I enjoyed reading The New Manhood by Steve Biddulph where he talks about this exact issue. He explains how in more tribal times death was a key part of life, and there was much more exposure to death and dead bodies through rituals, burials and ceremonies. It was more tactile and therefore people knew it was inevitable.

Case in point: twice a year Kitty and I attend Lifeline Bookfest where we get large piles of second hand children’s books for Junior Pixels and Little Bear to read. The thing we love about these books are they’re not the ones you see for sale in the shops: a lot of them are from the seventies and eighties. One thing Kitty observed is how they’re generally darker than new books being released today: there’s more death.

In November last year I dislocated my patellar (knee cap). It was the worst pain I have ever experienced, especially during the twenty five odd minutes it took for ambulance to arrive, give me the green whistle and relocate my patellar. I thought I was going to die, and strangely, until that moment, I never actually realized I would at some point die.

It dramatically changed my whole outlook on life (and death). I realized I needed to be healthier. I completely gave up drinking soft drinks and alcohol (not that I ever was a regular drinker: more of the occasional social binge), and gave up eating sugary foods.

The first two weeks of zero caffeinated soft drinks were hard, but I drank green tea instead and I can’t remember feeling healthier.  My trip to Austin in March was the first time I have ever been able to sleep soundly on a plane (not being completely wired on caffeine).

Seven months later I don’t miss the soft drinks one bit and I enjoy being sober all the time as I’ve never had clearer thoughts or been able to sleep so easily. After a knee operation and a long recovery of physiotherapy, my knee is also mostly better.

Through my experience I realised what death actually is and while that it is inevitable for us all: I don’t want to die. I want to be healthy because there is so much to live for.

“There’s this aphorism that I learnt when I quit drinking, which is that my happiness grows in proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. The more I expect, the more unhappy I am going to be. The more I accept, the more serene I am.”

Like when he speaks frankly about dealing with early onset Parkinson’s Disease:

”The experience of dealing with the reality of a diagnosis with an incurable progressive illness … once I recognised that and accepted it, that opened [life] up for me in terms of possibilities. You see the entirety of your life in a way that you don’t when you myopically focus on your career, or what your last movie did. All of a sudden it’s all bigger, the stakes are bigger, the implications are bigger and the possibilities are bigger.

The only thing you know for sure is that there’s no cure for this, it’s going to get worse. Given that’s what your great truth is, you have to find ways to make things better.”

I recommend your check it out.

Pretty

Strange

I thought I would resurrect it by writing about our current places we regularly eat. Our criteria is pretty straightforward: fresh, reasonably priced simple yet tasty food with no fuss.

1) Makanan Indonesia @ West End: a authentic Indonesian restaurant located in the strip of restaurants in Hardgrave Road. I love the Satay Set, and Kitty loves the Nasi Goreng and Fish pieces.

2) My Thai Kitchen in Milton: this is the more casual sister outlet of the popular My Thai Restaurant. Fast, fresh Thai food with excellent flavours. We usually get takeaway as they only have a few tables with paper plates.

3) Guzman Y Gomez in the Valley: it’s become our Sunday afternoon tradition to go to GYG in the Emporium for fresh tasting Mexican food. I usually have a steak burrito, Junior Pixels has a ‘little guy burrito’ of his own, and Kitty usually has a vegetarian Nachos. Yum!

4) Swamp Dog @ South Brisbane: just down the road recently opened a new fish n chips store with a difference. They only sell sustainably sourced seafood, and offer free homemade lemonade. We usually go for whatever fish is fresh and tasty, with an Asian salad.

5) Brown Dog Cafe @ The Gabba: Not where you’d expect to find a great breakfast, but we often frequent here on weekends for brekkie. Despite being located directly opposite a brothel, it’s a great little place for scrambled eggs on toast and tea. Kitty loves the pineapple and mint frappes.

This blog was always an experiment, write about anything and see what happens. I used it to write about a lot of shit that made me angry and I simply no longer care.

The Dalai Lama apparently once said:

“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”

I’ve written on here a dozen times how I used to want to buy a house. I used to get angry that young people couldn’t afford houses. I now realize it was all a ruse: you don’t buy a house, you just take on debt.

I somehow thought you couldn’t have a home without owning a house, which is complete bullshit. We have a wonderful home, and we don’t have a single dollar of debt to our names. It has meant we are blessed to make decisions we wouldn’t have been able to make if we had debt. Kitty has taken two and a half years off (so far) to raise two wonderful boys. We live in a beautiful apartment with a wonderful roof top garden, and when we get sick of it, like we did our last place, we give our notice and pay a few hundred dollars to move somewhere else that suits our phase of our lives.

I now truly believe you need to change your mind. I used to believe a lot of shit I no longer believe in, that’s how I know I have grown.

The older I get the more I believe that everything happens for a reason, no matter whether good or bad. It sounds harsh because some truly terrible stuff happens to very undeserving people, but it’s what I believe. When something bad happens, I see it as an opportunity to make things better. I dislocated my patella (knee cap) in November last year and saw it as an opportunity to focus on losing weight and living a more healthy lifestyle. Without it, I probably wouldn’t have made that change, and I would have been my same old self. I can now sleep on long plane trips because I don’t drink copious amounts of carbonated caffeinated beverages that keep me wired.

But the biggest change in my life has been having the two boys. Everyone told me (but I didn’t believe them) but it’s so true: everything changes when you have kids. It’s no longer about you, it’s now about them. It sounds negative but it’s the best thing that has ever happened to me (besides meeting Kitty of course) and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

“For some of us, a hobby is a wonderful way to pass the time. For others, it quickly curdles in the sun of our curiosity until it becomes a disease.”

~ Helen Razer on hobbies (The Big Issue 8 Nov)

This is rather relevant to my arid plant hobby, quickly becoming an addiction. I’ve got six weeks off work to help with the little bear, and seem to spend every spare moment hunting rare, old or unusual arid plants.

Little bear has been amazing so far, a real delight to see and hold.

I also read a very sad story in the NY Times this week about Dragon Mums: mothers and fathers of terminally ill children. It taught me to cherish every moment with little bear and junior pixels.

“This is a love story, and like all great love stories, it is a story of loss. Parenting, I’ve come to understand, is about loving my child today. Now. In fact, for any parent, anywhere, that’s all there is.”

“This is not an issue of credit rating. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that”

Alan Greenspan on the USA’s credit rating being downgraded on the weekend.

Print more money? Seriously? Is that really the solution to the whole world, Australia included, being addicted to debt and having been on one huge debt binge for the last decade? Confidence inspiring.

Video here.

Australia is one of only three countries in the world that allow speculators to negative gear:

Deduction of negative gearing losses on property against income from other sources for the purpose of reducing income tax is illegal in the vast majority of countries, the exceptions being Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Their new material was especially enjoyable, I look forward to their new album later this year.

I really enjoyed his latest Mickey Haller novel: ‘The Fifth Witness’, and find it especially interesting that he writes courtroom fiction so well having never been a lawyer.

“…the mental satisfaction of having $1000.00 (in 1939) laid away where you can put your hands on it, is worth more than what interest it might bring, especially if you have the investment in something that you could not realize on quickly.”

Warren Buffett’s grandfather Ernest Buffett writes a letter in 1939 on the importance of what Scott Pape calls Mojo Money, some money tucked away for just in case.

I can’t stress how important this is, or how much it changes your attitude to life. I have quit jobs I wouldn’t have without my mojo money. It allows you to think rationally in non-rational situations.

“Home ownership makes sense for most Americans, particularly at today’s lower prices and bargain interest rates. All things considered, the third best investment I ever made was the purchase of my home, though I would have made far more money had I instead rented and used the purchase money to buy stocks. (The two best investments were wedding rings.) For the $31,500 I paid for our house, my family and I gained 52 years of terrific memories with more to come.

But a house can be a nightmare if the buyer’s eyes are bigger than his wallet and if a lender – often protected by a government guarantee – facilitates his fantasy. Our country’s social goal should not be to put families into the house of their dreams, but rather to put them into a house they can afford.”

~ Warren E Buffett – the world’s third richest person, even after giving billions to charity, applies some common sense thinking to the dream of home ownership in his entertaining yearly letter to his investors.

In Australia, we still have hugely overpriced houses, and banks willing to facilitate the common fantasy of owning a hugely expensive dream home with lifelong debt. It makes even less financial sense to own an overpriced home in Australia.

“Amy and Wes Rogers are 32-year-old parents of two young boys and the owners of four investment properties, one of which they are selling because they are frightened the government may abandon negative gearing on investment properties.”

This cry-poor article in the Australian newspaper about a family with four investment properties made me feel sick. Seriously, there are struggling Australian families that can’t even afford one drastically overpriced dwelling to house their own family, let alone four as investments, or five if you count their own house.

At least there is a little schadenfreude thrown in for good measure.

But the market is working against the Rogers. The house has been on the market for more than 180 days and, although there have been many viewers, there have been no real offers and the agent has already persuaded them to drop the price by $20,000 to $290,000.

“And now they want us to drop it by another $35,000,” she says. “This house we are trying to sell is tied to another in the way we financed it, and, if we sell Oakdale at this low price, the bank will require a valuation on the other property that’s tied in, and then, if negative gearing laws change, we believe it will drop the value of that second property.” If that happened, they would be left with the much higher original debt to service.

via whocrashedtheeconomy.com

And it's important to make sure that we're celebrating the end of his own lifelong crime spree, not that we *killed* him in order to end it.—
Marco Arment (@marcoarment) May 02, 2011