australian fijian western show on the great barrier reef truly makes one feel like a stranger in a strange land…oh, brave new world!
i’ve been wanting to write something for awhile, but things have been busy (as usual) and i’ve been unmotivated (as usual). but over the course of the past few days, i’ve actually been semi-productive, so i figured i would top it off with a post.
my favorite accomplishment was putting up the honeymoon page on daveandkerri.com. i found web pages for the places we are staying and included links and pictures along with the itinerary. it seems so crazy, really. fiji, sydney, and the great barrier reef. i think we are going to see and do a lot of things but, at the same time, the itinerary seems to also include a nice balance of relaxation. as an added bonus, october is supposed to be a great time for heading to those parts of the world, too.
i also put pictures of the western show up on flickr. we only saw the wild west show, but it was fun and educational and was one of the things i wanted to ponder deeply and write about, but that won’t be tonight. in a nutshell, it was related to the history of the cowboy, and how much it has become a part of our culture, even though the cowboy as we think of him only lasted for about 20 years. it seems like such a short time. granted, there are cowboys today, sort of (none of which actually sing country music). it’s like hip hop, i think. it’s a lifestyle, not a profession. the real cowboys are the ones that led steer drives for hundreds of miles…the old west cowboys, not the ones that drive chevy’s and have the little decal of calvin relieving himself on a ford emblem. my point, if i ever decide to write about it in the future, was how it became part of our culture, and how long it would be a part of it. how far back in history will the lasso reach? fifty years from now, will there be a wild west show? will the seats be packed like they were when i was there? maybe we’ll have a new-age cowboy show that doesn’t involve any cattle, but folks driving around in their ford and chevy trucks, perfectly synchronized at 50 miles an hour (and 3 miles per gallon).
back to the pictures, i haven’t decided if i want to put any of them on kettlepot. i’m still unmotivated, and severely critical right now. but at least i took some pictures. that should count for something.
i’m also trying to finish brave new world. technically, i finished the main story. i’m reading huxley’s follow up to it, which is very, very interesting. even if people don’t read the book, i think they should read “brave new world revisited”. right now, i think i want to do a small book report on it. there were a lot of similarities to “stranger in a strange land”, which i’ve read maybe 5 times. the interesting thing about brave new world, though, is that the “revisited” provides a lot of insight in to why things are the way they are in the future, including examples of huxley’s present day that led him to design it the way he did…creepy experiments that proved things about human nature that, in the story, the future “world controllers” use the make a freak utopian society.
to tie my last to thoughts together, in the brave new world, there are “savage” reservations; basically, native american reservations. (pieces of that were very “stranger in a strange land”). but i wanted to mention that there were some native americans doing a few different dances at the western show, and some of those pictures are included on flickr. the dances were amazing, especially the hoop dancing, which constitutes a large number of the pictures on flickr. the coolest part was that the father was the main hoop dancer, which from the announcer is a big deal and not something just anyone can do. but the dancer’s son was following his father and learning the hoop dance, and the two of them danced together and was really touching, and real. the crowd gave a nice response, as well, which made me, even if only for a brief moment, believe there is hope for us all yet.
and then i caught the news on the radio…