Distractions galore!

We can’t let the shouters, silence the rest of us.

by frogpondsrock on January 18, 2012

in Distractions galore!,potential insanity,real life

Melinda Tankard-Reist shouts a lot.

She shouts about porn and the exploitation of women, she presents herself as a feminist and campaigns against the sexualisation of our girls.

Playboy bunnies on eight year old girls knickers make me a bit shouty as well and I think we should all be making a lot more noise about the sexualisation of our little girls.

BUT

What Melinda Tankard Reist would prefer that we didn’t know about her is that she is a fundamentalist Christian.

A god botherer of the first order who attends a Baptist church.

I didn’t know this, because to be honest even though I follow Melinda Tankard Reist on twitter I find her hysterical screechings to be a bit exhausting and I only notice her occasionally.

Once I was made aware of Melinda Tankard Reist’s religious leanings a lot of her opinions were immediately put into context.

A context that Melinda Tankard Reist doesn’t seem to like me having.

And it also seems that Melinda Tankard Reist would prefer that her religious preferences aren’t talked about.

Melinda Tankard Reist says,

“She tries to follow Jesus, but she doesn’t want anybody focusing on her religion because that will distract from her work.”

I tend to disagree.

I think it is of critical importance that we have a context within which to frame our responses to Melinda Tankard Reist’s anti porn and anti abortion campaigns.

I think that Melinda Tankard Reist’s religion is very, very important to how I perceive her and her work. It doesn’t distract me from her work at all, it gives me the previously mentioned context.

Dr Jennifer Wilson has been persistent in her public questioning of Melinda Tankard Reist and Dr Wilson writes that she is now being sued by Tankard Reist for declaring on her blog, “No Place for Sheep” that Tankard Reist is a Baptist and attends a Baptist church.

MTR threatens Sheep with legal action if we don’t censor our posts about her immediately

In the conversation that ensued on twitter between No place for Sheep, Weezmgk and myself, I offered my public support to Dr Wilson

This conversation in turn inspired Machine Gun Keyboard to write this post in support of Dr Wilson

Melinda Tankard-Reist is not the internet nor sex police

So here I stand on my soapbox on my blog declaring loudly that I am Spartacus, because it is incredibly, incredibly important that WE DO NOT LET THE SHOUTERS WIN.

We the public should always, always question the motivations of high profile public campaigners,politicians or anyone else that purports to speak in our name.

I AM SPARTACUS!

{ 9 comments }

Sunday Selections #50

by frogpondsrock on December 18, 2011

in Distractions galore!,fauna and flora,frogs,photography,sunday selections

We have been doing this for fifty weeks. Wow! That amazes me. Thankyou.

This week I am ignoring my own rules and posting photos that I took yesterday. You can either follow the rules, or not. I don’t mind at all. I just simply enjoy the fact that each Sunday we are here together sharing photos.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

{ 18 comments }

Sunday Selections #48

by frogpondsrock on December 4, 2011

in Arty stuff..,Distractions galore!,photography,sunday selections

The Blurb

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

These photos were all taken last summer.

I love bulbs and before my grandfather died in 2008 he would always give me lots of bulbs. Every time my Tiger lilies flower I think of my grandfather.

The curve of this Molly Hawks wing sends me off into ceramic daydreams.

As does the fine detail in this bush blowflies wing. I love the colour of this blowfly.The eyes of the common house fly always remind me of futuristic robotic design.

I can watch the Orb spiders in their webs for hours. My friend Zelda brought her cockroaches in for me to photograph. I like cockroaches.The sound tunnel at MONAA frogling emerges.

Welcome swallow

This dead sting ray was on the beach and if it hadn’t been so smelly I would have brought it home and made a plaster cast of it. But honestly internet it stunk to high heaven.

{ 22 comments }

“Die Churp Die” and other distractions ie: Zombie Klout

by frogpondsrock on November 17, 2011

in blogging,Distractions galore!,potential insanity,Zombies

I have a very active imagination, I create wonderful “what if” scenarios inside my mind complete with multicoloured layers of alternate realities. This can be a good thing as it enables me to visualise work that I need to make and I can quickly fill pages of my visual diary with ideas that will keep me happy in the studio for months.

This can also be a bad thing as when I am feeling especially maudlin, I can spend an inordinate amount of time brooding on possible futures for my family, all of them grim, and so my mood plummets. Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Autism don’t make for happy daydreams.

I try not to think of the long term ramifications of my daughter dislocating her good knee yesterday. I try to block memories of a particularly harrowing post, written by my bendy cyber daughter in England from my mind, as the thought of a dislocating trachea is just too horrible to contemplate. Yet it happens to my bendy girl and I worry.

I must not allow myself to dwell on all the medical problems that beset my family, my sons anxiety, his high blood pressure at 17, his pain. The fact that my husband at 48 years old, requires slow release morphine patches in order to walk, and as I wrote those very words on this blog , The Spouse came into the kitchen to say good morning and as he kissed me, his right hip dislocated and then his left decided to do the same. The Spouse has gone back to his bed to lie down until his morning nausea abates, then he will get up and push through his pain barriers and finish building his new garage, from timber he milled himself. And I will gently chide him for working too hard, knowing that his pride will not allow the pain to win and also knowing that tomorrow he will be in slightly more pain that he was today.

I need distractions from my reality otherwise I too will begin to fall apart.

And this is where you come into play, internet.

You are my escapism.

Twitter provides me with countless hours of escapism. News links to all the current events that interest me. I follow the Occupy Wall Street movement closely, I keep an eye on various anonymous news feeds, I follow human rights abuses here and abroad. I subscribe to prostitutes and politicians, skeptics and believers, anonymous street artists and the world’s great museums and they all keep my mind occupied.

My Die Churp Die twitter revolution, complete with its own #occupychurp hashtag and catchy graphic designed by the inimitable Zoey from Goodgoogs, is an attempt to entertain myself, whilst not so subtly pointing out that I think my fellow tweeters are worth much more, than the few cents churping promoted tweets will provide.

But this is only my opinion and my opinion is only one amongst the millions. If you don’t like what I am saying on twitter, please unfollow me rather than send me snarky emails with dodgy hotmail addresses.

My dislike of the principles behind churp are as inconsequential in the scheme of things as my love of Zombie Klout. But if pressed, I will admit that it is the complete lack of originality in the churp churp logo that offends me the most.

I am a hypocrite of the first order as I will ask you to give me a +K for Zombies and I will tweet those links at the same time as I will use a Die Churp Die avatar. I will retweet links condemning Klout for creating Klout profiles for unauthorised minors, at the same time as I will declare that I am The Great White Crocodile Hunting Zombie Film Maker on Klout.

Why do I do this?

I do these things, simply to amuse myself, internet.

To take my mind off the things that grieve me.

To give myself a few minutes relief from the things in my life that hurt.

It is that simple.

{ 25 comments }

Wanting to share.

by frogpondsrock on October 8, 2011

in blogging,Distractions galore!,thinking out loud

I am sitting here at my computer watching two yellow throated honeyeaters dive bomb a hawk that is perched in a tree. The honeyeaters have decided that the hawk is far too close to their nest and they are taking it in turns to fly high into the sky and fling their little selves at the hawk’s head.

I was first alerted to the fact that there was a raptor outside by the carry on of the crows, or to be precise the forest ravens as crows are mainland birds. So I have watched as this hawk is harassed and bullied by a pair of raven and now the honeyeaters are having a go. She has stayed on the same branch for over an hour with nothing more than the occasional flick of her wings to indicate that she is bothered by the attention

It is these things that I like to share with you my dear internets but I am unable to get a decent photo of the hawk from here as some inconveniently placed branches on the tree partly obscure her from my view.

After I wrote that last line I grabbed the camera and went outside to see if I could get a decent shot for you but the hawk flew away down the valley before I could even get the camera up to my eye.

And just like that, in the blink of an eye I have lost an hour or more of my day. Though I don’t consider it lost, not really. I saw some bright yellow daffodils in the middle of some very thick scrub. They would have had to be at least a metre high and I know that they have grown from seed from my own dafs. The thought of these two daffodils straining for the sky in the middle of the bracken and dolly bushes, wattles and gum trees makes me happy.

Today the Qld police through their twitter account @QPSMedia are testing their new website www.QLDAlert.com ahead of the storm season. They set the ball rolling with this wonderful tweet. How better to check out a websites strengths and weaknesses but with a simulated Zombie attack on World Zombie day. Qld police media unit. I salute you.

Looking at the back of my house I don’t think we would have much chance in a Zombie Apocalypse. But it is a good thing that Klout says I am an authority on Zombies, So I will be able to put my Zombie Whisperer skills to good use in case the Qld Zombies decide to come down to Tassie.

Daylight savings has thrown me out of whack and I am waking up at 7 am or later and by the time I am into my first cup of coffee it feels like half the day has vanished. I have been absent from the blog because the early mornings are when I write and by 8.30 all my words have vanished so rather than write a page full of rubbish I write nothing at all.

Tonight is my High School reunion. It has been 30 years since I ripped off that hated school tie and vowed to never ever wear navy blue again in my life. Surprisingly enough I am quite looking forward to the reunion and I really hope my old English teacher is there. Apart from my mother, Mrs D was the only other strong female figure in my life and over the past thirty years I have often wondered how she was. Though if she is at the reunion I will have to keep my blog well hidden as Mrs D would be appalled at how I mangle the English language and as for my sentence structure, well my dear internets we wont even go there will we?