Month: August 2004

I know some of you use this blog to check that I’m not dead.
I’m not dead.
That is all.

Athletics always bored me.
Actually, most sport bored me. I am less bored now. Some sports, basketball to take one obvious example, I am actively enraptured by. But mostly – sport is not my thing.
Athletics was a particularly boring example. Okay, some people run. And then they stop. Hmmm.
I’ve watched some athletics at this Olympics, just like I’ve watched some at previous Olympiads. And you know what? It is cool, man. I like watching it. There was something in the paper today about how new technology is making it so much more fascinating – you get to be so close to the athlete, to see their face as they push themselves, compete, succeed or fail.
The runners seem so fast to me now, when once upon a time they seemed to be running at precisely the speed runners should run.
The high jumpers, decathletes, hell, all the track and field – I love watching it. It fills me with a kind of positive existential energy, if that makes any sense. It is thrilling.
Meanwhile, sadly, the NZ mens basketball team has been scorched in its final game, losing big to Australia of all people. A gutwrenching win-loss tally; we came close so many times but couldn’t quite win.
Brilliant news, however – the womens team, so long in the shadow of the men, has fought through to the top 8! I am elated for them.
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Oddest thing about the Destiny Church rally that all the NZ bloggers are talking about – in one report, I see the National Front made an appearance. In a photo elsewhere, I see an Israeli flag being waved. Stephen partly explains (from the comments in Chinashop, well worth a read in full):
“My informants tell me the Israeli flag bearers are a bunch of so-called “Messianic Jews”, ie former Jews who have been sucked into fundamentalist Christianity with the promise that they can somehow retain their Judaism. (Funnily enough, only missionaries and other apostates agree with this: you’d think that would be a tipoff). Hence their fondness for stars of David, etc: it’s how they reassure themselves.
Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, they’re not Jewish, they are deeply confused Christians.”
Any march where the National Front, who I understand to be behind the Jewish cemetery desecrations, is sharing ground with people waving an Israel flag – man, something is very very non-right.

In the Derby Gaol, there’s a particularly haunted room. The condemned man’s cell, where prisoners were kept for their last night before execution. There are dozens of accounts of people seeing strange things in here, and seeing things move, or feeling someone touching them.
That’s where Cal slept.
(I didn’t sleep at all. Yarning, not freaking, FWIW.)
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Here my voice a couple times in the doco here.

So the doco on D&D’s 30th anniversary is being broadcast tomorrow.
For those who came in late, I’m probably on it, as I ran a session for the microphone. They may use none/some/lots of the session, I dunno.
I’m only a little nervous about how it’ll turn out – the guy making it seemed very on to it, his angle was solid and I have thought through media enough that I optimised what I was doing for an audio audience. (Hmm. Is an audience for video a vidience?) Still, things can turn out wonky nonetheless, and I was only a small part of the big picture.
NPR in the States ran its own, equivalent, doco yesterday. The gamers they used were the centre of the story, which we won’t be, and they sounded like good people. The whole thing was good – but not perfect. It gave a strong impression that there are no women involved in gaming ever, for example – I made sure that there was a female voice in our group to cut this question off at the pass.
Anyway, no point talking about it until it’s out. Saturday 3.30pm UK time, BBC Radio 4, available for download on the BBC Radio 4 site afterwards. I’m gonna listen to it driving through the English countryside, unless I’m locked up in a Lovecraftian asylum after witnessing Things Man Was Not Meant To Know in our sleepover at Derby tonight.
Speaking of which, I must pack.
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The Tall Blacks beat Serbia-Montenegro, current basketball world champs, at the Olympics! While Spain is probably beyond our reach, we are able to knock off Argentina, too, they’re vulnerable… let’s hope things go the Kiwi’s way. Its so damn good to see this team taking names!

Brad once said my hiphop name would be MC NoShame. I think my shame glands have expanded since those days.
Svend has been recounting his tales of Edinburgh at Festival time. Yeah man. I ran into (Kiwi comedienne) Cal Wilson on the street recently, I was talking to my Cal on cell at the time so just kind of walked straight past. CalW was waiting for a taxi, and when MyCal finished talking to me I thought about turning around and going back to say hi. I decided not to. It seemed like a vaguely sad course of action that would embody all the saddest aspects of that “Kiwis are all one big family aren’t we when we’re overseas aren’t we aren’t we please validate me!” tendency you see now and then.
My main memories of Cal Wilson are going to see her standup show ‘Telebimbo’ in the late 90s, and her performance in a pilot for a shameless NZ-Friends-ripoff ‘Flatmates’ as the potential love interest of Kevin Smith (RIP). Now ‘Flatmates’ was dire and my primary recollection of ‘Telebimbo’ is that sitting around with Stuart, Michael, David, Svend, Pearce, etc was just as funny.
My other main memory is that she was hot as a sweating chili pepper.
And while I’m thinking back on NZ’s dubious comedy heritage, does anyone know who those guys were that VUW orientation year, who yelled out ‘look! Arnold Schwarzenneger is having an accident!’ to summon a crowd to the dungeon cafe? Because dammit if that joke hasn’t stuck with me all these many years. It wasn’t even funny then.
Cal and I have just planned out some of our trip through Ireland. We roughly know where we’re going – basically, starting in Dublin and going anticlockwise around the whole island. Sa-weet. Very excited.
Lordy. My brain is tired. I still haven’t written up the Paris escapade for morgueatlarge. Will try to do it tomorrow night before we embark on our expedition to spend the night at Derby’s Haunted Gaol.
(If anyone reading wants to sign up to the morgueatlarge travel email list, just fire off a blank email to morgueatlarge-subscribe@topica.com.)

You know, Phase IV. The one with the ants.
You people. I dunno.
Yeah, we’ve got a Svend staying with us, funnily enough he’s here for the festival but not here For The Festival if you know what I mean, and I think you do, nudge nudge. Oh, crikey, now I’ve innuendoed all over my explanation. Hmm. Ah well, carry on. Yes, Svend is here, filling our evenings with wit, wisdom and a rather large amount of catchup gossip. I know what you’re all up to, you people! (Yes, Giffy, including you. Especially you.)
And we went to Monster Mash for dinner. When the waitresses (and they’re waitresses, not wait staff or waitpersons) take your order, they sit at your table. They all do this, every time. It’s a strategy. It works. It makes me feel at home. Lovely.
Um, that’s all. Chavez not ousted, again! Tall Blacks nearly beat Italy! Tall Ferns beat Korea! Peurto Rico beat the US “Dream *cough* Team *splutter*”!

Shortly before going to bed last night, in our bedroom, a fly buzzed past my nose. I thought to myself, bugger. I need to evict that fly or it will wake me up by buzzing insistently in my ears at 6 in the morning.
Kindly, the fly waited until 7 in the morning. Gah.
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Cal and I wandered into the middle of town yesterday and decided we’d like to see something at the fringe. Ideally, something free. That happens sometimes, you walk around and someone gives you free tickets. So we walked, but evidently our ‘give us free tickets’ faces were slightly too desperate and haunted, like a guy with too-prominent car keys at a speed dating night, and we were left unmolested.
So we went into the box office at one venue, which happened to be selling Flight of the Conchords tickets, and figured we might as well see how far in advance we needed to buy them. F O the C (which is sort of a street term for Flight of the Conchords) have been doing very well again, selling out right from day one, getting good big notices and murmurs of winning the Perrier this year. And the nice person at the box office said, ‘well we just had some returns so you can go tonight if you like’.
So we went to see F O the C last night. And it was good. Everyone laughed. I laughed a lot.
Special irony-filled punchline: right after buying tickets, we walked outside and were immediately offered free tickets to a show! But it was too late because we were already going to see F O the C! If only we’d found the guy first, how different our night would have been!

All the downgloom I was feeling about the spreading influence of racism was nicely countered last night by watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. The Olympics have always been fiercely nationalistic, despite the ideal, but racism has no home there. (As far as the two can be separated, at least.)
And its hard to stay gloomy when you’re seeing athlete after athlete marching into the stadium and grinning like they were the luckiest people in the world. Which they were, I guess.
The roar of applause for the Palestinian team cheered me up too.
I only watched bits of it, managing to miss New Zealand among others, but it was a happy occasion nonetheless. I watched more than I did of the 2000 opening ceremony, at least. (Cough cough.)

So the festival has begun here in Edinburgh. [grumpy local] And the streets are crowded and the buses are always running late and there are morons everywhere grah grah grah[/grumpy local] Flight of the Conchords had a cover byline on today’s Metro and were the cover page of the Festival insert. This is good. They are, according to Metro, tipped to win the Perrier this year.
Cool.
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Feeling deeply disturbed by the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Makara on the heels of a smaller, similar act in Thorndon. My unease about the trend towards racism in New Zealand of a few months back has returned. The extremist forces of ethnic fear are particularly hateful. Normally I’m more concerned with the small-scale creep of prejudice into the mainstream discourse – but in the past week or so I’ve had a few contacts with the extreme prejudice that will never be mainstream. It’s sickening.
I know that the incredibly vast majority of New Zealanders are equally sickened. But I hate that there is a National Front. And I hate that Don Brash has been playing the race game. They are two extreme ends of the same nasty prejudices and I hate them both.
We are meant to be Better Than This in New Zealand.
Rationally, I know there’s lots more to say and to be said. These issues are not simple. (Actually, the cemetery issue is simple – it’s hateful and disgraceful and wrong.) But all I have at the moment is this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that the worst things I’m seeing on this side of the world are going to be at home as well.
Ugh. Enough. I need to sleep. Go read David’s blog, it is funny.

Back from Paris. Was great. Yes. More to come.
Old lady at airport: How do you make a potato puff?
Cal: I don’t know.
Old lady at airport: Chase it around the garden.