Misdiagnosis

“You know, I took your physio’s referral for you from the thirty or so ‘urgent’ cases because it looked like the easiest. From the description I though ‘Oh yes – a standard ACL tear. No problem. I’m going to be using your case for a teaching seminar as an example of things being not always what they appear to be.”

“…Right” I replied. “Is that good ?”

That’s what a specialist sports doctor told me about the state of my knee, after some closer examination.

Last week, my physio told me that what I had most likely done to my knee was torn or snapped my cruciate ligament ( or what I called the cruciatus ligament ) – which was a pretty common sports injury. She then went on to explain what would be done to fix this ( cutting off some other ligament from elsewhere in my body , and then grafting it into my knee ) – and I almost fainted. It rather freaked me out.

So – I got a referral letter sent off to a sports doctor at the Wakefield hospital this week, and warned that it would probably be well into the New Year before I heard back from her.

Two days later I got a call from the hospital asking if I were able to make it into them for an appointment. There had been a miraculous opening. “Hell yes !” I said.

So after a morning of Christmas shopping ( which seemed to be going worryingly painlessly for a change ) and made my way to Newtown and the specialist sports clinic.

After five minutes of jumping around in my underwear, the doctor echoed what my physio had said. “ACL tear most likely, considering the means of injury and the state of your knee. I’ll get you to have some x-rays now, and we’ll get you booked in for a MRI scan as well. That’s really busy – so it won’t be for a couple of weeks. I’ll see you again after that.”

So – downstairs to radiology I went, x-rays were taken ( and am I the only one that thinks hospital x-ray machines are rather sinister things ? ), and I went onto the list for an MRI scan.

Then, home.

No sooner had I sat down to do some painting, then I got a call from the radiology dept.
“Can you have a scan done tomorrow ?”

“Umm – Yeah sure. I thought it was going to be weeks before I was going to get this done?”

“Usually that would be true – but we’re going to be here early tomorrow – and we can fit you in at 7.15 if you can make it. Can you make it at that time?”
“You betcha !”

In I rolled early the next morning, and was inserted into the MRI machine. That was an experience ! Yet again, TV has lied to me. Whenever I’ve seen MRI scans on telly, it’s really quite a futuristic affair. In you glide into the machine – badda-bing, badda-bang – hey presto – results ! “Here’s the probem, you’ve got three gall-bladders !”

It’s not like that at all. It takes AGES – about 28 minutes to get my knee done ( and it started to get difficult to stay still. It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic too ! ). It’s also REALLY noisy. They give you a pair of those ear-muff things – and it was still really quite loud. The machine makes a lot of disconcerting clicks, and then launches into a full-on power buzz, which makes various changes in pitch and tone. I’m pretty sure there’s been a few people in the world who have freaked right out in one of those things.

Afterwards, they told me to see the receptionist at the sports clinic and see if the good doctor could see me again today. The MRI had confirmed what the x-rays had hinted at – it wasn’t my ACL at all, but instead I had a fracture.

“You had an MRI scan TODAY ?” said the incredulous receptionist “We only saw you YESTERDAY ! That NEVER happens !”

I felt pretty good about the way things were progressing !

So yeah – I have a fracture. Again. This is now my fifth. Still – I feel a lot better about having a fracture. At least I’m on familiar territory here ! And there’s a 99% chance that that it’ll heal fine. I have to go back in for more x-rays early in the new year, to see if things are healing okay ( the doctor was a bit mystified that I was able to walk reasonably normally, as normally someone in my position would be on crutches – and probed me quite thoroughly to make sure that I just wasn’t pretending not to feel pain. “Doc” I said “I’m not the kind of guy to say something doesn’t hurt when it does ! Just ask my wife !” ).

All in all – I feel pretty lucky. If I hadn’t majorly lucked out in so many areas, I would have spent the summer with a fractured bone and not even known – and in all probability made things worse ( the first thing the doctor told me to stop was the rehab stuff the physio had got me to do – like the lunges, which were really starting to hurt ! ).

But it does mean that I won’t be doing anything strenuous of weight-bearing with my leg at all – which puts a major crimp on my exercise programme. Oh well, it’s more important to heal. No dancing on New-Year ( doctors orders ).

I’m most happy about my other ligaments not being harvested in a patch up mission though. Man – that really sounded pretty bad …

Seraph’s week of encripplement

They tell you a lot of things of tv to try and keep you from falling in the warm blubbery embrace of obesity. They tell you to push play for thirty minutes a day. Be active. Do exercise. That kind of thing. But they NEVER mention the dangers involved. There’s never the disclaimer “WARNING ! Robust physical activity may leave you in a screaming heap of agony and piteous weeping!”. The kind of warning which might have done me some good last Friday playing soccer with some of the guys at work.

I was doing quite well it must be said. The game had been going for around 40 minutes – and I had managed to stay moving the entire time – mostly at something approaching a running speed. No Beckham, but pretty good for me. I had even made a couple of half-decent attempts at goal !

It sure puts a crimp in your game when your right knee decides its going to bend the wrong way though. I’m not really sure how it happened either ( it’s lost in that moment of white pain you get in these times ). Two of us were going for the ball at some speed – we might have got tangled up, I might have slipped … but whatever the cause, I remember hearing a distinct POP, and then I was rolling along the Astroturf in a large degree of pain.

Oww.

So – after VERY CAREFULLY driving myself home with a rapidly swelling knee, I spent the rest of Friday with ice wrapped in a tea-towel clasped to my wounded flesh. Things were still pretty bad the next day – so after being ordered to seek medical help by my sister, I asked Viv to take me to the after-hours doctor in Newtown.

I was given crutches, pain-killers, anti-inflammatory meds and an order to stay home for the week. Luckily the seniors have gone – so there was a good deal less relief to have to write each day.

I should have done more school work ( like the report comments I should have finished by now ), but I tended just to sit around playing video games. I managed to finish Okami ( which is a very cool game ! ).

I saw a physio this morning, and got the all clear to drive again and go back to work. She thought that I might have damaged some cartilage inside my knee. There’s a chance that something may have ‘snapped’, which would require something called ‘key-hole’ surgery to fix ( man – I don’t like the sound of that ! ). I have exercises to do to help fix things up. If I’m lucky – then I should hopefully be alright in another 6 – 8 weeks.

Sigh.

Oh well. I’ve had worse ! At least there’s no bones broken.

In other news – today is the end of ‘Movember’, and I have been supporting the cause with my own effort. Behold ! The glorious ‘Anarchy99’ !

Curse you, NZQA !!!

What IS it about education in this freaking country ? Why must it be administered by a bureaucratic bunch of losers which would make Kafka* spin in his grave ? Get this - the year 10 ( 4th formers for all you old-speaker out there ) have an English exam soon, and it's going to be based pretty heavily on the format of the 1.6 NCEA exam for Y11 ( 5th form ) students.

I know that they have old exam papers on-line, so I go to download a couple of poetry question sections so my students can get a taste of the kind of thing they'll have to answer. Found questions, copied them, no problem.

So then I go to open the on-line resource book for that years exam. This is the one that actually has the literature / text extracts that they're having to answer the question ON. Kinda important to have.

The document is opened, and I was stunned to find that EVERY resource you would need to make any of the questions USEFUL to look at have been removed and replaced with the uniform comment 'This resource has been removed for copyright reasons'.

WHAT !!?!!?!

$#@$#**&^%@$@ !!!!

What kind of bollocks is that ? Since WHEN is rampant publishing of a POEM on-line been a major breech of copy-right law ??

I can imagine the ads now :

"You wouldn't steal a handbag ! You wouldn't steal a car ! YOU WOULDN'T DARE STEAL A POEM !! YOU TWISTED SACK OF INFECTED INTESTINAL WALL ! Downloading POETRY is THEFT ! And poetry theft will be met with swift and terrible justice delivered by CHUCK NORRIS HIMSELF !!!! YOU WILL PAY with BLOOOOOOD !!!"

Yeah - because I heard that the international poetry studios are REALLY hurting because of that whole on-line exam racket. Sylvia Plath is righteously pissed off ... no wait - she's DEAD. Like your freaking MEDIUM !!!

Look, nothing against poetry, but it's HARDLY at the vanguard of the arts. Incan-restoration interpretive dance is more widely regarded ( and NO - you can't claim that 'song lyrics' count as poetry ! ). If I were a poet, I'd be BEGGING to have my poem in a senior English exam - just for the freaking exposure ! Do you realise how many teenagers could be baffled by your obscure metaphors about pioneer NZ women or a sunset ? HEAPS !

So I just photocopied the original exam paper we had in the department files.

Yeah - way to stop me in my poem-piracy tracks, huh? You like that NZQA ? Cos I got more where THAT came from ! Jerks ...


* I have no idea if this reference makes sense. I have never read Kafka. He wrote a story about a castle that was supposed to be some kind of allagory. And he never finished it ... or something. It sounded good though, eh ?

So childish !

Driving to work I noticed that the :

REDUCE
SPEED

sign on the side of the road had been the target of some vandalism. Two of the letters had been covered with spray paint, changing the sign to :

REDUCE
#PEE#

I hated myself for doing it, but I laughed so much I nearly drove square into a church.


Reduce pee ... *snigger*

Revieworama !

The final countdown begins again – only another couple of weeks before the seniors leave for the year to go and ‘study’ for their exams. School becomes a great deal easier after that. Okay – maybe not a great deal ( I’ll still be freaking busy ), but it’ll be better !

Here’s a bit of a review of things I’ve seen / read / played recently –

Perfect Creature

So close ! So very close to being a really good film ! And yet – so over the mountain range studded with land-mine far away. It must be said right at the start – it’s a HELL of a lot better than ‘The Irrefutable Truth About Demons’. Mind you, considering that ‘…Demons’ is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, I’m not sure that’s much of a endorsement.
What the film did REALLY well was in creating a very cool world. Very steam-punk, while still retaining a very NZ feel. Kinda post-colonial mixed with Dickensian London. It worked pretty well. The ‘mythology’ of the world was interesting too. I liked the idea of Vampires not being evil, or even really monstrous. The idea of the ‘Brothers’ being a kind of ‘next-step’ in the evolutionary process was great, but more so was their partnership with humanity. They were ( supposedly ) so much more powerful than humans, but were essentially bound to serve humanity. I loved how the Brothers were objects of religious reverence for many humans, and how there’s a ritual of tithing blood in churches.

All very very cool.

So – what’s the problem ?

For a start, there’s not a HUGE amount of ‘super-human’ ability demonstrated by the Brothers really. Oh sure – they’ve got heightened-senses ( shown though various crash zooms and other fairly unimpressive sfx ), but what else ? Uncanny climbing ability … and that’s about it. Oh – and a weird pointy-finger style of fighting. Now really ! These are Vampires ! Okay – given that they’re a genetic anomaly they’re not going to be turning into mist or flying of in the form of a bat, but surely there could have been something a little more impressive they could have done. I guess there are hints towards super speed and strength … but there was just too little done with it. That was a shame.

The biggest problem for me was the antagonist. They made a seriously BAD error in casting. Rather than looking evil or scary – the ‘bad’ vampire ends up looking … well … retarded. That’s a bad look for your villain no matter how you cut it. I just couldn’t take him seriously. Also – there was an issue for me with this character’s motivation. At the start of the story, the antagonist’s goal simply seems to be ‘kill people and drink their blood’. Fair enough ! He’s a vampire – I can understand that. BUT – as soon as the bad guy gets caught it seems that his motivation arbitrarily changes to ‘infect as many people as possible with my blood-disease’. WHAT ? What the hell brought that on ? Why would that happen ? It didn’t make any sense. It also REALLY bugged me that he was able to escape from the maximum security Brother stronghold. It was a ‘deus ex’ situation where ( supposedly ) very clever people ( Vamp’s guards ) start doing inexplicably stupid things ( letting Vamp out of his security harness when he’s CLEARLY one of the most serious risks to all of society, not getting a Brother to check the security glass after Vamp has repeatidly hurling himself at it … and not putting Vamp BACK in the harness as a punishment, not having a fail-safe lock-down so that bad Vamp can just stroll out back into the middle of the freaking city heart !!! ). It’s really annoying when characters do things that are so stupidly out of character.

Still – there’s certainly some interesting things going on in the film, and it’s worth a DVD rental. Just don’t shell out $15 to see it on the big screen.

C+


Sun-Shine

Argh. ANOTHER film where ( supposedly ) very clever people to some VERY stupid things which bugged the hell out of me.
In a lot of ways it reminded me a lot of ‘Event Horizon’ – just replacing the supernatural elements with more scientifically plausible things. There are some good thrills here and there, but I found things largely pretty predictable.
The music is pretty good – and largely contributes to the atmospheric impact of the film. I wouldn’t mind getting the soundtrack.
Worth a rental if there’s nothing else you want to see, just get ready for some ‘Aw c’mon!’ moments.

C+


Lady in the Water

All the reviews I read about this pretty much panned this film. I got it at the last Video Eze sale for ten bucks. I didn’t get round to seeing it for quite awhile – mainly because I wanted to like it, but all the evidence seemed to be pointing at it being rubbish.

I finally braced myself and slung it in the DVD player last night. And y’know what ? I really liked it ! It was a nice story. It did stretch my suspense-of-disbelief a little bit in places ( the girl / woman living in the flats who JUST HAPPENED to know the stories of the Narfs and the Skrunts ) but there was a reasonable reason present for how this could happen that I was okay to buy into.

Not M. Night’s best – but he hasn’t done anything yet to equal The Sixth Sense in my books ( and that would be because it freaking GENIUS ), but it’s pretty enjoyable modern fairy-tale.

B

The IT Crowd – Season 2

Freaking awesome. Not quite as good as season 1 – but very very funny ( my fav joke was a legendarily hilarious take off of those damn ‘You wouldn’t steal a hand-bag !” copyright ads ). I miss Denham though …

A


The Day of the Triffids

Always meant to read this ages ago – and only just got round to it now. Well worth reading. Some pretty unsettling moments within. I gotta read me some more John Wyndham ! I think “The Kraken Wakes’ or ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ will be next on the list.

B+


Resistance – Fall of Man

A very competent FPS from the guys who brought you ‘Spyro’ and “Ratchet and Clank’. Again – it’s the setting and situation which are so captivating. It’s really an alternate World War 2, by instead of battling the Hun – it’s an ‘alien’ threat which is kicking the crap out of mankind. The Chimera are a scary bunch of dudes – and the cool thing the game does is weave the story of the Chimera uprising ( which is a huge mystery in the game. You don’t really know what the hell the Chimera are or where they come from. Are they Aliens ? Are they a genetic experiment gone wrong ? Are they a race which has co-evolved with us under the earth ? I’m at least ¾ of the way through the game and I still don’t know for sure ! ).
The weapons are cool – and while they’re reasonably futuristic sometimes ( such as the Chimeran Auger – a gun which fires energy bolts which pass through walls and obstacles until they clam into organic matter, or the Bullseye – which has the ability to ‘tag’ an enemy, which allows the conventional fire-power of the gun to home in on the tagged victim unerringly – fecking handy in dealing with smart-ale Chimera hiding behind cover ) , there’s a good mix of conventional thrown in, and the ‘advanced’ weapons fit in well with the WW2 feeling.
The action of the game alternates between frantic battle-front warfare, and tense ‘survival-horror’ tunnel-creeping sections. There’s some nice boss throw-downs and some fun vehicles to drive ( I’m hanging out for another tank-level ! Though the huge Chimeran spider-tank is pretty groovy ! ).
Graphics are great – though I’m sure that with an HD cable and a LCD tv they’d look even better ( duh ! ).
All in all – another winner from Insomnia games studio! Roll on “Ratchet and Clank : Tools of Destruction” is what I say !

A

One day - two parties !

Yesterday was busy busy busy. I had two birthday parties to go to. Two ! Who can live at that speed !! I don't know how those LA socialites do it. And imagine Bruce Wayne ! Having to live THAT life AND be a crime fighter on top of that. Yeesh.

The big focus on attention though ( as it was for most of the previous week - hence no updates ! ) was my costume for the second of the two parties - Clare's 'Space' party. I admit that I was pretty stumped for something original for a few days when I got the invitation. Yeah - I thought of all the standard Star Wars and Star Trek openers ... but I wanted something unique ! Something NO-ONE was going to copy.

It was tricky alright - something that was original, but WASN'T going to cripple me financially either.

Then a week ago today ( almost at the same time too ) - it stuck me.

A crew member of the 'Nostromo' - complete with chest-burster alien !

Genius !

But that DID mean I had to make myself a chest-burster in under a week - as you can't just go out and buy these things ( I looked, trust me ! ).

Cue much paper-mache work !

Oddly enough, one of the hardest parts of the process was finding some of those long thin styled balloons to get the paper-mache on. It was damn near impossible ! Everyone only had the round kinds. Can you believe it ? At about the fourth place I looked at I was getting pretty distressed ( as the whole plan hinged on having one of these balloons - just freaking ONE ! ). Then, JOY ! It had something similar - weird caterpillar shaped balloons. They didn't look much like caterpillars really though - to be honest, they more looked like ... well ... sex toys ( they were kinda ribbed too - very unsettling ).

Despite their unusual 'added value' they worked just fine. The second hurdle was getting the paper-mache tube to dry in time. It was very slow going - even with being bunged in the hot water cupboard. In the end I just wacked int on top of the woodburner. THAT got things sorted !

The painting and gluing was reasonably straight forward.

I did investigate getting some sew-on patches made stating various Wayland-Yutani slogans and such - but that were FAR too expensive to have made. In the end I just printed off some from net pictures and sellotaped them to the pair of overalls I got. That worked reasonably well ( and way cheaper ! ).

People at the party seemed to think it was kinda cool, and I have to say that I was pretty pleased with the final effect.

Jenni's Rock-Star party was a lot of fun - though Viva and I couldn't stay long. It was nice to see people, and I was reminded ( yet again ) of how lucky I am to have such great friends. I really am fortunate to know such a great bunch of cool, interesting and NICE people.

Yay for friends ! And for the absence of parasitic xenomorphs on Earth !

Critical Mass 3 - Vague Origins

Hey gang ! Been a while since my last post I know. Th end of term 3 will do that to you, especially when you're trying to get a year 13 production of "Waiting for Godot" done ! Whew !

I've been having a nice break not doing much. Playing too much "UFO:Enemy Unknown", eating poorly, and working on this comic. I have now discovered the joys of the 'pattern brush' - as evidenced in the exquisite grid pattern in the alien suit blueprint. It's a pretty cool feature !

And I THINK I got all the spelling mistakes out this time !

I also had an especially nice birthday, with many people getting me some very nice gifts - a big thanks to all of you ! But especially to my little sister and her partner who got me and Viv a freaking PlayStation 3 !! So much for any more marking in the holidays !

I've got another episode of Critical Mass drawn - so I'll get to work scanning than and getting it to 'publication' level. I shall also be starting a new video game canvas for my old pal and partner in crime ( although I'm more his misshapen minion to his evil genius really ) BubbaJay. In consultation with him we've come to the conclusion that a C64 inspired image would be best - probably based on "Impossible Mission" - though it might be "Creatures" if I can find a decent set of images of the sprites somewhere.

Did I mention that I take commissions ?

Dial up is for who ?

I'm constantly mishearing things, my brain often re-editing things so they're more scandalous or entertaining.

Case in point - talking with Meredith last night, and we were talking about broadband, and I SWEAR I heard her say :

"Dial-up is for fat people".

There's a t-shirt in that statement.

My brain hurts

Gosh. A weekend of marking Y10 'writing' has just about pushed me over the crumbling cliffs of sanity to the cruel cruel rocks of do-lally-land.

How the hell is it possible to write SO badly ? It really staggers the mind.

I present for you a small case study of the kind of thing I've been subjected to. It is one of the more acute cases, but not unrepresentative.

The task, I thought, was simple enough. Describe a location taken from the text we're studying and describe it as vividly as possible ( in other words - taking care to develop descriptive detail and use figurative imagery ).

I thought it was simple enough anyway.

So - one of the locations was a ball. What did our case study make of it ? Let's see:

Paragraph 1 - " The ball had a nice calm feeling, with darkness covering the strong, heroic building with shades of light casting from place to place from what looked like a mini red torch."

...Say what ? Seriously - what the hell was that ? Mini red torch ? What does that even START to mean !? Owww - my head.

Paragraph 2 - 'The ball was like any other ball in 'Dreamland'.

Huh ? Dreamland ? What the hell is that ?

'Gold surrounding the walls like the gold rush. Carpet formally place like it they were in Buckingham Palace.'

Feck - what IS this ? Pain in head increases in intensity to sharp stabbing pains in the central cortex. Hands start to twitch involuntarily.

'A massive room the size of Wembley Stadium with a light, peaceful shadow casted the whole room like it was saying 'I love lying on the beach!' Small shades of light swissed across the room like the speed of light, to create that party atmosphere."

Sweet jebus - this is worse than torture. I can't confess to anything to make it stop ! Why is shade talking about loving to be on the beach ? THAT party atmosphere ? Kid - I think you've had WAY too much of THAT party atmosphere by the sound of it. Dammit - I think my nose has started bleeding...

Paragraph 3 - ' They see hundreds of people. man and women surrounding the room like small moving bears sidestepping from one to another.'

Argghhh ! Make it stop make it STOP ! I'll do anything ! Sidestepping bears ?
WTF ?!!?! Vision fading...

'Dancing was the only action going on at the ball like you couldn't do anything else, it was like the carpet telling everyone 'to step on me, you must dance formally with your partner, no excuses !' '

*With a scream of tormented anguish Seraph falls into a coma, convulsing violently*

And that wasn't even the end !

And I marked stuff like that ALL weekend !

Sigh. It's like reading subtitles of Hong Kong action films, where the translators don't know English, this sort of crushingly bad gibberish that VAGUELY hints at an intention below the verbal up-chuck.

And YES. I KNOW that there are ethical issues in sharing this with you - but hell, when you consider the cruel and unusual suffering this kid put me through - he freaking owes me this !

The sort of thing Seraph giggles at for days

Hey - you know what a couple of words that are funny together are ?

'Booze shack' !

Hee hee hee !

That's almost as good as 'Pickle Weasel' !

( you can tell the end of term is near, can't you ? )

Critical Mass 2 - That is the Question

A special thank you goes out to my good friend Lucifer Morningstar for his photoshop help with this, which accounts fot the noticable increase in image quality here. Not the REAL Lucifer of course - as far as I KNOW anyway. It WOULD explain a lot if he were though...

This and that from the life of Seraph

- I went to the Wellington City Mission great 2nd hand book sale. Not because of any kind of affiliation to the mission - but because of my love of cheap books ( not knocking the City Mission though - they do good work ! ). They seemed to have a much more streamlined check-out process ( including a '10 books or less' express lane which was a bloody good idea - it certainly saved me time ! ). I spent my time prowling around the fantasy / sci-fi / horror tables and ended up getting a few Stephen King books that I haven't read or read fully :
* Everything's Eventual ( mostly for the Dark Tower story "The Little Sisters of Eluria", but there were a number of stories which I didn't get round to reading when I borrowed Hix's copy )
* Insomnia - For the 'Dark Tower' links !
* Skeleton Crew - I've NEVER read this collection of stories - and I really should, now that 'The Mist' is being made into a feature-film by Frank Darabont !
* Bag of Bones - I would have got this LAST year ... had it not been for the fact that the lines were approaching what seemed to be a light-year in length ! Hix tells me it's good !

- Sauntered into the public library and borrowed a book on photo-shop ( to help, hopefully, with my comic strips ) and a John Wyndham omnibus containing 'Day of the Triffids', 'The Kraken Wakes' and 'The Crysalids'. I've been hankering to read 'Day of the Triffids' - for some reason the idea of killer plants has been playing on my mind. Don't ask - it's my brain and even I don't know.

I gotta say - I'm loving that self-checking-out-books-machine they have in there now ! It's awesome ( even if it had trouble reading the bar-code on the photoshop book and I had to retry it, like, ten times.

- My 'Fungus the Loon' Blood-Bowl figure that I got on Trade-Me arrived today. You gotta love night-goblin fanatics ! They always make me think of my buddy Conrad playing the 'Warhammer' video game on his computer when we were roomies down in Christchurch. On the field of honour his army was ranged against a force of goblins.
"Goblins?!" laughed Conrad, in haughty tones. "They'll be no match for my heavy calvary ! CHARGE !". The mighty steeds tore across the middle of no-man's land - lances dropped to a wave of glinting steel death.
"Hmmmmm... Y'know - you might not want to do that" I said - drawing on my days working at Pendragon Games and my knowledge of the tabletop 'Warhammer'. 'That group there looks like a bunch of Night Goblins - they'll probably have fanatics hidden in their ranks."
"Fanatics ? What are they ?" Conrad asked - his cavalry now scant pixels away from the goblins.
"THOSE are fanatics." I answered - as four massive ball-and-chain swinging goblins flew from the front of the ranks - smashing his cavalry and leaving them in a tattered, bleeding heap of wreckage. "Yeah - they'll do that."

Tee hee. I remember his stunned expression so clearly.

- I saw 'Die-Hard 4.0' this afternoon. It was okay. I should have followed my instincts and waited to till it came out on DVD though - it wasn't as good as the previous three.

- I fixed the shieldy-thingy at the top of our wood-burner pipe. It's harder than it sounds.

- Did three loads of washing ! Which I promptly forgot was on the line when I went off to see the movie and got all damp again. Smeg !

Tomorrow :
- Make pancakes for breakfast ( promised Viv I would )
- Loads of marking ( joy )
- Wash car ( covered in green pollen )
- Spray lawn and re-seed ( so there can be some actial GRASS on the damn thing )

Geek ? Read on !

This will be of probably little interest to you 'norms' out there. If you have no kinship with the world of boardgames, you might just want to stick your fingers in your ears and start going 'la la la la la' loudly now.

I'm not sure WHY you might want to do that - because, y'know, you'll still be able to READ this - but it might be a laugh.

Now - to the meat of this entry !

Man - I just saw that some board-game company in Canada got the rights to re-issue 'Titan'. Wow - I never thought that would happen. I'm not sure that Titan would REALLY be my kind of game ... but I'm tempted to get it to sort of have a link to a piece of gaming history.

You'd be bummed if you'd just spent in excess of $200 USD to get a old school Avalon Hill copy though wouldn't you ?

In the 'what the hell?" zone though - I just read on-line that Fantasy Flight Games are going to re-issue the classic "Dune" board-game ( yay ! ) - only it WON'T be "Dune" ( freaking HUH ???? ).

Turns out that FFG, for whatever reasons, can't get the Dune license to do it. Why ? Who the hell knows - most likely reason is that the gaming rights have ALREADY been sold to someone else who is going to do something infinitely more crap with it.

So - instead, they're going to use the same game MECHANICS, only set in the Twilight Imperium universe.

Personally - I don't see that working all that well. Part of the appeal of the old game is to play the warring factions of the Dune story ... I don't think the alien races of TI are really going to cut it ( mind you - I've not actually played TI, so I can't say that categorically ). And I don't think that either sandworms or a quasi-mystical spice played much of a part in the TI game, so I have no idea what they're going to do there.

Sigh. So close to getting a new 'Dune' and yet so far.

I signed the on-line petition in support of FFG, but I doubt it will have much of an effect. You should sign it to ! The spice must flow !

I should just pony up the cash to get a copy on E-Bay maybe. It's not that much more for a present-day game I guess.

/geeky board-game related stuff.

I've been working on a couple of other 'Critical Mass' comic strips - one 3 panel ( already scanned and cleaned up - awaiting colour and text ) and one full page semi-origin story ( 80% penned - would be finished, but stupid arty pen ran out. Feck ). Hopefully you'll be able to see them soon !

Right - tired now. Sleep.

Meet the soldier !

Oh sweet ! The next "Meet the character" video promoting "Team Fortress 2" has just gone on YouTube by the look of things. Watch it ! WatchitwatchitwatchitwatchitWATCH IT !!!

And make sure you see "Meet the Heavy" too - if you haven't already ( and if you haven't - what's WRONG with you ? I mean - do you have some kind of LIFE or something ??? Yeesh ! )

Happiness is Warm Pencil Karma

I forget who is was who first introduced me to the concept of pen karma ( though I get the feeling it may have been the great sage Spaceman Jack Dee ) - roughly the idea goes that you are either in a good or bad karmic cycle with your relationship with biros. When it's good - they just COME to you. No matter what you do - you have a steady supply of pens on hand. Conversely, when you have bad pen karma nothing you do will stop you losing, misplacing or having your pens lost.

Being a teacher is GREAT for your positive pen karma. I am always picking up pens after a class - no matter what it be, or even if we've WRITTEN anything that lesson or not.

I've just been sorting through my secret cache of pens and checking which are worth keeping and which simply don't work or are beyond their prime, and I noticed an interesting thing - pretty much all the coloured pencils I've acquired through the turning of the wheels of fate are in the warm spectrum. Get a load of this colour breakdown :

Orange - 4
Red - 3
Brown - 4
Yellow - 3 ( well - one is more gold I guess )
White - 1
Green - 1
Blue - 1 ( but hopelessly smashed - had to be thrown away )

Weird eh ? I wonder why that is ? Maybe the warm tones are less noticeable on the carpet in the class rooms, or perhaps the warm spectrum colours are more expendable is the world of colouring in these days. I know from my own past that the 'blue' and 'black' were highly prized colours ( blues used for your steel armour and swords, black general shading and outlines ).

For those of you interested - the pens I've gathered so far this year number 27 :

Blue - 14
Black - 6
Red - 7

And that doesn't count the ones I've actively using in my pencil case. And NO - none of them are named ( okay - some of the pencils WERE and I just trimmed off the names with a craft knife, but those were only because they were bastards and I was simply doing the will of karma ).

'Abandoned Muffins'

The lights come up on our stage. Seraph stands center, dressed in beatnik gear - complete with beret and sunglasses. There is a figure in a pigeon costume behind him, stage left. The pigeon-person is also wearing a beret and sunglasses, and is, inexplicably, holding a saxophone. It begins to play a mournful dirge on the sax. Stage-right is a third figure in a wombat outfit ( also with beret and sunglasses ) who punctuates the sax with semi-random hits on a set of bongos.

A small Victorian side table is flown from the ceiling. On it is a plate piled with mini-muffins, blue-green with mold.

Seraph :

Egg. Milk. Butter -
melted
With the
heat of

fra
ter
nal

love.

Flour from the thresh-ed wheat
sifted for a festive ...
treat.

With powder ( of the baking kind )
and salt - sprink...
ELD ... into the bowl we find
Under the kitchen skin.

Spatula !

SPAT - U - LA !

Fold till moist -
moist -
moist as the mist-draped morning.
But WHAT.
What MOURNING...
... for you ?
Abandoned muffins ?
Puff-balled bites of gall-stained bakery ?

Who knows your passing ?

The penicillin thread needles through your
mashed-banana
blueberry
heart
and dark
chocolate bones -
confectionery white chocolate blood cell count
PLUMMETS ...
... into cancerous
for
get
full
ness.

No more
pain
where you cats are ...


Seraph pulls a sledge-hammer from behind him, and when a scream which might be rage and might be despair, brings the hammer into a sweeping overhead arc, smashing muffins, plate and table into a mangled twisted wreck.

Silence.

All three bow to scattered, hesitant applause.

Lights fade to darkness.

See ya Paddy...

My grandfather died a couple of weeks ago. He got hit with pneumonia pretty hard ( and he'd already had it earlier in the month ) and he pretty much just checked out very suddenly.

It's all very sad. He was the only grandfather I had - my Italian grandfather died with my dad was just a kid, so I never knew anything about him.

I've been trying to think of the things that really stood out for me in his time on this planet.

I remember him freaking out and getting VERY cross with me when I was small for bringing a cow skull into their house ( which, in retrospect, was a fair enough response. I have only vague memories of the skull itself - but I do remember having to mostly dig it out of the ground - so it can't have been a very pleasant thing. I think at the time I had thought it was 'pretty neat, though why is beyond me now ).

I remember him having a fairly minor win in lotto while we were down ( $100 or so - not much ), and when he got the cash he immediately gave me and my sister $20 each - which I remember thinking was very generous of him ( I think I use it to buy the first book of the Steve Jackson "Sorcery!" fighting fantasy books - which came with it's own separate spell book. That was pretty cool ! ).

When I was staying with him and my uncle down South before hitting the Christchurch teachers college, I remember how he used to INSIST that I have a fish fillet from the fish and chip shop when he was getting the order together - because they were SO amazing. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I thought they tasted worse than raw pig uterus.

I do remember that he made freaking awesome sausages. Dear god in heaven, they were the lobster thermidor of the small goods world !

I don't remember what his real voice sounded like though. He got his voice-box removed years ago and had to use one of those buzzer things. It was freaking hilarious when he misplaced it or, even funnier, when the batteries started to go and he'd end up sounding like a darlek going through puberty - all squeaky highs and burbling liquid lows. It took a massive amount of self-control not to laugh when either of these situations occurred ( or at least not laugh until you managed to make it far away enough that he wouldn't hear ! ). South Park was JUST being shown on channel 4 while I was living with him and my uncle, and there was much fun had trying to get him to say "Were you in Da-Nang ?" in the style of Jimbo.

And now he's gone. The ole fella lived to be 81, so he had a good run I guess. He lived to see me and my sister graduate and get our teaching diploma and doctorate respectively, saw me married as well as both of his own kids, and was around for a good part of my little cousins Annie and Grace's lives. Didn't get to see any great grandchildren - sorry man !

I delivered a reading at the funeral mass ( something from the Book of Job, I forget which book and verse ), and was a pallbearer as well. He was buried with his engraved beer jug from the local hotel resting on the top of his coffin, which gave we pallbearers the extra challenge of lowering the casket into the grave without tipping the jug off and smashing it. Fortunately we managed to lower it with jug intact. I kept getting marcarbe images of Tetris flashing into my head as I lowered the suspension straps down inch by inch. I'm not sure what my grandfather would make of that !

The food at the wake was pretty much entirely sandwich or deep-fried, which did nothing to help my current weight loss programme. Still - there are those who would say that this is no bad thing ( right mum ? ;) )

I spent the rest of the time before we drove back to the airport playing weird balloon games with my wee three year old cousin Annie. Then she discovered an even BETTER game which involved running at me from another room, and leaping on me. Fun fun fun ! Normally I wouldn't put up with such abuse - but I cut the kid some slack.

As I said - all very sad, but it just goes to remind you how transitory life is, and how we should dance while the music plays.

See you later Paddy - happy trails.

Based on a true story !

So - this essentially happened to me at the last parent / teacher interview. I had this parent of a dead-beat skater kid who kept asking me again and again and AGAIN how I could make him stop being a dead-beat skater and start caring about his education !
I kept telling him that I DIDN'T KNOW ! If I freaking KNEW - I would have DONE whatever it FREAKING WAS to make him NOT be such a freaking skating LOSER.
I DID consider telling him to give him a decent smack in the head ( just not with an Antarian XJ-9 Electro-Doomfist ).

Critical Mass was a guy I invented a few years ago. He was a superhero type who's power was being mindlessly violent. We might see more of that now he's a teacher. Of sorts. I'm not sure why he's a teacher now. Seems a good an idea as any.

Hmmm ... the colours seem to have changed slightly. I kinda like C-M better with blue hair now !

Additional - Double Hmmmm ... the pic seemed to disappear ! How odd. I've tried posting a different version - maybe this will work ...

This requires a delicate hand ...

There are a lot of things I like a lot about teaching. Everyday is different, there's heaps of variety and when you have a good day teaching - it's a pretty freaking good day.

I've often wished that I could JUST teach though - if there were a way of removing all the OTHER job aspects that come with the territory ( social worker, cop, detective, warden, mediator, janitor, etc ).

I find myself put in a delicate situation today. I have a student in my English class - academically challenged, a bit of a slacker in previous years - but trying now, a nice enough guy. He's going through a bit of an 'emo' phase - which I've found mildly amusing. Up to this point anyway.

Y'see - he wrote a short story for a creative writing task that featured some fairly strong suicide themes. "Ooooooooooo - that ain't good" thought I. "Now what do I do?". Do I talk to this guy and see what's up ? I don't really feel qualified for that ! Do I refer him to someone else ? It's only a story after all - I don't want to waste people's time here. I didn't quite know what would be the right course of action. And if I do sitch this kid up like a kipper to the Chaplaincy team and it's nothing, what is this kid going to do ? I got stuck dithering essentially.

Then today while we were in the library for sustained silent reading - I noticed that he was reading a book about suicide - y'know, one of those 'social problem' texts like 'The Great Brain Robbery'. I got in touch with the Chaplain straight away and registered my concern about him as a potential suicide risk.

It's probably nothing and there's nothing to worry about - but I'm not going to risk it. Screw that - if I left it alone and it turns about this kid tops himself I hate to think what I'd feel like. It was bad enough a a few years back when a kid I had taught the previous year killed himself. I hadn't even seen the guy for two terms, and I just kept thinking "Was there something I could have done ? Was there something I should have seen? Was there any way I could have stopped it ?". I was pretty shook up, I can tell you.

All in all I'd rather not have to deal with this kind of stuff / responsibility really. Just let me teach you - you stupid bastards ! Is that so hard ?

Sheesh.

Sweet sweet karma !

At the end of last term I had a run in with a certain student. He was told three times on two consecutive days that he was not to be in the performing arts block ( juniors wreck up the place and have been banned ). He kept coming in - and I gave him a detention ( with four or five others who were also there ). He didn't turn up to my fifteen minute detention - so I passed it on to the Director of Junior School, who slapped him with an hour school detention.

He bleated on about how he was being picked on by me, how I was too mean, how he hated me ( becasue I obviously hated him ), and how he would leave school if he ever had a class with me again. There was a LONG protracted discussion ( which just went around and around and around ... ). I was very angry. I was very angry for the first three days of the holidays actually - it just wouldn't get out of my head.

Cut to today.

Kid is shooting an ad in his performing arts class - and is acting as a professional skateboarder endorsing a energy bar. He is going to perform simle jump from top of set of concrete stairs. He is advised by his teacher ( not me - but who was also drawn into the fray )that maybe having some sort of safety gear on would be a WISE course of action. "Nah man !" this kid replies. "I know what I'm doing!"

Camera runs.

Another kid does skateborad trick. Pulls it off fine.

Anger-generating kid goes to to trick.

He loses his footing and falls down the stairs, slamming his face into the concrete.

On film.

Film is shown after school to Mr. Seraph, who proceeds to scream with laughter until he can't breathe, demands it gets played twice more, wants copy on hard-drive and is considering putting it on YouTube.

I KNOW that it's 'shameful joy' and I KNOW I shouldn't laugh at the misfortune of others, and I KNOW that even now I am angering the Lords of Karma myself.

But man - That was so SO funny. And it's not like he got any SERIOUS damage ... he did fall on his head after all ! Ha ha ha !!!

That made my freaking WEEK !