highlyeccentric | Oct. 19th, 2006

Oct. 19th, 2006

The fact that many Muslim women seek to dress modestly has been used by conservative politicians and commentators as a big plus about Islam. At a recent public forum, Towards a Cohesive Australia, the federal MP Tony Abbott said combating terrorism meant facing up to the ways Western societies fall short of their professed ideals. He then posed the question: "How can alienated Muslim males be expected to respect women, for instance, when this city's bookstands, billboards and TV shows proclaim that women are sex objects?"

Well, we should expect that they will respect women the same way Muslim women are expected to respect men regardless of the images they are bombarded with.

-Nadia Jamal, SMH 19/10/06

Mothering isn't a job, it's a relationship. It's about my connection to my son and my daughter, and theirs to me. Nobody in the family can apply for a transfer to a different department. We all muddle through on L plates. Hell, my children are so unalike that few of the parenting lessons I absorbed raising the eldest apply to the youngest. He's gregarious, impulsive, chaotic. She's shy, cautious, organised. They need different things. Do I bitch about being a mum sometimes? Sure. Is every moment rewarding? No way. But the hardest job in the world? Please. Put down the violin.

Mothering (or parenting) is not a career; it's more like some endless improvisatonal role play game. Just when you think you've read the situation and worked out the rules, everything changes again. Life, and the kids, keep throwing new elements into the story as it unfolds, and you have to go with it. Like theatresports, the golden rule is that you can't block or reject the new stuff. Teething, tantrums, deceit, rebellion. You have to take it on. It always feels like I work out what to do about the new twist in the plot about five minutes after everyone else. And nobody ever lets me go back and do any of my scenes over again. But what can I do? What I always do. I wing it.
-Michelle Griffin, SMH's 'The Mother Lode', 19/10/06

Back on May 8, 2005, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology held the first ever Time Traveller's Convention, correctly assuming that "technically, you would only need one". Urging folk to leave details of the convention inside library books and carved on to anything non-biodegradable, the organisers hoped their knees-up would be well broadcast to people of the future. (At the time, I begged every editor I knew to send me there, explaining all I'd need was an air ticket, accommodation and enough alfoil with which to craft a convincing "future suit and hat", but, perhaps foreseeing dark futures off their own, all deferred.) As it turned out, the convention was a "mixed success", with "no confirmed time travellers" in attendance, Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live blaming the poor showing on the fact that "people from the future already know the party sucked".

-Jack Marx

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Strong Verbs Are Just Better

I shall wing it, I have wung it

Oct. 19th, 2006

Oct. 19th, 2006

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