1. Dreamed that I'm exploring some type of website. I want to find Australians on the site. All I find is one woman, and she writes about birthday parties.Then I realize I wasn't looking in the right place. When I find the right place, I read about an Australian who has built an amusement park. He writes about how no one was coming, so he decided to open it up for free for awhile.
Later when I woke up, I thought about my novels. No one is buying them. Should I make them free? But then I realized I can't do that on Kindle. I would have to upload the novels elsewhere, and I'm too lazy to do that.
Maybe I would make the effort if I had good indication the results would be positive.
The thing is, though, my novels are not expensive. One is a dollar and the other is three dollars. I think many people could afford that if they were actually interested in reading my novels.
But then there's the issue of reading an e-book. It involves downloading a Kindle app, which many people might not know how to do. If someone was mildly interested in reading my novel, they might not want to go through the effort of finding out how to get Kindle. They might just decide to forget about it.
It might be easier than to just put my novel up on a website—put it on a blog. But I've done that before. And there still wasn't much interest.
The thing is, many things don't just cost money; they cost time. And I think that's the thing about my novels. People aren't interested in investing their time. Maybe they don't like novels. Maybe they like novels but don't like the subject matter of my novels. Maybe they were kind enough to give my novels a chance. Maybe they read the sample and didn't like my writing style. Maybe they read the samples and liked them, but they already have a huge to-read list.
2. Thought about the dream-Australian with the amusement park. It was nice of him to make it free, but what if it's not completely safe? What if the rides aren't built up to standard? Then it's not so nice that he made it free. Although I guess it's nicer than amusement parks that charge a large amount of money AND are not safe enough.
3. Started watching Rabbit Proof Fence.
4. Reminded by IMDb, that that movie is directed by Phillip Noyce.
Is he the one who made Dark City. Or is that someone else?
5. Saw that Noyce didn't make Dark City.
He did make Dead Calm.
One of his most recent movies is The Giver.
5. Remembered that the guy who directed Dark City is the same guy who directed The Crow. Or at least I think I'm remembering that.
6. Saw that Dark City and The Crow was directed by Alex Proyas.
7. Looked at the credits of Rabbit Proof Fence.
Roy Billings is in the movie. I feel like I'm seeing a lot of him lately.
Other Australians, in the movie familiar to me: David Gulpilil, Deborah Mailman! Anthony Hayes, and Garry McDonald
8. Thought that the white people in this movie were scary and evil.
With all the evolution and genetic we've been studying in biology, I'm pushed to wonder if there's something inherently wicked in white folks. That's racist, I know. But I'm white, so I'm allowed to be racist against white people. Right?
We could point to people of other races who do bad things in order to try to prove we're all the same evil-wise. But there's a lot of race-mixing. How do we know that the badness of non-white people doesn't come from their white genes?
Besides, I'm not saying white genes equals 100% evil and non-white genes equals 100% sweet goodness. But could it be that white genes have a slightly higher level of evilness? Or at least a higher level of whatever makes people want to conquer, invade, exploit, kidnap children, etc.
9. Worried I am as racist as A.O Neville (Kenneth Branagh), the villain of the movie.
But I'm not planning to kidnap white children in order to breed the whiteness out of them.
10. Thought about how homo sapiens in general are a bit greedy and exploitive no matter what their ethnicity.
Look how we ALL (minus vegans) treat non-homo-sapiens. I don't think the white people are the only ones who are bad with that.
11. Read a post on Terrie's Next Blog that further pushed my belief that if we go to Tasmania, we'll like the north better than the south.
12. Felt that if you're going to kidnap children in order to "better them", you could at least provide toilets and not make them pee and poo in a shared bucket.
Or maybe that was standard sanitation for the 1930's?
I don't know much about sanitation history.
13. Consulted Lord Wiki. He says that flush toilets started being used by the wealthy in the U.S and Europe in the late 1800's.
14. Thought that even if flush toilets weren't commonplace in Western Australia in the 1930's, how about outhouses?
Or how about this, at least? Each kid gets their own bucket.
15. Saw a mean black man in the movie. I think it's to remind racist people like me that anyone of any ethnic group can be a cruel, bossy bully.
16. Tried to remember how the story of Rabbit Proof Fence ends.
I'm sure the girls succeeded in running away, but where did they go. I'd be scared for them to go back home. Wouldn't the mean white people just find them again?
17. Wondered about Moodoo, the tracker (David Gulpilil). He's one of the non-white villains. He searches for runaways and brings them back to the white people at the Moore River Settlement. And he's good at what he does.Though the runaway girls outsmart him.
Does Moodoo bring back runaways because he thinks Moore River is the best place for them? Or is he doing the work to protect himself and his daughter from white-people harm?
Maybe he just enjoys the hunt and doesn't think much of the consequences.
18. Liked the white woman who fed the children, gave them advice but didn't demand information from them.
I think one of the general ideas of this movie is that there are both good and bad in all ethnic groups.
19. Wondered if the girls truly encountered super nice white people, or did they add that to the movie so white people could watch the film without feeling so horrible about themselves.
I don't remember if the scene was in the book or not. It's been a very long time since I've read it.
20. Sickened that these people would stop children from getting back to their mothers.
21. Liked that the movie has hints of spiritual-supernatural stuff.
22. Finished watching the movie.
I thought it was very sad, especially the postscript at the end.
The children do make it home eventually. And that's good. But history repeats itself. Molly (Everlyn Sampi) grows up to have her own children. Her and the children are kidnapped and brought to Moor River. Molly and the children escape, but eventually one of them, Annabelle, is taken away forever.
Disgusting and sad.
23. Learned from Lord Wiki that certain people claim the situations in the movie are untrue and exaggerated.
I guess I already knew that.
It's like Holocaust denial.
I guess that's the human response to wrongdoings. Pretend it never happened.
That's not to say I believe everything in Rabbit Proof Fence is 100% true. Movies based on true events are often exaggerated and fictionalized. But I do think the general story and ideas are true.
24. Decided to read about A.O Neville on the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
His birthday would have been five days ago...if he had managed to live 140 years.
He was born in England.
He moved to Victoria in his twenties; then later moved to Western Australia.
He started out as a public servant—working as a record clerk.
Later he became an immigration officer, and was in charge of selecting and processing people from Britain.
Neville had five children of his own. Did he ever stop to imagine what it would be like to lose them—to have them stolen from him?
25. Read stuff I heard about in the movie. Neville pursued a method of ethnic cleansing that involved intermarrying partially black people with white people. This way the blackness would eventually fade away.
26. Wondered how Neville would feel if he returned to life today.
Would he still believe in what he had done? Would he have regrets?
27. Wondered about the decedents of Neville. Does he he have any grandchildren alive today? How do they feel about their ancestry? Do they feel shame? Do they deny it? Do they try to ignore it?
I'm not saying they're personally guilty of something. But even if we're innocent, we can feel shame and embarrassment about what our family members have done.
28. Went to Random.org to pick my next thing to watch.
It's the modernized version of Patrick.
Cool. It's a good thing to watch the week of Halloween.
I hope it's not too scary, though.
29. Went to palg1305's Flickr Account.
30. Left Flickr. It's not working for me.
31. Learned from Lord Wiki that the Moore River Native Settlement is about 84 miles north of Perth.
32. Learned that these days, the place is known as Budjarra. It's leased to an entity called the Wheatbelt Aboriginal Corporation. The town it's in is called Mogumber.
32. Consulted Lord Wiki about Doris Pilkington Garimara. She's the one who wrote the book, Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence. It's her mother who did the escaping, and it's her younger sister Annabelle that was forever lost.
33. Learned from this article that Annabelle was found but never reunited with her mother.
I kind of vaguely remember reading something along those lines way back when.
34. Wondered if Tim Phillips is an Uber driver after seeing this Tweet from him.
Just found out that my #uber rating is 4.8 #humblebrag.
I don't think that's a humblebrag, though. I think that's just a brag. Or maybe driving an Uber car is a humbling experience, so that's why it's a humble brag?
Do riders get ratings? Maybe he's just a rider.
35. Saw from Google that riders get ratings. Yikes.
I'm going to be so nervous when I finally try Uber.
I don't want to be rated.
35. Thought maybe Tim Phillips could make an advice video about how to be a good Uber passenger.
Maybe you just have to be friendly and polite? Is there something more to it.
What if you need to be really interesting and conversational?
What if you get points deducted for ignorance? Sometimes I'm ignorant about certain things—like sports and cars. What if the Uber driver starts asking me about some game, and I'm totally lost?
36. Wondered if Tim Phillips felt his brag was a humble brag because he didn't get a perfect 5.
Or what if the high score is a 10?
Then would he be bragging about failing?
I can't imagine Tim Phillips to be the type of person who's proud to be a bad customer.
Later when I woke up, I thought about my novels. No one is buying them. Should I make them free? But then I realized I can't do that on Kindle. I would have to upload the novels elsewhere, and I'm too lazy to do that.
Maybe I would make the effort if I had good indication the results would be positive.
The thing is, though, my novels are not expensive. One is a dollar and the other is three dollars. I think many people could afford that if they were actually interested in reading my novels.
But then there's the issue of reading an e-book. It involves downloading a Kindle app, which many people might not know how to do. If someone was mildly interested in reading my novel, they might not want to go through the effort of finding out how to get Kindle. They might just decide to forget about it.
It might be easier than to just put my novel up on a website—put it on a blog. But I've done that before. And there still wasn't much interest.
The thing is, many things don't just cost money; they cost time. And I think that's the thing about my novels. People aren't interested in investing their time. Maybe they don't like novels. Maybe they like novels but don't like the subject matter of my novels. Maybe they were kind enough to give my novels a chance. Maybe they read the sample and didn't like my writing style. Maybe they read the samples and liked them, but they already have a huge to-read list.
2. Thought about the dream-Australian with the amusement park. It was nice of him to make it free, but what if it's not completely safe? What if the rides aren't built up to standard? Then it's not so nice that he made it free. Although I guess it's nicer than amusement parks that charge a large amount of money AND are not safe enough.
3. Started watching Rabbit Proof Fence.
4. Reminded by IMDb, that that movie is directed by Phillip Noyce.
Is he the one who made Dark City. Or is that someone else?
5. Saw that Noyce didn't make Dark City.
He did make Dead Calm.
One of his most recent movies is The Giver.
5. Remembered that the guy who directed Dark City is the same guy who directed The Crow. Or at least I think I'm remembering that.
6. Saw that Dark City and The Crow was directed by Alex Proyas.
7. Looked at the credits of Rabbit Proof Fence.
Roy Billings is in the movie. I feel like I'm seeing a lot of him lately.
Other Australians, in the movie familiar to me: David Gulpilil, Deborah Mailman! Anthony Hayes, and Garry McDonald
8. Thought that the white people in this movie were scary and evil.
With all the evolution and genetic we've been studying in biology, I'm pushed to wonder if there's something inherently wicked in white folks. That's racist, I know. But I'm white, so I'm allowed to be racist against white people. Right?
We could point to people of other races who do bad things in order to try to prove we're all the same evil-wise. But there's a lot of race-mixing. How do we know that the badness of non-white people doesn't come from their white genes?
Besides, I'm not saying white genes equals 100% evil and non-white genes equals 100% sweet goodness. But could it be that white genes have a slightly higher level of evilness? Or at least a higher level of whatever makes people want to conquer, invade, exploit, kidnap children, etc.
9. Worried I am as racist as A.O Neville (Kenneth Branagh), the villain of the movie.
But I'm not planning to kidnap white children in order to breed the whiteness out of them.
10. Thought about how homo sapiens in general are a bit greedy and exploitive no matter what their ethnicity.
Look how we ALL (minus vegans) treat non-homo-sapiens. I don't think the white people are the only ones who are bad with that.
11. Read a post on Terrie's Next Blog that further pushed my belief that if we go to Tasmania, we'll like the north better than the south.
12. Felt that if you're going to kidnap children in order to "better them", you could at least provide toilets and not make them pee and poo in a shared bucket.
Or maybe that was standard sanitation for the 1930's?
I don't know much about sanitation history.
13. Consulted Lord Wiki. He says that flush toilets started being used by the wealthy in the U.S and Europe in the late 1800's.
14. Thought that even if flush toilets weren't commonplace in Western Australia in the 1930's, how about outhouses?
Or how about this, at least? Each kid gets their own bucket.
15. Saw a mean black man in the movie. I think it's to remind racist people like me that anyone of any ethnic group can be a cruel, bossy bully.
16. Tried to remember how the story of Rabbit Proof Fence ends.
I'm sure the girls succeeded in running away, but where did they go. I'd be scared for them to go back home. Wouldn't the mean white people just find them again?
17. Wondered about Moodoo, the tracker (David Gulpilil). He's one of the non-white villains. He searches for runaways and brings them back to the white people at the Moore River Settlement. And he's good at what he does.Though the runaway girls outsmart him.
Does Moodoo bring back runaways because he thinks Moore River is the best place for them? Or is he doing the work to protect himself and his daughter from white-people harm?
Maybe he just enjoys the hunt and doesn't think much of the consequences.
18. Liked the white woman who fed the children, gave them advice but didn't demand information from them.
I think one of the general ideas of this movie is that there are both good and bad in all ethnic groups.
19. Wondered if the girls truly encountered super nice white people, or did they add that to the movie so white people could watch the film without feeling so horrible about themselves.
I don't remember if the scene was in the book or not. It's been a very long time since I've read it.
20. Sickened that these people would stop children from getting back to their mothers.
21. Liked that the movie has hints of spiritual-supernatural stuff.
22. Finished watching the movie.
I thought it was very sad, especially the postscript at the end.
The children do make it home eventually. And that's good. But history repeats itself. Molly (Everlyn Sampi) grows up to have her own children. Her and the children are kidnapped and brought to Moor River. Molly and the children escape, but eventually one of them, Annabelle, is taken away forever.
Disgusting and sad.
23. Learned from Lord Wiki that certain people claim the situations in the movie are untrue and exaggerated.
I guess I already knew that.
It's like Holocaust denial.
I guess that's the human response to wrongdoings. Pretend it never happened.
That's not to say I believe everything in Rabbit Proof Fence is 100% true. Movies based on true events are often exaggerated and fictionalized. But I do think the general story and ideas are true.
24. Decided to read about A.O Neville on the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
His birthday would have been five days ago...if he had managed to live 140 years.
He was born in England.
He moved to Victoria in his twenties; then later moved to Western Australia.
He started out as a public servant—working as a record clerk.
Later he became an immigration officer, and was in charge of selecting and processing people from Britain.
Neville had five children of his own. Did he ever stop to imagine what it would be like to lose them—to have them stolen from him?
25. Read stuff I heard about in the movie. Neville pursued a method of ethnic cleansing that involved intermarrying partially black people with white people. This way the blackness would eventually fade away.
26. Wondered how Neville would feel if he returned to life today.
Would he still believe in what he had done? Would he have regrets?
27. Wondered about the decedents of Neville. Does he he have any grandchildren alive today? How do they feel about their ancestry? Do they feel shame? Do they deny it? Do they try to ignore it?
I'm not saying they're personally guilty of something. But even if we're innocent, we can feel shame and embarrassment about what our family members have done.
28. Went to Random.org to pick my next thing to watch.
It's the modernized version of Patrick.
Cool. It's a good thing to watch the week of Halloween.
I hope it's not too scary, though.
29. Went to palg1305's Flickr Account.
30. Left Flickr. It's not working for me.
31. Learned from Lord Wiki that the Moore River Native Settlement is about 84 miles north of Perth.
32. Learned that these days, the place is known as Budjarra. It's leased to an entity called the Wheatbelt Aboriginal Corporation. The town it's in is called Mogumber.
32. Consulted Lord Wiki about Doris Pilkington Garimara. She's the one who wrote the book, Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence. It's her mother who did the escaping, and it's her younger sister Annabelle that was forever lost.
33. Learned from this article that Annabelle was found but never reunited with her mother.
I kind of vaguely remember reading something along those lines way back when.
34. Wondered if Tim Phillips is an Uber driver after seeing this Tweet from him.
Just found out that my #uber rating is 4.8 #humblebrag.
I don't think that's a humblebrag, though. I think that's just a brag. Or maybe driving an Uber car is a humbling experience, so that's why it's a humble brag?
Do riders get ratings? Maybe he's just a rider.
35. Saw from Google that riders get ratings. Yikes.
I'm going to be so nervous when I finally try Uber.
I don't want to be rated.
35. Thought maybe Tim Phillips could make an advice video about how to be a good Uber passenger.
Maybe you just have to be friendly and polite? Is there something more to it.
What if you need to be really interesting and conversational?
What if you get points deducted for ignorance? Sometimes I'm ignorant about certain things—like sports and cars. What if the Uber driver starts asking me about some game, and I'm totally lost?
36. Wondered if Tim Phillips felt his brag was a humble brag because he didn't get a perfect 5.
Or what if the high score is a 10?
Then would he be bragging about failing?
I can't imagine Tim Phillips to be the type of person who's proud to be a bad customer.