Mother is a mchine

This afternoon a miracle occured. I mean a real bonafide miracle. Not just the insane ramblings of a woman hocked up on antihistamines trying to get through the school holidays with grace and dignity and all three children still containing their limbs and breathing abilities, but the real McCoy, walking on water, parting the sea, turning water to wine kind of deal.

Unfortunately the miracle that occured did not contain a long lost Daddy Wharbucks, or the floor of my sons bedroom becoming visible; nor did my ass suddenly regain it’s former glory and lift itself from banging against the backs of my knees; but a girl has her right to a fantasy or two…..

What did happen was this.

A few months ago, I got WiFi broadband. It lasted two days. Whilst I could connect to the internet, I couldn’t actually DO anything on it. I couldn’t log into my account, I couldn’t even log into ebay. So I pulled it all apart and sent it back to telstra with a big thanks but no thanks.

A month later, I recieved a bill. For $470. (The modem and the early termination of contract fee.) I couldn’t believe it. Not only had I sent the modem back, I had the service for two days! I was outraged. Especially considering that I only signed up because the guy flogging bigpond to me specifically said I had ten days in which I could peruse and then terminate should I choose. Of course there is a lesson in there on not taking anything at face value and actually reading the TOS. (Red face moment there, I should know better)

To cut a long story and several tirades short, I recieved an outstanding notice today. Because I had paid the phone and mobile bills, but not the bigpond bill (I was contesting, I sent the modem back, there was no way I was paying for it and I figured I had no choice with the ETF, but the ETF wasn’t due until tomorrow anyway.) there was an outstanding debt. It didn’t state it was a bigpond issue, it was just an amount. So I called Telstra. Because aside from the bigpond charges, my bills were up to date. I have issues with bills, I cannot have overdue notices, they induce insomnia- so generally my bills are always paid either well before or on the date they are due.

It must have been my lucky day because I got Kelly. Kelly was wonderful. She went through the last three bills with me, item by item and amazingly took my anal retention in her stride. She managed to do the unthinkable. She reduced a $710 bill to a mere $236!! She tracked down the modem I had sent back, she even had my ETF taken care of. In short, Kelly restored my faith in Telstra. Big corporations are generally machines, with no ethics or thought of the people who pay for their services, their sole obssession profit margins and top dollar for shareholders. Finally, some common sense prevailed. Someone actually decided that charging a woman $330 for terminating a service she had for two days was ridiculous.

See, bona fide miracle. Thank you Kelly. Telstra is lucky to have you.

TBOR- more thoughts and an explanation of sorts

Some more thoughts and some already stated on the Book of Revelation that I wrote about in my other blog. I will no doubt at some later stage return to the topic of sexual crime and man as victim, since that is what the film is about and my reason for disliking it is for turning what should have been a powerful look into the debilitating nature of this kind of crime was turned more into an erotic fantasy that has completely and utterly castrated the whole original concept of the film in the first place.  Forgive the repetiveness, but it just bugged me so much I would have to dig for a week to remove the bug from my ass.  So here’s what I wrote in the other blog,

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Today is all about procrastination. I am putting off doing the ironing.

So I thought I’d tell you all a little story, that really isn’t a story at all, is just me rambling and doing what I do best, avoiding the mountain of ironing that awaits.

Anyone who has ever met us would know that the husband and I are completely different (and not just by genitalia) I mean we are totally different. The only thing we have in common (aside from our offspring) is that we are both rabid and fervent Rugby League fanatics. (He moreso than I)
I am a lover of words. As a child books were my heroin. I shot up volumes of Shakespear, snorted Bronte and Austin, smoked the great books of the western world and ate literature like candy. I was brought up in a house that encouraged political passion and debate at dinner, that was socially aware and lived an excessively bohemian existence.

My husbands world was very different. It was working class full of 6-5 and overtime. Chops and sausages and dinner infront of the tv. Camping once a year and kids sitting in the car waiting for Dad to remember them and bring them a packet of twisties until he was done drinking at the pub and took them home.

The closest thing to culture my husband had ever experienced was the time his mum accidentally bought natural yogurt instead of sour cream at the supermarket. The only literature he had ever read was The Hobbit, that he was introduced to in his year 7 english/lit class. It was the only book he had ever read before he met me, when he was 20.

So it really should have come as no surprise that he thought Michelangelo was a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle, that Virgil was a thunderbird (not a poet) and that real men don’t eat quiche. Which means we see the world in completely different ways. Somehow we work, we have over the years rubbed off on each other, each muting and magnifying certain aspects of each other. (Though no one in his family will watch the news with me, apparently my ranting at the tv scares them)

So it would be only natural that our tastes in movies are completely different. Now I don’t mind the odd war movie. (In fact we own pretty much all of them including every epsiode of MASH) My husband is as Army as they come. Had we been americans he’d have been the best goddam marine the US Army would have ever seen. So his taste naturally lies in War and action movies.

Me? Well for one thing I love to laugh. I especially like intelligent comedy. Wit, puns, dry, black, sarcasm, it’s all good. but I do have a ridiculous love for the kind of movies that deconstruct boundaries and force us to face taboo. (Bad Boy Bubby comes to mind as the most successful movie to combine humour and taboo in the most engaging of ways, making Australian Film a force to be reckoned with and then leave us wondering why we have failed to make such a remarkable impact since.)

Enter a small DVD, Australian and poorly recieved by critics. I wanted to see it for myself. Had to see it for myself. It promised to tear down gender stereo-types, make us see men and women in ways we had never seen them before. At least that was the promise. The husband of course was resistant to the idea. but since he really is a good husband he sat through it with me. And thank god he did. Without his pithy quips and his pained expression and the six pack he was forced to scull simply to endure the first 20 minutes had me laughing out loud where otherwise I would have fallen asleep before Greta Sacchi had even uttered the words “I want you to dance without ego”.

Now, normally when I write about movies I have watched, it’s because I like them so I warn the reader of any spoiler I might accidently allow to pass onto the screen in my desire to talk about what I have seen, however, in the case of The Book of Revelations….this is not the case.
1. I did not like it Sam I am, I would not watch it in the can, I could not would not Sam I am.
2. Spoilers? What spoilers? The whole movie is nothing more than a slow torturous sucking of 119 minutes of your life that could have been better spent ironing or cleaning the kitty litter tray.
3. I will tell you everything, to spare you the indiginity of having to watch it for yourself.

Daniel is a dancer. (modern ballet or something, whatever it is, it is mind numbingly dull and I would rather have my eyeballs peeled like grapes then watch an actual performance)
His sour puss girlfriend (also a dancer) sends him out for cigarettes and he doesn’t come back. Greta Sacchi is the choreographer and Collin Friells (the only saving grace of the movie) is a cop who was once married to her, she asks him to look for Daniel.

Daniel returns after 12 days. During which he was abducted by 3 hooded and masked women who chained him to the floor and used him as their sexual puppet. (An idea my husband thought would be awesome in typical testosterone fashion) What ensues is Daniels downward spiral as he attempts to come to grips with his victimisation and goes in pursuit of his attackers ending in a violent episode that really, leaves one feeling kind of flat. More of an anti-climax really.

The movie was supposed to offer up the role of victim for examination. Man as victim in particular and the stigma attatched to men as victims of sexual crime. (And woman as perpetraitor) Unfortunately the whole tone and mood of the movie falls flat on its own unemotional delivery. The dialogue is stilted and unanimated. No one seems to ever get really angry until the final climax, which in itself seems to be contained rather than the explosive finale one would expect.

I realise the awkwardness of the acting and direction is meant to reflect on the awkwardness of the material, but it didn’t work. It touched lightly on the subject, for example where Daniel goes to the police to report that “his friend” was abducted by three women and the two police officers laugh “Half his luck” and so the crime remains unreported.

It touched lightly on it when chained to the ground Daniel begs to be freed so he can use the bathroom and he is left there, lying in his own urine until one of the hooded women comes to his aide, removes his clothing and gives him a slightly erotic sponge bath. If they wanted to truly debase him they would have left him completely naked and chained, exposed in the same way a man would leave a woman. It seemed to want to challenge the generalisations but failed to really pull through. Probably the most frightening thing he underwent was when they released his wrists and ankles and instead chained him to the wall by his balls.

Daniel then leaves his dance company and returns to the spot on the road he was dumped, to trace back his steps in an effort to seek out his assailants. In my husbands words, “You gotta commend his tactics, screw every woman you meet in an effort to find the three.” Which is basically what he does. Because his abusers allowed him to see their naked bodies and the identifying marks by which he could some day indentify them. (One had a tatoo on her hip, one had a tatoo on her breast and one had a big birth mark on her ass)

Throughout the movie the husband would pipe up with the same machoistic reactions as the cops. Half his luck, go with it buddy just go with it. It was a highly erotic movie with sex scenes being somewhat explicit. Not XXX explicit but certainly explicit enough for the R rating. What was lost on my husband was the movies subtle attempt to show that this was infact rape. When there is no sexual consent, it is a sexual crime to continue to engage in a sexual act with someone who has expressed no desire to be involved.

It was however slightly more successful in showing just how debilitating this kind of crime is on men. On the stigma atatched to reporting the crime. On the debate that if he was able to perform then obviously you can’t really class that as rape now can we? of course we can. Sexual stimulation will achieve the required result even if one party is unwilling. In the case of men, more so, since anatomically it does seem to have a will of it’s own. It does open up a lot of points to address but never really does it adequately enough.

I believe most will still see this movie as three women seducing a man rather than three women objectifying and raping a man. Because the film fails to really go to the great depths of villification. It has swept them aside and replaced them with erotocism, which damages the whole plot.

Collin Friels as a cop who specialises in sexual crimes, is the only one who brings any real warmth, persona and life to the film. He is fluid and emotive, and yet he is the only alive thing in a world of dancers where their art itself relies on emotion, fluidity and passion, and yet they all seem devoid of emotion at all.

The cinematography is pretty good. The scenes of the melbourne alley ways where Daniel is abducted are beautifully done. But otherwise, the movie holds no real appeal. What it promises it fails to deliver.

119 minutes of wasted time. The husband now gloats.

God I hate it when he’s right.

My weekly opinion- Abdicating Parents. The private vs. public debacle.

I was taken aback recently when reading Hugh Mackay’s scathing article against the upper-middle socioeconomic stratum and their demands for expensive private schooling, in August 10’s article in The Age.  What begins as an assault on these parents “abdicating their parental duties”  to the social policies incorporated and  employed by private schools, becomes an outright attack on private schools being the new tool by which parents (these abdicating, absent and apathetic parents) are buying social status, grades and future jobs.

 

There’s a small piece of me that wants to poke out my tongue and give a resounding “well D’Uh”.  Without a good education jobs are harder to come by. Year 12 is about getting good grades, you ARE competing against every other year 12 student for a place at University. This is why we have a UAI. A ranking system by which we are all graded and subjected to in order to be found worthy of tertiary education.  And it doesn’t matter which school you go to, whether it be private or public, you are still ranked, still graded and still judged on your academic performance.

 

The days of school being for expanding and broadening, developing a lust for and nurturing that pursuit of one’s knowledge went the way of the Dodo decades ago. Indeed, when I was in high school more than a decade ago, the emphasis was placed on getting good grades to earn the good TER and therefore better your chances of getting into University, nothing about nurturing and developing a curious hunger for knowledge for its own sake.

 

And what is so wrong about wanting the best for our children? The old adage that you get what you pay for is as true in education as it is in every other facet of life. To illustrate this point, my daughter is a keen musician and not completely without talent. In choosing a school for her, (which when you are a military family tends to  happen every two years) I must take this passion into consideration. She is a much happier child, performs better academically and socially when she is able to express herself musically. 

 

Where I currently live, our local public schools are a mixed bag. The two primary schools we are zoned for are woefully under funded and don’t  have a music program.  (FTR neither does the school she does attend which is private, but it does have a good choir and a wonderful staff that go above and beyond and (shock horror) I chose the school because of the family values and discipline it reinforces, there were two private schools in the area that have excellent music programs but they had no availability for her for enrolment, however, one of the schools allows her to attend their band practise every Tuesday morning and actually arranged transport for her to the practise and then to school, something that honestly, would not happen in a public school.)   

 

The point is that many private schools have better programs, resources and curriculum than their public school counterparts. If you can afford the best for your children, of course you are going to give them the best that you can.  

 

And whilst the claims in  Mackay’s article that private school is the tool of the class making devil, I am just as disturbed by his disdain for parents who want their children to be taught in an environment that teaches not only academics but common courtesy, manners, values and discipline.  Why are these value systems so maligned?  It’s not about having schools teach these fundamental basics of common politeness, it’s about having these values reinforced in their schooling life.  Yes, my children are privately schooled. Yes, I chose my children’s school  because it reinforced those basic social niceties that I have spent teaching them every day of their lives. And yes I resent being labelled as a parent who is abdicating my parental duties and choosing a school based on how well they can baby sit my children. 

 

My children spend the bulk of their waking hours at school five days a week. It’s only natural to want them to be in an environment that reinforces the values they learn at home.  Reinforces. There is no abdication there.  As for the push for private education being a sign of institutionalised class structuring, until the pressure for children to do well in school is lessened, then parents are going to continue to seek out the best educational opportunities for their children, which until public education reforms are made, will remain the dominion of the private school sector.