just been having some interesting discussions about some pieces of feminist jargon.
One definition I don't use is "Sexism = Sex/gender prejudice + Power", whilst the definition I tend to use (and which I think is much, much more common) is "Sexism = Attitudes, beliefs and actions that are prejudiced on grounds of sex or gender"
One set of definitions I do use is "Sex = biological state of being male/female" and "Gender = A persons identification as woman/man" whilst in common use both terms are interchangeable and thus much more vague and fuzzy, hence why I tend to use those terms to express myself more clearly.
There's nothing wrong with having an atypical definition of course, as long as you don't assume everyone shares it. Sometimes the context is enough to establish this but most often I find it best to specify my usage.
With the second example, this is easy enough. Rather than just saying 'sex' and assuming that everyone will know what I mean, I refer specifically to what I'm referring to, whether that be 'body sex', 'chromosome sex' or this notion of 'brain sex' that I'm not sure I believe in. Rather than just say 'gender' and assuming that people will know what I mean, I say 'gender identity', or 'gender role', or 'gender norms'... etc. That helps clear up exactly what I'm talking about and doesn't even require that people distinguish between sex and gender.
Either way, one thing that does bug me is when someone sees someone post about 'sexism' and 'gender/sex' using the typical every-day definitions and posts to say 'That's not correct, the correct definition is...'
Suddenly there's this presumption of authority over the English language and it's not merited. People sometimes try to justify it under the dubious claim that it's the academically correct terms, which I've never seen supported and doesn't seem to be true according to anyone I know who studies these things formally. Their actual source for believing this seems to be 'someone online told me so...'
Now, when it's the first term this is obviously annoying. I don't define sexism that way and I have my reasons. I understand the point being made, it's an attempt to distinguish between institutionalised/culturally engrained prejudice and isolated examples of prejudice that may not be part of a wider social problem. However, not only is it a clumsy way of doing it that attracts a lot of kneejerk reactions from people unfamiliar with it, it's just easier to write 'institutionalised/culturally engrained sexism' rather than rely on everyone knowing this generally more obscure definition (and then act like their uneducated for not knowing it).
Even with the latter, where I personally do find the atypical definitions useful, I don't find the attitude of 'this is correct' useful.
Firstly, sometimes the context doesn't require it. Most of the times when I'm referring to a 'woman' or 'man' in everyday usage the context is very clear and also very vague, so there's nothing to gain by making the distinction; it wouldn't change the content of what I was communicating. Sometimes words are meant to be vague and should remain vague; it's an important part of how we communicate.
Secondly, the way those terms are set out are going to end up reflecting the personal views of whoever does it.
I was first introduced to the difference in the usage in Sociology. There 'gender' was talked as referring to the socially constructed ideas that surround the biological distinction between being male and female. So talking about 'gender' was talking about this socially constructed concept of 'masculine/feminine' and these gender roles, norms and values society had laid out for me.
The next time I encountered it was on the transgender forums I used to frequent as a teenager. There 'gender' meant something that was fairly synonymous with 'brain sex'. Whilst in sociology class, and amongst some feminists, 'gender' was specifically non-biological, here it was being used to refer to something that was very much thought to be biological in origin. When people there talked about 'their gender' they weren't talking about whether they were 'feminine/masculine' or any of that socially constructed nonsense, they were talking about something they felt described their inner nature and felt to be innate.
There's also a common difference in the way that transsexual people tend to talk about gender and how gender-queer people talk about gender, which I discussed recently: linky. The conclusion of my scribblings there being that what was happening was that two different groups were trying to bend a limited amount of concepts (just two) to describe their experiences and situation, so naturally the words are used differently as to meet their own needs.
And that's okay.
Of course, it opens up plenty of room for misunderstanding but the best way to avoid this is "When I use this term I mean...' but not 'this is what I find it useful to mean by this term, it should be used that way by everyone' regardless of whether that makes it harder to a different group with different interests to express themselves.
Thirdly, by suggesting that the authority on language usage should be academia (even supposing that origin is genuine for a moment...) then what we are saying is that a predominately white, middle-class and cisgendered group should decide on the very language in which we discuss these issues, which doesn't seem a good idea at all.
I remember once a psychology undergrad online trying to lecture me on the meaning of 'transvestites' and me not being very impressed. I don't care what may or may not be commonly accepted jargon in academia, I'll use language the way it is useful for me to do so. I also use 'decelerate' to mean 'slow down' without any shame at all.
Fourthly, supposing we did manage to create a more precise set of terms that did manage to suit everyone's needs and let's say it didn't turn out to be so unwieldy a set of jargon as to be useless...
Are we expecting everyone to learn this new vocabulary before sharing their experiences about gender? Don't we run the risk of excluding people who simply haven't had the time to educate themselves on the new academically approved set of definitions?
And what gives us the right to tell them that this is the best way to talk about their gender issues anyway?
Thoughts: National Identity
Been discussing/debating national identity with some Americans online again. The examples vary but to pick the closest to home, the issue was how appropriate it is for an American, who was born in America and has lived in America all their life and never left America, to claim to be British.
I think the times that something clearly has gone wrong is when an American online asks me where I'm from and I say 'I'm British' and they say 'me too!' despite having never even been to Britain. Even if they were British in some sense, they're clearly not British in the sense I am so 'Me too!' is clearly an inappropriate reaction.
Despite what racists like Nick Griffin might say about how 'there's no such thing as a Black Welshman', there clearly are people who are British that are not white nor necessarily have any white ancestors. In this sense of the term, being British has nothing to do with ancestry. People who are black or of Asian descent can be as British as I am (and more British then the aforementioned Americans). I myself would not feel less British if I discovered all my great grandparents were foreign.
It's not really about culture or heritage either. I wouldn't consider myself suddenly 'not British' because I rejected both mainstream and minority British culture. Culture is just the popular values, norms, attitudes, behaviours (etc) of a group of people, so British culture is the combined values, norms (etc) of British people. It's not culture that determines who is British, it's the British who determine what is British culture.
Hence when we see lots of immigration from Asia, Africa or the Caribbean, they don't need to conform to mainstream British culture to become British. They become British because they become part of British society. Their values, norms and behaviours become a British subculture even if mainstream British culture has little to no impact on the way they think, feel and behave.
I don't want to define it purely in legal terms however. I may be British but I'm also English and that doesn't appear on my passport. I also consider myself European even though that's not on my passport either. I say I am these things because I am a part of English and British society, which are European societies (societies in Europe). Even if I leave Britain to live elsewhere, I have still spent a significant (arguably the most important part of my life for my character formation) in British society.
When I say 'I'm British', I'm not really saying something radically different to when I say 'I'm a Southerner'. Now, my mother is from Liverpool, but that doesn't make me half-northerner or half-scouse no more than having welsh people on my father's side makes me 'part Welsh'. Being a southerner is something that stays with me, if I moved to the North then I would still think of myself as being a southerner but it's not about ancestry, heritage or culture; it's about the fact that I grew up in the South. It's a regional identity that is dependant on me personally having that kind of immediate connection with the region of South England.
My parents were watching a stand-up comedy by a Canadian of Indian descent recently. It was a mixed bag for me but one thing stood out. In it he described how he once took a holiday to India. He was feeling very full of Indian identity when planning it and all the way on the plane. He took one step out into India and then suddenly he felt very Canadian. I'd imagine that's how a lot of Americans who claim to be British would feel the moment they got off a plane and trod on British soil.
In a way, I might have thought America would be the least likely nation to adopt this attitude. Most Americans are not of ethnic descents indigenous to the land they live in, yet they are American. Clearly 'American' does not refer to ancestry, so it should not surprise them that other national identities don't either. I suppose the mass immigration that replaced the indigenous population of America is just more recent, hence the difference. In the UK, lots of different ethnic groups have come, settled and then become British. Some Americans talk about themselves as a mongrel nation citing all the different European nationalities they are descended from without realising that those European nationalities are just as mongrel as themselves; there's no such thing as a 'pure-bred English person'.
Not to say there's anything wrong with taking an interest in your ancestry or even being proud of it if you so like, just seems silly to confuse having ancestors who were X nationality and being of X nationality themselves.
Link: How using a male name changed this writers career - linky (reminds me of this lj entry: linky)
Link: On Masculinity by guingel - linky
Link: Girls gone anti-feminist - linky
Link: Why strong female characters are bad - linky
Link: Compare and Contrast: Articles about men's and women's health - linky
Link: Penny Red on the Veil - linky
Went down Dungeon every Saturday this month, along with a Friday that was too quiet to bother with in retrospect.
I noticed in the first week that I'd managed to max out my overdraft, which was a bit depressing as I was worried I wouldn't be able to go out for the rest of the month but I managed to sort it out with the job centre. They hadn't actually given me any cash since last year as I'd been told that my job seekers allowance had run out and I'd been only attending for the National Insurance contributions. I'd put through an application for income-based job seekers but heard nothing about it.
I had to ring up the Totton office to check on the progress but there was no record of the application, which was annoying. The woman who I gave it to at the office was also the one that was fairly condescending and also tried to sell me on the importance of getting a qualification that's outdated and been replaced with a qualification that I already have an equivalent too, so I suppose I should have been sceptical from the start. When I finally managed to sort the whole thing out, it turned out that it should have all been transferred over from the start.
On the plus side, it did mean getting a big bulk of money all at once.
I had one quick and relatively painless interview with the NHS for a transport admin position. It was for the blood bank department and the interview went fairly well but despite having pretty much all the qualifications for the job, I've never worked in a position connected with transport before. There's 89 other applicants, so if any of them have good admin skills and transport experience, I suspect they're get it. Oh well. :o/
Dungeon itself was mostly okay although with a few dull nights.
On one I ended up listening to a tedious conversation involving someone trying way too hard to impress everyone with his abilities at various computer games. I don't like people bragging in general, it never comes off well even if it's about something especially remarkable... okay, so you have lots of degrees, good for you, but bragging about it just makes you seem pretentious and smug... okay, so you've got a good high-paying job but bragging about it just makes you sound materialistic... okay, so you've done lots of charity work, very good, but bragging about it makes it seem like you did it for the wrong reasons.
Bragging about computer games is just pathetic though. I enjoy computer games, I think they can be lots of fun, but what they are not is a source of self-worth or a means by which to impress other people. I shouldn't expect much else though, first time I saw this was at a LARP where he was trying to impress people by the amount of influence his character had collected in the game (no one cares! It does not make you a more likeable, respectable or impressive person!)
Still, better than the people I saw on the way home in the Kebab shop. Three girls came rushing in and needed to borrow the phone and their preferred method of persuading the people working their was basically high pitch squealing, was embarrassing to watch. The worst thing is that it worked and not only did they use the phone, they ended up wondering around on the other side and doing 'oh, look at me, how funny, I'm helping' type stuff with the male staff, who looked inordinately pleased with themselves for merely having these thin blondes being friendly to them, which is probably more pathetic than the squealing was - even if they were my type, there's no way I'd demean myself my looking smug just because someone I thought was pretty was talking to me.
Spent my Sundays at LittleCyberAlex's losing at Risk and Settlers.
Lacuna_Raze came over to visit on the last weekend of the month where we celebrated a belated Valentines and caught up on Lost. We finally got to exchange Valentines Cards, which was very nice obviously :o) Was the same weekend that we dragged out Luke with us to Dungeon and tortured Bert between us. Also skipped LittleCyberAlex's for once to give me and Lacuna_Raze a chance to spend more time together :o)
I found out my younger brother is looking into kidney donoring, which hasn't occurred to me before although sounds like a good idea. It was quite a few web searches and phone calls to work out where to start though; turns out that Portsmouth Hospital is the nearest place that does it.
I got all the leaflets and booklets on all the testing I'd have to do near the beginning of the month. and my brother worked out that I was looking into it too when he phoned with very similar details and confused the person on the other end :oP He's always been into blood donation, being on the organ donor list and is registered to donate bone marrow, etc, as well. Neither of us really understand why people wouldn't donate after death; I think the new opt-out scheme will be very good.
I watched a documentary about mummification once where they mummified someone who had donated his body to science and apparently they're now looking for new volunteers for something similar, which would sound interesting if it didn't seem so important to donate organs instead. I think it would be a fair deal though if I get a sarcophagus and a little pyramid, perhaps with a little pit-with-spikes trap to protect my remains etc. I'd also want my kidney back to be preserved in a jar once the person I donated it too is done with it *nods* :o) It's much more likely that I'll just give up whatever bits of me the hospital wants and the rest will be burnt, which seems to be the way most people in my family want things to be done. My parents were talking recently about how you can be burnt in a more eco-friendly cardboard coffin these days, which seems like a good idea.
I haven't donated blood since 2003 or something; I got out of habit and found that I bled slowly anyway. My brother mentioned he was going locally so it was a good excuse to get back into it. Had to update my address when I got there as I must have not been since before I moved back in and then spent an hour waiting and fifteen minutes donating. For the first time, I actually felt dizzy afterwards, although probably only because I got up too soon.
The forms for me and my brother's kidney donations came through in the second week of the month, along with the first dates for the check-ups. It was a bit annoying that the dates were decided on without consulting us as they're supposed to organise them around our commitments. If they had we'd probably have tried to organise them to coincide so he could give me a lift.
I watched a few different films during the month.
Surrogates an interesting concept (everyone lives through their lives through remarkable life-like robots) but it's not set nearly far enough in the future to be feasible given that the vast majority of people use them and they are just so very life-like. (Spoiler) I didn't like the anti-science attitude either, not only do I not like the conclusion that such a way of life is essentially bad, I think it should be an individual choice so the lead character making that decision for everyone was really not justified. Also, it completely ignores the massive level of chaos and devastation (that would inevitably lead to loss of human life) that such a decision should have had. It's also interesting to bear in mind that the film can be taken as an analogy for the Internet and online identities.
I'd seen trailers of '9' and it looked interesting but it lost me towards the end. Nice aesthetics but the ending was bizarre. The ending I thought they were going to go for wasn't going to be brilliant but would have at least made sense, whilst this ending was just bizarre and silly. Spoilers, when I first saw the 2's soul get ripped out through the talisman, I half expected the twist to be that the machine was now controlled by 2's soul. I got a little confused when it turned out that my instinct about the talisman was right (that it did transfer souls) so I thought that maybe the goal was going to be to get all the souls in the machine to 'complete' it and humanise it, not a great Hollywood ending but it would make sense. To find out that the machine was just stealing souls (for no apparent reason) and that the ending would be to get them back, release the dead souls (that wouldn't have ever been lost without the talisman) and that doing so would in some inexplicable way cause rain to fall that (it is implied) will perhaps heal the world... that wasn't satisfying.
I did wonder whether that the 'completing' of the machine was the original ending intended that had been scrapped for a nicer one but when wikiing it (linky) I discovered that 9 (2009) is based on a short animation from 2005 by Shane Acker and the storyline focuses solely on soul stealing - linky. In many ways, the story is more satisfying as a ten minute animation... :o/ End spoilers
I watched Coraline during the week and was surprised to see that it lived up to the hype, which was nice. :o) Very creepy and in an interesting way.
The last of Season II of Being Human was brilliant. Spoilers I like the fact that it's got a lot darker since the first season. I do sometimes like the comedic elements but I think I generally have more enthusiasm for dark and serious drama and Being Human has really started to deliver on that front; everything has gone bleak and not only morally dubious but actually invites you to condemn the characters for their behaviour. I liked how we saw a lot more of the back story for Mitchell too, I think it's important so as to remind us that he's not human. Oh, and the fact that next season looks like we'll find out a lot more about the show's ideas about the afterlife sounds like it's going to be really interesting. :oD
Diary: Month of March: Films and tests
Still finding myself a bit bored quite often, so kept myself entertained by a mixture of watching yet more films and playing Gears of War II with my brother. (okay game, plot line is weird).
District 9 is quite good, I liked it a lot although the tone of the film changes half way through. (mild spoilers) It starts off very much in a documentary style and then drifts more and more into a typical action movie but still seems good. It seems to be a commentary on apartheid but with aliens. That probably makes it more surprising how negative the portrayal of Nigerians are. I can appreciate that the Nigerians we see are supposed to be a specific group of criminals and that apparently can mirror the position of many Nigerian immigrants in South Africa (enough to say it's not fabricated apparently) but the whole cannibalism sub-plot was really seeming to stretch realism and move quickly into the area of racist stereotypes.
Watchman was very good. It's nice to see a super-hero show that's really gritty. The new Batman films are nice for the added realism (as far as is possible with that kind of show) and that it's on the dark side but Watchman goes further and allows the protagonists to be flawed and all too human characters, to the extent of being dislikeable. I read that the ending was changed but, by the sounds of it, the film ending is better.
Also finally watched Iron Man. Was very dubious to begin with as the film tried to impress me with the protagonist's billionaire lifestyle. I appreciate that it was supposed to be self-indulgent and shallow but the whole thing still managed to feel like it was aimed at people who thought that kind of lifestyle was in some way enviable. I'm not saying that I wouldn't appreciate that amount of money but the whole fast cars and one night stands with models type lifestyle just doesn't impress me in the slightest and just ends up feeling more like what I'd expect a not particularly bright adolescent to think was 'cool'. That being said, there are much worse examples of films that try to do this and it did pick up once the plot moved along. I was really glad that I didn't turn it off on the credits and thus noticed the end scene with Samual L Jackson. :o)
I finished reading the Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle, which at first read exactly like the film but with worse dialogue but towards the second half of the book introduced some more interesting scenes that could have worked well. The ending is better described too. There's an attempt to try to create a live-action version of the book, which would be brilliant - linky
Early in the month, my mother gave me a lift up to the Queen Anne's hospital in Portsmouth for all the tests I have to do to check whether I'm eligible for being a Kidney Donor. The first thing they did was smother gel on me to give me an ultrasound and check that I did actually have two kidneys, which I do (good start). I was then X-rayed, had six vials of blood taken, two urine samples and some weird test using charcoal covered sticks to test for some kind of superbug. The strangest bit though was the ECG and having electrodes attached and wires connected to me all over the place. I won't know the results until a week after though.
I hear that you can get between £30-70,000 for a kidney on the black market but it's illegal in most western nation of course, I hear it's easiest to do in the USA. Even if I didn't want to donate a kidney anyway, that kind of money would tempt me :oP Travelling elsewhere to sell a kidney seems like too much hard work to make a charitable act self-interested though and I'm not sure on the legality. Apparently, selling a kidney (even if you have the surgery outside of the UK) is punishable by three years in prison and a fine. :o/
Now, when looking at how organ trading goes on in places like India, I can understand why it's so frowned upon in the west - it's an abuse of the poor, who often don't get the right medical checks and treatment and thus end up with their own kidney problems later in life. That's not right at all. That being said, I think I feel about it in the same way I do prostitution - the sex industry in many places, including parts of the sex industry in the UK, seems to be really horrible but I don't think criminalisation is the way forward.
Obviously, we don't want people being taken advantage of due to either being seriously ill or being poor but criminalising the trade all together leaves the ill person still ill and the poor person still poor. Sending them to prison for attempting a trade clearly does no one any good either. That of course is the same problem with criminalising prostitution, any sex workers who are such because of bad economic positions are still in those positions and criminalising their method of dealing with that has not helped them in any way.
And I suppose the solution is similar as well. Anyone donating a kidney should still have to go through all the same tests and after-care treatment as altruistic donators do now but I don't think allowing a payment would really reduce us to conditions as seen in less scrupulous areas of the world.
I got the call back about my tests a week later and everything looks like it should still be going on. My white blood cell count is apparently a bit low but everything else is normal, so it's all good. I tested positive for exposure to both chicken pox and glandular fervour but that only matters if the recipient hasn't ever had those, which most people have. :o)
With Lacuna_Raze away for most of this month, I've been going down Dungeon twice a week, on the Fridays and the Saturdays, but I'm starting to get a bit fed up about it. Maybe it's because the people I know better aren't coming out as much, which means that I spend most of my time with people I haven't known for very long and a lot of whom are more acquaintances rather than friends. Perhaps I'm just becoming over-familiar with the place and thus it's not easy to look forward to etc. I probably should make an effort to try to find something to occupy myself with that isn't clubbing. I still do gaming on Sundays, usually at LittleCyberAlex's but lately at _pheonixrising's, but that's only one day a week. Need to keep myself more busy :o)
My younger brother seems to be coming out a lot more often now, which is doing something to liven up Dungeon etc (we also seem to be ending up at other people's homes or down Edge more too)
Thoughts: When not to help others
I tend to think that trying to be a good person is not only about trying to help people but knowing how and when to try to help people.
A few road related examples have really driven this home for me lately.
Now, if you're driving down the road and you have to stop in a queue of traffic, then it seems good-mannered to leave a space so people in the side road can pull out. If the side-road is on the side of the road that you're driving on then that's actually part of the Highway Code in Britain, although I hear it's not everywhere. It offers a practical benefit to others at little to no cost to yourself. Even things that don't make a practical difference, like waving/acknowledging other road users who have been courteous to you, are good.
What I've also noticed, however, is that some people are so keen to be seen to be courteous and caring that they forget the end-goal and actually can make things more awkward for users. A few times now I've been in a side-road wanting to pull out and the road I'm pulling out into is entirely clear except for one car who then decides to stop and 'let me out'. There's nothing in front of this car and nothing behind it. If the driver had carried on driving then the road would have been clear and left me with an empty road to pull out into in my own good time. All they've achieved by stopping is wasting their own time and making the situation more awkward.
Now, that's just on the road but I've seen people do similar things in social situations too; people who are so keen to be seen to be helpful and caring that they end up making a problem themselves or at least making one worse. Of course, after creating more drama than there already way (if there was any anyway) they're always the type to go around telling everyone about it or blogging about it to make sure everyone knows what a caring person they are, often with complaints about how dramatic other people are (when usually they're the only ones being dramatic in the first place).
I've found there are a few ways people do this.
There's the sort of person that sees something dramatic going on and, rather than calmly assassin the situation and making a sensible judgement about what they can do to help, decide the best solution is to wade into the middle of things and act as dramatically as the people already involved, which is just throwing wood on an already burning fire.
There's the sort of person that really wants to counsel people on their problems even when not invited. For someone who is just trying to have a good time or even just get on with their life, having someone constantly try to turn the conversation to problems that are none of their business can really be irritating, particularly when it comes with unrequested and patronising levels of pity and 'comfort' not asked for. Yet there is that sort of person who will wonder through life constantly on look-out for the barest sniff of drama that they can dig at to try to drag to the surface, all the time pretending to that it's just them being caring.
Then there's always the sort of person who basically gossips lots about things they have no real knowledge about under the pretence of 'being worried', the only effect of which is to start lots of completely unfounded rumours that said person has to then dispel every time they're brought up.
None of this is to say that a person can't try to 'be there' for people who may want someone to be there, it's just about attitude.
If I see a close friend that looks sad or I think might want to talk about something then I'll likely go over to them and ask how they are. I won't make a fuss and I'm not even likely to ask if there is a problem; I'll just give them the opportunity to talk to me about anything bothering them. If they don't want to talk to me about their problems then I won't press them; they're adults and can make their own decisions.
If I see someone I don't know well who looks down or like they're having problems then I'm not likely to bother them myself; chances are that they won't want to talk to a stranger and I might just be misreading the situation. What I'm more likely to do is say to someone who knows them better 'so and so looks a bit down, you think he's okay?' and then I'll let them make a judgement about how best to deal with the situation.
In some cases, I'll do nothing; sometimes people just want to be left alone. If I'm not asked to help then I won't help. Is sometimes the best option.
In many ways it's like the idiots who see someone who looks sad and shout 'Smile!' at them. Perhaps some of them are deluded enough to think that this is a helpful and nice thing to do. Personally, I find it very rude; most of the time I'm not actually sad or upset, which makes it just obnoxious. Other times I might actually be sad about something and some idiot commanding me to be happy isn't going to solve my problems. Better they just keep their mouths shut really.
Thoughts: Feminist Jargon
I've just been having some interesting discussions about some pieces of feminist jargon.
One definition I don't use is "Sexism = Sex/gender prejudice + Power", whilst the definition I tend to use (and which I think is much, much more common) is "Sexism = Attitudes, beliefs and actions that are prejudiced on grounds of sex or gender"
One set of definitions I do use is "Sex = biological state of being male/female" and "Gender = A persons identification as woman/man" whilst in common use both terms are interchangeable and thus much more vague and fuzzy, hence why I tend to use those terms to express myself more clearly.
There's nothing wrong with having an atypical definition of course, as long as you don't assume everyone shares it. Sometimes the context is enough to establish this but most often I find it best to specify my usage.
With the second example, this is easy enough. Rather than just saying 'sex' and assuming that everyone will know what I mean, I refer specifically to what I'm referring to, whether that be 'body sex', 'chromosome sex' or this notion of 'brain sex' that I'm not sure I believe in. Rather than just say 'gender' and assuming that people will know what I mean, I say 'gender identity', or 'gender role', or 'gender norms'... etc. That helps clear up exactly what I'm talking about and doesn't even require that people distinguish between sex and gender.
Either way, one thing that does bug me is when someone sees someone post about 'sexism' and 'gender/sex' using the typical every-day definitions and posts to say 'That's not correct, the correct definition is...'
Suddenly there's this presumption of authority over the English language and it's not merited. People sometimes try to justify it under the dubious claim that it's the academically correct terms, which I've never seen supported and doesn't seem to be true according to anyone I know who studies these things formally. Their actual source for believing this seems to be 'someone online told me so...'
Now, when it's the first term this is obviously annoying. I don't define sexism that way and I have my reasons. I understand the point being made, it's an attempt to distinguish between institutionalised/culturally engrained prejudice and isolated examples of prejudice that may not be part of a wider social problem. However, not only is it a clumsy way of doing it that attracts a lot of kneejerk reactions from people unfamiliar with it, it's just easier to write 'institutionalised/culturally engrained sexism' rather than rely on everyone knowing this generally more obscure definition (and then act like their uneducated for not knowing it).
Even with the latter, where I personally do find the atypical definitions useful, I don't find the attitude of 'this is correct' useful.
Firstly, sometimes the context doesn't require it. Most of the times when I'm referring to a 'woman' or 'man' in everyday usage the context is very clear and also very vague, so there's nothing to gain by making the distinction; it wouldn't change the content of what I was communicating. Sometimes words are meant to be vague and should remain vague; it's an important part of how we communicate.
Secondly, the way those terms are set out are going to end up reflecting the personal views of whoever does it.
I was first introduced to the difference in the usage in Sociology. There 'gender' was talked as referring to the socially constructed ideas that surround the biological distinction between being male and female. So talking about 'gender' was talking about this socially constructed concept of 'masculine/feminine' and these gender roles, norms and values society had laid out for me.
The next time I encountered it was on the transgender forums I used to frequent as a teenager. There 'gender' meant something that was fairly synonymous with 'brain sex'. Whilst in sociology class, and amongst some feminists, 'gender' was specifically non-biological, here it was being used to refer to something that was very much thought to be biological in origin. When people there talked about 'their gender' they weren't talking about whether they were 'feminine/masculine' or any of that socially constructed nonsense, they were talking about something they felt described their inner nature and felt to be innate.
There's also a common difference in the way that transsexual people tend to talk about gender and how gender-queer people talk about gender, which I discussed recently: linky. The conclusion of my scribblings there being that what was happening was that two different groups were trying to bend a limited amount of concepts (just two) to describe their experiences and situation, so naturally the words are used differently as to meet their own needs.
And that's okay.
Of course, it opens up plenty of room for misunderstanding but the best way to avoid this is "When I use this term I mean...' but not 'this is what I find it useful to mean by this term, it should be used that way by everyone' regardless of whether that makes it harder to a different group with different interests to express themselves.
Thirdly, by suggesting that the authority on language usage should be academia (even supposing that origin is genuine for a moment...) then what we are saying is that a predominately white, middle-class and cisgendered group should decide on the very language in which we discuss these issues, which doesn't seem a good idea at all.
I remember once a psychology undergrad online trying to lecture me on the meaning of 'transvestites' and me not being very impressed. I don't care what may or may not be commonly accepted jargon in academia, I'll use language the way it is useful for me to do so. I also use 'decelerate' to mean 'slow down' without any shame at all.
Fourthly, supposing we did manage to create a more precise set of terms that did manage to suit everyone's needs and let's say it didn't turn out to be so unwieldy a set of jargon as to be useless...
Are we expecting everyone to learn this new vocabulary before sharing their experiences about gender? Don't we run the risk of excluding people who simply haven't had the time to educate themselves on the new academically approved set of definitions?
And what gives us the right to tell them that this is the best way to talk about their gender issues anyway?
Thoughts: National Identity
Been discussing/debating national identity with some Americans online again. The examples vary but to pick the closest to home, the issue was how appropriate it is for an American, who was born in America and has lived in America all their life and never left America, to claim to be British.
I think the times that something clearly has gone wrong is when an American online asks me where I'm from and I say 'I'm British' and they say 'me too!' despite having never even been to Britain. Even if they were British in some sense, they're clearly not British in the sense I am so 'Me too!' is clearly an inappropriate reaction.
Despite what racists like Nick Griffin might say about how 'there's no such thing as a Black Welshman', there clearly are people who are British that are not white nor necessarily have any white ancestors. In this sense of the term, being British has nothing to do with ancestry. People who are black or of Asian descent can be as British as I am (and more British then the aforementioned Americans). I myself would not feel less British if I discovered all my great grandparents were foreign.
It's not really about culture or heritage either. I wouldn't consider myself suddenly 'not British' because I rejected both mainstream and minority British culture. Culture is just the popular values, norms, attitudes, behaviours (etc) of a group of people, so British culture is the combined values, norms (etc) of British people. It's not culture that determines who is British, it's the British who determine what is British culture.
Hence when we see lots of immigration from Asia, Africa or the Caribbean, they don't need to conform to mainstream British culture to become British. They become British because they become part of British society. Their values, norms and behaviours become a British subculture even if mainstream British culture has little to no impact on the way they think, feel and behave.
I don't want to define it purely in legal terms however. I may be British but I'm also English and that doesn't appear on my passport. I also consider myself European even though that's not on my passport either. I say I am these things because I am a part of English and British society, which are European societies (societies in Europe). Even if I leave Britain to live elsewhere, I have still spent a significant (arguably the most important part of my life for my character formation) in British society.
When I say 'I'm British', I'm not really saying something radically different to when I say 'I'm a Southerner'. Now, my mother is from Liverpool, but that doesn't make me half-northerner or half-scouse no more than having welsh people on my father's side makes me 'part Welsh'. Being a southerner is something that stays with me, if I moved to the North then I would still think of myself as being a southerner but it's not about ancestry, heritage or culture; it's about the fact that I grew up in the South. It's a regional identity that is dependant on me personally having that kind of immediate connection with the region of South England.
My parents were watching a stand-up comedy by a Canadian of Indian descent recently. It was a mixed bag for me but one thing stood out. In it he described how he once took a holiday to India. He was feeling very full of Indian identity when planning it and all the way on the plane. He took one step out into India and then suddenly he felt very Canadian. I'd imagine that's how a lot of Americans who claim to be British would feel the moment they got off a plane and trod on British soil.
In a way, I might have thought America would be the least likely nation to adopt this attitude. Most Americans are not of ethnic descents indigenous to the land they live in, yet they are American. Clearly 'American' does not refer to ancestry, so it should not surprise them that other national identities don't either. I suppose the mass immigration that replaced the indigenous population of America is just more recent, hence the difference. In the UK, lots of different ethnic groups have come, settled and then become British. Some Americans talk about themselves as a mongrel nation citing all the different European nationalities they are descended from without realising that those European nationalities are just as mongrel as themselves; there's no such thing as a 'pure-bred English person'.
Not to say there's anything wrong with taking an interest in your ancestry or even being proud of it if you so like, just seems silly to confuse having ancestors who were X nationality and being of X nationality themselves.
Link: How using a male name changed this writers career - linky (reminds me of this lj entry: linky)
Link: On Masculinity by guingel - linky
Link: Girls gone anti-feminist - linky
Link: Why strong female characters are bad - linky
Link: Compare and Contrast: Articles about men's and women's health - linky
Link: Penny Red on the Veil - linky