On the outside, it’s easy to misconstrue “Draw Muhammad Day” as a noble cause, a peaceful protest of sorts. It’s easy to believe that you’re doing the right thing by scribbling down a picture of the prophet Muhammad, posting it on the internet, and flipping the bird at any Muslims who might happen to find your actions insulting, and that they should lighten the-fuck-up because “free speech lol”.
Unfortunately, this is incorrect. What we have here is a classic case of very popular internet forum mindset – specifically, confusing the right to free speech with the right to act like a toolbag.
It’s trolling.
I’m serious – what else can you call it when a bunch of non-Muslims who live comfortable Western lives, and whose freedom of speech is not threatened in any way, deliberately and enthusiastically engage in an activity that they know will be offensive to others? Offensive to people who have never personally done anything to offend them?
It’s trolling of the highest order; textbook in execution, industrial in scale, and dripping with extra lashings of the misguided self-righteousness that only the greatest breed of troll – the unwitting – can summon.
Is it that simple? Yes, it is. But let’s examine it in more detail.
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So as most of you know, I do a weekly Refried comic for games.on.net. My editor found this week’s comic delightful (Pure gold, mate) and in fact liked it so much that he showed it to his manager – which turned out to be a bad move. She decided that it was possibly so contentious that it had to go all the way up the chain to the CEO of Internode to make a decision on – and he said no. Given that its subject matter is a South Australian politician and Internode is an Adelaide-based ISP, they decided it wasn’t a good idea to go upsetting the establishment.
But, under the terms of my contract and as a private citizen of an entirely different state, there’s nothing stopping me from publishing it myself, and a lot of people have been asking for it, so click here and enjoy.
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We’re coming home soon!
Finally, after eight long months, our time here is finally coming to an end. And now, as is my wont, instad of focussing on coming home, I’ve started worrying about all the things I never got around to doing. And all the things that I want to do before I leave. Y’know, the ones I probably won’t do because of Christmas, and the fact that I’m sick AGAIN.
Like seeing Maddie. Man, I meant to call her and email her so many times, and I put it off and put it off. And seeing Greg! What was that all about, huh! At least he came to my surprise party, which was, you could say, a huge surprise. And Kate. Oh, Katie. Kate left for Africa about the time that I arrived, and came back about a week or two ago. So I haven’t had a lot of time to see her either. And Nidhi! She’s not even in the country, I believe, which is sad.
I am a bad person.
Tim threw me a surprise party the other day, which was the best thing ever. He was all “We’re gonna go out to dinner for your birthday!” And I’m all “Yay!” So he blindfolds me, and Sarah drives us to the place (our car was unavailable, long story). It took about forty-five minutes, and I got completely lost. I had a good idea where we were for a lot of the time, but then she started taking some turns that were totally weird and I lost track of where we were. Anyway, we got there, and they were leading me toward the place, and they take off my blindfold and we’re BACK HOME. Man, I was so weirded out! I thought it was a big joke, that Tim was going to be all “Just kidding, I forgot to bring something, NOW we leave” but then we went inside and all my friends were waiting for me!
It was the best thing.
In hind sight, I’d been pretty dumb about the whole thing. There were a lot of clues I could’ve picked up on that I didn’t until it was too late. Such as the fact that nobody had asked me if or when I was having a party, and the fact that Mum had started cleaning the house for grandma’s annual visit more than a week in advance. But oh well! Maybe I was just sub-conciously willing to go along with it. In any case, I have the most wonderful friends, and the most wonderful Tim.
Speaking of cleaning, the other day Tim and I were cleaning out the back room of all my stuff accumulated over the last 23 years. We found some pretty cool stuff, and gave a lot of things to charity, so we felt really good about it all at the end of the day. We finally organised all our boxes to ship home, which cost substantially more than last time, but we have like, twice the boxes to ship home now. One less computer though!
In fact, neither of the computers we shipped over are getting shipped back. Weird.
Anyway, the point I’m getting to is, we found a lot of neat stuff, including some old journals and draft books from school. I would like to share some of the entries with you, ’cause they are weird and awesome. Debari, you love my stories, right? You are gonna LOVE these.
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Hello!
I was reading through the archives of my old blog the other night, and it left me with a desire to put finger to keyboard again. What’s more, I yearn for the days when I blogged about whatever popped into my head while I was writing as well. My fingernails are inconveniently long for typing on my lappy keyboard though, so I don’t know how long I’ll stick with it.
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In the middle of October, Jess and I travelled down to Newcastle. I had just won an eBay auction for ‘Ere We Go and Freebooterz, two of the few remaining out-of-print Games Workshop Ork sourcebooks I did not own. This was tremendously exciting for me; previously these books had always escaped me as I was either outbid or I could not make it to the place required to collect them. But this year, fortune smiled and they popped up in sunny coastal Newcastle, only available by pickup, and I happened to be in the right state at the right time. The seller and I even agreed to meet, fittingly enough, at the local Games Workshop store in Newcastle. It was perfect.
Little did I know, when we undertook this labour of love, that this would be the very thing that would cause me to lose my own job with Games Workshop.
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