Forgetting of wisdom: anyone have it typed up?

[aussiechica]

Hi guys!
I was just wondering if anyone, perchance would have
'the desire for the old school tie', 'the creature from the back room' , or 'the remberance of perfection' from Paul McDermotts Forgetting of Wisdom all typed up- I swear, I have the book, its just that Im trying to save myself some typing (because I am lazy and have enough of that to do already)
Thanks!
Aussie
(whose religion project is currently turning her atheist)

[Beckslee]

I can scan it for you on the weekend, into text. But you'd have to wait until sunday night or the very latest monday

[smooth]

I think that Spoofy has some articles on her site

http://paulmcdermott.cjb.net

Don't quote me on it though because I am not sure if she still does or not, and even if she does I'm entirely sure that those ones would be there

Anyway, you can give it a go I guess

[aussiechica]

yay~yay~ yay~yay~yay~yay~yay~yay~yay

Thanks dude! you rock! :metaldev: and you saved me alot of work

Scanning in to text though, what does that involve? Would it come out like an image or as word document? (as you know I am about as high-tech as two monkeys and a stick- I it a miricle that I can work Mosh at all!)
Thanks again dude
Aussie!

[Beckslee]

I've got this special program that has an OCR recogniser and it scans directly to word.

[kali]

I think there are some on the Tangawarra site!

[aussiechica]

I've got this special program that has an OCR recogniser and it scans directly to word.

Oh, how high tech are you! Thanks alot dude, that sounds perfect!

I think there are some on the Tangawarra site!

Yeah, there are a few but not all ones I want-
the only one there I need is old school tie.
But thanks anyway. Trust me to want like the only three that arent typed!

Thanks guys!
Aussie

[Spoofy]

Is it not on my site?
I do have most of his articles there

*wanders off to look* if not, I will type it in a minute

[Spoofy]

It was there.....on the first WA article page I went too!!

Old school ties
Published in the Australian Magazine April 1 - 2 2000


The days spent in school govern the rest of our lives. How many of us huddle around the water cooler at 10:30 because of some trace memory of "little lunch"? Or at two in the afternoon start looking at the clock, tortured bu the laborious movements of its hands? Or by 3:30 need to sink into a lime green vinyl bean bag and be reduced to a state of catatonia by some mindless American dyfunctional family-oriented sitcom? How many millions are still expecting Dr Who at six? This tragic Pavlovian response is the legacy of school. A great portion of our lives was spent listless in the labyrinth of those nauseating corridors. And, late in life, we can no easier escape them than we could out of PE class with a letter written in our own blood.

the reason for this is the structure of the school day. School was neatly compartmentalised into hour-long segments, which could easily be subdivided into quarters or halves. This regime gave life a rhythm that found devine correlation in the TV guide. the fact that school finished at 3:30 and by four children's programming was well under way seemed more than just mere coincidence. And, just as in school, the world of TV was based on hour and half-hour segments that dovetailed beautifully to form entertainment. the repetitious format of school suggested that the rest of life would be seamless. When it wasn't, many of us fell apart.

I believe, and recent studies tend to support this thought, that the celebrated Australian inclination to laziness is due entirely to school. There are two ways to attack this problem. the first is to adapt our working hours to regular school hours. this would reduce the working week to a manageable 25 hours (plus homework). The other option is to keep future generations in school a bit longer. It'd be a harmless piece of legislation to extend the school day from 8:30 to 6:30. That way, when the kids mature and have to hold down "real" jobs, they won't feel the urge to head home at three in the afternoon.

This could also open up a new world for disenfranchised teachers. Regardless of the fact that they educate and instruct our greatest assets, they'd make a great deal more money in private enterprise. To get the wheels in industry turning again we need prim authority figures armed with pieces of chalk walking around our workstations, forcing us to pay attention. If we're sluggish, a loving crack across the knuckles with a metal ruler. And nothing focuses the attention more than a blackboard duster hurled with ferocious intensity at the temples.

Large corporations could employ these Matrons of Mathematics and Dukes of Discourse to patrol officers ready to confiscate tennis balls, rubber bands and pornography. Leaning on a shovel would be a thing of the past if council workers had Mrs Deportment, the third-grade English teacher who was only ever interested in posture, on their backs. But it's in the area of cleanliness that teachers excel. How spotless would our cities become if teachers followed around sanitary wokers with that calm, commanding voice of authority: "There's one you missed"?

For most of us, our conditioning became ingrained with our primary education. We emotionally begin each day at nine, finish at three, with bouts of imagined educational boredom in between. I pity the poor individuals (you may have them in your office or perhaps they're members of your family) who failed to progress to the secondary stage and remained fixated on a time- management program dictated to them in kindergarten.

These are people who barely make it through the day without bursting into tears. They're normally a bit sleepy until 11 in the morning, by 1.30 they're overexcited and experiencing rapid mood swings, and by 2 they need a nap. At the sound of a piano they have an urge to lie down (which can make it difficult in a lift). After work they stand outside, looking maudlin, waiting for someone to pick thern up.

The rhythm of school was beaten into us for 18 years, most of them spent in the mindless pursuit of knowledge. We moved from halls of mechanical precision into an organic world of chaos. Is it any wonder we're confused? Unless we act now, of the future will be the the workers same. They'll sit at their workstations fondly remembering play lunch, joyously swapping Pokemon cards, mimicking The Simpsons and wondering, from time to time, whatever happened to Dawson? just like us, they'll find themselves daydreaming at work, staring out a window, overcome with nostalgia for the great TV of the past and waiting. Waiting for that final bell to release them.

[Cherryish]

Spoof... she said that only one of the ones she needed was there, and that was the Old School Tie one...

I read it wrong the first time too.

[Spoofy]

I realised after I posted it (glad I didn't type it!!!)....

I was checking for the other 2...which I remember reading....and no not in FOW, cause I haven't read it yet


I am about to type them.....

[Spoofy]

The creature from the back room

It was one of three photographs of myself my family had dragged out. Although a number of years separated the photographs I was wearing the same school uniform in all of them, which gave them an unnerving unity. In the first one I was about eight and was smiling straight into the camera. I looked so happy, I found it hard to recognise myself. The same face beamed from the next photo taken three years later. Then there was the third photograph, the one when I was around twelve, the one that instantly made everybody laugh. In between the giggling fits someone managed to spit out, "What on earth happened?"

Within a moment the way I viewed myself stopped, my development ceased and a single negative image became fixed in time. This reference point burnt out all that preceded it and all that would follow it. It's often difficult to find where the instant began. I am luckier than most - I have a photograph to remind me.

It was undeniable that something had changed in those few years. It was more than bad lighting and a poor subject - my entire demeanor had altered: my eyes were downcast, the heavy metal spectacles I wore appeared to cut into my nose, my mouth had curled into a sneer, my hair had darkened to a lank and greasy mop. I had become "the thing".

As my family pointed and laughed I remembered what it was like to be thirteen (because that seemed to happen a lot when I was thirteen). And I knew something they didn't: the way I look in that photograph is the way I see myself today.

That version of me - the thin-lipped myopic monster, the human toad, the creature from the back of the room - is the one I cannot erase. It's installed in my visual memory and no amount of you-beaut feel-good positivity can dislodge it. We can spend a lifetime trying to escape those akward adolescent moments but they lurk in the subconscious until conditions are ripe for them to return.

For me it lifts itself out of my pysche like a teenage Mr Hyde running quietly amok in my life. I'll be at a dinner party and there sitting in my seat is that gangly acne-ridden mouse-haired invertebrate. I wonder why the other guests have said nothing. I wonder how long I can get away with it before someone throws me out. I feel like a great pretender wiating nervously to be uncovered. My outward appearance has not changed by inwardly I am thirteen again and I find I am too frightened to speak, nervous and embarrassed, and any confidence I have has evaporated. I tell myself: it doesn't matter what's outside, it's what's inside that counts. And what's inside is a throwback, a mutation, a stunted nondescript. Then as mysteriously as it appeared "the thing" has gone.

The only saving grace is I'm not alone. There are some of us out there who have magnified one second of weakness for the duration of our lives: the girl who tucked her skirt into her undies, the boy who sees himself with a Marella jube eternally struck in his braces, the one who wet their pants just before the bell went, the slowest, the shortest. It could relate to a piece of jewellery, a pair of shoes, a shameful incident, and it waits to be reborn. There is a girl I know who was the tallest girl in school and some days she still is the tallest girl in school.

Do people in positions of power confrint these demons or are they forced to live with them as well? Does Clinto picture himself as a clumsy, sexually illiterate youth when he speaks to Congress? Does Tony Blair recall miming to Beatles songs in his bedroom with a hairbrush? Is Howard the epic knight, the Queen's colours tied to his lance, tearing another blanket from a Hills Hoist windmill? Do their alter egos rise up in moments of crisis and 'go the spoil'? Is there any way of overcoming this stumbling block?

I tried for a while to replace the negative image with a positive one but nothing worked. I looked for things I could be proud of, I searched for any triumph or success - perhaps if I had won something, achieved something, if I could find something positive. It was useless exercise - nothing I compared it to had the same power. I had to consede the weakness was victorious.

I can see the boundaries of my life, my limitations, the structures that enclose and surround me as clearly as the border of that photograph. As my mother slipped the photo into a frame and placed it on her sideboard I couldn't help feeling he had won again. Even as I write he has been here. Crouching at my shoulder, whispering in my ear, grateful that I had given him shape.

[Spoofy]

If there is any typing errors its cause I was trying to eat dinner, type and do other "stuff" at the same time


The rememberance of Perfection

I have searched this world over and never found it again. Occassionally, like a face long forgotten, it appears in a crowd, surfaces for a second, and disappears. I thought I caugt a whiff of it in Morocco once: in desperation I followed a decaying series of passageways to a sweltering market, where in the mix of exotic spices and animal droppings I lost it.

We all have smells that awaken buried memories. These odours are personal and individualistic and have a significance which is all their own. Smell can provoke memories more powerful and all-encompassing than any others: it's when the old factory receptors and the much maligned nose prove their worth - with a single sniff, they cause the head and heart to swim with an overwhelming rush of nostalgia.

The smell I picked up on that street and lost was the acrid artificial fragrance of a transparent plastic bag. A bag I bought from a corner shop for a pittance when I was seven. A bag that contained little green American WWII soldiers. A smell I have searched for in vain all my life.

As a child I gnawed on any object I could get my flouride-enhanced, calcium-deprived pegs around. All manner of toys, *plants and furniture suffered at the hands of my teeth. I spent many an idyllic afternoon licking lead or gnawing on aluminium saucepans. But that all changed when I purchased the bag. I'd been attracted to the pack because of the graphic cardboard seal depicting the D-day landing with liberal splashes of blood and death and, of course, the strong smell emanating from it. The stench was so artificial, so fake, so disagreeable, it scented the entire store with the odour of cheapness.

At home, in the privacy of my room, I ripped off the cardboard and a powerful charge of aroma enveloped my head. From that second I was lost. The plastic of the bag had fumigated and permeated the soldiers. Each one carried a hint of that special pong. I couldn't resist and chewed on the muzzle of an M16. Before long I had attacked the entire platoon. A leg here, an arm there, a tiny radio pack. Limbs hung loosely on tendons of stringy green plastic, snipers lost their heads, foot soldiers were unable to stand after I ate their pedestals: it was carnage. The army that had emerged whole and fragrant was reduced to a dirty dozen ragtag lepers. ** I needed more.

When I returned to the corner shop they were all sold out. No doubt word had spread like wildfire amoung the juvenile hedonists in the area. All that remained on the rack was crappy Sherman tanks, amphibious vehicles, and vanity sets moulded in a hard, unforgiving synthetic. I have reason to believe that the special plastic I loved has since been banned. Banned by some nameless international convention governing the safety of small children. I have little doubt it was poisonous and yet I would give almost anything to find it again. No smell has come close to the wonder of that bag. It was the most moving odour I have ever experienced and evokes the utopian experience of childhood. No food or beverage that's passed my lips has matched the intensity of that plastic. I can only suspect it is akin to the sensual pleasures the ancients derived from the pomegranate. Over the years I've search. I have stood in toy stores sniffing the air - I once ate a relative's Christmas present - but it's never been the same. To this day, the slightest suggestion of that smell magically transports me to a time of innocence.

How fortunate we are to live in this age of the artificial, this time of plastic - not because of the multitude of uses, but the smell. How many generations have gone to the grave without experiencing the intoxicating odour of rubber on a hot day? How dull the scent of lavendar when compared to latex. How many children have been forced to chew the ends of sticks never knowing the untold joys of chewing the heads off little green plastic American soldiers? Was there ever a product that was so good to put in your mouth and so stupid to swallow?

* It is best not to use toy soldiers, or indeed toys of any kind, as a dietary supplement.

** I realised, later in life, that the injustice I'd inflicted upon my men dipicted, visually, the ture horrors of war. The happy-go-lucky gun-tooting group of healty-minded whole-limbed infrantry were replaced by gnarled stumps of spittle-ridden plastic. BUt unlike society I chose not to remember the brave ones who'd fought for my freedom. I left them forgotten and discarded at the back of a drawer to gather dust. There were no ticker-tape parades, no welfare, no support. Eventually there were buried in an unmarked shoe box, in a shallow grave, beneath a house brick.

[aussiechica]

Wow! thanks Spoofy!
Yay! Youve saved me so much work, thanks loads!
My typing speed is tragic (my parents actually baught me that lil
kiddies 'Kewala Typing' program - what does that say about1) my typing skills and 2) their opinion of my intellectual ability), so youve helped me ot loads!
Thanks Spoofy and everyone else for you help!
Bye T h a n k y o u ! ! !
Aussie

[Spoofy]

Thats okay......I'm not the best typist either, but it gave me a chance to get my project dolphin stats up


I've decided that next time I decide to type one out, I will not try and cook lunch, eat, and wash dishers at the same time cause it makes it look like it took me 30 minutes to type something that should have taken about 10 minutes