Silence: An explanation, if you will.

Silence is golden; it’s a method of communication, which seems to have lost its allure but not it’s effect. In an age where we want direct, on the spot, clear and transparent communication, the simple keep quiet and nod your head seems like a dying art, a bit like writing letters, going to the post office or saying “Nek Minit lol”. The speed in which we receive information is astonishing; the time between an incident occurring and its inevitable materialization as a status on your news feed is awe-inspiring.

Time and money are no longer factors with updated news articles around the clock, instant messaging and with the aid of the ever-advancing smart phones no major incident will be missed. Who could doubt these amazing advances in technology, this shift in the relaying of information, who doesn’t want the world at their fingertips, it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Well except for the mail man who’s out of a job and the paperboy who had to sell his bike but other then that the system is perfect. Isn’t it?

I’m not a big technology guy, I was happy with a Nokia 3210 and the closet’s thing to an app was the game snake, if you were born after 1995 ask your older siblings. I purchased my first smart phone last year and found myself inundated with offers to download free apps, an app for games, dating apps, news apps, there’s even a domino’s app that lets you order pizza. I know what you’re thinking; did this guy just crawl out from under a rock or something? No I didn’t but it was all very alien to me.

The first app I downloaded was SBS The World Game followed by a couple of news apps. I sat down with my cup of coffee, lit a smoke and proceeded to get my daily news fix, Syria’s in turmoil, Egypt’s a mess, manufacturing is leaving Australia to pursue cheaper labour opportunities overseas, more of the same really. As I went to put my phone down I accidently pressed the forum section on this particular news organisations app and low and behold I’d stumbled onto what can only be described as a free for all of public opinion.

The rubbish that was being thrown around on this thing was unbelievable, “ladies and gentleman when entering an internet chat forum please keep your arms and legs safely secured, do not remove your helmet and prepare to go full retard”. What began as a debate on manufacturing turned into a no holds barred economists cage match, anyone and anything that could be thrown around as an excuse for the state of affairs was. It didn’t have to be plausible, feasible or true but once out in the public arena some members of the general public accept it as fact.

This incident really got me thinking, do people really believe what they read and see on the Internet? How can you differentiate between fact and fiction in a place where everyone has an opinion and clearly isn’t afraid to voice it? How do you find truth? Who are these people and is the information being presented credible or is it just the rumour mill in full swing? How do you know their not just trolls (Dickweeds on the internet) who are having you on?

Well the fact of the matter is you don’t so I thought id test the theory.

Step 1- Spread a rumour: 

·      “Did you hear about?” “Yeah I knew there was something up, I walked past her in the corridor today and she just looked at me and nodded, weird right” “Really weird… So then maybe the rumors are true”, “MUST BE”, “? just in boxed me asking if I’d heard the story, LOL bro, yeah I heard it MUST BE TRUE”  

Step 2 – See how quick it spreads:

·      Really quick

Step 3 – The person who was affected by the rumour was aware of the   experiment and was to inform me if any one actually approached them regarding said rumour after seven days.

·      No one

Step 4 – See how long people continued discussing it behind the persons back.

·      2 months of back handed remarks

So I guess by now your probably thinking what the hell does any of this have to do with silence as a form of communication, well my friends when people are so miserable in their own lives that they need to talk about other people to draw attention away from the monotonous existence they call a life, they don’t actually care whether it’s true or not so its better to greet it with a nod of the head and a smile than to dignify it with a verbal response.

…PEACE

Interview With...

Interview with…

Growing up in today’s age can be hard but growing up as the older of two siblings is always going to make life that little bit tougher. An older brothers job isn’t easy but someone has to do it.

Couple that with being the older brother of a 17yr old sister and you know that it’s going to be a bumpy ride for our man Mike. Mum & dad want him to be the role model, he want’s to give her the inspiration to be successful but does she really want to listen? As children it’s easy all she wants to do is play & hang out with him then BAM puberty happens then all of a sudden she’s wearing make up, short dresses, going to parties and dating boys. From being the approachable big bro, all of a sudden he’s the last person she wants to go to with her problems, he starts losing the connection, which he had spent so long building through their childhood.

How does he ask her about the important things in life when he can’t even bring up the topic of her leaving her socks in the lounge room without World War III breaking out. Having found out she had a boyfriend - only after the relationship had ended - Mike was left a little dejected, unsure of how to support her during the bad times.

Trying to get Mikes attention she would occasionally ask him to help her with her computer, which if I might add Mike is capable of doing, which is a clear cry for his attention and love from a big brother she had once pushed away.

Life is a lot simpler for the siblings now Mike is attending the prestigious La Trobe university in Bendigo while his sister is turning 18 this year and has found love with a friend of Mikes which she met through the football. ‘

The true sign of a siblings love is to be there during the hardest times to support one another and then to guide them during the best of times.

Trust Is….

Trust is…. The cornerstone of any relationship whether its business or personal, it’s the base of any solid foundation but can you ever truly trust someone?

I hear stories on the news about wives hiring hit men to kill their husbands; for example the 2012 story of Vicky Soteriou, married to Chris, she has a lover on the side who together tried to murder her husband. The thing that gets to me is that apparently every morning she would tell him that she loved him, they were married, had kids, he trusted her. Well shit if you can’t trust your partner whom can you trust?

You occasionally get the feel good stories the ones that make the eyes water, the knight in shinning armour riding in on his noble steed to save the damsel in distress who’s locked away in her tower, but are you mad enough to jump on the back of a horse with a bloke you don’t know that showed up at the right place at the right time.

Right place, right time can sometimes be wrong place, wrong time.

Bring out the Ouija board and lets see if we can connect with the spirits of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s political careers.

We need look no further than our own backyard to see trust shattered, I’m referring to the comical reign of the Rudd/Gillard Labour government. Our dearest “Kevin 07” the man of the people, hip, up with the times, bilingual, twitter using and all round top bloke stabbed in the back by the iron lady of the labor party, in the immortal words of Derryn Hinch “shame, shame, shame”. How do you trust a government when its representatives don’t even trust each other? Can you expect to regain the faith of the people to the level it had once achieved with that sort of behavior?

How often we see democratic countries thriving economically and politically on the world stage descend into a downward spiral of self-destruction and totalitarianism thanks to some joker being put in charge. 

The saying “absolute power corrupts absolutely” is so true just look at Syria, Libya, Iraq and Lebanon just to name a few. In times long ago these nations were enigmatic, conjuring images of bazaars filled with merchants selling the finest rugs, silks & spices. The air thick with the aroma of burning incense and tobacco, people moving through the lanes like mice in a maze, a hot desert sun sitting high in the late afternoon sky and children playing in the streets. Then like being woken violently from a beautiful dream the streets are empty, the bazaars are no more, the traders have fled, the smell of incense and tobacco is replaced by the thick aroma of burning rubber and gun powder, the streets run red with the blood of the innocent and all of this because they put their trust in the hands of a select few whose greed, delusions and thirst for power has lead to the immense suffering of the people they are meant to represent.

Ok its not all doom and gloom out in that big beautiful world but someone’s got to play the devils advocate.

Love Is…..

Love is…. Complicated; love can lead you to feelings of elation or to feelings of despair, is it real? Or is it a fabricated term people use to describe the chemistry that one experiences upon meeting a potential partner? 

Love stretches from family and friends and as far as material possessions. Love has no bounds; it is endless and infinite however it is not without its flaws. Love can make you blind, with it comes the potential for pain, leading you to poor decisions and questionable behavior. Love can be born out of necessity or can be purely organic, blossoming like a rose through the cracks in the pavement.

Is there such a thing as an endless love? Possibly. 

Imagine if you will, love wasn't like in the movies: what if in the titanic Jack doesn't sacrifice his life for Rose, Romeo doesn’t commit suicide for his beloved Juliet and that dude in the notebook doesn't go all lone ranger and the bird takes off with the rich bloke. Are the movies giving us a true depiction of what makes a real world relationship?

 Ahhhh spoken like a true pessimist but someone has to play the devils advocate.