From The Morgue

So I was planning a happy-skippy blog entry about how I’ve been really busy knocking off dozens of items from my post-Palestine to-do list (no exagerration – the list came to 40 items and I’m down to the teens). And talking about Kill Bill, because I saw part 2 and feel I have Things To Say about it. And making wry comment on the coverage that sheep and that budgie have been getting all around the world.
But I’ve just seen the coverage of the Iraqi prisoner abuse.
First thing – it’s on TV way before the net. Discussion boards have the story but the mainstream newssites and big blogs aren’t covering it yet. Weird – TV ahead of the internet – I can’t think the last time it happened to me.
Second thing – oh my lord. Of course, it’s one incident and it’s being dealt with and it’s not a general situation – but there have been so many reports of this kind of thing in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Gitmo. It is a sign of a general culture. This kind of activity is the outgrowth of the rhetoric surrounding the US military effort and ‘clash of civilisations’ and war on terror etc. It’s *inevitable*. It was predicted. It has been reported before. But photos tell a different story.
Third thing – it’s been a rough two weeks for the Arab world (which does exist as a collective entity on some level, if only because the rest of the world keeps lumping them together) – Bush supporting Sharon, Fallujah being bombed, and now this. If you’re already feeling victimised, this run of events certainly looks like the West is prepping for a fight to the finish with the Arab Middle East.
Fourth thing – the grinning thumbs-up may be familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention to the war-blogs for the last few weeks – the ‘Boudreaux controversy’ has been argued all over and made it into Salon.com a few days ago. Basically, its a photo of a grinning GI next to an Iraqi kid holding a sign – but there are two versions of what the sign says, one sickening and one heartwarming. Obviously one, or both, was photoshopped for political reasons. I think psychological logic supports the idea its the negative one, but it’s impossible to prove. This prison activity will lend more weight to this logic, because its premised on the fact that some soldiers in Iraq are happy to humiliate the Iraqis. And now we see that this is indeed the case.
Christ. Things are going to get worse before they get better.
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I did like Kill Bill 2, for what its worth.

Beautiful run of days lately. Sweet. *Puts global warming thoughts aside*
Yesterday I sat in the Meadows under pink-blossomed trees and read Russell Hoban’s Angelica’s Grotto, and wrote in my travel journal of Palestine. I’ve written about twenty pages and I’m at the start of the first full day in-country. It’s taking a long time to process.
I’m trying to get writing happening again but this has stalled it. Gah. Soon, though. Ron the Body is aching to be written.
My friend Tina is back in Edinburgh. She was my best friend at work and she dematerialised to England, but has come back. We had a nice wee drink at our local pub on Saturday night, which was sort of a new experience for me. Very cool though. Apart from that it was a weekend of sunshine and roleplaying. Too much roleplaying! But it’s all good stuff. I want to make the most of my time with the Providence Summer crew before they scatter to the four corners of the earth; and the Ottakar’s Club isn’t quite ready for me to walk away from it, though it’s close. I have a number of usurpers who are pretty much running things now – we just need a few more people running games to take the pressure off.
I have been saddened to note the gender balance of the Ottakars group has slipped markedly. Our women have left the country and no new ones have joined. Bums. But what can you do? At least GEAS is a very healthy demographic variety. That’s the way we like it.

Still drifting, just a little.
Haven’t yet come to terms with Israel and Palestine, in that I haven’t turned it into something I can tell stories about. It’s too big and complex. There’s a couple I am comfortable with, but most of it is just too much. Tomorrow I plan on sitting in the Elephant House after work and writing down everything I can about the trip. That should be a good start.
We have some great photos at least. These will be shared shortly.
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Just saw Shaun of the Dead. It’s a solid 4-star effort, well worth the cash but no groundbreaking classic. And given that my criticism is “but no groundbreaking classic” you can imagine how much I enjoyed it. (Lots.)
It was effectively scary, and very funny. Filled to the brim with easter eggs for horror trivia fans. (Name of the restaurant Shaun rings to make reservations: Fulci’s.) And the gore, while infrequent for a zombie movie, was very effective – in fact, I think it’s the best disembowelling-by-crowd-of-zombies I’ve ever seen. (Maybe Day of the Dead tops it. Maybe.)
Which reminds me, it’s Dead by Dawn this weekend at Filmhouse. I forgot to book tickets in advance AGAIN. Dammit. Last year Freddy Kreuger elbowed me and I saw Bubba Ho-tep. Not sure what I might make it to this time around. Maybe nothing. I feel much, much busier this time out.
Beltaine celebrations are coming, and they’ve put an attendance limit on it for the first time. Calton Hill will still be the venue and thousands of all ages are expected. Should be great.
Gah. Sleep needed. Zombification imminent.

Nothing has seemed real today. Back to work. It was like floating.
I’ve spent most of the evening churning through the chaos of our home to make it tidy and suitable for doing all the things I urgently need to do. There are so few spaces that are usable… I still can’t quite deal with the absence of tables. The laptop is on a small card table. There’s the coffee table. And that’s it. It doesn’t seem right.
I’ve accumulated a lot of books. Dammit. That wasn’t meant to happen.
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A new batch of Leon testimony is up at Leon’s God page. A couple of new commandments too. Get on the Leon train, it’s the hottest ticket in town…
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I won’t post the subservient chicken link, even though it amused me far too much, out of some faded determination not to participate in viral marketing. I’m sure you can find it if you don’t know what I’m talking about and care enough.
I will post this link, to a dog on a skateboard. At Frank’s place on Friday night this provided endless entertainment. Well, to me at least. He’s so cute, riding around on that skateboard! Look, he thinks he’s people!
No link to Stone and Parker’s Princess, our other main entertainment on Friday night (well, apart from Leon). Children read this blog and that little bundle of love is NOT FOR KIDS. If you think South Park is restrained, Google for it – it’s out there.
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It was great to catch up with some of the Londoners over the last few days. Sorry I missed those I missed. London is still a crazy town.

Radio silence has been due to a week spent in Israel and Palestine. Wow. More to come.
Currently in London. All is good. Back in Edin Sunday evening.
Leon-worshippers, be advised your testimonies will be added to the site as soon as I get home to do it.
Peace, everyone.

The time has come.
The stars are aligned.
Let the truth be known…
LEON IS TO BE A GOD.
(This, of course, follows on from this blog entry.)

On Friday night I gathered some folks together at Palmyra, which is a tiny Lebanese takeaway joint with some tables for eating in. We took over these tables. I love Palmyra – it’s wildly cheap and the staff are tremendously friendly. Most visitors to Edinburgh who stayed with Cal and me will have been taken there at least once. Brad – you introduced me to the place, I hope you have a smile at these photos…

Continue reading Birthday at Palmyra

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.