Im looking after Amber`s rabbit Alfie while they are all in Scotland sorting out the funeral.
Really this rabbit should have been drowned at birth, its legs are out of their sockets. its not in pain but it means it has to flop about like a seal with its legs splayed to the side. Subsiquently it needs a bath ever couple of nights because it gets so dirty. There is an operation can be done but we`ll have to wait and see about that. Toni didnt have the heart to kill it after amber took to it like all children do to crippled animals. Its mother rejected it and Amber has bottle fed it kitten milk so that the little critter is still alive. She carries it about like a little rag doll so its soft as anything.
I think a pair of wheels on its sides might help it. Does anyone dare me to make it a harness with wheels on?
I havent posted this to the site. I might, but not now.
[Jul. 19th, 2007|10:24 pm]
Dear Mr Dawkins
Its doubtful you will read or reply to this but I felt I should write it anyway. ive been a member of this site around 6 months and like many people here, i came looking for a place on the internet where I could discuss atheism and rational thinking. The forums on this site have been an eye-opener and not for all the right reasons. As forums under the banner of your name I would expect this site to be one of the forerunners of atheism and clear minded thought that is free from religious and cultural persuasion, and for the large part it is. i also understand that what happens in forums in no way represents your own views and endorsements. I am writing to express my dissapointment that many atheists on the board imagine rational forward thinking to be a bonus badge to label themselves with simply because they are an atheist , without ever actually doing the hard work involved of actually being rational and progressive. There was a thread placed on these boards which I found not only to be vile and discriminatory in nature - a violation of forum rules - but also to create a shameful image of atheists as ignorant, bullying, childish and discriminating. As though atheists dont have enough of a problem with the public perception of our morals to begin with. The moderators endorsed this thread and allowed it to stay even though it is in clear violation of forum guidelines. Why? Because it was atheists mocking theists. Im sure if it was the other way round, much pompous disgust would have been poured on the "theists dressed as `retards`" but apparently its funny because its atheists doing it. http://buffalobeast.com/117/let_there_be_retards.htm
Well it is not funny Mr Dawkins. Not to me, not the learning disabled and not to atheists who do not wish to have this kind of image of themselves promoted. Im sorry that your forums which site themselves as a `clear thinking oasis` is no more than a playground to some people. Thousands of people visit here and pass through even if they dont register or reply. What they read here is assumed to be the forefront of progressiveness, and some of us who have come here assuming that have been let down by what is passing for progressiveness. Infact I find it quite worrying. I have seen threads sugesting women aught not have equal rights, that evolution shows white superiority, and that perhaps we aught to own slaves. Perhaps it is time we stopped labelling ourselves as `clear thinking` and `rationalists` merely because we are atheists. The two are not mutually synonymous. You do not become rational and progressive just because you are an atheist, infact some people *shock* are atheists just because there parents were atheists! And they come to places like this to laugh and mock and feel superior without ever scrutinising their own opinions and behaviour.
The work throughout your books has been to promote rational thinking and perhaps this site should have more emphasis on this to, it should certainly be enforcing the rules effectively to make sure nobody is discriminated agaisnt. Have you ever thought of writing a book on rational thinking skills, self criticism skills and moral thought? I think it would be an excellent example to set to people.
Lindsey
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Ok so I havent posted it yet and to be honest I dont know if I want to deal with the backlash if I do. I doubt Dawkins would read it, I simply wish to state my opinion, however I am not interesting in opening up another lengthy debate with the dickheads I have come across on the site.
I finish work in about 2 weeks. I only got one interview lined up so far, a job encouraging young offenders to go to college. I possibly got the interview because no one else applied...
Its a shame I cannot be kept on where I work now, but I know they do not have the budget for more paid staff. the majority are volunteers anyway. It really bugs me that for this line of work charitys for some reason expect you to volunteer. oh no you cant expect to be paid, your supposed to volunteer because its charity. you do it out of the kindness of your heart not for money. I have a problem with that whole set up. It implies that people who work for charitable causes are not `really working` as though no service is being provided. I mean its not like if all these places shut over night the goverment would have a real problem on its hands. It isnt like it would suddenly lose Millions because the people using day services would then require to be looked after by relatives who would need to quit work, or that they would stand to lose billions by the sudden weight put on the NHS by the loss of beds and extra nursing staff then required to staff them. If you put your parents in a nursing home or your infants in a day nursery, would you expect the staff to be unpaid? I think it is charities themselves who have promoted this image of the pitiful disabled who need charitable kindness to bring money in, otherwise *shock horror* the goverment might actually have to set up a proffesional service where in ALL staff are paid. I mean isnt it really what people deserve? A real service , not daycentres and staff running on charity money? When I think about all the jobs which are highly paid and dont really deserve to be, its not like there isnt enough money to put into things like this, like I said earlier, centres SAVE the goverment money by allowing some freedom to the carers, who might otherwise be caring 24/7 , as many of the service users are severerly disabled. And Yet so many of them are shutting and so many understaffed because the centres cannot afford to run on charity donations and staff cannot work for free forever.
I went to the doctors yesterday to complain about the chronic neck/shoulder pain Ive had for about 6 years. Less than 24 hours later I had had an X ray. How is that for service! And people moan about the NHS. I just walked in and had it and walked out again, and they didnt even know who I was. Of course they SHOULD have known who I was because I was born there, but apparently, there is no record of me ever having been born there...or anywhere.
so apart from the minor hiccup of not technically having been born, Im still impressed with the treatment.
Infact its quite a bit more alive than it was yesterday.
I dont know though, Im having trouble feeding it, its head is so tiny I can`t easily grasp it between my thumb and forefinger and I cant get the tweezers in its mouth so Im using the syringe. The problem with having to feed a bird this young that its food needs to be more liquid than solid, and you can tear the lining of the mouth with your feeding impliments or you can squirt food into the windpipe by mistake, which will kill it. Ive only fed it some small amounts.
Its a baby ...er...columbidae of some description. She found it today when coming home, lay on the pavement underneath some trees some men were sawing down. The poor little mite is only a day old at the very most. Its a pigeon of some sort, but seems as its nest was in a tree, its more likely to be a collared dove than your average town pigeon, as they tend to nest under bridges and ledges, being origionally called `Rock doves`
Chances are itll die in the night. they nearly always do , not least because when she picked it up it was cold and nearly dead, but she hadnt the heart to leave it to be stepped on or die of cold. It perked up in her hands though so maybe its got a chance, we got some food down it, a little . Any tips on hand rearing pigeons would be appreciated.
This would have been a perfectly good picture , but the girl from `The Grudge` has unfortunatly decided to make an appearance in it.
A herd of japanese tourists stop to admire ...something. Of all the stuff in the British Museum one could stop to admire, why the hell are they looking at this?
Me and the man, looking at a brass plague of the war fallen.
The Blind man. I drew with him the other day, although it wasnt my Idea I must admit. I didnt think he could do it but he could. Basically he can distinguish between light and dark, and so somebody had the idea of seeing if he could see a black shape on a light box.
So I sat down with him, hoping this would work. I switched the box on and was dismayed at the poor quality of the almost none existant light. He took his dark shades off and peered at it. " I can see there is light infront of me, but everything is diffused" I was suprised to see he didnt have `blind man eyes` but ones which looked perfectly normal, although thats testimony to how recently he lost his sight.
"would shutting the blinds help?" " yes thats helped, I can see the light there now.
I put the black shape on the light. Its the outline of a duck. I didnt tell him what it was, just that Id put a shape on the light. He seemed suddenly deflated `the lights gotten darker` he said, but he saw no shape.
Can you draw round it with a pencil? He put the pencil to the edge of duck and finds the ridge. The he put his eye a few inches away. "I can see the edge of the shape now" And he begun to draw round it. His hands shake, blindness isnt the only thing wrong with him. Nobody actually knows whats wrong with him.
"I think its a bird of some sort"
"uh huh"
"am I doing ok?"
"yes your doing really well."
He couldnt see what he drawn afterwards though, with it being a thin pencil line, so I found him a fat black marker, which he found he could see.
Shakily and very slowly, he begun to try to draw. He didnt want to, he hadnt done this before, and I guess if youve lost everything, even such a tiny failure is another insurmountable loss. But i could tell what he was drawing. It was the outline of a man.
Then he begins another drawing. he draws one circle and then another, and he puts a dot in the centre of each. I notice he is holding his breath when he puts the pen to the paper. I expect because he is controlling the hand shaking. He joins the two dots together with a line and from one if the circles he draws a short line upwards.
"Is it recognisable?"
"Its a bike"
"you can see it then? you arent just having me on , it does look like a bike then?"
We talk about getting a better light box, and how we could really do something with this. He is enthusiastic and says how anything he can fight back is a victory. He had been told he had MS 10 years ago and would never walk again. but after doctors said this and that, retracted this diagnosis, collaborated on that, he suspected they were full of shit. and he taught himself to walk agan. It took him 3 years but iv never seen him use a wheelchair, and indeed today he danced. Well sort of.
Id like to see him take this further. I know it would mean alot to him. I had remarked on how id be devastated if Id lost my sight and couldnt draw anymore. He said nothing. He used to be a portrait painter himself and I realised he was unable to answer me when I said that.
Phil has headed off to London to see his family and so I had a weekend away with my own in Wales. I had a great time. I thouroughly believe scrabble is only fun if you are drunk and cant spell. That way, everybody gets to argue over whether a word is real or not, and all burst into complaints each time somebody, after half an hour of deliberation, puts down a word like "Bop" or "Om" and completely closes the board up. Anyway, I got up at 5 am and snook off for a walk. Ive not had the world to myself for a long time. Just me and the sunrise and a few bemused sheep chewing in the fields. I sat on a rock in the middle of a stream and watched the birds flit by. When I was a child I used to come here, to this very same stream and catch fish. I think ten years have past since I last came to that spot. Back then I would come with my cousins Toni and Danny. we`d walk down the stream at midnight in the pitch black and smoke pot. Occasionally. The place hasnt changed one bit. There is still even a peice of metal junk from a car which I found a slow worm under about 11 years back although slow worm wasnt , unfortunatly. Alot has happened since that time. though Im still as close to my family members now as I was back then, and im very glad for that, not a lot of people have that.
I got back in about 7 , long before anybody got up and noticed I was missing.
I know my posts are short these days. thats partly due to being busy, partly due to needing a kick up the arse to post anything that I want to post. Its strange though, if you stop writing for a while, that part of you rusts over. I find it hard to excercise myself in writing like I used to, so I stick to painting instead. At least Id like it to sound that poetic, I know the truth is I often fritter away alot of my creative energy by jumping round, of all things. If I start feeling a need to paint or write, Ill go do something pointless like run round the place, or walk fast with music on until Ive worn myself out. its not that im trying to defeat it, just that I get excited and the fasted way to express it is by movement. Painting and writing is channelling. It is taking the raw energy and adding layers of complexities, filtering it through thought until something cohesive is made. Perhaps thats why people with dark moods make such good writers. You can use that energy and force it through filters. Maybe for these writers and painters, it is their only way to exsponge those emotions. maybe they dont have the ability to express them in their purest form, which would be a scream or crying. I suppose I should console myself that at least I still have this kind of fire inside me that I need to express. Seemingly so many people I meet dont.
Pirates of the Caribbean was so-so. Did anyone know what was going on in the middle?
I spoke to a blind man yesterday He was sat stroking a beautiful victorian style teddy bear infront of him. when I spoke to him he told me he made the bear himself, he had made hundreds. He thought he`d bring it in , incase anybody wanted to learn the skill of crafting traditional bears, and did I think anybody would be interested?. I said there was plenty people would be interested, and he was pleased because he didnt make them anymore, so wanted to pass the skill on to someone else. So we got in a conversation about the bears ,and creating things in general. He used to make the bears as a hobby, and then after a while, he thought they would be good enough to sell. He begun making them out of angora and Mohair, which cost a few hundred pounds to buy for each bear. He set up a trade name and called the health and saftey agency to inspect his bears. Two men came round to test if the bears were safe enough to be marketed. All he heard was ripping as they teared the bears to bits and declared them `unsafe`. He said he was thouroughly heart-broken, but after many more months of learning new sewing techniques, his bears were finally durable enough for sale . And so he begun to sell them, for hundreds of pounds each. He had to because they cost him so much to make in the first place. so this was how he passed most of his time since going blind. Only he could not make them anymore because he lost all feeling in his fingers. Its rare I make an audible sound of involuntary sadness, but I did at this point. I dont remember the last time I felt so dismayed. I suspect he must be blind due to diabetes. He also used to paint before he went blind ,and he would like to give me all of his art materials because he doesnt need them anymore. Because he can`t create himself anymore, he want to pass on what he can to other people.
This is kind of a sad post isnt it? Let me say something a little more uplifting. My painting arrived safely in California and should now be on show (if all went to plan) at the Sacramento Arts Centre in the West Coast Pastel Society Exhibition. If anyone does get to go to that, id be grateful if they could tell me if I won anything!
My dog was really ill last night. She was rubbing her face, bloated, had the runs was panting excessively but most of all, was following me round with a look of terror on her face and wailing. Even when I got in the bath she was scratching at the side of it and begging to be held. well I realised today she stolen a big bar of dark chocolate that Phil bought me and eaten all of it. she is only a chihuahua and even small amounts of chocolate are poisonous to dogs. she seems to be over the worst of it now, and is almost back to normal so itll be pointless taking her to the vet. suprised she is still alive. Little bloody toe-rag wont try that again I hope.
I have finally developed a taste for strong cheeses, just like my mum said I would in my twenties. Its like moving up a level in gaming. I now have blue stilton, parmesan and shropshire blue within my capablities. I think officially this is classed as moving out the class of `Cheese Bitch' to `Cheese Whore`.
I have an application form on my table. It is for a Masters Degree in Art Psychotherapy. I have the nessisary skills and I now have some the experience needed in care work. The only thing Im really lacking is money. £3000 a year fees plus id have to move. Hmm. Its worth me applying anyway, as if I get a place, they can defer me for a year if they feel I need more experience, or if I cannot accumilate the money this year. So I guess its all systems go. Time for me to get my arse into gear with the application, portfolio and ringing around to see if im entitled to loans or grants.
I had a busy day today. I made a model aircraft in the morning, glass painting in the afternoon and in the last few minutes I made four bracelets with a bracelet making kit with a girl with downs syndrome. She hugged me afterwards and said " I really like you lindsey" I like this job. I wish it was permanent.
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