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Longtime readers will remember this post from back in February. It was when I was doing my ten fave pics from my North American travels, and featured Aaron and the legendary Guru Josh.
When Aaron arrived in Wellington a short while ago, he gifted me with a bunch of pimped-up Dodge Darts from his now-legendary farewell bash, and the actual one-and-only Guru Josh record featured in that photo.
I listened to it today. Oh, man. There’s a nice sax line in it, and… well, that’s about all. It is a thing of beauty. I adore it. I may never listen to it again.
But then the power of YouTube exposed us both to something we never expected: the video accompanying the single.
Wow. It’s the perfect transition from 80s electronic pop videos to 90s dance hall raver stuff. All these big-haired women and singlet-clad guys who had walked straight out of a Cyndi Lauper video and were going apeshit to the Guru Josh sound. At the centre of things, our man, Guru Josh, holding court, whispering “1990s Time For The Gurah” into the mike, and grinning like a simpleton as he tapped out the melody on the keyboard. All this with bad 80s fashion and a little samurai pony-tail.
But don’t take my word for it. Go check out Aaron’s adoring Guru fanboy post – he’s linked to the video. Experience Guru Josh for yourself. And remember – 1990s – Time for the Gurah!

Right now I feel pretty bad. I just killed Aaron.
The Alligator made it here on Monday, arriving into Wellington for the beginning of his one-year stay. Well, he didn’t really arrive into Wellington – fog closed the airport so he ended up in Palmerston North and on a bus down. It rained a lot that day. And the whole week. That sucked. I’m trying to show off the city and it keeps spraying icewater in his face.
Aaron thought he might try out this roleplaying thing that I value so highly, and knowing both Leon and I were going into an old-school D&D game I invited him to join. He was keen, and sunk a bunch of energy into setting up his character, Lynard Skynard the Barbarian. We assembled a group tonight and kicked off. I was running it as a classic old-school adventure. Aaron jumped into the fray, setting up the situation and bringing characters together like he’d been at this all his life. It was all going well.
Then, after waiting while other players used their special skills to bypass an obstacle, finally he got an opportunity to do what his character did best: fight. Bad guys roamed into view, everyone rolled initiative. My bad guy won. I told Aaron to roll a die. He did.
“You’re dead,” I said.
I had seriously, seriously screwed up.
I was so determined to stick by my self-imposed rules of ‘by the book’ for this game that I didn’t deliver the fun around the table too well. And then, to make matters worse, I delivered a lethal jolt of pure anti-fun right to the vulnerable part of the guy I most wanted to enthuse.
Aaron took it all with good grace, and then some. Lynard Skynard will be back soon enough, raring to go and kick some monster ass. But this was not my finest moment.
Damn. I feel bad.
Anyway, you can read his side over at the Alligator Love, Aaron’s new blog. Also contains thoughts on rugby and other perspectives on the country from a newcomer. Go check it out.
(And while I’m at it, I discovered a few weeks ago that Ruth has a blog. How had I not noticed this? It’s lovely.)

Huzzah etc.! As already posted on my LJ, today marked the launch of ‘Amazing Triple Action’, a 12-part series for superhero games, all written by me.
This has been occupying my time for quite a while. I am very pleased that it is finally out in the open!
More details here – note that this is a different link to the one on LJ and gives a bunch more info.
And the product page is here.

Back in March I received a bunch of random greeting messages from Kiwi mobile phones, all in painful yoof-txt-speak. I wondered at the way my relatively new cell number received four different messages from four different numbers in one weekend – a statistical anomaly that hasn’t repeated since.
Until this weekend, when I received three, all from different 021 numbers, all content-free variations on “hey, who’s this?”. Still I wonder exactly where this is coming from – is it really, as it seems, just random kids punching numbers at random into their mobiles in the hope of finding someone to chat to? If so, why do I get four in one weekend, then one or two in six months, then three in another weekend? The odds against that distribution seem small.
But that’s not why I was prompted to make this post.
I just got via email from Telecom NZ’s mobile messaging service a notification that I had been sent a picture from a Telecom NZ mobile. I clicked through the link to xtra’s Lightsurf and get this:
—
To: [my gmail address]
From: [a telecom number]
Sent: 01/10/06
Subject: A Picture Share!

—
So, anyone know who these pouting fourteen-year-olds are and why I received a photo of them?
Are we going for the bored-teenagers-spamming-random-identities explanation or the inexplicable-moneymaking-scheme explanation this time? Or is this just a sign that I am not Up With The Play, in the same way that little old ladies are confused by Nigerian scam emails?
I am baffled. Advice welcome.

Just got a call from the Alligator, who has landed in Auckland and is due in Welly in a couple weeks.
He tipped me off to this account of his farewell party, written up for Seattle’s indie scene zine The Stranger. Excerpt:

Someone shotguns a High Gravity malt beverage and shouts, “Get rich or die fuckin’ tryin’!” Someone else shotguns and shouts, “Locked and loaded!” All out of catch phrases, our host does a traditional Maori war dance on top of the fridge. I get more fucked up than I’ve been in years and the party is a raging success.

That’s how they roll in Seattle, baby.

Further to the research in the previous post, I’ve just sent this letter to the Listener.
===
Vincent Gray of Wellington writes to challenge the climate science
presented in ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and your cover article.
Vincent Gray is a member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition. The
NZCSC website is essentially a clearing house for links to climate
change scepticism. On the day I write, 25 September, nine of the top
ten linked items are funded either by Exxon-Mobil or by the coal
industry Western Fuels Association.
(The other, somewhat embarrassingly, links to a climate change skeptic
whose book was refuted at its own launch – by the invited guest
speaker!)
NZCSC denies financial links to Exxon-Mobil, but they are actively
spreading Exxon-Mobil propaganda.
===

Saw Gore’s opus last night. More on that to come.
For now: just read the letters page of the Listener’s most recent issue. It features a letter by Vincent Gray of Wellington, listing a set of claims which (supposedly) counter Gore’s (supposed) alarmism.
I plugged Gray’s name into google and found his writings referenced with admiration by NZ’s own climate change denial organization, http://www.climatescience.org.nz/.
The top item on Climate Science’s site is an anti-Inconvenient Truth piece from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Exxon has given the CEI over $2million US since 1998 for, among other things, “climate change outreach”.
—
Note, this doesn’t indicate Mr Gray is connected with either Climate Science or CEI – this was a two-minute google search.
Nevertheless, I am interested in Mr Gray’s activities – how closely tied is he to ClimateScience.org? (I could email or call him to ask, I guess.)
And is ClimateScience.org an example of an astroturf organization? How could I go about finding out? Any ideas, anyone?

Well, that was nerve-wracking. I just spent an evening in the company of some fine fellas and fellesses, listening to them do a read-through of my play ‘Straight to Video’. It’s almost the first time it’s been exposed to humans; a few chosen people have seen copies of it but this was really the first time it got under major scrutiny.
I was anxious. As I was at pains to point out to the gathered bodies, it was the first time I’d written anything for performance longer than about five minutes. (It occurs to me now that this is with the exception of Cold Night, but that was Just Playing Around and not actually expected to be performed. ) (Oh, and except for a script for a film adaptation of in move, as well. But this is a minor point.)
Everyone was very kind in their willingness to indulge me nonetheless and the readthrough began. And may I say, it was a revelation. As I’d hoped, hearing my dialogue brought to life by a bunch of wonderful people taught me huge amounts very very quickly. I already knew there was big work to be done, but this made very clear the specific kinds of work to be done, and what other options I have to change and develop the piece.
(One particular revelation stands out – one character, who’s meant to be key to everything pretty much, kind of doesn’t exist nearly as much as she should. If you have an uneasy feeling in your gut that you’ve given one of your readers a dud character, listen to that feeling!)
It also convinced me that the thematic idea at the core of the piece is sound, and the idea of its execution is also sound. The base is good, I just need to make the expression of it extremely awesome.
Anyway, after the reading, which clocked in at just under an hour, people spent a while longer pitching in loads of ideas and insights and it was just marvellous. There literally was no better way for me to spend 90 minutes on this project than doing the readthrough. And no-one said it sucked, either. Result!
Thanks to the man with the organiser skillz, Leon, and to the awesome reader-folk Glenn, Dayle, Svend, Fraser and the lovely Laura.

Last week I made a pilgrimage to Ernesto’s, the brand new successor-cafe to the iconic (if not always wonderful) Krazy Lounge in Wellington. Ernesto’s is now run by Havana, who also run the nifty Havana Bar and maybe-the-best-cafe-in-Welly Fidel’s, and distribute the wonderful Havana coffee far and wide.
Bad news. The vibe in there sucks.
They removed all the booths, replacing them with a single bench seat running the length of the left-hand wall (as you enter). They removed all the large tables and replaced them with lots of little ones, which are modular but not at all welcoming. Worst of all, they’ve left a gigantic unpopulated river of space flowing from the entrance, past the counter, right to the back wall. The left and right sides of the cafe might as well be different addresses, they’re so far apart.
It is, to be honest, a disaster. How could they screw it up so bad? The vibe is nothing like Fidel’s, nothing like the Havana Bar, nothing like the old Krazy. I don’t know what it is like. There’s no appreciation whatsoever for space and the way people inhabit it. Man. I was crushed, absolutely crushed. I so wanted this to rock, and it was the complete opposite.
—
I had just beforehand gone a bit mad and spent some money on comics for the first time in an age. Picked up Local issue 6, which was a very cool tale about two roommates in Park Slope, Brooklyn who don’t quite get along; Pictozine issue 1, a new NZ comix zine with a grab-bag of stuff, including Dylan Horrocks outlining the contents of his personal Lighthouse library; and Snake Woman issue 1 and 2, a very pretty (Michael Gaydos art, the guy who did Alias with Bendis) conspiracy/horror story steeped in Indian mythology. This was ‘created by’ Shekhar Kapur, Indian film director best known outside India for the harrowing Bandit Queen and, of course, Elizabeth. It didn’t disappoint and I’ll probably pick up #3.
Almost bought God the Dyslexic Dog just because its title is cool. But didn’t.
—
Watched Clerks 2 last night, for some reason. Not really recommended unless you have affection for the Kevin Smith oeuvre and accept that the funny isn’t much there. I thought it was nice.

Have been super productive in the last couple weeks, such that yesterday I hit the afternoon and found myself at a loss for what to do next. Always stuff to do, mind, but nothing urgent and nothing howling for my attention either – except Ron the Body draft 3, which I think has just (finally) hit the top of the pile. Hurrah.
Just had a long messenger chat with a Parisian friend who I met in Mexico last year and who was sitting in an internet cafe in Peru. And sent a letter to Cain in Mexico yesterday, with some long-promised bits and pieces in. (Other letters are on the to-do list as well. Shoulda written more yesterday.)
It was great to reconnect with someone from travel days. Friendships on the road are often brief but intense, and I had promised that we would still be friends when our paths crossed again – and sure enough, we were chatting away without missing a beat despite nearly a year incommunicado.
In other other news, the Alligator has deployed from Seattle and is expected on NZ soil in a few weeks. Another travel buddy succumbs to the lure of NZ… yes, come here, come all of you, come here…