Roll up, roll up,

Come one, come all, to the greatest blog hop on Earth… wwwhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

*Ahem*. Indeed. Excuse me, I’m excited. It’s carnival time. Oooooh yeah. I love a carnival. Virtual, or otherwise. In fact, I’m so excited about it, I’m sitting here eating fairy floss and spinning round and round and round of my swivelly cool computer chair. As you do.

Whatever. If you don’t know what I’m talking about- how could you not, from last paragraph, it’s the Aussie Mummy Blogger September blog carnival’e. Click on the big top, and go check it out.

I know, I’ve given a whole heap of jobs this week, so I have, quite helpfully and most patronizingly, written up a post-it for you. Here you go. You’re welcome.

Excellent. You can print it out and tick things off as you go.

OK. Enough of the carnival spirit. On with the flogging!! Check out all the details here. Follow the rules. Get ready.. get set….and… flog!

1. Follow my blog, the Random Ramblings of a SAHM. I never seem to get to reading all the links here. But believe me, I try. Not that any of this is my idea anyway- FYBF is MummyTime’s brainbaby, I’m just minding it for a bit.
2. Grab B’s bubbly button and post it on your sidebar.
3. Link your First Name and/or Blog Name and URL of your linked post (not your homepage) below. 
4. Add a short description (max of 125 chars). It could be a description of yourself, your blog or a teaser to your latest post. But be warned, Mr McLinky List doesn’t seem to groove on apostrophes, quotation marks, or other forms of punctuation. Use them at your own risk.
5. Follow at least 1 linkyer/blogger (Be nice and spread the love).
6. The list will be open for linkyers on Fridays (and for the foreigners Friday as well).
7. A new and fresh link list will open  every Friday. And you will have to link up AGAIN. The previous link list  does not carry over to the following week.
8. And lastly, have lotsa fun. I mean it. If I detect anyone not totally loving the awesomeness, I will bump you off the linky list. (Joking) (Kinda).

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Guisendeit,

It’s the Blog This 50th Challenge, remember? I posted my 50 Things I Almost Did My Fifty Things List About last week.

And voting is open now. You don’t have to be an Aussie, or a Blog This member, to vote.

So…this is one of those posts that should say something like this:

Go on over to Blog This, check out alllll the entries, decide which one you think is the bestest and cast your vote.

Instead, I’m going to say this:

Get your sweet little tushes over to Blog This (if you haven’t already) and vote for ME, ME, ME. If you can find me. I’m in the second poll, and it’s in alphabetical order. OK? OK. Awesomeness. Thank you berry, berry much!!

And just in case you missed it, here’s the Blog This link again.

*Ahem*

Hey, it’s like the title of the post says- Shameless Self Promotion. Ringing my own bell, tooting my own horn, singing my own hurrah. Or something.

Till death or fish herpes do us part,

A year ago today I married this fella. Kinda handsome, huh?

When parousing the My Pictures folder for a photo of The Man to go with this post, the most recent one I came up with is this.

Awwww, yeah. Such class. It’s almost sad, what one year of marriage and two little kids can do to a man.

Happy anniversary Man. It’s been nothing if not damn entertaining.

A few kilometers further down from that creepy old house, and there’s more urban decay in the Tiny Train Town- more life left behind, expensive possessions left to rot and rust and time.

Tourist steam trains are the only trains that still use the rail lines in Tiny Train Town. Drive along the main road far enough and you’ll come across a shiny new museum that houses trains and locomotives of all types and sizes and speeds; if you reach that you’ve gone too far- turn around and drive back a kilometer or two.

On your left there- slow down so you don’t miss it- just behind that row of trees. Just where the second set of rails end, and only one continues into the distance.

That steam engine has been parked there for years.

It’s impossible to tell what it’s paint job used to look like, because the entire body of this train is coated with crinkly, dusty deep red rust. How does a train, worth goodness only knows how much to manufacture, just be left to rust like that…?

The steam engine isn’t all. Buffered to it’s front, as if the engine pushed them there any no one ever uncoupled them, are train cars, four of five of them. There is stock car, still faintly smelling of animals. A car loaded with what appears to old, wooden shipping containers, one a long way from home, marked Melbourne. A Special Services car that a friend suggests was a prison carriage, but it just doesn’t seem guarded or solid enough.

I walk away feeling sad, slightly devoid of life myself. How does life just disappear like that…? there is the vaguest sensation of ghosts talking, chatting happily in the background as they go about the business that was theirs- shoveling coal, driving a train, packing a crate destined for Melbourne. Living lives that once revolved around objects that are now abandoned and lifeless.

It’s sad, but there’s a strange comfort in it. Maybe it’s just that muffled chatter of ghosts who voices I don’t immediately recognise, rather than the one that talks in my mind all the time.

I hate bullies.

I hate people who take advantage of their own confidence, their own lack of empathy; and force, with words or action, or the unspoken threat of words or action, their will on others.

But that’s far too clinical, saying it that way. I hate people who throw their weight around. I hate people who pick up on the fear of others, or desperation of others, and use it to support their believes, or their wants, or their opinions. It never seems to matter, to someone with that domineering streak, whether a person’s loyalty or opinion as it’s stated is an honest reflection of the other person’s feelings. It doesn’t matter– it’s the verbal agreement, the social and physical submission– that’s where that ugly, mean power comes from.

I was bullied at school, can you tell? I was unpopular little geek in the final years of primary school; in high school I was downgraded to total nerd worthy of having her schoolbag spat on and put in a garbage can, and teased mercilessly when I begun my period. (Tanya and Emma. Hi.)

Moving schools didn’t help much. My second year of high school meant starting somewhere new where no one knew me. Bullies, they found me anyway. I don’t think it was as psychical the second time around– it was more of that soul crushing ostracism that only teenage girls are capable of. It was rumors and names and something less tangible– again, that push and shove, that abuse of power that bullies thrive on.

When I was about fourteen years old I was so insecure I remember feeling as if I was curved in the middle, like a banana or the letter C– something I’d done to myself. Because if I curled up into myself then no one would notice me and that constant gangly ugliness wouldn’t be so magnified. I remember a boy in my year, for no other reason than to be just… nasty, asking our entire music class if “anyone actually liked Lori?” and no one– not even those who I did consider friends– speaking up to say they did.

As is said… I hate bullies.

One particular chick who bullied me in my middle–ish years of high school– hi, again- what is it with Emma’s?– has turned out to be, sadly, in the percentage of people that never grow out of being bullies, that for some reason still need the satisfaction of making other people feel small to make themselves feel normal. I ran into her about eighteen months ago– in the final few months of the Purple Before– and she went out of her way to draw attention to and make snarky comment about the brand of jeans I was wearing.

I found myself staring at her, wide eyed, head cocked to one side, in silence, for just a beat too long– enough to break the rhythm of the conversation, to make a few people uncomfortable as they witnessed a standoff of sorts.

Fifteen years ago, in high school, I would have dropped my gaze, my face burning, willing my eyes not to fill with tears, that sick heavy shame of just being me sitting in my guts.

Fuck that. I’m not in high school anymore. And I don’t do bullies, not anymore. I still get scared– there is one person in my life who is a blatant, compassionate–less intimidator who literally makes my insides turn to a shaking, unstable liquid. I am scared of her, and she knows it, and she takes full advantage of it.

I try not to let her. Especially now, in the After. I have simply faced too much, to be afraid of her, afraid of that.

I don’t know what it is about me– but I attract bullies, as if there’s some scent that comes off me, some indicator of weakness. Maybe there is– I’m naturally passive, I don’t like confrontation, I’m a ’yes’ person and a pleaser. It makes me an easy target and sometimes I can feel that painted all over my face.

Sometimes I wonder why, if someone had to be blamed… blame the weakest. There’s nothing noble or pleasant about that. But when it comes right own to it, people are just animals, and it’s an evolutionary given– survival of the fittest.

It’s one of those unfair truths of life that some people just never grow out of having that oppressive personality streak. I recognize it more in women than men, but that’s probably just the world colored with how things have been in the past. I hate that some people are just like that. I hate that it still makes me feel vulnerable and unworthy and fourteen years old all over again.

As I said, some people, they never grow out of it. But I’m too old for that shit now, and I know myself too well.

Finally, at thirty years of age… I don’t do bullies anymore.

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Human beings are psychologically stupid creatures.

As a species, human are pack animals– we live together in groups, and we function as a society. Unfortunately that means that– like most good pack animals, including dogs and sheep– we go with the flow.

We’re told what we’re told. We do what everyone else does. We follow the pack leader, or whoever that appears to be at the time.

The basis of any good society is order and, to some extent, compliance. That’s what people do– obey. Comply. Bend with the wind so we don’t break with it. Authority figures are just that because they hold some kind of power over us– whether that power is based in respect or fear or something altogether different, we’re reluctant to disobey their orders when the power is in their hands, as are the consequences of your actions.

In the 60’s– back when science was cool and nobody asked too many questions– they performed what was called the Milgram experiment. Basically, they asked people to do things they knew that technically, morally, they shouldn’t. In greater detail, they instructed their subjects to electrocute people every time they answered a question wrong. And they answered all the questions wrong– they were plants of Dr Milgram (who may or may not have been a bit of a sadist). The instructor– also a stooge– told the subjects to administer electric shocks that ranged from 15 volts to 450 volts for every wrong question, increasing the voltage every time. 450 volts. Despite the buttons being marked with big red warning labels that basically said “Danger! Burnt skin! Frying hair!” and their victims shrieking audibly in pain and moaning about having a heart problem, they continued to follow orders.

Just because they were told to.

Over two thirds of people willingly electrocuted someone with a heart condition who was screaming in pain… because an authority figure they’d only just met and had no substantial reason to trust was instructing them that they should.

Is that one of the most disturbing things you’ve heard today, or what…?

Added to that, most of us– Australians in particular– tend to be inherent ‘people pleasers’. We want to be perceived as likeable and helpful– we want to be accepted. We want to be helpful. Craving acceptance, it’s another one of those tribal things.

WorkSafe Victoria reenacted, to some extent, the Milgram experiment (slightly less sadistically) on an average Australian street recently. Have a geeze. It is utterly terrifying how many of us will risk electrocuting another person, just because were asked to.

Lots of terrifying stats here, in fact… it kind of makes me even more grateful I work from home and the only one requesting I do stupid things is me. Most work supervisors will put a $1000 bonus over your health and safety, and their own. Over seventy percent of those surveyed admitted that productivity is far more important than personal safety.

It comes back to that biological undertone I’m always waffling on about. Think like a Neanderthal– if your fellow human are running, and fast, it could literally mean your life to go pelting off in the other direction. Obviously there’s a reason everyone’s fleeing…. or so you’d think.

Survival is everything.

This pack mentality has led to a few amusing psychologically scientific discoveries. Most people, when they don’t know what to do, will follow the actions of those around them. If two or more people stand in a particular spot and stare at the sky, there’s every likelihood more will join them, wanting to know what it is they’re looking at… and it will be quite a few minutes before they either give up or realize they’re looking at nothing at all.

If you’re in serious trouble in a relatively public place– you know “Trent, come back, you’ve got my handbag!!” kinda thing– you’re far better off to be somewhere where there’s only a handful of other people around– one of them might actually help you. The larger the crowd of people, the greater the sense of displaced responsibility– no one steps in to help because there are plenty of other people there who’ll do it… all of whom are, of course, thinking the same.

The phenomena dubbed ’group think’ exists across many different languages and countries– it’s less a cultural phenomenon than one that belongs to homosapiens in general. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably been sucked up into it at one time or another. It’s those situations that end with three or four or more people looking sheepishly at other wondering how they ended up driving to Bondi at 2am for ice cream when none of them actually thought it was a good idea. Once the idea is verbalized and no member of the group speaks in objection, it becomes the norm and everyone assumes that everyone else is engaged in a genuine enjoyment of the activity, while everyone else assumes the same about them; and no one speaks up at all for fear of rocking the boat, unsettling the status quo.

Thinking about it, that may be how a lot of riots start out. Or at the very least why you see row upon row of yellow bins when it’s actually green bin week on your street.

I worry about the human race sometimes. All those biological instincts have got us this far… but it might be sheer sheep–like stupidity that ends us. People are natural compilers and obeyers– when it comes right down to it, most of us really are ’yes’ people.

People are stupid. Try not to encourage that by asking them to do stupid things.

*This post sponsored by Nuffnang.