Saturday, August 14, 2010

Changing times

The past few days have been interesting for me.

I was recruited to help out a company by the name of ALPA (Ahrnem Land
Progression Association) by removing some shelving from an old Coles
store which has now been shut down. The shelves will be sent to remote
Aboriginal communities out in the bush for their chain of stores,
which by the way has a great business plan: get the community healthy
by putting a tax on junk food. They've been doing this for the past
10-20 years if I remember correctly. And Australians call Aboriginals
stupid. Anyway, I digress.

The HR manager was the one who I had to work with, and through him
(mind you, he's a white guy) he told me a lot of information. A lot of
things most of Australians never tell you, mainly because they don't
know. Like how there's 100 jobs in a community of about 1500 people.
FUBAR? Oh yes. Anyway, he tells me how great the Aboriginals out there
are awesome, and true to their old way of life. Maybe not to the point
of running around in their old skool clothing, which comprised of
nothing, more so that they focus on keeping the language and culture
alive. Props for that.

You look at the people in the cities, and they're pretty much the
exact thing that you're average Australian thinks and talks about
Aboriginals. Drunkards. Now, not all of them are bad when they get
drunk, but some of them are. As are some white people, but sadly
Aboriginals just don't have the biology to handle booze like the
majority of human population does. Tragic, and something I can't
explain.

Going on, one thing that I do hear from the both sides, is that
Aboriginals don't really control their kids like Westerners do, or
other cultures for that fact. Or maybe it's just a generation thing,
and not so much a cultural specific issue. For example, today, there
for three kids hanging out in McDonalds, just hanging out, listening
to their music on their phones, and just screaming whenever someone
just walked through the door. It was so retarded. This was around
23.30 mind you, on a Friday, and they were not even 15. What. The.
Fuck. Don't they have anything better to do? Do they run away from
home, because all the male members of their family have goes at finger
fucking them or what? Sorry for being blunt, but at this point in
time, I'm over it. If there are problems at home, shouldn't they be
solved? Ok, this topic isn't just a touch'n'go topic, it's a
get-your-swim-shorts-on-because-we're-going-into-the-deep-end kind of
topic.

Oh, and what the hell is all this shit of having ear plugs in your
ears when you're hanging out with your friends? Jesus, I'm getting old
aren't I? Listen to me. However, what's funniest, is when you see a
whole group of kids doing it? What started this trend? Fashion? Well,
I have one thing to tell you fashion: Get fucked. Who on the hell do
you think you are? Why do we let it influence us so much? It's beyond
retarded. No joke. It's like we were all dropped on our heads, and
then we figured it would be fun to drop ourselves off of some ledge
(head first of course) and cause brain damage for ourselves to make
dealing with choice and individuality as simple as possible.

I talked to the manager of McDonalds, asking him if it's a common
thing that Aboriginals hang out and just cause a ruckus. His reply is
yes, it's all the time. They can't ask them to leave because it would
be classified as racist, and as long as they're not destroying
property, they can do pretty much whatever they like. By the way, this
is coming from a non-white person.

We, as a society (ie, the world) are fucked. It seems like we'll latch
onto any sort of previous damage caused to ones race for as long as
possible, and just play that card as often as possible just to get
ones way.

Ok, here's a history lesson that will probably make you shit yourself.
It wasn't until the 1960's that Aboriginals were taken off the fauna
and flora list. Did you get that? Before that time, they weren't even
classified as being human, thereby giving you the right to do whatever
you saw fit with them. You could kill one, and it wouldn't be
classified as murder. How sick and narrow minded are we as species to
let that kind of thing pass us by?

"Well Chris, I was sitting on my ass in Sweden, what the fuck was I
meant to do, even if I did know about it?"

Fine, kind of hard to know what's happening on the other side of the
world with the communications technology available during that time,
but what if you did know. And you told your friends, and the word just
spread. Would you ever do anything about it? What would you do? I
think it would just remain a simple topic over the coffee table for a
week, at best, and then switch over to something more important, like
how many kids Branjelina have now.

Here's a good current example. The punishment system in Sweden, life
is what, 12 years? What about raping a little girl, 3-4 years? Wow.
Why don't you just spank my bottom and call me a bad dog while
instead, it's just as effective. Ok, granted, most prisoners would
love to kill a child rapist, so survival chances aren't all that
great, but let's just say that they did live, survive the whole ordeal
of becoming the communal finger puppet (read: ass raped by everyone –
at the same time).

I'm noticing this is becoming a very dark post. Don't know if I should stop.

Oh, and I have a stronger and stronger feeling to get involved with
the news, but I hate being lied to and I just don't know where to get
straight facts that would allow me to form my own opinions. I was told
about Al-Jazeera, how straight edge they were. "Awesome!" I thought.
Go to their web page, and it's practically only how we're ripping
ourselves apart, and how we're trying to find new and more fun ways of
doing it as well. Maybe it was the wrong day to check out the news, I
don't know. But it gave me a good incentive not to get any off spring
and push some poor child into a world where we don't give two shits
about another person. Yes, the majority of people are good, but how
good are you willing to be to a complete stranger? How much are you
willing to help and how much are willing to risk in exchange of
feeling good and knowing that you changed someones life? Me? Not so
much. Because it feels like no matter what I would do, it wouldn't
solve the problem that the specific person in question has. Maybe
short term, but what about long term. I'm simply not qualified to do
something like that. However, what if we as a society helped one
person. Think of it, not just your three friends giving you support,
but a whole city. Let's scale it down, think if it was just your whole
local community, within a mere 2-3 km radius of your house? Think of
what we would be able to accomplish.

Bah...ok, just going into a never ending ramble which has no end.

Anyway, I went to a rodeo tonight. It was cool to see a bunch of
cowboys. Real cowboys.

I'm off. Laters.

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