1. Started watching an episode of The Secret Life of Us.
2. Thought about tribes, because that's the subject of this episode.
The idea is that tribes are pretty much any cohesive social group.
I think I'm only truly in one tribe, and it's what I call the Lake House Tribe. We're the people who visit my parent's lake house together for holidays and weekends. Many of us also socialize in other places, and we often text each other.
I think the Lake House Tribe has main stars, recurring guest stars, and regular guest stars.
The main stars consist of my parents, me, my two sisters, our husbands, and our six children.
The recurring guest stars include my second cousin, her husband, and their child. And then there's Greg and Karen, who are family despite not being blood-related.
Then every so often we have other guests. Some of these guests come more than once, but they don't come as often as my cousin's family and Greg and Karen.
3. Wondered if I'm part of my in-law tribe.
Maybe. Sort of. When I'm with some of them, I feel part of the tribe. But we don't talk much outside of the infrequent visits. Then again, I don't talk to Greg and Karen much outside the lake house, and I consider myself to be in a tribe with them. So maybe I am in my in-law tribe.Or I'm kind of on the perimeter.
4. Figured it out. I'm a recurring guest star in my in-law tribe. I'm not one of the main-players.
5. Saw women on The Secret Life of Us who are totally not my type of people. They like to talk about their expensive furniture and how they're keeping up with fashions.
6. Thought about how certain conversations can make me feel very outside of the tribe.
I imagine this happens to almost everyone. It can be due to a subject that's very uninteresting to us. Other times it's due to the fact that the other participants are on the opposite side of a debate. There's no one on our side, and we don't speak up. Or we speak up and then quickly feel embarrassed and shut up. Sometimes it happens when the group talks about a shared past we're not a part of, or their mutual friend we don't know.
7. Decided to go back to my TV show character analogy. I think tribe-outsiders can be treated as either special guest stars; or they can be treated as extras.
How do you treat someone like an extra? When you talk to the group, make no, or very little, eye contact with the outsider. If you want to move the group, invite the other stars or special guest stars to follow you. Don't invite the extra. Don't ask the extras any questions about themselves or their lives. They're not important to your story. Ignore them as much as possible. Treat them like a piece of the furniture.
If you want to treat an outsider like a special guest star, do the opposite. Make sure they feel included in conversations by making eye contact with them and asking their opinion. Also, explain things to them that they might not know since they're not part of the tribe. Also, ask them about their lives—maybe even find out a little bit about their tribes.
8. Heard Kelly (Deborah Mailman) say similar things to what I wrote earlier. However, instead of using the term main star and recurring guest star, she uses the terms inner circle and outer circle.
Her choice of words is probably better.
I guess then I'd say I'm in two tribes, but in one of them I'm in the inner circle, and in the other, I'm in the outer circle.
9. Started to like Nikki (Anna Torv) a little more, simply for the fact that she doesn't put up with the shit from the snobby decorating-obsessed women.
10. Wanted to say that I'm not generally against people who like decorating. The overly crafty ones can make me feel inferior, but that's fine. These women, on the episode, are snobby bitches who brag about how much they paid for things. Well, actually it's just one woman. She brags about paying thousands of dollars for a couch. But the other women seem supportive of this behavior.
11. Felt it's not so bad if someone brags about getting something at a bargain price.
I much prefer bargain-braggers to I'm-rich-enough-to-afford-this braggers.
12. Got a little emotional at the end of the episode.
Kelly talks about new tribes forming, and we see this happening with all the new characters. They hate each other in first two episodes. They started being somewhat friendly with each other in the following five episodes.
Then, at the end of this episode, they've become a tribe.
Kelly used to play sports with the old characters. Now she's playing sports with a new group.
Well, actually Simon (David Tredinnick) has been in the group all along, too. Sort of. I think he's on the outer circle of the tribe.
Christian (Michael Dorman) has been around for a fairly long time. I think he appeared in the second season.
13. Looked on IMDb. Yeah, he's been there since the middle of the second season.
So this new tribe is made up of three old characters—one who pretty much never gets their own storyline and another who had storylines in the past but doesn't really now. Then five of the new tribe first appeared in this season, and another appeared towards the end of last season.
14. Wondered if it was necessary for the show to bring on that many new characters.
15. Wanted to say that I am starting to like the new characters. Or at least I don't dislike them.
Maybe at this point I'm neutral.
16. Started to watch an episode of Farscape.
17. Recognized a guest star on Farscape, and looked up the actress. It's Leeanna Walsman.
I saw that she was on Wentworth, but couldn't remember who she was. I think that's because she was twelve years younger on Farscape and had alien make-up.
I looked up Walsman on Google Images, and saw that she played....
I don't know what her job title was. Maybe she became the prison governor. Yeah, I think that might be it. She's the one, though, that was having some lesbian flirtation with Franky (Nicole da Silva)
18. Learned that, on Twitter, you can change the list of trends based on location.
So now I can see what's trending in Australia.
Well, for now I'm looking at Sydney.
19. Saw that most places have Paris in mind—Australia, and otherwise.
What's strange is, a few minutes before we learned of the news, Jack asked about 9/11, and we talked briefly about how some mass tragedies get more attention than others.
I've been wondering tonight why this is so. I definitely think racism plays a part. I can't imagine how it would be otherwise.
I think the other factor is whether a city or country has frequent attacks. It seems like every day someone is bombing India, Africa or a country in the Middle East. It's almost like I expect it to happen, and it's not a surprise. In the same way, I'm not shocked when a shooting happens in the United States. It's par for the course.
The other thing, I just thought of today, is I think countries with high levels of tourism get more attention when attacked. New York is a huge tourist city, and London, Sydney, and Paris are as well.
20. Wondered if my theory is wrong.
Lord Wiki says one of the most visited countries is Turkey. There were bombings in Turkey this year, and I think that got less attention than Paris is getting. So either, racism plays a part there, or the fact that the main victims of the villains of the Middle East are the decent people of the Middle East. We're used to seeing attacks in those areas, and the absence of novelty causes us to pay less attention.
Well, I wish people would stop killing each other. Though I doubt that's ever going to happen.
I'll just hope then that among the evil in the world, there will also always be good.
Read my novel: The Dead are Online