1. Misled by headlines on News.com.au.
The headline reads, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Valentine message to Lucy slammed by proponents of gay marriage.
I pictured people getting nasty and mean about the whole thing.
Maybe some people did.
But the examples of what people wrote, that are provided by the article, are very civil, well written, and persuasive.
The basic idea of the example messages is, It's nice you guys have a lovely marriage. We'd like one too, thank you very much.
2. Wondered if I'm misdefining the term "slammed". I guess I'm picturing it as being more intense, angry, and mean.
I'm picturing the response, on Twitter, given to Charlotte Rampling when she said something controversial about Oscars diversity. The general attitude there was, you're dumb. We don't like you anymore. Go hide under a rock for the rest of your life. No one actually said those exact words. It's just the general feeling of the Tweets.
3. Thought the messages to Turnbull (quoted in the article) went well with that saying about catching more flies with honey than vinegar.
4. Tried to understand the whole Kristen Davis thing. This is the second or third time I've seen something about it.
I guess she was on a show, in Australia, that tried to do a funny skit about Sex and the City, and it didn't go well.
Was it offensive? Not funny enough? Kristen Davis wasn't in the mood?
5. Started watching the last season one episode of Wicked Science.
6. Thought the miniature T-rex in this episode was pretty cool.
7. Enjoyed the special effects in the episode.
8. Went to Random.org to pick my next Australian thing to watch.
It's a movie called Adore. The stars are Naomi Watts, Robin Wright, and Xavier Samuel.
I'll probably start watching that on Tuesday.
9. Saw from IMDb that the original title of Adore is Perfect Mothers. I'm guessing original means it's the Australian title.
10. Started watching an episode of Home and Away.
11. Saw a reference to Australians in my favorite Disney blog.
In a post about the Three Caballeros Anthony says, There is an appearance by gay icon Carmen Miranda's sister Aurora. (I know it's kind of like getting Dannii Minogue when you were hoping for Kylie, but I'll take it!)
I might actually prefer Dannii to Kylie—just because I preferred Danni on Home and Away to Kylie on Doctor Who.
12. Remembered I saw Kylie on Neighbours. I liked her on that.
13. Decided I like the Minogue sisters equally...although really not that much.
It's not that I have anything against them. It's just I'm not really that much into them.
I'm pretty neutral about the whole thing.
14. Read a little bit more of Bridget Neval's blog, and learned she once baked a cake in honor of Will Smith's birthday. This was as a fan not a fellow actor.
That's very sweet.
Neval lists it as something embarrassing.
I don't think it's that embarrassing.
As far as enthusiastic fan behavior goes, baking a cake is very benign.
15. Decided that baking a cake for a favorite celebrity is benign UNLESS the fan tries to deliver the cake to the celebrity's doorstep.
That would be a bit scary.
16. Decided if the cake baker is a neighbor of the celebrity, it's not so awful for them to bake a cake...UNLESS they became a neighbor because they were fans of the celebrity.
17. Followed the Twitter link on Bridget Neval's blog, because there's a Tweet that I find to be a bit disturbing.
In most other people, I'd just see it as a rude and stupid Tweet. But with Neval's eating disorder issues, I find it more sad. She Tweets, Uhhhh feeling slightly bloated today so I gotta apologise to everyone who's ever had to look at me ever because I'm so sorry I'm a monster.
18. Thought that in most cases people don't need to apologize for their appearance.
I think the only exception is if they're not dressed appropriately for an occasion.
Let's say someone is supposed to go to a wedding. Their plane is late. They don't have time to change, so they show up to the ceremony in a casual outfit. They had made the decision that being there was more important than being there with the appropriate outfit.
I think they made the right choice, and it's not their fault that the plane was late. But still, it's nice to give an apology.
19. Felt bad for Maddie (Kassandra Clementi) on Home and Away.
Her social life isn't going well, and she just found out the chemo isn't working.
That's not a very good day.
I think Roo (Georgia Parker) isn't making things easier, though. She's pushing Maddie to be with her friends even though Maddie doesn't have many friends. Out of the friends that she does have, one dumped her, and the other publicly humiliated her about being dumped.
Pushing people to spend time with their friends when those friendships aren't going well isn't that helpful.
I think Roo should be there for Maddie. She can be Maddie's friend at this point. Then, hopefully, as time passes, Maddie can feel better about being around her peers.
20. Went to the Tropfest website.
Today I'm going to watch a 2010 finalist film called "Smoking Will Kill You".
21. Saw that "Smoking Will Kill You" is four minutes.
I've noticed that most of the 2010 films are shorter than the Tropfest films from the previous years.
22. Saw that Toby Truslove is in the movie.
I think he's that actor from The Strange Calls.
And I think he might be the star of the 2010 Tropfest winner film. There's a photo from the film, and it looks like him.
23. Reminded by IMDb that Truslove was also in Outland. I liked that show...better than The Strange Calls.
24. Saw that Truslove is NOT in the 2010 Tropfest winner.
The person I'm seeing in the photo is actually Patrick Brammall.
Oops.
25. Went back to watching the smoking movie.
26. Thought the actress in the movie looks familiar.
27. Thought the movie was a bit silly. The whole thing is a guy goes outside at work to smoke. For some weird reason, he stands on the ledge of the building. I guess he's a risk taker? Then a woman comes outside and assumes he's committing suicide. She tries to talk him out of it.
I usually think misunderstandings are hilarious. This is different, though, because I don't get why someone would stand on a ledge just for the hell of it. It seems far-fetched.
28. Finished watching the film.
There was good irony, so I like it for that. But the building ledge idea felt weak to me.
29. Thought of the general idea of the film. Someone tries to talk someone out of suicide. Yet they do such a bad job, they end up making a NOT suicidal person suicidal.
I can't think of specific examples, but I feel maybe there have been times in my life where someone tried to cheer me up when I wasn't actually feeling bad, and they ended up saying things to make me feel bad.
Or maybe I was feeling bad, but they made me feel worse?
30. Wondered if I've ever done that to anyone.
31. Saw that the actress who looked familiar to me is Heidi Arena. I know her from The Librarians. I think she played the character who uses a wheelchair.
32. Saw that Raphael Sammut, the director of "Smoking Will Kill You", has done crew-type work on Tangle, Rush, and Offspring.
33. Noticed that Sammut doesn't have anything on his filmography past 2011.
Maybe he's doing advertising work. Theater? Something completely different?
34. Found an article about Raphael Sammut and his Tropfest film.
It's confusing, because it says, Raphael Sammut is the director of Smoking Will Kill You, the story of Bill and Sammy; two men who should never have met.
As far as I know, that's a mistake. Sammy was a woman, not a man.
35. Learned that Sammut figured out he wanted to be in the film industry when he was a child, but he mistakingly believed you had to be an actor to do that. Later, he learned he could get work behind the scenes.
36. Learned that Sammut had a lot of struggles in his career.
37. Liked how Sammut describes his average working day. The average working day for me finds me working as a production runner while dreaming of a directing career.
Sammut describes his work as a production runner. It's pretty much a gopher type job
38. Learned that Sammut was working on a feature film. Then he lost funding and had to break the bad news to everyone.
It's hard enough having bad news about your career. I'm sure it's much worse when the bad news for you is also bad news for other people.
39. Started to watch another episode of Home and Away.
40. Glad that Evie (Philippa Northeast) is reaching out and acting like a friend to Maddie.
It makes me think of the bad-weather friend concept.
The fair-weather friend wants to be around you only when things are going well. They disappear when you reveal you have a problem.
The bad-weather friend doesn't give you the time of day until you end up with cancer or have something like your whole family dying in a plane crash.
I feel that there's been times I've been the bad-weather friend, and I have conflicting feelings about that.
On the decency side, it could be that I'm better at being a listener to someone that has problems than being a fun friend when things are going well.
On the other hand, it could be that I don't care about certain people unless they're having a problem.
But really, I don't think it's that I don't care. It's just the world is full of people. With the Internet, our lives are packed full of people from our past and present. It's hard to make time for everyone, and if someone has a major problem, it might get them better noticed.
41. Wanted to clarify that I'm not this bad-weather friend on a regular basis. It's not like I have fifty friends with cancer, or other tragedies, that I'm juggling.
It's more like three or four people, in the last several years. And it's not really friendship—more like a few emails and/or giving their blog attention.
Anyway, though, seeing Evie be nice to Maddie made me kind of see things in a better way. Maybe it's not so bad to reach and be friendly towards hurting people that you weren't friends with before they were hurting.
42. Had sympathy towards Maddie's viewpoint.
She questions getting more chemotherapy. If she's going to die, she doesn't want to spend her last days feeling like total crap.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
If there's a good chance, the second dose might save her, I think she should go for it.
If her chances are slim, I think it's best if she just dies in peace.
43. Thought, though, that I really don't want Maddie to die.
If I feel this way about a fictional character, I can understand real life people pushing their real life loved ones to fight for their life. I think it might be worse, though, to have to watch a loved one suffer.
44. Saw from the little preview photo of my next episode of Home and Away, that Leah (Ada Nicodemou) might be waking up from her coma. There's a picture of her with her eyes opened.
This comes after today's episode with VJ (Matthew Little) accepting that his mother might never wake up.
I'm glad Leah is going to wake up but annoyed that it looks like it's going to happen easily and so quickly.
Dragged out storylines can be annoying, but a storyline like this needs a little more time.
It's the same thing with Hannah (Cassie Howarth). I'm glad she's recovering from her paralyzation, but she really wasn't paralyzed for long at all.
Well, that being said...she still IS paralyzed. If I was the writer, though, I would have held off on her getting feelings back in her leg.
45. Remembered that Phoebe (Isabella Giovinazzo) was very quickly rescued from her kidnapping.
People's problems are very quickly resolved in Summer Bay.
I really shouldn't worry too much about Maddie. Her cancer will probably be completely cured a few episodes from now.
46. Thought conversation between VJ and Zac (Charlie Clausen) was very uncomfortable.
VJ tells Zac that since Leah probably won't ever wake up, Zac doesn't have to play single parent to him anymore. VJ is very gracious about the whole thing.
It would be lovely if Zac told VJ he loves him and wants to continue being a father to him. I guess they don't have the type of relationship. Zac IS hesitant about breaking the ties, but his attitude is along the lines of I SHOULDN'T abandon you. It's not a matter of Zac not wanting to abandon VJ.
47. Thought that Marilyn (Emily Symons) is very beautiful—beautiful in appearance and beautiful in personality.
48. Thought that Oscar's speech to Maddie was very touching.
She wants to give up, and he tells her she should fight—if not for herself then for the people who care about her.
I think it's nice to be reminded that people love you, and that it's important to them that you stay alive.
Though if Maddie's chances are slim, then maybe Oscar's words are kind of like emotional blackmail.
49. Decided it all depends.
Some people really might want to die, because they no longer want to feel the pain. They're over it. Being pushed to stay alive might just add to their stress and guilt.
On the other hand, some people might choose death because they feel their absence won't make that much of a difference to anyone. For them, it might be really nice and important to hear that people want them to stay alive.
50. Thought that this could apply to more than just dying people. It could apply to suicidal ones as well.
Some people might kill themselves despite feeling loved, because they feel their problems can't be overcome. It's just too hard.
Other people might want to kill themselves because they feel they're not loved enough. In cases like that, I feel skeptical about how suicide prevention lines can help. How can a stranger convince you not to die if you feel no one in your life loves you enough?
Well, I guess maybe they know what to say. There might be some magic words.
51. Imagined they can maybe give the suicidal person hope that one day love will come into their life.
I'm not talking about just romantic love. I'm talking about any type of love. It's knowing that someone wants and needs you in their life—not out of obligation but because they're actually quite fond of you.
52. Saw that Leah wakes up in this episode.
It seems she has no signs of brain damage.
53. Wondered how rare it is for people to wake up from a traumatic brain injury without any major symptoms.
That being said, I don't know for sure that Leah is totally fine. They showed her for only a brief moment.
It's just that she looked like someone who had awoken from a long peaceful nap. She didn't look agitated or damaged in any way.
The headline reads, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Valentine message to Lucy slammed by proponents of gay marriage.
I pictured people getting nasty and mean about the whole thing.
Maybe some people did.
But the examples of what people wrote, that are provided by the article, are very civil, well written, and persuasive.
The basic idea of the example messages is, It's nice you guys have a lovely marriage. We'd like one too, thank you very much.
2. Wondered if I'm misdefining the term "slammed". I guess I'm picturing it as being more intense, angry, and mean.
I'm picturing the response, on Twitter, given to Charlotte Rampling when she said something controversial about Oscars diversity. The general attitude there was, you're dumb. We don't like you anymore. Go hide under a rock for the rest of your life. No one actually said those exact words. It's just the general feeling of the Tweets.
3. Thought the messages to Turnbull (quoted in the article) went well with that saying about catching more flies with honey than vinegar.
4. Tried to understand the whole Kristen Davis thing. This is the second or third time I've seen something about it.
I guess she was on a show, in Australia, that tried to do a funny skit about Sex and the City, and it didn't go well.
Was it offensive? Not funny enough? Kristen Davis wasn't in the mood?
5. Started watching the last season one episode of Wicked Science.
6. Thought the miniature T-rex in this episode was pretty cool.
7. Enjoyed the special effects in the episode.
8. Went to Random.org to pick my next Australian thing to watch.
It's a movie called Adore. The stars are Naomi Watts, Robin Wright, and Xavier Samuel.
I'll probably start watching that on Tuesday.
9. Saw from IMDb that the original title of Adore is Perfect Mothers. I'm guessing original means it's the Australian title.
10. Started watching an episode of Home and Away.
11. Saw a reference to Australians in my favorite Disney blog.
In a post about the Three Caballeros Anthony says, There is an appearance by gay icon Carmen Miranda's sister Aurora. (I know it's kind of like getting Dannii Minogue when you were hoping for Kylie, but I'll take it!)
I might actually prefer Dannii to Kylie—just because I preferred Danni on Home and Away to Kylie on Doctor Who.
12. Remembered I saw Kylie on Neighbours. I liked her on that.
13. Decided I like the Minogue sisters equally...although really not that much.
It's not that I have anything against them. It's just I'm not really that much into them.
I'm pretty neutral about the whole thing.
14. Read a little bit more of Bridget Neval's blog, and learned she once baked a cake in honor of Will Smith's birthday. This was as a fan not a fellow actor.
That's very sweet.
Neval lists it as something embarrassing.
I don't think it's that embarrassing.
As far as enthusiastic fan behavior goes, baking a cake is very benign.
15. Decided that baking a cake for a favorite celebrity is benign UNLESS the fan tries to deliver the cake to the celebrity's doorstep.
That would be a bit scary.
16. Decided if the cake baker is a neighbor of the celebrity, it's not so awful for them to bake a cake...UNLESS they became a neighbor because they were fans of the celebrity.
17. Followed the Twitter link on Bridget Neval's blog, because there's a Tweet that I find to be a bit disturbing.
In most other people, I'd just see it as a rude and stupid Tweet. But with Neval's eating disorder issues, I find it more sad. She Tweets, Uhhhh feeling slightly bloated today so I gotta apologise to everyone who's ever had to look at me ever because I'm so sorry I'm a monster.
18. Thought that in most cases people don't need to apologize for their appearance.
I think the only exception is if they're not dressed appropriately for an occasion.
Let's say someone is supposed to go to a wedding. Their plane is late. They don't have time to change, so they show up to the ceremony in a casual outfit. They had made the decision that being there was more important than being there with the appropriate outfit.
I think they made the right choice, and it's not their fault that the plane was late. But still, it's nice to give an apology.
19. Felt bad for Maddie (Kassandra Clementi) on Home and Away.
Her social life isn't going well, and she just found out the chemo isn't working.
That's not a very good day.
I think Roo (Georgia Parker) isn't making things easier, though. She's pushing Maddie to be with her friends even though Maddie doesn't have many friends. Out of the friends that she does have, one dumped her, and the other publicly humiliated her about being dumped.
Pushing people to spend time with their friends when those friendships aren't going well isn't that helpful.
I think Roo should be there for Maddie. She can be Maddie's friend at this point. Then, hopefully, as time passes, Maddie can feel better about being around her peers.
20. Went to the Tropfest website.
Today I'm going to watch a 2010 finalist film called "Smoking Will Kill You".
21. Saw that "Smoking Will Kill You" is four minutes.
I've noticed that most of the 2010 films are shorter than the Tropfest films from the previous years.
22. Saw that Toby Truslove is in the movie.
I think he's that actor from The Strange Calls.
And I think he might be the star of the 2010 Tropfest winner film. There's a photo from the film, and it looks like him.
23. Reminded by IMDb that Truslove was also in Outland. I liked that show...better than The Strange Calls.
24. Saw that Truslove is NOT in the 2010 Tropfest winner.
The person I'm seeing in the photo is actually Patrick Brammall.
Oops.
25. Went back to watching the smoking movie.
26. Thought the actress in the movie looks familiar.
27. Thought the movie was a bit silly. The whole thing is a guy goes outside at work to smoke. For some weird reason, he stands on the ledge of the building. I guess he's a risk taker? Then a woman comes outside and assumes he's committing suicide. She tries to talk him out of it.
I usually think misunderstandings are hilarious. This is different, though, because I don't get why someone would stand on a ledge just for the hell of it. It seems far-fetched.
28. Finished watching the film.
There was good irony, so I like it for that. But the building ledge idea felt weak to me.
29. Thought of the general idea of the film. Someone tries to talk someone out of suicide. Yet they do such a bad job, they end up making a NOT suicidal person suicidal.
I can't think of specific examples, but I feel maybe there have been times in my life where someone tried to cheer me up when I wasn't actually feeling bad, and they ended up saying things to make me feel bad.
Or maybe I was feeling bad, but they made me feel worse?
30. Wondered if I've ever done that to anyone.
31. Saw that the actress who looked familiar to me is Heidi Arena. I know her from The Librarians. I think she played the character who uses a wheelchair.
32. Saw that Raphael Sammut, the director of "Smoking Will Kill You", has done crew-type work on Tangle, Rush, and Offspring.
33. Noticed that Sammut doesn't have anything on his filmography past 2011.
Maybe he's doing advertising work. Theater? Something completely different?
34. Found an article about Raphael Sammut and his Tropfest film.
It's confusing, because it says, Raphael Sammut is the director of Smoking Will Kill You, the story of Bill and Sammy; two men who should never have met.
As far as I know, that's a mistake. Sammy was a woman, not a man.
35. Learned that Sammut figured out he wanted to be in the film industry when he was a child, but he mistakingly believed you had to be an actor to do that. Later, he learned he could get work behind the scenes.
36. Learned that Sammut had a lot of struggles in his career.
37. Liked how Sammut describes his average working day. The average working day for me finds me working as a production runner while dreaming of a directing career.
Sammut describes his work as a production runner. It's pretty much a gopher type job
38. Learned that Sammut was working on a feature film. Then he lost funding and had to break the bad news to everyone.
It's hard enough having bad news about your career. I'm sure it's much worse when the bad news for you is also bad news for other people.
39. Started to watch another episode of Home and Away.
40. Glad that Evie (Philippa Northeast) is reaching out and acting like a friend to Maddie.
It makes me think of the bad-weather friend concept.
The fair-weather friend wants to be around you only when things are going well. They disappear when you reveal you have a problem.
The bad-weather friend doesn't give you the time of day until you end up with cancer or have something like your whole family dying in a plane crash.
I feel that there's been times I've been the bad-weather friend, and I have conflicting feelings about that.
On the decency side, it could be that I'm better at being a listener to someone that has problems than being a fun friend when things are going well.
On the other hand, it could be that I don't care about certain people unless they're having a problem.
But really, I don't think it's that I don't care. It's just the world is full of people. With the Internet, our lives are packed full of people from our past and present. It's hard to make time for everyone, and if someone has a major problem, it might get them better noticed.
41. Wanted to clarify that I'm not this bad-weather friend on a regular basis. It's not like I have fifty friends with cancer, or other tragedies, that I'm juggling.
It's more like three or four people, in the last several years. And it's not really friendship—more like a few emails and/or giving their blog attention.
Anyway, though, seeing Evie be nice to Maddie made me kind of see things in a better way. Maybe it's not so bad to reach and be friendly towards hurting people that you weren't friends with before they were hurting.
42. Had sympathy towards Maddie's viewpoint.
She questions getting more chemotherapy. If she's going to die, she doesn't want to spend her last days feeling like total crap.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
If there's a good chance, the second dose might save her, I think she should go for it.
If her chances are slim, I think it's best if she just dies in peace.
43. Thought, though, that I really don't want Maddie to die.
If I feel this way about a fictional character, I can understand real life people pushing their real life loved ones to fight for their life. I think it might be worse, though, to have to watch a loved one suffer.
44. Saw from the little preview photo of my next episode of Home and Away, that Leah (Ada Nicodemou) might be waking up from her coma. There's a picture of her with her eyes opened.
This comes after today's episode with VJ (Matthew Little) accepting that his mother might never wake up.
I'm glad Leah is going to wake up but annoyed that it looks like it's going to happen easily and so quickly.
Dragged out storylines can be annoying, but a storyline like this needs a little more time.
It's the same thing with Hannah (Cassie Howarth). I'm glad she's recovering from her paralyzation, but she really wasn't paralyzed for long at all.
Well, that being said...she still IS paralyzed. If I was the writer, though, I would have held off on her getting feelings back in her leg.
45. Remembered that Phoebe (Isabella Giovinazzo) was very quickly rescued from her kidnapping.
People's problems are very quickly resolved in Summer Bay.
I really shouldn't worry too much about Maddie. Her cancer will probably be completely cured a few episodes from now.
46. Thought conversation between VJ and Zac (Charlie Clausen) was very uncomfortable.
VJ tells Zac that since Leah probably won't ever wake up, Zac doesn't have to play single parent to him anymore. VJ is very gracious about the whole thing.
It would be lovely if Zac told VJ he loves him and wants to continue being a father to him. I guess they don't have the type of relationship. Zac IS hesitant about breaking the ties, but his attitude is along the lines of I SHOULDN'T abandon you. It's not a matter of Zac not wanting to abandon VJ.
47. Thought that Marilyn (Emily Symons) is very beautiful—beautiful in appearance and beautiful in personality.
48. Thought that Oscar's speech to Maddie was very touching.
She wants to give up, and he tells her she should fight—if not for herself then for the people who care about her.
I think it's nice to be reminded that people love you, and that it's important to them that you stay alive.
Though if Maddie's chances are slim, then maybe Oscar's words are kind of like emotional blackmail.
49. Decided it all depends.
Some people really might want to die, because they no longer want to feel the pain. They're over it. Being pushed to stay alive might just add to their stress and guilt.
On the other hand, some people might choose death because they feel their absence won't make that much of a difference to anyone. For them, it might be really nice and important to hear that people want them to stay alive.
50. Thought that this could apply to more than just dying people. It could apply to suicidal ones as well.
Some people might kill themselves despite feeling loved, because they feel their problems can't be overcome. It's just too hard.
Other people might want to kill themselves because they feel they're not loved enough. In cases like that, I feel skeptical about how suicide prevention lines can help. How can a stranger convince you not to die if you feel no one in your life loves you enough?
Well, I guess maybe they know what to say. There might be some magic words.
51. Imagined they can maybe give the suicidal person hope that one day love will come into their life.
I'm not talking about just romantic love. I'm talking about any type of love. It's knowing that someone wants and needs you in their life—not out of obligation but because they're actually quite fond of you.
52. Saw that Leah wakes up in this episode.
It seems she has no signs of brain damage.
53. Wondered how rare it is for people to wake up from a traumatic brain injury without any major symptoms.
That being said, I don't know for sure that Leah is totally fine. They showed her for only a brief moment.
It's just that she looked like someone who had awoken from a long peaceful nap. She didn't look agitated or damaged in any way.