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I've changed the format of my web log so that the latest entry is at the top. Please read all of it if you haven't already.

This morning I finished reading 'Burned Alive' by Souad. It is an autobiographical account of Souad's life as a survivor of an attempted honour killing. I can't begin to convey just how much this narrative angered me. Souad is an incredibly brave survivor of the most heinous of crimes. Her only crime (in the eyes of her family and village) was to become pregnant before marriage. In order to maintain her family's honour, her brother-in-law doused her in petrol and set her alight. She survived, was taken to a West Bank hospital where she was left to die until she was taken by a western humanitarian worker who took her to Switzerland. The emotional trauma was horrific; that she was able to marry and have children later is a sign of her courage. Reading Souad's story made me want to cry, but it made me angry more than anything. The power wielded by Souad's father, brother, brother-in-law, and other men in that community, who treated women as though they were less valuable than animals (which is inconsistent with the amount of gold they would part with when trying to find a bride for their sons), enrages me. Some 5000 women are killed each year for as little as even looking at a man. I can not convey just how terrible this is. That in the 21^st century, there are still places where women are treated this way, is terrible. And yet, when I hear about cases of domestic violence here in New Zealand, I know that this sort of ill treatment is not confined to the illiterate peasants of the West Bank. Visit the website of Surgir, an organisation that 'works with women, anywhere in the world, who are subjected to criminal traditions, women who are martyrs in their souls and in their bodies, and with the children of these women' (Souad, 2003, Bantam Press, London).

It boils down to two interrelated issues: power and control. One who has control is the one who has power. No human being has the right to inflict pain and suffering on another human being. But human beings kill each other in self-defence, or in wartime so even that statement is problematic. Would I kill to protect myself? I don't know. Is it justifiable to kill another person as part of a military campaign? I don't know. If someone was trying to rape and kill me, I would defend myself, but I would definitely not want to kill someone if there was any possible alternative. If someone was trying to kill someone I loved, could I kill? I don't know. If I did, I would find it extremely hard to live with myself. The Bible is very clear on the subject, but still the Israelites killed others. So this is problematic, but the fact remains that honour killing is appalling. The psychological effects on women living in societies where they are treated worse than animals must be dreadful. Yet we don't hear about uprisings of women in these societies. They are conditioned to believe that they are worth nothing. Often they do not know any better. Am I working from a cultural superiority complex? I certainly hope not, given that I recognise that the ill treatment of women happens in the most liberal of societies. I dislike the idea that morality is culturally relative, because no culture that I've heard of actually routinely promotes murder as a morally right activity. Not as far as random, needless, no reason for killing required. The western world is not innocent in all of this either. Look at the American policy of executing murderers. When does one murder justify another? Self defence? Maybe. War? Preferably not. Vengeance? Definitely not. Western countries can't rest on their laurels. What about the deportation of an overstayer to a country where they will more than likely be murdered on arrival? What about killing a small group of people in order to free a larger group? What about the concept of collateral damage? All these issues are problematic, and I have no answers for them.

Returning to Souad's book, I found it well written, and enlightening. It spelt out the plight of women in fundamentalist societies. Note that I don't specify Islam here, because extreme fundamentalism within any religion can lead to the oppression of women, and other groups. It isn't all that long ago (in the scheme of things) since women were burned as witches. So visit the Surgir website. Educate yourself. I believe that the key to overcoming oppression is education. Souad was not educated, and knew little about the outside world. Where there is no contact with the outside world, there is plenty of opportunity for oppression.

Taking a step of faith today. I'm going to email Campbell Live to see if they can find me a job. Probably sounds stupid and attention seeking, but at this point I'm willing to try just about any (moral and ethical) way of finding the right employment.

I've spent a lot of time lately writing my crime thriller novel. The word count has risen by nearly eight thousand over the last month or two. It's hovering around 26000, so it is about a quarter to a third done. Even though my mood has been lower in the last few days - the weather isn't helping - I'm made great strides in the story line. And I've been able to write about some of the places I love. Anyway, my creativity seems to be on strike tonight, so this is it for today.

I've been busy this morning... got most of my dishes done, and applied for two jobs. Molly and Magpie have been pestering me since the early hours of this morning for food, but since I kow-towed to them before it was even properly light, and gave them their jellymeat, they have no excuse. Evidently Magpie also likes ginger crunch. Odd.

I've been thinking about church lately. I was getting very dissatisfied with my current church, mainly because I'm the only young person there, but having visited another church, which is very like the Baptist churches I grew up in, minus the pentacostalism and women in leadership, I think I'm going to stay. What made me change my mind about leaving outright was the fact I bumped into a friend from there at the supermarket the other morning, and engaged in a frank conversation about another parishioner with whom I had had trouble. Suddenly I am aware that I'm not the only person having trouble with her, and I shouldn't allow that to put me off. So what if there aren't any other young people... Maybe I need to spread my wings a little and find other activities in which I can meet other young people. I'm thinking something like drama classes. I've always loving acting (or trying to act), and I am rather musical. So I'll try to figure something out.

Just working out how to do this page actually in hypertext mark-up language rather than relying on Word 97. Not a lot happening at the moment. Just getting over a viral form of tonsillitis, which isn't very pleasant. I found out that Willow got spayed today. And guess what... they could only find one ovary. Seems she was born with just the one, and it is genetic - by which, I presume my sister either meant congenital or hereditary. I wonder if Molly had two. The vet didn't say anything.

I think I could get the hang of this html stuff. Seems pretty straightforward. I remember programming in what I think was COBOL on our old ICL machine that had just 3MB in hard drive space. And I had to use an old daisy wheel printer that had the Q missing from the daisy wheel. Still, it was fun, and made me think. I spent hours trying to make a menu work on it. Last I heard that particular machine was in the university's computer science department's old computer museum, and had died. Crazy how much things have changed. I still use my old Win95 200MHZ machine with the 2 GB hard drive. My brother's machine has 40 GB of HD and a 2.6GHZ processor. 95 may be old and virtually obsolete now, but since I don't use it for the latest games (or anything requiring more than 200MHZ) it suits me. Would love to replace it, but it's like an old friend. Even the later machine that I got about a year ago has died, but this one ticks on beautifully.

A couple of weeks have passed since I last wrote. Still haven't found work, but that's par for the course.

Scary about the drug trial that went wrong in the UK. I can't help but wonder if the New Zealand guy involved is someone I know. Or a friend of someone I know. Still, regardless, it is awful what happened. It is ironic that the drug being testing was to help with inflammatory illnesses like rheumatoid arthritis, because it seems to have caused inflammation. Unfortunately, we need (legal) drugs, and testing on healthy humans is just something that has to happen. Someone suggested to me that perhaps they should be testing the drugs on people who are all ready terminally ill with the diseases the drug is meant to help, and I suppose some people in that situation would jump at the chance, but I don't really know. There is an element of risk in getting out of bed in the morning as well, I guess, and I imagine it is more likely that someone is going to be hit by a car than die from a drug test. I wonder if there are any statistics on mortality rates from drug testing.

I'm going to do some work in the community garden tomorrow. I hope to bring home a whole lot of peaches. Last week I did, and ate about seven while watching TV that evening. Not such a good thing to do, but it beats chocolate, health-wise. And my aunt's sister told me that it looks like I've lost weight, today. That was appreciated. I've taken my uncle and aunt's dog Bart for a walk four days lately. I was a bit tired today, so didn't go as far as I did on Friday. On Friday, oddly, I had a fever, or so it seemed at the time. Walked a fair way, but probably cancelled out the benefit of the walk by buying chips at a supermarket halfway. I didn't eat all of them, and in fact, I've gone off greasy food. Far prefer peaches!

Molly and Magpie (my two cats - mother and son) had a lovely present for me this morning. A mouse, which I flushed down the toilet. I wonder how many mice end up in the sewage ponds!? At least mousing has some practical use. A few weeks ago, Molly had a thrush, which was still alive, but severely disabled. I took it outside on the end of a spade and put it under a tree. 20 minutes later it was inside again, courtesy of Molly. I don't have a cat flap here, but I do have a whopping great hole under the kitchen sink cupboard, and Molly can push the door open from inside because it doesn't latch. I was busy screaming at Molly to take it outside again, and my next door neighbour came out on the veranda and asked if something was wrong. Luckily he's not phobic about birds. He took the thrush back into his place, with the plan to nurse it back to health, but it died there. Hunting birds is the thing I hate most about cats, and guess what, I have two of the darlings.

Magpie has taken to jumping in the shower with me when I'm drying off. A couple of times he actually got in when the water was running, but that doesn't happen very often. Once I'm out, he rolls in the water that has collected on the bottom of the bath (which the shower is over). Daft kitten. Someone said, "He's a real waterbaby, isn't he?" to me. What is a waterbaby? A little black and white, very wet kitten, I guess.

Nothing else to say today.

Here is Molly, in December, with all five of her kittens feeding. The look on her face is priceless. The front kitten may well be Magpie, although from this angle, I can't tell. The kitten in the background, peering up at the camera is Conhin, who lives with Bart the terrier, and my uncle and aunt. The dog and kitten are great mates. The tabby kitten in midrange is Willow, named for Willow Rosenberg, off Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She coexists happily with my sister, Dad, one of my brothers, and Thomas, the aforementioned thick but gorgeous ginger cat.

Okay, that was a little dumb. And for a Chihuahua, Jack is not dumb. He mastered the cat/dog door way before one of the cats. Within a week, I think it was. Tom took 3 months. Katie, the tabby, took a day or two.

I've been thinking about the nature of mental illness. One of my old friends got married yesterday, and although I only found out today, because we're not close, and haven't seen each other for years, I wondered if her brother had managed to come over from the US to attend. I don't know, but to hazard a guess, I guess not. The trouble with having a mental illness that affects your ability to work is that you stay poor. I wonder about how many people who have mental illnesses, yet are incredibly intelligent creative people, are unable to realise their full potential because they are unable to exist at more than a subsistence level. Living on the invalids or sickness benefit (what Americans would call welfare) isn't easy.

I struggle with pangs of self-doubt. Will I ever find appropriate work? I achieved a Master of Arts in my field, which is human geography. I am fascinated by social issues, and would like to work in social policy. But many employers aren't excited by the prospect of employing someone with clinical depression. And when you add the probability that you will remain on medication for depression for the rest of your life, the odds of finding the right kind of work goes right down. If anyone would like to employ an intelligent, well read, innovative 27 year old, please let me know by way of my email, which is curiosity [no spam] cat@slingshot.co.nz. Just take out the [no spam] bit. I would dearly love to carry out social research on a permanent, paid basis. At the moment I work with social work students from the University of Canterbury carrying out social action research for various churches, and this is all unpaid, though a great experience. I hope that one day I will be able to realise my full potential. When that day is, I don't know. At my worst, which has been a lot more lately than it should, I think that I'll never get anywhere. This compounds on my depression; I find it extremely difficult to pull myself out of the sinking quicksand that is my depression.

It is coming up on five years since Mum died. Sometimes the pain of losing her is as raw as it was when she first died. Of course, the depression doesn't help things here. It is an ongoing battle - a war between chemicals in my brain. Most of the time I can laugh, but it is getting harder. The best thing would be a good, interesting job, where I am at my creative best. Here's hoping...

So it should... Someone suggested a while ago that I try doing a web log. Well, here it is... Not much to say today, so I'm going to shut up and let Jack say something:

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