I’ve been talking a lot about the 78 boat people from Sri Lanka this week.

I was on 7pm Project on Monday, with George Negus firing off about how what Rudd and Co are doing is illegal.

Then on 2UE with Steve Price on Wednesday, where I got enraged about how these people are not illegal (until proven otherwise), are not flooding here (it’s a trickle), and just need to be processed. By a country that is signed to the UN charter.

And then I was on ABC 702′s journalist’s forum yesterday evening, where I pointed out that in the absence of true leadership from Rudd and Co, the lecturn – and blackboard – has been handed over to a goose like Wilson Tuckey to imflame things with talk of terrorists and army intervention and other mis-information.

But I take a deep breath now and share this Buddhist thought I flicked open to to in Jack Kornfield’s Book A Path With Heart when the sheer emotion of it all sent me looking for softness:

Compassion is the “quivering of the pure heart” when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life.

I found it in the chapter titled Stopping The War. Of course.

Oh, you’ve got me. I’m using this post as an excuse to post a picture of a man’s crotch.

...or are you just happy to see me

Let’s get the plug out of the way: they’re Calvin Klein’s new Body jeans for men.

The gimmick? They add extra bulk around – and let’s just say it straight – the penis, with the strategic placement of creases and added fabric in the crotch.

The sociological spin? It suggests a movement away from the “hipster anemia” look of the past few years, back to “chunky man cool”. I’m thinking Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise.

I just came across this telling Google algorithm in Salon. The journo had done a search for “bad fathering”. The search came back with the helpful suggestion at the top of the screen: “Did you mean: bad mothering?”  They also get a similar suggestion when they Googled “poor fathering.”

It’s not Google’s fault. Google just reflects the patterns in the searches we make. In doing so, it gives us an interesting reflection of where we’re at, hey.

Last week I mentioned I visited a shaman in Bali. The reaction from everyone was, did he dress like Sandy from Monkey (skulls around neck, carrying a staff), and what wisdoms did he impart. To the first, no, he wore shorts and plastic sandals and we sat in his kitchen as kids and cats run amok and his wife cooked curry.

And his profound insight? Oh yes. Well, he told me I don’t much go for relationships. And that I shouldn’t. Go for them, that is. Nor should most women like me. If we want to be happy.

Now this might strike a shard of horror through the spleens of some.  But I’ve had a week to digest and clarify the idea. It opened interesting cans of worms, with myself and with friends, both partnered and otherwise. And I wrangled with whether to explore it as part of this journey to make life better. In the end, I decided I had to.

This much we kinda know by now:

* How we eat is being controlled by big fat corporations

* We’re getting big and fat – and sick – from the way we eat.

But, here, the rest of the story.

I got goosepimply where the farmer says, “People have to start demanding good wholesome food from us and I promise you, we’ll deliver”. This is the point, isn’t it. We can shop differently and change demand and supply chains. This is the only way change will happen. It’s madness to expect it to start from the farmer. They don’t have the power. We do, or at least those of us in a financial position to buy organic. And those of us who know better than to buy crap-tastic food full of enhancers and modifiers.

It’s a moral responsibility.

I’ve confessed to this before (on twitter, in Cosmo): I have this thing where I have to eat before I go to bed. Doesn’t matter how sustaining dinner was. I have to snack. Honey on rice toast. Toasted nuts with cinnamon. It ticks many wrong boxes and doesn’t do great things for my self-esteem. Or weight at times. I’ve managed to steer the habit around with sheer tenacity. But for anyone still struggling, these tips made sense to me. I stumbled upon them on a post on Huffington Post by Janice Taylor, who refers to herself as, intriguingly, “Our Lady of Weight Loss, Patron Saint of Permanent Fat Removal .

Ten Ways to Curb, Conquer and Control Nighttime Eating

Right now, I’m noticing little moments of whimsy. Pockets of of creativity that explore ideas capriciously. Whimsical people are a little bit quirky, a little bit nerdy, often loners.  They were the kid who’d delicately pull apart a daisy. Or watch a worm for a full 45 minutes in a puddle. Now they create music and art and things that are neither art or music or anything in particular. It’s just whimsy.

Melbourne singer/songwriter Megan Washington is whimsical. She used to sing backup for Old Man River.  Her singing made two of the male panellists on Spicks and Specks cry tonight.

In case you’re still wondering what whimsy is about, possibly my favourite whimsical outpouring. It features Zooey Dechanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt being doing mad whimsy in a bank. Just for fun. (And to promote their latest movie.) Creatively there’s no point to it. It’s just… whimsy.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
– Leo Tolstoy

Change yourself and everything else around you changes, slowly. It’s a knock-on effect.  And in time the world changes. It’s slow, but it does happen. Which is more than most of us can say for our best intentions to go out there and create something grand and exciting that will fix depression, or youth suicide, or breast cancer.

Bring it in close to home, rather than working outwards, and you get results. Gently. Effectively.

My spiritual counselor friend Sky once told me to “be my message”. I’d been rabbiting on about how I wanted to show, and to tell, people how to do things better. 

This week I had myself a “think week”.

I read in the Wall Street Journal that every six months Microsoft’s Bill Gates extracts himself from his chino-wearing Silicon Valley brethren and heads to a wee cabin on a hill for a “think week”. He removes all distractions and armed with (I’m imagining) a bunch of Enya downloads, some butchers’ paper and coloured textas, nuts out ideas and new directions. I can see it now. Scrawled in big letters and taped to the wall next to the mounted moose head, “Portals? Doorways? Euraka!!! Windows!”.

Yes, yes, I think I need a think week!

don't go here

I love a tidy DYK (did you know) list. Especially if it’s an odd number of items (everyone compiles lists of 7 or 11 things, have you noticed?). I’ve been talking about this list with people all weekend – what NOT to eat. If you want to live to see another day.

1. Canned Tomatoes

2. Corn-Fed Beef

3. Microwave Popcorn

4. Nonorganic Potatoes

5. Farmed Salmon

6. Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones

7. Conventional Apples

It seems like innocuous stuff. But it’s very innocuousness can leave you thinking, well, what the bloody hell am I meant to eat now if tinned tomatoes can kill me? The answer, as I’ve banged on about before, is to eat as close to the source as possible. Neat. Simple.