1. Read and liked Peter Hartcher's editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald about the Paris attacks.
His basic message is don't do what the terrorists want us to do—go crazy and cause more deaths.
He talks about America's response to 9/11. By responding with war, we ended up killing more of our people than the terrorists did.
Hartcher, doesn't suggest, though, that nothing be done.
He says we should police our borders; stop passing on and promoting the message of the terrorists; unite with the Muslim community; stop referring to the terrorists by the names they want to be called; and then there's something about shutting down the bases.
I don't understand the shutting-down-the-bases part, actually. Well, I do, sort of. But it seems you'd have to kind of do war-stuff to do that. So, that kind of confuses me. It's not like you just casually walk into a country, go to the base of the enemy, and say, Greetings and salutations! We're here to shut you down.
2. Thought about conversation I had with Tim yesterday about fighting against Muslim terrorists.
OR...well, Peter Hartcher says we should be calling the terrorists "Daesh", because the terrorists don't like that.
Maybe I'll start doing that in my blog but probably not in real life, because I have no idea how to pronounce it.
Anyway...
Okay. I'm still struggling with confusion here. What if I wanted to talk about Muslim terrorists in general, not just ISIS. Because from what I'm reading, Daesh refers to ISIS. What if I'm referring to Muslim terrorists who are not from ISIS...like Boko Haram?
3. Decided I will just finish my story using Daesh, but keep in mind that I might be including people who are not Daesh.
Anyway, what we talked about is how, in the past, it seems you could win a war by killing a lot of the enemy. I could be wrong, but I think the general idea was that if you killed a lot of your enemies, they'd kind of surrender. Then some peace treaties would be signed and a few decades later, the two countries would be besties.
With Daesh, it seems very different. They seem HAPPY to die. It's like an honor. They sacrifice themselves with suicide bombing. And if we kill people from their group, they don't surrender. They just get new leaders and form new groups. It's seems the more you fight them, the stronger they get. Or at least they become more determined to do evil things.
Did we really improve the situation by killing Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden?
So yeah. I definitely agree with Hartcher. We shouldn't put our energy into war. We should put our energy into security and protection—be on the defense rather than the offense.
4. Thought of calling the terrorists shitheads but that would actually be an insult to the miracles of our digestive system.
Shit is a zillion times better than terrorists.
5. Started watching an episode of The Secret Life of Us.
6. Wondered about Christian (Michael Dorman) moving out.
Is that Dorman's way of exiting the show?
The only thing that makes me think that it's not the case is, Christian left because of a fight with Stu (Stephen Curry). It seems the fight might need to be resolved. So I imagine Christian might come back. But maybe he won't come back until several episodes later.
7. Decided to just look and get the answers from IMDb.
8. Saw that this episode is not Dorman's last one, but the next one is.
Maybe he'll come back for a resolution.
9. Decided that Lucy (Alexandra Schepisi) on The Secret Life of Us reminds me a little bit of Zhaan (Virginia Hey) on Farscape.
I'm not sure why.
It's a little bit about appearance. Maybe. And also personality.
10. Thought maybe there might be slight similarities in voice as well.
11. Related to Lucy being upset when hearing her fiancé came to visit, from London, because of a work conference.
We have people in our life who have never made the effort to come visit us EXCEPT when there was a work-reason for coming into town.
12. Realized I'm sort of being a hypocrite. Because when we visit people, seeing them is often a secondary reason for the trip. Not always, though, so I think that's where the difference lies.
13. Thought that Nikki (Anna Torv) is similar to Emma on Bates Motel.
Both characters are involved with a family that's not their own, and they have this assumption that it's their right to know all the family business.
Emma wants to know all the Bates family secrets and acts offended when she feels something is being kept from her.
Nikki is angry at Lucy and Adam (Nicholas Coghlan), because they both kept a secret about Adam having a baby. Yes, Nikki is their roommate and friend, but does that mean she's absolutely entitled to know everything?
I think being let in on a secret is a privilege not a right. Unless the secret involves us.
14. Thought about that fact that Nikki and Adam had a sex thing going on. I think, eventually, Adam would need to tell Nikki he has a child, but I don't think it's required that he tells her right away. If they started dating, yeah...it would be kind of wrong to shut her out of that part of his life. But in the last episode, Adam tried to move the relationship to a not-just-sex-thing, and Nikki rejected him.
15. Thought that Kelly had very good lines about getting over a break-up or loss. Will it be over when you can get through a whole day without thinking about them? Or when you've said everything you needed to say? The only answer seems to be when the time has really come, you'll know. But you can't get there by force of will. You get there when you stop struggling.
My favorite part is the last two sentences.
Time is the great healer. Though sometimes it might help to stay busy and find other avenues of happiness while you're waiting for time to do it's job.
16. Thought of how it's like when a person goes on and on about how they don't care about a certain family member that's hurt them. They often bring this family member into their conversation and brag about how they've learned to not care about them..
I'm usually thinking...BULLSHIT. If they really didn't care about that family member, they wouldn't be talking about them.
17. Started to watch an episode of Farscape. It's the sequel to the episode I watched yesterday.
18. Felt the Moya crew was unfair to Jool (Tammy Macintosh). Yes, she's a bit annoying, but so are most creatures. She's distraught because she's been awakened after several years of being frozen. Her family members are dead, and she's on a strange ship with a bunch of strangers who are enduring a life and death crisis. The Moya crew extend her very little kindness or sympathy. Then they scream and cry as Zhaan dies. Wasn't Zhaan's whole message about love and peace—growth of the soul and spirit? Mourning loudly is fine, but it seems a better way to honor Zhaan's life would be to live her message by being kind to lonely newbies.
19. Saw from IMDb that Jool is sticking around for quite awhile. So maybe in the end, the crew will give her some loving.
20. Went to palg1305's Flickr account.
Today I'm going to look at his Lockyer Valley album.
I don't think I've heard of that before .
21. Learned from Lord Wiki that Lockyer Valley is farmland west of Brisbane. He says Lockyer Valley is known as Australia's salad bowl, because a lot of fruit and vegetables are grown there.
22. Learned that the area had severe flooding in January 2008 and January 2011.
I remember the 2011 Queensland flooding; though I thought it happened in February.
Well, maybe some of it happened in January and some in February.
23. Learned from Lord Wiki that the floods started in December and went through January.
I guess I'm wrong about the February stuff.
Maybe I'm thinking of the fires.
Yeah. Those happened in February.
24. Started looking at the photos.
There's one of a spider, and he looks like he has only six legs instead of eight. What's that deal with that? Are his other legs hidden somewhere? Did they fall off?
25. Zoomed in on the picture, and found the other two legs. They're near the spider's mouth.
Maybe they're kind of like his hand-legs.
26. Had a moment of weirdness while exercising.
I did Spotify on Shuffle like I usually do.
I heard an updated version of the Golden Record's "Little White Duck".
I could totally imagine Chiana (Gigi Edgley), from Farscape, singing the first part.
Then I imagined Scorpius (Wayne Pygram) singing the next part.
I couldn't picture a singer for the third part, unfortunately.
Then the end has multiple singers, and I pictured the whole crew of Moya singing together.
27. Went to IMDb to find the next The Secret Life of Us actor to look at on Twitter and Instagram.
Though I haven't yet found many of the actors on Instagram. I don't know if they don't have an account; or I'm just looking in the wrong places.
Anyway, the actor for today is Sullivan Stapleton. He's a pretty big deal in terms of international stardom. And usually what's meant by that is he's found some good jobs in the United States.
He's on a TV show now called Blindspot and was also on a show called Strike Back. Tim mentioned that one to me. He said he thought Stapleton was British.
28. Saw that Strike Back is a British show. So no wonder Tim thought he was British.
29. Figured that being on a British show is also a doorway to international stardom.
30. Started to feel ethnocentric.
Is it really that you'll become big when America hears about you? Or is it that no matter how big you get, America won't hear about you until you're on one of THEIR TV shows and movies. Because America doesn't watch international television.
I'm talking in generalities here. Some Americans do watch foreign television. It's just it's not played on our mainstream channels. I think other countries get more international content.
31. Consulted Lord Wiki because of a comment on IMDb asking if Strike Back was British or American.
Lord Wiki says it's British-American.
IMDb had different information. They listed it as just being British.
32. Saw that Andrew Lincoln was on Strike Back.
33. Saw that most of the cast is British; and the crew as well.
I also saw that Sullivan played an American.
34. Felt IMDb was kind of more accurate.
I don't really see that much of an American influence on the show.
Except at least one of the writers is American.
I guess that counts.
35. Went to Twitter.
I see an account for Sullivan Stapleton, but I suspect it's fake, because there are only 662 followers.
It's also not verified.
36. Found the official Twitter for Blindspot. I figure if Sullivan Stapleton has an account, they'll be following it. So I'm searching through their following-list.
37. Did not see an account for Sullivan.
38. Found an Instagram account.
It seems to be real. It has eleven thousand followers.
And there are pictures of Sullivan Stapleton in many of them. Though he looks different to how I'm used to him looking. At first, I wasn't sure if the guy in the picture was him or not.
39. Felt Sullivan Stapleton looks more like Sullivan Stapleton in this photo...well, compared to the others photos.
40. Saw that Sullivan took a photo of a street with his name.
That's sweet.
We do stuff like that too, sometimes.
41. Liked Stapleton's photo of Australian food.
42. Looked at Dustin Clare, another Australian actor on Strike Back.
I wonder if he played an American as well.
I vaguely remember hearing that British hire Australians to play Americans. Maybe Spencer McLaren said it? I'm not sure.
43. Dropped a pot lid on my foot as Tim was asking me to identify an accent I heard on TV.
After I finished yelling out loudly in pain, did Tim ask me how I was or what happened? Nope. He just repeated his question—wanting me to identify the Australian.
Honestly, I wasn't really paying attention to the voices he was listening to...not even before I dropped the pot lid. I was busy thinking about the fact that I need to order underpants from Amazon.
44. Had the idea that Tim was in some kind of trance. Otherwise, I really can't explain why he didn't notice the crash of the lid or my yelling. It seemed pretty loud to me.
45. Remembered that when I was in the shower, I thought about the title Strike Back and how it fits well with what's happening today...France vs. Syria.
I'm not sure how to feel about it.
I think if France is bombing Syria in order to disable their fighting capabilities; I'm not going to be against it. War is horrible, but if there's a way to lessen the power of really bad aggressors, it seems like a necessary evil.
If France is bombing Syria out of revenge or as a way to show it's strength, I think it's a big mistake. It's really pointless.
46. Ate cheese for dinner that might have been Australian.
It said Australia on the packaging, but sometimes people calls their stuff Australian even when it's not Australian.
47. Decided to look at the label on the cheese...if it hasn't already been thrown away.
48. Found out it's been thrown away.
49. Found the website for the cheese.
It's called Old Croc, and the website is loud with billabong-type noises.
50. Saw that the website talks about the Australian dairy industry in a way that makes me think the cheese is Australian.
It's distributed from New Jersey.
51. Thought it was odd that they don't provide the location of the cheese company-thing in Australia.
My guess would be that in Australia, the cheese company uses a different name.
52. Found a cheese news website that has an article about Old Croc. From what I'm reading...I guess the cheese doesn't come from a particular big farm or company. I'm thinking they get it from various farms and then do the packaging in New Jersey. Also, some of the cheese aging is done in Wisconsin.
53. Found this article that says Old Croc cheese comes from Victoria.
Really, that's all I wanted to know.
I think things seem more truly Australian when I know which state they come from.