From The Morgue

I turn 28 at midday Friday April 2, New Zealand time. Slightly after, actually. After going through life convinced I was a morning baby, turns out I’m a pm kid.
So. I am asking everyone who reads this to give me a birthday gift. The gift is this: put a favourite quote in the comments.
A quote from anyone. Philosopher or heavy metal lyricist. Superhero or politician. Funny or serious, bathetic or inspirational.
This will make me a happy moose.
Happy birthday, me!

On the bottom right of my front page, where most of you will be reading this, there are some links to other people.
“Daffyd, Church of” is David Ritchie, currently fighting the good fight over digital rights control and format shifting. Also, dodgy taxi drivers. He hosts this blog, and got me doing the blogging thing. (Iona tried first, but David went one better by actually setting up the blog. I couldn’t stay away.) He is the guy you want on your team for the film questions at trivia night down the pub. He is, of course, a legend in his own time; that’s why I registered him as a Church. He has a small but vocal following on a compound in Tulsa.
Pierce is Pearce. He’s the guy you want on your team if the pub quiz film section is compiled by the guys from the Psychotronic film encyclopedia. He’s a writer and a get-down-that-thang funky dance machine, and right now he’s got a big and insightful piece about potential changes to NZ’s drug laws. If you’re a Kiwi, check it out.
A moth just landed in my glass of water. Yech.
My Cal is of course My Cal. Yay!
She’s hosted at Stonesoup, a NZ bloggers collective orchestrated by Iona. Iona sowed the seeds of my blogging, so it is ultimately All Her Fault. She’s engaged in a horrific, take-no-prisoners battle with poisonous spiders, and though she’s winning the battles, I worry about the war. Lots of nice little fiction pieces turn up on her blog, which is good, because this girl can write words.
Also at stonesoup:
Chuck, a retired fish anaesthetist nursing a fixation with trepanning and ancient egypt. Also the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet (“but sorry, girls, he’s taken!”)
Jenni, bouncy multi-subject-enthusiast/librarian, and considerably ahead of the curve on the latest cool stuff coming down the pipe for what you might call the “neopets demographic”.
Karen, centrifugal scientist who I met in the same round of introductions as Jenni, currently haunting the black-market research alleys of Palmerston North. Not blogging often enough.
Giffy, emergent superheroine with a secret identity as a schoolteacher, who now works in the same school as my mother, which amuses me and pleases me an awful lot.
Also Suraya and Carla, who are wonderful people and who I don’t know nearly as well as I would like. Although now I read their blogs, so I know them intimately! Read Suraya for: thoughtful London commentary, moody London photos, disarming tales of doomed selfaware rock-musician-lust. Read Carla for: commentary on queer issues, ethics, politics, and MAN that makes her blog sound boring, which it isn’t.
Idiot/Savant I’ve plugged a bunch of times recently. Essential reading for interpreting NZ’s socio-political life.
Nate Cull is a Christchurch-based roleplayer, peace activist and thoughtful, searching Christian and his stuff is *always* worth reading.
Andy Macdaddy, the Dadster, the Macaroon, the Andaddy Andad, is a hyper irregular blogger who uses his life in Wellington as a prism for understanding, um… well, just for yarning about basically. He also has the best url in the game.
Artefact is Jamie Norrish, but is the part of Jamie that is focussed on his Artefact Publishing endeavours, except for when it is other parts of Jamie as well. He’s eclectic and honest and quite, quite wonderful, but there are posts full of incomprehensible tech jargon mixed in with posts that any old fool (i.e. me) can easily understand. It’s the kind of blog that talks about sequence functions in PostgreSQL and Beowulf on the same page, and that is alright by me.
Morag is here in Edinburgh, and she’s great fun. She also has kind of become a meme singularity. Read her for amusing gushing over her girlfriend Bex, the latest personality-typing quizzes, and to get access to her words and art pieces on her Insomnia site.
Sweetheart Stuart is a wonderful, wonderful (bitter) man. There is no longer blog on his site, but there is wonderfully trippy music (although, sadly, Satan’s Vomit is not available for download on his site at this time). He makes music and laments stuff (lamenting is now offline-exclusive).
Jack and Heather live in Cambridge (that’s UK Cambridge) and they have just become parents to the delightful Rebecca. This whole post is designed to make you go and read their accounts of the birth, here and here. It’ll make you cry. Awwww. (Jack is, of course, renowned in blogging circles in NZ because he was namechecked in a big article the Listener did on blogging, way back when blogging was Strange And New. Read for: cycling, tattoos, piercings, and teh LOL funnay.)
And down the bottom of the list is nexus of Wellington reality Sophie, who seems to know pretty much everyone. And we all love her! Read for amusing fretting, cow orker lust, work enjoyment, and gleebouncing.
There. That should keep you going on my light blogging weeks.

This column by Guardian columnist and progressive thinker George Monbiot caught my attention today. Monbiot calls for a new UN charter allowing and regulating the use of force against a nation for human rights reasons.
Along the way there was some content that caught my eye:
“We can say without contradiction that the war should not have happened, and that it has been of benefit to the Iraqi people by ridding them of one of the world’s most abhorrent dictators.”
I agree, as anyone who read through my either/or rants of a few weeks back will know. I’d think this was self-evident if so many voices on the pro-war side weren’t still missing it completely.
But to document the lies that led to the war and the dangers that arose from it is to answer only half the question. The other half – what should have been done instead? – still hangs above our heads.
Here, I wanted to hear Monbiot say his piece about what should have been done instead of war. Unlike many commentators on the left, Monbiot is very good at outlining a practical alternative to the way things are – he doesn’t simply criticise without proposing an alternative. (Not that providing an alternative is essential to a criticism – but it does strengthen a critical position immensely.)
Sadly for me, this isn’t the point of his piece. (He instead discusses a hypothetical situation where military intervention is the only option.) In any case, it has prompted me to consider what should have been done before war.
My impression is that a military invasion of Iraq was the only option for dealing with Iraq that was seriously pursued by the US administration from soon after September 11, 2001. I have never seen anything that punctures this impression.
However, to even think about this approach to the problem of Iraq, we need to know why Iraq was a problem. The public narrative was three-pronged:
* Iraq was supporting terrorists that threatened the West (links to Al Qaeda were strongly implied)
* Iraq itself possessed weapons of mass destruction and was a direct threat to the West
* Iraq was a tyranny where innocent Iraqis were trapped under a ruthless and vicious leader
As the fabricated nature of the first reason became clearer, emphasis shifted to the second, and likewise to the third when the second became threadbare. The third is, of course, entirely true – but is it a justification for war?
One of the problems when considering what should have been done before war, is figuring out which of the 3 justifications for action is being addressed. Steps prior to a war to strike down terrorist networks would be different to steps prior to a war to eliminate a gathering threat, which in turn would be different to steps prior to a war on humanitarian grounds.
Seeing as the third justification is the one that stuck, I’m going to focus on that. We all agree that Iraq was a tyranny, and Saddam was as close to the dictionary definition of evil as you’re going to find. The Iraqi people were suffering under Saddam.
Invasion was the response taken in March last year. For the decade previous, the response was trade sanctions in the hope that the people would be motivated to revolt.
The sanctions caused terrible, incomprehensible suffering for no real gain.
The invasion caused great suffering for a concrete gain, the ousting of Saddam – but with a further cost that has yet to be entirely played out.
Is that it? Are these the only two approaches that the civilised and powerful West can come up with to remove a tyrant? Is this really the best we can do?
There were other approaches that could and should have been explored. It is damning that there was no exploration of alternatives. It is damning that the invasion was sold as the only way to deal with the situation without any case being made discounting alternatives.
That is why the people of the world marched a year ago. That is why opposition to the war remains strong. We were rushed into war under false pretences, and war has a horrible cost. Those costs were never shown to be necessary.
I don’t believe the costs of the war in Iraq were necessary in order to oust Saddam Hussein. If they had been necessary, the US administration would have made it clear.
They didn’t make it clear that it was necessary. Their story is bogus. I’m not buying it.
Oh, and Tony? Poor Tony, afflicted with the delusion that we believe his intentions were malicious or dishonest. No. His intentions were good. He believed in the war. He’s just a man who made a foolish evaluation and stuck to it ever since. That’s all.
He got sold. Don’t you be sold too.

Weird vibe of living in the future these past few days (which was at least part of the impetus for the vignette of the previous entry). One example – bad 80s television is turning up in DVD collections – A-Team and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon recently announced.
I’ve been talking for several years how DVD is going to be the breakthrough for TV collecting. A lot of genre stuff has been available for well over a decade, but nothing much mainstream until a few years ago. Now the dam has burst. It’s cool. The Freaks and Geeks DVD is being released soon, as is Homicide season 3. That warms my heart. These are shows that deserve extended appreciation.
It’s all part of the seachange in the medium. When digital delivery a la Tivo becomes as mainstream as the VCR, which isn’t far away (look at the takeup of DVD to see how quick this turnaround works now), then we’ll have gone into an entirely new realm from the world of commercial TV in the 80s.
And that’s good. Because, by and large, commercial TV in the 80s sucked.
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Chris Eccleston is the new Doctor Who. This is brilliant news. The man is the business. This is gonna be a good thing. My prediction: sales to US cable television will ensure it will last at least 3 seasons, each about 13 episodes long. That’s about all I reckon Eccleston will stay for, though, and then we’ll have to see.
I like Doctor Who.

No-one else in the room again, noisy night, and hot. City sounds, like artwork. I flip the switch and cycle through the options. Rest the cell against my thigh, settle in. Scanner clips my retina and ID’s me to open up the full allotment, got to knock at that credit somehow. Remind myself not to blink too much. Scanner bug sometimes decides I’m not watching if I blink too much and shuts off the ads. Screw it. Now I just want to blink.

It isn’t so bad before sleep, the adfeed. When sleeping alone at least. So easy to sleep alone these days. The agencies love it too, when your brain’s slopping out sleep chemicals and your defences are down, impressions count fivefold when the head’s in that shape.

Woman onscreen, naked breasts, they’ll read my pupil dilate and deliver it back again. Every freaking time. Every night it delivers the sex hit at a slightly different time, iterating towards perfect receptivity. Treating me like all I am is meat and gaze and the consuming instinct. Not worth getting worked up over it, they’ll just pick it up and add it to my profile. Their log is my life. Turning in at midnight on a Friday, sitting on my bed and my cell making commerce at me. What went wrong?

A series for delivery food. Too late for that, man, too much crazy chemicals. Uppers and downers and even-me-outers, some of them even prescription, even legal. My stomach couldn’t even handle it if someone paid me to swallow.

So many beautiful people in these ads. Smiling and all the same colour, same as me, side by side. No sign of the gang bang that wiped out three kids last night and got the whole city up in arms crying racism and revelation. So much more palatable on the screen and me with neon scratching at my windows, bed shaping itself to me. Christ, I’m alone again and every single one of these ads has a couple in it. Every one has a couple. What was that about? They tailor the skin colour to me but they’re selling me on falling in love? What’s the angle on that?

Not tired. And if I go out, then the ads win, because clearly I want to go out because I’m lonely thanks to this. And if I don’t go out it wins anyway. Let my credit float me while it can.

Same choice every night.

Neon flash in my eye, but nothing on the wall, the walls around me, and why do I still have no posters? Why do I still have nothing?

I’m not tired.

My cell is beeping at me. I’ve missed some ads and its turned off the feed. Waiting for me to settle back in.

But there’s something happening outside.

Baby Rebecca got the message. Congrats to Jack and Heather! Lots of pictures here. Cal and I were rooting for you to name her Ciabatta, but Rebecca will do just fine.
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Anyone who’s ever thought seriously about narrative would do well to check out Dramatica. It’s a theory of story unlike any I’ve encountered before.
Its premise is that there is a specific type of story, the “grand argument story”, that has a particular resonance. This type of story is a representation of a human mind turning over a problem and coming to a conclusion. It teases out all of the elements that must be included in order for a story to become a grand argument story.
I found it incredibly insightful. I have believed for a long time that narrative is something that is, to some extent, hardwired into us; that certain stories have special power and meaning. Dramatica is an attempt to identify the structure of those stories, so that writers can create them.
I won’t go into details – there are a lot of them. There’s a free-to-download Dramatica book in pdf thats a few hundred pages long. They’re really trying to push the software they came up with for sale – the software takes the theory and turns it into an operation, asking questions and making suggestions to build up a grand argument story. The theory itself is free.
I find it fascinating to consider that the narrative structure that humans are attuned to is a metaphorical representation of behavioural problem-solving.
I’m not sure how this links to the Joseph Campbell myth-structure stuff. I think they would fit together well, but I’m hardly an expert on either theory.
So. Yes. Dramatica. Check it out. Within the task it sets itself it makes a lot of points that resonate. I’m currently working through a novel plan that I was stuck on, and it’s giving me plenty of ‘of course!’ type moments, which was the goal. I wouldn’t use its approach for all my writing, but it’s a good tool for the arsenal.
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I really want to write a substantial response to idiot/savant’s piece on ‘false consciousness’, because it’s good and something I have opinions & thoughts on. But, as usual, it’s nearing 1am and I still haven’t sent out the email for this week’s Ottakars club thing. So. Sleep instead. Night all.

“It is hard to view the results in Spain as anything but a choice between Bush and al Qaeda. Al Qaeda won.”
– from Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, March 15 ’04

I crashed out on the couch and lost consciousness for an hour after getting back from work. Haven’t done that for quite some long time. It was good. Yay for the nap couch.
Roleplaying convention “Conpulsion” was good. I sat on the front desk a lot and turned away grumpy yahs. “Yah” is the word for the upper class folk in general, and specifically those students who are at Edinburgh Uni with substantial financial backing from mummy and daddy, or anyone who looks like they fit that profile. (They’re related to “neds” in a matter/anti-matter way.) The student union building was closed (end of term) except for the con, but the memo hadn’t got to a lot of people it seems. Most of them were lovely, of course, but it’s the grumpy and rude people that stick in the memory. Hurrah!
(Graffiti in the university toilets remains a good way to read the psyche of the nation. Aside from the inevitable cottaging graff, the walls are covered with nasty yah-vs-“slacker” and Scots vs English abuse. Class and nationalism still divide this country with a power I keep underestimating.)
The con itself was similar to last year – big, balkanised, drunken. I didn’t make it to any of the games, but I did okay with the ‘hanging out in the bar’ part. It was notable as the con debut of recently-released game AState by local boys Contested Ground Studios, a source of much merriment and celebration because the CGS guys are brilliant and genuine and the game is very worthy indeed.
A personal highlight was being recognised for ‘services to roleplaying in Edinburgh’, mostly in reference to the Ottakars Roleplaying Club, on account of a bunch of write-in nominations by attendees. A huge surprise and I was really touched so see so many people I respect giving me such a show of support. Wow. A really good feeling.

Spare ye a thought for Heather who has a baby inside her that is stubbornly not appearing.
Note also that it’s not too late to have some input into the name of the Elder progeny; check the list on Jack’s blog.
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Cal & I went to another Palestine thing last night, focused on the death of Tom Hurndall. Tom was 21 and English and a photographer, and he was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper in the Palestinian town of Rafah last year. He died from the injury a few weeks ago.
Speaking were a Palestinian guy who was on the scene and witnessed the shooting, and Tom’s sister Sophie who has been part of the family effort to pursue justice for Tom, and for the Palestinian people.
It was pretty harrowing stuff. Hearing from someone who was there what the circumstances of the shooting were was eye-opening – I thought I knew the story but really all I knew was the ‘escorting children to safety’ line. The detail goes, Tom was with over a dozen internationals (including several photographers and reporters from Reuters and other media channels) and they saw three children pinned down in a street by Israeli military fire. Tom went out into the line of fire wearing his reflective jacket and carried one of them back to cover. Then he went back out for the other two children. He didn’t make it.
It’s the fact that he went into a fire zone, and then went back in, that startled me.
What is happening right now in Palestine is an abomination.

I am feeling particularly productive. In advance of Conpulsion I’m trying to pull together some material for OGL Horror, a roleplaying book published by Britain’s Mongoose Publishing and written by my vague acquaintance Gar Hanrahan. It was a cool book and I’m enjoying playing with the ideas within. If all goes well I’ll get them published in some form, and if all goes really well I might get paid for them. But we shan’t count chickens, etc etc.
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If you haven’t read Cal’s story yet, go do it. I think it’s cool, but I am entirely biased.
And while I think of it: Cal is a wonderful girlfriend.
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Watched League of Extraordinary Gentlemen over the weekend. Cal was sick so we got out two DVDs, and i had a card that got me a free vid with any chart rental. Of course, we didn’t want any chart rentals, but I picked up LXG anyway because some people do seem to like it. I can’t see why. It’s dire. It takes a special kind of foolishness to take such a good idea and mung it up, but they manage. Only bright spot: Stuart Townsend as Dorian Gray, who stole every scene he was in and most of the ones he wasn’t in.
The other video was the charming All the Real Girls, a great indie romance-drama-thing. Just see it like we did, with no preconceptions – you won’t regret it.
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Which reminds me, we stumbled on a strange lesbian-lovers-in-boarding-school flick late night that had Mischa Barton in the narrator role, and that made me watch some of the first episode of new US wannabe-guilty-pleasure The OC because she’s the lovely girl with the bad boyfriend in that. It was *so strange* seeing the face of little kid Devon from the astonishing movie Lawn Dogs being used to deliver wry 90210-style dialogue, let alone to make deeply felt comments about the mystery of lesbian love. Purpose of this paragraph: find and see Lawn Dogs, it’s great. *Especially* the ending, despite what the critics say.
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And I discovered today that my NZ-rock-gods-to-be Two Lane Blacktop have split up. Sucksville. Their site is gone too. Bigger sucksville.
At least Idle Faction are still together.
Edited to fix the name of the DVD. D’oh!