The Megapope

A Short List

2012-02-08T22:04:00.001+13:00

1) Living by the bush means occasionally taking a tee shirt off the washing line and having things like this leap for your jugular.

Tamsyn gave a shriek while I merely leapt backwards 30 paces and landed on the roof of the house in a combat ready pose. Or something. I used to be fine with wetas, and then one crawled down the chimney of a bedroom I had in Hamilton and up onto my toe while I was in bed.

I beat the little shit to death with a fire poker.

2) Postgrad design schooling starts soon! I would have been working on my masters this year, but after the Great Toe Disaster of 2011 I'm completing the post graduate program instead. Ah well, whatever doesn't kill us is merely really irritating. Seriously though I'm looking forward to the brain exercise, and I'll also be doing freelance work as it comes my way so I'll be a busy panda.

3) Health is up and down. Blood sugar is still screwy, brain-meats tend to go mushy during the day. The dreaded mid afternoon-itis is the worst, when I just kinda sit there dribbling a bit unless I'm out of the house moving about in some way. Weaning myself onto stronger diabeetus meds, with the hope that a gradual approach will both lower the blood sugar and prevent the, uh, flushing effects.

4) Mark's coming over from the UK for a week! He's over for a wedding up in Auckland then down in Wellington at the end of February. Looking forward to some geeky get togethers with the lads plus various outings aroond toon. Andy has a roleplaying game for us to play that involves forming a heavy metal band. I'm hoping we can all find some mullet wigs for the occasion.

Domestic Bliss

2012-02-02T21:46:00.000+13:00

Today marks the end of the Long Web Drought of 2012, the terrifying two whole days of having to do things like "read books", or "make conversation" in order to pass the free hours. The 80's called, they want their leisure time back.

As it turned out such leisure was scant as Tamsyn and I moved out of our old flat on Tuesday and up into the wilds of Brooklyn (Wellington) into our first ever couple-only cohabitation. Let me tell you, gentle readers, that nothing lends one a sense of achievement quite like wrestling a couch down a narrow flight of stairs in a strong wind while getting rained on. Our local moving companies are clearly veritable gods among men, as I was left a wobbly mess with dead arms (though I'm sure 6 months of forced inactivity has a say in that).

The movers we hired (for some reason just to get our bedroom stuff and not the lounge items we'd been keeping at Tamsyn's parents' garage, hence the couch wrestling adventures) were totally awesome, very fast and didn't drop anything. Before you could say 'oh look it's a house full of our mainly dry belongings' we had a house full of mainly dry belongings. The main exception being the benighted couch, which is coming along nicely thanks to the ministrations of the dehumidifier that came with the flat.

STAGE 1: LOUNGEOCOLYPSE

STAGE 2: THE ARRANGENING

STAGE 3: LOUNGEOSITY

We even got a rug! It really ties the room together.

Over the next week or so we'll be going crazy hog wild and purchasing such frivolous toys as a toaster, vacuum cleaner, some more nice prints for the walls, maybe some more shelving (can't have enough shelving, yo), bear traps for visiting Jehova's Witnesses, some kind of gun emplacement for keeping away all the little flying critters that come with living right by some otherwise beautiful native bush... the usual stuff.

Soooo yeah. Obligatory new love nest post: COMPLETE! Next up I'll be going on about exciting plans for the new year, including a blawg project that I'll be undertaking with the young dude that I'm mentoring. Should be fun!

To Recap (part 2)

2012-01-25T19:28:00.002+13:00

In which I talk about.... THE FAMILY CHRISTMAS™

Because frankly I can only talk about my toes and general health for so long before the urge to run screaming down the street and off the edge of the Wellington waterfront overtakes me, and most, possibly some of you wouldn't want that.

So yeah, this year Tamsyn and I got into an airplane and went up to Hamilton for the holiday festivities. It was Tamsyn's first year away from her parents over Christmas; bravely venturing north to the land of my youth with a safari hat and protective clothing. I of course was struck by the urge to tell her about every landmark and street the moment we landed, which mainly involved a litany of haunts that my chums and I had loitered in, engaging in mostly legal intoxicants and rolling dice with too many sides.

In one of those small world syndrome moments that are the hallmark of the kiwi experience, our taxi driver who cheerfully attempted to rip us off on the drive from the airport knew my youngest brother and used to drive him home from the pubs all the time.

Something that struck me going up to Hamilton this time was the difference in style demographics. I managed to see one hipster the entire time I was up there. Just one! There are more than that in Palmerston North, a town named the most boring place on Earth by John Cleese! He was a teenaged, spotty creature, dressed in the appropriate garb and shuffling along behind his parents. More of a proto-hipster really, yet to hatch properly but on the right track. But otherwise it was a bit of a shock seeing the default uniform of polo shirts, singlets and shorts. Certainly there was a profusion of popped collars. The only real contrast to this was a healthy dollop of bogans, resplendent in their plumage of black, heavy metal tee shirts, ripped jeans and mullets. Glorious.

Christmas day itself covered all the requisite bases of excellent food, drinking, family and some presents. We had lunch at my middle brother's place, and I was used as a climbing frame by my nieces and nephew and conquered a small mountain of delicious things. We even sang grace holding hands before eating and I managed to not die from embarrassment as Tamsyn watched on with a wide grin. After that was a (slightly) lighter dinner at my youngest brother's house, also attended by uncles, cousins, one Gran, a rabbit and two cats. Later in the evening Sing Star was perpetrated in the lounge, while most of the guys hid in the garage, playing darts and occasionally farting which let me tell you is the height of comedy after a couple of gins.

We also talked to my Nan, uncle and aunt in the UK over Skype, which mainly involved everyone crowding in front of the computer and shouting a lot while a neighbouring, aged Elvis impersonator went through some songs in the lounge.

Oh, and special shout out to my cousin's trifle, which was delicious and well worth going into a diabetic coma for.

Other highlights of the trip include a picnic down by the Waikato river with Scott, a walk through the Hamilton gardens with my dad, and a fun night at Calum's, where most of the boys managed to meet up for several drinks and a whole lot of nerd talk, much to Tamsyn's bemusement.

The flight back was just as blissfully uneventful as the trip up. The in-flight biscuit was pretty good.

To Recap (part 1)

2012-01-24T00:40:00.001+13:00

Welp, it's 2012 and this blog's been neglected like a forlorn old badger in the back of the garden for too long. So let's get this party started.

When last we left our hero...

I've been pain meds free for many weeks now, and enjoyed a clear head for a while. I marvelled at my ability to not walk into stationary objects and how I could think all kinds of things without saying them. Amazing stuff. And then my constantly high blood sugar, caused by the foot injury, caught up with me and I was rocking the fuzzy head, mood swings and zoning out like afternoon maths class.

A visit to the doctor resulted in stronger doses of metformin... which worked, also causing nausea, stomach cramps and, uh, extended periods of peaceful reading in a small room, blessedly equipped with an extractor fan. Some experimenting and several miserable days later, I think I've found a balance of spacing the medication throughout the day so that my blood sugar levels stay right without the side effects.

My toes, probably in fear for their damn lives after all this, are quietly behaving themselves. I was given these cute little protective tubes to put on them when out and about, which let me wear my normal boots. I've been for a couple of walks now with a walking stick, sometimes using it for balance, other times just having it on hand to smite the ungodly or pretend it's a laser rifle when I think nobody is watching.

In other, much more interesting news, Tamsyn and I are getting our own place! We move into the new flat at the end of this month! Just look at all these exclamation marks! It's by the bush in the Brooklyn hills, reasonably close to the local shops and cheap enough to make saving up for... things... pretty easy. I'm hugely looking forward to renting our own place. Being able to make breakfast wearing nothing but an apron to protect the sensitive regions is something I could technically do right now, but I feel the resulting counselling bills from my flatmate would dampen the experience.

That's all for now. Watch this space, I feel it coming alive once again. Happy 2012 everyone.

Dan 1, Toes 1

2011-12-01T14:26:00.001+13:00

While writing up a new post, I discovered that I'd accidentally left a draft unpublished. Here it is.

I call it a draw. Went back to the doctor's today and miraculously the non stick silicon bandaging had done the job and my patchy big toe has now stopped leaking. HUZZAH!

It's currently got an interesting honeycomb pattern where the fleshy bits have granulated through the holes in the bandage, but that's happened before and isn't a biggie. The prognosis at this stage is that I need to keep off it as much as possible for quite some time. It's going to take many moons for my toes to regrow the usual layers of skin where the gangrene was lurking about and I need to be careful with them for the forseeable future. Which means a visit to the podiatrist tomorrow to see why my specialist footwear boat-shoes took the skin off my feet in the first place.

Withdrawals are pretty much done and dusted. Felt a bit dizzy over the last few days but the worst is well behind me. The best thing about tramadol that I didn't really think about until the benefit was no longer in place, is that they let me keep my feet up on the couch all day without getting sore, crampy stiff legs. I want to run through the meadows like a crazed wildebeest and I can't. What is this!

Aaaaaand that's life. Doing some freelancey bits, looking forward to Tamsyn's work Christmas function this weekend, keeping up with the housework when I'm able, working on portfolio and cartoony things, making phonecalls to bureaucratic organisations and being on hold a lot, watching Luther with Tamsyn, occasionally painting some models.

What a Weaner

2011-11-22T17:46:00.001+13:00

Welp, today is the first day of weaning down to one tramadol a day before getting off the stuff. LET'S DO THIS! It's the plan for the next three days with the three remaining pills that I have left, taking one every evening before bed.

So far I don't feel too bad... kinda prickly and a little bit dizzy on occasion, moments of light headedness and about 23.5% clumsier than usual*. My body's had a fairly potent cocktail of pain relief rocking through its system for the last four months, trashing the place and not doing the dishes. So I don't blame it for being all like 'waaah gimme back my toys!'

Oh, and aching limbs. Kinda feels like the onset of a mild fever, really. WHINE, WHINE, WHINE!

*****

In other news, it looks like I may be partnering up with another mentee. One of the mentors in my group is looking at going overseas, so we're meeting up tomorrow for a chat and stuff. Her mentee is really cool and enjoys nerdy games like Magic the Gathering so I suspect we'll get on just fine.

*As measured on the Hilarious Toe Stubbing and Spoon Dropping Index

Toe Saga

2011-11-18T10:31:00.001+13:00

The podiatrist, a large lipped fleshy man who looked like he was once a rugby prop, tutted at the underside of my toe as if it had personally offended him. Perhaps it had. His ears stood out indignantly.

"This toe" he announced, "is missing all of the skin underneath. You've taken it off." I looked, and he was right. My recent adventures in hobbling had all been for naught. Endurance at the price of precious, precious toe meat. I was suitably chastised, and helpfully held my toes apart while he applied the bandaging and iodine strips.

I caught the bus for most of the way home and hobbled slowly up Webb street, passed by a young man on methamphetamine who was having a pretend conversation into his cell phone about breaking some other young man's spine at his apartment. He eyed me nervously as he strode by to make sure I was listening. I was, but most of my attention was on the baby birds, who were singing their hearts out without pretense.

The Post You've All Been Waiting For

2011-11-13T15:24:00.001+13:00

Don't even try and pretend otherwise. Well, here they are!

Introducing the latest range of PEDORS© trainers by FUCKUGLY® footwear specialists! Made by hateful Welsh shoe-miners high up in a hidden Appalachian mountain retreat, these specially designed foot boats will literally embarrass away your toe pains! And loved ones!

PEDORS© trainers are made from a composite of space age polymers, old bouncy castles and pure distilled ugliness, the latter painstakingly harvested from baboons arses, British radio presenters and every car created by Toyota ever. They are guaranteed to be completely fireproof, as any flame will fizzle out and slink away rather than be publicly seen burning these shoes.

The team at FUCKUGLY™ believe in Function beating the crap out of Form and chucking it out the window, leaping out after it and riding it screaming down to the pavement below and using it as a nice soft cushiony landing. This is inherent in every part of the shoe, from the 80s Velcro fastenings that obstinately fail to do up by themselves like in Back To The Future 2, to the 'floating rubber dingy' design ethos that permeates throughout.

On the plus side, they are amazingly comfortable to wear.

Lucky, Lucky, Lucky

2011-11-11T22:37:00.001+13:00

So it's not like I'm Captain Awesome or anything who might deserve to have such fantastic people around him because of the sheer awesome that surrounds him in a glowing nimbus of puppies, money and sex.... I dunno, I kinda trailed off with that, really.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is that I feel very lucky in my circle of friends and family. Yeah, I know I've posted this before, buuuuuuut turns out that this is my blog.

Today I had a Skype conversation with Ma and Pa, who are greatly looking forward to our Christmas Adventures™ up in HamiltRon. My lovely folks remain quite batty in their middle years, thank goodness. I don't know what I would do with sane, boring parents. Whenever we chat over the tubes it's like watching some kind of gentle British comedy routine from the 1980s. Great stuff.

Also this morning I sought out possible writers for a cartoony comic idea that I'm mulling over, and wham. Several people put their names into the hat for potential writers. Huzzah for having a bunch of creative mates!

Sooooo yeah. Keeping busy with things and am currently in pretty good spirits. That goes up and down like a yoyo of course, but I never really stay that down for long.

Thorndon Orthotic Adventures

2011-11-07T09:52:00.003+13:00

So today I went up to the orthotic center in Thorndon. Which is lovely this time of year may I add. Thorndon, not the orthotic center, though that had a certain footsy charm I suppose.

In any case I was seen by a nice gentleman, in his sixties I would guess, replete in comfortable sweater vest and expensive trousers. He measured my feet with a wooden calliper thingee and made humming and harring noises in the medical equivalent of "parts are gonna be a bastard"and then rummaged out back for a few moments, returning with the ugliest pair of special diabetic shoes I've ever seen.

The saving grace is that they are black. They look like very chunky, cheap black synthetic sport shoes. What they are is actually very expensive, but handily subsidised black synthetic orthotic shoes, that will support my feets under the arch. They also have a very soft material top that puts no pressure on my toes at all. It made me feel like my foot was in a small boat with a canvas covering or something.

I don't have to wear them on a permanent basis, fortunately. They're for while my delicate little toe-nubs are still healing up and should result in better foot support and also less pain while hobbling around. That's the idea, anyway.

So yeah, that's that. I pick them up later on in the week and will of course present photographic evidence for your edification and titillation. On the way out I paused to chat to two very nice old ladies about a map of Wellington on the wall, and then hobbled down to the Parliament building and caught a taxi home with a driver who played very loud, mournful country music. He seemed so wrapped up in his sorrow that I couldn't bring myself to comment on what a nice day it was.

Big Badda Boom

2011-11-06T13:33:00.000+13:00

Last night was loooooovely. We had five (FIVE! AHH AHH AHH! *thunder roll*) friends over for a pot luck dinner which was sliiiightly cramped but not really all that bad in our somewhat small lounge. Cosy, let us call it. There was delicious pate on rice crackers for starters, then roast lamb, roast spuds and salad for main course, followed by strawberries, panna cotta and lemon cake for dessert. Delish!

My blood sugar is still annoyingly high so I contented myself with a few strawberries and a tiny nibble of Tamsyn's cake (phwoar) for dessert. (I'm on the low carb breakfasts at the moment too. Bacon and eggs is delicious but I'll probably get tired of it fairly quickly.)

Anyhoo, we all piled into town for the Official Fireworks™ and were not disappointed. Strategically we placed ourselves around the harbour towards Te Papa so as to avoid any obnoxious radio music (last year they finished the fireworks with Katie Perry...) and also so I could find myself somewhere to sit. And so perched upon a glowing spherical thing I watched teenagers let off those wizzy spinning things at unsuspecting passers by. I also got some attention of my own after lighting up a Six Sparkler Bundle Combo which briefly created a miniature sun on the end of a stick. Good times.

The display itself was amazing, of course. Just as good as last year. We all stood there entranced at the big flashy Hollywood-esque display in the air and made commentary upon our particular favourites. And then it was over and we strolled (or hobbled) down towards some food carts to have a Sausage Of Regret before heading home for cups of tea.

Eeeever so slightly marred by my foot giving out on the hobble back, but on the up side we ran into Tamsyns folks outside the Michael Fowler center while waiting for a cab. So that's okay.

All in all an excellent night. A++ would eat food and blow things up with friends again.

Curried Design Explosions

2011-10-31T22:18:00.000+13:00

The weekend was pretty cool. 'Twas the hatching day of my flatmate Chops* and so her family and friends assembled at Masala for the eating of delicious curries. I got her an Adulthood Trophy, inspired by the one in Hyperbole and a Half, of which Chops is a big fan. So now she has proof that she is a Responsible Member of Society and to be taken seriously by older people wearing tweed and stern or possibly constipated expressions.

Tomorrow will be my last day at work. YAY REDUNDANCY! It was a good run, and I learned a lot while I was there and met some cool people, plus having a year in the same place doing magaziney things will look good on the old portfolio. I'll get depressed about design job hunting in the current economic climate later. In the meantime I've already sent off a couple of applications. Whoo!

On Saturday we're heading down to the waterfront with some friends to watch this year's explosive firework display. Hopefully they'll choose not to end it with Katie Perry this time around. There's something a little embarrassing about having a pop radio station blast out the latest shitty teen anthem at the end of a cool public event, like having enough tons of gunpowder going off in the harbour to change local weather patterns was somehow not hip enough for the kids.

*This is my pet name for her. I chose it on the basis that it doesn't suit her whatsoever.

Floating

2011-10-28T17:29:00.000+13:00

So on Thursday I set out to walk, or more accurately to hobble from my place to work for the first time in three months or so. I took just the one crutch and made pretty good time down Cuba street, overtaken only by the speedier geriatrics and three toed sloths. The day progressed and my foot was moderately hellishly painful but manageable, so I figured I'd walk home as well.

That turned out to be a slight mistake and I spent the rest of the evening feeling absolutely wretched and high as crap on pain killers. Wheeee!

Today then I walked to work and then got the bus home, and that seemed to be better though I'm still really wiped out. It's kinda fascinating to see what a mere three months of couch surfing with my feet up has done to me in terms of endurance.

I'm working on really trying to take note of my own mood swings as they occur due to various factors. It's hard going at times as any kind of strong emotion tends to lower one's self awareness in the moment, but practice makes perfect. One of these days I'll stop kicking small children when my blood sugar drops or at least kick them only in non vital organs.

I realised just now that I've been, by varying degrees, more or less high on pain meds for the last three months. I have to say I'm looking forward to getting off the stuff.

And Now, Fish

2011-10-25T21:07:00.000+13:00

Shoo bop do waaaaah!

Man, getting into the swing of blogging again is a little challenging. SO HOW ABOUT THAT LOCAL SPORTING TEAM HUH?

Today I started a minor freelancey thing which involved tables. So many tables. They were huge, like Hercules. My In Design struggles slightly with a table that's roughly 80 by 80 panels, it turns out.

Also I composed a letter to the dread lords of ACC, written in a distilled mix of my own blood, sweat and tears upon the skin of a recently sacrificed virgin. With the proper portents and signs in place, this letter will change the VERY COURSE OF HISTORY or possibly get my claim finally approved, one of those two.

Tamsyn and our flatmate are enjoying the Sookie Stackhouse books, which are what the show True Blood is based on. It's not often that a TV show is eminently better than the written material from whence it came, but in this case the HBO people took a decent premise that was terribly written, and made a vastly superior product.

With that in mind, the girls are reading it anyway, for what I believe are "the lols".

And now, fish!

Missions And Jam

2011-10-24T22:25:00.000+13:00

Today was a Monday but lo, it was also Labour Day here in sunny New Zealand, which was just as well since most of the country would be recovering from the World Cup final that was held last night.

Momentary aside: I'm not a huge rugby fan as most of you know, but Tamsyn really gets into it and we couldn't not watch the semi final last week followed by the final this week. So I contented myself with making a note of all the hilariously homoerotic things that the commentators said during the match. We got to around 250 comments on that facebook thread, heh.

Sometimes I am 12. The rest of the time I'm asleep.

Anyhoo, so today being a holiday we went for a drive up to Kapiti beach with the lovely Mr and Mrs P where it was absolutely freezing cold and blusteringly windy. Because we are totally hardy folk this didn't stop us from loitering around on the sand for approximately ten minutes and then slinking off to eat fish & chips. We also stopped by Tamsyn's folks place on the way back for a cup of tea and to receive a jar of bacon jam which I am currently eating on toast.

If you haven't ever experienced bacon jam, well it's an acquired taste with some people it seems but I find it totally delicious. It involves bacon, how could it not?

Photo taken by the talented Mrs P. Tamsyn looking
wavey, me looking crutchey

The feets are being a bit troublesome still in the ongoing pain department, and the doc has put me back on antibioitics which should hopefully help get rid of any remaining bugs, with the added bonus of turning my pee an interesting shade of orange. Pain medication is still a feature of my life, but I've at least kicked the morphine now and have halved my tramadol intake.

I've noticed (and been informed of) mood swings being a feature of my ongoing drug useage, especially when I haven't taken them when I should, combined with my foot giving me shit, also combined with physical withdrawal symptoms. So that's something I'm trying to stay on top of now after going a bit crazy on the internet a few times.

Not that I would ever claim it was all the drugs and pain you understand. I know I can be a total bastard. ;-)

So that's my sporadic update. I'm going to try and save up my usual facebook posts for blogging for now on and just use FB for photos and other stuff. It'll be good to start regular writing again methinks.

Nubbin

2011-10-04T13:41:00.000+13:00

I liked this picture so much I had to post it onto my blawg.

That's all I had to say really! I'll do an actual update sometime soon. :-)

Hobby Blawg

2011-09-20T20:19:00.000+12:00

So that my everyday lifey blog doesn't get overrun by space marines, I've made a hobby blog which is over here. I'll be using that to put up progress pictures as my army develops and to natter on about all things involving miniatures and painting stuff.

Ultramarines And You: Spartany Romans In Space.

2011-09-19T22:31:00.001+12:00

So I've long been a fan of painting things blue. My last endeavour was a pretty decent sized Cygnar army for Warmachine, pics of which can be found here.

Now, thanks in part to a prolonged period of downtime due to nearly losing my toes (they were down the back of the couch it turns out), I've gotten back into the modelling bug along with a few friends, including vomkrieg and bellum malleus. The good people at Games Workshop are supplying my habit in the form of Space Marines, plus a few third party companies that make spare parts for making a more customised looking army. In my case I wanted to bring out the spartan/roman feel of the Ultramarine chapter, so I've ordered some greek crests and helmets to go with my little plastic dudes.

I'll start making semi regular updates as my painting progresses, along with interesting conversions (ie custom made stuff) that I work on and squads that get finished.

Dan Update

2011-08-12T21:07:00.002+12:00

Mum and dad are coming down at the end of August and I'm pretty excited about it. I don't get to see them much, though lately we've been talking more over Skype. They're spending a few days in a hotel conveniently just down the road from where I live, and we'll be having dinner with Tamsyn's family, hopefully catching up with some of my friends for a couple of drinks, and otherwise hanging out in wintery Wellington. Whoo yeah! Plus of course we are going up to Hamilton for Christmas, as previously mentioned. I miss my folks, it's nice spending time with them when I can.

I've been painting up some space marines (pictured: not mine) as I sit aroond the hoose. I'm still finding it difficult to concentrate on school texts when I'm on pain medication, and since the nurse has recommended I walk around every hour or so, I've had to up the tremadol a bit. But as it happens painting is still pretty easy and also very relaxing, and I've been relearning how to apply nice looking blue highlights to ultramarine miniatures and leafing through various Games Workshop books looking at the pretty pictures. Ben comes over when he has the spare time to paint with me, plus I'm going to be undertaking painting afternoons with some of the boys when I'm mobile again.

The FEETS are healing. Righty is looking pretty swish apart from this fairly gross wound on the bottom, but oy, Lefty is still a real mess. Healing very slowly, still quite bloody and black looking, and painful as hell to stand on. It throbs like a mofo for ages after walking, hence the strong pain relief. However, it's not infected as far as anyone can tell, so I just have to be patient.

Next week I'm hoping to get back into school stuff, even if it's just an hour or so a day to begin with.

Over It

2011-08-06T20:38:00.001+12:00

I am well into the 'aaaaagh, want to leave the bloody house' stage of the game. My left big toe (or 'Great Toe' to use the medical nomenclature) is still pretty sore and doesn't take me standing up (or it being down) very well at all, so I'm still couch bound and using crutches to hobble about the house on food and loo missions. The rest of the time I hover about the tubes, or watch things or read books. Pain meds and antibiotics are making me a bit nauseous at times and my temper's flared up a few times this week, from that and generally being cooped up.

But! ACC is being sorted out and I've received visits from friends and cards from Tamsyn's family and work and my folks. And my support network is being really amazing, and a few times people have just been so awesome that I felt a bit weepy from the random acts of kindness. And Tamsyn's being patient and understanding and generally brilliant about the whole thing.

So, whinging aside, it's a small thing really. I know this, even if keeping perspective while sitting here pained, grumpy and fidgety is sometimes beyond me.

I'll tell you what though, I would trample the homeless for a slice of toast. It'll be a good day when my blood sugar rights itself and I can up my carb intake again.

Trundling Along

2011-08-02T19:11:00.001+12:00

Went to the doctor's yesterday, who gave me more pain meds and otherwise had a bit of a poke around my feet with a stick, nodded sagely as he took measurements and calibrated my star charts, and then sent me on my way again. I've got an appointment tomorrow at the out patients clinic where presumably a slightly more qualified person will do the same thing. I will also be asking him questions along the lines of can I go back to work next week without my toes dropping off, how do I best coerce ACC into giving me huge bags of money, and will the black crusty thing at the end of my foot hatch into a Greater Old One from beyond time and space. Possibly as far as Essex.

My body is annoyingly sensitive to sugar at the moment, to the extent that I've basically been put onto a low carbs diet to keep my blood sugar levels within the optimum range to facilitate healing. Even eating bread is sending me up into the 12-13 regions, where a healthy adult is supposed to be between 5 and 8. On the plus side this means I get to have things like sliced beef, capsicum stuffed with cream cheese and cucumber slices for lunch, courtesy of Tamsyn's wonderful mum who's been coming over and keeping me company/bringing me lunch. The diet's worked very well with instant results, so there's one thing I don't have to worry about.

Apropos of nothing, wouldn't it be nice if the leaders of our two biggest political parties at least pretended to acknowledge our MMP system? Refusing to include any of the other parties in their debate is horse crap of the worst order.

I'm On The Drug

2011-07-30T13:56:00.000+12:00

Man I need to sort out my drug intake. It's getting a bit out of hand and today I forgot whether I'd taken my beetus medication or not. At the moment I'm taking glycazide and metformin (my usual beetus meds), tremadol, paracetamol and occasionally morphine for pain relief, antibiotics for general toe not rottingness, plus a laxative since the pain relief turn my bowels into a concrete mixer (I just know you wanted to hear about this). And since the pain relief makes me dopey as hell, I really need to keep a calendar or something that I can tick off when I take all the others.

Not a huge problem in the grand scheme of things, but I thought it interesting enough to write about.

Sorted out some details of mum and dad coming down at the end of August. We're going to spend some time with Tamsyn's family plus go out for some drinks with a few of my old Hamilton friends who knew my folks when they were spotty teenagers. Should be an awesome catch up. Plus we're going up to see them this Christmas... I'm looking forward to seeing what Tamsyn makes of a Phillips Christmas Extravaganza. Hopefully the mental scarring will fade with time.

Reading Time

2011-07-28T22:01:00.000+12:00

Fair bit of catching up to do for school. Yeeesh. The readings! They are mighty! I tried getting into them today, and I managed a bit of a start on the very dense 'Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter' by Gaston Bachelard and.... oyyy. I'd be having a bit of a time with this material during a normal day, try getting into an academic essay on the nature of the elements and metaphorical representations in dreams and discussions of formal vs material imagination when you're rocking the tremadol.

In other news, Tamsyn's parents are spending time with me while I recover, which is really lovely, especially with my mum and dad being so far away. Tomorrow they're both popping over with books to read so we can spend the afternoon all studious like in the lounge. I'm enjoying the excuse to get to know them better and spend some quality time.

Rest of the week is just recovery time for the toes really, then next Wednesday is another visit to the doctor to see how things are doing and I should hopefully be out and about in the week following that. Probably with a bit of a dashing hobble for a while. If by dashing you mean wobbly and walking into trees.

Slight Exaggeration

2011-07-27T12:26:00.001+12:00

I swear the staff here have a thing against me sleeping during the daylight hours. I'm coma'ed out on the bed, happily dosed up with pain killers and enjoying my nana nap, when the catering guy bursts head first in through the window, his trolly on fire and borne aloft by the screaming hellish engines of the damned as he proceeds to run over everything inside the room at least twice, smashing equipment to the four directions and then brutally knocking my bed halfway across the room as he slams the food tray into it and hollering at the top of his lungs through his megaphone "OH HI THERE SORRY DID I WAKE YOU HERE IS YOUR LUNCH PLEASE ENJOY OKAY HAVE A NICE DAY NOW" before cart-wheeling back out of a different window to the accompanying cacophony of shattering plate glass and crying children.

Sandwich totally wasn't even worth waking up for, just saying.

Feeling The Love

2011-07-26T20:00:00.003+12:00

So this post was inevitable, because I wanted to say a big fat thankyou to everyone for being totally awesome during my time in the hospital. I don't take any of my friends or family for granted, and all the attention that's come my way has been really amazing and warmed the cockles and other squishy pink areas of my heart.

Tamsyn is really the bestest partner any large hairy person could ever ask for. She's been here with me as much as humanly possible, fed me creamed rice while I lay floppily on the bed in a drug induced haze and even ate hospital food on my behalf. Truly nobody should have to make such a sacrifice. Between this and the week I was couch ridden, especially during her sinus infection, I owe her a lot of pampering and will pay the debt gladly.

Tamsyn's folks have been really lovely. Visited me a few times in the ward, brought me delicious home made stew when the thought of more Misc Meat and Stodge was enough to make me buckle into a moist heap of beardy tears and kept me company in the morning with talk of the world and a cup of tea.

And the books! Oh such books I have received, a veritable library from visiting friends... admittedly I've read almost none of them since we got my laptop hooked up to the internet, but hey, they lend the ward a certain literary feel, as long as Dr McNinja, a Grey Knights codex, transformers toy magazines and Sandman comics are the sort of readings that you feel lends a credibly well read air. Which I of course do.

Mum and dad are coming down to see me, either this weekend or at the end of August. I know it's not easy for them to get time off work and get down here, so the fact that they're taking the time to do so really means a lot. I don't get to see my folks all that often, and nowhere as much as I'd like.

Sooooo yeah, I guess I just wanted to say a big thankyou to those who've dropped by in person (you totally helped keep me sane), to friends that have kept in touch over the Tubes (ditto) and to all the well wishes and love that's come my way. They might be evil little bastard infecto-stubs, but my toes have at least shown me how amazing my friends and family are.

Hospital Adventures™

2011-07-24T14:42:00.001+12:00

This post brought to you by morphine and tremadol! Might be somewhat disjointed and rambling.

Weeeeeeeell then. As most of you know by now, complications arose from my foot surgery at the benighted Valley of the Hutts hackorium I mean hospital, and after a few days of resting up at home I got a pretty nasty foot infection... signs of gangrene which is one of those words that no diabetic ever wants to hear, ever. All those jokes I've made over the years about my dick/limbs falling off, basically were about the dangers of getting gangrene as a side effect of the Beetus.

Sooo yeah. Tamsyn insisted we head into the A&E after she came to bed at 2 am and found me still awake with painfully twitchy feet. After a six hour wait they took one look at my toes and suddenly it was action stations with exciting montages involving X Rays and being trollied around and given morphine and people screaming that it couldn't possibly be lupus.

Eventually I ended up in the Short Stay Ward, which let me tell you is a great form of entertainment after sitting on a couch going stir crazy for the better part of a week. My bed and curtained off area was smack in the middle of the action, so I got to watch people running past and witness the hijinks of other patients which included:

Lecherous Geriatric Moustache Poet, who talked in a gravely voice and serenaded this poor Filipino nurse with lines that sounded like they were lifted from a song by Guns and Roses, calling her his rare desert flower. Because when thinking of the Philippine islands, large tracts of desert is certainly what comes to my mind.
Eldritch Samoan Gurgling Man, who slept a lot. Poor old guy was pretty sick I think, and made the weirdest collection of gurgles, grunts, squeaks, honks and coughs I'd ever heard. And just to outdo himself, when he was awake he would very loudly crunch away on ice cubes with an air of quiet contentment.
Lazy Eyed Colostrum Nurse who not only tried to force the temperature gauge brutally in one ear and right through to the other side and was generally just a bit weird, but who also very furtively when noone else was around tried to hook Tamsyn and I up with an underground colostrum ring, who had 'meetings' and 'would fix my toes right up' with their magic cow squeezings.

At three AM one morning, a doctor and two nurses tried taking Moustache Poet off to get a CT scan, and the old guy leapt out of bed and put on this hilarious upper class academic accent, and very loudly told them that "my solicitor has h'advised me not to have h'a scan performed due to the dangerous rays that these infernal machines produce!" I semi consciously told him to sod off and shut up, which one of the nurses may have heard and may have laughed at quietly.

After three days in the Short Stay Ward, I was moved upstairs to the Vascular department, where Vascular people do Vasculary things. I have a room of my own, which is nice and means more sleep at night, and a lovely view of the massively shitty weather outside. I've been hooked up to an IV drip for six hours a day, which is delivering a transfusion (I like that word, sounds a bit like transformer) that is spreading out the blood cells to more easily get down to my feets to facilitate the healing process. At the earliest I'll be getting this until Wednesday. No idea what happens after that, but presumably if all goes well I'll be able to go home.

The downside of the transfusion is that it makes me feel a bit nauseous, so I'm gonna sign off for now and have a lie down, and let the magical solution do its thing inside my veins.

Bye for now.

Shut It Down

2011-07-16T01:16:00.001+12:00

Livejournal has become the equivalent of the trusty old golden retriever that one grew up with but now wees on the carpet while you look on tolerantly. Yes, I have many happy memories frolicking with it through green pastures, but now it just sort of sits there on the rug, looking depressed and smelling vaguely like damp socks. It would be a kindness to take the old fella out back, give it one last pat, gaze lovingly into its trusting eyes then blow it away with a .44 magnum.

Tonight I went through and unsubscribed from the handful of RSS feeds that were still operating on my LJ friends page, trimmed a bunch of old info and contacts, and otherwise tidied it up before closing the door. And, uh... I guess that's it. Seems kinda untidy to just leave it there, but the stupid exporting function only lets me get a month worth of entries at a time, and there's still one or two people that I'm yet to catch up with in greener social networking pastures.

So here's to you Livejournal. You were my early twenties online diary. I made people laugh, I made people mad and I made some friends that I'm still reading today. I think I'll read what they're up to now in fact.

Sedentary Lifestyle

2011-07-14T11:55:00.002+12:00

I've been sitting with my feet up on a stool since Monday and I'm going INSANE. Legs are achey and stiff and when I walk I hobble about on my heels like an angry bear, waving its paws around and sniffing for honey. Irritatingly I haven't been able to have a shower, so it's sexy fun flannel washing for Dan, which as it turns out is even less sexy and fun than it sounds. Maybe I should just get a rag on a stick.

Joy of joys I managed to pass the most hated Information Design class! How that happened I'll never know as I bombed the 70% assignment pretty badly. I guess I understand averages less than I thought I did. I got an A for my core paper, so hurrah for that.

Having a nice new design for my blog makes me want to use it more often. Kinda wondering what to write about though... I still have an interesting article about women/gender in advertising that I could hammer out, plus there's probably some LUX things I could tell you about which is all pretty interesting stuff.

In about half an hour the nurse is coming round to change my bandages, so I'll be able to get a look at my toes for the first time. Here's how they currently look.

House Of The Damned

2011-07-12T23:37:00.001+12:00

Currently I'm stuck with the sitting and the bandaged mummified toes, along with an irritating cough and the beginnings of a head cold. Tamsyn has a totally arrived cold, and is shuffling about bumping into things and making eldritch moaning sounds that cause the neighbouring dogs to howl with despair.

On the plus side it also keeps the Jehovahs Witnesses out, who I'm informed are specially trained to hear eldritch moaning from several blocks away.

So yeah, our currently disease free flatmate who I have affectionately nicknamed 'Chops' on the basis that it doesn't really suit her at all, will be barricading herself into her room tonight on the off chance that we end up rising from our bed at 3 am with a hankering for the brains of the living and plague dripping maws. It wouldn't be the first time and if I wake up covered in garlic and feeling moist but in a somewhat holy way, I'll try to be forgiving. It's the mature response.

Operation: Feets

2011-07-11T18:03:00.009+12:00

Dear diary. Today I went to the hospital at stupid o clock in the morning, with Tamsyn and her lovely mother Navina who drove us in out of the goodness of her heart, or possibly some other kind internal organ. I got asked a lot of questions about five times each by different members of the hospital staff, who are apparently super passive aggressive and refuse to talk to each other. Are you allergic to anything, one would say. Have you eaten this morning? And then they would leave and 5 minutes later someone else would approach and ask exactly the same things. I wondered if they left notes for each other on the staff fridge about using up the last of the butter or leaving urine samples in Mountain Dew bottles.

Some time later I got put into a backless gown for ease of access to my bum, plus some fancy paper shoes and a fetching shower hat, and I trundled along into the surgery room. Oh no, all the staff were there together! I hoped they wouldn't start a fight or something, I know how it gets when you're around someone for ages that you're not talking to. But miraculously they all pretended to get along for my sake and the next thing I knew someone had stuck an IV thingee in my hand and placed an oxygen mask over my face and then I was waking up on the day patient Recovery Recliner Sofa (so comfy) with tightly bandaged toes and orange iodine feet.

Then we came home and I slept for several hours due to being woozy as hell. Tamsyn made me an amazing omelette and is being lovely and looking after me plus I got to open a newly arrived transformers toy. It was the best day ever.

Couldn't Think Of A Food/ACT Pun Title

2011-06-28T23:09:00.005+12:00

The problem I have with libertarian types mocking campaigns for healthier eating or GST cuts on fruit and vegetables, is that it ignores the privilege that's inherent in being able to afford good medical care, regularly buy fresh fruit and veges or get into a gym whenever they feel like it.

Yes, not everyone agrees on what 'healthy' means and absolutely, it's your body. I'm still learning not to project my own issues about fat on to other people, and sometimes I slip up. But I do believe that having any kind of a choice in the first place means privilege, and all I see in the subtext of that press release are well off people, likely with good doctors, personal trainers if they want them and pantries laden with fresh produce, telling the majority of people who can't afford to always have all of those things that they have the freedom to settle for a three dollar burger and isn't that awesome.

The more I think about it the more it kinda sickens me.

Ten points to anyone who can think up an awesome ACT and food/eating related title.

Break Time

2011-06-13T23:17:00.004+12:00

Big assignment that I got an extension for was handed in this morning. Hip, hip, hurrah I say. On Wednesday I want to make it into a blog post, which will involve some editing and stuff, since I think the subject matter is interesting (critique of the Mammoth Supply Co yogurt branding... probably feminist 101 stuff for many people but I learned some useful things).

Tonight was In Nomine up at The Mount That Is Pleasant and a good time was had by all. Plus I don't have anything due in now until halfway through July. Huzzah!

Sleepy time for me. I'll be entertaining again later.

Live From Massey University

2011-06-07T15:14:00.003+12:00

Well I may as well do SOMETHING while I wait for several enormous files to copy over to my USB drive for printing.

How the hell are you, internets? This week saw a dramatic turn when I spent many days working on assignments. And by dramatic turn I mean business as usual. Also happening: work. And a weekly game of In Nomine up at Jarrod's.

A friend of mine got mentioned in the newspapers for putting out a fire. He has been rightly inundated with congratulatory facebook messages.

Uh, what else. Wellington Slutwalk is happening soon. Some dudes in Boston tried to set up a troll 'Slutwalk Tehran' movement, but the internets quickly found the forums where they planned it and called them out. Well done, internets!

I want a dog. And an elephant. I would ride the elephant around town, with my dog perched grandly on its head, barking at those lesser beings who are underprivileged in the pachyderm department, ie everyone else. It would be glorious.

Hmm. Looks like file of doom has finished copying. I'll try and get back into updating more regularly.

Blah Blah Blah

2011-05-23T12:23:00.003+12:00

It's official: Facebook is killing my blog. Micro updates on thoughts and interesting links just aren't making it here at the moment.

However! I do have an interesting post coming that's about a particular reading on gendered advertising. I'll try and get that done tonight sometime.

I passed on the 48 hours this year, instead spending that time working on assignments. I chose wisely but it was still a bit stink. On the other hand, Tamsyn got to join in and the movie they made looks amazing. Can't wait to see it on the big screen.

Maybe I'll try and save my links and ramblings for a nightly blog roundup. See if that gets me back in the mood for blogging.

Winter Blues

2011-05-09T10:25:00.006+12:00

Yesterday was depression tastic. Not entirely sure what brought it on, so I'm putting it down to a combination of many things, including sitting around in the postgrad studio all by myself (I hate working alone), not getting much sun over the last while and possibly missing out on some obscure vitamin or something. I got some school work done, but not a whole bunch and mainly I just flopped around like a morose salmon.

Tonight is geek night up at the HOUSE THAT IS PLEASANT which should put me in better spirits. In the meantime I have a day of browsing through densely academic library books and experimenting with Microsoft programs.

*blows sad sounding party whistle*

Online Sexism

2011-05-06T12:34:00.007+12:00

(probably triggering for women who've had to put up with horrendous online sexism)

I don't know how many of you regularly browse Reddit, but a recent, sadly typical incident really stood out to me as an example of online misogyny and I wanted to share it with you. Why? So that the next time someone asks why feminism even exists in this day and age, in this our enlightened democratic equal western culture™, you can point to asshattery like this and be all like YO CHECK THIS OUT YO. And maybe throw in another YO for emphasis if you're feeling up to it.

A brief introduction. My own personal viewpoint of Reddit is that it's a great place to have good communities. I visit a bunch of excellent subreddits, such as doctor who (what it says on the label), two X chromosomes (place where women can generally post without getting harassed), one Y (place for men that tries with varying degrees of success not to descend into men's rights or pick up bullshit, crosses over with 2X), crappy design (mainly for the lols) and many others.

As well as these more focussed subreddits (because a place for women is so niche, *cough*) there are several very open forums for things like pics, videos, funny things found on the internet, and so on. As you may expect, these forums are dominated by a loud privileged majority, who much like I imagine the Anonymous forums act, very quickly eviscerate or give kudos to other members as the mob dictates.

Soooo it's into this atmosphere that a young woman decides to offer up a picture, showing herself with a teeshirt print that she made that has the reddit logo on it. The image has an accompanying reddit discussion page which is of course where things get ugly really quickly. The equation is beautiful in it's moronic simplicity: girls are for guys to look at, therefore any photo of a thing that also contains a girl's face is therefore pandering to the beardy masses in order to get upvotes.

The top ranking comment is a link to this image, which summed up the feelings of many other commenters on the discussion thread. It gets worse. So, so much worse.

Yes, you're attractive. Are you validated now?
AKA. i am kinda hot, please reaffirm this.
I think I love you.
My reddit shirt is better. Fuck you, karma whore.
fuck you.
You made something that covers your boobs. Downvoted.

People of course stepped in and either apologised to the poster on behalf of the community or got into flamewars with the offending commenters but frankly the whole thing was a completely depressing clusterfuck.

The next day, the guy who wrote many of the more vitriolic attacks against the sexist commenters made a post summing up his feelings on the event (you can see the image he made by clicking on the link at the top). I suspect that his submission did well because a) he approached it in a humorous way (easy to do when one isn't the target) and b) he's clearly male and it's often easier for men to get behind another man sticking up for an attacked woman than it is to get behind a woman who's trying to stick up for herself.

As for the poster of the original image, she had this to say in the comment thread of the second discussion. I almost missed it since she only had 2 upvotes, compared to the 550 garnered by the man who was sticking up for her.

So yeah, there you have it. Congratulations if you made it this far down and through all those links. I apologise for the convoluted nature of this post, but I think it's a really good example of what we men put women through on a daily basis. You don't have to be all activisty to want things like this to go away, and I think the best thing we (especially men) can do is show it up when it happens and not let people (especially men) claim that there isn't more discussion, reflection and action to be had.

Good Distractions

2011-05-01T17:03:00.005+12:00

Readings, readings, readings. But before that, in brief:

1) Had Craig and Sarah over for dinner last night. It was really lovely, and Tamsyn did amazing things with little stew filled pies and roast potatoes. Plus I made a salad. I CONTRIBUTED! There was whiskey and fine conversation late into the night and I totally forgot (as always) how low my alcohol tolerance is (probably the one entertaining thing about diabetes) and ended up all sleepy on the couch while the grownups continued talking. Good times.

2) Started reading Gravey's blog, which is really insightful, well written and pretty much the male perspective feminist blog I've been looking for.

3) Amusingly, now I have assignments coming out of my ears, work has picked up for a while. So I'll be keeping my head down either at work or school for the coming week(s). And on that note, it's back to my readings. Ursula M Franklin has things to tell me about how we interface with technology.

Holy Shit...

2011-04-28T17:53:00.004+12:00

...I can't believe I forgot

THE JENNERS

She was totally there too and amused us all with a Peruvian nostril flute performance. Afterwards a swat team burst in through the door and she got taken away.

Plus we had dessert.

Oh Hai

2011-04-26T11:36:00.004+12:00

Woah. WOAH. Hey, blog. Man, this is awkward. Long time no see, huh? It wasn't you, I swear, it's me. I've just been so busy. Now blog, don't be like that. I still love you. See? Here I am, typing away. Typey typey.

Livejournal looks like it's pretty close to being dead now. My friends either have actual blogs of their own, or like myself they tend to do micro updates about whatever happens to be taking their fancy on Facebook. Oh LJ, you were glorious for a time. That time being the 1990s.

Today is cold and rainy and awful. I have the heater going in the lounge and it's delicious, but soon I must venture out to get my essay draft printed out. On the up side though I am well equipped with a big coat and quite like rainy walks. Tomorrow and the rest of the week is going to be all about working during the day and studying during the evening, so I'm taking today at a sedate pace.

Caught up with Terry and Hayley on Saturday for dinner at Craig and Sarah's place. Really nice catch up and a reminder that the 48 hour film competition is less than a month away. Excitement!

Unleavened Bread

2011-04-18T23:34:00.005+12:00

Yawnyface. Went to passover seder with Tamsyn. The food was delicious, everyone was great company and the singing was totally incomprehensible but that was okay because it was fun to listen to and clap along. I noted that I've never heard the word 'kibbutz' said so many times in one evening before.

I rocked the kippah, all the guys got given one and mine was this totally cute hand knitted number made by one of the older women.

Apparently one of the guys who was there is on Shortland Street. Sometimes it's nice not to watch New Zealand television and have these little revelations happen during conversation. Nice young guy, with plans to try out LA soon. I hope it works out for him.

Right, time to waddle off to bed. So full of ALL THINGS DELICIOUS.

Being Me All Over The Place

2011-04-17T18:56:00.007+12:00

...mainly involves doing assignments, but that's not everything!

* Got very nicely whiskeyed up the hill-that-is-pleasant. One minute there was a full bottle of sherry cask Grants, the next it had mysteriously vanished and somebody had stolen my ability to walk in straight lines. Also I suddenly wanted to eat a kebab. Weird.

* One of my mentoring friends is looking into getting me partnered up with the brother of his mentee. I took some time to think about how I felt about this prospect, and whether I'd have the time. I figure these are the kinds of things we make time for, though. Still a bit bummed out that my guy got taken away across the North Island, which reminds me: must get onto a letter for him.

* Slutwalk is happening! You should totally join in if you agree that nobody is to blame for rape other than rapists (the Toronto website sums up the 'why' very well). It would be cool to see more menfolk getting involved... it's pretty shit that us menz largely get away with having as much sex as we like while women continue to have their sexuality policed. Slut shaming feeds into rape culture, you dig homes?

* I hopefully have a pretty decent freelance job on the horizon. It involves a website for an umbrella group of organisations all over the country, as well as branding, print material and social media stuff. Exciting! At this point I figure sleeping is for the weak/people who aren't idiots, so what the hell. Plus, money. Money is nice and can be exchanged, as Homer points out, for goods and services.

* 48 hour film festival is on the horizon, looming like a great threatening wave of madness and no sleep. This will be our... sixth year? Seventh? Lots, anyway. Having done sock puppet film noir, fairy tale kung fu, zombie documentary and co-joined twin kidnapping tale amongst others, I can't wait to see what we come up with this time.

I'm Doing My Readings, Honest

2011-04-13T14:26:00.002+12:00

The Weekend That Was

2011-04-11T11:25:00.004+12:00

Wow. Where do I even start? Well, let's get the mundane bit out of the way first; I got my assignment handed in after a week of late nights and way too much caffeine. Presentation went really well, I think, with good feedback from the critics.

AND THEN ANDY GOT MARRIED HOLY CRAP.

The wedding was amazing. Highlights include:

The bride and groom were brilliant and funny and held it together really well
Seeing everyone together again. Even Mark who very sneakily came over from Singapore and surprised the shit out of Andy. Well done Tamara for helping us keep it from him
All the boys very drunkenly belting out Faith No More's 'I Started A Joke' in the middle of the dance floor, much to the amusement of onlookers
Speeches were great fun. Mine seemed to go down pretty well, though really Andy and Tamara both knocked it out of the ballpark with theirs. Very funny and lovely
Best-manning it up! Hung out with Andy all day, helped keep him generally sane and didn't even mess up handing over the rings.
Hugely hung-over all day breakfast the next morning(ish) at Fidels.

I could go on. Everyone had a great time, I may have possibly gotten some freelance work out of Tamara's dad, the food was amazing, the bridal party photo-shoot was great fun, Tamara's bridesmaids were very cool, the wine was delicious and I got drunk enough to see triple by the time I staggered out of the taxi. PLUS I got to share the whole thing with Tamsyn which made it perfect.

Amazing weekend was amazing. Today I am doing bugger all and loving it. School work starts up again tomorrow, but for now I am happily wallowing about in dressing gown and track pants. Time for a cup of tea, I think. Jolly good.

Zombie Shuffle

2011-04-07T00:19:00.004+12:00

So tired. 13 hour day today. Delved through most of a brick in book form on phenomenology, which thankfully was incredibly useful and has ended up forming the bulk of the theory for my current assignment. Got into a headspin halfway through the day and didn't know what the hell I was doing until I talked it out with two fellow students who reassured me that the direction was solid and that I was making sense. Stupid brain.

Rest of week: assignment, class, assignment, wedding rehearsal, assignment, wedding. Sleep is going to happen in there somewhere.

Belatedly remembered that I signed up for possible involvement with the Greens who are (hopefully) organising some kind of response to the awful flyover proposal before it gets crammed through. Ah well, I did say I liked being busy.

Mentoring Long Distance

2011-03-30T09:49:00.004+13:00

So it's just been confirmed that my mentee is heading to a new town, at the other end of the North Island. His mum's gotten a new job there, which is awesome, but I'm still having a bit of a sad. There's things we never got to do, including an important trip that was taking far too long to organise, due to various factors.

He's a really cool dude, and I hope he'll have a good support network in the new place he's going. I'm not even the first mentor in the group to have the team split up through distance... I think so far two mentors have moved away and one of the other kids have? Something like that, anyway. Life happens.

I guess apart from not seeing him any more I'll also have to examine how I can be of use to the rest of the mentoring group. Might look into doing something new at the end of the year.

In any case I got to meet some really amazing people, the coolest being my mentee.

Things As Of Late

2011-03-28T14:58:00.003+13:00

Numerical list form, because I'm deep in two day hangover territory, my brain-meats are barely functioning and I just happen to like numerical lists.

1) Stag party was a total success. The groom had a blast and despite collapsing into alcohol soaked unconsciousness halfway through the night, got his second wind around midnight and came with us back into town for more shenanigans. We last brave few made it back home around 4 am after an amazing day/night of go carting, laser tag, ten pin bowling, boozing and staggering all round town. Round of applause to all who were present.

2) I left the WYFC group. Reckon it's for the best, and I can be quietly supportive and help out in various ways without getting all up in their collective grills. Given that this was my original plan, I should have really stuck to that in the first place. We live and learn.

3) Next up on social calendar: wedding to best-man for, and my mostest longest term friend EVAAAR is coming down to visit the weekend after. Woohoo! I don't get to see her much and I'm holding out for her to move down from Auckland when university learnings are over. Good stuff.

4) Assignments due in soon: plentiful. In fact I'm putting off a bunch of work to write this post, so I guess I should really get back into it. Sigh.

5) Tamsyn continues to be awesome and amazing. I think she's doing it on purpose.

Revelry

2011-03-25T23:25:00.006+13:00

Stag party tomorrow. Even as I type this, a near-feral drunken Hamiltonian is approaching my flat, ready to knock down the door and liberally spray intoxicants all over the place. I'll have to hose him down and strap him to the couch to get some sleep, though it's to my understanding that he's undertaken special training which means he can rest half his brain at a time and keep the other half in a state of permanent inebriation.

I am ready. I have done my duties and I believe that the betrothed is going to have his socks knocked clean off. The rest of him will probably be fine, since I've been given orders to bring him back in one piece. Or at least the biggest piece that's left and no longer smouldering.

Radical Masculinity

2011-03-24T19:51:00.006+13:00

The more I talk with ladies of the feminist persuasion and start reading some books on the subject (starting out with In Our Time by Susan Brownmiller - thanks S) the more I'm growing the germ of an idea about how maybe there should be a different, but parallel movement, or school of thought or... something aimed specifically at men.

Maybe there is. I'm writing this down as the idea comes to me after a short discussion with a friend, and I'm currently "working on an assignment" so this is all being hurriedly jotted down based on my current scant knowledge, so I can review it later.

But yeah! I feel that feminism kinda has... I dunno, limited specific use for men, maybe? I'm trying to be careful about how I say this, because it's all exploratory and cautious. But I think that feminism as a movement is ultimately by and for women. I'm keen and happy to get involved, and I know I'll learn a lot of useful ways of thinking from the movement, but... well, there's a reason that men who get involved are often called allies, I guess is what I'm saying. Not to say that I think being a male feminist is any kind of oxymoron, nor would I want to indicate that any kind of male orientated movement would supersede feminism.

A friend I was talking to about this used the term 'radical masculinity', which I really like as a starting point. Anyhoo, I'm done with my initial mind-splurge so It's time to start looking around the internet and see what I can find.

EDIT: Hah, should have known there would be a blog with this very term.

Day Of Rest

2011-03-20T12:46:00.003+13:00

Something I'm trying to get back into the habit of, and to make a feature in my life again, is the one day a week of doing sod-all, in an appreciative and reflective kind of way. As much as I approach this from a christian perspective, I also think that as a mental health and all round refreshment of the soul thing it's invaluable, especially now that my life is busy as hell.

I love being busy. Absolutely love it. Yesterday I undertook a design challenge for postgrad class which involved tearing round the city on my bike, taking video and camera footage along the Mt Vic tunnel, then rushing back to Massey and coming up with a design proposal and presentation. This was a condensed version and trial of our next exercise, and I think I did pretty well going by the reactions of the rest of the class. I was exhausted when I got home and then it was off up to see two close friends of mine to discuss a personal project and eat delicious things until quite late.

This epic day really finished off a very busy week, so taking time out today to blob around, catch up with a couple of friends later on for cafe missions and generally relax has highlighted for me the value of taking a Sunday, or Sabbath or just whatever day you can fit in to not think about everything that's going on and let the brain meats reboot.

Time for another cup of tea.

Oh Hai

2011-03-16T22:08:00.002+13:00

Oh hello blog. Doesn't time just fly past? It seemed like only a few days ago I was posting silly bullshit about chaffinches and here we are again, just like old times.

Sooooo, school is going well. First exercise is due on Saturday and it's really just collating and analysing the classes we've had to date, pretty easy stuff. I posted a critical review on the Massey blog thing as part of it and got good feedback from my lecturer, so huzzah for life.

One of my best mate's wedding is coming up! OooooooOOOOOooooo! I'm best manning, which means doing all the hard work while the betrothed sit about relaxing I KID, I KID PLEASE DON'T KILL ME. Seriously though I've been helping out with stag night duties and I reckon it'll be a fun evening for all. The groom might even come out the other side with all his own pubic hair still attached.

Technical Terms

2011-03-11T11:25:00.006+13:00

Craig: Man, looking at cars to hire when in UK to do our Tour De Highlands.

Looking at hire cars is a foreign experience. Average CO2 output. Pounds symbol per day. NOTHING MAKES SENSE.

me: hahaha

Craig: wtf is a large compact...

me: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HAGGIS PER MILE?"

"EQUIVALENT STOAT POWER??"

Craig: Fuck it, we're hiring motorcycles.

me: "5 CHAFFINCHES TO THE HA'PENNY??"

Craig: *lost it*
Craig: THE TEARS!
have... visions....me: *wins*

Presentations

2011-03-09T21:55:00.002+13:00

Over the last couple of nights we've been having seminars wherein speakers who are doing their doctorates come in and talk to us lowly postgrad monkeys about what they're currently up to. It's a combination of seeing research-practice in action, as well as helping some of the denser theoretical essays come to life in ways that aren't going to happen when you're wading through material that has the consistency of treacle and contains words with the same syllable count usually associated with either long dead fossilised reptiles or extremely intimate parts of your anatomy.

The presentation most relevant to my discipline was titled 'Letter-space: Typographic Translations of Urban Space' and was part of an ongoing doctorate that positioned ye olde letterpress printing as a spatial and structural visual medium through which the candidate's own students then explored the meanings and experiences of their local urban design, ie Wellington. Seeing how the students translated their own reflections on their chosen locations (including Midland Park, the rather striking block of flats on Webb street and the Bank arcade) was really fascinating, especially watching them build the metaphorical framework that mirrored that of the city... letterpress printing is very tactile, blocky and shares the same sense of limited working space and ordered hierarchy as a typical urban environment.

...oh and the next guy talked to us about studying Aikido and incorporating the co-creative context of the martial art into a qualitative design research project. Awesome, huh?

Testy

2011-03-08T23:32:00.003+13:00

Facebook Notes is total shit is turns out for publishing my blog to, so for the first time EVAR I have installed an application on the Faceybooks (gasp!) in the form of the Graffiti RSS reader that I am now testing out.

Sooo let's see how long it takes for this blog post to show up on my wall. DON'T FAIL ME NOW GRAFFITI.

Uhhh actual content? Lessee... today was very busy, I had work and a seminar in the evening. Also I finally got my office chair home, after it took a 3 month holiday in my boss' garage. Hurray for life.

Readings and Klezmer

2011-03-06T20:26:00.004+13:00

Life is ticking by. Found myself in a bit of a surly mood over the last few days, though generally things are pretty good. The study is now set up in it's basic iteration with the table delivered and everything in place. Still waiting for my boss to bring over the old office chair that I took from work, which ended up in her car and is now hanging out in her garage, presumably being colonised by spiders and dust mites.

Having my brain stretched by postgrad work is very nice and I currently am working my way through a small mountain of readings. That's basically the core of the higher echelons of the tertiary study experience; ploughing your way through lots and lots of dry, academic writing and condensing it down into digestible morsels, deciding what you think about what you've just read then finding a clever way to say it. Currently I'm at the digesting stage but I'm having some very interesting conversations with other students on the forums which is causing my think meats to percolate appropriately.

I went to the wedding of some old family friends of Tamsyn's, which turned out to be my first Jewish wedding experience and it was great fun. They got married under the chupah, broke the glass and shouted Mazel Tov, hoisted the couple up onto chairs, danced in big circles while holding hands and there was an amazing klezmer band that seemed a teensy bit surreal after so many Hollywood movies that couldn't help themselves but use said music the moment anything vaguely Jewish appeared.

It was a lovely evening, I met a bunch of very nice people and the venue was beautiful; they got married at the renovated boat shed function centre on the waterfront which offered a gorgeous view of the city as the sun went down and all the lights came on.

Postgrad And Other Misadventures

2011-03-02T11:24:00.003+13:00

Man, livejournal eh? I think maybe 10% of the people in my friends list post to LJ with any kind of regularity now. Most of the regular posts I get are from communities and even a lot of them have died off. So with that in mind I've synched my blawg up to my faceybooks, which imports it into sexy note form for your reading "pleasure".

POSTGRADUATE STUDY™ has begun! I was a bit nervous to start out with. I did well at UCOL, especially in my final year, but I felt like now I was up against the big kids who'd been much more academic for longer. My degree program was brand spanking new when we started it, and the transition from diploma involved us cramming a lot of the research and writing part of design into the last year.

BUT! It turns out that my goodly degree tutors did a stirling job and I've been able to hold my own over the first couple sessions of discussing dense reading material such as the essay 'A Pattern Made of Holes' by Carter, who takes sadistic glee in peppering his writing with malignant words like 'polysemous', 'polyvalency' and 'mythopoetically'. All in the same paragraph.

Drawing Conclusions

2011-02-27T14:39:00.005+13:00

As is my way, I am working up to, approaching from downwind as it were, the notion of drawing cartoons much more often. To this end, and with the realisation that a lot of what has been holding me back is lacking the right tools, this year I'm resolved to get myself a decent wacom tablet and to practice with it until I feel comfortable, then to keep practising with it, lots.

By the end of the year I aim to have a good tablet, large screen and to upgrade the ram and hard drive capacity of my laptop.

Inspiration is coming from reading some really good cartoon blogs by some very talented people and thinking to myself that I could do exactly such a thing if I wanted to. And it turns out I do.

deep breath

2011-02-24T23:43:00.013+13:00

Okay. First, disclaimer: I'm immensely privileged to be happy with my own sex/gender, to have been raised by two loving parents, to have reaped the benefits of a patriarchal society and to prefer having sex with people of the opposite gender to myself. These and other factors have made my life a relative bed of roses and any whining that follows is in no way an attempt to remove myself from that context.

I'm going to try and get this out without being offensive.

I have, as of this writing, hugely internalised fatphobia. Over twenty years of sporadic abuse (even as I write that I keep looking up at the opening paragraph and cringing, but I'm trying to call a spade a spade even if it does sound a bit melodramatic) from my brothers, kids at school, friends and from myself has ingrained the notion that I'm a big heffalump and that my body is a giant slab of unwieldy pork.

As a kid, my brothers gave me shit for being a fatty long before I would ever be considered 'overweight' by whatever standard people might care to use. Having two garden rakes for siblings meant that, after my satellite dish ears got pinned back at the age of six, they had to come up with something to taunt me with, and so fatty it was. High school... well it's high school. If you don't leave with some kind of emotional trauma then you didn't do it right. By the time I was 18 I hated my body, which is a shame really because I didn't look all that bad underneath the dorky goth makeup.

Between 18 and 23 my weight ballooned until I was 140 kg. My self loathing grew in equal measure but weirdly it also seemed somehow right and fitting, because everything I'd been told was, well, now accurate. I'd alternate between getting hugely angry at myself for getting 'that way' and sinking into a black depression or even bursting into tears on occasion. Annah, my partner at the time, had to pry me out of my teeshirt with a crowbar; I almost never undressed in front of her for most of the 5 years we were together.

Soooo, most of you know the next bit, along comes the Diabeetus and suddenly it's lose weight or die/have my penis fall off. I took option B and quit the mountain dew and pies and took up occasionally regular exercise and over a few years I slimmed down. Cue success story pictures in Women's Weekly and writing the next best selling weight loss book and hanging out on the beach shirtless and tanned and having an amazing life.

...what actually happened is that all the bullshit in my head mostly stayed where it was and while I did things like sunbathe shirtless in Australia and wear singlets that, gasp, showed off all of my arms, nothing all that much changed on the inside. In fact in some ways that I'm just coming to appreciate it's almost worse because now I'm catching myself doing stupid things like checking myself in mirrors and looking down at my stomach when I'm sitting and still refusing, over my dead body in fact, to go swimming shirtless at the beach with friends.

I've told myself that I'll be happy when I've lost the 'final ten' that will put me down at a mean, lean 95 kg (there are All Blacks rugby players heavier than I currently am) and that with no gut or moobs I'll be free to prance about like a gazelle with just shorts to cover the essentials. But really that's bollocks. I can feel the fake smile I put on when Tamsyn tells me I look sexy or attractive. I get uncomfortable when people praise me over losing weight. I worry that it's never going to be enough, and in worrying I freeze up and stop taking the care of myself that the diabeetus demands.

As a male feminist who's blessed to have female friends smarter than myself, I can see the tie-in with the movement and fat acceptance. I'd like to think that I'm merely judging myself and not other people's weight. It could be that I'm capable of such heroic compartmentalisation, and I think in some ways that has indeed happened, but if I'm thinking less of my friends because of their body shape at even a subconscious level then I want to stop it.

What I want more than anything though is to be happy in my own skin, without having to make my skin into what I think it should look like. This is so mixed up with my health and the diabeetus and my own fucked up perceptions of what a sexy male is supposed to look like I hardly know where to start, though. Somewhere there's a balance between keeping my body functional and healthy, and accepting it for what it is. Damned if I know where that balance is, but I guess writing all this down might be some kind of start.

Moore Than Meats The Pie

2011-02-22T20:33:00.006+13:00

So as I wait for Yakov's Squirrel Disease (my pet name for the mumps) to work its filthy way out of my system, I thought I might do another post on my transformer collection hobby, now that I'm in a place where I no longer have to sell them off to pay the rent.

More specifically I thought I'd go into more detail about the kinds of toys I collect, which is generally known as the Classics line of transformers, even though Hasbro and Takara have labelled them under various titles including Classics, Universe and Reveal The Shield.

What I love the most about classics transformers is that they're basically reimagined figures based on the old 1985 cartoon. They're toys that look how my 5 year old imagination thought they did at the time, how they should have looked if the technology was available.

EXAMPLE THE FIRST. And this is a little extreme since the original character was a very simplified 'mini' transformer with even less articulation than standard... but meet Warpath.

This is how he looked back in the day. I had Warpath as a kid and he was one of my favourite mini transformers. I remember wishing the toy was big like how he appeared in the cartoon.

And this is how he's been redesigned for 2011. If you know the character, you can tell it's the same robot. And just look at that badass.

A better example would be Jazz. A well known Autobot from the original cartoon, and of course the guy that gets torn in half in the live action movie, Jazz in 1985 looked like this. Kinda cool, but no leg movement whatsoever and limited articulation in other places.

But then there's the remake, and just look at him! Fully posable, articulated joints and looks very faithful to the original cartoon character. More so than the above toy in fact, since you know. He has knees.

Works For Me, Anyway

2011-02-16T10:41:00.003+13:00

Write shit down.

Best way I've found to beat the brainworms and get things done? Make a motherfracking list, yo.

There are times when you're sitting in a dark place and your mind is slowly drowning in poisonous juices and all you can think about is how life is pissing in your cornflakes. If the actual problem is just not knowing what to do next, then get a pen and paper and free your brain. Write down what you'd say to a friend in the same situation. List your options, weigh up the pros and cons of each. Note down the things you don't know but can look into. Make a To Do list with little boxes to tick off, even if it's starting out with...

1) Clean the house

2) Go for a walk

3) Look for jobs

4) Beat those cats that keep having sex outside my window to death with a broom

...because I reckon things will look a teensy bit better after ticking those puppies off. Sometimes stepping outside of your own brain for a bit is all you need to get the ball rolling and decrease the size of the shit heap, even by just a little.

Mileage varying, etc.

Domesticity

2011-02-10T19:03:00.003+13:00

The flat is coming together, yeeeees. I spent the last two days industriously painting shelves; one for the bathroom in White Gloss to stop it imploding with moisture and one for the study in Flat Walls Grey, to put my transformers onto. Also we have bought hooks and oven mitts and door wedges and various other Things to make house life easier in all those little ways that stop flatmates from one day snapping and burning the place down while dancing naked outside on the street.

We are indeed going to be having a house warming, but currently the plan is to wait until our erstwhile landlord has paved the front area and finished the fence, so that there are two Outside Zones™. What with the inevitably huge invite list, we're keen to have as many spots for people to lurk in as possible, plus the less drunks tripping over loose bricks and killing themselves the better. That would almost be as bad as throwing a house warming and having nobody show up.

School begins! Soon! I am receiving emails galore, replete with timetables and terms of study and research practices and introductions to tweed wearing academics with excessive amounts of letters after their names. It is a mere eighteen days until I blight the rarified halls of Massey University with my hairy presence. Even now, the staff there are readying themselves with special tinctures and meditation programs.

I like living closer to town. I wasn't particularly far away up in Kelburn, but here I can stroll round the corner and be at the top of Cuba Street and watch interesting buskers and eat interesting foods and be shat on by interesting pigeons. Most of my close friends and associates live in the area too, which is cool; Aro valley seems to be the nexus around which my social sphere spins.

Year One

2011-02-06T00:16:00.003+13:00

Spent today with Tamsyn, for lo it was our first year anniversary. See, also, files marked 'Holy Balls', paying close attention to sub-section 'How The Hell Has It Been A Year Already'.

We had pancakes for brunch, which were amazing and delicious, followed by lazing about the house watching TV shows on the laptop. In the late afternoon we trundled into town, spotting interesting costumes and the ever entertaining game of Sexy Variant spotting, which goes along the lines of 'oh look, a sexy cat girl' or 'there go some sexy flamingos' or the ever present default 'sexy sexy' costume which I am happy to say seemed almost equally presented across gender lines.

For those overseas readers Wellington is currently hosting the Sevens, which is basically a weekend long costume party in town with loads of drunken people everywhere and overtones of rugby. As noted above, I observed that the Sevens brings out the exhibitionist streak in the male of the species in much greater numbers than Halloween... possibly all the beer and rugby makes them feel more secure about showing off ample man flesh, which essentially means there is eye candy about for pretty much anyone.

For an early dinner we had Taiwanese at Cha and ate until we waddled. Then we checked out a photographic collection at the museum and ended the day with The King's Speech, which was just as good as the trailer promised. Beautifully shot and very well acted. Colin Firth did an amazing job.

And that was my anniversary day with Tamsyn. Really enjoyable celebration of 365 days together, and being able to come home to a lovely flat rounded it off perfectly.

Tomorrow we're going to tackle the study and see if we can make it a bit more... studyish. This may have to involve fire in some way.

Lifey Bits

2011-02-03T20:02:00.003+13:00

February, eh? What's that all about then?

Busy, busy, busy. Flat is amazing, and beautiful in places. Our bedroom is awesome with new furniture and the lounge looks lovely but the study is still filled with ALL THE CRAP IN THE UNIVERSE and every time I walk past it I want to cry bitter tears. Well not really, but it would be awesome to get rid of the two exploded old beds and all the packing and turn the room into a place I can hang out and do drawing and gaming in. All in good time.

I love living with Tamsyn. Coming home and hanging out with her is wonderful. It's been almost a week and she still hasn't threatened me with sticks. I don't even know.

Work hours are on the up, with promises of some really good freelance projects on the horizon. I'm hoping it doesn't become overwhelming what with postgrad coming up, and am making arrangements to siphon off extra work that I can't handle to well placed designy mates. Yeeeeeees.

Soooooo yeah. Life is blessedly drama free, full and going past like the VERY CLAPPERS. I'll think of something more interesting to blog about later.

Movingosity 4: Move Harder

2011-01-30T20:18:00.006+13:00

Done. Bloody well done. Over two days we moved the girls from downstairs to the flat above, then grabbed my stuff, then cleaned out both houses. I'm tired as hell and the study is currently more of a spare room holding everything in the world ever, but it is over. Hurrah, tea and crumpets for all.

Steph, Andy and Rowan came down and helped us, which was wonderful and made things a lot easier. May your trifles always be wobbly.

Tomorrow I shall start unpacking all my books and make a start on organising the bedroom before the new bed and chest of drawers arrives on Wednesday.

Flatwarming... at some stage. Probably early March going by how this month is shaping up.

I love it here. More later when my brain isn't dribbling out of my ears.

Movingosity Part 3

2011-01-27T13:55:00.005+13:00

The Moving Dudes came for Alannah and Richards things today. There was huge bustle and sweating and men thudding about the place like heffalumps and then suddenly the place is emptier, the lounge floor strewn with debris like coathangers and dead moths.

I have so far packed six boxes of books and my remaining documents/nick nacks... which is actually most of my stuff. I've managed to discard two and a half rubbish bags of unwanted things, including a fair to middling sized CD collection that was sitting in my cupboard neglected, and now it's mainly just things like clothing (that can very conveniently be transported in my nice big travel case), a couch, shelves, bedding, etc.

Thankfully I still have the internets at the old flat for the remaining few days of my habitation here, since I have Things To Do like get my studylink on and organise a meeting with my mentee's social worker, etc. This morning was spent screaming imprecations at my laptop as Google's Chrome browser proved to be too much for the government websites I was trying to access, so I can try again this afternoon using crusty old Firefox, with less screaming of imprecations. Probably.

Movingosity Part 2

2011-01-25T17:25:00.002+13:00

Holy sweet Moses I have a lot of shite papery things. I don't know why. For years I've been holding onto 3 large boxes worth of... crap. Ancient cartoons, old school things, notes from various institutions, redundant letters from inland revenue and WINZ, screeds and screeds and bloody screeds of character sheets and writeups for roleplaying games that took place during the mid 90s and so on. So far I've almost filled up a large rubbish bag with this dross and it just keeps coming.

I feel like that old muppet woman in the Labyrinth who walks around with all her belongings in a big pile on her back, who one day looks over her shoulder, says 'bugger this' and cuts the string.

Movingosity

2011-01-24T19:51:00.006+13:00

Having lived many years of my life as a rudderless hippy and then later as a rudderless design student, I am well versed in the ways of flatting and that most hated of consequential activities; packing up and moving your shit.

Nothing beats 2009 for shitty moves. Returning to Palmerston North after my massively ill advised rebound experience in Brisbane saw me sleeping on a fold out couch, in a room that held less than a dozen boxes filled with what remained of my life after breaking up with Annah. Over the past year I'd managed to get rid of a nice bed, chests of drawers, a desk, couches and various other Misc Nesting Things that a couple ends up owning, in what I like to claim was an instinctual desire to parse myself down to a kind of foundation level where I could figure out what the fuck I was doing with my life.

...I was probably just a dickhead and wanted to travel light.

So now it is 2011 and I've been in Wellington for almost a year and I'm moving into a lovely upstairs flat with Tamsyn and Vanessa. Over the next day or two I'll be going through my collection of paperwork and keepsakes and deciding what I can get rid of and what will be coming along. There are ancient, sentimental letters from high school that will finally be discarded, and an even older teddybear that won't. All in all doing a bit of a purge feels loads better this time around, as I'm preparing to share my life with someone amazing.

Oh Look A Blog Post

2011-01-22T21:34:00.004+13:00

My life sucks and I hate it.

No wait, the opposite of that. Silly me! I get those two confused sometimes. Oh Dan, you so wacky! Why, just this very day I hung out with Tamsyn all afternoon, then I went home and had an amazing bacon sandwich! Unbelievable! And last night I went to Emma and Simon's housewarming! And had a great time! If I get any more excited I may as well be using two exclamation marks, and frankly by that stage there's just no hope left.

Sooo, what else. One week to go until The Great Exodus of 2010, whereupon I will be moving into a lovely flat with Tamsyn and Vanessa. In the first week of February it will be one year since Tamsyn and I got together, which is both amazing, happy-making and somewhat scary in a 'what the flaming hell happened to 2010' kinda way.

I've had one or two friends grinningly ask me if everything's going to be okay living with Vanessa, who is what the pop psychologists like to call a type A personality. With all due fairness to Vanessa, who is lovely, they tend to ask me this more because I'm very clearly not, though I'm not as deep in B territory as I once was. Why, I got both a haircut and a real job.

But yeah, I don't anticipate any problems. Tamsyn and Vanessa both communicate very well and I, over time, have honed my hoots and grunts into a passable imitation of human speech. Plus my tendency to start house fires in my sleep has been mostly sorted out now and I even stopped using flatmates toothbrushes to clean the loo.

Angry Terrier will haunt your dreams.

Shoo Bop Boo Waa.

2011-01-19T21:59:00.004+13:00

Bollocks post to remind myself to blog more. Not really in the mood right now though, so tough bikkies, voyeurs.

Dates To Remember

2011-01-10T13:38:00.002+13:00

Back to work: 20th January.

Moving into exciting new flat with Tamsyn and Vanessa (eeeeeee!): 30th (roundabouts) of January.

Postgrad diploma begins: 28th February.

Going for a walk to get milk so that my tea starved brain doesn't implode: right now.

Trial By Bogans

2011-01-06T16:48:00.004+13:00

Hangover = earned.

Last night Tamsyn and I went out to one of her bogan* friend's birthday parties. It was real fun! I have just enough bogan in me to get on well with anyone who wears black, is up to date with current WWE characters and knows the lyrics to a bunch of Iron Maiden songs, and once it became known I was also into Transformers then my acceptance into the group seemed like a given.

We had a few drinks at the Bristol to warm up, then it was onwards to Regal for delicious Yum Cha and a bottle of red wine, followed by all of the gin ever at their flat which had a fantastic balcony for smoking on, and listening to hugely loud heavy metal music and talking about all things wrestling and huge shape changing robots related.

I was pretty stoked that Tamsyn's other group of friends accepted me; even though she doesn't see them as much as she used to, I could tell that they were still pretty close and they were a good bunch of people.

We barely made it home last night. I think Tamsyn and I both hit the 'head home before we fall over' level of drunkenness at exactly the same time, so we gingerly put down our drinks, made our goodbyes and staggered off into the night, clutching at each other for support. I dimly remember stopping for a ciggy and some surreptitious relief into an accommodating bush on the walk up Willis street.

Great night. Will happily repeat, but probably not soon.

*Note to Australian readers: bogan in NZ carries a slightly different connotation than it does in Aussie, I believe. Generally it has more of a heavy metal white trash overtone than racist redneck white trash overtone.

Auld Lang Syne

2011-01-01T19:15:00.007+13:00

New Years dinner party was huge success. We kept it fairly low profile since small flat is small, with just a dozen or so people in attendance (and even that tested the limits of Tamsyn and Vanessa's wee house). Everyone brought delicious food which included three chickens, potato salad, various pasta dishes, vegetarian sausages, lots of delish nibbles plus strawberries soaked in wine, served with icecream for dessert. There was an enormous amount of food and this morning's hungover leftovers breakfast was indeed epic and, I feel, very adequate payment for having to clean up the flat which looked like a decadent sort of bomb site.

As a new experience I got to try some apple flavoured tobacco out of a hookah pipe. It was surprisingly smooth and quite delicious, and many present who didn't normally smoke felt the urge to try a few puffs and immediately enjoyed it.

And. And! I received a delicious bottle of gin from Andy and Tamara for designing their wedding invitations, as well as a bottle of whiskey from Craig and Sarah as a thankyou gift for MCing at their wedding. Truly it rained alcohol from the sky. Needless to say I got very drunk. I was quite relieved to discover that I'd only used half the bottle of 12 year old scotch after sharing a tipple with all the whiskey drinkers present. Still, good whiskey should be shared.

In summary I had a brilliant night, spent with those I consider to be family. We even managed to stagger into town at 11.30 and catch the tail end of the countdown (we would have gotten there 5 minutes beforehand but SOMEONE had to make a toilet stop).

Good start to 2011 all in all. Well done everyone, jolly good show.

Harpy Noo Yeerz!

2010-12-31T16:58:00.003+13:00

Bloody hellfire. Can't believe it's been another year. Especially 365 days since last year, piece of shit that it was.

2010, I love you and want to have your babies. 2011, you have a bit to live up to, just saying. Flying cars might just do it though.

Have a great New Years Eve everyone, as it rolls around to where ever you happen to live in the world. I'm spending mine with the Tamsynator and a bunch of our posse. I believe delicious things and alcoholic beverages may be making an appearance, though these rumours will of course have to be carefully verified.

PS: at the end of January I'm moving into a new place with Tamsyn and her current flatmate/bestie, Vanessa. Excitement!

Obligatory Christmas Haul/Festivities Post

2010-12-29T12:25:00.006+13:00

...I find these a leetle bit tacky, but on the other hand sometimes I can be a tacky person so that's probably okay.

I did really well this Christmas in the pressies department, and got:

Hallensteins voucher which basically built up my summer wardrobe of shorts and tees

Some socks (I genuinely love getting socks)

Really nice book about typography

Lovely new laptop/general roaming satchel

Aftershave to make me smell all manly and fresh

Moleskine diary type book for scribbling down ideas

Gordon Harris voucher for getting arts supplies and designy things

and a Decepticon transformers toy!

This was also a year that I was able to get my friends and family decent pressies, which was nice. I enjoyed doing horrendous gift wrapping which drove Tamsyn up the wall, especially the Frankenpresent that I gave to Vanessa.

Christmas eve/day was spent up in sunny Kandallah, Wellington, with Tamsyn and her lovely family. We discovered The Most Amazingly Tacky Shop Ever and got ourselves some awe inspiring 2011 sunglasses, which you can see in my previous post. That night Tamsyn and I went to a Christmas Eve service at a cute little church and sang some carols and watched candles being lit. It was pretty cool, though one of the songs was Away In A Manger which made me feel like I was back at Sunday School. We walked home that night to the sound of the church ringing its bells.

We did presents in the morning and then had friends of the clan show up for lunch which went really well. Om nom turkey. I got to meet some Younger Geek Friends of Tamsyn, who were really nice and had that cutting wry wit that marked them as One Of Us.

Then it was down to Jarrod and Steph's place that evening for more food (my belt was creaking by this point), booze and drunken rockband. And lo, it was fantastic and a good time was had by all.

Final score: A++ one of the best Christmasses ever, would festive it up again.

Pics Of Pure Festiveosityness

2010-12-24T19:16:00.003+13:00

Gaze into his smoldering gaze of smolderingness.

Tamsyn is hardcore and doesn't even give a fuck.

I was always ahead of my time.

Tamsyn has joined me IN TEH FUTURE

Festive AND entertaining.

We totally both purchased those 2011 sunglasses and plan on rocking them out for New Years.

Sore Feet Of Victory

2010-12-23T22:07:00.003+13:00

Whooooo what a day! I spent it with Tamsyn and did all the Christmas shopping in the world, ever. We traipsed from one end of town to the other, then halfway back again. The weather was beautiful and the crowds weren't too bad, actually. It felt nice to have everything done the day before Christmas eve, plus tomorrow afternoon we're heading up to see Tamsyn's folks anyway so it kinda hard to be sorted.

I got my mentee a really cool book on graffiti art and hip hop culture, which hopefully he likes, plus an accompanying card with a pimped out santa sleigh. Plus assorted Things for friends and family were purchased, taken home and dutifully wrapped up. I quite like having a cute little pile of wrapped up pressies sitting in my lounge, ready to be given out. Brings on the warm fuzzies.

Plus I am now officially a man, for I purchased myself a wonderful set of beautiful blue eggcups.

They stack up on a little holder type thing and they fill my heart with joy.

Look at that smug fucker and his magnificent eggcups.

Aaaaaand yeah. Things are continuing to come up Millhouse, as they say. I might do a post from Tamsyn's place tomorrow, but if not then everyone have a fantastic Christmas/holiday season and you'll doubtless hear from me soon.

This Season's Buzz

2010-12-22T13:31:00.007+13:00

Not ONLY is it the season for festivenessositytude, but there is something else going on that I have noticed, and it tugs on my heartstrings, dear readers.

There are dead bumblebees, everywhere. Lying forlornly on the pathway, nestled in the flower bed, limply strewn in the gutter like stripey little fuzzy pillows of sadness. Is there anything in this life more wretched than a dead bumblebee? Other than Morris Dancers I am hard pressed to think of anything. And so this season as you are stuffing yourselves full of turkey and unwrapping your Hoola Hoops and Donkey Kong games, I beseech you to give a thought to the poor little bumblebees, who died so that you can spread overpriced manuka honey all over your crumpets.

See what I did there?

Tis The Season

2010-12-21T14:45:00.004+13:00

How many of you have strong feelings about Christmas, one way or another? Some of my closest friends loathe the holiday to the depths of their souls and for me it's a bit like watching someone kick a puppy to death. Don't get me wrong, I'm not obnoxiously festive (though I did get me a four dollar santa hat from the supermarket that I've been rocking out around town). I don't own a christmas tree or festoon my flat with bunting. I am yet to wander the streets wassailing or hang mistletoe above the bed and give Tamsyn saucy, eggnog fuelled looks. But I do hold a quiet appreciation for the holiday in my heart and this year I'll be going to a Christmas eve church service to mark the Christian aspects of the holiday in my own way.

So, faithful readers. Are you pro or anti Christmas?

This Year In Key Words

2010-12-20T11:36:00.006+13:00

The top 12 key word searches to my blog for 2010! Simon, well done for coming third place with Dungeon Fuckers. I suspect you have more readers than I do.

1. megapope 189
2. the megapope 60
3. dungeon fuckers 7
4. megapope blog 7
5. megapope blogspot 3
6. "this one weird rule" 2
7. meagpope 2
8. megapope.cl 2
9. www.megapope.cl 2
10. мегапопы 2
11. "48 film festival" 2010 kidnap 1
12. "bishop brian tamaki 1

With honourable 'why the hell would anyone google this' mentions to:

18. "llamafia" 1
19. "misty series" uncle 2

Note: the Misty Series is an infamous exploitive child sex movie that I mentioned once in a blog post where I linked to this boingboing article. The very next day I got two hits on my blog from people googling the film. I really, really hoped it was for legit research purposes.

Master Phillips

2010-12-20T11:15:00.003+13:00

In today's Monday, I am now officially a postgraduate design student, enrolled with Massey university here in sunny Wellington. The program is a year long, full time and leads into the masters degree the following year should I choose to continue to that level (and really that's the main point of the postgrad diploma).

I'll be keeping with my current job while studying. I anticipate a few possible clashes but generally the program is aimed at older students who hold down jobs so it shouldn't be too bad.

My City

2010-12-19T13:43:00.002+13:00

Your Week With Dan

2010-12-18T15:36:00.004+13:00

Life, it continues. And continues awesomely.

Had an extra week of work before the holidays, which was nice. I got to be in the office for the last day, so there was wine for all and a general atmosphere of laid back (the sales team) activity (us production monkeys). Plus I got me a free office chair as part of the Great Clear Out of 2010.

Slept in until 1 in the afternoon today and it was GLORIOUS. This afternoon I'm heading round to Mike White's for his 30th birthday, with Andy. There are also possible forecasts of Jarrod, with outbreaks of BBQ meat and squalls of beer towards the evening. And of course tomorrow morning is MUPPETS CHRISTMAS CAROL at the cinema! With a weekend like this I really do feel like I have it disgustingly good.

Other great things about today: not having to wear jeans. The weather's been hitting us with Hamiltonian levels of humidity recently so it's all about the shorts and sandals for the forseeable future now that work's over. I might even get browner legs. Woah.

Yawny Face

2010-12-13T20:14:00.012+13:00

Argle Blargle. Long day was long.

Spent three hours roaming around DISTRICT X of Wellington trying to hunt down my wayward mentee. The little scamp buggered off with his mates and his mum was... not particularly useful in bringing him to heel. Twitch.

In happier news, the rest of my day was very enjoyable as I did some Christmas shopping and stopped by work to get some papery bits done. Sense of glowing achievement over caricature collection is still with me and I'm drawing up some more project ideas to do over the holiday period.

Going to see the Muppets Christmas Carol at the Embassy, on a double date with Tamsyn, Craig and Sarah. I loves me some muppets.

Strains of shitty metal music are drifting into my room from the lounge, courtesy of Richard. Bless his little ginger heart, he's such a bogan.

Weekend 2: Weekend Harder

2010-12-12T19:19:00.008+13:00

Finished those caricatures like a boss. Apparently they went down really well, people liked them and there's the possibility of doing more, so hey lally lally and a packet of biscuits. I feel a nice warm sense of achievement over that and am inclined to go so far as to throw the horns.

Whoooo hell yeah.

This is one of 46 cartoons; TV's Kevin Milne, who (until recently, I think) presented Fair Go on our nation's airwaves. I figure I can post up a pic of him since he's a Celebrity Person and Well Known on our illustrious islands.

Also, Tamsyn and I had an amazing dinner at Andy and Tamara's, along with Jarrod and Steph which was hugely grown up and awesome fun. Our hosts cooked up a mean roast lamb which was followed by a delicious tiramisu pudding and strawberries. We arrived with pre dinner nibbles and wine, and we stayed late into the night talking about Future Adult Things (with appropriate levels of tongue in cheek humour and snark) and had a really nice time. Hurrah!

This week: catching up with my mentee and his social worker (who's a real awesome guy), arranging financy things, running errands and hopefully getting postgrad stuff sorted out in some capacity.

Goal Post In Sight

2010-12-10T21:29:00.004+13:00

Can't stay long. Cartoons will murder me in my sleep.

Six are left. Six. But they haunt me. Haaaaaaauuuuuuunt meeeeeeeee.

Note to self: review lack of time management skills.

Second note to self: sugar free lift plus: success. Sexy success.

Dan out.

PS: Look into italicising the word sexy more often.

The Great Cartooning Of 2010

2010-12-06T12:48:00.003+13:00

Step 1: Prepare work environment. This largely entails having lots of tea on hand, switching off the internets and plugging in some headphones.

Step 2: Get 40+ caricatures done for the Wellington TVNZ office by Saturday morning.

Step 3: Profit!

So for the rest of this week I am Hermit Dan, sitting atop my mountain retreat until the weekend comes around. Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.

Weekend: Achieved.

2010-12-05T19:18:00.004+13:00

Wow. What a weekend. I am totally exhausted.

Craig and Sarah's wedding was amazing. Great friends, delicious food, fun speeches, more cameras than sensible and entirely too much to drink. Plus I danced a bit, which hardly ever happens, and spilled red wine on my nice new white shirt, which does.

Please excuse muddled train of thought rantings here. Tired Dan is tired.

Ran around like a crazy mofo during the wedding, since the happy couple made me the master of ceremonies and that involved making sure the speeches were in the right order, that people went up and down and around the right places at the right times (herding 90 slightly inebriated wedding guests is kinda fun) and that the afternoon flowed smoothly in regards to group photos, eating times, etc.

Also. ALSO! I got to actually take part in the ceremony! The vicar was Sarah's dad, who also walked her up the aisle and did the giving away thing, so I got to stand up there at the start with a mic and say some lovely words that he wrote for me, before passing the lead to him. It totally made me feel like an actual wedding celebrant, pretty cool.

Everyone had a total blast and I think this has set the benchmark for future weddings. Perfect weekend in all ways. A++ would marry again.

Two photos from the enooooooooormous amount that were taken over the weekend. These two were both snapped by Cameron, one of our design school peeps:

Me looking all exhausted after my main MC duties had been carried out for the afternoon.

My reaction shot to Tamsyn catching the bouquet thrown by Sarah. Did I mention that Tamsyn caught the bouquet thrown by Sarah? Well it turns out, right, that Tamsyn caught the bouquet that was thrown by Sarah.

Facebook will of course be inundated with many, many more pics of the happy event over the next week or so.

Decemberosity

2010-12-01T20:25:00.006+13:00

...in OTHER news, the end of the year is nearly upon us and, I have to say, 2010 has been in pretty much all ways superior to the filthy Year That Shall Not Be Named.

Awesome girlfriend? Check.

Cool job that's taught me lots? Check.

Living in Wellington? Check.

Sweet posse of friends? I'll give that a double check. Woah.

Enjoyable flatting experience? Check.

Somewhat life changing volunteer program? Check.

Incidentally, if any of you wanna be volunteer mentors for next year's batch, please contact me and let me know you're interested. Like many things involving kids they're always after more males to get involved, but nobody will get turned away. And I know that many of my friends reading this would make amazing mentors. DO IT.

And now we're coming into summer! Fuck yes! If there's one thing to make a person appreciate summer starting, it's a Wellington winter. I am getting shorts, even, and already my feet are redeveloping sandal tan marks. Astounding.

This weekend is the wedding of Craig and Sarah. I am MCing for them, which involves standing there with a mic making Pithy Remarks in between drunken relatives staggering to their feet and giving speeches. I've promised the bride and groom that I won't be too embarrassing, since after all what goes around comes around, plus Craig's grandmother is lovely and it wouldn't do to give the old girl a hernia by revealing the terrible truths about her grandson.

Current design projects: wedding invites for Tamara and Andy, plus a poster for a pub in town that's paying me with a 200 dollar bar tab. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

My Sides, They Split.

2010-12-01T20:10:00.002+13:00

Aha.

Ahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHASNORTAHAHAHAHA.

Hahaha. Heh. Aheeeee.

That is all.

Late Night Thunks

2010-11-25T23:29:00.004+13:00

1) THIS WEEKEND HAS ALL THE THINGS HAPPENING EVER WHOO!

2) NEXT WEEKEND IS CRAIG AND SARAHS WEDDING HUZZAH!

3) Postgrad meeting went very well. Sending off application tomorrow.

4) Wanting to go see Minge, which looks cool, plus one of Tamsyn's friends are involved. I haven't been to the theater in ages, so what better way to feel all cultured again than by checking out a cool bunch of feminist ladies doing their thing. PEOPLE WE SHOULD ORGANISE GOING TO THIS THING THAT IS ALL.

Post Graduate Diploma

2010-11-23T16:26:00.004+13:00

Design Research Practices 1: Introduction to design research

Design Research Practices 2: Development of a design research topic

Information Design: Making complex information into accessible design systems

Art Direction for Advertising: including images, composition and typography

Digital Media Studio: Digital techniques and concept development

Graphic Design Special Topic: image and identity, designing for adapting

120 credits. Working less than full time as I am, doing this and keeping my job should be doable.

Seeing the head of the school this Thursday to finalise my decision. Exciting stuff.

Crash-tastic

2010-11-22T13:55:00.006+13:00

Well. That was fun.

I remembered to take my DIABEETUS MEDS for the first time in over a week this morning, so down the hatch went good old trusy Metformin and Glycazide, with breakfast at around nine am. Little did I know I was paving the way... FOR DESTRUCTION™.

Four hours later and I'm feeling peckish, and if there's one thing every good diabetic knows, it's to eat something when one is feeling peckish. So up I get to make lunch and suddenly it's 'ruh roh'. By now I know exactly what the early stages of a blood sugar crash feels like. So I hurriedly prepped lunch, thinking it would be ready by the time I got too bad. This was, technically speaking, wrong.

By the time the food was on the plate, my hands were shaking like leaves. Epileptic leaves. I picked up the plate to head into the lounge, and the thing basically vibrated right out of my grip and there went my lunch, all over the floor. In the punch-drunk midst of my semi lucid haze I thought bugger this, lurched over to the fridge, managed to grab the door on the second try and promptly stuffed an entire kiwi fruit into my mouth without bothering to skin it first. It was delicious.

Sooo yeah. It seems that the meds have become too strong for me. I have evolved, life has found a way, etc. Next up will be a visit to the docs, and I imagine that for a while I might try not taking pills at all, and closely monitor my blood sugar to see if it goes back up into 'ohnoes my penis is about to fall off' territory.

Tra La La

2010-11-22T09:10:00.007+13:00

Hello internets. How the hell are you?

Blog updates are a bit sporadic at the moment. Life, it goes, fast and nicely. The job remains enjoyable, mentoring remains challenging but fun, things with Tamsyn are awesome, social life is great.

I'm looking into (and applying for since the deadline is coming up) postgraduate studies for next year. I'd be doing the postgrad diploma, and also staying with my job. Which would then let me go for my masters degree in 2012. My reasons for doing so are many and varied, but can be boiled down to expanding my skill set, opening up more opportunities, letting me teach at a tertiary level if I ever want to, making more contacts in Wellington, and taking my portfolio to the next level. So yeah, I have an interview this Thursday for that.

The mentoring program finishes this weekend. I can't believe it's been 20 weeks already. We all get up on stage with our kids and tell the audience what we've been up to, plus I think the mayor is there to say well done team and all that. To my mind the real work begins after that, because the plan is to keep in contact with the kid, but there'll be less support going on from the program.

Looking forward to that entire weekend immensely, actually. As well as the mentoring graduation, I have Trish and Lisa coming down to visit from Hamilton, plus Craig is having his stag night. Next weekend is going to be stupidly epic.

And now some photos that sum up the last couple of weeks with perfect accuracy.

Tamsyn in a silly hat.

The view of Wellington from the cable car.

Me in a fetching reindeer ensemble.

Me in the now infamous silly hat.

Craig pulling his best Herp Derp face to date.

Explosions In The Sky

2010-11-06T14:31:00.007+13:00

Yesterday was, by and large, taking into account all considerations, weighing up the pros and cons, measuring the yardsticks, totally awesome.

Had a nice catch up with Annah who was down visiting people, and we sat out in the sun in the middle of town, sipping beverages with Craig and then later Sarah and Misc German Friend whose name I forget. It was an amazingly beautiful spring day and I wore a teeshirt, waistcoat and dress jacket with my usual black jeans. Which was perfect attire for the weather right up until, this being Wellington, everything suddenly turned to poos.

Image: proof that the day was awesome, dammit. Also part of Annah's head.

For a while it was all up in the air as to whether we were going to get any fireworks display in town, as a storm front was barreling its way into the region and suddenly it was cold wind gusts and fat drops of rain, but the main brunt of the crappy weather managed to hold off and a bunch of us went down to the water front and watched 12 minutes of hugely awesome pyrotechnics. There were huge planets that burst out from nowhere, complete with rings, plus gentle golden rains (tee hee), falling stars, multicoloured 3D globes that filled the sky, dazzling rockets and so much more. I now know what you get for 190,000 dollars worth of fireworks. Turns out it's five tons of explosives.

The size of the crowd was decent, though the fairground setup was pretty basic. Luckily there was the prerequisite battered things on sticks to be had, and I made sure to sample the local delicacies of 'chips with cheese-dog covered in sauce and mustard'. I swear that this was some kind of native trick to see whether I'd eat something dubious, but I wolfed it down and earned the respect of the trailer chieftain.

My only real gripe was that the whole affair was managed by Classic Hits FM, who treated us to a stunningly loud Katie Perry blasting out across the crowd straight after the fireworks were over, though I guess at least it helped getting everyone home quickly.

Also I am now officially Tamsyn's longest running boyfriend. This is pretty cool and made the night even more awesome. Luckily she has still not seen through my facade!

War And Peas

2010-11-02T22:27:00.010+13:00

Well, my persistent audience. How the hell are you? Consider that a rhetorical question, unless you feel like actually telling me, either through comments or interpretative dance. So today I wondered for a bit why those of you who I know would rather see me fall under a bus continue to read this thing. Though I am aware that knowing isn't the same as caring, and it does relieve an itch, doesn't it?

Over my 30 zillionth cup of tea this evening, as I started to undergo tannin induced hallucinations, I pondered this inability or unwillingness that so often inflicts those who fall apart, to sever those final cords. Naturally I blame the internet, which makes it so easy to watch others at a distance, in a 'peeking through a pair of curtains and telling Mavis on the phone what those neighbours are up to' kind of way.

Right now it's the strange mix of anonymity and transparency which fascinates me. For instance I have a very good idea that people who hold me in... low esteem, let us say, are reading my blog. One of them even left a couple of comments on a recent post. But it's not the same as walking up on the street and starting a conversation, and I guess it's that sense of negotiating boundaries and the realities of claiming 'space' that is yours on the digital plane that I also find pretty interesting.

Of course this is a public blog, and so I don't hold any claims to this being much of a space for me to be private in. The most I can do is say who gets to comment here. But on the other side of the coin I can see who reads this blog through a variety of online tools and so the watchers become the watched and have now entered the conversation through the simple act of placing their eyeballs onto the page. As Neo would say, woah.

Also, and I realise this as I type it out, I do have some sense of my blog being my space in a fashion, as I think played out when Detractor A left a comment a few weeks back. When this happened my instinctive response was to engage in dialogue, because that's what one does when a guest comes into your house. Possibly if I was more territorial by nature I wouldn't have left the comment through, but I've always loved to receive guests of any kind and I swear to this day, if my worst enemy knocked on the door and asked for a cup of tea, I'd be very hard pressed not to invite them inside and offer them biscuits as well. It's that sense that someone has entered a domain of mine that makes me want to engage them on friendly terms, and I think this information makes me glad that bears are illiterate.

This is a topic that, really, I'm way too tired to give proper justice to now, being late o'clock in the evening, so I hope you'll excuse me for lightly rambling through what should really have been a much more in depth post about online interaction.

Of course it's entirely possible that at the end of the day this blog is merely the vehicle by which my detractors are hoping to witness my HORRIFIC DOWNFALL, and let me be the first to assure you that when my doomy doom comes upon me, I shall let you know here first, possibly with full colour pictures and a flow chart. It's the least I can do for a faithful audience.

Tribal Council

2010-10-30T02:18:00.003+13:00

Well. Google analytics tells me people are still coming to this blog, so I guess I better write something. It's been a while, hasn't it?

Mum and dad came down to Wellington last weekend, and we did the Official Meeting of the Tribes, in which Tamsyn's people met mine and we exchanged cultural artifacts and stories of our ancestral homelands. I now have a fetching bone nose piercing from Tamsyn's father and I believe her mum received my family's sacred five ton rock, that we wheeled down from Hamilton especially on wooden rollers. It'll look stunning by the flower garden plus it makes for a handy paper weight.

So the meeting went well and we ate delicious things and everyone had a lovely evening. The rest of the time they were down we did Wellington touristy things like visit the museum and go up the cable car and back down through the botanic gardens, where we happened across the leader of the Labour party, New Zealand's Phil Goff. He and his wife were enjoying the day and so I resisted the urge to leap at his person and scream about undoing the works of the National party and merely settled for small talk about how nice the gardens were. Also my dad made first contact by bearing down on him and booming 'I've seen you on TV!'

I have more things to talk about but it's rather late and I'm falling asleep. So there can be more bloggingness tomorrow.

Hackity Hack, Don't Come Back

2010-10-11T12:31:00.006+13:00

And after a night of hacking away with a dry, chainsaw like cough I've lost my voice! I can see the smiles on your faces now. Well it's okay, I don't have the best voice anyway. It sounds horrible listening to it on playback, which I'm aware is the case with most people, but I like to think mine is especially awful. Plus according to Tamsyn I say 'girls' as 'gals' which is a terrible thing for a person to find out at the age of 30.

Been an interesting week. If by interesting you mean largely boring and uneventful due to being all sick and stuff in bed.

Online drama seems to be mostly resolved, which is nice.

Got an unexpected Calum visitation this weekend, and spent Sunday afternoon hanging out with him and Andy and having a good catch up. Very likely didn't do my voice any favours by chatting all evening in between bouts of a horribly dry cough, but then I wouldn't have found out that Calum hopes to put a spa bath into the back of his van. And how cool is that?

What else. Oh yes, Paul Henry's resignation. Can I say anything about the guy that hasn't already been said? I guess if I wanted to strive for some semi originality, I would say I'm glad he got fired, he deserved it but I also feel sorry for him because he loved his job and got on well with his workmates, and having to lose that would be really shit for anyone. Maybe this will learn him?

Rest of the week: work, seeing mentee kid, gaming with friends, dinner with Tamsyn's folks... AND A CUDDLY TOY! *audience cheers*

Nerk Has Gone Up A Level!

2010-10-09T09:19:00.011+13:00

Things to do while sick and one's brainmeats feel like they're filled with radioactive slurry...

MARVEL at the graphics laden intro sequence of this 1994 masterpiece!

BE TRANSPORTED to a magical world so real you can taste the 16 bits of pure emersion!

ENGAGE the enemy with a force of characters that stride the world like colossi!

QUIVER with delight as the battle sequences fill you with awe and excitement!

I played the shit out of this game when I was 14 with my good friend Dave McIsaac and really I love it just as much now. I download it every couple of years to play on a genesis emulator and it never gets old.

For those interested, Shining Force Central has the low down on the entire series right here. Caution, website may cause bleeding from the eyes.

Meanwhile, In The Office...

2010-10-05T19:32:00.003+13:00

WORKMATE A: Paul Henry ended up getting suspended! He should totally go over to TV3 instead!

WORKMATE B: Yes I also think this! Wouldn't it be awesome if he was here in the office with his unique brand of edgy humour where he totally says what we are all thinking! I bet he would liven the place up haha!

DAN: Yes! I'd be all like, hey there Paul Henry, you racist fuckhead!

WORKMATE A & B: ...

DAN: My work here is done!

exit DAN, stage left.

Mentoring Shenanigans

2010-10-03T19:02:00.004+13:00

Geez louise. Flaming Nora, even. As they say. Well, not 'they' really, more like one crazy person who was in my design class. Oh you and your Old Farm Wife expressions!

Anyway where was I. Oh yes. I am tired! Today was long, especially on a mild hangover and not enough sleep, but also very fun. C4C had a careers day which consisted of taking our mentees along to the High Court and TVNZ, where two of the mentors work.

At the High Court we played out a scripted case in which the two program leaders were on trial for murder. Me and my mentee got to be the two judges, so we lounged about in our robes in the judge's room first, then swanned out and made everyone stand before we got to sit down at the bench and listen to the rest of the proceedings. Then we decided to sentence the leader who was found guilty to a lifetime of cleaning toilets in maximum security prison.

Firm, but fair.

After a lunch out in the sun outside parliament it was off to TVNZ, where we conducted on-camera interviews and watch the footage that had been shot of the mock trial being edited. The interviews will be shown at the mentoring graduation ceremony, which I think is about 9 weeks away. I took an interest in the editing process; the dude worked on a program that looked functionally very similar to Final Cut Pro, which is what we use to put together our 48 Hour Film Comp movies.

Then it was back up the hill where I promptly exploded out of my nice suit jacket and waistcoat and flopped down onto the couch in my lovely fluffy dressing down and track pants. Loungey Dan is loungey for the rest of the day.

Biddly Biddly Boo!

2010-09-26T23:28:00.005+13:00

Greytown was very nice. The main street is covered in outrageously expensive, upper class antique stores and art galleries, plus some nice cafes and other boutique shops. Including one lovely little old fashioned place where they sold horrendously marked up, Napoleon era soldiers. I took one look at them and turned up my nose; here was an old lady with a mouth like she could professionally suck lemons for her country, selling miniatures and she couldn't even apply a basic highlight! I could have easily done a better job. Too bad I guess that I don't own a beautiful olde time boutique store to sell space marines out of.

I had a lovely time with Tamsyn's family. We stayed in a very cute, rustic cottage that was all lit up with fairy lights when we arrived, and had marvelously kitchy things like 1950s English books full of private school yarns laying about the place. Also a new private joke was born, about two chickens. You had to be there.

Oh, and I really do have to mention the Main Street Cafe and Deli, where you can get the best pies in the entire multiverse. I had me a venison pie with gravy and mashed potato, and it was like a week long bender plus getting arrested for indecent exposure in my mouth.

IN OTHER NEWS, I am fixing my bike tomorrow, or at least having a look at it with a mind to seeing what needs doing to make it road worthy again. I'm quite sick of hobbling around the place with my craptastic toe, thankyou very much, and I miss getting decent exercise. Since it looks like the waiting list for surgery is going to be somewhere between two to six months, proactive Dan is being proactive.

ALSO I am percolating on picking up a cheap scanner so I can start doing the occasional cartoon illustrations to go with my blog posts. Reckon that might be fun and give me an excuse to draw stuff. TO THE TRADEMES!

NOT TO MENTION did you know there's a sega genesis emulator for the mac, and that you can get Shining Force 2 on this thing? Well you can, and I did and ITS AMAZING. Yes the graphics are laughable and the storyline is stupid but OH HOW I LOVE IT.

The Megapope

A Short List

Domestic Bliss

To Recap (part 2)

To Recap (part 1)

Dan 1, Toes 1

What a Weaner

Toe Saga

The Post You've All Been Waiting For

Lucky, Lucky, Lucky

Thorndon Orthotic Adventures

Big Badda Boom

Curried Design Explosions

Floating

And Now, Fish

Missions And Jam

Nubbin

Hobby Blawg

Ultramarines And You: Spartany Romans In Space.

Dan Update

Over It

Trundling Along

I'm On The Drug

Reading Time

Slight Exaggeration

Feeling The Love

Hospital Adventures™

Shut It Down

Sedentary Lifestyle

House Of The Damned

Operation: Feets

Couldn't Think Of A Food/ACT Pun Title

Break Time

Live From Massey University

Blah Blah Blah

Winter Blues

Online Sexism

Good Distractions

Holy Shit...

Oh Hai

Unleavened Bread

Being Me All Over The Place

I'm Doing My Readings, Honest

The Weekend That Was

Zombie Shuffle

Mentoring Long Distance

Things As Of Late

Revelry

Radical Masculinity

Day Of Rest

Oh Hai

Technical Terms

Presentations

Testy

Readings and Klezmer

Postgrad And Other Misadventures

Drawing Conclusions

*deep breath*

Moore Than Meats The Pie

Works For Me, Anyway

Domesticity

Year One

Lifey Bits

Movingosity 4: Move Harder

Movingosity Part 3

Movingosity Part 2

Movingosity

Oh Look A Blog Post

Shoo Bop Boo Waa.

Dates To Remember

Trial By Bogans

Auld Lang Syne

Harpy Noo Yeerz!

Obligatory Christmas Haul/Festivities Post

Pics Of Pure Festiveosityness

Sore Feet Of Victory

This Season's Buzz

Tis The Season

This Year In Key Words

Master Phillips

deep breath