This question has plagued man-kind since the “beginning”. Is there a higher force, a supreme sentient being out there? Whether or not you call it God, Brahman, Allah, Vishna, Krishna, Yahweh or Jehovah, most people have believed in something higher than ourselves. We as a collective humanity have believed that we are not alone in the world and in times past we have reached for the stars and hoped and prayed for a divine answer.

This is not about your specific beliefs – i wouldn’t assume to call any one out about what they may believe in – but about my belief, my hope that there is something out there who…

I don’t know how to explain myself properly, in my mind I imagine this ball of light. This light is Good. It is all the things we associated with happiness, warm, comforting, fulfilling. It is beyond our conception, it is everything and everything is it. We are not without it, and it cannot be without us. We are talking a lot at the moment in my study of religions class about life after death, and recently our year coordinator has been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer, and my SOR teachers father is not well, and is in hospital. This has brought home sharp and fast the reality of our studies, not only do we want to know this information to pass an exam, we won’t to know this information to be assured of the well-being of loved ones.

I’m not a deeply religious person, I could probably count on my fingers and toes the numbers of times I have been to church in my lifetime. I go to a catholic school, do I guess you could say I was raised catholic, but I am very open to different beliefs. Until recently I did not think God existed. Logically there just couldn’t be “someone” there watching over each and every one of us. But it is often at the worst time in our lives that we turn to religion, and – I pause here to think about what I want to say – look don’t read this and go what a nutter, I have been described by many people as sacrilegious and iconoclastic, I’m not usually the religious type.

It is in the darkest periods of our lives that we turn to religion. This reminds me of a story – Footprints

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed He was walking along the beach with the LORD. Across the sky flashed scenes from His life. For each scene He noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. One belonging to Him and the other to the LORD.

When the last scene of His life flashed before Him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of His life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times of His life.

This really bothered Him and He questioned the LORD about it. LORD you said that once I decided to follow you, you’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.

The LORD replied, my precious, precious child, I Love you and I would never leave you! During your times of trial and suffering when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.

Carolyn Carty, 1963

Some philosophers believe that it is only through suffering and prayer that we attain a soul. Does that mean that to attain a pure soul I should suffer and pray, suffer and pray and then suffer and pray some more? This is all a way of expressing my uncertainty with life. I’m not sure of the boundaries any more, what I once took for solid fact has been torn down and replaced with a void of unanswered, indeed unanswerable, questions.

Answer me this – does God exist and why does He punish us so?

The reporter told how just before she died she said “mother don’t let me die”. This young girl, who’s name i didn’t catch was buried in the home town of her mother yesterday.

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How about we spend $44 million educating parents on how best to protect their children from the dangers of surfing online. The Clean Feed laws you proposed will not cost $44 million, they will cost $45 million the first year and $33 million each year after that. What an incredible waste of money.

We have programs right now in schools that teach teenagers about sex, drugs and alcohol. Why can’t we have a program that teaches children and their parents how to responsibly manage the content that they and their children view on the Internet. How about we attempt to sustain the bouyancy I’m sure the National Broadband Network will bring your numbers in the polls by following it up by casting out the laws that will waste tax payer dollars and alienate the Australian youth.

How about you keep your job by ensuring that in the next election the youth of Australia, a group if which I am a member, will vote for your party? Because right now you are about to take a massive step toward alienating your most fervant supporters. We can be mobilised to ensure your party a landslide victory. But we can and will be mobilised to tear down the wasted effort you will have put into a law that will be repealed 2 years from now. We will march against this abuse of power. We will not sit idly by and allow you to annihilate our countries Internet growth with the posion pill that the Clean Feed Law is. And we will win, because as much as you want to censor us, WE are the parties future, WE are the next generation of leaders and we will NOT be silenced.

Lights! Pretty Lights! (I tried to rotate this, but it wouldn't work. So, tilt your head.)

Hey there! I was out with the camera this afternoon, and the lighting was very exciting. So I took some photos and would now like to show you! Comments, suggestions and edits are very, very welcome.

Oh My God! It's a Flying Dog!

One dog ran to get the other, and I happened to snap this at the perfect moment, unfortunately it was a little out of focus.

Merry Christmas!

I think this one is self explanatory.

Good afternoon. As those of you who follow me on Twitter will be aware on Wednesday I had my wisdom teeth out. I was wheeled into the O.R. at approximately 8.30 and I woke up some time later around 11 o’clock ish. When you see in the movies and TV shows the people who wake up from general anaesthetic that are groggy and the drift out of their slumber, and slowly open their eyes… It’s not like that. I  tried to get comfortable on the bed, by rolling on to my side, how I normally sleep. Well thats not a great idea when you have an IV in your arm, so the nurse looking after me (who was the strangest, most unexpected looking nurse I have ever met) had to tell me several times to lay flat, and then when i woke up they pretty much straight away shuffled me of the bed out to the recovery room, where they fed me Jelly and Ice-cream. No lying around like in the movies. They pretty much made sure I was able to keep the food down then told me not to swallow any of the blood in my mouth and kicked us out.

So that was Wednesday gone – I took some painkillers and slept for the rest of the afternoon. Then Thursday came. Well. Thursday was great – i kept myself hopped up on the painkillers and antibiotics, and read some books, (coincidentally, Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater was interesting) and slept some more. Then Friday came – by this time i was swollen up like a bullfrog (or at least I imagine like a bullfrog, having never actually seen one) and pulled several stitches in my mouth, so now my left side seems to be taking a lot longer to heal than the right. Also, the cabin fever is building.

But there is an upside to all this. JELLY! I love Jelly, but it is incredibly hard to make – you have to really stir this stuff or it doesn’t work! So after a few failed attempts I think I have it down, but wow, it took some time.

I’m starting to get sick of not being able to eat anything hard.

I found out most of my results from end of term exams. Study of Religion – A (ask me anything about Judaism, I dare you), IT – B+, Biology – C (woohoo i passed), English – B (again, woohoo). So that was good! I’m just waiting for Maths and Accounting (i’ll be surprised if I pass accounting at all. and it’s summative too :[   ). Maths i’m very hopeful, i feel like i know all the stuff, i worked my butt off for it!

Anyway now i’ve bored you all to death, so i will try and find something interesting to blog about next time. Suggest something to me. I’m interested in Photography at the moment, so I think i may share with you all some snaps. We shall see.

Arrivederci I miei amici!

I do work experience at the local council in the events department. My boss is a hilarious woman from out western Queensland. She took the races at one of the major towns from nothing to a major event that attracted thousands of people – so she is pretty awesome. (she doesn’t read this, so it’s not just sucking up). We were talking about how people can get so ‘councilfied’ – they get stuck in a single way of thinking and everything (wow the strings group just finished and half the auditorium left. ouch) they do is the same and they can’t make anything new and exciting. I realised that this is true for all of us – we each get stuck in a pattern, a happy, comfortable mode of living. Whether it is with a loved one that we never expect to leave or with the daily routine of family or the harsh, intense, sometimes dull grind of work. We may not enjoy some of these things but we do feel comfortable doing them because they are familiar and they are known. I think that possibly the greatest human fear is the fear of change – we like order and we love rules and patterns that can be completed every day. We find it so comforting to have something that we know can repeat day in day out.

I realised just now that i am been stuck in a rut – a (majority of the time) happy, blissfully ignorant rut. So I’m going to try and break out of this rut. I’m gonna try and do things differently, shake off the ‘friends’ that I’m not happy with and that I was just living with.

I’m going to make a change – hopefully for the better. Comments, suggestions, thoughts?

PS. I can play cello, clarinet and piano – just not as well as some of these kids. Wow there is some talent here!

I’m looking forward to speaking to you all, more and soon.

Adios.

Imagine you are a woman – for 50% of you, imagine you’re yourself. A man walks up to you holding his iPhone and says “you are the most beautiful girl ever seen, have i”.

A) this man probably still lives with his mother
B) you can do better than this
C) he’s holding his iPhone. to pick you up. need i say more.

Despite the lame attempt at a Star Wars throwback, this guy is reading a script from his iPhone. 5 words. Drop. it. like. it’s. hot.

The reason for all this anger is the insulting new iPhone app that Pepsi released – Amp Up Before Your Score, which allows you to go through a pre-ordained set off stereotypical women, and provides the greatest douche with lines like “i’d like to get caught in your friendly fire”. If i was the ‘military chick’ that this douchebag was trying to pick up I tell him to piss off before I shoved my gun up a his arse and emptied a magazine.

We wonder why society is so out of touch and desensitized. It’s senseless, revolting companies like Pepsi that will do anything to hit their key demographic market. If we demean and degrade women like this in advertising how can we expect those horrible people out there that see a woman as anything other than a ‘good lay?’ Around the world civilized nations have worked to eradicate racism, we have come a long way since the days of apartheid, but there is more to do – get rid of the degrading sexism that we still apply to men and women across the board. Anyone can do any job – male or female, hard labour or hair dressing. We treat women like crap because they are presented that way by some of the most influential advertisers in the world. On behalf of men everywhere, I’m Sorry.