Weekends are teh best

Ah, the delightfulness that is a weekend. I managed to sleep in until 6.45am, sloth about in bed until 7.45, then get up and go for a slow, short jog. OK, not as sedentary a start to a weekend as I might have preferred (I do like my sleep-ins to be longer than a regular working day), but it feels good to have got up and got some fresh air, and there are many hours of day to enjoy. There is no school ball this weekend. No filming needs to be done for any competitions. There is no writing challenge on at the moment. No meetings for Kapcon. It's a pleasantly quiet weekend, with just 80 or 90 tests and stories to mark. The quiet life :) I have been enjoying the discussion around women in gaming that's been happening on the internets this week. I particularly enjoy the perspective provided by the fact that my all-boy teen gaming squad was pretty maladjusted and wouldn't have been female friendly as it existed (this was never tested, so I am left only to speculate about how our behaviour might have changed if it hadn't been a boys club), but as I've grown up I've managed to become a less prejudiced and socially awkward person. My recent gaming experiences have been both balanced in terms of gender and conduct. Having been a stupid teenage boy (not by any means the worst of my breed, but in retrospect pretty spazzy at times) means I have a first-hand awareness of just how dumb and self-important teenboys can be. And that there is hope for them to change. I remember the black-and-white clarity of teenboy-logic which saw any positive prejudice (like grants and scholarships etc.) as wildly unfair, which thought the idea of a women's room was a weird and unnecessary one (though a parents' room would be fine), and which viewed with disdain the notion of 'womens' studies'. Fourteen was probably the ugliest age for these sentiments in myself and my peer group. They didn't last, thankfully. Nor did the odd moral certitude I had at the time that killing people who were bullying you would be justifiable, but inadvisable due to the likely consequences. Seriously - I remember asking myself whether it was right, and whether it was practical, and fell short of murder on the practicality front (and, of course, on the actually being violent front. I may have had intellectually reprehensible morals, but my actions as a teenboy were entirely standard, and I found violence in the real world (as opposed to horror movies and conjecture) quite repulsive). So - I was a spazz when I was a teenager (not the whole time, but I can clearly remember moments of stupidity), but I like to think I'm relatively well adjusted now. This means I can look back and see where I've come from, and have hope that even quite offensive or highly prejudiced people can change, if their brains and morals develop. I think that development in my case was part of growing up, so it might be harder to arrange in an older person, but is still (I hope) possible. NOTE: Yes, I am saying that my morals are better than those of other people. This is just my opinion and agenda, but it's one that is largely promoted (or at least given lip service) in NZ: racism/sexism = bad, social engineering to break poverty cycles/encourage equality = good