Now is the winter of our discontent

Well, winter has arrived with a vengeance. This morning, when the missus dropped me off at the train station, it was definitely time to don the jacket. It's been cooling down for a few weeks in Sydney maintaining a reasonably balmy 10-16C (50-60F for all you Yanks who seem destined to be stuck in the dark ages of imperial measurements forever) but overnight it dropped to a chilly 4C by about 6:00, which made the trip to work less pleasant than normal (<sarcasm> because going to work is always such a brilliant experience </sarcasm>). For those of you who regularly go to work in subzero temperatures that may sound perfectly normal, even nice, but Sydney-siders are used to a slightly warmer climate.

When the mercury drops my mind wanders off to fresh powder, back-breaking moguls and long, steep tree-lined runs, which just make me more depressed because since getting married, having kids and buying a house I haven't had the money to go skiing (or at least I can't justify spending it on skiing - things like food, mortgage repayments, clothes, daycare, doctors, etc. tend to take priority for some bizarre reason). <sniff><sob>

My two forays into the Canadian snow-fields have given me a taste of the good-life, in terms of quality snow & quality mountains. Unfortunately, Australian skiing doesn't compare - we just don't have high enough hills. My favourite, out of the places in Alberta and BC that I skied, was Blackcomb, BC. Those were the days...when the only things you worried about were whether you were going to do a black or a double-back run down this time and the prospect of breaking something (such as your neck, or worse yet a ski!) on the way down. I was an above average skier when I could afford it (i.e. when my parents used to pay), shunning anything less than a black run and snickering (inwardly) at those who snow-ploughed over to the start of a designated trail (yes, I was a teenager and a bit full of myself but I was a pretty good skier). I tended to stick to the Horstman & Blackcomb glaciers and the Jersey Cream Bowl & the West Bowl on Whistler Mountain. I think my favourite at the time was the Saudan Couloir, although they've since changed the name, I think, to the Couloir Extreme (bit gay if you ask me).

Ah...to reminisce about coming back to a lodge worn out & sore after skiing hard all day. The stifling heat & humidity of the drying room compared to the crisp, pure mountain air outside. Goggles so fogged up in the drying room you can barely see where your boots are. Snow/ice-encrusted beanies. Boot warmers & thick socks. Settling down near a log fire watching Warren Miller movies. Playing pool & cards till late at night and fantasizing about Mike Wiegele heli-skiing tours. Going to bed at a ridiculous hour and getting up with the sparrows so you can do it all over again.

It almost makes me feel young again.

Buzz Lightyear & Human Nature

My kids love Buzz Lightyear.

I have two boys (3 & 4) and they know Toy Story & Toy Story 2 backwards. They also love "shooting" each other and "putting fire on" each other; that is, they pretend...obviously. There's definitely potential there for them to become homocidal, pyromaniacal psychopaths, if their imagination is anything to go on. But how did they get like that?

I have my fair share of violent video games (Xbox: Fable, Halo 2, Splinter Cell, Dark Alliance 2, etc.; PC: Battle for Middle Earth, Call of Duty, Enemy Territory, etc.) but I never play those games in front of my boys. In fact I rarely play them at all these days (work, family & a crappy public rail system leaves little time for playing games; and now I've started blogging - what's wrong with me?). They love playing Midtown Madness on Xbox but that's not violent (that's the only Xbox game simple enough for them to play that I'll let them play). They've seen all the standard Pixar kids DVDs - Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Ice Age, Dinosaurs, etc. and my wife & I have taken them to the movies to see a couple kids movies (Finding Nemo & Robots from memory). I guess some of those can be a bit rough in places, but they're not exactly the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Towering Inferno.

They also both go to daycare a couple days a week. They do the whole role play "I'll be Buzz, you be Woody" thing, although recently it's been "I'm mean Buzz [the 2nd Buzz from Toy Story 2], you're Spiderman". They've never even seen spiderman! Ah...the power of merchandising. I used to think that perhaps all the kids at daycare (well, the boys at least) run around shooting each other with invisible guns and that's where they got it from. Perhaps.

But my latest theory is physiological - that God preprogrammed that behaviour into our brain chemistry. There's no denying that there are substantial neurological differences between men & women. What and how we think is not entirely influenced by society & the experiencial data we absorb. People have, in greater or lesser degrees, a predefined disposition that directs our thoughts. (This, in essence, has been the subject of many an in-depth philosophical debate of greats such as Descartes, Kant, Hume, Plato...)

Obviously the friends our children come into contact with and interact with influence their behaviour but I think it's inevitable that little boys will shoot each other with imaginary guns. That doesn't mean that they're going to become serial killers when they get older, just that they're little boys. I'm not so naive as to think that passively experienced glorified violence has no affect on children. I'm in no way endorsing exposing children to violence in movies or games. I'm just saying I think there's more to it than that and a certain acceptance of human nature has to be arrived at before we can manage those tendancies in our kids and cultivate the qualities we want them to exhibit (kindness, gentlenss, sharing, confidence, self-control, patience, etc.).

Anyway, enough psycho theory babble for now. I'm sure my kids will be the subject of future blogs (especially since #3 is due in July).