Simply complex it all its simplicity

So.

I spent this week starting uni.

It's a pretty cool place, but I don't really want to chat about that.

No, today I wish to speak of something that I was presented with in my sociology lecture.

Apart from my lecturer having a wonderful Scottish accent (or is it Irish...I'll listen more closely tomorrow), he also has an obsession with this cartoon that he discovered, the "understandascope" by Leunig. It's a great cartoon that one would imagine being in the AST - you know describe and interpret the following picture.


Image Source: http://www.adm.monash.edu.au/advancement/assets/images/understandascope.jpg

He was talking about perspective, how one views the world, and how important it is to realise that each of us views the world through a different lens. Not entirely a new concept, but he expressed it well.

We all seek to understand the world - and wish that we had something similar to the understandascope, something that we could look through that would somehow make everything clearer. But here is the irony of the picture - we seek to understand the world, and and would love to have an understandascope, yet the understandascope itself is flawed, due to it being only one lens, in one place, in one society, in one world.

This one cartoon expresses and highlights the complexity of human nature with almost childlike simplicity.

Which perhaps raises another irony.

Are complexities really that simple to grasp?

And does that make them, in essence, simple?

Hmmm.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

-Carl Gustav Jung

Would it be ironic if you printed this?

So I recently got a new computer, right? And its wonderful, and fantastic and all that mushy junk.

And we have a few computers in our house, and they are all networked, and the printer is connected to the "main" computer, which needs to be on before any other user can print. And the main computer is slow.

And so printing takes far longer and is far more inconvenient than it really needs to be.

So I think to myself "Printers are pretty cheap these days, just go pick yourself up one and connect it to your shiny new".

WRONG.

Printers come with EVERYTHING now. You can only get multifunctions. Okay, I lie, you can get regular normal plain old printers.

BUT THEY COST MORE THAN MULTIFUCTIONS.

So why don't I get a multifunction?

BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE THE ROOM FOR THE GIGANTIC HEAP OF HYDROCARBON MANURE.

I have said it once.

I have said it twice.

I have said it many, many times.

And after this experience my resolve was further hardened.

I.
Despise.
Printers.

Now I know that you are all thinking, "Wow, despise Chris? Isn't that language a little harsh?" But I beg to differ with every fibre in my being.

I realise that printers are hideously useful tools - they paperise (yes, paperise, got a problem with that verb?) stuff on your computer, which makes it easier to read and archive in hard copy. They let you stick things on walls, and give yourself paper cuts.

But its this usefulness that is the downfall of the humble printer.

One NEEDS a printer.

And the printers know this, yes they do.

The printers know how much you need them.

"What the hell Chris, they are inanimate objects for goodness sake..."

NO. I REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THEIR INSOLENCE IS RANDOM MECHANICAL FAULT. THEY KNOW.

"You have mice that connect in the same ways, and you also need them, but you don't hate them"

THAT'S BECAUSE THEY AREN'T EVIL.

Maybe that is too harsh.

Yes, it is. Maybe printers are merely insecure. They need to be reassured of their usefulness, they need to know that their work is needed. But everyone needs that every so often.

Printers, however, go about this in entirely the wrong way.

They do it by stuffing up at vital moments. They do it by constantly needing more paper. They do it by running out of ink. They do it by refusing to talk to the computer, or the network.

THEY DO IT BY BEING WANKY PIECES OF HIGHLY INSECURE PLASTIC.

AND THAT MAKES ME HATE THEM.

AND NOW THEY HAVE TEAMED UP WITH SCANNERS AND PHOTOCOPIES IN ORDER TO BE EVEN MORE USEFUL AND EVEN MORE FRUSTRATING BECAUSE THERE ARE SUDDENLY THREE TIMES THE NUMBER OF THINGS THAT CAN GO WRONG. NEVER MIND ABOUT BEING THREE TIMES THE SIZE AND THREE TIMES AS INSECURE.

So I leave you with a message, my dear readers.

When you are feeling a little insecure and need some reassurance.

Don't. Be. A. Printer.

"I didn't fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong"

-Benjamin Franklin

Street Corners

She was standing, staring at a busy city street. Her eyes roved around the area, searching, then they flicked to her watch. She was late, but that didn't concern her in the slightest. She was content to procrastinate. The young woman was thinking - thinking about street corners. She didn't really know why - it wasn't something that she thought about very often, nor was it a particularly interesting thought topic, it was just what she was thinking about.

Street corners seem to have negative connotations, she mused. Why? Was it Americanised stereotype - the references to drug deals and hookers? It must be - I can't think of any other way that street corners could be sinister. They are where the lights are put, where the traffic is directed from, where the green man tells you when its safe to walk. If anything street corners should be held in a positive light...

The city's surroundings swirled around in bustle of noise. Hissing - rubber on bitumen and stopping buses. Yells - street vendors and angry motorists. Growls - idling engines and exhausting fans. Lights changed from green to red, and the growling engine noise doubled - only to be relieved by the change from red to green - and the opposite line of traffic raced off in a cough of greenhouse gas.

The young lady still stood, now staring intently at the corner of the intersection where a crowd of teens had stopped, perhaps waiting for the anonymous green man. A small joking push was all it took.

The streets squealed and ground to a halt.

Screams.
Panicked whispers.
Car doors slam.
Racing footfalls on concrete.
Raised voices from commanding onlookers.
Distant piercing whirl of rushing sirens.

The young woman stood stiff, neck craining, shock flowing through fear laden veins, rushing in time with her frantic heart.

The teens stood pale on the opposite corner, comforting each other, sobbing painfully - framed by a bloodied bus, and hysterical communters.

Tense silence took hold of the rigid scene - all eyes focussed on the paramedics trying desperately to revive the limp teen.

***

The lady glanced at her watch. She took a final glance at the tragic street corner, wrenched her eyes from the dramatic final act of the boys life.

Her heels clicked away briskly from the street corner - punctuating the return of the ceaseless city noise.