Frog Brained

We are on this planet for a remarkably short time. Sure, it feels long, but it’s not. Our lives are literally a flash in the pan, and if you’re lucky enough within that time to meet your other half, you are blessed indeed. Finding the person who completes you, who lets you live your life more fully and more joyfully (apart from all those arguments about taking out the trash and leaving the lid off the toothpaste) it’s a wonderful thing.

Unless you happen to be gay. Then, apparently, it’s an abomination and no you can’t have marriage rights and no you can’t be listed as next of kin and dear god, you want kids? No freakin’ way, freakazoid.

Where does this come from? The Bible? Well maybe, but the Bible also says a woman can’t enter a house of the lord when she’s having her period, and that slaves are okay if they’re not from your own country. We’ve managed to move beyond these things, how long till we move beyond the rest?

I’m not Bible bashing here, really I’m not. I’m bashing a world where you can’t marry your life partner unless you happen to be straight. I’m bashing a world where you can live with someone in a loving, monogamous relationship for 10, 15, 20, 30 years but you can’t be on their contacts as next of kin.

You cannot tell me love is a sin. Love is supposed to be a wonderful thing, it’s supposed to be a joy and frankly you can’t tell me that a gay man feels any less for his partner than a straight man does. You can’t tell me that a straight woman loves her partner more than a gay woman loves hers.

For the love of pete, please can we have an end to “commitment ceremonies” and a beginning of marriage for any two people who are of legal age and happen to be madly, deeply, wildly in love.

Thank you. Speaking as an Australian, and therefore a close ally to your country, thank you.

I hadn’t really dared to hope that Obama would win. Even here on the other side of the world we had constant election coverage, and the whole time I would think “Man, it would be awesome if Obama won, that would really be brilliant”.

And here we are, and there he is and I’m almost crying with excitement.

Dear voters of America, not only the impressive result, but the record numbers of you who decided this was an election that you NEEDED to vote in - these things deserve congratulations.

Thank you.

Watch the above video, it’s one of the most mind blowing performances you’ll ever see on a bog standard talent show. I particularly love the look on Simon Cowell’s face about 2 bars in.

I’m not much of an opera buff, but like most people, a well sung Nessun Dorma can move me to tears, this one most certainly does.

When I was reading up on giant bugs, I was told to be careful when digging up adults, as they might have babies. I’ve checked every time but tonight after I dug up my big roaches and chatted to them a bit, I didn’t notice the babies until I went to tidy the tank. Careful digging around revealed 10 baby roaches, each about 7mm long. Nine of them look healthy and bright, the other one might not make it. There might also be more I couldn’t find, i didn’t want to be rough in the sand considering the teeny adorable babyfaces.

BABIES!

This morning when I left for work, my leafbugs were about 7cm long. Give or take. Tonight, I peeked into the tank to find one of them was almost finished her moult, and the other was just starting hers. This was exciting enough until I realised they had almost doubled their size to 13cm with a single moult. They’re resting up now, the one in the photo (Cafe) had a terrible time trying to shed the last of the skin from her rump, so in the end I reached in and tugged gently to help her out. She was pretty pleased with that. Sadly it looks like one of her front legs has malformed, but I think there’s one more moult in them yet, so it will fix then. Latte hung herself upside down and hooked her back legs to the lid of the tank, pretty much just walking out of the skin. It was fascinating to watch.

Also, don’t forget Nanowrimo. If I can do it, so can you. I’ve got Alison, Mum and Kirsty doing it so far. What’s stopping you?

Five days to go until Nano starts, eeeeeeeeeep. I have worked on my two plots over and over and now I’m bored with them so I’m starting all new on Saturday. I’m trying not to think too much about my plot as I’m scared i’ll get bored of this one too, so apart from some basic backbone I’m leaving it vague until I type it.

Otherwise, the only thing of note today is the lack of genuine jobs for men in romance novels. They’re all Greek Tycoons, Sheiks, Princes… I want to read “The Tax Accountants’ Secret Wife” “The window cleaner and the virgin” “Bob From Bob’s Carwash and Saloon and his missus”. Far more interesting.

Imagine, if you will, that you’re out and about somewhere. It’s a warm day, and you’re thirsty. What do you do? Probably step in somewhere and buy a bottle of water, or find a drink fountain which will provide you clean cool water. Or if you happen to be at home, you can turn on the tap and there it is again, all the clean water you can drink - and don’t tell me your tap water isn’t drinkable if you’re living in the first world. It is. It might not taste of “nothing” like your bottled stuff, but if it was dangerous, it wouldn’t be in your pipes.

What if the water you drank could kill you? What if the only water you had wasn’t clear at all, but a murky muddy mess containing all kinds of bacteria and disease. Sure, then you’d hit the bottled. Unless you happen to live in an area where there’s no money for bottled water, and no way of obtaining clean water.

Okay try this. You’re sitting there watching tv and you’re hungry. What do you do? Probably hit the kitchen and get some food happening, or you call a pizza or you step out to a cafe. You can see where I’m heading with this, right? What if you couldn’t afford to do these things? What if the price of a loaf of bread was more money than you had in the world. What if your family was hungry, and you couldn’t provide the food they need?

Poverty is global. From famine stuck farmers in the third world - stuggling to scrape a living off dead earth - to people in your own town who may have lost jobs, become ill or for whatever other reason are living below the poverty line.

There’s no easy solution. Aid in the third world can provide clean water, medication, education and food supplies, but they can’t make the rains come. Aid in the first world can provide emergency money, clothes and food, but they can’t create a job or cure a disease.

One of the greatest battles is indifference. People who are comfortable in their lives too often don’t feel they should bother with people who aren’t. Why not though? There’s not a lot of difference between having a home and not having a home, especially these days. Is your job secure? REALLY? I don’t mean to be scaring people here, but in reality it’s a short jump from “comfortable” to “hungry”.

I can’t make you do this, but try it as an experiment. For the next couple of hours at least, or even a whole day, stop and think from time to time. When you reach for the fridge, imagine what it would be like if when you opened the door, there was nothing there and you had no way to restock it. When you pick up your sweater, imagine what it would be to have that as one of your only items of clothing. Or what it would be if you DIDN’T have it at all. When you turn on the tap, how would it be to have nothing come out? What would you do? How could you cope? Imagine it. Think about how easy it is to get food and water, but what if you had to walk an hour each way to a dirty well? What if the water in that well made you sick, but you didn’t have any choice?

There’s a hundred organisations you can support. A hundred ways to make even the smallest differences. From local foodshare groups who ask that you pick up an extra can of food and donate it for a hungry family, to child sponsorship that helps an entire community with improvements to their homes and towns. Donating your used (but good quality) items to thrift stores can help in two ways, firstly by raising money for a cause and also for making low cost useful items available to people who can’t afford to run to the department store.

You don’t have to be a saint, you don’t have to give away all your worldly goods and all of your income, but if you can spare some money, some time or some items - then you’re taking care of your fellow man.

As a related aside, from today, this blog will have a Kiva banner in the sidebar. Kiva is a micro lending organisation that makes it possible for anyone to loan small amounts to people trying to improve their lives. I would urge you to visit the site, loan someone $25 and give them a chance. I would also urge you to get involved in local plans to assist in poverty relief.

Mark’s been referring to the Spinies as Leafbugs, which I kinda like. So there you have that. The other night I was giving them a freshen up with new leaves to nom etc. As I generally do, I scooped them out of the tank and parked them on my shoulder where they have a little conflab about the weather and the view while I tidy up the house. This last time however, I put my hand up to pick them up and… okay there’s only one bug there. It was Latte, so i popped her back in the tank and very carefully felt around my back for Cafe. Just then, two legs appeared in my line of sight from above. Seems Cafe had taken the scenic route over the top of my head.

It was warm last night and I kept waking up (I do that when it’s a warm night, it’s why I look so dang tired for most of summer). The big roaches are just as night time chatty as the little ones, only louder. I heard much scuffling and chattering, so I flicked on the light to find them constructing a new burrow. I might block off the light along the bottom so they’ll burrow near the glass. The little ones do that and it’s handy for a quick health check (and for snorgling bug bellies from underneath).

I COULD blog about things other than the bugs, but where’s the fun?

If you’ve retained the vital information from earlier posts, you’ll know i’d ordered a couple more giant roaches in order to make roach babies, which I imagine to be unbearably cute. Well they arrived this morning! Expecting them to be the same age as Badger and Hazel, I scooped out the existing roaches, gave them fresh sand and some new leaves to nom, and then opened the box containing the new roaches… and ooooh my lawd, I needed a bigger tank. You see, rather than a couple of 1 year olds, I’ve landed 2 FOUR year olds. The 1 year olds (actually 18 months or so now) are, if you recall, just a shade under an inch long. The four year olds.. are a little… bigger:

Yeah. So off to the pet shop to get a bigger tank. With a little rearranging they’ve parked quite nicely by the spinies, and there’s room for the babies (who look so TINY now) in their own little tank. I’ll let them get a wee bit bigger before they go in with the others.

Also, the 2 new ones are of breeding age *exciting*.