There is so much you can do, when you don't go to work

Today I did not go to work, and it has been a glorious day so far!

First I slept in (until 8.40! crazy!) and my cat came and cuddled with me in bed.
Brett also bought me a coffee in bed, which is always wonderful, even though i jumped up about 30 seconds later.

The best part of my day has been going on a photo expedition. It was lovely. I went out to Brighton Beach and some other beach which may or may not be called Hampton Beach and played around with my new camera stuff. I stacked my filters and experimented to my hearts content (well until my parking ran out) and i just enjoyed the view.

An old man came up to me (he was walking his dog) and we chatted about cameras and photography and the lovely cloud formations we were seeing today and it was all just nice. In hindsight i wish i had taken his photo, because it would have been a nice addition to my day. oh well.

my favorite picture i took today was this one:


those dogs were so gorgeous. i now want a golden retriever. or a golden cocker spaniel. i love cocker spnaiels, they have soft floppy ears that are fun to pat.

for the rest of my day off, i think i will go and watch Angel, and drink hot chocolates on the couch.

I don't think I have ever had a better day off when i should be at work.

There are more pictures from my day off at flickr (the link is to the left).

Gadgets

So, not a terribly serious post, but i had a wonderful day buying cool stuff for my camera. I bought:

1/ A Hoya 77mm linear polarizer! What?!! A linear one! that won't allow auto focus on a digital camera! CRAZY TALK! i bought it so i can take long exposures during the day. how does this work i hear you ask? (well i imagine that if you are a photo nerd then maybe you are asking this); it works by being stacked on top of my circular polarizer, and then i change the angle of my linear polarizer, and hey presto! neutral density filter! So why didn't i just buy a neutral density filter? well, because they cost almost as much as the last camera lens i bought, that's why! So for $60 bucks I can now take exposures 30secs long in BRIGHT DAYLIGHT. hello cool water trails and waterfalls and movement and stuff. fingers crossed i can pull off a good shot using it.

2/ A wireless remote. Now i can take a photo by pointing a remote at my camera. it doesn't get lazier than this my friends. Or more fun, seriously. take my photo below. i got to pash my husband AND take a photo at the same time. Truly a thing of joy, beauty and wonder.



The other benefit of my wireless remote is so i can take long exposure night time photos. Star trails and moon rise photos, and just generally awesome night time pics. Now i just need to get out of the city.

3/ A spare battery. not terribly exciting. but necessary so i can do the things the first two purchases allow.

So when will i get to use my cool new toys? Well, I am going camping in 2 weeks on the long weekend. I will have 3 glorious full moon nights to photograph to my hearts content in the great otway national park. it has beaches, rivers and waterfalls so i can experiment to my hearts content. i really can't wait. i want to be there right now.

Also coming camping will be Brett (the husband) and a bunch of friends. Don't tell them this, but the reason i suggested we go away for the long weekend was purely so i can take photos. oh! and there are so many koalas in cape otway! i will be sure to take some koala snaps too. we might not have squirrels, but we have koalas. if only they were everywhere like squirrels are.

Hypocrisy 101.1 - Having my cake, and eating it too.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about issues that bother me, and things that I really give a damn about. Since I have so many of these issues that worry me, I’m going to split these posts up, since writing is rather cathartic and it’ll be a book long if I do it all in one go.

My newest source of confusion and guilt. I have been a vegetarian before. Not for the purpose of saving animals, but just because I lived with a bunch of vegans who made it impossible for me to eat meat. For 2 years I didn’t eat it, and I didn’t really miss it that much.

My confusion stems from this: if I can argue so strongly against things like jump racing or be so opposed to them, how can I eat meat? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? I think it is, yet I don’t really want to stop eating meat. I’ve also just started eating fish, and I don’t really want to stop doing that either. I feel guilty however.

I imagine that to die as a fish does, would be horrible. They basically asphyxiate to death, and then along I come and cook it up for dinner. I suppose it would be okay if I just found a dead fish (that had died of natural causes) and ate it, but I don’t. My buying and eating fish supports an industry that goes out and mass murders fish.

Cows, and sheep, and baby sheep and chickens, they all get slaughtered too. Not necessarily humanely. I recently bought my self a copy of “skinny bitch” by those two rather horrible frightening ladies called Trinny and Susannah. I was interested in reading this book that had caused quite a stir in nutrition circles. Little did I know, the reason it causes a stir is because they describe graphically the horrible ways in which animals are killed for our consumption. It’s also a sort of expose on the food industry in America in general. It really was horrifying stuff. I had to shove it away and (since I was on a plane at the time) wish I had pre-ordered the vegetarian meal. But it stuck with me. The images of animals being killed are burned into my mind. There are quotes from people who worked in abattoirs commenting on some of the animal treatment, and truly some people really are sick. To make a sweeping total over-generalisation (which I can do, this is my blog after all), people who work in abattoirs and are not completely repulsed by their jobs have deep seated mental health issues and should be screened for mental disorders on a weekly basis.

BUT, does this mean that I should be too? I wonder if they had school excursions to abattoirs if we would all be vegetarian?

So, can you see my conundrum? I find myself disgusted by animal cruelty, yet I eat meat. And I like it. I enjoy a lamb roast. I love a pork chop. Hell, I’ve even eaten camel for Christ’s sake! How do I come to terms with loving animals and wanting them to have nice long lives where they aren’t forced into human slavery, and then also supporting an animal killing industry that fits in with my lifestyle?
I have a friend, Sarah, who gave up eating meat until she had been a vegetarian for the length of time she estimated it would have taken her to eat a whole cow, and thereby saving the life of one cow. 2 or 3 years I think it was, and she has just recently begun to eat meat again, although I don’t think very much of it. At first I thought this really really weird. But now I think it’s amazing! Not that I didn’t before, but now I’m not so “hmm, how strange” and dismissive. (Sarah if you are reading this, then please I would love to discuss more how you came to doing this). However, I’m not sure that I can find that kind of dedication to the cause. I want to eat meat, and I want to not feel like a hypocrite for doing so. I want to eat my chops AND be able to argue about animal cruelty while I stuff them down.

It’s very easy to ignore this subject, and not think about abattoirs and go on eating meat like a chop is just something you buy at the shop and wasn’t once part of an animals flank, but it is. And I think if we all sat down to dinner and looked at our plates and said “that’s daisy the cow I’m eating, I used to go and pat her every day on my way home from school” then maybe we wouldn’t be eating it so readily.

I know that there is the argument of “it’s us or them” or “survival of the fittest” or, “we’re the top of the food chain” but that doesn’t work for me. We breed these animals for food. And let’s face it; a cow is not going to eat us. It’s not going to see us, run over and then bite a big chunk off and swallow it. (Well they might, but only if some sicko human trains them too, like in “Hannibal rising” with the pigs).

Is there a way for me to do both things? Or do I just need to come to terms with being a hypocrite? My only consolation is that at least I’m not being determinedly ignorant of my actions.

Chasing Steeples

There has been a lot of media attention to "jump racing" aka steeplechasing in the last few days in Victoria. This has been due to a number of horse deaths during the races. I have for a long time been very anti jump racing, and to a lesser extent racing in general.

I found myself quite immersed in the age discussion page on this topic and some of the reasonings for jump racing were truly appalling.

one person compared jump racing to bull fighting:

“I went to South America in January and saw bull fighting. I have to admit it was great to watch much more exciting then then football. The crowd was great as well so much atmosphere and culture. And that what you have to do when you travel overseas get enriched by the local culture. Thats what multiculturalism is all about.

And the best thing was afterwards they fed the slaughtered bulls to the cities poor. I thought it was very generous and showed strong enviromental standards. If only we recycled as much and avoided so much waste.

Anyway I think there is nothing wrong with jumps racing or bull fighting. Both are great to watch and make good day out with the family.”


Is this person crazy? It's bad enough that this person considers bull fighting a good day out with the family, but that they think its acceptable on the grounds of “multiculturalism” is really quite off. Then using this as a basis for making jump racing acceptable. Further to this, how does anyone ever reach this kind of reasoning? Did they not go to school? Did their parents not teach them about animal cruelty? Do they have no empathy or sympathy for other living beings?

The most trotted out excuse for jump racing was: “it prevents the horse being sent to the knackery, so it gives the horse a purpose and lengthens its life”

who do they think they are kidding? Ex-racehorses have long been sold to riding schools, as pets, as horses for hacking etc etc for as long as I can remember and undoubtedly for a lot longer than that. There is no reason for the horse to be sent to the knackery. In, fact if it wasn’t for the racing industry I seriously doubt there would be such a thing as “the knackery” in the first place. And here’s why:

The knackery only exists because the racing industry has so many cast off horses, and nowhere else to put them that wont cost money.

As a previous horse owner, I can assure you, not a single horse owner like myself would EVER consider sending their horse to the knackery.
My horse had to be put down after breaking a leg (he jumped a fence in the paddock and didn’t quite make it) and there was no way I would have let anyone come and take his body away to be used as any kind of food. He was my best friend. I loved that horse more than anything, and to this day I still miss him and wish he was alive. We even considered spending the 60K it would have cost to have his leg reset, even if it meant we couldn’t ride him. This would have been terribly painful for him though, so I made the choice to not go through with that. Instead we hired a backhoe to come and dig a grave for him.
THAT is what a horse lover does. They don’t send their horse to the knackery.

The third reason people were advocating jump racing was because so many people will lose their livelihood if it is banned. I can understand this reasoning, however I still can’t really make peace with it. Sure, it’s sad that some people will lose their jobs. That sucks for them, but in my mind their job mucking out stables, or wiping down tables at the racetrack isn’t worth a few horses lives. As far as I’m concerned it should be banned immediately and the racing industry held accountable for animal torture. It may not be bear baiting, but it’s a close as it comes in Australia. The people who worked in the industry (not the owners) should be retrenched appropriately and supported until they can find new employment. The racing bosses and horse owners can go bankrupt. Fingers crossed they do.

Is it a bird? is it a plane?

Right. So my new friend beccy joe has inspired me to get typing and write a blog. So here it is, my little life in words. Only the funny stuff. or the stuff that really gets me cranky. or happy. or sad. or...you get the picture. Yes, i know i mispelt adventure in my blog title. I kind of like it though. It goes against my typo / spelling freak/ grammar nazi nature. Anyhow now that the introduction is out of the way, i want to tell a little story about my day.

Today I was spat on by superman. Yes, you heard me correctly, superman!

I was riding my bike to work, tra la laing my way along Swanston St, when up ahead i see superman. on a bike. He has a yellow coat, bright blue tights, a red backpack, and red shoes and socks! So...superman. I have a giggle and continue on with my merry tra la laing, and because superman is quite a big guy and he can't ride his bike as fast as i can whip my trusty steed down a hill, i decide to overtake this oddity.

Perilous decision.

As I came level with superman, he hocked one up, and without even bothering to look, spat to his right, and in my face.

He immediately apologised but I was too busy going from shocked to livid and then letting him have it to pay attention to that! I harranged him about how disgusting spitting is, how feral it is (yes i did use that word), how revolting HE is for spitting. Luckily for me (and sadly for him) we arrived at a red light, populated by many fellow bike commuters who then got to hear all about how superman SPAT on me. Ugh, what a revolting man. I hope he is ashamed.

It's my intention to ask him if he's spat on anyone today every time i see him now.

What i don't understand is how anyone can just ride around, spagging off the side of their bikes! It's so gross, and unhygenic. I hope he hasn't been on a plane lately. I don't want my life cut short by swine flu because superman couldn't do what the rest of us do, and wait until we are locked privately away in a toilet before doing icky things with body fluid.

I think i need to take another shower now.