Today’s been an introspective one. I’ve been at home sick – wasn’t able to go into work, so I spent the day snoozing and playing around on the net.

I checked out some sites I hadn’t been to in quite some time, like years, and had this whole ‘flashback and remember when’ thing going on. I realised I’ve done a lot in my youngish life, and met a lot of people and been a few places. I’ve lived in four different towns/cities. One in particular seemed to come up a bit today, and I was remembering all the friends I’ve lost touch with over the years. It’s still hard to get my head around change. By change I mean the people that come and go. When I was at Uni, you had people who you lived with and hung out with. By sheer proximity and frequency, you become almost like family – you spent whole days together, laughing, crying, having adventures and basically just growing. All the while, time marched on and one person left, then another, and another, and eventually I too left. And all of a sudden life took a hold and we lost touch.

I miss some people, and I’ve added their names to my “must email soon” list. Some people I don’t miss at all and don’t care that I won’t see again. We all have these people, and I know I’m not alone in having an internal mind-wander of a day; I just hadn’t had one for some time and forgot what it was like.

My life these days is better than it ever has been and better than I thought it could be. I mean, I always dreamed and hoped for what I have now, and I don’t want to change what I have at all – the most perfect girl, plans for our life together and progressing along career-wise.

The one thing missing from my life, and what I would actually change, is the number of good friends that I have regular day to day contact with. Most of my genuine close friends live in other towns, states in some cases, and contact is infrequent at best. I miss them and wish I could see them more.

It’s been an overcast day, particularly chilly for this time of year, and this weather has thrown me off I guess. I mean, winter in winter is cool, because that’s how it’s supposed to be, but a wintry day just a few after hitting 40 degrees is weird and throws you off balance.

I should be doing some housework and general organizing of things, but I’m not in the right headspace. I don’t know if this is the sort of situation where I should just go “Bugger it mate, knuckle down and do what you have to do and it’ll pan out as it should”, or if this is one of those times I should say to myself “ride out this mood and then do the other things”.

Or perhaps, this is one of the times where I should remember what a clever lady said to me recently: “You think too much”.

*shrug*

My beautiful girlfriend has bought me the best present ever – an iPod. The past six months I’d been increasingly keen to have one, if only to block out the Mouth Noise Brigade (you know, the sniffers, lipsmackers and loud eaters) that seem to be all over Melbourne’s Public Transport network .

My birthday was quite recently and the girl went all out and got me what I’d been ogling. It’s been quite easy to get the hang of and now I don’t know how I managed to live without it.

One thing I’ve fallen in love with is podcasting. I stumbled across “Bobcasts“, a regular two minute or so spiel from the inimitably charismatic Greens Leader, Bob Brown. A quick two minute sermon every few days never hurt anyone, and the delighfully charming musical introduction (straight from ‘Bush Sound Effects for Beginners’) makes it all the more worthwhile.

But without a doubt, my greatest ever accidental discovery in the past five days has been The Ricky Gervais Show (David Brent, from The Office). This weekly half hour is a hoot. I downloaded several episodes (all free) and have laughed myself silly. I actually had to turn it off last night on the train on the way home because I was literally laughing out loud – which seeing as no one could hear what I was listening to was funny in itself. Karl Pilkington, even if he is a character, has to be the ‘daftest geezer’ and the show is absolutely top notch. Do yourself a favour and check it out.

Just on podcasting, don’t get too excited; the deckchair guru doesn’t have the most radio-friendly vocal chords, so I shan’t be jumping into it anytime soon myself. I don’t know why, but my voice sounds shithouse on recordings, always has.

Kim Beazley and John Howard enjoy an outing, while Peter Costello, as always, looks on.

With thanks to Prue for drawing my attention to this little puppy:

“MAKE HIM BEG: KEEP THE UPPER HAND”

“IF SHE LOVES YOU, SHE’LL LOVE YOUR MATES”

Headlines like these are giving false impressions of how things really are. All they really accomplish is to perpetuate false stereotypes and give people an unrealistic set of rules to live by.
What’s required is a move away from the “nightclub philosophy” that fills most of our women’s and men’s magazines.
Let’s set about shattering some stereotypes and generalisations, shall we!

Men:

Women:

Now, the above (as all assertions about gender roles are) are generalisations, of course, and should be treated as myth-busting statements, not as being biblically accurate; there are always exceptions.

Modern pop culture sees girls from a young age graduating from magazines such as Disney, where they read about cartoon characters, to ‘Girlfriend’ and ‘Dolly’ where they’re trained to be “fashionable, fabulous and fat-free”. From 12 we have girls wishing they were Carrie Bradshaw. They then move up to Cosmo and Cleo and are continually brainwashed on how to behave around men and how to ‘keep them interested’ by pretty well ignoring them and seeming distant and cold.

The same can be said for men and their literature. All men’s magazines consist of is women, sport, alcohol, cars, and perhaps some hair wax product. The last one is included because we males have become metrosexuals. Men start off with ‘Ralph’ or ‘FHM’ and are bombarded with light-hearted interviews with sexy barmaids, heroic sporting heroes and tales of great alcoholic binges. Combine all three and the magazine is onto a winner, especially if there are graphic photos involved. Blokes are advised by the ‘experts’ that girls will pretty much put up with anything and that “if they don’t, then get rid of ‘em!”.

It’s an instant world we find ourselves in. We can chat with friends over the other side of the world in real time; we can cook a roast in 20 minutes in a super slimming grill; we can buy goods from one continent and have them the next day, all paid for straight away. Everything is immediate and now. I’ve even head people starting to moan about noodles and call on Maggi to get the cooking time under a minute (“But Mum! It’s false advertising, It should be 2 minutes in total, not 2 minutes cooking time!”).

We all want quick answers to lengthier lessons. What we overlook is that it’s the experience that makes it all worthwhile. No people are the same, and it’s ridiculous to believe a “one size fits all” approach to wooing the opposite and same sex. Pop literature is doing nothing but giving us false hopes and taking our dollars, when we’d be best off using the $10 to send a card to the one we admire. It might be old-fashioned but at least it’s honest and direct without any mind games.