The Danger Of Stereotypes

[This is a backdated post]

America, we have a confession to make.

When I say 'we' I mean most of the rest of the world.

I've appointed myself spokesperson.

I'm sure this will cause no problems whatsoever.

Anyway, America, here's the thing.

We kind of don't think of you as real.

I mean we know you exist, it's kind of hard to pretend you don't what with your citizens who travel and all the stuff you do and produce but it's the producing thing that's kind of got us screwed up.

You make a lot of movies.

And TV shows.

Most of the movies and TV shows.

And because of this your country kind of seems like a giant living movie set...

You drive on the wrong side of the road - just like in the movies.

You have diners with drip coffee and a bewildering selection of pies - just like in the movies.

You make fun of each other's states and accents and the various wide range of communities and lifestyles.

And this is problematic for some of your citizens because, well, you typecast them.

People with certain features or specific Americanised genetic backgrounds are cast in the same sorts of roles and then their real world counterparts have to deal with being seen through that lense.

Some of the stereotypes people are fond or proud of, others not so much.

People from one part of the country only know what hilarious accented sidekicks or ominous accented villains have taught them.

That's kind of goofy and funny for us foreigners until we realise that our ignorance about what the people of Louisiana or Minnesota are actually like is an ignorance shared by many of their countrymen* and women.

When we were travelling in Europe my brother and I met an awesome writer from Texas who reacted with suspicion to our curiosity and enthusiasm to know what being from Texas was really like.
She was used to people from her own country slapping 'Yosemite Sam' type assumptions over her and then being jackasses based on those stereotypes so it took us a while to convince her we were genuinely interested.

The amount of times we spoke to people from different parts of America and were told 'We're not actually all gun nuts in my state**' or 'Yeah, we're not all a bunch of tightly wound prudes where I come from' was fascinating.

You get some of the same lack of representation of people with stronger regional accents in most countries, there are some accents you just aren't going to hear on national broadcast radio or TV in the UK for example.

But it just seems like given the size of America and the size of the population that this phenomenon is much more pronounced***.

It's that very size that leaves many people operating under the influence of these stereotypes as they have a finite amount of time, brain space, and in many cases damns to give about such a broad range of communities and their traditions.

I suppose what I'm saying America is that, even though we can often catch ourselves out here thinking of you as a giant movie set, sometimes it feels like you treat parts of yourself like they aren't real either.

So while we as a global community are working on making sure there is a more representative array of people of different genders, races, sexualities and religions in TV shows, movies, books and on radio; you could make an effort to toss some people from your less represented states into bigger roles and just make them normal people expressing their differences without comedic effect or self-consciousness.

I know it'll take a bit of effort but I figure it'll be worth it for the kids who get to say 'Hey, that person sounds like me and they aren't getting laugh-tracked out of the room every GD time they turn up! Hooray!'

And then the rest of us will get to learn more too and even if we're still staring at you like slightly creepy weirdoes because holy crap, you're actually real and not just on my DVDs! we'll at least be more accurately staring at you and you'll be more accurately staring at yourselves.

[I am sure there are quite a few shows where people from different states get to roll along, contributing to the show without having to fulfil a special extra purpose but speaking as a casual viewer of a selection of comedies, dramas, crime shows and movies, there aren't as many of them as would be helpful. Feel free to recommend some good ones to me though!]



*What's a gender-neutral term for that that doesn't sound clunky as hell? Co-nationals? Yeesh

**This lad qualified his statement with 'There are quite a few gun owners but we grew up respecting guns, that trigger happy bullshit is not tolerated'.

***Or at least we see a lot more of it because you make so many of our TV shows and movies and books.

Afternoon Puzzles

Dear police officers,

Why do you like setting up the breathalysing stations at 1pm on a Thursday?

I know Thursday is pay day for a lot of people but how many of them have managed to gather up their pay and get drunk by 1pm in the afternoon?


I know the point is to set up the stop points in unexpected places and at unexpected times so people can't prepare or anticipate or avoid you but when you set them up in places hardly anyone goes or at times when it is highly unlikely anyone would be pickled...

Do you actually want to catch anyone, police?

Or do you find it annoying and just want to meet your 'yes, I set up a bloody breathalyser station and tested people this bloody week' quota with as little paperwork required as possible?

Because almost every time I have to stop and puff into that little testing device it seems to be at a time of the day when you would not be netting a huge catch.


I'm not sure if I'd be more worried to find out that you were all fed up and listless and feeling unmotivated and unappreciated and just going through the motions or to find out that you are on the ball and there is an underacknowledged culture of morning and midday drinking that I have not heard about...

If it's the first, hey, you guys are doing good stuff, keep up the good work, you look cute in your checker-brimmed caps.

If it's the second, don't tell me, I'll just keep driving carefully and watching out for idiots and not worrying that the breakfast boozing population of Australian could wipe me out at any moment.

Go Time

Battle stations everyone!
This is not a drill!
I repeat, this is not a drill!

This Friday coming you am going to be left in charge of a baby!
A real, live human baby!
6 months old. Male. Weapons-grade dimples!

His parents are having a relaxing night off and they are entrusting you with their adorable offspring!
You can do this!

You know how to change him!
You know how to feed and burp him!
You have an excellent track record of getting him to stop crying!
The way he falls asleep 9 out of 10 times he rests his head on your boobs those puppies may as well be soaked in chloroform!
You can do this!

Wait, how many bottles should he be allowed a night?
What sort of intervals!?

Draw me a diagram of how he is supposed to be tucked in at night, include measurements and tensioning requirements for tucking in the blanket!

He's teething now, how often do you need to apply bonjella?
How long do you leave his teething ring in the freezer before it will soothe him?
When would you need to use baby panadol?
What if he won't stop crying?
What if it turns out that he is The Chosen one and I need to protect him from potential assassins?
What if the zombies rise when I have him?
Do we have a rendezvous point?
Because I'd be taking him to my first staging post to keep him safe unless you have a better defensible position in mind.
I take babysitting responsibilities very seriously.
Very seriously indeed.

Unlearning Learned Behaviour

Well bloody hell, now what?

OK, a while ago I got sick with a particularly nasty virus, my doctor told me to stay away from caffeine and alcohol for a while and warned me that I may need to avoid them for the rest of my life in order to avoid a possible relapse or developing a permanent condition.
So for the last two years I've had no tea, coffee, chocolate, alcohol, soft drinks or beverages that contain caffeine, or anything of the sort.
At all.

Around last June she told me that I was no longer sick with the virus and when I asked she said I could think about trying little bits of alcohol and caffeine but I got the strong impression that she didn't think it was advisble and she wouldn't nominate safe amounts or intervals.

My uncle is a doctor and I kept intending to ask him about it but put it off for months because if he concurred with her then I'd have to face the unadorned truth that I should stay away from alcohol and caffeine for the rest of my life.
I know it's silly seeing as I was already doing that day by day but having it confirmed makes it official.
And once it was official I would start hearing sad songs in my head and seeing slow motion, soft focus memories of delicious chocolate thingies and cups of coffee and cool refreshing beverages*.
Anyway just before I went away in December I finally sent him an email with the relevant results attached and less than an hour later I got an email back saying 'I don't know what she's talking about, nothing you eat should impact on your blood test score'... 0_0
Right. OK.

The particular blood test score that I've been left with does mean that I'm more likely than someone without it to develop certain conditions later in life but I'm not guaranteed to develop them and unless I lead a life of Bacchanalian excess I'm unlikely to negatively influence that likelihood.

This was a relief but as I was about to go away to another country I wasn't about to start trying things.
After two years of no alcohol I would be guaranteed to be the world's cheapest date as the booze went straight to my head, and after two years of no caffeine it would likely whip through me like a hurricane.

That plus after two years of avoiding anything containing either of these things diligently because I thought it could make me permanently ill...  I couldn't quite wrap my head around it.
I mean I've even been avoiding uncooked soy sauce, just to be safe.
Did you know that many types of soy sauce have up to 6% alcohol in it? Well they do.

When I came home from Nepal with a persistent cough I went to see my usual doctor and found she was away and I was seeing the new doctor at the surgery instead.
So I thought 'what the hell' and asked her as well.
She said that there were perfectly healthy people who had these scores and there was no scientific link between caffeine and alcohol and negative impacts on health as a result of this blood test score.
I asked some pedantically specific questions to be sure and yep, after two years I can start introducing chocolate, coffee and booze back into my life.

And I have no idea where to start.

I mean obviously I'd start off slow, small amounts at staggered intervals but...

I am going to be nervous as hell.

This is going to take a while.

But I am determined that by the next time I visit Italy I will be able to have a coffee or a glass of wine without a thought.

Well, not entirely without a thought, I will appreciate them more than I ever would have believed possible a few years ago.



*Can't liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive, if living is without yooooooooooooOOOOOooouu!

I Need Your Clothes, Your Boots And Your Pony

I've been to see The Hobbit three times now and I'm probably going to see it again.

I am not ashamed, not even a little bit.

What I am is slightly obsessed.

Not only with Middle Earth and the beloved characters of my childhood or everything that Peter Jackson has done with the material since The Fellowship Of The Ring.

But with the clothes.

And not just the fancier stuff with the embroidery.

Everything.

Bilbo's dressing gown.

The simple design of the shirts and the fact braces involved.

Tunics and breeches.

Cloaks and boots.

If I learn to sew properly, with the level of skill I want to, I could happily spend years of my life making this clothing.

And I would wear it too.

Not just because I'm a nerd.

But because it is gorgeous and looks comfortable and fun.

I also wouldn't at all mind living in Bag End but I think the clothing is more attainable than the sort of money that it would take to build something this glorious.

It's Like Being An Archeologist But With Piles Of Tosh

There are some tasks that seem too intimidating to approach.

So gargantuan that it's hard to know where to start.

So daunting that every initial step seems steeped in discouragement.

For me that is the family home's rumpus room.

With the family's 'children' now firmly in their 20s it hasn't been a play room for over a decade.

We still use it to watch TV and my brother has his exercise equipment in there but it has acquired a third and less desirable role over the years - the dumping ground.

Anything we didn't want to get rid of but which didn't have a proper home got popped in the cupboard or in what began as a neat pile against the wall and evolved into a tribute to The Great Wall Of China.

Every now and then we mumble something about how we should do something about this.

Then we have a tentative poke around, become disheartened and leave it for 'later'.

Well these holidays 'later' arrived with a vengeance.

It started with a pile of defunct electronics that we'd put aside to 'take to the tip when we get around to it'.

I gathered them up.
I put them in the boot of my car.
I kicked my brother until he came and helped dig around to see if there were any more bits of electronic crap that needed throwing out.
I dragged him to the tip with me.
We dumped the whole pile at the tip's recycling centre so they could strip out the wiring and whatever else they wanted.


We went home drunk on victory!

Well, I was drunk on victory, my brother felt pretty neutral about the whole deal except the kicking and the being press-ganged into participation.

Once I got home, I was on a mission.

Old paperwork was thrust into the hands of the people it belonged to who were forced to go through it and either find a home for it or bin it.

Boxes were opened and emptied and sifted through.
Stuff was reorganised.
Stuff was thrown out.

Floor space was cleared.
Carpet was vacuumed.

More victory inebriation!

It is ridiculous how satisfying this was.

It probably  helped that it had now been so long since certain things had been stored away that we realised that no, we were never going to use them.

It also helped that we've all gotten past the ages where you attach emotional significance to junk.
I'm not saying we're a bunch of robots who threw out our childhood toys, we've kept those, but there were plenty of other things in there which given a few years we can now recognise as things that don't need to be kept.

We still need to go through the big cupboard, which shouldn't be in too bad of a shape as I went through it in 2007 when I was unemployed after coming back from Europe and Young Endeavour.

What I know is lurking in there, waiting for me, is our VHS collection.

Yep.

VHS collection.


The whole thing.

Taped-from-TV and store bought.

Obviously any home movies will be kept and transferred to disc - if they haven't already been - but the rest of it...

It's stupid I know but I feel shitty throwing out the store bought ones seeing as we kept them in such good condition and I feel annoyed throwing out the taped-from-TV ones when they contain things that haven't been released on DVD yet.

I'm going to.

I have to.

It's an obsolete format that we haven't used in years.

I'm going to feel weird about it though.

I hate throwing things out when they still work.

But my strange and pointless attachment to VHS aside, victory!

People are not going to recognise that room when I'm through with it.

And so help them God if they try and pile things up in it again.

Annual Attempted Self-Improvement-Palooza

Yeesh, time flies!

I had actually forgotten that I'd made any resolutions for last year - thanks, sieve-for-a-brain! - but I managed to do OK, OK here defined as 'achieving my usual 2-out-of-3-ain't-bad success rate'.

I cocked up a few times but my punctuality is better - success!

I did not manage to detach myself from the internet to the degree I'd have liked - dang!

I did do a comic for every day of last year - extra success! - and have decided to keep it up because it's fun :-)

So the attempt to be less internet addicted rolls on as a non-resolution task and here I am, faced with a brand new year.

Hrrrmmm...

What to resolve...?
 OK, here we go.

• Resolution The First: Start Getting Into Gardening Properly
  I have gotten excited about gardening before here, here, here and here but despite my noble intentions I've mostly been doing maintenance fiddling rather than planting anything new or learning anything particularly advanced in the gardening skill set.
  So this year I'm going to buy some plants and then do my level best to keep them alive.
  As I'm doing this resolving in summer this means that there's some things I won't be able to plant until winter/spring but if I manage to plant anything at all I'm going to count that as a success.
  Even if it's a collection of herbs and a tomato plant in a pot grown on my balcony at the flat.
  
• Resolution The Second: Read A Book A Week
  I started recording what I was reading in 2009 and depending on what I was up to that year I got through a varying number of books.
  28 in 2009 (I started keeping the journal in June).
  73 in 2010 (By far the most successful year).
  34 in 2011 (Hey, woah, what happened there...?)
  21 in 2012 (WHAT!?)
  So yes, this year I want to ratchet the reading back up again.
  New stories, new knowledge, new writers to admire, more inspiration.
  I'm going to aim for 52 books, with the loose goal of a book a week and if I manage more than that then I'll just get to be smug about it.
  
• Resolution The Third: Start Sewing
  Remember The Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric I bought?
  This year it is becoming quilts.
  It is becoming at least three quilts and then depending on how obsessed I am with quilting by that stage I'll either make the rest of the material* up into quilts for later** or put the material aside to make the quilts when the time is right.
  I want to try making clothes as well. I've put myself off in the past by imagining getting the measurements wrong and making clothes that don't fit or just cocking up and ruining the material.
  I look at lovely material and hate the idea of screwing it up by cutting it out wrong or ruining it somehow but I'll never learn if I don't squash that aversion down and just let myself make some mistakes.
  

* I bought so much material. 2 m of each of the... maybe 7 patterns?

** Later = when people have babies