Helpfulness-ness

I had the chance this morning to help a bewildered visitor to Melbourne town who was trying to get to RMIT from the corner of Elizabeth and Collins. Now for all the non Melbournites out there, this kind of direction is quite simplistic and helped me feel good about myself for the next hundred meters or so till I started dodging trams jaywalking on Bourke St.


The man, of unknown overseas origin, wandered on his way happily hoping that he was one step closer to his destination than he had been when standing on our meeting corner. And I can't recommend enough that you ensure these tourists, visitors, new residents, interlopers or otherwise time travellers do get the assistance that they are asking for.

It may be a little far to run ahead of him and drop bread crumbs or pay a skywriter to lead them towards there intended goal but it does give you a good kick to make people feel a little better.
Now, I know you can all see this as self congratulatory but this should lead to an obvious conclusion.

People need to help people out.

Well, I don't think that was that much of a revelation but maybe, just maybe if you're feeling a little down you should go out and find someone who is incompetently trying to parallel park their scooter and assist them (without appearing to actually steal the scooter).

Heck, this should be naturally for everyone to assist any stranger, who happens to walk by, across a pedestrian crossing regardless if they want to cross or not. Why not wait half an hour to merge onto a freeway letting everyone else past first, you'll feel 189.3% better than you had earlier in the day(figure not yet proven)

But lastly, if you want to truly help someone else. Maybe you should let them help you. If you notice a friend or colleague feeling a little glum then what better way to make them feel better than to go out there and injure yourself(only to a slight degree, no point killing yourself) so that they can give you the kiss of life, tourniquet up your acute angled knee and feel for a good two days on top of the world.

Well, that's all from me for this post.
I think it's time I went and helped some people out.
Maybe just a twisted ankle this time, broken bones just take too long to heal.

Looking for: one Greek god of indecision.

A friend of mine recently was lamenting on the issues of the ancient civilization of Greek gods and that it takes a while to work from one disenchanted offspring through to the other side of the Olympus trailer park. And while this may seem like more of a chore than a benefit, I can see that it adds a level of perceived omnipotent interest that you don’t tend to see in other major religions.

For example the family tree of Christianity, as far as I understand it, is just Father, Son and Holy Spirit with no specific focus for each of the three, saying that they are, in fact, all one entity in effect. The Greek gods, on the other hand, seem to have worked out that they shouldn’t multi-task but endeavour to share out the responsibilities to all of the family, from supporting the world on there shoulders right down to god of deceit and lies. Personally I can see that it would be quite annoying to be born, be congratulated on being immortal then told that you have to take care of a certain section of the population for the rest of eternity without any option of retiring in forty to forty five year.

So what did this mean for all those ancient Greeks? It meant they could curse to their hearts content should they not catch any fish that day and only annoy a minor deity of hooks and nets, or pray specifically for a miracle of childbirth right to the god of childbirth for a quick and painfree labour. With this kind of personal service it could be a working version of the automated phone switches with more of a personal touch.

But if you think these ancient gods may now be useless, redundant and a little out of touch you may be a little surprised. Sure the majority of these are split between death and love and the many facets of that but for starters, there is a whole group who seem to be the group for the internet.

For starters blogging is covered by Momus who was the male spirit of mockery, complaint and stinging criticism, a perfect role should anyone ask. Neiceaa happened to be the god of quarrelling, grievances and thus of forum posting of all kind and lastly Pseudia seems to cover all photoshopped images and gossip columns with the portfolio of lies and falsehoods.

But does this mean that a range of gods, titans, spirits and other yet unnamed immortals have the option of heading back into our current time, moving away from catering to the chariots and sandals and adapting to mobile phones and Transcontinental Jets.

Well, with the right marketing they can bring Mr T back from the eighties and make it popular to wear slapbands, if only for a day, but then again maybe there's a god of Fads?