From The Morgue

It’s been almost a year since the massive and historic protests against the then-pending Iraq war. I went to the march in Glasgow, as well as a few other marches and talks earlier and later. They were fascinating, as well as worthwhile, and my belief at the time that they were the point when suspicion of the Bush administration’s push for war became entirely mainstream. I feel that point of view has been utterly vindicated. A documentary was shot over those months about the school students who took days off school to protest, and it has been screening off and on, generating a lot of support for what was widely decried at the time by even the most moderate of commentators. It was an extraordinary moment, and the only time in my living memory when such dissent had been so much a part of the mainstream around me.
Last night Cal and I went to ‘The Road To Peace In Palestine’ at the Edinburgh City Council chambers. Much less of a cause than the Iraq war, but very much continuous with the anti-war movement. The elegant chambers overlooking the royal mile were packed out, and the demographics had shifted even further from the anti-war protests – the largest groups by far were retired white people (Scots, I presume) and middle eastern people in their mid to late 20s. There were only a handful of white faces under the age of 40 – quite a change from every single protest march I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if that’s a positive step, but if nothing else it makes it hard to tar the concerned people I saw with the brush of ‘foolish middle class white kids’.
Reverend Alistair McGregor of the Church of Scotland spoke first, and his overwhelming message was to go to Israel/Palestine and see the situation first-hand. He emphasised the psychological pressure being placed on the Palestinians by the occupiers. I found his speaking was unpleasantly locked in the Tony Blair Brit politician tradition – lots of ‘friends, believe me’ type rhetoric – but his message of seeing first hand was hard to fault. Also of note, and a big change from last year, was his haste to raise the issue of anti-semitism and proclaim his innocence. It’s a sign of how high that issue has been raised in recent months.
Then Rabbi Cohen spoke. He presented as fact something I’d never heard before – that active modern Zionism, forcefully creating a Jewish state, is actually against God’s will. He spoke movingly, and I certainly wish his interpretation to be correct since it is so profoundly rooted in humane concerns, but if I know anything about Talmudic lore it’s that readings are endlessly disputed. The most valuable contribution he can make, I think, is to give Palestinians a Jewish person to welcome and talk to and debate with, and so demonstrate that the anti-semitism charge made against their whole people is likewise without merit.
Finally, and best of all, Ibrahem Hewitt. A Geordie plain-speaker, he was compelling and sharp, and spoke of how his organisation has been and remains labelled as a terrorist threat by US security, preventing a lot of international freedoms. Of course, it has been thoroughly investigated by UK officials and utterly cleared. A sign of the way in which these matters are dealt with. I felt he was too quick to characterise the enemy (Israeli government, US government) in terms of their most extreme exemplars, which could lead inadvertantly to demonising of the Israeli people, but within its own context he was impossible to fault.
It was an interesting night and raised a lot of questions for me. None of which I’m going to share right now. It’s time for bed.

I had an elaborate analogy involving writing and DNA sequencing and cloning and genetic engineering and stuff. But I deleted it because it was a bit crap. However, by telling you it existed, I somehow still get the kudos for my amazing ideas, without having to put up with the scorn that would result had any of you read what I wrote. Amazing how that works. Hey, in high school, when arm wrestling competitions were all the rage, I shrugged and refused to take part because I knew I’d lose. Despite me saying this, there was a small section of my classmates who were convinced I’d actually be able to beat them, if only I’d cut loose. See? Credit for nothing, in the face of all available evidence. People are funny sometimes.
Timely: I read in some of the comments on Teresa Neilsen Hayden’s essential blog Making Light that Robert Heinlein was firm that the proper response to the receipt of a rejected manuscript is to package it up and send it somewhere else. Don’t look at it, don’t dare edit it, just send it off. Keep it moving.
Of course, I’m no Heinlein, but I don’t think he meant it to apply only if you’re a writing god. It makes that perfect kind of simple sense – editors refuse good manuscripts all the time, so keep trying, and while you’re still trying, write something else and submit that too.
In the process of getting writing momentum going again I’ve realised that one of my continuing problems is having too many projects on the go at once. I have, seriously, about twenty to thirty live projects at any one time. With that many things in progress, ‘live’ becomes a creative description rather than an accurate one.
Now, on the face of it I don’t have a problem with this – I can justify time spent on every one of them.
The trouble is that they get in the way of each other. It’s too easy, when the going gets tough on something, to let it slide and turn attention to something else. There’s always lots of somethings else to turn to. Hey, that play you’ve been writing for four years about those guys choosing a video? Written twenty pages and some character notes and not sure what to do next? Not a problem, because look over here, it’s that comic script about one-hour parties you left half-done in 2000!
I’ve decided I need to sort this out. In my notebook I’ve made a priority list of projects to get sorted this year. I want to get rid of some of these long-lasting excuses. Bonus: by finishing things, I gain momentum and sense of satisfaction and confidence etc etc.
The dREAL ruleset was the first of these. It’s being distributed on the net at the moment, and people are making use of it, so that’s cool. And it’s a long-term project finished.
I’ve been taking down a few of the smaller ones as well. Now I’m back on to a big fish: Fell Legacy.
Fell Legacy was the fantasy novel I wrote a few years back with the support of Dale Elvy, whose own fantasy trilogy was published by HarperCollins. I wrote a damn good story that was sort of a Lord of the Rings in reverse – a muddy, angry, claustrophobic story about communities and friendships falling apart in difficult times. I sent it, of course, to Dale’s publisher, dropping the name and all. Sadly the manuscript was rejected. (I claim to this day that it was rejected because, of course, they have Dale – why would they need me? As this makes both Dale and me look good, alternative hypotheses have been deemed unnecessary.)
So I got this manuscript back, and then I went to the other side of the world.
It is the height of folly to have a completed, awesome manuscript on the shelf with but one rejection letter to its name. I have done that story wrong through my traveller’s neglect. On my list: Fell Legacy. Get it out there again.
So I have to get it ready to submit. I pulled open the file – 630 or so pages of manuscript. 130,000 words. Cool. And I can make it better.
Heinlein Alert! No, you fool! Wrap it up and send it off! Those who’ve been involved in my writing travails will know I’m always ready to re-draft anything I’ve written. I was sorely, sorely tempted.
But Fell Legacy had something I wasn’t happy with – a saggy opening. The most crucial part of the book, at that. Revise it, the voices said, reviiiiise it!
So I struck a deal with Heinlein. I would re-edit the prologue. And no more. I have forbidden myself to read over what follows.
And a matter of days later I’ve made the opening kick seven times of rear over the old version, and I’ve left the rest alone, and it’s all good. Time to knock on some doors.
Thanks Mr Heinlein. Thanks for helping me kick the habit.
—-
Everyone should go read Nate Cull’s blog entry on rockets and stuff, too.
~`morgue

This computer, our nifty laptop, with speakers, and broadband, is the best soundsystem I’ve ever owned that accepts mp3s. And so I finally catch up to the cool kids!
So I’ve been busily downloading a bunch of music files that have been sitting on the web for some time, and enjoying them tremendously.
Of course the power of knowing the creators led me to start with the files at aquaboogie and nonwrestler – some tracks I’ve heard, some I haven’t (but, sadly no Satan’s Vomit. Stuart, where is the love?) and all now residing merrily on my hard drive.
Next mission: Marxman.
It’s a little known fact that the whole reason I came to the UK was to find a copy of Irish Communist hip-hop outfit Marxman’s second album, Time Capsule. (True. This mission has been, sadly, a failure. In my naivete I assumed that somewhere in the UK there would be record stores along the lines of, say, Real Groovy. Um – no. Nope. No. At least, not anywhere I’ve been.)
Time Capsule was released free on the web by Oisin, the DJ for Marxman. I had a copy of this on one of my previous destined-for-burning hard drives, and listened to it on my tinny wee speakers. I remember the first track, Dazed & Confused, as insanely good and I was pleased to find that it mostly lives up to my memories.
(Marxman – yah!)
Next up – still on the hiphop vibe – Public Enemy’s unreleased ‘Bring the Noise 2000‘. I have a lot of love for late-period Public Enemy, and Chuck D’s messages about the rise of electronic music distribution released a decade ago on ‘Muse Sick in Our Mess Age’ sound pretty on the money now.
And now I’ve rediscovered www.loveisdashit.com which archives Michael Franti’s/Spearhead’s live performances, in the spirit of Franti’s ‘record and distribute my live gigs’ philosophy. And it’s damn cool.
And I’m just scratching the surface of what’s out there. Cool. I should finish with some nifty word-type-image like ‘I’m catching the technology wave’. How about: ‘I’m swaying on the weeble carousel of the new era.’
See, I can do this.
Needless to say, check all this stuff out if you’re so equipped.
—
One of these days I’m gonna do a serious-type post like I’ve been threatening to do. But Cal just messed up my hair until I screamed. So not now.

There was a documentary here the other night about Tetris. I didn’t watch it. I was scared I’d get the urge again.
Tetris was one of the best of what I call the ‘pattern games’. Solitaire, Freecell, Minesweeper – all the same. They consist of a procedure of pattern manipulation that is highly repetitive and simple combined with a large variety of possible patterns. They are utterly engrossing, and I think that’s because they take work in perfect step with the brain itself.
My university training was in psychology, principally cognitive functioning such as memory. I was, and remain, fascinated by non-conscious processing – basically, where the neural system in your brain busily tracks or recognises or prompts something without your conscious awareness of what it’s doing.
The other day I started singing ‘there were green alligators…’ out of the blue, wondered what came next and eventually realised it was that song about noah’s ark leaving the unicorn behind. Then I did a double-take, for right next to me was a picture of a unicorn. My brain was processing stuff and spitting it out, and I wasn’t at all aware.
Brains are good with patterns. In a sense, patterns is all they are and all they do. Our brains are extremely good at noticing patterns and structuring our behaviour accordingly, much better than we usually realise. Our brains don’t tell our conscious awareness what they’ve noticed or figured out though – we just act accordingly. Even if we reflect on our actions, there’s usually no hints that some of our behaviour was prompted by recognising a pattern. Fortunately our conscious selves are very good at coming up with reasonable-sounding explanations for everything we do, so it isn’t much of a problem.
Tetris and the other pattern games exploit this. Our conscious effort is united with our non-conscious function to recognise and manipulate a pattern. Combined, they can provide an incredibly involving experience.
I remember when I was playing a lot of Tetris – I’d throw on a CD and listen to it while the blocks came tumbling down. My mind would wander incredibly, in and out of the music and the game-playing experience in front of me. It’s the closest to dreaming I’ve ever been while awake. And, not surprisingly, when I put my head down to sleep I would still have one foot in Tetris – the patterns would continue in my head, blocks coming down not as if I was seeing them but as if I could feel my brain playing out the patterns over and over and over again.
Which it was.
I didn’t watch the documentary but I did read the Guardian’s article about it. It mentioned a woman who spent a day seeing people talking in Tetris, their words falling from their mouths in patterns like blocks. This is how the brain works. It’s a crazy thing to put a mind in, I reckon – not that we have a choice in the matter.
—
Because I know you’ve all been aching for it, that rpg.net thread is here.
And handsome tall man Chuck, and my own handsome fizzog, are temporarily visible at Cal’s blog.
EDIT: and the book we are holding up is, spookily, pattern recognition. That’s the unicorn factor at work again, perhaps?

Waitangi Day – New Zealand’s national day. There’s a lot I could say about this but I will again resist temptation (aided of course by my desire to go to sleep).
Instead I will highlight two quotes from two different folk involved in the tumult of Waitangi Day 2004:
“Mud throwing is not the way for New Zealand to advance to the future.”
– Don Brash, after being splattered with mud
(from here)
“Go up and find out for yourself.”
– tree-climbing protester when asked by a reporter what it was like up the
tree
(from here)
Non-Kiwis won’t get enough context to get more than mild amusement at the state of our politics. Locals, though, might appreciate the richness of how these two quotes symbolise the issues. At least they do for me. Maybe I’m just reading too much in.
Amusing, anyway, alongside the seriousness of it all. Yes, it can be both at once. Politics usually is.
—
Went to see ‘Taking Sides’ tonight at Kings Theatre. Julian Glover. Just felt the need for some stage-stuff, and the queue for the free preview of Death of a Salesman was ten million people long.
It was… okay. I dunno why I didn’t warm to it more, given how it touched on many themes dear to my heart in ways I thought were clever and even wise – , maybe it was because it was built around a conundrum which I resolved to my satisfaction a decade ago.
Certainly the sheer theatricality of the production startled me. Actors booming their lines out into the audience, exaggerating their gestures, dialogue that sound like Highly Charged Aphorisms strung together. I’ve gotten so used to naturalism that I couldn’t get past it in this show. Although it could just have been that the show itself was badly written and directed.
Nah.
Anyway, much cheaper stuff at the festival was much better. Of course.
—-
I’ve just web-published a long-term project. It’s a roleplaying game ruleset, and I’m quite proud of it. However, if you’re not interested in the nuts-and-bolts side of RPGs then don’t bother following this link for more info.

I received a letter from my grandmother yesterday. Brilliant. Letters are great, and letters from beloved grandmothers are one of the best kinds.
I know you read this blog sometimes Felice – you’ll be getting a reply in kind.
—
We had a big fryup for dinner. Mushrooms and scrambled eggs and tofu sausages. Man, that tofu was the blandest I have ever et. I think I have been spoiled forever by the wondrous Engine Shed smoked tofu (thanks Brad).
Still: yum.
—
I finally finished the writeup of the roleplaying game I ran late last year, Providence Summer, on RPG.net. It’s about kids and teens in Providence, RI in the summer of ’61. They hang out, fight, make out, and get into trouble. It was really something quite special. One part Rebel Without A Cause, one part Stand By Me, one part Twin Peaks without the creepy supernatural stuff. One hell of a tale with an ending that’ll stay with me for the rest of my life. Groove.
And the whole point of this bit was that I was gonna link to the writeup now, but rpg.net is down. Ah well.
—
WMD intelligence inquiries. I have a whole rant but I’ll spare you this time – it’s past midnight and I need some sleep.
Good night.

The infamous aura of burning surrounding Edinburgh resident Morgan Davie struck again on Friday. At approximately 4.45pm, Mr Davie’s work PC began to “sound like it was clicking its tongue”. Shortly after, the computer desktop stopped working.
Mr Davie was then shown the error-page known among computer experts as “the blue screen of death”.
Upon investigation, it transpired that Mr Davie’s hard drive had burned out. Scorch marks were visible on the hard drive unit. Crucially, all data stored on the hard drive was lost.
This is an unusual fault in year-old components from reputable manufacturer Dell Computers. However, Mr Davie believes the Dell components were not faulty. “I’ve got this aura of burning. Hard drives always burn out on me. They just do. It’s really annoying, actually.”
Mr Davie has had three hard drives burn out on him in the past, a rate of burnout that is “significantly above the average”.
A Dell Computers spokesman had this to say: “That guy’s just got a freaky aura of burning. What ya gonna do?”
– Reuters

Been meaning to post this link for a while. It’s an interesting take on NZ by an associate (and sometimes fellow blogger) of Tom Tomorrow, Salon’s left-leaning political cartoonist.
I liked it. We likes hearing people talk about our country, yes we do, yes we do, gollum gollum.
~`morgue

I pick that the stupid Academy will do this:
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Sean Penn – MYSTIC RIVER
(possible surprise: Johnny Depp – PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL. Yes, seriously.)
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Benicio Del Toro – 21 GRAMS
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
50/50 between Keisha Castle-Hughes – WHALE RIDER and
Charlize Theron – MONSTER – as a Kiwi I’m backing Keisha. The Anna Paquin factor, y’know.
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Renee Zellweger – COLD MOUNTAIN

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
FINDING NEMO

ART DIRECTION
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

CINEMATOGRAPHY
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (anything with water gets bonus points)

COSTUME DESIGN
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

DIRECTING
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
(FINally)

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
Don’t know any of the nominees

FILM EDITING
CITY OF GOD (and it’d deserve it, too)

MAKEUP
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

MUSIC (SCORE)
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

MUSIC (SONG)
“Into the West” – THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

BEST PICTURE
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

SOUND
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

SOUND EDITING
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

VISUAL EFFECTS
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
AMERICAN SPLENDOR
(but it should go to THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING fer chrissakes! it’s the infamous unfilmable book! it’s been made into a great film! grrrrr)

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
LOST IN TRANSLATION

Back in my teens I used to get killer migraines. They’d start off by messing up my vision, just removing parts of the scene in front of me. (This never left a big hole – it was a seamless removal, like a t-shirt image being obscured in folds. Incredibly weird sensation. I vividly remember having a conversation with a classmate when I was about 14 and explaining that I knew I was going to have a migraine because I couldn’t see him, even though I was looking straight at him.)
Then you get the big spirally halos, like when you stare at a bulb and get the afterimage, only the afterimage is a thin strip of metal dipped in oil reflecting rainbows at you. And the halo would get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until it disappeared off the edges of my vision.
And then, about half an hour after that, the migraine would kick in proper and if I wasn’t in a place where I could lie down, it was too damn late. Migraine is nasty. You get the headache mixed in with intense nausea and hypersensitive physicality. Brain is firing all kinds of nonsense, head is aching, stomach feels like it’s in the wrong way. This for about four hours, then another four of decreasing intensity, and then another 48 of gingerly moving through the world with little aftershocks making you watch your step.
Bleah. Anyway, I grew out of them when I left my teens. I had one in 2000, out of nowhere, but apart from that, none since about 94 or so.
Except I had one back at the end of August (the night of the Spearhead gig, curse it) and another one this Friday gone. Two inside of six months after only one in the previous decade… I don’t know what to make of this, exactly. It ain’t a trend I’m encouraging. Hmm.
Anyway, I was in a weird space all that day. I kept having incredibly intense deja vu and presque vu. All the vus. It had got to the point where I had started composing a blog entry beginning “I’ve been spending all day dangling just out of reach of an incredibly vivid but imperceptible other reality.” Or somesuch. That was the idea, though – that it felt like there was another me in another life and I was having crossover. I could never quite grasp the specifics, but I felt over and over again that something was *there*, just out of my mental grasp.
Anyway, then I had the migraine. You can put your cause and effect whichever way you like there.
The migraine was accompanied, when sleep eventually came, by remarkable dreams literally filled with people from my childhood and youth – I remember a group of five polynesian guys I haven’t seen since I was about 12 or 13 and having a big conversation with them. I don’t remember who they were now I’m awake, I don’t remember even if they were real, but I believe they were. One thing the brain is remarkably good at, after all, is remembering faces. Anyway, those five and dozens and dozens more. If you were at my primary school there was an even chance you would have turned up. The only other moment I remember with great clarity was when I dreamed Nikki Schollum (“smile and say hi” type-acquaintance since primary school, some readers I’m sure will know her) being completely unable to remember the name of the big country next to New Zealand. (It’s Australia, honey. You’re welcome.) (Actually, I don’t think I was in the dream at that stage. But if I had been there, I’m pretty sure I coulda told her.)
Anyway. Out of it all now. But migraines are weird things and they mess up your head something wild. Neurons firing all over the show. Wild. And, lest it not be clear, not fun at all.
(Oh – It’s going around, it seems.)
—-
The delightful Craig Duncan was in town this past weekend, not long after his New Years Day nuptials to longtime boyfriend Marcel Hodel – longtime receivers of my morgueatlarge travel emails will remember the photo of those two from back in December, no doubt. I thought it was a great photo. Wonderful to see the old boy.
—-
I’ve realised I’ve got more to say about Lost In Translation, but I’m not going to say it now. Time to go home.
Oh, yeah, my new shoes are T-Mac 3 (since the demise of my beloved Converse to Nike, I’m investigating the exciting land of Adidas). To all (Jon Ball) of y’all (Jon Ball) who are interested (Jon Ball), they are the cool ones with my usual black-with-blue preferred coloration. And you can watch a movie about them over here.
Peace. I windmill whenever I want, apparently.