Category: Self-ish

RIP Pio

I have a half-finished Friday linky but no stomach to finish it. Just took a call from my mother who saw this in the paper, and let me know a young man I knew had killed himself.

In my last year of high school, Pio was just starting. I was a school prefect assigned to his class, and he was in the basketball team I coached with my friend Matt. But I actually met him the year before, on a bushwalk organized for my year and his, to build some connections between incoming pupils and impending school leaders. We did most of the walk together, forging an instant connection. I can’t remember what on earth we talked about but he was smart, funny, and great company. I was delighted when I ended up assigned to his class the next year.

It was May of that year that Pio’s family was devastated by tragic violence. Everything collapsed around him. The school made some efforts, with the basketball team at the forefront – but my fellow coach and the staff liaison were well out of our depth. I don’t know what else happened around him then. We were all worried.

The next year, I was at university but with my friend kept coaching this young basketball team. Pio was by all appearances back to his old self. Neither of us were convinced, but it was good to see him apparently doing okay. After that year we lost touch. I ran into him in his final year of school, where he was himself recognized as a school leader, and then I did think he’d come right despite his awful experience. But that was just me being naive.

Last time I saw Pio was at a funeral in 2006, one of his classmates from that same class I was prefect for. He was on good form and we had a great chat. On leaving I kicked myself for not trading numbers with him. I’ve thought several times since that I should look him up, particularly since moving back to Lower Hutt. But I never did.

It sounds like his mental wellbeing starting slipping not long after that last time I saw him. It sounds very sad. And apart from feeling upset, I feel angry and helpless. I look around this bloody country and all I see is more and more pressure being applied to those who are the most vulnerable. At the same time, what support we’ve managed to put in place is being undermined and hollowed out or just taken away. There’s nothing civilised about what we’re becoming. If our society is worth anything at all it should have found a way to help Pio, and his family two decades ago.

We have to do better than this.

Peace be with you, Pio

Birthday 2012

Thirty-six with a bullet baby. Man, last year was a tough year. Amazing and successful but that was some hard work. Not keen to repeat that experience in a hurry.

Anyway today is my birthday and I intend to listen to much jazz, like seriously much.

In previous years on this blog I’ve invited people to leave me a quote in the comments as a birthday gift, like here. But blogging in 2012 is different and most of the social stuff has shifted to the social medias. I ain’t gonna fight it.

(You are still invited to leave a quote in the comments though, if you ain’t Facebook-active or whatever. Just secretly, getting those always makes me delight all up.)

AND I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT MY BIRTHDAY!

CAN MUMS HAVE IT ALL?

What about Dads? Can we have it all too?

Saturday’s newspaper had a magazine section with a big article heavily featuring our little fambly – Cal, Willa and myself. It’s up online here. It is actually quite a good piece, I reckon.

One message in there is how much we are relying on family for support, and on employers being flexible. We are blessed with much support in all those ways, plus plus a babby who is happy and not much trouble as babbies go. We are lucky people.

I am feeling the lucky today. Today (and the whole week actually but especially today) has been manic to the extreme. But I am getting by and well-fed (good healthy home-made tucker) and wee Willa has been adored by many people today and has lots of cuddles and food and poor hardworking Cal was super supportive tonight as I raced to get a piece of work done…

This blog is gonna stay low-frequency low-thinking posts for a while I guess. Capacity is low right now. But I want to record this here so I can’t argue with myself later: for all the challenges fitting everything in? I’m having an amazing time.

Anyway, enough ramble. Go read the article. You know you want to.

Want: Shackleton Whisky

Antarctic explorer Shackleton had some whisky stored in his hut. It has been recovered, and a blend created to match it. The blend is apparently quite close. Lots of details at the Whisky Exchange blog.

My great-grandfather Felix, about whom I’ve blogged before, went down to the ice with Shackleton. He was part of the team that built the hut. He might have answered the ad mentioned at the start of the Whisky Exchange article: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.” He might have been the one who set down the crate of whisky that has been recovered. (He didn’t stay on the ice – he came back to New Zealand with the Nimrod after the hut was built, down there about a month all told.)

Felix used to live across the street from our new house. In his final years he used to sit on the step and chat to passers-by. I’d like to stand across from that step and lift this whisky in his honour. Genies, falling stars, and other miscellaneous wish-granters – please consider making it so.

(Note to my parents, my aunt, and others who have a filial interest in making me happy: this is a hundred-quid bottle. Don’t even think about it.)

Birthday & Akira

Facebook just reminded me that it’s my birthday shortly. I was genuinely surprised.

In past years I’ve asked people to gift me with a favourite quote, or indeed with any old quote, and add it in comments.

This year I’m going to ask you to contribute a link on Friday, to the usual Friday Linky post. Together, we will cast a magic spell of procrastination that will ensorcel offices throughout the world. So keep your eyes peeled for potential linky goodness.

Here’s one you can’t use because I got it first: Prince Gomolvilas’s vid about the white boy’s Akira that I posted about last week.

Looking at her

Trying to capture part of my experience of fatherhood –

– the moment she came into the world? It felt discontinuous, like the world was torn down and then rebuilt containing something new. The arrival of Willa as independent being, breathing and looking – it seemed to break causality. A person, where there had been no person.

The light was shining on her. It actually was, the lamps in the delivery suite were arranged to drop a circle of light around newborn Willa, but I suspect that my brain would have made it seem that way regardless. There was information coming off her in waves, more than I could take in. Like if those lamps had been shining in my eyes – only they weren’t, they were bouncing off my daughter first, then flooding me. I couldn’t see her. There was too much information.

I still can’t, seven weeks on. Other people comment on resemblances but I can’t see them. When I look at her, my brain goes into overdrive. I get more data than I can process. Everything.

I know it won’t last – the chemical rush, the neural repatterning, the imprinting, the magic will all subside. But, I suspect, will never entirely disappear. So call that the first thing I learned as a parent: parenthood is a new way of seeing. Literally.

ICONS: The Mastermind Affair

Warning: this post is about tabletop roleplaying games. Sorry if it makes no sense to you.

Mastermind Affair cover

Just released: The Mastermind Affair, PDF-format adventure for the ICONS RPG. (Written by me.)

It’s a hefty 45-page adventure suitable for most traditional-type Supers RPG settings – I guess it’s a bit more DC than Marvel in its shadings. It has a whole mess of villains, all with that great Dan Houser art – you can see some of them in the preview pages. It has a descriptive character aspect of which I’m inordinately proud, but I can’t tell anyone what it is because it’s a minor spoiler. It’s a neat adventure and if you like Supers stuff, you’ll get a kick out of this.

Best of all: it is only a buck ninety-nine, American. The publisher, Adamant Entertainment, has adopted an “app-pricing” model where everything costs just under US$2. This means you can get ICONS itself, the amazing full RPG game, for $1.99 as well. (Also my older stuff for the same price.) It’s a fascinating and exciting business move, and I think it’s the way all digital products will inevitably go – music downloads, e-books, online newspaper subscriptions, etc will all be getting massively cheaper as it sinks in that the value proposition is different to that of a physical product.

So, $1.99 for a fun adventure. That’s about $2.60 in NZ pesos. If you are of gaming ilk, do consider it.

(Sadly, although the playtesters are credited, their amazing characters are not included. You’ll need to ask them for descriptions.)