Amazing Triple Action 2 released

First there was issue 1:

Now there is issue 2:

Click on the images to go to the product pages. I am now the author of a series, instead of a one-off. This feels Good.
I’m liking the writing. It’s going quite well at present, although I’m still deliberately balancing more towards ‘interest’ than ‘income’ so money is light. Diving heavily into Ron the Body novel stuff, which is great because it’s been a long time coming but the time has been put to good use in preparing myself and knowing better what I’m trying to do.
And the ATA stuff continues to be a lot of fun, and is being received quite well. I have a pitch for another RPG gig in prep, just waiting on concept art at this stage.
Oh, have I even mentioned here? I don’t think so… I’m one of the three founding voices of Gametime, a groupblog delivering a Kiwi-centric voice to the global conversation about roleplaying games. Worth a glance if you’re interested in that sort of thing…

Shihad – Wellington, Jan 6

There are only a few musical acts I get all fanboy over.
Shihad is one of them.
First chance to see them live since 2001 or so, at the Welly Town Hall gig where I smashed out one of my front teeth in the mosh pit.
I am excited.
Shihad official site
Shihad on wikipedia
Shihad on myspace, currently offering three of my fave songs ‘You Again’, ‘Deb’s Night Out’ and ‘Saddest Song In The World’ for your listening pleasure.

[mediawatch] DomPost vs. Morse

(It’s taken me a while to get around to this one.) On October 25, on page A13 (thus squarely in the news pages, right above ‘Petrol theft gang leader jailed’), the DomPost published a profile of Valerie Morse.
Valerie Morse is heavily involved a large number of protest/activism groups in Wellington. Most recently, she appeared in the news as spokesperson for Peace Action Wellington which opposed the arms conference at Te Papa.
The title of the article is Doth she protest too much?, which signals some of what is to come. Check out sentence four in the article:

“Kia ora,” she says, answering the phone in a syrupy American accent.”

Syrupy? Syrupy? The contempt just drips off the page. But look a bit deeper – what is the reason for this sentence? Why is it there? How many other profiles quote the person answering the phone? No, clearly we are meant to draw some conclusions from this. She’s effectively American, and she answers the phone with Kia Ora – that puts her in the negative categories of ‘interfering foreigner’ and also ‘politically correct do-gooder’. These categories are invoked beneath the surface of the text and colour everything that follows.
And. incredibly, that kia ora is is the only direct quote from Morse in the entire article.*
It gets even more amazing later on:

She is what is known in the wider world as a rent-a-protester and what is known in journalism as a rent-a-quote: she will talk and be photographed every time, naked or clothed.
But last week she would not talk about how she makes a living, or whether her pay packet consists solely of payments from organisations funded by government grants.

This ties in to an earlier mention that her Masters thesis was paid for by a government grant. Clearly the intent is to put Morse in the category of “living at taxpayer’s expense”, much like the hated dole bludger.
In the whole article, headlined as it is, and with the rent-a-protestor bit given boxout treatment to draw the eye, Morse is given precisely 13 words** in which to defend herself:

Her response is that her passions are all joined by a common struggle against domination and power.

Naturally, this rather sensible explanation is buried in the second half of the article and never referred to again.
Think what you will of Morse’s causes, and her behaviour in championing them, but this article is nothing but an outright personal attack. And, I reiterate, on the news pages, right above “Petrol theft gang leader jailed’.
Incredible.
* Well, there is the sentence She would say only that she worked with a number of “community collectives”, and technically that is a direct quote. But, come on.
** By comparison, a police inspector who sees her at protests gets about three times as much space to talk about her.

On Halloween

(Originally posted as a comment to Jenni’s LJ, here)
Halloween is a great example of how culture and tradition works.
Definitely Halloween as it’s known here is driven by US influences. As I understand it, it was kinda dead here until the movie E.T. came out and made a big deal out of trick or treating. The commercial influences are a big driver but we’re slowly working out a way of integrating it into our culture – and it seems the main way we do it is by ignoring it except for holding costumed/spooky events at the time.
Halloween is indeed timed with the harvest, but it’s more than just a harvest festival – Samhain marks the end of summer and the beginning of winter, and is a way of talking about the deep psychological effects of the seasons (which are far more ‘real’ in the northern hemisphere than here in the southern). This is why Halloween is a spooky night – the ghosts and ghouls and spirits are connected with night time, and the long nights begin now.
Except here in NZ, they don’t. Rightly speaking, our spooky festival should be linked in time with our harvest festival, and we don’t have either. I firmly believe that our culture would benefit from a spooky festival, because I think one of the fundamental human experiences is to be afraid of the dark and the unknown and celebrating fear and mystery allows us to process and tame that fundamental experience.
One of the signs that New Zealand is such a young culture is the fact that our festivals are nascent and clearly still settling down.
Our family-bonding-event is Christmas (in the US this role is taken by Thanksgiving). It is slowly losing its midwinter associations and gaining associations with the beginning of summer. I think our Christmas is well on the way to becoming a quite distinct celebration attuned to our cultural needs; here it means the beginning of reliable good weather, the time of rest and family holidays and getaways, and also the bonding of family ties – all these strands fit well together, so I think our Christmas is gonna keep getting more and more distinctive as it goes along.
Our Festival-Of-National-Myth is currently being fought out between ANZAC day and Waitangi Day, with ANZAC day a clear winner for the moment but neither really winning in the grand scheme of things. Eventually we will become able to celebrate ourselves, and one of these two days will be when we choose to do it. Unless we end up a republic, and Republic Day will win out.
Our social-structural-justification day is Labour Day, and like such days all around the world (except for places where the social structure is heavily contested) is low-key but not going anywhere.
I’m still unsure what Easter is in our scheme. I’m not sure we as a culture have any particular need for a chocolate festival, and despite the best efforts of Christianity this most sacred event is becoming just that. I believe that unless it fulfills some deep cultural need its status will keep eroding until it becomes entirely incidental to our cultural landscape. Again, the lack of clearly-defined seasons stops this from really working as a beginning-of-winter celebration – there’s nothing in it at all that relates to those ideas. I think Easter is our most incoherent festival and will be the one to change in character the most in our lifetimes.

Nails Pinnacles Sudden Death

This past weekend a bunch of good folk went camping down near Cape Palliser, on the south coast of the North Island. The weather had been horrid lately but we chanced a window of clear skies and warmth, and though the wind came in solidly through the night and there was a bit of rain mostly we got out unscathed.
The one-nighter was to celebrate the birthday of Leon (King and God), and many glasses of mead and whisky and such were raised in his honour. The Alligator also introduced all and sundry to his game Nails, which may just be the greatest drinking game of all time, although bunch of elderly lightweights that we are we didn’t quite get as hammered as we could have.
Shortly after arriving we embarked on the easy trek upstream to the Putangirua Pinnacles, a very strange environment indeed where eighty-foot cliffs were made of soft-packed stone constantly eroding; every step was accompanied by the clatter of pebbles falling somewhere, and brushing the walls would cause the outer layer to collapse. It was an invigorating and eerie place, the soft soil’s collapse making a weird rippling landscape of deep channels and odd recesses.
The Pinnacles were used as a location in Lord of the Rings, in the approach to the Paths of the Dead in the third movie; here’s a pic of the location on a LOTR site that gets across the weirdness of the place quite well.
What it’s like among the Pinnacles – pic from theonering.net
(I’ve been trying to find a screencap online showing the landscape as it appears in the film, but no luck.)
—
And after returning, shaggy-brained and wind-blown, from the camp I had a couple hours to rest before an Indoor Netball final, which was against our arch-nemesis team – we’d won by a last-second goal in our last match. This time they stormed out to a big lead in the first quarter and we spent the rest of the match creeping back into it, only taking the lead once with a couple minutes to go, and then ending regular time on a draw! So it went to a shootout, which again was a draw, and then a sudden-death shootout which our chosen shooter managed to win! Victory, hard-fought, against a team you really respect – that’s one of the pleasures of sport right there.
Although I think it helped put my back out. Owie.

SGA 6: Give It A Try

I started off by recommending that everyone out there go and see An Inconvenient Truth. I know I emerged from that film filled with concern and feeling the importance of action, of actually doing something instead of just thinking about it. I’ll wager a good portion of you reading this had exactly the same experience.
Have you actually done anything yet? No. I haven’t either.
So, it’s time to change that. Give my Small Group Action idea a try. It’s easy.
Just pop over to your email right now, think of one other person who might be interested, and send them an invitation. Maybe something like: “I’ve been thinking about An Inconvenient Truth. Interested in doing something achievable in response?”
It is just that easy.
What next? Still easy. Just grab the very handy SGA guide for a one-page step-by-step. (Also includes all the potential actions from the previous post in this series!)
SGA Guide, .pdf, 92K
I know people are interested in these posts – I’ve had more verbal feedback on this series than on anything else I’ve ever put online. So I hope this has been interesting for you, and most of all I hope it sparks you to try out the SGA idea. It’d be great if a few more groups got underway to go with the ones already happening!
Right, enough from me on this, for now at least. If you have any questions, just drop me an email or leave a comment here. I’d love to help. Or just ramble at you, whichever. 🙂
Now go send that email!

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I lost 30 grams of weight without changing my diet one bit! Thanks for the clippers magic, Fishy! Good to hang with you guys.
—
The wind managed to rip the roof off our conservatory. Huh. Stupid weather! And just when I’ve acquired a taste for sitting out there in the morning sun (when we have morning sun as opposed to morning torrential rain and howling wind). I suppose this demonstrates nothing so much as proof that things fall apart/the centre cannot hold/especially in a southerly.
—
Saw Kora play Sunday night – wicked set. I liked but didn’t love their EP, but the live show carried out the beauty of good gigness. Their support, Budspells, was a surprise as they took their opening dub/reggae sound (appropriate for a band named Budspells) into rap and then into uptempo house/dub fusion stuff (rather unexpected for a band named Budspells) – the crowd was going wild for them. Hella good, and I came away converted. Only downside were the few foolish bodies who were a bit of a nuisance.
Were You A Fool? Try our quiz and find out!
(1) Did you spend most of the gig with your back to the stage and your fists in the air, surveying the crowd for hot chicks to hit on? (Yes – 5 points, No – 0 points)
(2) Did you walk backwards into me from the side so I turned around to get a face-full of hair? (Yes – 3 points, No – 0 points)
(3) If yes to (2) did your hair have the approximate dampness of a sponge that’d been sitting in a lukewarm pool of water for an hour? (Yes – 2 points, No – 0 points)
(4) If yes to (2) did you do the same thing again half an hour later on the other side of the room? (Yes – 8 points, No – 0 points)
(5) Did you carry a full wine glass or handle of beer into a wildly dancing tightly-packed crowd? (Yes – 2 points, No – 0 points)
(6) Did you leave the broken remnants of your smashed glass/handle on the dancefloor so vigorously dancing people were hopping up and down on shards of glass? (Yes – 7 points, No – 0 points)
Scoring:
0 points: maybe not a fool.
1 or more points: fool.
—
Bad taste in my mouth from being tempted to look at an unpleasant blog site. It’s a local version of one of those where White Neonazi types put up photos and address details of people involved in peace actions or who happen to be Jewish. I stopped after finding a friend prominently featured and a couple other acquaintances namechecked.
Still, it’s reassuring really. There are only two or three people involved in the whole enterprise, and they’re laughably inept and certain to be under heavy police surveillance. This isn’t a big city where that kind of thing can actually form into a proper subculture without check. As much as it disturbed me to see a friend depicted and abused on the site, if I actually start treating the site as anything more than a joke then it’s sold me on its own bullshit.
(Similar sites in other countries with larger population bases are a different kettle of fish, of course.)

SGA 5: To Do What, Exactly?

Okay, so in the previous four entries I’ve talked about how the most functional setup for action is small, short-term groups pursuing concrete outcomes. This leaves one great big question to be answered: what the heck can small, short-term groups actually achieve?
Back in June I got some people together to brainstorm some answers. (A great wee session, mentioned in one of those little elusive allusive comments here.) Here’s what we came up with.
Examples of things small groups can do
Raise the Profile of an Issue
– put an issue on the agenda somewhere
– get government to deal with it
– make companies/businesses/etc. aware of it
Gather Information For Informed Choices
– spread the burden of research and the benefit of knowledge around the group
– find out the merits of, say, organic food, or different energy companies
– information will inevitably be spread further than the group as well
– this extends to things like local elections – who is standing, what are their platforms, etc
– when making a change in consumer behaviour, write to all the companies/businesses concerned explaining the reason for your change
Support Your Own Behaviour Change
– can be hard to make changes alone, and especially hard to maintain changes
– with group support, can make changes in, say, energy use or food buying habits
– same principle as a group of people going on a diet together
Contact A Stakeholder
– can contact MPs (local or MP with interest in the area), foreign governments, councils, businesses, NGOs, community organizations, officials in a ministry, media organizations
– can write letters or make a visit
– can raise an issue, ask a question, seek information, seek advice or clarification, express concern or support, propose an alternative route, ask how alternatives could be considered, ask how their plan can be supported…
– because there tend to be few such communications, they can be very powerful. For example, media organizations are very sensitive about advertising revenue and pay close attention to letters received.
– do not assume a stakeholder knows all of the context around an issue – you may be able to offer useful information
– conversely, the stakeholder may have thought the issue through in more detail than you initially realize – give them a chance to explain themselves and gather information on their approach
Spread Information
– to increase understanding/awareness of an issue, or correct misunderstanding
– organize a public meeting – find good speakers, organise venue, publicity, invite media and/or community
– develop and hand out flyers in a key location
– organization a small and focused demonstration, invite the media
– lobby a media entity to interview a key person
– fly posting, stencils and graffiti, websites, culture jamming…
Bring About Change In An Environment
– an environment structures the behaviour within that environment – changing it can support and drive behaviour change
– for example, a group who work in the same building could lobby for a new recycling policy within the building
Direct Action
– tree planting, beach cleaning
– other kinds of volunteer work that are not long-term commitments
Conduct Research
– a small group could conduct a simple survey and publicise the data
– the survey should be something concrete and not an opinion survey
– for example, an evaluation of the condition of bus shelters in different suburbs cross-referenced against the average income of the suburbs could indicate inequity in distribution of resources to maintain these shelters
Interact with Government
– find out what is going on, what decisions are pending
– develop and make submissions on coming legislation