Entries from August 2003 ↓

Lately, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned probably every time I’ve written in this thing recently, it’s been uni pain season. What that brings with it is a dramatic increase in procrastination, which leads to me being constructive in all kinds of ways I’d usually never pursue. So anyhow, lately I’ve been reading up on my philosophy jibber-jabber, reading a lot of theological and philosophical papers and other things like that, I’ve even spent many hours reading what are, for the better part, one-sided over-dramatised rants on e2. So resultantly (which I was shocked to find was actually a word when I checked the dictionary), I’ve been doing a lot of that introspective jazz, thinking, considering things and all that waffle, and the one real conclusion I’ve come to is that I’m pretty damnwell happy with who I am and what I’ve done up to this point. Which personally I found was a pretty damn shocking revelation, but one which I’m pretty smiley about. Which isn’t to say I’ll give myself any chance of becoming complacent, after all, I do have a lot of (what are for the most part quite secretive) plans for the next couple of years, not to mention the concepts I’m working on for the longer term.

Personally I’ve worked out that not trying to plan anything solid more than a year in advance is a pretty good system for me. Of course this rules out a lot of financially responsible decisions (that I’m sure my parents would be appalled at me passing up on one hand, but supportive on the other) like home loans, stock investments and all other manner of things that involve mature levels of committment. But I’m quite happy to live with that, I have no plans on being a rich old man, the idea doesn’t interest me at all really. But my 1-year-max-plan scheme seems to help me stop setting myself ridiculously hefty long term goals and other things I’m not real fussed about. I have no problems chucking things into the “I wouldn’t mind thinking about doing this stuff in the next few years” bucket and perusing through it reasonably often, but when it comes down to it, I get the feeling that giving myself ultimatums like “I want to be on a six figure salary by 30″ or “I want to have a $40,000 car before I’m 25″ and such and such (warning, cliché approaching), just aren’t me.

Polywaffling aside though, I guess a consice summary would be something like I’m down with being me, and I like the idea of doing what I’m gonna do and seeing where I end up.

The next quandary I find myself part of involves nutting out whether the capitalist prize of supposed riches can lure me back into corporate whoring again, or whether I set a bearing for begging for a crappy part time job and working towards something that I think I might like a lot better than the whole ’suit’ bag, but which have no guarantees of. Of course, this will have to wait for a while until I finish dealing with the most impending of my proverbial horde of uni assignments.

I’ve been a little out of it today, it’s just been one of those out of kilter days. I’m starting to get this real sensation of impending doom. I don’t know what it is, but something’s sitting in the back of my mind gnawing at me. I don’t think it’s Uni, I mean Uni can be hard and a pain in the ass at times, but it’s nothing I can’t handle, and even if it turns out I can’t handle it, it’s no great loss. Maybe I’m just getting that thing again. You know, the feeling that you’re aging too fast and by the time you’ve done half the things you wanted to do, you’ll be too old to do the rest of it? I wonder what you call a fear of aging, no doubt there’s a term for it. Then again I guess it’s not so much aging, more running out of time.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m just spending too much time focusing on the destination and not just paying attention to the journey (Warning, warning, entering cliché territory). It’s not like I spend a lot of time thinking about it, but maybe even what I do spend is too much. Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves, that kind of jazz. Maybe I do too much, check that, maybe I want to do too much. But I could hardly see that as a bad thing. I think when I get right down to it, the one thing I’ve gotta do is question my own motives. The last thing I want to be doing is spending my life trying to impress other people or wasting my time doing somebody elses dirty work.

Beaten paths are for beaten men.

After all, where would the fun be in things if I knew what I was doing?

Unfortunately, unlike my compatriot Alex’s venture, yesterday’s visit to the dentist didn’t involve mighty praise for my fangs. Instead, I was told that my teeth could be upgraded, that they had the technology… they could make them faster, stronger, more agresssive… which apparently involves sticking lots of pointy metal things in my mouth, clamping things to the inside of my jaw, and getting four fillings. I dearly enjoy rinsing my mouth out with a half-limp face and then spitting out large quantities of blood. Spitting out blood always feels so cinematic. Apparently “one of the clips must’ve been a bit close”. It’s all good now though, and I have new uber-mighty chomping powers never before known to humankind, or something like that. However I had to pay handsomely for the privelege.

I’ve been sleeping a hell of a lot lately, which bothers me a bit. It’s probably more to do with it being damn cold all day and night than anything else, but it’s still a waste of the day, and I have things to do and much procrastinating to get on with. Speaking of which, I was looking at an assignment for Project Management Professionalism and Ethics on Tuesday night and spontaneously realised that I just *had* to write a brief history of the record industry, sound recording and a dissertation on the way commercial singles and mp3’s are slowly cutting away at the concept of the album as a collection of specific songs that belong together. It’s currently about 1300 words long so far and I’m up to the great depression of 1929. Let it not be said that my procrastination is unproductive. However, so far when I read through the thing I get the feeling it’s written a bit too blandly and academic and doesn’t have as much feel or punch to it as I’d like. I guess when you’re trying to cover a lot of ground in a short piece you don’t have as much freedom to break out into the lengthy anecdotes and so on that make an article more entertaining than informative, but you get that. I’m gonna have to get on with the assignment though since it’s due this coming week. I also have a 1300 page tome on MFC programming that I’ve gotta try and beat information and candy out of to get the GUI end of the project rolling, lest I end up taking a reaming in a few weeks when it’s due.

So my weekend’s looking like it’s gonna consist of uni work, cursing the bitter cold and possibly beating someone over the head with a large blunt object so I can go do something somewhat interesting as well. If I get bored enough and wake up during the day I might go poke fun at mobile phone sales rep’s as well, seeing as how my phone is out of contract, and being a dirty consumer whore I need to have shiny new things to play with. Did I mention it’s bitterly cold?

My dog Gifford, who many of you may know and fear (or at least fear the hyperexcitability of), has over the past couple of weeks become a complete imbecile. The most frustrating aspect of which involves him seeming to think it’s a good idea to wander around and piss on various items inside the house. Now for any of you that may not know, Gifford’s not a pup, he’s 4 people-years old and is generally quite civil (aside from being *really* happy to see people anytime after not seeing them for any period of time longer than several seconds). Last night he decided he needed to micturate on one of the pool table legs (I wasn’t around at the time), and today decided that it was a marvellous idea to wander into my room while I was sitting here working at the computer… and relieve himself in a wide spread all over my Uni bag.

So I don’t know what to do about the blasted animal. I mean I told him off and chucked him outside, but I doubt that’s gonna hold up as a long term solution. It’s possible he’s reacting to the house all of a sudden being quiter and cleaner with my younger sister having moved out, but I don’t know. Hopefully dogs are different to people and he’ll get over it quickly and go back to just yapping a lot and being annoying.

In other breaking news, it’s now coming up on week 4 of this semester at Uni, and we need to have the project implementation mostly done by week 8. I hate actual work, it’s such a drag. Still, it’s gotta be done if I intend on getting this superfluous piece of paper. But I think it’s probably more about me wanting to have done it than it being about anything that’ll actually come about as a result of me having done it. Just one of those things, you know? Been there, done that, bought the tshirt. Right now I could probably wax on philosophical style about my perceptions and intentions for the future and such and such, at least enough to fill a couple of pages… but I think I’ll save that for some other time.

after a good, ooh, let me see… probably three months spent wasting away in some equivalent of an internet black hole, I’ve finally resurrected my site from a fate worse than death. wen.ch is now once again live on the… hmm, optic fibre I guess, or whatever the hell it is that the nations sorry excuse for a telecommunications infrastructure transmits my stuff over. Being a bit of a fiddling type (and not the violin-ish kind), I decided to shell out for a couple of months worth of paid livejournally-ness to tinker with the livejournal embedding features and so on. It’s reasonably friendly, but unfortunately I can’t seem to find any provision for customising the comments pages, along with the calender’s “List by Title” function being uncustomisable and the “View by Day” function being customisable, but not embedded.

But waffle aside, for the most part the week has progressed rather sedately. Traditional caffeine consumption and subsequent Uni lectures, along with healthy doses of assignment procrastination. I’m not even gonna get into the ritual cycle of denial about having to get some shitty job or something in a few months time, the only alternative being to do some more study or something and continue to excel at being significantly poor.

In another fascinating turn of events, I was bitten by a spider while sleeping a couple of weeks back and as yet the little bastard’s bite still hasn’t healed. I have recorded no increase in radioactivity levels and as far as I can tell I haven’t developed any new superhuman powers. The animal kingdom gives me the shaft once again.

I have today, through my most pertinent endeavours, uncovered the answer to the single question that has plagued the minds of man through the ages…

Who would emerge victorious in a battle to the death between an electric bass and a glass chessboard?

And this very day my friends, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, that the bass does lay down the proverbial smack upon the glass chessboard. Subsequent studies will also be published in my new book “Pointy glass things hurt” pending the closure of distribution rights.

In other news, if anyone is in need of a marvellous set of glass chess pieces for nix, please feel free to contact me…

Well, it’s finally happened. After countless ridiculous comments left in livejournals over the past few years with the monkier ’spartacus’ from a long dead in-joke, I eventually signed up for a livejournal. That’s right. I’m selling out, giving in to the man, taking the path of least resistance, working the corporate machine, I’m a dirty consumer whore. I was tossing up the ins and outs of going to the trouble of writing my own journal management script for my mind-numbing ramblings over the past 3 years, and then I thought “Why not be a slack bastard and just use someone elses!” So with complete disrespect for my computer science heritage which is wretched with the concept of writing things from scratch for no apparent reason, I’m here on a livejournal account. Oh how the mighty have failed to get off their slack ass.

The reason I chose today of all the days in all the world to do such a thing, is mainly because I’m feeling really weird. Most of today was fine, I’d go so far as to say quite enjoyable even. Then I was boiling the kettle to make a cup of molten go-juice charged with many a freeze-dried granule and thought I’d read the paper to kill the ninety seconds or so I had to wait. Not particularly interested in reading more about the ongoing trial of a terrorist bomber, I flicked over to page three of the west australian and found myself looking at this:

Man freed over sex with girl, 13
By Sean Cowan

A MAN aged 20 has won his release from jail after he convinced the State’s highest appeal court he should get a lesser term mainly because the 13-year-old girl he had sex with gave her consent. Glen Paul Marris was jailed for three years in December after pleading guilty to four counts of sexually penetrating a child aged between 13 and 16 and two of indecently dealing with her.

But a Court of Criminal Appeal judgment released this week revealed Justices Michael Murray, Anthony Templeman and Christine Wheeler ordered the jail term be suspended in April.

Justice Wheeler said consent was not an issue in the commission of the offence but could be considered at sentencing, including whether efforts were made to gain consent.

“The appellant clearly had a number of substantial mitigating factors in his favour,” she said.

“His plea of guilty was prompt and his remorse apparently genuine. His prior character was apparently very good. His risk of reoffending was low.

“The offences contained no elements of perversion or deviance. Importantly . . . it does not appear to me there is any suggestion of premeditation or calculation or any overbearing of the will of the complainant, even by an attempt at persuasion.”

It was clear Marris did not make lengthy attempts to persuade the girl to have sex with him. He had not pressured, blackmailed or forced her.

The judgment said Marris met the girl, who told him she was 13, at the York Show. They discussed sex that night and had sex in Marris’ car.

Justice Wheeler referred to the case of a man who met a girl on the internet and gradually introduced her to sex over several meetings. “There was not that element of grooming behaviour,” she said.

Rather it appeared to be a purely opportunistic offence over a short period and lacking real premeditation.

She said the encounter was undoubtedly one the girl regretted and Marris accepted should not have occurred.

Defence lawyer Gail Archer had argued that Marris’ case was substantially different to the internet case.

Justice Wheeler also referred to a 1992 Parliamentary speech in which then-attorney-general Joe Berinson said amendments to the WA Criminal Code were only to target sexual activity with an element of abuse.

“That, it seems to me, is a concept of considerable importance in relation to sentencing,” she said. “The greater the element of abuse, as evidenced by matters such as disparity in age, or the use of force, or other types of pressure, or by corruption of a child, the greater the culpability.”

Generally, I’d just be cynical and mostly condescendingly dismissive of the whole thing, think up some creative vulgar term for a guy (just about) my age who was convicted of four counts of statutory rape against a 13 year old girl and go on my merry way.

This time was different though, for the most part because of the simple fact that Glen Paul Marris of York, WA was one of my childhood friends. I knew him from when we moved to York when I was 10 until we left when I was 13. I played basketball with him, I hung out with him with my friends, he was in my classes at school, he came to my house, I traded cards with him. Hell, he helped me out in a fight I got into the first week I was at that school (with another guy I ended up being friends with).

I just feel completely weird. It’s really, really strange. I don’t blink when I read about guys in my high school classes going to jail for breaking and entering and grand theft auto, anyone could do that. Another friend of mine from York had his brain neatly separated into two along the horizontal axis by a sheet of broken glass when he was in a car accident, and while I was sad, it didn’t phase me this much. I mean everybody you know dies. Not so many of your friends fuck thirteen year olds when they’re almost 21. It’s creepy you know? When you’re the same age as someone, in the same place in the same kind of circumstances, you’re almost like a split in reality. You’re a number of different ways the same kind of life could go. Not literally of course, but there’s that kind of feeling you get. Things you could’ve done, ways you could have gone… and one of these friends I shared a moment in time with was still in that tiny rural town, and went to jail for repeatedly violating a child.

I don’t know what to think about that.

Domicile to Houston:

We are live.