2007 - 2013 Gone in a blur

So, my last post on this blog was back in 2007. Nearly six years. And buggered if I can recall it being that long!

We're heading off overseas for four weeks on holiday later this year. A couple of days in LA so the kids can do Disneyland, then over to Bermuda for abour a fortnite for the wedding of one of the wife's cousins. Then the best bit, a couple of days in London on our way to an 11day Trafalgar tour of (some of) Europe. So looking forward to it!

We're getting the boys to blog their trips as a bit of homework while we're away, so I thought I should set a good example and resurrect this crusty, dusty old blog. Also - big ups to Google for not deleting old blogs!

Riting 6 - Shapeshifter

Shapeshifter


August 26
My palms are itching again. I can feel the hairs straining to break through. Its still two days until the full moon, but the urges are starting to surge.
I went to the Hardware Warehouse yesterday, stocked up on some stronger chains and locks. I got combination locks this time, I figure that I have enough trouble setting the things with my fingers, there's no way paws could unlock them.
The bolts I set into the basement floor seemed to hold up okay last month, so once I get the new chains locked down, I should be pretty damn secure.
On the walk home this afternoon I caught myself drooling at a young girl walking past. I could almost feel my fangs rending her throat, almost taste the hot, coppery blood on my tongue. I snapped myself out of it, but it was a near thing. I'm going to have to start isolating myself earlier.

August 27
Its not full til tomorrow night, but I can barely contain myself. I spent the day avoiding contact with people at work, tomorrow I'll call in sick. They're equal opportunity employers - so why should my time of the month be a problem? Tonight I'll be down in the basement checking the chains and locks. The way I've been feeling today, I'll have to do the lockdown well before sunset, wouldn't want any slip-ups.

August 28

August 29
It worked. When I woke up this morning, I was still chained up. Damned hungry though, went through the best part of a pack of bacon, and a half dozen eggs - all barely cooked. My muscles ache like a bastard though, they are good strong chains!
Back to work today. I don't think anyone even noticed I was away yesterday, not even Brian, and he's supposed to be my supervisor - he couldn't supervise his way out of a paper bag.



To be continued...

Riting 5 - Bete Noir

The shadows moved, that was the second sign that something was there, skulking, lurking, waiting. The first sign had been the hairs on the nape of my neck bristling. Now I stood under the street light and looked like a man hoping against the odds for a taxi. There was no chance of a cab in this neighbourhood, not at this time of night, hell, not even at high noon.

I had two options: number one - walk briskly in the other direction, pretending I knew nothing, and hope I got away with it. Even so, even if I made it home in one piece, someone wouldn't, not tonight.

Option two it was then.

I crossed the street, heading for the building next to the alleyway. Then I walked across the dark opening. As I was about to reach the pool of light at the other side I whirled, and ducked to the side just as it leapt for the spot where my shoulder blades would have been. A thought flashed across my mind, I wished I had my sword, three feet of shining metal would have made me feel a lot more confident. In its absence I drew my dirk from its sheath under my leather jacket, and unholstered my pistol with my left hand.

Its momentum carried it about five metres past me, but it landed lithely on all four paws and whipped around to face me, snarling. As it gathered itself to spring again I quickly put two bullets in its chest and one between the eyes. That slowed it only slightly, but enough to give me time to lunge forward and bury the dirk to the hilt in its chest. The thing took a few seconds to notice the foot of hardened silver alloy piercing its heart, then its eyes glazed, the dull reddish glow faded, and it collapsed, losing bulk and definition as it fell. By the time it hit the ground it was becoming transparent, fading away before my eyes. My blade rang out as it fell to the pavement. I reached down, picked it up and sheathed it. No need to clean it, all traces of the beast it had been embedded in moments before were gone. I pocketed the three silvery slugs that had also dropped from the disappearing corpse - waste not, want not.

I took a deep breath, glanced up at the full moon floating amongst the clouds, and carried on down the street. Looking distracted, apparently hurrying home, actually alert to every sound and movement, I continued on my patrol.

Cross posting

Below is a post I made on a thread at Public Address System. I wouldn't normally stick it up here, but I think it could bear development, and maybe turn into something useful. Plus its longer than than my usual posts, so I might as well get some mileage from all that typing...

I'd also note that "Chinese" as we use it in New Zealand is an umbrella term, referring to one or more of nationality, culture, language and ethnicity
Which has changed and is changing with more exposure to Chinese and Asian people and culture.
As far as my mother-in law is concerned, anyone from Mongolia to Indonesia and across to Myanmar is "Chinee". She's old school. Kiwis of my generation are more likely to be able to distinguish Korean from Chinese, from Malaysian, from Thai, etc. If only by the food.
My kids will be even more globalised, their school has more Korean kids than Maori, my youngest's best mates are boy from Pakistan, one from somewhere middle-eastern (I'm guessing northern middle-east, but I don't know - but we now know more about halal food than we used to - McD's ice-cream bad, but Wendy's is OK), a french kid and I think a kiwi lad as well.
We inherit a lot of baggage from our parents' generation as kids, then as we grow up, we either settle into the same ruts, or we compare that knowledge with what we find in the world, and build ourselves a new set of baggage to pass onto our kids. Hopefully a lighter set of luggage.
When I was at primary school 'Arab' was an abstract concept involving deserts & camels. 'Jew' was a derogatory term for someone who kept wanting a bit of your lunch. 'Chinese' was very exotic, and referred to sweet & sour wontons and chop suey.Over time I worked out that Arabia hasn't been a country for a long time, but the region has a much longer history of civilisation than anywhere my ancestors have called home. I had several friends who after a while turned out to be Jewish, and bore no resemblance at all to Shylock or whatsisname from Oliver Twist. I met plenty of Chinese students at high school and Uni, both fresh off the plane and first gen (spent a nice few days canoeing down the Wanganui River with one, which his parents didn't quite see the point of when he should have been studying, of course I couldn't see the point of all that studying when he was already dux).

Long story short, kids are dumb, but they can learn.

Sporadicness

In case you were wondering, I've started trying to do more writing again. Not doing too bad so far. I'll be trying to keep doing it nice and regularly, a few times a week. Who knows what'll happen with it.
I'm writing in Google Docs, so I can access it on whatever computer I happen to be using at the time. For starters I'm just writing whatever comes to mind at the time, ideas, stories, diaries, any crap that jumps into my head, just to get in the habit of writing and thinking about writing. I'll post most of the stuff I write as I go, so there should be piles of crap, some rough drafts, and maybe some work progressing through some further drafts towards being readable.
Bugger-all, if any people read this blog (cept for you sweetie) so it'll largely stand as a record of my thought processes and how I work as I build a piece of writing. I know I'm a keen starter, so there'll be lots of stuff begun here, but not too much of it will capture my attention and imagination enough to develop. Still, it could be fun to look back on one day.

Riting 3 - A story for the kids

Every night Dad reads the boys a story. The boys love listening to the stories and imagining that they are doing the things the people in the stories are doing.
One night, after the story, the boys and Dad are talking about the zoo and the animals there. Dad asks "If you could be an animal, any animal for just one day, what animal would you be?"
C wants to be a big cat, maybe a tiger, or a leopard.
Q wants to be an elephant, a really big one!
Dad tucks the boys in and kisses them goodnight.
They go to sleep thinking about themselves as their favourite animals.

C wakes up and stretches his long stripey back, flicks his long stripey tail and prowls through the hot, steamy jungle towards the river. He sees a flicker in the undergrowth from the corner of his emerald green eye. He freezes, watches, listens, sniffs. He sees a small movement, hears a furtive scurry, and smells something tasty. He keeps low, he moves slow. He is silent, he is a shadow, he is invisible. He is closer now, he can hear his dinner breathing, he can hear its heart beating, he can hear ... a noise behind him. There is a stamping, a trampling in the forest behind him. His dinner runs away. He turns and snarls at...

Q is hot and thirsty. He shoves the branches out of the way as he wanders down to the river for a drink and a swim. Small animals rush out of his way, no one wants to be under his feet when they hit the ground. He sniffs the air with his huge trunk, he smells trouble, just as he sees the tiger turn towards him, baring his teeth. He lifts his head, waving his trunk and showing his long sharp tusks, he trumpets a warning to the tiger. The tiger pauses, the elephant can see him thinking. The tiger decides. He slinks quickly off into the shadows. The elephant trumpets one more time, then carries on down to the cool water of the river.

Riting 2 - randomish ideas

SF
Genetic engineering. Mice, cows, sheep, rats. Human DNA. smart rats have been done before. maybe some other trait.
cows as surrogate wombs. genengineer a cow with a human womb, implant embryo, wait 9 months. popular with the too posh to push crowd.

Cheap power invented. fusion or something similar, generators the size of lawnmower engines can supply more than enough power for an average house. In mass v. cheap to build, run on water, or something almost as cheap, no moving parts. For less than the price of a cheap second hand car a household can be self-sufficient for all their energy needs. Cars run on ultra quiet, ultra powerful electric motors, never need filling up, bugger all maintenance. Greenhouse emissions drop to pre-industrial levels within a decade. Fossil fuels only needed for plastics, etc, supplies will now last much longer. Huge upsets in world order - oil-rich countries now in turmoil.

Cheap, easy food. With cheap power, some kind of vat grown food, not necessary haute-cuisine, but nutricious and available anywhere.

No need to work, with food & power being practically free, only need to work for luxuries. definitions of work will change.



Kids
If you could be any animal for one day, what would it be?

Riting

So, I do this every now & then. I resolve to do more writing, and maybe get my shit together to do a few stories, or something that might have some enduring value in the world. Then I scrawl a few pages of crap and lose interest. Gotta get my act together a bit better this time.


I read a lot. I like to read. I love to read. There are some really amazing books out there that have altered the way I look at, and think about, the world. Its time I gave something back.
Its intimidating though. All those people wrote those things which changed my life. How could I presume to emulate them, how could I have the hubris to think my meagre talents could have any such effect on the world. But then I think, well, I've read a lot of books, an awful lot of books. Most of them haven't rocked my world, most of them I haven't even considered reading twice. Not that I regret reading them, or that they haven't, in aggregate, affected who I am. But, they weren't what I would call amazing.

Then there's a few (but not too few to mention) that I have regretted reading, mostly I never finished them. There are a fair number of books I haven't finished, most of them are OK, even pretty good books, some of them are classics, they're just not my thing, not to my taste. But some of them were crap. Not just pulp, or cheesy, or badly written, or derivative; some of my favourite books are one or more of the above. These ones were a combination of all those things, plus a lack of imagination, and general crapness.

The point is, there's some really shit books out there, and a whole bunch of mediocre ones, and a huge range of good ones, and just a few really good ones. I may not be able to write a really good book, but surely I can manage a mediocre, or even better-than-average one. I know how to spell, I know what good writing looks like, I can string a tale together. If I put my mind to it I can come up with a decent idea, turn it into a plot and build a story, with actual characters in it that sound like real people and do things that people will want to read more about, so that my story won't be one of those few absolute stinkers.

Theodore Sturgeon famously said "Of course 90 percent of Science Fiction is crap. 90 percent of anything is crap". I don't expect to escape the truth behind that. Probably I will write piles of stuff noone in their right mind will want to read, and stacks of stuff that just isn't that interesting. But hopefully in amongst it all, there will be a few percent that will find an audience and a few percent of that which might actually be classed as not-too-bad.

Here's to reading.

Man I suck at this!

So, I just noticed its been a year since my last post.
Well, you didn't miss much, life goes on etc etc.
Still I can't help but feel guilty that my hordes of eager readers have had to go without for so long.
So I'll reminisce a bit.

I remember the old days, about 10 years back, when I was first on the 'net.
Before the word blog was invented. There were sites I admired, ones I read religiously, checking often to see if they had been updated. Some are long gone - hey, scratch that! The site I was going to use as an example of long gone is being updated again! Wow, EOD is back, how long has this been going on? Why did nobody tell me? Well so much for this post, I'm off to read www.eod.com - the Entirely Other Day.
See you in a year...