Down With The Sickness - Health Services in this country need some work.

This may come across as a whinge about 'poor me, I feel so shit' the actual intention is more of a 'if I'm in such a crap place right now, imagine how much worse an awful lot of people have it'. It's also really long. Sorry.

I am sick. I have been somewhat sick for more than 20 years, for those of you who have no experience of chronic illness (count your blessings) please try to understand that it isn't even close to what it's like to catch something, even something nasty, and then get over it. There is no getting over it. And I've never been able to adequately explain to people who don't live with it how different it is. 

The Spoon Theory is one of the better ways I know of. Another way I've used is this; imagine you've spent the whole weekend partying Friday night and Saturday night and then you slept in 'til mid afternoon Sunday. You get up and you feel pretty crappy right? You've probably slept through the worst of the hangover but you sure as hell don't feel yourself. You're tired, you can't focus and you just want to be left alone. There's probably some random discomfort in there too. I feel like that all the time. All the time. 

Right now there's a complication for me. I have developed some other sickness. About a month ago I got what seemed like a pretty straightforward, if nasty cold, streaming eyes and nose, chest full of gunk. I took a couple of days off work thinking a bit of rest and I'd be ok - it usually takes me a bit longer than normal to recover from the lingering traces of a cold but otherwise I follow a pretty normal pattern of recovery. But this 'cold' just won't go away, and the coughing has resulted in me pulling a muscle in my chest - so I'm in pain and it's hard to breath. For a whole month so far. And a couple of days off has turned into more than 3 weeks. Which I can't afford. This is adding to an already very stressful time for me and a time when I am basically deeply unhappy with the universe in general. I have to move house inside the next month. Kitty turns 18 very soon. (this has some good points as well as some awkward ones). I'm still in the 3 months probational period at work and they must be totally thrilled at a new employee being so utterly useless to them at peak period. Thanks National, you gave them an easy out there. I have no savings. I will get next to no, if not actually no pay this month. I have the energy levels of a hibernating tortoise.

Let's roll back a little bit to the point at which I reentered the workforce after a quite long absence trying to get my health back together. I live in Christchurch, New Zealand - the broken city. It used to be the Garden City, and I'm sure it will be again eventually, but for now it's the Broken City. And when it broke in 2011 I got up to help. First with the Student Volunteer Army, where I helped out in the kitchens providing food for the volunteers and as many extra meals every day as we could throw together to take to the eastern suburbs where the most damage was. When the kitchen was no longer required I went to the Red Cross, where I started out as a volunteer entering data to help people join the dots of their lives back together. From there I was offered a job working with Earthquake grant funding, where I stayed for some time. I found that the stress of being back in the workforce was alleviated by the knowledge that I was directly helping people. I like working in Humanitarian Aid. I'm not sure how much Humanitarian Aid likes me working in it however. I can be an abrasive person when I try - though the douchebag generally only surfaces if I genuinely feel that something is being done badly. I'm not going to go into that whole kettle of fish - and I must clarify here that I'm not even slightly suggesting that anything was being misappropriated in the slightest, there was never any hint at all of anything dodgy. They ran out of excuses to keep me around, and I moved on to Neighbourhood Support temporarily to assist with a great little project that will make things a whole lot easier if there is another major (or even minor) incident in Christchurch - I hope the rest of the country picks up on this project it's a very good plan. End cryptic non reference. I want to be able to work in Humanitarian Aid again. Or as a political adviser, because I have some experience of being in shitty situations, and I have a healthy mix of compassion and pragmatism. And it seems like politics could do with more people like me.

All this got me back into the workforce; this is a good thing that I am quite happy about, but I'm finding that working a job in the private sector - while a good job for a nice company - isn't satisfying the part of me that wants to do good things in the world and that my stress levels are starting to climb again. I could probably control that if I didn't have a zillion other things all at once too. Housing New Zealand 'need' to repair the units I live in - which means that all of the tenants are being turfed out (in theory they are finding new places for us but in practice there isn't all that much to go around) it looks like they've found a new place for me, it's a nice little house that I'm pretty sure will be just fine, though it looks like I'm not actually going to get to see inside it to judge how right it is before we have to agree to take it. I can live with that; a government subsidised roof over my (and my daughters) head is a great thing and I'm hardly going to be overly choosy about it. But I've been sick for the last month. I'm not better. Turns out it may even be something quite serious. And sometime in the next month I have to move. And I won't get much in the way of pay this month. And with having had some three months ish of no pay before I started this job I have nothing up my sleeve and limited family in the city (I do have friends and I will be begging for assistance there - but this just makes me luckier than many) so now I come to the actual crux of this collection of issues...

I SHOULD be able to ask for help. But for a variety of reasons this is a complex puzzle of added stress and crap. The biggest probelm for me is that simply approaching WINZ is a known stresser. The atmosphere of the place is one of 'us and them'. I would not for a moment say that all the staff are heartless bastards, I have encountered many staff who seem to genuinely want to help and have even done things that go against what appears to be the general policy of the place. The general policy being 'give them the least you can possibly get away with' with a healthy dose of 'make damn sure they know exactly how little you think of them while you're at it'. 

The general atmosphere there has caused me many issues over the years - which is not to say that they aren't at least somewhat my fault, but you see part of my illness actually makes it really hard for me to handle high stress situations, so while I won't actively lie about anything I will potentially omit the full details if I think they will result in either confrontation or humiliation. There is a culture there of only helping a little bit, the less the better, that I think is in need of a lot of scrutiny. To drag some further meaning out of the old idea that give a man a fish he eats today, teach a man to fish he eats forever.... If you give someone only the means to continue to exist at the same miserable level, then yes they continue to exist but there is no hope of improvement. No hope of them making something better for themselves and by extension making things better for everyone. While on the benefit my medication was paid for and my doctors visits - but treatment like ongoing physical exercise or therapeutic massage - both of which would likely have made my life far more comfortable and potentially made me more able to function at a 'normal' level were denied to me. Where's the sense in that? A request that rather than paying an ongoing sum for bus services, that they simply advance me for a bike so that I could get mild exercise and get places was met with incredulity. Seriously, they would apparently rather pay for my buses forever than pay for a bike once. In theory I can get a community services card still - but to be quite frank most of the time it would make so little difference that it simply isn't worth the hassle of dealing with WINZ - I did apply shortly after I came off the benefit, but I got a 'we need a birth certificate or other proof of blah blah blah...' do they seriously not hold records of this stuff? Do we live in the digital age or not? The paperwork hoops are another of the hurdles that they like to change the height on - think you've handed us everything we asked for? Think again! We need you to get this from the IRD or that from HNZ or .....  So, you would like me to approach ANOTHER GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT, another government department that is overworked, and ask them to send me something which I can then give to you in the hopes that this time I have the right thing. Why the hell is this so hard - Government departments are SUPPOSED to be able to communicate with each other - and for the sake of getting a benefit who in their right mind would ever ever ever say 'no you can't request my information'? Seriously you idiots; if I'm trying to rip you off chances are I'm ALREADY ripping them off. Can we please work from the assumption that most people are not actually trying to rip the system off and that most people are probably not 'dole bludging losers'? This unbelievable culture of beneficiary bashing is doing my head in. If you've never had to claim a benefit; never had to ask for any kind of hand out; never had to deal with unexpected disaster in your life... I'm happy for you, really I am. I hope that huge numbers of you exist out there. But life is not always black and white, and sometimes stuff happens that is beyond our control. And very very few people who are met with hardship want it to stay that way. There are a number of apparently intelligent people out there who seem determined to believe that there are hordes of people out there who will choose to live on a government handout if they can, that it's easy street. Having to decide whether keeping the power on is more important than eating for the next couple of days is not all that entertaining. Not going to the doctor when you really really should but can't afford to, not great. Sitting in the Emergency department for 6 hours because you've been classified as non-urgent but can't afford to go to a clinic at weekend prices. Frickin' not awesome. Knowing that your kids are falling behind because you can't afford the technology the other kids have. Heartbreaking. Your kids lunchbox doesn't have much in it on Wednesdays because you've run out of food by then. Your kid is being made fun of because their shoes are a wreck but you have to save for months to get them a new pair. Your kid has to walk to school in the rain but you can't afford a decent jacket. You get a respiratory bug in winter, but you can't turn the heating up because your power bill is already too high. 

So back to that respiratory bug thing. WINZ is not the only issue here, they are the bit that mostly stops me from asking for help, but for a constantly ill person they are not the whole issue by a long shot. Because there's the whole medical service - over worked doctors, over worked and underpaid nurses and ancilliary workers. Unbelievable waiting lists for diagnosis and some treatment.

I have been to my GP 5 times in the last 4 weeks. And to hospital in an ambulance once and to the Emergency Department under my own steam once. In that time I have felt like I am not really being listened to more often than not. I don't really blame these people, they don't have time to mess about with someone who 'probably just has a nasty cold'; but I know sick. I am literally always sick and need to take extra care over any extra sick that comes along. I know when something is actually wrong, if I thought it was just a cold I would wrap up warm and soldier on. On my ED visit I told the nurse at reception that I had been struggling for breath for some time and he said that it didn't sound like I was struggling for breath. I could hear the unspoken 'well you look ok' that sufferers of invisible illness are so used to hearing. I said struggling for breath I didn't say unable to breath. I AM struggling for breath, each breath in hurts because there is a pulled muscle on the left side of my chest but on top of that I'm inhaling more frequently than I normally would because I'm not getting enough air from each breath. I feel like I have a weight on my chest. Each breath is a far more conscious act than usual because I have to slowly drawn in as much air as I can. Too fast and it'll hurt too much, too shallow and I don't get enough air. Fuck you with your 'it doesn't sound like you're struggling' bullshit. You don't know what's normal for me OR how I will react to a struggle. Just because I don't need to be intubated right this second doesn't mean everything is ok. At the ED they took an x-ray, mainly to shut me up probably. There's no overt wheezing sounds from my lungs and no crackling to speak of, they've been congested for more or less the whole month with clear fluid that replaces itself as fast as I can cough it up. They took an x-ray the first time I went into hospital too. And what do you know the second one shows a change in my lungs. The hospital recommends that I see a respiratory specialist and they gave me yet another course of different antibiotics. So I go into the doctor (my regular doctor is busy so I see one of the others - I'm actually sort of pleased about this as I'm pretty sure my regular GP is now in the _believes I'm becoming a hypochondriac_ zone) when I made the appointment yesterday I was hoping it would actually just be a check up as I was feeling a bit better - much less coughing, much much less fluid - but this morning the coughing had started up again and fluid is starting to accumulate in my lungs again. So it was an actual discussion. Where I had to explain once again what was going on and why it was distressing me so much - seriously I HAVE HAD A COUGH FOR A MONTH SOLID THIS IS NOT NORMAL - She asked some relevant questions about when it's worse and when it started (which actually got me thinking and I realise the shortness of breath did not start with the cold - it started about a week before when I biked to work) and asked if I'd been given any prednisone yet - she was surprised when I said no. I had discussed steroids with the hospital but the ED doctor had said she thought it was a bad idea and could make things worse - I'd actually wondered all along if steroids should be tried but figured that doctors know what they're doing. Anyway the GP gave me steroids. So we'll see who's right there I guess. In any case if they make it worse that would rule out some things too. Much though doctors don't like this I'm not medically inept, I understand diagnostic process. Getting worse isn't always a bad thing. She's also put through a request for a spirometry test. And scared the bejesus out of me by using the magic words COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder) (please don't let it be that) (at least it doesn't appear to be cancer) (at least my heart seems to be all good). So now I finish the Roxithromycin, take the Prednisone, maybe start taking the Azithromycin after I finish the Roxithromycin depending on improvement. Continue taking pain killers as required. And sleeping pills. And wait for the respiratory people to give me test time. But I feel like if I'd put my foot down with the doctors from the beginning maybe they'd have moved faster. Or maybe they would have treated me even worse, without outright disdain instead of just failure to listen. I feel like if I could afford to just call the bloody ambulance when I felt that bad the hospital might have taken me more seriously. Also I wouldn't have had to tolerate the dickhead nurse. (BTW the rest of the hospital staff were all basically fantastic - but there's always one dickhead isn't there?). I feel like if I could afford to go private this would already be diagnosed. And I do get that private is always going to be different from public, but it seems to me that in some respects it is far too different. Sick people aren't actually up to jumping through extra hoops to get things done. My life could be about to be utterly ruined by another major illness on top of what I already have but no one is in a big rush to do anything about it. And if I do find myself needing assistance again, I can look forward to being treated like a second class citizen for the crime of being ill. 

I have a number of friends who also suffer from chronic illness; between us we cover quite a few of them. I asked them if they might like to see anything added, here's what they had to say; (*ALL anonymous because I've actually been on the end of being told how crap I am for having an opinion about my illness)

"the guilt when you just can't......."

followed by

"feeling guilty because yours goes into remission but others haven't but still always waiting for it to sneak up on you."

extremely relevant to most chronic sufferers...

"...the paranoia that comes with doing ANYTHING that might make it flare up - paranoia which then makes it flare up - sucks donkey balls."

Not having a diagnosis is sometimes harder than having one

"Living in limbo over here,, waited months and years to be told right now there's nothing wrong with you but one day there will be or not but don't come see me again cause your not diagnosable. Except on days when I am."

Chronic but not terminal...

"...the offhand attitude of doctors, almost a "well it's not like it's a gonna kill you illness so you know just be happy it's not like cancer or something 'bad' " I was made to feel like dread and worry and concern for what my future 'might' hold was silly and trite."

A lot of ongoing treatments are expensive; and some of them are not subsidised despite being recognised as  of primary assistance...

"It's OK if you can afford the extra expense to manage it, but if you can't it takes a lot out of you."

... so either you spend money you can't afford on things that make you feel better and are left with a shortfall that by necessity is going to come out of something else you need. A massage will provide me with roughly a week of less pain, but the cost of a massage - even at mates rates - is a weeks worth of power, or several meals for my family.

"It's for LIFE. And even if it temporarily gets better, you're just *waiting* for it to come back and kick you to the fucking curb, so it's not even necessarily much of a respite."

Chronic illness means long term - I know lots of people think it means serious illness but not necessarily - the chronic part covers the time period only. But most chronic illnesses regardless of severity are debilitating, because they wear you down. Constant pain, or nausea, or insomnia, or depression or palpitations or whatever your symptom or combination of symptoms are, weighs on your mind, people often reach the conclusion that because I seem pretty strung out about my illness it must be mostly in my head - in some ways it is but not the way you think. My brain sends incorrect signals - or interprets signals from the body incorrectly it lies and tells me I'm in pain all the time when there is nothing physically wrong with the 'painful' area. There is something physically wrong with my brain. And it's hard work living with constant symptoms, whatever they are.

"Just because it flares up when we get stressed out/anxious doesn't mean it's purely psychological. "

I've been told that one a lot - not by psychologists or psychiatrists or trauma therapists or cognitive behavioural therapists. By GP's - who generally know very little about my illness. I've even had a GP tell me he thought it was a "bullshit diagnosis" (a lot of doctors from his generation have similar opinions about my condition, apparently keeping up to date with modern philosophy isn't something they all do. You know what I can live with that - there is a truck load of new information out there, keeping up with all of it must be a chore - but if an actual patient of yours has been diagnosed by a specialist service it's presumably prudent to LOOK UP that condition. Suffice to say, he's not my doctor anymore.

"So many doctors who assume that because a patient is 'overweight', that must be the problem, and refuse to even consider other options or treatment."
 

To top that off, a number of the conversations I had also brought out the subject of doctors and specialists being deeply insensitive to the condition (or if still in diagnosis, the potential condition) drawing on my own experience - my first visit to a rheumatologist was less than stellar - his examination was less than thorough and he failed entirely at listening to the quite relevant piece of information that despite my huge number of niggling and ongoing pain problems I have a very high tolerance for acute pain. He made no effort to listen to me at all and told me it was all in my head. I'm very glad that a different doctor sent me to a pain specialist ( oh as an aside I cannot recommend the Burwood Pain Management Clinic highly enough - they do sadly have a rather long waiting list but they do a thorough work up of physical, mental and traumatic aspects of your issues and work with you to find reasonable solutions tailored to you - love those guys ). I hear stories of doctors stopping once they think they have the answer and ignoring any additional information passed on that might contradict their decision. I hear patients who have been emotionally forced to take medication they don't want to - a couple of whom lost all faith in the medical system and are now entirely 'self medicating' which is absolutely not doing them any good. Doctors are supposed to have 'bedside manner' maybe there should be a module in medical school on empathy, that you have to repeat occasionally to keep your practice up. Because it isn't just with my Chronic illness that I've seen this happen (though my weird pain threshold was a factor here) I was in hospital with tonsillitis - intitially I was treated with several courses of antibiotics because we were going through another phase of 'don't take them out'. I had been complaining of a sore throat that I described as being like gargling razor blades. I hadn't eaten in three weeks because I couldn't swallow anything - I was dehydrated because even swallowing water was hard. I several times told them that the most painful spot was further down my throat; but the arrogant douchebag doctor never listened to what I was telling him, the constant stream of 'it doesn't look that bad' 'it can't be as sore as you say it is' was depressing and debilitating; this is where it gets hilarious, if you like dark humour. One morning the doctor came into my hospital room for a check up and took a brief look down my throat then suggested that I could probably go home as it didn't seem severe enough for surgery... I got pretty mad (it was day 23 of no solid food, i was on iv fluids) and shouted at him - the sharp movement of shouting burst the infection sitting just beyond where the doctor had looked and I literally sprayed pus all over the motherfucker. Surgery the next day as infection did not go down after 'lancing'.

I also received a number of personal messages discussing things related to chronic illness, a common theme of this is related to the difficulty with continuing to work while ill. Chronic sufferers tend to need to be more careful about illnesses going around the office and need to be more vigilant about making sure they don't come back to work before they are at least reasonably better, add to this that otherwise well people come in to work despite their cold/flu/death plague without thinking that there might be people in the office more susceptible to it.

For the love of Bob don't come back at that with 'if that's the case why are you working at all'?, if you are also the same bastard who will call me a bludging wastrel if I don't work but claim a sickness benefit.

It's an odd thing but many of the chronic illness sufferers I've come across say they are less likely to catch every little thing going around the office (I myself basically NEVER catch stomach bugs and seldom get colds) BUT if they do catch something it tends to screw them (absolutely true of me).

Look I do understand the need to go to work despite your illness - but ALL of your coworkers, not just the ones with special immune systems, are susceptible to catching them; wear a mask, it won't kill you and it might save them. And workplaces that have a cubicle type environment - I know this probably sounds like some kind of horrible concentration camp mentality, but how about creating a couple of contained offices that people that are clearly sick can work from so that it doesn't spread to the whole team? I know my workplace suffers from spreader syndrome every time there is something going around. Surely it's sensible to either encourage the plague pit to go home, or separate them from the herd. 

In an ideal world; if I can dream for a minute.... there would be a job out there for me where I can both help people in some way AND have a boss that understands that I can't do it all - if I stress I will fall down. Understands that I might need to avoid the plague carrier at work, or that I might need to work from home sometimes to reduce my stress load. The Red Cross was more or less pretty good for that, and Neighbourhood Support was too. I'd dearly love to be back in Humanitarian Aid. But the real world doesn't tend to be overly willing in either of those areas. Given my political leanings working for a political party like the Greens or Labour in either a consultative or an aide role would also be quite good. I have a lot of opinions on policy - and I'd like to be able to share them. Particularly Health, Social Welfare & Education, hint hint. Quite hot on the Environment and Sustainable Energy Sourcing too. Hell working for a corporation in a giving back to the community role would also be amazing, there are a lot of big companies out there who could do a lot of good with a little push. Many of them do already. I have some big ideas in that direction too.

I want to make the world a better place, if only in a small way - but sometimes I think that I'm too broken to achieve much of anything. Right now I feel pretty broken, and I feel pretty sure that this is going to screw me up massively. I hope I'm wrong, but even if I am I probably need to start looking for some sort of work that feeds my soul, and doesn't provide me with such regular accumulations of germs. Because it seems that only by keeping my soul at least reasonably content can I keep an even keel on my stress level. If anyone out there has an idea for where and how I can make that work, I'm willing to listen.

Peace. Out. 

Morals are not the same as Ethics

Morals versus Ethics

This is an important distinction where law making is concerned.

Currently in New Zealand there is a not very new but freshly hot *discussion* in play regarding abortion law. To cut a long story short; a quite left winged party has a policy to change the laws regarding abortion, to legalise and extend the rules applying to abortion. And we have an election soon. Dynamite + flame = BOOM. 

Here's something I wrote a while back - LINK - that isn't technically about abortion but about choice and how religious doctrine is not the boss of me. I'm putting this here to save me having to reiterate the basic idea that your belief set is NOT THE SAME as mine; and until you can actually prove that I'm wrong, or at least have an open discussion about it, rather than just shouting your beliefs at me I don't much care what your opinion is.

What I want to discuss now is the difference between morals and ethics in this situation. People love to tell me what is morally correct - usually while telling me that I'm not. Morally correct is however a subjective interpretation of what is right - a moral set comes side by side with a belief set and the two are usually intertwined. For what it's worth - the first person to suggest that I have no beliefs because I identify as an Agnostic is likely to get a metaphorical smack; call that fair warning.  The first person to suggest that my morals are worth less because I don't believe in any deity can expect to hear the following, only with my caps lock on... I don't need a god figure to tell me whats right or wrong - I make my own decision based on fairness and decency and without the threat of eternal damnation. If you think this makes my morals worth less than yours you probably need to examine the concept more closely.

Morals are often arrived at by attachment to the belief set of a larger group, but they are arrived at by an individual based on those beliefs and can vary quite wildly both from group to group AND within a group. 

Ethics look at a situation from the perspective of the group definition of right. Ethics are reached by consensus and while they may mirror the morals of many they will sometimes be contrary to the morals & beliefs of even quite large groups. Ethics take the group consensus and turn it into a guideline for behaviour. The law takes ethical decisions and turns them into a rule set for common behaviour practices. The judicial system sets a system of punishments for the infringement of that rule set. There is no judicial or legal system in place for the transgression of a moral choice that is not also a transgression of an ethical choice. To put that more plainly, or at least differently. You will not be punished under civil law for a moral transgression UNLESS that transgression is also a breach of ethics. All the politicians would be in prison if you were. *Zing*. Your immortal soul is your own problem.  

The argument over abortion is currently mainly in the sphere of morals, as individuals argue over what they feel to be right. The decision on what is legally right is quite another story. While the moral opinion of the population at large should certainly be considered,  it is the facts of the case that will decide the ethics for the most part. 

So each and every one of you; if you want to be taken seriously in this debate there are several things you need to understand...

• The only thing you gain from the hurling of abuse at your opposites is the disdain of every sane voice.
• Saying 'I disagree' without following up with how, why and what could be changed to fix this is utterly without value. This is a debate not a poll of opinion.
• Stating an opinion as a fact is stupid. Backing up your opinion with facts is awesome.
• Facts you learned by googling and taking the first answer that agreed with you is not the same as backing your opinion up with facts. Though they may bear a close resemblance. Research is not a filthy word.
• Moist is a filthy word.
• Personal abuse is utterly unacceptable as a means of validating your argument. I'm fat, what's your point?
• If you call someone stupid merely because you disagree with them, you are saying far more about yourself than you are about them.
• I may be harping on about not being a dick - but have you READ some of the comments on these debates? 
• I will have far more respect for reasoned argument from someone I disagree with than for a throw away comment from someone I do agree with.
• Debate is GOOD; better ethical decisions are made the more members of the group affected by the decision talk about it.
• Trying to shut people out of the discussion because you don't think their opinion counts is a DICK MOVE. Yes, I know a lot of women feel that men shouldn't get any kind of a vote here BUT men are also half of the conception equation. What weight different opinions carry is in the end up to those who actually get to decide the matter. 
• Be willing to THINK about what your opposites are saying; if we dismiss everything we disagree with we will never reach any kind of consensus. We will only reach a bloody minded decision based on one set of ideals.

This decision is far to important to not take seriously; make your voice heard but don't forget that everyone else's voice gets to be heard too. Dickishness not withstanding. 

Peace. Out.

I am Rtmiss

No Fitz, I am not going to write about my damn feet. They're awesome and everything but I have no current photos.

So I'm celibate. Have been for *mutter mutter* years. I think this causes a certain amount of confusion for certain people who know me, and definitely causes confusion for people who are getting to know me. And people who merely know me via other people.

Because I'm also a flirt. And occasionally quite sleazy. And not against sexual dubiousness. Quite pro it actually, in a nobodies personal boundaries being overstretched kind of way (IE: it's all very well to make vaguely obscene remarks (etc) to someone you know shares your perverted sense of humour, but lay off anyone that doesn't). Then there's the whole dancing at parties thing. Look I don't _really_ mean anything by it OK? There is little chance that anyone is going to convince me to behave (especially during Closer ). And nobody's asked me to.

Here's who I am. Dad named me after Artemis and he was bang on the money. I'm a born hunter. The thrill of the chase and all that. To drag a metaphor out, while I enjoy the hunt and even the capture, I'm not particularly interested in the 13 course meal that results. To keep yanking at the metaphor... I realise that there are a number of guys out there who would be more than happy for me to just order the appetiser but you see the problem is not with them it is with me. Once I start I have a tendency to keep eating until I make myself sick. Not in one sitting you understand, I may have earned the nickname Insatiable Vixen (tally ho!) but I'm not entirely without limit.

In a nutshell the problem is, I fall in love. Stupidly head over heels. With my whole, huge heart. Far too quickly and far too completely (insanely, if you like). So I decided I wouldn't bother with that anymore - it was just screwing me up. Yes I probably could go seek professional help, but - and this may come as a surprise - I don't fucking want to. I'm actually reasonably content with who I am. Skeletons and all.

This is usually the point at which people suggest healthy one night stands... except that I find them deeply unsatisfying - not that I'm exactly a seasoned explorer of the realm. I don't have an issue with the concept, it just doesn't seem to work for me. And since neither does the other thing, I gave it up for Lent. And the rest of the time. Which has done me less harm than you might think. And forces me to examine passing infatuation, of which there have been a few. None that I had any real intent towards, but a spark of interest you might say. Or horny if I want to be entirely honest, which is traditional in these bouts of over share.

While I'm oversharing... I also develop very close bonds with the closest of my friends, and occasionally with people I have literally no (obvious) reason to bond with. I have a few close friends that I HAVE NEVER MET. I usually know long before they do that the bond will be eternal. It's a knack, I suppose you might say. I recognise kindred spirits - not alike spirits you understand - people that I instinctively KNOW I will get along very well with. I've only cocked it up once, I've never been wrong. I got overly enthuastic about forging a bond with someone and scared the living bejeesus out of them. I can be a LOT passionate about things. I can be a total handful - I am aware of this. But if I love you, I love you forever. I am very protective of those in my heart. And a hug monster. If I hug you regularly then you live in the deepest part of my soul. "Don't be afraid. Just walk on in."

Peace. Out.

I object to your subjective bullshit

 So. There was this irritating post yesterday suggesting that girls shouldn't wear skimpy clothes because it's 'immodest' and attracts 'pigs'. It paints a nasty picture of why nice girls should cover up so they can catch a nice guy. To ice the cake it's signed off "sincerely, Real Men. 

And I HATE IT. H. A. T. E. I. T. 

To begin with, opinions on the relative decency of skirts lengths and cleavage depth are entirely subjective not to mention pathetic (sorry, I'm super irritated by the concept that naked r bad m'kay. Naked is what we all are under whatever clothing we choose to wear and IT ISN'T SOMETHING TO BE ASHAMED OF) the amount of skin I choose to reveal is more heavily influenced by the weather than it will ever be by other peoples attitudes.

But the main irritating bit for me is the continuing saga of rape culture. Insidious, fucking annoying, rape culture. Because this attitude expecting women to cover up because men might get the wrong idea is an ongoing and enormous problem. It's not even the 'wrong idea' that I give a fuck about, it's the using the wrong idea as an excuse for piss poor behaviour. This attitude that wearing a tight dress is some inherent offer. Because clearly expecting men to be capable of exhibiting self control is way too much to ask. It's the removal of our right to say no on petty and frivolous grounds. 

Which brings me to the 'Real Men' sign off. Real Men can look at a woman in whatever she chooses to wear without seeing her outfit as some form of gift wrap. This real men crap gives me apoplexy. Incoherent rage. Because the most common apparent definition of a 'Real Man' seems to have less to do with decency and respect and more to do with control-freaks, physical prowess and douchebaggery. The men I like the best are the ones for whom being male or female doesn't change the way they treat a person. (you know, fumbling attraction and related awkwardness aside). Men who converse with me on the same level as they would any of their friends. The real men in my life are all keepers. I was going to list a few, but I realised that I am blessed with a long list of great male friends and it would start getting super awkward. And then I'd forget someone and they'd be sad. It's just a whole awkward kettle of fish. You know who you are, I hope. And I love you all. 

Peace. Out.

Beyond Good and Evil

I stupidly started an argument on teh interwebs. Rather than continue in this pointless endeavour, I will write here - equally pointless probably but I'll feel better about it.

Once again I have been annoyed by the unwillingness of people who think they're doing the right thing to be willing to examine their premise for even a second. Not all people, many people are fabulous. Quietly going about their lives being decent and kind without needing to nail anyone to a 't' shaped object to make a point.

Faith is a wonderful thing. I wish I had more of it. I continue to have faith that humanity is not entirely made up of douchebags and asshats for example. No matter how hard the douchebags and asshats try to convince me otherwise. 

Blind Faith, and Misguided Faith are other things altogether. It's a lovely thing that you believe all the things you believe, I applaud you for trying to live your life by a set of rules that you have assigned to yourself. Would you, for the love of whatever Deity or Higher Power you hold to, LET ME LIVE BY MINE. You see different people believe different things and have a different set of priorities for those beliefs. I'm willing to bet that you can even walk into a single place of worship grab any two people and find that they have differences of opinion in their common belief set. Different religions sometimes form BECAUSE people have differences of opinion over how their belief set is being lived. And that's cool too, because how else do we grow as a species? Differences.

So if there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands even millions and billions of different belief sets out their - whose gets to be the winner? If you want me to live by your rules, and so does 'he' (whomever 'he' may be) and your rules are totally different from his, what? Are you going to fight to the death for the right to rule me? Because I also have a different belief set, and while I don't expect anyone else to live by  mine and I'm really not willing to do more than say, wrestle in lime jelly over it - I'll die before I'll let you make me follow a rule that makes me a bad person. 

Because most peoples decisions come down to that. Most peoples arguments against or for this belief or that belief come down to whether or not they feel they are doing the right thing. Which is great, until they start telling me that I have to do their 'right thing' with absolute disregard for what my 'right thing' is. 

And this is where I start screaming about Religion staying out of Government, and Government staying out of Religion. They should be mutually exclusive, if for no better reason than none of us can fully agree on either, certainly not BOTH. Civil rights should be at the heart of Civil decisions, obviously there are massive differences in Civil rights from country to country but it is for each individual Government to decide on both what their Civil rights are, and how they apply to their law making. It's an argument for another day that some sets of Civil rights are a bit crap. Even in countries where 'one religion' applies (and it's never 100%) Governments should be very careful to apply this. Even more so really since it is in these countries that the most vicious hate crimes tend to occur. 

Wanting to do the right thing is wonderful, truly wonderful. But when you do it to the point of ignoring other peoples right to a full life then I think you need to examine what the 'right thing' you're trying to do is actually about. Cherish your right to your faith, cherish your right to believe in whatever 'crazy' things you want to believe, don't try to take that right away from other people.

Me, I'm going to continue to believe that humans can be better than the dross that keeps surfacing. Do you hear me? I have faith in you humanity. 

Peace. Out.

Who knows where Einstein is hiding

*massive disclaimer: Teachers are to be respected, they are not failing the system the system is failing them. Except for Mr. Brook. He was a dick.

It's impossible to recognise the next great mind of our times. Pfft you say, you can see who the smartest kids are right off the bat at school. Actually often the very brightest struggle with school, even to quite high levels. Using myself as a conceited example - I was uninterested in what was being taught to me in school, and as a consequence paid little attention. I passed easily enough, and well more often than not. But I wasn't paying attention and seldom had anything brilliant to add - because I didn't care. It took unusually gifted teachers to pull my mind away from it's own observations and actually CONSIDER what they were saying. I cruised through school barely taking it in. 

At home it was a different story. My father and I would lie on the back lawn late at night stargazing, and discussing philosophy, classics, psychology, whatever else cropped up for whatever reason. He recognised a kindred spirit and shot the breeze with me at every opportunity. I only wish that my siblings had seen this side of my father. Even stupid things like watching crappy TV often resulted in spirited debate. From this I know that my father was absolutely TERRIBLE at being proven wrong. I mean I'm sure some of my friends think I hate being wrong - I do. But I usually accept it, with evidence. Dad wasn't much for accepting evidence when he thought he knew better. I used to give him grief for it - you can't claim to be a scientist (and electrician or not he was a scientist inside his head, as am I) and ignore evidence. It was hilarious to me every time he continued to argue after the evidence was in - mainly because his God argument, which came out quite often, ran along the "I can't _not believe in God_ because I can't prove he doesn't exist any more than a religious man can prove he does. I believe there is no God, I don't _know_ there is no God." 

But I digress. As usual. At home my gifted mind was fed. A steady diet of 'figure it out for yourself' which was perfect, because that is the way my brain works. I have to figure things out for myself to have any faith in the end result. See. I am my fathers daughter. At school there was not the resource to deal with a gifted mind that wasn't interested. (Not aided at all by my fathers disillusionment in the workings of the education system). I grew up with the opinion that school had little useful to teach me. Though I have to say hindsight hasn't actually changed that opinion very much. 

The most telling comment I ever received on a report card, "Diana's results do not reflect the lack of effort she has put in." Thank you, that honest teacher. I actually needed to hear that. After I left high school an old teacher remarked to me that I was a regular subject of discussion in the staff room as a gifted student that they could not motivate. I found this fascinating because from my perspective only two teachers had ever really tried to capture my attention. One I hated, and still hate - he was a complete douchebag - but he did see that a kid who had been rocketed through advanced classes at intermediate school was going to be bored to tears in a high school that had no room to accommodate this. He gave me university texts and let me sit at the back of the class with those while everyone else did regular stuff. It was better than nothing. You old bastard. The other started a regular class thing of giving puzzles to any one who finished early, deciphering them became a matter of pride for some of us. Me especially, for no better reason than 'I could'. There were few other moments I could remember ever really giving a damn about classes. In primary school a teacher who used to challenge the whole class first thing in the morning - but I look back on that and realise that the less talented members of my class must have loathed those morning sessions. Watching Kane and I always the last two standing. An English teacher who saw through my dickbaggery to recognise my writing as not just silly not_quite_as_intended frivolity but as well written and clever frivolity. Yes, English staff of my past - there was a reason I always wrote exactly what was asked for and yet somehow completely inappropriate text. BECAUSE I COULD. The Biology teacher who completely freaked out when I told him I'd skipped a section we'd done in class in order to write an essay on a topic we hadn't studied, in my final exam - who had the balls to apologise to me after he saw the A+ on it. I did it because the topic we did in class was boring. And the topic we hadn't was something I had waxed philosophical on at home. Brief glimpses of what could have been. But mine was not a mind that was easy for teaching staff to deal with. And like the less able, into the too hard basket I went. 

But this is not a story of the past - this is a story of now. I see a lot of the same thing happening, kids that I can see are smart, really smart, overlooked because they aren't using it on the mundanery of school. There's this boy - I hate thinking about him - he was at school with Catherine for a while. I expect he's in prison now, or if not won't be far from it. He was a little pain in the ass. Bucked authority at every opportunity. Annoying little pissant that appeared to WANT to be yelled at. And considering his background probably did. Any attention is better than none right? But I could SEE this clever mind in there. Utterly wasted. Because no one believed in him. Not even me quite a lot of the time, because I couldn't see how it was possible for him to crawl out of his shitty situation when the ladder kept being pushed away. Because that's what we do. Not to every kid, but to the inconvenient ones, who on top of their inconvenience don't have the money to make the system play their way. Don't have parents willing to fight for them.

HOW MANY GOOD MINDS HAVE WE THROWN AWAY?

Everyone, no matter what state their brain is in deserves the same opportunity. No matter what state their body is in. I'm not suggesting that everyone CAN achieve the same, I saying that everyone should have the opportunity to be everything that they can be. Poor kids shouldn't be left behind for such a stupid misguided economic farce. It does not save us any money at all to only educate those that can afford it. Society as a whole is increased by everyone having the best opportunities. I'm not going to bother looking up the information, because I am a deeply lazy blogger. I am going to tell you what I have seen. I grew up in a time when education was cheapily available to pretty damn nearly everybody. There was little legitimate reason for a bright kid not to go to university if they wanted to. There was little reason to not finish high school. Apprenticeships were about the only valid reason. And we were a BETTER, HAPPIER society for it. Things have gone further and further down hill the more unattainable higher education became. The more we had to worry about debt from our education the more we had to chose between a job now or furthering our options. Or choose to do a minor degree so the debt doesn't become an obstacle to a happy existence. 

Now we throw on top of this falling standards at high school. (oh do fuck off government, it is at least a bit your fault). Standards falling further in the poorer schools because they don't have the same access to resources. What is this elitist bullshit? Why is a publically funded school in a posh area so much better equipped than a publically funded school in a low socio-economic area? What, do poor kids not deserve the same opportunity? Fuck that. Stephen Hawking came from a relatively poor family, where would he be without funding I wonder? On the scrap heap with the rest? One hopes not, but one fears so. His parents were motivated to see him well educated, what of the child who's parents are less interested? Is crappy parenting also a criteria for failure? 

HOW MANY HAVE WE THROWN AWAY?

Education is the very centre of a well run society. YES I MEAN IT. The better the quality of education to all of our children the better things run as a whole. From the little to the huge. The child who grows up understanding that everyone has their place and that no place is unvalued doesn't look down on the kid who grows up to clean his pool. Do you want your fucking pool clean or not? We want equality, but we aren't teaching it to our children. Everything they see shows them that some people are more equal than others. If we don't show them how important it is to respect everyone's rights then what do they learn? Some of our children are growing up feeling undervalued. Unvalued. What point is there for them to be productive members of society? Society's job is to raise our children into responsible adults. Yes I said society, even you non-parents have an ongoing responsibility here. Because society stagnates when we neglect our children. The whole thing, not just the bits that have chosen to reproduce. THE WHOLE THING. No man is an island, entire of itself.  

We are creating a society full of holes. As the education system falls into disrepair the gap between the well educated and the not will grow wider. We need middle people. They matter too. Go and read the story of the Golgafrinchans. (See *The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams) More truth is written in comedy...

We also need top people, and we are not producing enough of them (or more correctly, we are not producing enough of them that are sufficiently stupid to hang around after they qualify). Like rats, they recognise a sinking ship. Alright, alright I'm not really suggesting that you'd have to be stupid to hang around. You'd have to have different priorities than a simple life with a stack of cash to hang around. 

And how many people have different priorities?

Peace. Out.

Sense and Sensibility

Sexy times. Where there is a lot of sensibility but bugger all sense.

Lets start with the one I've been wanting to go off on since it hit the headlines (come on, you are all REALLY surprised I hadn't already spazzed out over it). 'Roastbusters'. Which is incidentally a fucking stupid name. Lets stop using that. From here on in the offending douchebags will be referred to as dickheads incorporated (DH INC). For the people out there who don't know what I'm referring to, which I have to assume means you are not from New Zealand (I'm surprised you're even reading...) these idiot teens got their horrible jollies by getting young ladies drunk, sleeping with them, (to a lesser or greater degree of consent fail, depending on who is telling the story and what day it is) and then naming and shaming on facebook. The whole country has it's knickers in seven different twists over which part of the whole sordid story is the worst bit. There's the victim blamers, who are all 'stupid girls shouldn't have been getting drunk and sleeping with guys they barely knew, more fool them' (incidentally we are talking about girls who were underage both for drinking and sex). There's the OMG fuckwit rapist! crowd, who are all 'nail those nasty little bastards to the wall' (incidentally we are talking about guys who were either underage or barely of age for both drinking and sex). There's the where the hell were the Police? crowd, who are all 'it was all over facebook how much more evidence do you need' (incidentally the law actually requires evidence not hearsay) and then there are the rape culture crowd, who are all 'we need to stop victim blaming and nail the rapists and where were the police?'.

What's my opinion? All of the above. Just in a less knee-jerk way. Because none of these suggestions is entirely wrong, just people have got so upset about their view they aren't actually listening to anything else.

Victim blaming is lame, and well - WRONG! It has been shown time and time again that in the majority of rape cases ridiculous type casting of 'she was asking for it' is just BOLLOCKS. The shortness of the skirt does not invite rapists - statistics actually suggest the opposite is true, though in fact I think that the clothing simply isn't one of the factors. The reason short skirts feature less is because walking home late at night in a tiny skirt isn't actually that common. You're much more likely to be wearing jeans. More rapes happen in the home than out on the streets in any case, and how many chicks are wearing a skimpy outfit at home? At a party sure, and I'm certainly not going to suggest that parties aren't a rapists wet dream, but it's again not the clothes - it's the booze. And the loosened inhibitions of a party atmosphere. But even at a party the rapist is less likely to target the chick in the short skirt. Why? Because the chick in the short skirt doesn't have the insecurity issues that the wallflower in the jeans and t-shirt does. The chick in the short skirt only becomes more interesting when she starts getting too drunk to make good decisions. If I were to take the surveys of clothing worn when raped at face value I'd never wear jeans again. But the simple answer to that one is - a lot of people wear jeans in all sorts of different situations, jeans are a top choice for both sexes. (This was a single example of the 'she was asking for it' argument, there are others. Dancing with you is also not asking for it. Neither is sharing a drink with you. Being super drunk/stoned is not asking for it.)

In fact pretty much anything where I didn't actually ask for it is not asking for it. This is where the consent argument starts.

Consent, it's a grey area subject - it always has been. Because not everyone is comfortable with the idea of actually saying 'You, yes you, I would like to have sexual relations with you. Now.' Now I could start a whole other debate here with the idea that, 'for crying out loud you are about to undertake the most intimate contact you can have with another human short of birth and you can't TALK to them about it?' But to be fair, I'm not all that mad keen on talking about it in a clear consent kind of way either. Sure I might be willing to say something moderately filthy to the same effect, but clear and super obvious consent is much less likely. And really, it isn't undertaking a formal written contract and I don't want to be removing all the spontaneity and fun from the act. That is also a subject for a whole different argument. But for the sake of argument, you are not going to hear a clear and definite consent terribly often. "Oh, yeah, baby" etc is considerably more likely - and there's really no reason why you can't take your social cues this way. I mean a) if you leap straight from enjoying a kiss to trying to jam you penis in somewhere, you are probably doing it wrong. (OK, there IS a time and place for that hurried BANG, but there's a huge portion of both my brain AND my, for want of a better word 'heart' that thinks the FIRST time is actually not that time. Maybe it is for you, whatever floats your boat - as long as it also floats your partners boat. And, b) providing the 'oh, yeah baby' sounds continue you are probably heading in the right direction.

The side of the coin that is more distinct is. NO. If you have any reason to suspect that the answer is no...

For those not in the know, this is my favourite Maritime Signal Flag... 

"Stop carrying out your intentions and watch for my signals"

For any reason. NO. If it turns out that it was actually ok to proceed, no harm done. However if the NO was real, then you just stopped yourself from doing something awful. This is the thing, if you break the no means no rule you've broken it. If you just slow down the procession of sexy times, big whoop.

And now we're heading into the territory that gets people into serious trouble. The failure to understand that if someone is not in proper control of themselves for ANY REASON AT ALL, they cannot reasonably consent. I've consented while moderately pissed. I'll grant that the decisions might have been stupid but they could still reasonably be called my decision. Here's the line - for me at least, and probably for a fair number of people. Am I slurring my speech? Yes? My consent isn't worth diddly. Can I stand up unsupported and at least reasonably stable? No? My consent is not worth diddly. Are my eyes focused? No? NO. You should not take the consent of someone who's brain is not functioning reliably. 

Now there is this whole other line of thinking that is all, but they said yes! Let me be extremely clear here. Twice in my life have I been THAT drunk and ended up sleeping with someone. Both times I should not have consented. Both times my consent was not worth a damn. Because I was not even close to rational. Once I boinked a complete stranger, whose name I do not even know, that I met at a night club. I was a very long way from being able to legitimately consent. The other time, I shagged someone that I would have called friend then, that I now barely call acquaintance. Because I shouldn't have gone there. And because he was totally crap and an arrogant douchebag. It's really hard to look at someone the same way when you slept with them when you shouldn't have AND they were bloody awful. (FYI, to the person who is right this second thinking, oh god is she talking about me?? NO I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU - for a start I wasn't that drunk that night)

Then there is the, but we were BOTH really drunk... honestly when I hear this one I usually wonder how the hell any sexy times were achieved. I have a little bit of sympathy in this instance - because it's a bit hard to lay blame at somebodies doorstep when you were both too drunk for reasonable consent. Because contrary to popular fiction (or the fiction of someone I know who could actually be reading this) consent has to be MUTUAL. And this stupid bullshit idea that men don't need to consent, or that somehow a raging hard-on IS consent needs to stop. To all my darling male friends, I care about every last one of you - even you dickbag, you know who you are. You are ALLOWED to say NO. If you don't want to have sex with someone, it doesn't make you less of a man, it doesn't make you 'gay' (you can't catch it from abstinence, I assure you) (also, for the love of BOB 'gay' is NOT A FUCKING INSULT). And to every single person on the planet - if someone says no to sexy times with you. IT. IS. NOT. A. PERSONAL. INSULT. I don't fancy everyone on the planet. In fact I'm extremely bloody fussy. There are some very attractive people out there that do absolutely NOTHING for me. If you are not my cup of tea, this is not cause for war. If I can't say no to you without you getting all fucking affronted by it, that is your problem not mine. You know, unless I'm a dick and say things like "I'd rather marry an Arab and have 99 children" (I felt really, really bad for my flatmate when a douche actually said exactly that to him) you can totally be affronted if I say something like that. 

Back to Dickheads Incorporated. What makes me saddest about these guys is their apparent lack of remorse (at least until they were suddenly confronted with an angry mob). I can't say that they didn't know that what they were doing was wrong, because it's fairly apparent that they did. But they didn't care, and they didn't see any consequences for their criminal and utterly douchebaggy behaviour. Now they're in hiding because - that angry mob I mentioned. Somehow they didn't grasp that it was not just a big hilarious joke. Somehow they did not understand that the people they were doing this to were actual PEOPLE. Too many kids have too little respect for themselves and almost anti-respect for anyone else. It makes me sick that they managed to grow up without ever discovering that other people have lives, feelings & rights that they had no right at all to fuck up. That they have so little respect for anything that they just didn't CARE. How are we raising a society of shitty little bastards who just don't give a damn? I feel sorry for them. Everything in their lives has failed them. Including the justice system.

Because the cops should have done SOMETHING. They had known about this group for years and did fuck all about it. Maybe because their hands were tied - in which case we damn well need to untie them. Maybe because there really is an appalling rape culture, that makes it easier to just go 'boys will be boys' than it is to go, 'teach those boys to be men'. Not rapists. 

And there we start the whole battle again, as someone says, it wasn't REALLY rape. They agreed to have sex. I've already had to say this more times than I care to think about since these dickheads hit the news. The girls were underage. It was rape no matter who said what to whom, no matter who drank what, no matter who agreed to go where. Whether the girls were 'stupid' for being where they were, for drinking what they drank, for saying what they said is entirely irrelevant. And an argument for another day. We need to teach our sons to be better human beings. To know that being a man means being in control of yourself, not doing whatever the hell you want to, not giving in to your baser instincts. That a decent man respects his fellow humans. We need to teach our daughters to respect themselves enough that saying no isn't hard for them. No I don't need to drink that to be cool. No I do not want to have sex with you, thanks anyway. 

And on the other side of that coin, we need to teach everyone to step in if they think there is a problem. I'd rather be wrong and be told to fuck off than find out later I was right. If you think someone looks too drunk, do something. Get them a glass of water, ask them if they're ok - if they need anything. Call them a cab. Go point them out to the bouncer. If someone gives you the creeps, keep an eye on them. You don't have to be a dick about it - hell they might just be a guy with naf social skills. But keep your eye on the situation anyway, maybe you'll see something that you need to step in on. The thing you do doesn't have to be huge, the thing is - don't do nothing. If everyone is just a little bit aware of things happening, if everyone takes the step to slow things down then maybe we'll stop a lot of the shit that happens.

If you have a friend who's a bit crap at the 'consent issue', talk to them about it. Maybe just knowing someone thinks they're doing it wrong will give them pause. If your team mate is bragging about all his conquests, don't cheer him on. A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell. If your friend gets massively drunk and sleeps with anyone who asks, maybe she needs to know you care about her. If your friend needs booze to enjoy sexy times, maybe he needs a therapist. If your friend needs to be aggressive during sexy times maybe he REALLY needs a therapist. If you feel like maybe you have a problem with saying yes when you mean no, please seek help. It's ok to say no. Please don't say yes if you don't mean yes. What kind of person is ok with you having sex you didn't want to have? A rapist that's who, and who gives a flying crap what they think?

Peace. Out.