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Boom boom boom boom...
1 min read
Boom boom boom boom
Boom boom boom boom
Boom boom boom boom
Boom boom boom.
Boom boom boom boom
Boom boom boom boom
Boom boom boom.
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And about that angry ranting thing...
5 min read
I've been to Romania. This is a fact.
Thing is, facts can be funny things. They can stand there and say so much, yet say so little at the same time. Saying "I've been to Romania" doesn't really describe what happened, except in the most superficial of ways.
Now, I do a lot of what might be called charity work, though usually there aren't charities involved. I don't normally even talk about what I do because it doesn't seem proper to mention it, but when I do do what I do it usually seems to have a positive effect. Going to Romania was a more visible and costly example of that (both economically and emotionally) and, partly because I was so involved in it compared to what I normally do, it affected me quite profoundly. Normally the effects of what I do are positive, because I can see I've made an obvious difference to someone's life. With this, it was rather like throwing dirt into a bottomless pit.
I was in Romania with a team of people, mostly christians, mostly from my local church. We were there to provide medical support and some construction work for the Roma in and around Sighişoara (home of Vlad the Impaler). I'd initially expected to be building houses - well, huts. Small things for people who have nothing. In the end we were building a fence for the medical centre near where we were based, which was a large enough thing in itself. This entire place was built by hand by two men to provide a free clinic for Roma women who, for various reasons (the most common being that their ID cards were taken off them by the local government), were unable to make use of normal medical facilities.
I'm not sure of the precise name for them in Romanian, but these Roma are culturally a little different from traveller Roma, who we'd refer to as Gypsies. Generally Roma divide into two groups: those who want to work, and those who don't. The former have a terrible time because of the latter, who are the more visible part of Roma culture. All Roma suffered decades of brutal mistreatment under the communist regime that used to run Romania, and weren't much better off when it left either as most of the organs of the previous communist state were still around, and still staffed by the same people. The most common abuse is to deny them everything they ask for because they're "obviously" just going to waste it, or to force them into the position of having to get a loan to survive - for which they have to surrender their ID card as collateral, meaning they can't make use of any state services, or get work, or even get married.
Anyway... I'm sort of tensing up just writing about this right now. Even without going out to the various Roma villages the medical teams visited I got a huge dose of life there. Begging was a huge problem around the Citadel and the richer parts of the city, where the tourists spend their time. The cynical mind would say that's normal, that's just the locals trying to take advantage of naive foreigners with lots of money and, to be fair to that cynic, a lot of it probably was.
The image that stays with me is a young girl, couldn't have been more than seventeen, carting a two year old kid around outside the local equivalent of B&Q, where a tourist or "rich" foreigner would normally never set foot. We were all in work clothes so we looked pretty scruffy ourselves, and she still came begging. You can never know if they're genuine, or if the child is just borrowed so they can get booze money, or if they're marking you as someone to be mugged later, but it doesn't matter in the end. Something drove them to beg off people not much better off than they were.
Before we left we were warned that our experiences would be very emotionally draining and would probably result in some less than satisfactory behaviour when we got back. In my case it's been this all-pervading sense of anger (which, unfortunately, feeds into other anger issues I already have) about how little people care about how well-off they have it. The problem with anger like this is that it will inevitably earth itself on the first obvious target it can find, regardless of the qualities of that target. I'd already had a yell at my own wife over something that she really didn't deserve shouting at over. I've had a go at quite a few people in the past two weeks and they never deserved it. The anger is all-consuming when it turns up.
I have to remind myself that or problems may not be as immediate and raw as the problems faced in Romania but they are still our problems, and they are still very real. I'm slowly working out my frustration about what I saw but it'll take a while to get it sorted. In the meantime I will most likely appear to be a pompous arse or an unstable barely-coherent lunatic at times. A little patience is al I ask.
I've been to Romania. I will never, ever be the same again.
Thing is, facts can be funny things. They can stand there and say so much, yet say so little at the same time. Saying "I've been to Romania" doesn't really describe what happened, except in the most superficial of ways.
Now, I do a lot of what might be called charity work, though usually there aren't charities involved. I don't normally even talk about what I do because it doesn't seem proper to mention it, but when I do do what I do it usually seems to have a positive effect. Going to Romania was a more visible and costly example of that (both economically and emotionally) and, partly because I was so involved in it compared to what I normally do, it affected me quite profoundly. Normally the effects of what I do are positive, because I can see I've made an obvious difference to someone's life. With this, it was rather like throwing dirt into a bottomless pit.
I was in Romania with a team of people, mostly christians, mostly from my local church. We were there to provide medical support and some construction work for the Roma in and around Sighişoara (home of Vlad the Impaler). I'd initially expected to be building houses - well, huts. Small things for people who have nothing. In the end we were building a fence for the medical centre near where we were based, which was a large enough thing in itself. This entire place was built by hand by two men to provide a free clinic for Roma women who, for various reasons (the most common being that their ID cards were taken off them by the local government), were unable to make use of normal medical facilities.
I'm not sure of the precise name for them in Romanian, but these Roma are culturally a little different from traveller Roma, who we'd refer to as Gypsies. Generally Roma divide into two groups: those who want to work, and those who don't. The former have a terrible time because of the latter, who are the more visible part of Roma culture. All Roma suffered decades of brutal mistreatment under the communist regime that used to run Romania, and weren't much better off when it left either as most of the organs of the previous communist state were still around, and still staffed by the same people. The most common abuse is to deny them everything they ask for because they're "obviously" just going to waste it, or to force them into the position of having to get a loan to survive - for which they have to surrender their ID card as collateral, meaning they can't make use of any state services, or get work, or even get married.
Anyway... I'm sort of tensing up just writing about this right now. Even without going out to the various Roma villages the medical teams visited I got a huge dose of life there. Begging was a huge problem around the Citadel and the richer parts of the city, where the tourists spend their time. The cynical mind would say that's normal, that's just the locals trying to take advantage of naive foreigners with lots of money and, to be fair to that cynic, a lot of it probably was.
The image that stays with me is a young girl, couldn't have been more than seventeen, carting a two year old kid around outside the local equivalent of B&Q, where a tourist or "rich" foreigner would normally never set foot. We were all in work clothes so we looked pretty scruffy ourselves, and she still came begging. You can never know if they're genuine, or if the child is just borrowed so they can get booze money, or if they're marking you as someone to be mugged later, but it doesn't matter in the end. Something drove them to beg off people not much better off than they were.
Before we left we were warned that our experiences would be very emotionally draining and would probably result in some less than satisfactory behaviour when we got back. In my case it's been this all-pervading sense of anger (which, unfortunately, feeds into other anger issues I already have) about how little people care about how well-off they have it. The problem with anger like this is that it will inevitably earth itself on the first obvious target it can find, regardless of the qualities of that target. I'd already had a yell at my own wife over something that she really didn't deserve shouting at over. I've had a go at quite a few people in the past two weeks and they never deserved it. The anger is all-consuming when it turns up.
I have to remind myself that or problems may not be as immediate and raw as the problems faced in Romania but they are still our problems, and they are still very real. I'm slowly working out my frustration about what I saw but it'll take a while to get it sorted. In the meantime I will most likely appear to be a pompous arse or an unstable barely-coherent lunatic at times. A little patience is al I ask.
I've been to Romania. I will never, ever be the same again.
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A Rant
4 min read
See the update at the bottom, because apparently this wasn't clear enough.
Just read this and felt profound shock.
Someone agrees with me!
When I was at school I was bullied mercilessly for years, driven to the point of suicide a couple of times because of it. You can see it clearly in all my school photographs from that period. I am so desperately trying to smile, to put on a happy face but all that comes out is a twisted, contorted grimace of fear and anger and depression because I'm sat next to the guy who has once again decided that he's going to make my life hell for the day.
I always feel sympathy for people who are bullied, but that's it. I don't feel more sympathy just because someone was bullied for a particular reason. I don't feel extra empathy because they're one of society's current designated victim groups. Gay people may have had it rough in the past. So did a little boy who's only crime was to be a little shy and a little quicker to show emotion than everyone else.
Much as I sympathise and understand the pain people go through when they're abused by others, I don't see why they should get a ribbon and a special day. Bullying is bullying is bullying; the reasons behind it are less important than the fact that the bully is taking pleasure in having power over another person's life, the fact that he's able to incite fear in them.
I didn't kill myself in the end but I was close, so very close several times. Other people bullied merely for being quiet, or red-haired, or having funny ears have killed themselves because of it, but they don't get their ribbon and their special day for everyone to genuflect and absolve themselves of the "collective sin" of "hate". They die and they're forgotten by everyone except their family. Being gay is no more a valid reason for claiming special privilege than having a lisp or a funny accent, or fat lips, or squinty eyes, or the wrong sort of family background. Yet, do these get a ribbon? A special day? Collective soul-baring?
Why should any of it?
UPDATE
I want to make it clear that this is nothing to do with any particular prejudice anyone might think I have against lgbt peeps, because I don't. I can't. I'd pretty much have to hate myself to have a prejudice against them because, and I know this might shock you, I am bisexual. For the record I wasn't bullied about this at school because it wasn't remotely obvious back then - I was just bullied about everything else. I have not made an issue of this fact in the past because I do not consider myself to be defined by who I might enjoy having sex with.
I do not believe that people should get extra "support" just because they're bullied for particular reasons. As I have attempted to point out, bullying is bullying, and it is a terrible thing, and every effort should be made to prevent it happening. I have never, ever said that bullying should be allowed to go on. I have never advocated that bullying against some people is less painful than others. I have never said that people should just "man up" or deal with it.
My life was effectively destroyed for the better part of fifteen years because of what I experienced in school, and completely wiped out for the first six of those years. Between 1989 and 2005 I was, for all intents and purposes, spiritually and mentally dead and I made a lot of incredibly stupid decisions during that time. It's only the experience of my wedding that finally kicked me out of it. The idea of "manning up" is a joke to me.
I do believe with all my heart that creating special classes of bullying, special "hate crimes", creates inequality and resentment against the groups that have been designated as deserving of this special treatment, and mistreats everyone else who is not part of that designated group. It is unequal. It elevates certain people to a higher status than others without justification. Justification does not include what happens to people in other countries, either. Riding on the back of someone else's suffering is as bad as inflicting it on them in the first place.
Just read this and felt profound shock.
Someone agrees with me!
When I was at school I was bullied mercilessly for years, driven to the point of suicide a couple of times because of it. You can see it clearly in all my school photographs from that period. I am so desperately trying to smile, to put on a happy face but all that comes out is a twisted, contorted grimace of fear and anger and depression because I'm sat next to the guy who has once again decided that he's going to make my life hell for the day.
I always feel sympathy for people who are bullied, but that's it. I don't feel more sympathy just because someone was bullied for a particular reason. I don't feel extra empathy because they're one of society's current designated victim groups. Gay people may have had it rough in the past. So did a little boy who's only crime was to be a little shy and a little quicker to show emotion than everyone else.
Much as I sympathise and understand the pain people go through when they're abused by others, I don't see why they should get a ribbon and a special day. Bullying is bullying is bullying; the reasons behind it are less important than the fact that the bully is taking pleasure in having power over another person's life, the fact that he's able to incite fear in them.
I didn't kill myself in the end but I was close, so very close several times. Other people bullied merely for being quiet, or red-haired, or having funny ears have killed themselves because of it, but they don't get their ribbon and their special day for everyone to genuflect and absolve themselves of the "collective sin" of "hate". They die and they're forgotten by everyone except their family. Being gay is no more a valid reason for claiming special privilege than having a lisp or a funny accent, or fat lips, or squinty eyes, or the wrong sort of family background. Yet, do these get a ribbon? A special day? Collective soul-baring?
Why should any of it?
UPDATE
I want to make it clear that this is nothing to do with any particular prejudice anyone might think I have against lgbt peeps, because I don't. I can't. I'd pretty much have to hate myself to have a prejudice against them because, and I know this might shock you, I am bisexual. For the record I wasn't bullied about this at school because it wasn't remotely obvious back then - I was just bullied about everything else. I have not made an issue of this fact in the past because I do not consider myself to be defined by who I might enjoy having sex with.
I do not believe that people should get extra "support" just because they're bullied for particular reasons. As I have attempted to point out, bullying is bullying, and it is a terrible thing, and every effort should be made to prevent it happening. I have never, ever said that bullying should be allowed to go on. I have never advocated that bullying against some people is less painful than others. I have never said that people should just "man up" or deal with it.
My life was effectively destroyed for the better part of fifteen years because of what I experienced in school, and completely wiped out for the first six of those years. Between 1989 and 2005 I was, for all intents and purposes, spiritually and mentally dead and I made a lot of incredibly stupid decisions during that time. It's only the experience of my wedding that finally kicked me out of it. The idea of "manning up" is a joke to me.
I do believe with all my heart that creating special classes of bullying, special "hate crimes", creates inequality and resentment against the groups that have been designated as deserving of this special treatment, and mistreats everyone else who is not part of that designated group. It is unequal. It elevates certain people to a higher status than others without justification. Justification does not include what happens to people in other countries, either. Riding on the back of someone else's suffering is as bad as inflicting it on them in the first place.
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Consistency and Great Music
2 min read
I am blah. Writing is hard, drawing is harder still - actually drawing is damn near impossible for one very good reasn: consistency, or my lack of it. Bet you didn't see that coming!
Yeah I sort of suck at keeping a face or character consistent at the moment. I find that every time I start a character, intending it to look a particular way, he looks different. Yes model sheets are handy... actually I should print some out and pin them up where I can see them, that would probably make this easier wouldn't it? Professionals don't just blast off a character design and then work on it again without references (unless they're absolutely incredible somehow) so why should I?
Anyway, yeah, so I'm still annoyed about consistency. On the other hand I have loads of epid music to listen to thanks to a little composition group called Two Steps From Hell. They make trailer music, and just trailer music most of the time. It's likely you've heard some in a recent trailer without realising it.
Epic doesn't begin to describe most of their work. Some of it is surprisingly haunting and beautiful too. My current favourites are all the various Drum-heavy tracks they did. Go look on Youtube for them. And be sure to buy their albums!
Final note: I bought an older model Cintiq on Ebay the other day. Waiting for it to arrive from Hong Kong as we speak. I'll let everyone know how much better I get when I an draw looking at the same place my pen is again.
Yeah I sort of suck at keeping a face or character consistent at the moment. I find that every time I start a character, intending it to look a particular way, he looks different. Yes model sheets are handy... actually I should print some out and pin them up where I can see them, that would probably make this easier wouldn't it? Professionals don't just blast off a character design and then work on it again without references (unless they're absolutely incredible somehow) so why should I?
Anyway, yeah, so I'm still annoyed about consistency. On the other hand I have loads of epid music to listen to thanks to a little composition group called Two Steps From Hell. They make trailer music, and just trailer music most of the time. It's likely you've heard some in a recent trailer without realising it.
Epic doesn't begin to describe most of their work. Some of it is surprisingly haunting and beautiful too. My current favourites are all the various Drum-heavy tracks they did. Go look on Youtube for them. And be sure to buy their albums!
Final note: I bought an older model Cintiq on Ebay the other day. Waiting for it to arrive from Hong Kong as we speak. I'll let everyone know how much better I get when I an draw looking at the same place my pen is again.
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Off to Romania for a week
1 min read
Churchy stuff, building a roof. Free food has been promised. Woot. 
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