From The Morgue

Like Chuck, Bradles has suggested to me that I might write a bit about the proposed motorway extension (the “bypass”) in my homebase of Wellington, in the context of the upcoming local body election there.
There’s a website called Heartbeat that looks at the election with a bypass focus. If you’re in Welly, check it out.
I’m heartily opposed to the bypass. There are so many reasons why I almost don’t know where to start.
I think the biggest thing that gets me is the blindness evident in those demanding such a massive change to the city’s infrastructure. To the bypass backers, the only choice is between a Wellington that is backward, clogged and inefficient, and a Wellington that is forward-thinking, free-flowing and efficient.
They seem blind to the fact that a more fundamental choice is embodied in the bypass project – a choice between one kind of Wellington and another.
In my head, from a distance, I understand Wellington in terms of its three streets – Lambton Quay, Courtenay Place, and Cuba Street. They all reach out (more or less) from a central core in Manners Mall. They embody three different aspects of Wellington.
Lambton Quay is the seat of the city’s productivity, its economic strength, its political significance. It is, if you’ll indulge a clumsy metaphor, the city’s mind.
Courtenay Place is the seat of the city’s nightlife, its theatres, its nighttime. It is the city’s body.
Cuba Street is the seat of the city’s creative energy, its endless innovation, its diversity. It is the city’s soul.
Wellington is a city with a rare balance, and of a size where that balance is felt. It is a city where that balance is embedded in the streets themselves – these are concrete symbols of what Wellington is. It is the balance that makes Wellingtonians feel at home.
The bypass will impact on Cuba Street. It will carve a symbolic wall through Cuba Street itself and cut it off from the extensions of the Cuba-Street-idea – places like Aro Valley, Brooklyn. It will have a huge effect on the city.
Now, I’m not saying that the bypass will definitely change everything or will definitely be the tipping point. There’s no way for us to know that. But it will cause significant change, of that we can be certain. If it comes to pass, Wellington will not feel the same. The balance will be shifted. If worst comes to worst, the balance will be completely upset.
This is, in itself, a huge and important reason to oppose the bypass.
But that’s not the reason I’m getting at here.
The reason you should vote anti-bypass councillors is this: those who support the bypass don’t understand any of what I’ve said above.
It isn’t even that they do understand but think differently. They simply don’t get it.
A city is more than its component parts. A city is also the relationship between everything within it. It is the ideas we hold about it. It is the way we move through it. It is the way we see it when we are part of it. It is the way we remember it when we are on the far side of the globe. A city is a network of ideas, it is an impossibly complex system, it is a bubble always, always bursting.
A city is more than its component parts. This is hard fact. This is how our brains work. This is how we see and believe and know the world. Things connect. This is what it is to be a human being.
Any person who cannot understand that a city is an idea more than a place should not be trusted with its care. Those who support the bypass fail to understand this. Do not support them.
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And on a less cod-lyrical note, what the hell is it with that stupid pro-bypass argument that it will save thousands of work hours each year or whatever, by making sure workers get into work a few minutes earlier each day?
This is *absurd*. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in the whole bypass argument. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Workers who get in a few minutes earlier are gonna spend a few more minutes checking email, having a coffee, going out for lunch, and leaving a few minutes earlier to boot. I mean, hello? Human beings, remember?

I got an email today from Paradise net, who have been happily sponsoring my Apocalypse website, free, since early 1999. They’ve decided they don’t want to sponsor me anymore and it goes to a pay programme now.
Oh well. The original agreement was for one year. So I got four bonus years. Nothing to complain about there, really.
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In other news, Flight canceled after passenger discovers Arabic-style handwriting in magazine.

I’m gonna post verbatim my contributions to a big thread on RPGnet. Its on a registered-folk only section of the board so I won’t link to it. Its fairly long, but I would really appreciate feedback.
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(post #1)
On Saturday afternoons I run a roleplaying club that is focused on recruitment (lately we’ve been creating 2 new gamers every week, which is pretty damn snazzy).
We meet in a cafe seating area that is located in an internet barn – so there’s an island of cafe-style tables, where we hang out mixed in with random cafe people, and surrounding the tables are rows and rows of computers offering internet access. (It’s an easyInternet, for those what know the brand.)
So Saturday I was co-GMing with a guy who was running his first game (which he was doing only a month after trying RPGs for the first time) – a fun Mutants and Masterminds thing he’d come up with. As he was doing okay, my mind wandered a little and I glanced over the back of the section wall at a row of computers.
There was this guy there, who looked to be in his early 30s, and he was gazing at and writing messages in a chatroom that was bannered ‘juniorteenschatsite’ or something.
It was obvious the site was Not For Him.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t, in the end, do anything. To be quite honest, I forgot about him when the 14-year-old-newbie-filled game needed my guidance – he was gone by the time I thought of him again, which was at least an hour later.
I’m thinking back on it now, and wondering if I should have done something, and if so, what?
Erg. *shudder*

Continue reading My Ethical Dilemma – Advice Needed!

Arr, it were yesterday. Oh well.

Oh, if I were a fiver and sixpence
I know just what I’d do
I’d spend and die for a bridie pie
And a custard square or two
(Yes a custard square or two)
Oh if I were a fiver and sixpence
I know just what I’d need
Hire a balladeer to sing everywhere
and be famed in word and deed
(Yes be famed in word and deed)
Oh if I were a fiver and sixpence
I know just what I’d try
I’d buy you out of your finest stout
And I’d drink the bottles dry
(Yes I’d drink the bottles dry)
Oh if I were a fiver and sixpence
I know just where I’d be
I’d face no fuss on a country bus
For I paid my way with me
(Yes I paid my way with me)
For a fiver and sixpence is me
—
No, I don’t know what I’m doing either.

to some of these last few entries. Check ’em out.
(Getting a comment from my grandmother was a special treat 🙂
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Officemate Lesley came back from maternity leave today. Teresa bounced around a bit more about the wedding. Lesley and Kerry talked creches.
I’ve long-ago perfected my ignore-all-surroundings skills (essential for my schooling at St Bernards College). My smile-and-nod skills, however, are somewhat rusty right now.
But probably not for long.

Wow.
Tony Blair has called for the UK to face the reality of human-caused climate change.
This is a huge deal. Governments have traditionally said ‘we can’t know for sure’ – the same magic thinking I ranted about a few posts below, only writ large – out of motivation to avoid doing anything and make hard choices or cross big business. For the British PM to stand up and make such a claim as this will change the rhetoric a great deal.
Cal mentioned that Tony sounds like he is, personally, scared. And I think she’s right. That speech came out of his own realisation that his children are screwed if nothing is done.
He’s going to be under massive pressure to moderate his position. I hope he stands strong – he’s been bloody-minded enough over Iraq, after all. And I don’t think he’s going to achieve terribly much in concrete terms. He can kiss any Washington influence he actually has goodbye if he tries to make this an issue over there.
But it shifts the balance of power in the public debate, and that is a wonderful thing.

My lovely boss T got engaged last night!
They went to see the Bourne Supremacy before that. Apparently the movie was quite good.
Congrats T!

Finished part one (first four chapters) of Ron today. Hurrah. That clocks in at somewhere around 30,000 to 35,000 words. In the first draft of Ron, part one was about 5,000 words. I knew I was doing a second draft before finishing the first one for a reason – the whole piece was being thrown out of whack by the too-short opening.
Anyway, there are four parts, plus ‘bonus’ chapters between the parts. If this wordcount is any guide, I’m gonna hit (4x30k + 3x7k=141k) about 140,000 words for the first completed manuscript.
Just like In Move.
And just like Fell Legacy.
Hmmm. There seems to be a pattern forming here.
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In other news, I seem to be entering the category of published RPG writery guy.
Appearing in next month’s Signs & Portents is ‘Breakdown Control’, a crazy game setting thing written for Gar Hanrahan‘s OGL Horror. It’s a good piece. I’m proud of it. I tried to make it something that Warren Ellis (careful – Warren’s site isn’t worksafe) would look at and say: “This is good.” I think I managed a “this doesn’t suck,” which is good enough for me.
Here’s the blurb for those to lazy to click:
“Breakdown Control – A violent world of brutal terror opens up in this new campaign toolkit for OGL Horror. One minute you are nobody special, then you receive a briefcase and inside a cellphone is ringing. Well, are you going to answer it? Of course you are.”

If that doesn’t seem like my writing, you’re right. But it does the job well enough. No-one’s gonna buy it for the OGL Horror stuff – it has a Paranoia XP adventure within and that’s gonna be the big drawcard, methinks.

But my article’s gonna be the best thing in it.

(I have to say that.)