My History essay I'm working on dominates my thoughts. So, a couple of quotes:

"Fascism is capitalism plus murder."
- Upton Sinclair

"The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category."
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

I agree with both, if you change Hitler's leader (probably Führer, in the original German) with dictator. Or possibly demagogue.

One of the troublesome things about studying this period of history is the growing awareness that Hitler's gifts could, had a better man possessed them, have been good for the world - or perhaps not. Nazism is, essentially, a flavour of fascism, and the thing about fascism is that it works - but in ways that aren't good. And Hitler's gifts are fascist gifts.

Fascism starts from the perspective of unifying people through the hatred of something else; Italian Fascism operated on the premise that its opponents were trying to keep Italy weak, when Italy should be strong. Nazism was based in very 19th-century ideas of racial heirarchy and superiority, and its hatred was focussed on the conspiracy of international Jewry. (This, I believe, is much like the homosexual agenda, which we hide from straight people but which is faxed to every queer on the planet daily. Honest. Today's had a lot to say on the subject of Catholic schoolgirls, you should have seen it.)

Which means that - as in Germany after the Nazis took power - fascism can be a powerful 'positive' force. Many people of Germany were better off than they'd been since before the War under Hitler. Unfortunately, though, fascist economics tend to drive the country they're operating in inevitably towards war. After a certain point both Italy and Germany needed a war, or else they would have collapsed.

My essay topic: Did the French 'invent' Fascism before World War One?

Short answer: Yes.

But I still need 2,499 more words.

And now, a musical interlude.

The Minstrel Boy

The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone
In the ranks of death you will find him
His father's sword he hath girded on
And his wild harp slung behind him
"Land of Song!" said the warrior bard
"Tho' all the world betrays thee
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard
One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

The Minstrel fell! But the foeman's chain
Could not bring that proud soul under
The harp he lov'd ne'er spoke again
For he tore its chords asunder
And said "No chains shall sully thee
Thou soul of love and brav'ry!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery!"


Now Listening To: Lili Fatale - Tomber
Now Doing: Writing my father's backup of his system to CD, as his CD writer isn't working, and pondering that I really should back up my own system. Writing this in TextPad so that I don't tax the system while it's writing the CD more than I already am by dint of running multiple applications, including playing mp3s, at the same time.
Now Planning: Work on my History essay.
Now Pondering: Fascism, and the way it seems like such a whiner's doctrine; its appeal is to the people who are comfortably off, but sulking because they're not fabulously rich, and frightened and angered by the dissatisfaction of the have-nots.

If you do a Google search on deflated soccer ball graphic, guess which website comes up as your number one result?

This one, that's which. I take great pride: I'm number one at something.

We're number one! We're number one! We're number one!

Go me!

From the cool dudes at Brunching: The Weblog FAQK.

Tonight my roleplaying campaign went on hiatus for the exam period. My notes so that I can remember where we're at when we resume are as follows:

The night of hell has just ended.
Jon has checked out of hospital AMA.
Bob recaps; agree to go get guns.
Amelia has revealed herself to be fast + deadly
Doc has figured the gangs somewhate.
Snakes are supporting Pete w/ Potato Heads.
Mary thinks she's going nuts.
All are going to Mary's G'ma's.
Guy who dumped Jonathan's body has been decapitated (by Amelia), body dumped.
Jeanette has been reined in by Snakes' leader.
Doc felt "presence" at Jon's house.
Bob's special gun was stolen, no fingerprints (place wiped clean).
Bob had weird time-loss experience at Jon's house/own apt.

Yeesh. And this is the visible part of the iceberg I set myself up for in terms of what's going on in this campaign's plot.

So. I was going to return to my interesting-links-and-commentary style, but I can do that later. For now...

Chris is going through something pretty hard right now. I know how he feels better than one might expect; my mother was sick for a long, long time, and for a year or so we reached the point where we figured we were just waiting for her to die. I watched her waste away. She aged about thirty years in the space of months - a nurse once asked if Dad was Mum's son. They're five months apart in age.

Mum got better, unexpectedly and shockingly rapidly - seven years of steady decline became perhaps six months of recovery. Mum's condition was different, though.

Mum and I got a lot closer during her illness, in some ways, though the tension of those years drove a rift between Dad and me that still hasn't really healed. That saddens me, because we were once very close, but we're too different now to reconcile very easily. But I know I would have been glad of the closeness I'd found with Mum if she hadn't made it through. My sister... probably would have found it hard to get over the way she and Mum didn't get on then, because there comes a time when you can't make good on these things.

One of the things that makes a difference, I think, when someone you love dies is how those things ended, whether you've left things between you that should have been addressed, or just left things unsaid.

It's a cliche, I know, and I can't claim I live up to it a lot of the time. But it's something to think about.

And Chris - if you need me, I'm here.

So Phillip sourced me The Many Faces of Go, a dangerously addictive Go software thing. I think I've spent at least two hours tonight on it - mostly solving problems, also playing a couple of games.

I suck. The computer beat me twice on a 9 by 9 board with a FOUR STONE HANDICAP.

Then I beat it by 18 stones. Go me.

Anyway, through the magic of Go problems, I'm learning to see more levels of play, and start to pick up on things. I need to concentrate more when I actually play. My problem is, I suck at joseki (opening play, basically) and end up frustrated before I get anywhere.

I blame Phillip, personally. He's the one who brought up the Go thing last year, just after I played a game against Dad. Sponsored the whole tri-club addiction by bringing in a set. It's all his fault.

Watching the second half of the queen's Jubilee concert (we missed the first half, because Mum thought it started an hour later than it did).

Random observations: Hey, who knew, Ben Elton is funny.

It turns out you can do Bohemian Rhapsody without Freddie Mercury, so long as you have the guitarist, but you need three lead singers and a choir.

Cliff Richard is much cooler with the guitarist from Queen to do a riff for It's Called Rock and Roll.

Ozzy Osbourne is insane.

Prince William is still cute.

I love the royal lion and unicorn with guitars.
Elton John is being broadcast from the Music Room. Can I say wow about Buck House, by the way?

My mother's comment: "It gives 'playing the palace' a whole new meaning."

Some day I'd like to take one of those Buckingham Palace tours. That, or I have to become hugely successful and famous in a public-service sort of way, so I can get to meet the queen, whichever.

(Yes, I'm coming out as monarchist. Live with it. I love the Queen. I braved claustrophobia and sunburn for the chance to see her at King's Park when she came to Australia last. And I did, too, a sublime vision in pastels.)

I'm actively scorning people right now, although in their absence, since I left that channel.

A beautiful, beautiful argument, started when one of the people started expounding that the Royal Family should be ousted and/or killed, and that the French had the right idea. An argument in which, apparently, all opinions are supposed to be held as equally valid, even when one set is based on extensive study of historical fact and the other, well, isn't.

As a constitutional monarchist, with very carefully thought-out historical reasons for her point of view, I took umbrage at this. Especially since the French Revolution, for all the beauty of liberte, fraternite, egalite, didn't exactly pan out brilliantly. (The Terror, anyone? Bonaparte dictatorship? The Third Republic? The Vichy French? Jean-Marie le Pen? Stop me any time you're ready...)

But I could live with republican views if she didn't express them so offensively.

And if hers had any basis other than nationalism.

I'm sorry, nationalism is what's giving us things like the Troubles in Ireland, to say the least. And nationalism gave us World War One.

Oh no, says my oh-so-erudite opponent, the Nazis gave us two world wars.

This would be the Nazi party that didn't come into existence until some time after the end of the first world war, and didn't come to power until 1932, would it? Or some other Nazi party I'm not aware of, that somehow eluded my notice throughout the past semester's intensive study of the history of Europe from 1890-1945?

And still managed to cause both World Wars, too. What a clever Nazi Party that must be.

So Netscape 4.whatever has been crashing on me lately, and it's getting irritating as hell. I'm now still using it for mail, but using Netscape 6 for browsing, because I prefer those elements of the two.

Fun link: Penguin Warehouse. Via /usr/bin/girl and dedicated to Stephie Penguin, for obvious reasons.

Quote for today: "Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be." - W.H. Auden

Encountered somewhat at random, but highly pertinent, I think. Serendipity is something which touches my life at odd moments.

I'm pondering, at present, the reasons why I haven't played Go in months. Quite simply, it came down to annoyance; Go games tend to attract spectators, and the spectators at the last match I played in particular drove me right off. Only a couple of the half-dozen odd actually play the game, and all kept criticising my methods of play in what was perhaps my fourth or fifth ever game. This was, as one might imagine, annoying.

It sapped my enjoyment of the playing of Go entirely, and I haven't got into it since. I am, however, going to be taking on a software Go thing against which I can hone my skills, learn to spot ataris and such that I tend to miss, all in the absence of the peanut gallery. With it I will no doubt regain my pleasure in the subtle challenge of the game.

A quiz.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Telekinesis, with esper for "touch". Because it would be so darned useful.

Would you use your super power to help any poor schlep that needed it? Would you use it just to help your loved ones? Just for personal gain? Or for PURE EVIL?

Probably any poor schlep that needed it, so long as I could do it without making it obvious I had it. I wouldn't want that to be public knowledge.

What would your one weakness be?

Coconut. Because it already is.

Who would be your arch-nemesis, and why?

Prince Andrew.

Just because.

Flashy spandex costume and alter-ego? Or regular clothes and your own name?

Regular clothes, and my own name. Possibly with slightly more leather.

It's been ages, so...

We all remember what happened on the eleventh of September last year, of course. But, prompted by a line from the M*A*S*H episode I'm watching (Frank Burns: "When are you going to learn about Chinese treachery? Didn't Pearl Harbour teach you anything?"), I feel compelled to bring up what was, too me, the most beautiful quote from the whole News Anchors Having To Fill Without Scripts aspect of that genuinely tragic and bad event.

I forget whether it was the CNN or A(merican)BC coverage that had this, but:

Announcer: "This is the first attack on mainland America since Pearl Harbour."

Beautiful, just beautiful.

(Okay, okay, because some people aren't so hot on geography or history: Pearl Harbour is in Hawai'i, not part of mainland anything, and Hawai'i wasn't actually part of America at the time.)

Because referrer hits are too much fun for words...

gay skinheads into total rubber coverage - What I love about this one is that it was talking about Pim Fortuyn that got me this.

Kylie Minogue Necklaces - what is a Kylie Minogue necklace, really? Other than something that sounds unbelievably tacky?

"movie sex" songs - Um. Not here. What's a "movie sex" song anyway?

And so you see. I think the moral here is that talking about a range of strange subjects gets you stranger search hits. If I get much weirder I'm going to have to set up an account over at DSR.

I'm considering avoiding people for a couple of days.

I'm fragile right now, I think. There's some stress from uni, and from certain people, and there's the fact that I'm on somewhat unstable emotional ground still because Mouse died, and there's this fractured misalignment in my life without her. Elderly feline or no, she was a friend I dearly loved, and I'm not done grieving yet.

Damn. I'm crying just thinking about it.

So today, I've been feeling very hurt by something that shouldn't hurt half so much as it does. All very niggling things, I did something that needed to be done at UCC, after the VP had said I could, and people have been bitching and flaming me for it. To any of those people who happen to read this blog: Fuck you, by the way.

So, yeah. I'm very raw right now. The good things are still good - like hugs from people I love, and playing, and that kind of thing, but the bad things are so so bad. Right now it doesn't feel like they balance, although right now, I realise, I'm in no position to be making responsible decisions about anything.

And I know that isolating myself is a bad thing, too. So I'm left uncertain, after all.

One thing I do know is that I'm aesthetically ill-suited to the present. I like some current and recent music, but I'm more inclined towards music produced fifty, sixty years ago. I like older literature than the newest stuff, albeit with exceptions - but then again, the fact that there are these exceptions perhaps suggests that the now is good and I should just collect music and books that predate my parents to fulfil my aesthetic wants.

Now Listening To: the rain

Ain't no miracle being born
People doing it every day
Ain't no miracle growing up
People just grow that way

So it goes like it goes
Like the river flows
And time it rolls right on
And maybe what's good gets a little bit better
And maybe what's bad gets gone...

Some days you just feel like optimism. Especially when you're getting attacked from unexpected quarters, and deciding people suck and you don't want to like them any more. Tonight I choose to be content instead of upset.

Today was, more or less, an average day, in that I had some really sucky bits and some highly enjoyable bits. Wrestling with Oliver for possession of a deflated quarter-size soccer ball was fun, although dangerous when Tommo got involved. Highly flattering was hearing Oliver talking about how cool my campaign is.

Tom L. brought in a movie called Metropolitan to watch at UniSFA today. I enjoyed it immensely; it's very sardonic and witty, and faintly surreal.

If today was so average, why do I feel so sucky? I think tonight is a night for abandoning the computer in favour of music and a good book.

Now listening to: Michael Crawford, A Touch of Music in the Night
Evil plotting:: Telling Aaron about the plans I have for my roleplaying campaign.

Hot soup is lovely in cool weather.

Presently in an IRC channel I inhabit there's a couple of folks having a toilet training discussion.

It's possible it's because I don't have children myself, or perhaps because I've read enough Freud to be highly suspicious of parents who obsess too hard about toilet training, but I find myself thinking, more or less: "... right. Do we have to hear the details?"

Anyway. Not much has happened this morning, and I'm sleepy. Today's UberCool is Martha, because she is the rockingest and most lovely, and she makes me happy when I am very un-.

I'm far less incoherent than I was, now.

Arwen (my sister) and Tenille (her housemate) came over this morning. It was good to see them both, although Tenille administered a "psychological test" which apparently shows I have psychopathic tendencies, and kept making Psycho noises at me after that. Bitch. Other than that we had fun, and I tempted Tenille cruelly by showing her Zeus, because I'm mean, and she deserved it.

Since then I've been thinking hard about some things that have been happening lately, especially last night, and what they mean.

I've been a lot more cuddly and sweet and friendly to people lately, I know. This isn't an act, although sometimes I feel like I'm pretending to be something I'm not, because this mode of behaviour is alien to my long-standing habits. This is me being my genuine self, and dropping the mask I used to wear all the time. And I'm glad I've done it, because I'm happier in the friendships I have and the people around me than I've ever been. But now I'm coming up against something I'm only now fully analysing.

For reasons I shan't go into in the vast and open public that is the Internet, I had a socially traumatic childhood and adolescence. I'm damaged in ways I keep discovering new facets of - although at least I no longer have the mindset that, being damaged goods as I am, I'm unworthy of the love of decent people. I used to. But the fact that I have a healthier attitude about my wounds doesn't mean they're not still there, and one of the things I've realised I can't do easily is say no to people, or reject them.

This wasn't always an issue, because I used to make myself distant and unapproachable. I kept a wall around the parts of me that mattered that very, very few people were able to breach. So nobody got that close to me, and nobody flirted with me, and nobody teased me unless they were trying to hurt me.

Now the wall is more or less not there.

And it's causing me problems, because if someone flirts with me, and doesn't mean it, I'll flirt back, and not mean it - but if they do mean it, I'll still flirt back, and I'll go through with my flirting till the point where my psyche revolts, and I feel sick and awful inside, because I still can't say no, even if it's bad in ways that make me go away and throw up, later, or feel worse still than that. The closest I can come to rejecting someone is just not responding, and if they don't get the hint, I give in, even when I'm hurting myself by doing so.

This is something I'm going to work on. I have scars enough to show that I'm too good at hurting myself already. I'm also not going to drink any more, because my more-or-less abstinence over the last few years has eroded all tolerance I had to alcohol, it seems, and being drunk doesn't bring out my better characteristics - it's still a willpower thing for me to look after myself, and make healthy decisions, and alcohol erodes my willpower.

One thing I'm getting better at is letting myself be teased by people who mean it well - that too was something I had trouble with, for a while, and still do, occasionally, just a little. Sometimes it hurts even though I know I shouldn't - but most of the time, these days, I laugh, and even enjoy it, because it's sweet indeed to feel at home with people, and to know they feel at home enough with me to tease me.

And I'm going to work on that rejection thing. I think I'll play Bartok again after all, some time, and not apologise for doing nasty things and so on. And I'll stop just ducking letting people into my campaign who I don't think will fit in, and just tell them no, this isn't the right kind of campaign for you, and I don't want you to join.

Because it is good, not having the wall. It's good to feel things, instead of being emotionally isolated. It's good to be happy. It's good to be able to snuggle with people, because that makes me happy. It's good to be able to let myself like people, in simple, uncomplicated ways, instead of that complicated "well I think they're wonderful, so I'm unworthy of their company, so I'll try and spend time with them without intruding on their existences" way that was so very unhealthy. I like just being able to enjoy the people I think are really, truly cool.

This is the key change, the fabulous key change...

And speaking of really cool: today's UberCool is Watha-James the Mighty, because it's his birthday, which highlights his inherent coolness to Uber proportions.

Layanna is still the UberCute, which is the only reason the little orc is getting away with the destruction she's been wreaking on my library.

Jen is, temporarily, the shiniest, because she had hologram sequins, and therefore outclassed Stephie's innate shininess. Sorry, Steph.

Oliver is a cute drunk.

Chris Gorham is an incoherent drunk.

Davyd is a hopeless drunk.

And so you see.