DesDownunder
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Thank you so much Bruin. Your concern and well wishes mean a great deal to me.
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Thanks guys, nice of you to drop in and leave your kind words.
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Sweet, yeah, right.
see latest entry 3rd August 2014
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Thanks Dude.
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Thanks Camy.
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I don't own a chest wig, camy, but that is one funny image.
In my case it's sneezing in the middle of the blow and getting the dentures stuck in the only thing worth hanging on to.
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Congratulations, Jason for the restaurant, and the boyfriend. I'm really pleased for you. You deserve your well-earned happiness.
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Thanks Tracy. You never fail to inspire me with your ability to express your cognitive clarity.
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Thanks Tracy, the whole situation is now irrelevant. Times have changed and the cinema has converted to digital projection which means that the (film) projectionist is no longer required. The skilled projectionists' position is now filled by a 'duty officer'.
So I would have been unemployed by now anyway.
It seems strange and not without some sense of nostalgia to think that the job I did for over 45 years, no longer exists. Like so many skilled crafts, the work that my brother projectionists and I performed, in the service of entertaining the masses, has been replaced by a machine without any awareness of the craftsmanship, and the showmanship that made a carnival side-show into an artistic and profoundly legitimate, entertainment event.
I guess I feel very lucky to have been involved in the best years of the art form. The worst years are not worth remembering except to note that, all things must pass. If I had a guitar it would indeed be gently weeping.
On the brighter side of my life, I am happy to announce that our poverty is at an end. I\ll explain more once the deal is finalised. Prepare ye all, for some new stories from pen (keyboard) just as soon as the dust settles. Stress, and anxiety are creativity killers, but also in a strange way, eventually feed the muses.
So I am not claiming that "it gets better." My life experience teaches me that "it gets worthwhile."
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Another way to consider movement from note to note is to realise the difference between a concert performance and a staged performance.
The silence or pause, holds the audience in anticipation, in suspense and expectation, then when the moment is right, the drama is revealed through the silence connecting the notes.
This is not confined to music. Most actors know the dramatic value of pausing between words and even between syllables.
Elevator music is predominantly continuous without any appreciable pauses at all; it just drones on and on.
As for hearing more music than Debussy, I guess that means I have heard more silence too?
The thing that gets me about Only Boys Aloud is that they all seem to get maximum enjoyment from understanding the dramatic emphasis they apply to their singing. It's as if they are sharing a secret with us, the listeners.
Whilst many people like the perfect notes of the perfect singer, I side with Wagner when he said he wasn't worried about the singers being perfect, just so long as the drama was conveyed. After all he composed, music-dramas.
It isn't just classical opera either. Listen to Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Queen, and Broadway musicals, and you will find songs full of soaring sounds and thuds, punctuated by pauses all beating to the rhythm of your heart and soul.
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YES!
​I wear odd socks too, but they are both black, because I am an anarchical, anti-authoritarian, libertine non-conformist.
I just love your religious reason for wearing odd socks.
Way back in 1970, I wrote a play with the lead character being played by two actors, one dressed in white, the other in black. This representation was multi-faceted with references to the Socratic white and black horses, Taoist yin and yang, the conscious and the unconscious minds, and of course, the character's identity crisis.
The audiences of the day were baffled because they mistook the two actors as alter egos of the character instead of being the two sides of the one person - the yin and the yang. Nevetheless, it played to packed houses for weeks, and I still meet people who tell me they saw the play and it altered their lives.
If I had thought of it I would have had the actors wear odd socks.
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Thank you Cole, it does indeed come to that. Twice is bad enough, After three, I had to wonder if it was me. After four, I had to use all my patience to give the manager every opportunity to not be the sociopath he eventually revealed himself to be.
I am the fourth person to have left the organisation in the last six months, because of him, that I know about. There were others but I don't know just how many, or why they actually resigned.
Was I targeted to make me resign? No I don't think so; my guess is that he had misinterpreted professional advice and proceeded to assert his authority by accusing me of non-cooperation. This is where it got too vague to counter. If he had accused me of not complying with a lawful order then I could have shown that was not the case, but it isn't possible to respond to him misconstruing the reason for proffering advice, and totally ignoring the good intentions with which it was made. The situation was outside the boundaries of his experience, his expertise, and I can only conclude without him having the requisite ability to listen to relative information without thinking he was being confronted. In simple terms he would shoot any messenger before the message was understood.
What I do know is, that his reaction of refusing to listen and needlessly asserting his authority made the situation intolerable. I feel a lot better, even if poorer.
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I'm doing a bad job of explaining the similarity of our two systems. Ours works much the same here as yours. The employee can attempt to talk with the employer, or the union, who will act on his behalf, or they can report the manager/ employer to the government.
The system is not the issue, however. what is the issue is the way the sociopath managers, ridicule and bully the staff, in ways that are very difficult to prove. True it can be done, but it takes time to set up a case and the stress and anxiety from participating in such a case, (being accused of lying and fabricating evidence by the company lawyers) is not something I would wish on any worker, or want to go through again, especially at my age. Think in terms of the messenger being shot; the victim being the guilty party.
Or perhaps the complainant is not called as a witness in the U.S.?
I have been told that I, "will never work in the industry again." Twice. Obviously they were wrong, but the threat is itself demeaning.
Judging from the the lack of compassion I see in the conservative right wing of the religious fanatic politics, which are so influential in choosing sociopaths as managers, I doubt that there are many people who escape torment and despair, even when a decision goes in their favour.
I'm fed up with the system here, and I don't see the U.S. one, as being much different, or better.
I do appreciate your concern, Cole.
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Cole wrote:
Your problems sound ridiculous to me. We have systems in place here to deal with that sort of thing. You evidently don't, making life very hard. Fairness in employment, employee rights, safety issues -- these are all mandated by law here, and the company is usually on the defensive and has taken steps to prevent these issues from arising. There are huge monetary fines for breaking these laws, and in many cases managers who break safety laws and force employees to work unsafely not only are fined and usually fired, but go to jail for lengthy periods of time. Really. It happens regularly when these laws are broken. And companies are continually training managers on the laws and how to perform without running afoul of them. Their own penalties are severe enough that they care about doing things right.
These cases are taken before judges, and the judges don't side with the company just because it's the company. They hear both sides and go by the facts. If that isn't the case there, then, wow! You should probably move here.
I guess I should have be clearer and not merely mentioned our OHS. OHS stands for Occupational Health and Safety and is the Australian government version of your OHSA. my point is not that it is toothless or useless, it isn't; the point is that the management, when in authoritarian mode, actively makes the staff feel like it isn't worthwhile for them to complain. This is reinforced by the legal process before lawyers and judges being even more intimidating than the managers who are often encouraged by the owners of the business to get away with whatever they can.
I have seen what happens to people who make claims against the company/management, and have been a witness for one women who was mentally abused. She won her case after months of delays (by the company lawyers), and all she received was a token compensation.
Often the judges award against the companies, but the toll of court appearances and cross examination is almost worse than the original workplace intimidation.
Cole, it is very much like the criminal cases where the judiciary will always accept the word of the police rather than believe that the suspect was innocent. The worker is assumed guilty of being a troublemaker, because he wants to abide by the rules. From what I see reported this is common to both the U.S. and Australia.
Finally, the only choice the worker has at the end of combating these sociopathic managers is to resign in such a way that the upper management is forced to resign as well. I've done that twice. It seems that when competent staff resign, then companies fire the sociopathic manager so they can say, "It wasn't us."
I don't have the heart to do it again, to put myself through all that b.s. again. The fact is that certain stress related issues are too much to cope with. The companies know this, and the courts treat them as trivial. If they didn't the system would collapse.
A word on pension plans; as Australia is more socialist then the U.S. we have government mandated pension schemes. The employer must pay an extra 9% of a workers wage into a registered superannuation fund. The worker may also make voluntary contributions. The employers' contribution is not available to the employee until he reaches retirement age. This is in addition to the government age pension to which all Australians are entitled from the retirement age (65 years being transitioned to 67) and paid until death occurs. It is now means tested and one of the 'benefits' of Australian government recognising same sex relationships (as de facto - no same sex marriage here yet) has been to reduce the age pension for same sex couples in line with opposite sex couples.
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I delivered the essay to the manager tonight. He refused to read it.
When I explained that I felt professionally obliged to inform him of when he instructed me to put the equipment at risk, he accused me of trying to tell him how to do his job.
So I'm out of work and will have trouble making the next interest payment on the mortgage. No problem, we'll just have to juggle the bills again.
The funny thing is, the tension and the anxiety in my body has gone and I feel great.
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We most certainly do have workplace tribunals to arbitrate under our OHS, but that is useless when the manipulation is a do or die situation in a real time environment like a cinema. There have been instances where management directions were out of the bounds of reason and the staff refused to comply. The staff were fired and the tribunal backed the management.
Worse however, are the manipulations where management has intimidated the staff by removing staff belongings from their lockers and then saying that they know nothing about it. Name calling in front of one other staff member is deniable as one person's word against another. Threats to not continue employment unless a contract is signed that attracts a considerable reduction in pay.
Yearly reviews that are patently nothing more than a chance for management to disparage workers, with impunity.
Then there are those delightful managers who excel at their administrative tasks, but have no people skills whatsoever. Management always side with the those managers/directors.
One such chief administrator destabilised a significant live theatre by ordering stage hands to do each other's work so she could classify them for a lower rate of pay. Having saved the theatre a large amount of money, she then increased her own pay by tens of thousands of dollars. Need I say how low the morale of the theatre staff fell? Need I say that the quality of productions was abysmal?
The MacDonald's model is just not suited to some workplace environments, but it is being taught as part of admin-manager degrees.
When I first encountered this diabolical strategy, I told the union to get me out with as big a package as they could get. The union told me not to do it, that, "Everything will be okay."
I replied, "just do it!"
Two weeks later the federal secretary phoned me and said, "We thought you were crazy. You're not. We'll get you out and then everyone else based on your payout."
Within three months, the company only had one technician left for the whole of Australia. The manager told me that it had cost the company a lot more money than they had thought, because they had expected people to just resign as a result of their workplace intimidation; though he called it workplace restructuring.
Frankly, your last two paragraphs seem to reinforce my criticism of those managers who excel in falling back on authoritarian models when it suits them, despite being nice people at a personal level.
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I had a boyfriend when I was 18 who wanted to top then wanted to be bottomed. He didn't last long...thank goodness.
Alternating every six hours is best.
It has always fascinated me that when a straight guy sees two guys screwing they tend to think that the bottom is missing out...they just don't understand, poor dears.
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Very interesting and revealing, Jason. Thank you for your generous post.
I can offer some observations gathered from my past 50+ years, but first I want to make something clear about the time of my sexual self-discovery.
There was no Internet and no one to explain the gentle explorations that would enhance or prepare a bottom for a gay encounter when I was 15. This was mainly due to the horrid criminal laws having sent information deeper into the closet than where we young teens were.
Mutual masturbation and fellatio were easy enough to work out with my school mates, but anal was a mystery that would have to wait until I was a mid teen and met a college age guy who had a bad bedside manner. I hope he wasn't studying to be doctor. He plunged in for all he was worth, and I wasn't really ready.
Neither was I ready for plunger number two a year or so later, but he too went on his merry way.
I was lucky in having an older lover who only desired mutual satisfaction of great gentleness.
However, I soon discovered the joys of prostate massage and I think younger guys are much more easily stimulated with an accompanying extreme pleasure, anally. The older we get, it seems that the prostate stimulated pleasure is matched by the pleasure of being a top. However, there is also a rider (no pun intended) to this as it certainly seems that a well used bottom may well develop an inability to reach orgasm, unless they are anally stimulated.
Several doctors and other practitioners all corroborate this theory, and that there is a natural changeover period between younger bottom, and becoming a not so young top. If the end of puberty which we can put at the latest as 16 being the younger bottom age, then the end of adolescence, which we can put at 25 would coincide with the change to becoming an older top. These age groups also fit in with the mentor system of Ancient Greece during its years of homosexual acceptance.
What I can say from experience and consultation with friends is that the notion of being only a bottom or only a top is not conducive to a full and happy sex life. As I said above the criminal law and its restrictive nature forced many of us to regard ourselves as one thing or another, but not both. That was something we had to learn. Today, I think young gay people have a much wider repertoire with greater access to information on methods of interaction. A pillow under the bottom's lower back can provide easy access for face to face encounters of the pleasurable kind. I have certainly found it best when the intimate flexing of posterior muscles is matched by the orbiting inserting shaft for maximum mutual lift-off.
I would emphasise that being able to alternate being both top and bottom is both healthy and necessary for a full sex life. But so too are the other 69 positions.
If you stop and consider it, we are lucky that the sexual prohibitions of Victorian England were ignored in boarding schools and in other more enlightened continental nations; otherwise same sex activity might have become limited to thinking about it. We humans are definitely, in my opinion, meant to share our sexual experiences with each other, and that includes those of us who have distinct genetic dispositions to exclusive same sex, or opposite sex relationships. There is a lot to discover about our sexual lives, and I don't think it is as limited as some would have us believe.
I would also agree that making love to a woman is easier than making love to a man. (I was seduced, I swear it.)
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Okay, so where does the sex scene go?
Just joking.
It's actually a good graphic representation of a classic plot line.
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Thanks guys.
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At my advancing years, I wear a Tibetan rainbow coloured head thingie in winter, and all the cute guys run in the opposite direction. But it sure attracts the straight guys who want to let me know that I have a gay hat on my head as if I didn't know. How helpful they are.
It's sure fun watching them go red when I tell that I wear the rainbow hat because I am gay.
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Thanks Ben,
I never comment on the comments at LGBTQ Nation.
It is not a discussion forum like here at AD.
Privately I am aghast, amused and sometimes elated by the comments.
Still it is not for me to judge them.
The story has its origins in male folk lore dating back to pre- Delian times and as for the lesbian wanting a vulva, I know nothing of such things. However the giant stone phallus in the temple was pointing at the sky through a very ornate opening. Maybe there's a clue there.
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Yes, the comments seem to miss the point of the tongue in cheek story which dates from pre-Delian times. But the motivation of my article was to stir the incessant religious obstructionism to human understanding of our existence as sentient beings, without the superstition.
The small number of detracting comments is offset by the sheer numbers of 'likes' on Facebook.
The culture versus human nature subject is of some complexity, which I must leave for the moment, except to agree that our present cultures do not reflect our innate goodness. And even that statement is debatable for some.
I'm glad you like the story. Thank you.
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Thank you James. You understand what I was trying to say.
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Our New Cat...The Continuing Saga
in DesDownunder's Blog
A blog by DesDownunder in General
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Training us, yeah, right, obviously he is the master sergeant for the SFFFD (Special Forces - Feline Feeding Division).
We're just going to have to learn our place in obeying his every need, which being psychotic, changes every 5 minutes.