an opinion piece

saddam has been executed.

i watched on sky news as they showed every single minute of it up until they put the noose over his head.

i cannot understand it. i am a chronic fence sitter - i swing many ways in an argument because i find a lot of points valid. i understand why china wants taiwan and i understand why taiwan wants to be its own state. i understand the basis of 'fundamentalism' and i understand anti 'terrorist' movements. i DO NOT in any manner or form understand or advocate the killing of another human being. i dont care what your reason is or what your excuse is. there is nothing that makes it right (accidents or self defense i suppose have their own case specifics)

[Thomas and i just had a conversation about fence sitting. he said 'do you think you are really a fence sitter?' and i said 'well, on a lot of things yes but i have my own topics that i'd fight for tooth and nail' ... to clarify ... by fence sitting i mean that i think i'm swayed sometimes not to abandon my own convictions but to 'modify' them in a way i hope depicts growth...?

tom wants to say something - except when it comes to legalising prostitution, where Sarah and I sit on opposite sides of the... 'Ho Wall'.. (haha)... (flip Ma'am is HOT - that we DO agree on)... she is against legalising prostitution, and I am for it, and we just cannot seem to agree on anything no matter how hard we RAH RAH RAH at each other about it.]

ANYWAY and so when you kill someone in order to punish them for killing someone, all you do is promote a sick cycle! how can you begin to account for your own killing of someone sinply in abhorrence of murder? it doesn't ring true in my own ears. and whilst i know everyone views it differently, the argument that seems to abound against me is 'if someone did something awful to a family member of mine then i'd want them to face the highest punishement available.' well... personally, in my case, there are people who i hold accountable for some awful things in my own life but i would never ever use that as an excuse for killing them back. there are better alternatives. but that is just me and my family bands me about for being too much of a 'humanitarian' whatever THAT means... i certainly dont take it as an insult.

saddam was executed. and that says something. it says something different to different people but to me it speaks volumes about the world we live in. (and the role of the media - making money and a sort of entertainment around death) and i am saddened by it.

i never ever keep resolutions BUT...

... THIS will be the year i do!! and i say that every single year. and i never keep any of them. but this year will be different. know why? i'll tell you - its because this year (2006) was the first year ever that i didnt open a single christmas pressie before christmas morning. you see, my family has that annoying habit of celebrating christmas on christmas eve and we open all our family pressies on the eve. and now that i am too old for father christmas to visit me. i dont get anything to open on christmas day (which is sooo wrong according to my materialist side) and so this year i decided to collect whatever friend presents i got (which was a LOT thanks everyone!) and open them christmas morning. suffice to say, every single morning over coffee was a battle. a battle so forceful it tore me apart. frugal idealist sarah vs impatient gimme gimme sarah. these two characters have battled it out MANY a time before and i am ashamed to say, impatience always won. but this time i took not even one single peek! not one! and so now i am trying to make resolutions that i will be able to keep in my newly found age of determination!

so far i will

i) be a nicer person... vague i know... but i have DEFINITE room for improvement and i think vagueness is good for this kind of resolution because then i can expand it into everything!

ii) be healthier ... this HAS to be the most common resolution of all time

iii) learn how to drive ... my BIGGEST grievance and obstinate fear in life... i think i'll need help!

iv) be better with money ... i'm TERRIBLE. i need to be more aware of what i do with money

v) stop being a pansy ... i need to take more risks

vi) study with resolve ... i float on by ... i need to be concrete in my learning and i plan on becoming well read in :
- genocide
- climate change and
- classic novels

vii) start singing again ... i would like to take professional singing lessons again ... it's been years

viii) get cath to teach me the basics of the violin

what are all your resolutions?

little miss church

sometimes my gran can be so dry without realising it and i laugh and laugh for days at what she says (which is sometimes uncomfortable because she usually says these things in church and nuns are very good at giving you the disdainful shrivelling look that makes you feel as though you have sinned beyond reproach)

yesterday at christmas mass (yes... once again... nobody wanted to go to midnight mass with me because they were sloshed out on brandy tipsy tart and so we ended up going to the frigging mass at DAWN (apt). the new priest (i am sure this is such blasphemony but i find him slightly irritating.) its weird - the irish priests all seem to know so much more and dont speak twaddle like the south african ones seem to. he was going on and on about how south africa has become consumed by materialism and secularism and THEN proceeds to call all the children up to the alter and ask them what they got for christmas. it just didnt gel and it didnt mesh with my love of pomp and ceremony that goes along with catholicism. anyhoo, there's this one little girl who pushed all the other children out of the way so that she could get to the front of the church before anyone else and she started bossing the deacon around. gran rolled her eyes and said in a sigh
'there goes little miss church again' ... it reminded me of 'little miss sunshine' a movie i LOVED and i canned my way through the rest of the ceremony (i think it was more exhaustion that hysterics)

but now i'm internally naming people things again. i'm very much a nickname giver - i like them better than people's real names... i mean chewy pen boy! how cool? ;)

it is almost 2007 - i think it will be a good year. i mean, lover of even numbers, acknowledge that 7 is a great number! plus 27 is my family lucky number. but apart from superstitious encouragements, i think it will be a good year because of the opportunities that abound! my gran is always telling me about 'growth years'... she says that being headmistress she got to see a lot of growth in young'uns but that there are specific years for everyone where they grow within themselves. 2006 was a growth year for me. i'm a lot calmer. a lot less judgemental but also a lot more weary of people. Obvious as it may sound, i realised how much i dont know (no no Mike - my brother - i AM still always right without a shadow of a doubt, but sometimes i just need some tweaking in opinion). i realised this year how much deeper everything goes - i'm the kind of person who believes that we are prone to overcomplicate things - dont make things harder than they are. its dumb. but at the same time - people cannot be immediately summed up. things go deeper than simple surface measures. (which is a nice way of saying that i've become a little wearier trusting people immediately)

2007 - have a good year! and make it interesting so that none of you phone me up with boring ass stories ;) just kidding, i love the phone! phone me! phone me now! seriously... at work... its boring

xx

MERRY CHRISTMAS

dear everyone

merry merry christmas christmas

i only wish the most wonderful things for you in 2007 ...

love you all

sarah

i cannot think of an inspired title because i am suffering from brain degeneration and lack of sleep

just finished reading : "special topics in calamity physics"

dont judge a book by its cover. usually i'd disagree ... i'm prone to thinking that if the cover isn't inspired enough to give insight into the book then it's not worth it. awful , i know ... judgemental too, but (to paraphrase a quote i read somewhere some time - 'life is too short to learn german') - life is too short to read a crappy book. this book is great. its intelligent and tiring (i could NOT have written this because I would have been too exhausted) and very very eccentric. and a lot of people wont like it. but i did because i like books that are different - i get to read a LOT... all the new books in fact ... and many of them are the same. interchangeable. this one is good. and the cover (in my opinion) reeks of 'chick lit' and should be done away with because it puts a lot of people off.

And there was a really good bit i wanted to quote here for you all, but i cant remember what page it is on - the 514 page book is so intensive by the time i got to the end i bearly remember what had happened in the beginning. if anyone out there reads it (and some of you will ... well ... ONE of you will because you're getting it for christmas) ;) please let me know what you think.

in other extremely important news - i went shopping with grandmere today. it was long. i'm talking 4 hours long. and we were in rosebank and all we went to was musica, woolworths, clicks and the fishmonger. i forget how long it takes her to walk places.

its fun with grams ... we were attended to by a pierced stoned shop assistant "how on earth does he blow his nose with that thing in there?" pondered grams. and when she wanted to order some judy dench dvd thing (grams LOVES the woman... wants to be her), she gave him MY number and commanded him to phone me because she would be 'unreachable' ..... riiiiight grams. she laughed.

"look sarahkins ... there is a dress for you!" (after i had pointed out this beautiful dress in stoned cherry that i love and covet but is waaay too expensive and when i am an ambassador i will buy it with my government credit cards and grams said she would save and buy it for my birthday and i told her to sew it and i think she just might... i digress) and pointed in a window.

"grams... ahem... that's a lingerie shop. that is a 'teddy'"

"oh. i thought it a bit skimpy"

last night shaks, tom and i went to see 'casino royale'. yawn. firstly : i have never stayed awake for an entire bond movie before, i think they are dumb. however, last night i managed to stay awake- but that was not because it was riveting but because the slush puppie i had to drink was in a carton big enough to bathe a baby seal in and so i had a lot of sugar. secondly : daniel craig? no. not a bond. shame... he tries though. thirdly : it was this odd grating montage of violence and super uberly cheesy lines. so - suffice to say, i was not super impressed. but for what it was? i didn't hate it ;)

pictures from sarah # 1's 21st

promised i'd put up a few photos from sarah # 1#s 21st! (i am sarah #2) ;)






hot john , mike (the wufflet) and chris










the table decor










greg, jono, vanny and the welbster (ryan)

caity, dustin, helen, jono and sarah #1

sarah # 1, abby, beth and me :)

i forget things

i can't tell you how many times i am driving (ahem being driven) down the highway or am walking in a mall or am reading something and i exclaim 'oh i am so going to blog that!' ... something funny i've just thought of or i've just seen and then i immediately forget it. i have in recent days COMPLETELY forgotten what it is i am looking for whilst in the act of looking. i think my brain might be beginning its degeneration process.
it's worrying. i might need to start making lists. i'll be that sad sad girl walking around with a notebook and a pen shouting 'cease the fun! i need a moment to write down in point form this very important anecdote so that people (the majority of whom will actually be with me when i yell 'cease the fun .... 'etc) can read about it!'. sad

shaks... what did i say on thursday that i wanted to blog? ... i told you, do you remember?

i have been tagged by tom. but, unfortunately, the mozilla firefox we use at work does not copy and paste and i cannot remember how to do it 'manually' because i did not pay a single second of attention during my year of computer science (i went through a crazy phase in grade 11 when i took 9 subjects instead of 6 and didnt really pay attention in any of them... good times) so i am going to do it later. i am too lazy to rewrite it all.

i cried 2 days straight at work. i have had an awful time! i have (in my opinion) been both verbally and racially abused and discriminated against and i am planning to take action against it. i never cry. never. not because i try be hard core or anything, but simply because i have a pretty tough skin... but this week has been horrid. everyone is saying i should quit. no. i will stand up for myself. and i am being told i am 'difficult' and have an 'attitude' when all it really is is the fact that nobody else ever stands up for themselves and so voicing one's own rights is seen as undermining 'authority'. well, i'm sorry. i will NOT back down. i need rent money. and i am not going to go find another job when i know i am leaving in june anyway and, besides training for something new in the beginning of masters, i would hate leaving people in the lurch. so here i am. being 'stubborn' as some have said ... in my head? - i know the 'authority' here will make my life difficult for the next 6 months... but it's tit for tat and i can make theirs just as difficult! and get paid an hourly rate for it! paid pig headedness.
i will not be bullied or trampled on.