To Whom It May Concern,

I discovered something beautiful.
There is a strange kind of achievement in seeing your own work coming together. When you can see exactly what you envisioned forming into a functioning dream, well, that's special. I stumbled upon a little store like that on Mother's Day with my family.

Introducing: Glory Box.

If you find yourself wandering around New Farm or the Valley and are looking for some incredible new clothes, vintage, or a little inspiration, let your feet take you to Glory Box.
Glory Box only opened a few weeks ago by the extremely creative, Amy Jory. It's home to gorgeous, new and pre-loved shoes, accessories, vintage clothing and collectables.

Cue beautiful photos:

You'll find this little gem at 1/599 Brunswick Street in New Farm. Keen to see some more of it? Have a look at http://www.facebook.com/#!/GloryBox.net.au or go to glorybox.net.au.

To Whom It May Concern,

I'm a student of journalism. If anyone asked me what I was doing with my life at the moment I would answer 'studying journalism'. I do not have the inclination yet to answer 'I'm a journalist'. I don't know why, perhaps it has to do with the fact that beside this blog my contribution to the world of media seems significantly minimal. However, the irony is, I still believe my opinion on various aspects of media matters. Especially the news. In fact, I believe the opinion of the public far outweighs that of the journalists.

The news is a medium that I love and loathe. It is a vital form of journalism, if not the most important. When the floods hit, when the earthquake hit, when the tsunami hit - the world was kept in the loop. The terror and pressures were shared. People had the capacity to do something. The images were heartbreaking yet there was a human element to the entire thing because it was presented on the news.

What I loathe is when it becomes acceptable for trivial stories to hit the air that are filling our minds with useless information, bad habits and gossip. A vast degree of the political stories, not all, but much, verges on over-technical drama. I can watch my family switch off in the living room the minute a prominent politician's name is uttered. If you bring up politics in public, eyes go glassy, thoughts wander and suddenly everyone you're talking to is nodding for the sake of seeming polite.

That should not be the standard response when you mention the Australian Government. Get rid of all of the irrelevant political nonsense on the news and maybe the nation will look up at the TV screen when their political leader's name is spoken. That's your job news! Get us interested in the nation. Stop showing us crap. Pretty please.

I not even going to largely mention the stories about the cow that got loose that one time or the neighbour that won't cut down his tree and it's ruining someones life. THAT IS NOT NEWS. Kindly make a TV show called 'Trivial Gossip' and air it that way. I'm fine with that!

This rant was brought to you by the content I learnt in my ninth lecture. That of news values.

To Whom It May Concern,
Channel 9 news, 6:25.
Wally Lewis speaking about a racecart driver who fixed a toilet seat to the cart, he says
"Well, he must be flushed with achievement," with a straight face. Lame. Right? Definitely lame.
Not unethical, just lame. Almost tacky.
That's the problem with media, more often commercials, and I only figured it out in my eighth lecture. There are advertisements we see everyday that people complain are unethical however they are simply tacky. Usually this has to do with gender issues.

Cue Tacky Ads That Verge on Unethical:

Right? Enough to piss off any feminist. The question is, unethical or just tacky? Check out these next images and make up you're own mind...

The first one I just shook my head.
The second one made me laugh.
The third....

So, where is the line? When do advertisements, or any form of media for that matter, cross over from tacky to unethical?

To Whom It May Concern,

Mike

 A factual story

For as long a Mike could remember, he wanted to go to sea. That was his dream. He did not want to go as a radio operator like his father, James, nor as an ordinary seaman like his uncles had. Mike wanted to be a deck officer and, someday, become a Captain. Yet times were tough in the early years of his life.

Michael Keating was born 22^nd September 1931 in Clifton, Bristol during the Great Depression that preceded the Second World War. Life in England during Mike’s early years were not easy, especially for his mother, Margaret, who stayed at home while James went to sea to earn what he could for the family.

Mike had only begun school for a short time when the Second World War was declared and his father moved the family to Blaisdon to work at Filton as a security officer in charge of Air Raid Safety.

Mike went through school still holding onto the dream of going out to sea, much to his father’s adamant disapproval.

“One fool in the family is quite enough,” James once said to Mike. Yet when Mike turned seventeen and sat the entrance exam for the Royal Navy for the second time, it became clear to James that this was what he truly wanted.

In the summer of 1948, Mike worked with his father on one of A & P Campbell’s paddle steamers. The Captain, an old Scotsman named Findlay Brander knew that Mike wanted to go to sea and while Mike stayed on board for some of his summer holidays, Brander taught him the basics of seamanship.

In August, two Bristol Channel Pilots who were waiting for their Pilot Cutter to come in and pick them up told Mike of a vacancy for an apprentice on the pilot boat. A week later he was enlisted as a junior probationer on the “Belle View”. He was 17 years old.

In July 1951, Portishead, Mike worked on a cutter that was moored as a form of accommodation for the older apprentices and shipmates. It was here, when he was rostered off, that he met Maureen, the woman that would one day become his wife. At the time Mike had two and a half years left of his apprenticeship and when he was not at sea they lived fifty miles apart, yet he had fallen in love. Many, including Maureen’s mother, opposed the relationship, causing at one point, Maureen to lose two jobs for the sake of being with Mike. Yet, against all odds, love triumphed.

Eventually, Mike had won over Maureen’s parents and when he returned from India in July, 1954, he asked for Maureen’s hand in marriage. Mike and Maureen were married in August, 1956 and moved to an apartment in Bristol. When Maureen gave birth to their first child, Mathew in June 1957, Mike was still out at sea until he was a few months old. It was from then that the beginning of this chapter of the Keating family began.

Dominic was born in October, 1959. When Anita was born in the January of 1961, the family had moved to a house in Bristol closer to where Mike worked as a Pilot up the Bristol Channel at the Port. John was born in September, 1962 and Mike and Maureen made the decision to move into a bigger house out into the country on acreage where they could raise the family.  While the family was living in Portbury, Mary was born in September 1963, Julia in August 1964 and Ben in September 1966. The family of nine lived out in the county for four more years.

By 1970 the Shipping trade had all but died off. The containerisation of freight had been introduced to major ports and the Port of Bristol was not one of them. After looking at their options, Mike moved his family to Plymouth to attend the university there for three years. After completing his degree in Maritime Studies in 1973, the Keating family immigrated to Perth, Australia where Mike worked briefly until he went back to sea on the Australian Coast for two years.

In 1975, Mike was then offered a job with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and the family moved to Canberra. Mike and Maureen stayed in Canberra until all of their children had left home and Mike retired briefly in 1987. After being offered work with the United Nations, Mike moved to Tuvalu with Maureen for three years. When his contract ended they returned to Australia and Mike took up work in Tasmania as an Instructor at the Maritime College.

In 1992 Michael Keating officially retired and moved with Maureen to Townsville where they lived for 14 years. When Maureen fell ill they moved to Cairns, closer to their second eldest son, Dominic. Maureen passed away in 2010; a beautiful wife, mother and grandmother.

Mike spent a year travelling around the world, staying with family and friends, until he returned to Australia in 2011 to live on Magnetic Island off the coast of Townsville.  Mike currently still lives on the island in Horseshoe Bay. The last time the eldest of his Grandchildren went to visit him for his 80^th birthday in September he told them about a couple he had met who offered him a job as a Pilot on their ship. He’s still considering taking up the offer.

To Whom It May Concern,

 It's a curious feeling when you realise your world is changing. It always hits me in a spectacularly ordinary moment. I know it's natural, I'm not particularly worried.  These moments do however put a lot of your life into perspective.  I can feel the world moving that little bit faster around me. I'm seeing the people I love less and it makes the time I'm with them all the more important.

 New thoughts are mattering to me in a massive way. Especially thoughts about things I couldn't even fathom before; politics, freedom, liberty, love, a time to be bold, a time to say nothing.  There is an element of pure discovery in all of this though. I'm discovering more about people and not all of that is in a good way.

I'm discovering more about what I believe is important. This post has been extremely self oriented but I suppose it was coming. Please excuse me for the lapse in concentration (if my prior posts hadn't already done that). But I vowed to write about people and for all intents and purposes, I am a person.

To Whom It May Concern,

I've been reading letters my Grandpa sent to me about his childhood and thinking about the life that was lead back then. While we are extremely privileged to live in the 21st century I cannot help but to envy him a few, I suppose unimportant, norms. I'm not sure either if envy is the word I'm searching for but perhaps I'll figure that out further on in this post.

My Grandpa was born in 1931, the Great Depression. Times were incalculably tough and reading how his family, well, my family, functioned during those times is incredible. Yet there was something about those times that seems so very genuine. The way people were back then, even as war loomed over them, was truly genuine.

A community really was just that. When food was rationed it was left out on the street to be collected. We wouldn't dream of that now. I don't doubt that at times food was stolen but we are so suspicious of each other now that it would not be a possibility.  Families helped other families when times got especially tough. Nine year olds could ride a bicycle five miles to the closest bus stop to get to school. The thought of that these days renders most parents in total panic.

Following that further, '30 minutes of exercise' as a necessity definitely didn't exist. Why? Because people HAD to keep fit to survive. These days a child will complain throughout their entire school career about walking a few streets over to the bus stop with their school bags. If it really comes down to it and we have to walk to school, well, isn't that just the end of the world? The way we abuse what we have been given; transport, running water, the ability to keep physically fit, readily available food...it puts things into perspective.

As I think about it I come to a horrifying realisation.

The only thing that would make people change their lifestyles and not take advantage of what we have been given is war.

Isn't that disgusting.

To Whom It May Concern,

I think there is much that we take for granted regarding the imagination of a child. I honestly believe it is a source we should learn from. This world is far too big and there are far too many awful realities without having hope that the good guys will chase the monsters away. Why do we let logic win once we get a little older? I doubt we are any better off for it. In fact we may even be worse off because relinquishing our hold over belief in everything makes our world that little bit greyer. What's wrong with believing anyway?

Have you ever seen a child by themself that was so absorbed in the crux of their imagination that they didn't even register your presence? So enthralled by their own version of a story that they have squatted down as low as humanly possible but are still perfectly mobile as they scoot across the ground vigorously? It's cute right? You almost envy them that innocence.

Well, the only thing that's stopping you is your own pride. It would be a great shock to come upon a 40 year old man, with his arms outstretched, zooming down the pathway. Why? It's not what adults do. To see a grown woman rolling down a grassy hill for funsies would be utterly absurd. But wouldn't it also be freaking fantastic?!

Obviously, there is a time when adults need to be adults and children likewise but that is not all of the time. Give yourself a moment, even once a week, to act like a complete child.

Jump in the puddles.
Play on the swings.
Make up Batman's next adventure.
Sing a song with three lyrics over and over again.
Dance in the living room by flailing your arms and bouncing.
Go and watch a kids movie. Nemo never fails to impress.

I think this world could benefit by throwing off the veil of responsibility every now and then.