These are my favourites not necessarily the "best" ...
Sports
Teams
1. Sydney Swans (AFL)
2. Cronulla Sharks (NRL)
3. Liverpool FC (English Premier League)
4. NSW Waratahs (Rugby Union)
5. Hockeyroos
Sports
1. AFL
2. Roller Skating
3. Gymnastics
4. Hockey
5. Swimming
Creative Arts
Books
1. Vineland (Thomas Pynchon)
2. Prozac Nation (Elizabeth Wurtzel)
3. Beachmasters (Thea Astley)
4. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
5. The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)
6. Alice In Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
7. Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
8. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
9. Playing Beatie Bow (Ruth Park)
10. Dubliners (James Joyce)
Poetry (pre-1900)
1. I wandered Lonely as a Cloud (William Wordsworth)
2. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
3. She Walks in Beauty (George Gordon, Lord Bryon)
4. First Love (John Clare)
5. La Belle Dame sans Merci (John Keats)
Poetry (post 1900)
1. Dulce Et Decorum Est (Wilfred Owen)
2. What the Chairman Told Tom (Basil Bunting)
3. Tell Me the Truth About Love (W. H. Auden)
4. Sometime During Eternity (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
5. The Ghost in the Martini (Anthony Hecht)
6. Variations on a Theme by Wiliam Carlos Williams (Kenneth Koch)
7. Why I am not a Painter (Frank O'Hara)
8. A Consumer's Report (Peter Porter)
9. I Missed His Book, but I Read his Name (John Updike)
10. Telephone Conversation (Wole Soyinka)
11. A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (Craig Raine)
12. Flowers (Wendy Cope)
13. God, a Poem (James Fenton)
14. Persimmons (Li-Young Lee)
15. Resumé (Dorothy Parker)
Art
1. Water Lillies
2. Starry Night
3. The Scream
4. Forest Fires series
5. Sydney at Night
Bands
1. The Offspring
2. Metallica
3. Queen
4. The Beatles
5. Elvis
Songs
1. To Be With You (Mr Big)
2. Who Wants To Live Forever (Queen)
3. Imagine (John Lennon)
4. I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General (Gilbert & Sullivan)
5. Steven's Last Night in Town (Ben Folds Five)
Movies
1. Labyrinth
2. E.T.
3. Lock, Stock and Two Smocking Barrels
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Pulp Fiction
Television Shows
1. The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson
2. Red Dwarf
3. The X-Files
4. QI
5. Dr Who
Movie Actors
Australia / New Zealand
1. Hugh Jackman
2. Sam Neill
3. Russell Crowe
4. Errol Flynn
5. Heath Ledger
Europe
1. John Hannah
2. Ewan McGreggor
3. Vinnie Jones
4. Kenneth Branagh
5. Hugh Grant
North America
1. Al Pacino
2. Harvey Keitel
3. Kevin Spacey
4. John Cusack
5. Oliver Platt
Television Actors
Australia / New Zealand
1. Simon Baker
2. Anthony Lapaglia
3. Daniel McPherson
4. David Wenham
5. Matt Passmore
Europe
1. Tim Roth
2. Robert Carlisle
3. Sam Callis
4. David Tennant
5. John Simm
North America
1. Michael Shanks
2. Gary Sinise
3. Don Johnson
4. David Duchovny
5. Vincent D'Onofrio
Comedians
1. Craig Ferguson
2. Jason Byrne
3. Paul McDermott
4. Eddie Ifft
5. Arj Barker
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Self Image Verses Reality
Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered who the person looking back at you is? Show me a person who answers no to that question and I'll show you a liar. How we see ourselves is a big part of what makes us as a person and having a negative self image can be quite traumatic, not just for yourself and but others around you.
I am in a constant battle with myself over how I see myself. When I look in the mirror I see an overweight 30-something. In my head, I see my high school self. I don't feel any different on the inside to how I felt in high school. But it's not just about how you see yourself, it's how you think that others see you. I've always thought that people's opinion of how I look is very low. As a teenager I would take every little thing that everyone said to heart. Every insult said without thought cut like a knife. My self image plummeted to the point where I wondered who would ever want me.
At the time, I really didn't have anything to worry about. I wasn't stunning but I was normal. I had somethings about me which were beautiful and somethings which were not but overall I was your average teenager. In my head, though, I was this freak of a person and anyone who found me attractive must be desperate or taking the piss.
Over ten years later and I'd give anything to look like I did then. What annoys me now is that when I say to people that I do not look how I want to look they think I'm being negative and begin to tell me all the good things about myself. I'm not saying I don't want the compliments, they are awesome. I just think there is a difference between being realistic and being negative.
It is realistic to say "I need to lose weight" when you are 20kg overweight.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve how you look but the image you aim at has to be realistic. I don't want to be stick thing, I think I would look a bit strange being just skin and bones, but I don't want to look how I do now. I can understand how people develop eating disorders like anorexia when they see the models and actresses who are absolutely tiny. What they don't see is the enormous amount of work those people do to maintain that image, the personal trainers they employ, the cosmetic surgery they undergo, the photoshop they use and the simple fact that they may be one of those people who are genetically predisposed to being thin.
I know that for me, I will never be anything smaller than a size 10, and that getting to that will be a huge effort and take a lot of will power. But I am determined that one day I will look in the mirror and see the same image that is in my head.
But self image isn't just about how you look, or think you look, it is also about how you see yourself generally. Whether you think you're intelligent or talented or creative plays a part in how you see yourself. Wanting other people to recognise my ability has been a big part of why I was so negative about myself as a teenager and into my 20s.
From the time I went to high school, it seemed that it didn't matter what I did, I was always good but not the best at whatever I did. There was always someone (and usually someone who was a friend) who out-shone me. I know that's how it is in life but I was very conscious of the fact that I was not the best at anything except when someone else screwed up. I was never the best because of my own ability, it took someone else's mistakes to make me come out on top and that was something I was very aware of.
At school, I was bright but not incredibly smart. Having said that, I went to an academically selective school. Everyone is bright and a lot of people are incredibly smart. Had I gone to a mainstream school I may well have been in the top bracket but in my school I was pretty average across the board. I wanted to be the big fish in the small pond, not the small fish in the big pond.
In sports I was a bit of a jack of all trades. I was good at pretty much every sport but not excellent at any of them. People say to me when they find out I went to the World Championships for skating that I must have been awesome. I struggled to get there and I am fully aware that I was not the strongest person in that team. I'm still very proud of the fact I represented my country. I'm just aware that I was not the best in that team. And that is the story of my life, whether it was swimming, athletics, hockey, gymnastics or skating.
I was never the type of person of whom other people said, "We must go watch her, she's awesome" or "Wow, didn't she do well at that." It didn't matter what sport it was or what other activity it was, I was just there, somewhere in the middle, not sucking but not exceeding expectation either and always flying under the radar.
Occasionally I would get the praise of the teachers at school but it wasn't their approval I wanted necessarily. I wanted the other students to think I was fantastic at something. There's a lot to be said for peer acceptance and peer support.
These days, I still crave recognition of my work and effort. I want people to tell me I'm good at something, that they like something I've done. It still burns when they don't. There's still that teenager inside that doesn't think she's good enough. But the adult inside me knows not to expect people to shower me with praise and, in fact, when I do get praise I often don't know what to do with it as I am still not quite sure I deserve it.
Self image is a work in progress throughout our life and it can sometimes feel like it's one step forward, two steps back. It is often hard not to take things people say to heart but we have to remind ourselves that often people don't think before they speak (I know that I am guilty of this) especially if they are teenagers. Be yourself and be proud to be yourself, don't try to be something you're not to fit in with the crowd and don't try do crazy things in order to stand out from the crowd. The person you need to impress most in this life is not counted amoung your friends or your teachers or even your family. The only person you need to impress is yourself and if you aren't impressed you need to fix it, don't rely on others to prop you up, think of their contribution as a bonus, not the main prize.
I am in a constant battle with myself over how I see myself. When I look in the mirror I see an overweight 30-something. In my head, I see my high school self. I don't feel any different on the inside to how I felt in high school. But it's not just about how you see yourself, it's how you think that others see you. I've always thought that people's opinion of how I look is very low. As a teenager I would take every little thing that everyone said to heart. Every insult said without thought cut like a knife. My self image plummeted to the point where I wondered who would ever want me.
At the time, I really didn't have anything to worry about. I wasn't stunning but I was normal. I had somethings about me which were beautiful and somethings which were not but overall I was your average teenager. In my head, though, I was this freak of a person and anyone who found me attractive must be desperate or taking the piss.
Over ten years later and I'd give anything to look like I did then. What annoys me now is that when I say to people that I do not look how I want to look they think I'm being negative and begin to tell me all the good things about myself. I'm not saying I don't want the compliments, they are awesome. I just think there is a difference between being realistic and being negative.
It is realistic to say "I need to lose weight" when you are 20kg overweight.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve how you look but the image you aim at has to be realistic. I don't want to be stick thing, I think I would look a bit strange being just skin and bones, but I don't want to look how I do now. I can understand how people develop eating disorders like anorexia when they see the models and actresses who are absolutely tiny. What they don't see is the enormous amount of work those people do to maintain that image, the personal trainers they employ, the cosmetic surgery they undergo, the photoshop they use and the simple fact that they may be one of those people who are genetically predisposed to being thin.
I know that for me, I will never be anything smaller than a size 10, and that getting to that will be a huge effort and take a lot of will power. But I am determined that one day I will look in the mirror and see the same image that is in my head.
But self image isn't just about how you look, or think you look, it is also about how you see yourself generally. Whether you think you're intelligent or talented or creative plays a part in how you see yourself. Wanting other people to recognise my ability has been a big part of why I was so negative about myself as a teenager and into my 20s.
From the time I went to high school, it seemed that it didn't matter what I did, I was always good but not the best at whatever I did. There was always someone (and usually someone who was a friend) who out-shone me. I know that's how it is in life but I was very conscious of the fact that I was not the best at anything except when someone else screwed up. I was never the best because of my own ability, it took someone else's mistakes to make me come out on top and that was something I was very aware of.
At school, I was bright but not incredibly smart. Having said that, I went to an academically selective school. Everyone is bright and a lot of people are incredibly smart. Had I gone to a mainstream school I may well have been in the top bracket but in my school I was pretty average across the board. I wanted to be the big fish in the small pond, not the small fish in the big pond.
In sports I was a bit of a jack of all trades. I was good at pretty much every sport but not excellent at any of them. People say to me when they find out I went to the World Championships for skating that I must have been awesome. I struggled to get there and I am fully aware that I was not the strongest person in that team. I'm still very proud of the fact I represented my country. I'm just aware that I was not the best in that team. And that is the story of my life, whether it was swimming, athletics, hockey, gymnastics or skating.
I was never the type of person of whom other people said, "We must go watch her, she's awesome" or "Wow, didn't she do well at that." It didn't matter what sport it was or what other activity it was, I was just there, somewhere in the middle, not sucking but not exceeding expectation either and always flying under the radar.
Occasionally I would get the praise of the teachers at school but it wasn't their approval I wanted necessarily. I wanted the other students to think I was fantastic at something. There's a lot to be said for peer acceptance and peer support.
These days, I still crave recognition of my work and effort. I want people to tell me I'm good at something, that they like something I've done. It still burns when they don't. There's still that teenager inside that doesn't think she's good enough. But the adult inside me knows not to expect people to shower me with praise and, in fact, when I do get praise I often don't know what to do with it as I am still not quite sure I deserve it.
Self image is a work in progress throughout our life and it can sometimes feel like it's one step forward, two steps back. It is often hard not to take things people say to heart but we have to remind ourselves that often people don't think before they speak (I know that I am guilty of this) especially if they are teenagers. Be yourself and be proud to be yourself, don't try to be something you're not to fit in with the crowd and don't try do crazy things in order to stand out from the crowd. The person you need to impress most in this life is not counted amoung your friends or your teachers or even your family. The only person you need to impress is yourself and if you aren't impressed you need to fix it, don't rely on others to prop you up, think of their contribution as a bonus, not the main prize.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Creating an acceptance of difference
Tonight I had to break the news to my son that I don't necessarily believe in God (actually I don't know if there is a God or not, I'm what you might call an undecided voter). My son is currently 6 years old, he attends scripture at school and believes what people tell him without question. He believes in God and those things associated with it. He hasn't started the process of breaking down his belief structure and deciding if he still believes. I was not much older than he is now when I began that process but it probably wasn't until I was nearly a teenager that I properly began to question religion so I'm not expecting him to change his mind any time soon, if at all.
It was really hard telling Bubba that I didn't believe what he believes. I found myself wanting to tell him to believe what I believe but I know, perhaps by having gone through the process, that simply telling someone what to believe doesn't make them believe it, they have to come to it on their own.
I don't want my son to be one of those people who judges people by what they believe. I want him to be open minded and accepting of the differences between people. I want him to be proud of his beliefs but not to think that they are the only beliefs or that the beliefs of other people are worth less than his. I want him to be able to say, "We can agree to disagree."
I have been Christian and Athiest and Agnostic. I know the struggle of finding a place I feel comfortable to rest my beliefs. I have read extensively on most major religions and their subsets. I cannot, in true conscience, say I fully understand how people can believe in any of the diety-based religions or the nature religions. It doesn't mean that I object to them believing in them. Each to their own, as they say.
If my son decides that he will remain Christian, after careful consideration of all the options, then so be it. It is faith without that questioning that I object to. The blind faith of the uneducated and the zealots. It is with those people I will argue, not because I think they will change their opinion but because it winds them up. I am their devil because I can site scripture and yet have no faith.
I have had heated arguements, especially in my middle teenage years, with many a scripture teacher over the finer points of the bible. If I had to lable myself I would have to say I'm an evolutionist. This belief has usually been the source of many of my arguments. I remember taking a book on evolution in to a scripture teacher because he believed in the literal reading of the bible, that God made all the animals and plants, and that the world was created in 6 days. It blew my mind that an educated adult could completely disregard all scientific evidence to the contrary.
These days, I am a little more accepting, if not understanding. I still think people should believe what I do but I accept that no everyone will. In fact, most people don't believe what I believe. Most of the world believe in some sort of religion. Maybe you could say I believe in the religion of science.
Some people think that if you believe in science and not some diety-driven religion that you lack spirituality. I say that being spiritual and being religious are not the same thing. I've known some very religious people who don't appear to have a spiritual bone in their body. Alternatively, I've known some very spiritual people who won't have a bar of religion.
The thing I like about science is that is has the ability to change its mind. If a theory is proven wrong, it is proven wrong. Science is often critical of itself and challenges itself. What religion does that? I also like that science says, "I don't know but I'd like to find out." Science doesn't claim to have all the answers. Science sets out to answer those mysteries that are as yet unexplained, it doesn't lay the blame or the praise for the mystery on something even more mysterious.
The thing I like best is that science doesn't even say it knows how the world began. It has a theory but it's just that, a theory, it might be wrong. I like the idea of the Big Bang Theory but really, it's a bit like believing in God and I'll tell you why: my first question to a scripture teacher was, "if God made everything, who made God?" I have the same question about the Big Bang Theory: where did the stuff which created the Big Bang come from? The only solice I have that science is where my heart lies is in the answers I got to each question. From my scripture teacher, on being confronted by this question from a 7 year old, I got, "He just is." From science, being constantly confronted by this question, I get, "No-one knows."
I want my son to have the same curiosity that I have. I want him to question things and not accept things blindly. I want him to be open to all the possibilities and not closed minded. Most of all, I want him to know that no matter what his choice of belief, I will always love him ... unless it's scientology.
It was really hard telling Bubba that I didn't believe what he believes. I found myself wanting to tell him to believe what I believe but I know, perhaps by having gone through the process, that simply telling someone what to believe doesn't make them believe it, they have to come to it on their own.
I don't want my son to be one of those people who judges people by what they believe. I want him to be open minded and accepting of the differences between people. I want him to be proud of his beliefs but not to think that they are the only beliefs or that the beliefs of other people are worth less than his. I want him to be able to say, "We can agree to disagree."
I have been Christian and Athiest and Agnostic. I know the struggle of finding a place I feel comfortable to rest my beliefs. I have read extensively on most major religions and their subsets. I cannot, in true conscience, say I fully understand how people can believe in any of the diety-based religions or the nature religions. It doesn't mean that I object to them believing in them. Each to their own, as they say.
If my son decides that he will remain Christian, after careful consideration of all the options, then so be it. It is faith without that questioning that I object to. The blind faith of the uneducated and the zealots. It is with those people I will argue, not because I think they will change their opinion but because it winds them up. I am their devil because I can site scripture and yet have no faith.
I have had heated arguements, especially in my middle teenage years, with many a scripture teacher over the finer points of the bible. If I had to lable myself I would have to say I'm an evolutionist. This belief has usually been the source of many of my arguments. I remember taking a book on evolution in to a scripture teacher because he believed in the literal reading of the bible, that God made all the animals and plants, and that the world was created in 6 days. It blew my mind that an educated adult could completely disregard all scientific evidence to the contrary.
These days, I am a little more accepting, if not understanding. I still think people should believe what I do but I accept that no everyone will. In fact, most people don't believe what I believe. Most of the world believe in some sort of religion. Maybe you could say I believe in the religion of science.
Some people think that if you believe in science and not some diety-driven religion that you lack spirituality. I say that being spiritual and being religious are not the same thing. I've known some very religious people who don't appear to have a spiritual bone in their body. Alternatively, I've known some very spiritual people who won't have a bar of religion.
The thing I like about science is that is has the ability to change its mind. If a theory is proven wrong, it is proven wrong. Science is often critical of itself and challenges itself. What religion does that? I also like that science says, "I don't know but I'd like to find out." Science doesn't claim to have all the answers. Science sets out to answer those mysteries that are as yet unexplained, it doesn't lay the blame or the praise for the mystery on something even more mysterious.
The thing I like best is that science doesn't even say it knows how the world began. It has a theory but it's just that, a theory, it might be wrong. I like the idea of the Big Bang Theory but really, it's a bit like believing in God and I'll tell you why: my first question to a scripture teacher was, "if God made everything, who made God?" I have the same question about the Big Bang Theory: where did the stuff which created the Big Bang come from? The only solice I have that science is where my heart lies is in the answers I got to each question. From my scripture teacher, on being confronted by this question from a 7 year old, I got, "He just is." From science, being constantly confronted by this question, I get, "No-one knows."
I want my son to have the same curiosity that I have. I want him to question things and not accept things blindly. I want him to be open to all the possibilities and not closed minded. Most of all, I want him to know that no matter what his choice of belief, I will always love him ... unless it's scientology.
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