Category Archives: Ask Trev!

Need the answer to that question that perplexes you so? Whether it be life, love, metaphysical, spiritual, sexual or fanciful Trev can shed light on that mystery for you.

Ask Trev!

Ask Trev – ‘What is the purpose of Meaning?’

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One of the most interesting questions I’ve had comes from Neil in Blacktown: What is the purpose of meaning?

 

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume Neil is asking about meaning in a spiritual and philosophical sense, rather than talking about meaning in a literal way. If I’m wrong Neil I’m sorry and will have wasted a lot of time writing this.

I found this to be a really deep question. It’s not ‘What is the meaning of life?’ but ‘What is the purpose of meaning?’. And that is something that I had never considered before.

I guess the purpose of meaning is to give your life purpose to give a glib answer, but it’s so much more than that. You can say things like ‘my purpose in life is to watch that movie/date that girl/get that promotion’ but those are goals which can be achieved. They may be fleeting meanings, but they are not meaning in and of itself.

 

For me the purpose of meaning is what makes you want to get out of bed each day. Not because you have to (alarm clock, work, check out at 10 etc) but because you want to continue down a path which is intrinsic to who you are and what you believe you are here for – essentially what gives your existence meaning. And what gives your life meaning can be transient, it can change over time. I wanted to be a stand-up comic when I was younger, but despite how strongly I felt about it it did not give my life meaning, otherwise I certainly would have tried harder. I love to collect Transformers, it remains a very big and important part of my life, but it does not give my life meaning. I think in part the purpose of meaning is something so important to you, something so quintessential to your being that in the end it helps define deep down who you actually are.

 

Maybe the best way to illustrate what I am saying is to use my own life as an example. In my personal experience, I have had three major factors that have given my life meaning, things beyond simple wants, urges and passions.

  • When I was a teen and then at Uni it was FUN – fun was literally what gave my life meaning and it’s all I wanted to do each day – I wanted to have fun!  I was annoyingly cheerful back then, I could not imagine my life getting any better because despite having zero money, a mediocre acting career and an irritating girlfriend, my days were packed with video games, mates, parties and living with my best friend whom I spent 90% of my time laughing with. Fun was my meaning, and my meaning was damn fun!
  • In my 20’s NEW EXPERIENCES was what gave my life meaning. I wanted to know everything, to go everywhere, to eat and drink and consume anything I hadn’t before. If there was something I hadn’t tried I wanted – needed to try it! I threw away my fledgling teaching career and took off overseas and spent a year backpacking across Europe. I ate things I had never heard of, learned languages I couldn’t pronounce a word of before, visited a dozen of the world’s biggest art galleries, went to Octoberfest and got drunk, went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and did comedy. When I came back from Europe I still tried new things, went to music gigs, hippy festivals, the theatre, the footy – somewhere I even have a DVD of me swearing very loudly as I throw myself off a bridge when bungy-jumping in New Zealand.
  • In my 30’s, now less than twIMG_3322o years off the big Four Oh (dear Primus where did the time go!?),  FAMILY has become my meaning and it is the strongest most defining meaning my life has ever had. I love my wife dearly, will never be with another person ever and we’ve had 13 great years together thus far. But now I am a father with a 3 year old son and a 1 year old daughter and they provide my life with a level of meaning that I had never considered possible. I am a Dad. It’s who I am, it’s what I am, it’s why I’m here and it’s by far the single most important thing in my life. My children provide my life with a meaning that dwarfs everything else. I go to my job so I can provide them with food and shelter, I work my hobby farm so they have a nice place to grow up on in the country, I am filled with an indescribable joy when I come back from work each day to see them both throw a happy fit because Dad is home before throwing themselves into my arms. My kids are the most important part of my life and I can’t see that ever changing. So for me, my kids are my meaning, and the purpose of meaning is what makes me Me.

 

I hope everyone reading this can find a meaning that makes you You, and I hope my ramblings have has answered your question Niel (or at least provided a nice distraction for a few minutes eh!).

 

 

 

Ask Trev!, Hobby Farming

Ask Trev – What to plant in Primary School gardens at this time of year.

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This question comes from Morg176 in Shellharbour

“I’d like to see an article on gardening for Primary Schoolers – What to plant, when, what might be interesting, what grows fast?”

Well first off it’s great to see teachers talking about this.  In my opinion every school would benefit from a gardening program.  It teaches so many lessons that take into account so many parts of the curriculum – horticulture, science, environmental studies, English, maths etc etc.  But most importantly, it teaches kids where their food comes from and how it is created, it doesn’t just magically appear on the supermarket shelves.

 

What to plant and when? 

As for when – as soon as you can!  Get started and it will gain a momentum of its own.  In fact I will tailor all my answers around the idea you will start as soon as possible.  At this time of year you can easily plant the following: cabbage, pak choi, lettuce, rocket, spinach, carrots, celery, cauliflower, spring onions, leek, onions, radish, turnips and swedes all should grow quite well.

If you are looking at a new garden for your Primary School and the soil isn’t great, I heartily suggest you plant some legumes which will stick in valuable nitrogen for your soil.  Peas of all kids do this but I have a soft spot for broad beans.

What might be interesting?

If the idea is to make the garden interesting for your students, I recommend putting in a variety of vegetables that all look quite different so the students can see the variety.  Broad beans will grow nearly 6 feet high, pack choi will turn into these lovely green vase shapes, radishes will provide these red bulbs half in the soil for kids to hunt for, leeks become little palm trees, rocket will become little willowy forests and cauliflowers look like big round soccer balls.

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What grows fast?

At this time of year?  Bugger all.  Spring and summer are the seasons where things grow fast.  However a general rule is the smaller the vegetable the faster it will reach its full potential.  Avoid swedes and turnips as they take forever, cauliflowers, leeks and cabbages take a while too.  Perhaps pak choi, celery, spring onions, rocket and broad beans may be your best bet.

 

Good luck with your school gardening program!  Don’t forget to prime that soil with lots of fertilizer, don’t forget to work in some water and weeding programs into your timetable and any more questions feel free to post them – I’’ll tackle them as best I can.

Ask Trev!, Hobby Farming

Ask Trev: Should I get chickens?

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This question was sent in by Mads of Melbourne:

Dear Trev,
Should I get chickens?
I have a small suburban backyard that I am sure would sustain 2 to 3 hens, happily.
People keep telling me horror stories.
The food will attract vermin. The chooks will destroy your garden. They’ll go off the lay in a few years and you’ll just have a few freeloaders in the yard. Foxes will massacre the chickens. Disease will destroy your birds. And so on and so forth.
Please help me refute these ghastly claims.
Yours in good faith,
Small, not really that angry anymore, Mads.

 

Dear Mads,

I will be addressing this issue on a larger scale in the upcoming weeks in the Hobby Farming section of this fine site but in the meantime let me quickly address your concerns.

*First off – these people are fools!  Don’t listen to these naysayers!  You can easily maintain 2 to 3 hens in a small backyard and here is how to deal with the issues people have raised:

 

The food will attract vermin: Depends on the food you give them.  Bread scraps and anything meaty most certainly will.  However a small chook feeder that you fill with scratch mix (you should be able to pick up both at any large pet store) will provide them with the sustenance they need as well as stopping the food spreading everywhere.

The chooks will destroy your garden: Depends on your breed of chicken.  In a small suburban backyard you should be going for a small breed anyway (I recommend Frizzles myself – lovely temperament, soft plumage and friendly) and smaller chooks will do less damage.  However you can either keep your chickens contained away from the gardens by keeping them fenced in or put some decorative wire over the gardens you want them to keep away from.  Bear in mind chooks are great for digging up a vege patch after you have finished with it, they will root out every weed and leave it ready for your next planting!

They’ll go off the lay in a few years and you’ll just have a few freeloaders in the yard:  Once again, depends on the type of chicken you buy.  Some lay for many years, others for a few.  You can always get a rooster who when amorously engaged with your chooks will provide you with new chicks who will one day take over the laying duties.  However I recommend getting your chookies some laying pellets and a feeder.  Not only does it extend the variety of their diet, but will help them lay for longer, more often and have harder egg shells.

Disease will destroy your birds: Drop a couple of fresh garlic cloves in your chickens water container, you will be surprised how many diseases that wards off!  If they don’t have much contact with other birds there should be little reason for them to develop diseases.  If they should develop something such as a mite infestation there are little tubes of drops you can get from any vet that will clear that right up.

Foxes will massacre the chickens: This can happen, even in a big city like Melbourne.  However the trick is to use solid chicken wire to construct their enclosure and make sure the wire is dug at least one foot into the ground the entire way around the pen, even the pen walls.  In Melbourne you do have foxes that climb fences and jump in so you can either make a cube shape with your chicken wire (high enough you don’t have to duck when entering) or else do as I do and have a little hutch within the larger pen (see the photo below) that you can lock them up in of a night.  With multiple redundancies most foxes will bugger off to find easier game.  And of course you can always get a dog to keep the foxes as bay.

Chooks

I heartily recommend getting chooks.  They are great little friends, you know the eggs have been humanely grown and are wonderful when kids drop by.  Good luck Mads!

Ask Trev!, Random Rants

Ask Trev: Which is the most evil of animals?

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Ask Trev! The section where I answer the problems that perplex the people.  This question comes to me from Maureen in Murrawee:

Maureen writes “Dear Big Angry Trev, can you tell me which is the most evil animal in the world?“

Well Maureen, the cliché answer to that is man. However this answer is wrong, dead wrong.  Animals in themselves aren’t inherently good’ or ‘inherently evil’ in the way humans understand these abstract concepts, they just ‘are’.  That is, bar one…

No ladies and gentlemen I am not talking about man-eating sharks, I am not talking about man-eating lions.  I’m not even talking about mosquitoes (even though they would win for being both the most deadly and the most annoying).  The most evil animal on the planet is…. the OCTOPUS!

 

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That’s right!  Evil, slimy, 8-legged a-holes spawned from the fiery pits of Satan’s backside!  Gross, disgusting, big eyed bastards with a bag of guts for a head and a penchant for ripping the masks off divers so they can use their beak-like jaws to gnaw on the flesh beneath! I’m surprised The Wiggles let one hang out with them – sends a really bad message to children about who to trust.

 

Here are a few facts about your Octopus:

*Those aren’t suction cups!  Each one of those little round protuberances that looks like the bottom of an albino plunger actually sticks to you because it is full of hundreds to curved barbs!  The barbs don’t go straight in no, they go into the flesh then curve off so if you manage to pull one off your arm it’s gonna take a hunk of flesh with it!

*They change colour!  That’s a creature waiting to ambush you if ever I’ve heard of one!  Not content to engage in open and honorable fisticuffs (which you think it would do considering it’s multiple arms) it will blend into the background or even worse, the ocean floor and then when you stand near it WHAM!  You are dealing with a near invisible assassin taking your foot off at the ankle!

*They are venomous – every single type – and at least one breed is capable of killing a human!  And those beak-jaws I mentioned?  Full of venomous saliva!  Let me repeat that – VENOMOUS SALIVA!  I don’t care what definition you go by – that’s freakin evil!

*They squirt black ink into your face that not only obscures your vision but dulls your sense of smell, so you can’t see or smell them as they come in for the kill.

*3 hearts.  Not one like a law-abiding creature, not two like a Time Lord, but three!  That means if you meet a vampire octopus you better have at least 3 stakes handy and be adept at fighting undead cephalopods in an underwater battle scenario.

 

If that isn’t enough evidence for you Marueen, let me share a story with you that is both true and well documented.

 

In a science lab there were two big aquariums, one on either side of the room.  One was full of crabs, the other contained an octopus.  The crabs were being bred in the tank as a source of food for the scientists to feed the octopus and such were their numbers and environment that they could do so quite happily and readily.

Now it got to the point that each morning the scientists were coming in and finding that there were always several less crabs then there should have been and scraps of crab carapace were in the tank.  They could not figure out what was happening as this was a daily occurrence.  So they set up a night vision camera before they closed up the lab that evening and left.

What they saw captured on film will fill you horror and dismay!

The octopus, not content with the sacrifices being fed to it each day had hatched a plan.  Every day it sat there, eyeing its prey across the room with evil and malicious intent.  As soon as the lights went out of an evening the octopus would use its four pairs of arms to pull itself up out of its tank, slither across the floor, climb the table, get into the crabs tank and then kill and devour many of their number, not even the children were safe!

The ultra sneaky bit was it didn’t stay there!  After sating its voracious appetite it would then climb back out, slither back across the room and back into its own tank.  That way in the morning when the scientists came in it could just sit there, shrug it’s 8 shoulders and put on a ‘Nothing to do with me’ expression.

 

Imagine the life of these poor crabs!  Sitting there in their tank while this bastard eyed them off all day, knowing that when night fell it would be upon them to kill and maim and devour!  You think you have stress ulcers?  You have nothing on what these poor crabs were going through!

And that Marueen, is why Octopus are the most evil of animals.  Thank you for your question.

Ask Trev!

Ask Trev!

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Need the answer to that question that perplexes you so? Whether it be life, love, metaphysical, spiritual, sexual or fanciful Trev can shed light on that mystery for you.  The more interesting a question, the more likely it will get an entire blog post dedicated to it!serious