M. Caspian's Blog, page 15

Video game nostalgia: Finding solitude

In a recent post on the excellent gaming blog Feebles Plays, Feebles640 shared memories of playing Tomb Raider as a kid: a family-bonding experience with a good slice of hero worship and fantasy fulfillment thrown in.

The post was interesting to me because my experience is the opposite: I will always associate gaming with the transition from shared social experiences to an individual experience.

As a kid, “games” meant board games. Specifically Monopoly, Scrabble, Equable (like Scrabble but with maths),  Ludo, backgammon, chess, dominoes, cribbage, and Mah-Jong. I longed for exciting newfangled American games like The Game of Life and Careers, but these were considered common by my grandmother, so we didn’t own them (no-one clings to propriety like a working class family trying to fake middle class). We played games together at the dining room table, all the time, certainly more than once a week. It was a normal way to pass the evenings.

I could only dream of a spinny wheel instead of dice

My grandmother worked as a receptionist in the management office of a  downtown Auckland shopping mall. In 1976 she brought home a huge treat from the very first shipment of generic Atari knock-offs: a heavy console the size of two shoeboxes plastered in dark fake-wood vinyl laminate, with two cylindrical controllers with rotating knobs on top. This was Pong.

(skip forward to 9:03 for hot and heavy Pong action)

The TV had no ports, of course. My grandfather had to unscrew the aerial cable to attach the console – via an RCA connection and an adaptor – to  our 10″ black and white Panasonic. It played two-player Pong, and single player squash/handball, and what was allegedly a clay pigeon shooting simulator, only the ‘guns’ were not available in New Zealand.

Pong was not that captivating, but I was hooked. Sadly, I didn’t get to play that often. I had three other humans to play with – my grandparents and my mom – but no one had the same fortitude for the game I did, plus when the game was on we couldn’t watch TV. There was – of course – only the one TV in the house.

Television was a shared experience too. More than shared by my family, it was shared by the entire country. TV was what one discussed at school the next day, what adults talked about at work. There were two channels in New Zealand: TV One and “the other channel” – TV2. Both were government run. One played the news and documentaries. Two played soap operas, dramas, and truly dreary ‘comedies‘ featuring racism and homophobia.

If I wanted to watch a show I had to negotiate with an adult who invariably preferred something involving Britain and coal miners’ strikes.

Sunday nights meant home-made hamburgers and A Dog’s Show; possibly the only prime-time TV show of dogs herding sheep that has ever existed. It was such an important show we were allowed to eat “on our knees” so we could watch TV during dinner.

But then in 1981 I saved months’ worth of pocket money and worked odd jobs to buy a handheld Pac-Man knockoff: Grandstand Mini-Munchman. It cost $19.95, which is $80 in today’s terms. That was a lot for a kid back then. It was worth it.

I fucking loved this game. It was the first time in my life I was able to be at home, yet still alone in my head: my first non-communal domestic experience.

I shared a bedroom with my mom. We had one living room in the house where we all sat in the evenings. I watched the same TV as my family, read the same books and newspapers, we went to the same movies together, visited the same places. Weekends meant “going for a drive” aka sitting in the car for three hours on hot vinyl seats while we drove to some picturesque spot, looked out the car windows, and then drove back home. I was never allowed to just be. But silly hand-held Mini-Munchman was mine. No-one else could play at the same time. No-one could watch me play. Even though I was in the same room with my family, it was a blessed solitary experience.

For Xmas 1981 my mom bought me a Galaxy II.

The graphics were really just monochromatic, but colored plastic overlays gave the impression of multi-colored aliens. Another kid in my class brought one to school. He earned detention, but the teacher let him off if he loaned the game to him overnight.

I think my family might have moved to ban me from the living room at this point. No human could listen to that noise all day without the help of some serious pharmaceuticals. Or hard liquor.

In 1982 I got a Commodore Vic-20 – hello Thermonuclear War Game – followed by an Amstrad CPC464 in 1984 (which, incredibly, I used right up until my first Windows PC in 1991).

Finally I could go from writing out BASIC programs on my grandfather’s IBM Selectric typewriter to actually doing the real thing. In 1986 I got my own bedroom, plus we got a second television. I had physical space to withdraw to and do my own thing. And my thing was computers, gaming, and books.

My grandmother, particularly, must have missed me as I withdrew from my family. New Zealand was slow to change. Born in the Depression, in an era that necessitated family closeness, she would never have dreamed culture would evolve so much that children would go their own way, would reject the path laid out for them.

I think I’ve been escaping into computers and video games ever since. Like books, they got me through some tough times.

And now screens bring us together. My friends around the world are my community, even when I can only dream of the day I finally visit and give them hugs and Jaffas. Plus I get to talk to everyone reading this blog, for which I am immensely grateful. Love and thanks to you all.

 

 

A business lesson from mold

I have moldy sheers in my back bedroom. It’s from last winter before I realized I have to leave the windows in there open all night or I get condensation on the windows, the sheers touch the window, and voila, mold. I bought bleach back in July, and I’ve had on my to-do list ever since to unhook the sheers and soak them in bleach, dry the fuckers, and put them back up. That’s a lot of spoons. Hence why I still haven’t done it.

My mom pointed out to me an ad in the newspaper (the newspaper, isn’t that adorable?) for this stuff called Curtain Magic, which is, according to the website,

Spray on curtain mould remover.
Suitable for ALL colourfast: curtains, blinds, nets, drapes, thermal curtains and fabric linings.
No scrubbing.
No taking curtains down.
Mould vanishes in minutes in front of your eyes.
Product comes ready to use.
Contains +/- 1% sodium hypochlorite and a number of non-toxic ingredients

“Right,” I thought. “I am sold. Let me give you all my money!”

The four litre pack comes with a free sprayer. I do not need four litres. I only need it for curtains on two small windows. I do not care that bulk is cheaper, I only want a one litre pack. That’s fine. I’m more than happy to pay for the sprayer. Or a spray bottle.

No.

There is no sprayer for sale on the website. No spray bottles. I cannot buy the equipment to use the product, even though they obviously supply it.

If I order Curtain Magic I will still have to go to a hardware superstore and buy a spray bottle. So I might as well just get some stuff – of whatever brand – when I’m there, as I’ll have to make the trip anyway, instead of waiting for a delivery, and possibly missing the courier.

This is how businesses with good ideas lose sales.

If you buy from the online Apple store, you might not want to get their iPhone cases, or laptop bags, because there are much better aftermarket options out there, but you sure can. If all you want is to Get It Sorted and not think about the problem again, Apple will handle that for you. You get it all in one shipment.

Don’t make it hard for customers to buy your product. When selling a spray-on product, sell the goddamn sprayer. (Also, seriously, maybe consider updating the website design. Design is something worth paying for too.)

 

I’d quit too

Our Prime Minister just quit, effective in one week. This is unprecedented. Our next election isn’t until November 2017. He’s a solid centrist leader with good approval ratings. He has no family crises.

I like to think it’s because he’d have to deal with Trump in the New Year. He’s been close to Obama: Key owns a home in Hawaii and they’ve golfed together in the holidays. And for all I’m a leftist and he’s been the leader of the conservative party, Key’s a good human being. He would never accept Trump’s bigotry and hatemongering.

If that’s the case, good on him. .

“But an extra drink fixes that!”

I’m home again.

I had to come home by Sunday so I could take my grandmother out, and if I hadn’t I would have missed this gem from their weekly creative writing session. They choose a prompt pic and the staff write down the story they spin. Yes, the dementia patients at my grandmother’s facility write flash fic. And it’s awesome.

A far away look crosses Angeline’s face as she thinks of her lover who lives in a distant land. She will have a long wait for his next visit! So she drinks a lot! And thinks about another drink as she remembers her husband working hard in the mines down the road. He will be late home tonight and Angeline is a little more than mixed up today. But an extra drink fixes that! What a long wait! “Perhaps I will go and look for another lover who lives nearby,” she says to herself. She has one for the road and sets off.

Please, universe, let me still be writing when I’m 90.

 

 

 

Travel is about highs and lows in the same day

I had one brutal day (in First World terms) this week. I finished it crying myself to sleep from tiredness and anxiety and hunger. And yet, for all that, it had great parts in it.

I skipped breakfast in Masterton, expecting to find an amazing cafe or welcoming vineyard on the Wine Trail route. First up were Carterton and Martinborough. I didn’t pass any amazing cafes or vineyard restaurants, and I kept watch the whole way south to Lake Ferry, right down on the coast of Cook Strait.

This is the safest place ever for kids.

I was expecting to get a room at the Lake Ferry Hotel – the only accommodation in town –  and drive out to Cape Palliser the next day. Mistake number one: I did not call ahead. A chalkboard outside announced the hotel was closed. Holy goddamn and shit. I was in the middle of nowhere. There was no cafe, no restaurant. Not even a dairy. There would be no lunch.

I drove out to Cape Palliser anyway. The road winds like a necklace dropped in a rocky Zen garden, twisting along a narrow margin between steep escarpments and a gunmetal sea. An “Active Slip” sign urged I use Extreme Caution. Washouts split the road in two places, but the water was down to only an inch or so deep, so I risked it.

The road to Cape Palliser. Photo by Phillip Capper on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons Licence

It rained the whole way.

Photo by me

I fell in love with the tiny town of Ngawi, clinging on to the rocks. They make a living harvesting crayfish, but there’s no safe harbor, so every night the cray boats are pulled out of the sea by heavy machinery. The road winds between the tiny fibrolite cottages and two dozen ancient excavators.

Ngawi. Photo by Jim Tucker on Flicker. Used under a Creative Commons Licence. It was raining too hard here for me to use any of my photos.

I have such a yearning to rent a bach in Ngawi for a summer and just read and write and walk along the beach to the seal colony and embrace being a hermit.

Past Ngawi is the Cape Palliser lighthouse. It kept wavering into view through the rain squalls, like a mirage on a postcard.

Cape Palliser lighthouse in the sun. I have only seen it in incessant rain. Photo by Aidan on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons Licence.

These are the stairs to carry supplies up to the lighthouse. I do not want this job.

Photo by me

Apparently no one wants this job as it’s been unmanned since 1986. Fun fact: it still has the original lens from 1897.

The coast is so gorgeous there, you guys. If there were such a thing as mermaids, they’d swim here.

Coast between Cape Palliser and Ngawi. Photo by Aidan on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons Licence

It was nearly four pm by the time I got to the lighthouse, and this was a little worrying as I still had to drive all the way back the way I’d come, then head to the next town, Featherston.

Mistake number two: I assumed there would be a hotel or motel in Featherston I could stay at. I couldn’t ring from Cape Palliser or Lake Ferry, because there was no phone service out there, and also, it’s not like there was anywhere else to try: Featherston was the next town.

You can see where this is going, right? Apparently there is a simply lovely motel in Featherston, but I did not find it. And I could not get a strong enough signal to use my phone. I found B&Bs, but they were all full.

It was now five thirty pm.

“Fuckit,” I thought. “I’ll push on to Wellington. It’s only a 70-minute drive. There are hundreds of hotels in Wellington.”

Mistake number three: I did not phone to check any of them HAD ROOMS. In my defence, I had the phone issue. It would have taken 30 minutes just driving around trying to find enough signal to use the internet. So, I drove into Wellington.

Okay, up side: driving over the Rimutaka Ranges was INCREDIBLE and I want to do it again, over and over. It helped that it had stopped raining.

Road over the Rimutakas. Photo by Duane Weller on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons Licence

What didn’t help is that EVERY HOTEL IN WELLINGTON I TRIED WAS FULL. Including all the ones right out by the airport. How is that even possible?  It’s our capital city! And sure, it was a business day, but there’s so many of them. Maybe the beds were all filled by insurance assessors after the earthquake.

Now, when I say every hotel, I’m lying. There was one hotel I found with three rooms left. I had the address. I found the hotel. I just found it on the other side of an intersection on a one-way street. I couldn’t get to it. “Ok, fine,” I figured. “I’ll just circle around.”

If you’ve never been to New Zealand you might not understand the trauma I was about to go through. So, A) Molesworth Street – one of the main thoroughfares – is closed after the November earthquake damaged an office building that is now being demolished floor by floor. B) A lot of smaller streets were also closed for repairs. And C) much of Wellington is super-hilly. The flat bit – the CBD – is largely built on land reclaimed after an 1855 earthquake lifted it from the sea (can I point out here, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do in the first place.)

This means the city is not constructed from simple blocks. It’s a couple of long straight main streets squashed tight between the ocean, and tortuous, narrow-as-fuck, winding roads canted at angles only drunk teens riding in wheelie bins enjoy.

A simple manoeuvre to circle around to get back to the hotel left me instead climbing the hills around the university quadrant, before descending a hairpinning lane the width of roll of washi tape. It was straight out of a 1960s James Bond film (the scene would involve a suitcase on wheels and an automatic weapon disguised as an umbrella).

But my spirits rose as I miraculously failed to meet any cars head-on, and the road spat my car safely out into the CBD again. I approached the hotel, still on the other side of the road, but hooray, this was a two-way street. Two blocks up from the hotel a delightful traffic-calming median berm rose from the middle of the street, planted with saplings. The tiny elms shivered as they mocked me: there would be no U-turns today.

It was farcical. I circled around again, going the other way this time, but was stymied by a set of orange road cones blocking entrance to a side road, and a set of one way streets designed purely to taunt me.

I gave up.

“Fuckit,” I thought. Again. “I’ll go out to Petone. It’s only 15 minutes out. There are motels there.”

This time I couldn’t phone ahead because there was zero parking, and when I pulled into a taxi stand to try to grab five minutes on my phone a taxi arrived and the driver was an asshole.

Also, question: why does no one in Wellington indicate until they’re already turning? What’s with that? I thought Aucklanders were supposed to be the bad drivers but we are thoughtful, compassionate, and we indicate for the full two seconds.

So, Petone. Town of a thousand trucks.

Petone. Photo by Brett Vachon on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons Licence.

The beachfront Esplanade is lined with motels. They were all full. My cellphone was out of juice. I cruised up and down the main strip three times hoping to find a place that had a room. Finally I spotted it: a motorlodge without a No Vacancy sign! I pulled into the parking lot and practically leapt into reception.

Turns out their sign was misleading: the motel was full.

I burst into tears.

Right there, at the reception desk.

I was so tired and the only sustenance I’d had all day was a pot of peppermint tea and my knee hurt from micro-braking on so many hilly roads all day and it was all too much and I cried.

I want to give a huge thank you to the receptionist at BK’s Esplande Motor Lodge for not even mentioning my blubbering, instead simply phoning around to find me a room. It was a simple kindness but it meant so much to me.

She found me a room! The new motel was only 10 minutes drive inland. On the way there I spotted a Lone Star. Booyah! Things were looking up. There would be pan-seared sea-run Marlborough salmon for dinner! (A meal also functioning as breakfast and lunch).

I checked in. The room was basic, but it had beds. At this point, sleep and food were literally all I cared about. I jumped back in the car.

I got to Lone Star at 8:42.

Their kitchen was closed. They could not feed me. And no, they replied when I asked, there were no other eateries open at that time of night.

Pffft, foolish Aucklander, expecting a restaurant to be open past 8.30! We’re so fucking ridiculous.

On the way back to the motel I spotted McDonalds flags on lampposts. I drove in desperate, ever-increasing circles looking for it. But I couldn’t even locate a Big Mac. Without my phone – charging back at the motel – I was utterly helpless.

I found a supermarket, but I was out of spoons and I just Could Not. I drove back to the motel. I drank a glass of water and got into bed and cried again and went to sleep.

But Cape Palliser, man. Hell, yeah. Go there.

Photo by Aidan on Flickr, used under a Creative COmmons Licence

Flash Fic!

I have a flash fic up on the magnificent unicorn-run Boy Meets Boy Reviews to celebrate their anniversary. Way to go, unicorns! I love you all.

Today is day three of my road trip. This is the delightful hot tub in the charming back patio of the motel I stayed the first night.

On the bright side, yesterday I went to the New Zealand Bakery of the Year 2016, Ten O’Clock Cookie. Also I visited Manukura, the little white kiwi. I was this far away from her [——————] . She is not so little. She’s five now, and I feel like her claws could disembowel an unwary petter.

And hey, Anne, if you’re reading this, I totally took your advice. I’m not working, not thinking about working, not planning when I’ll work next. I am totally and completely off duty.

Right now there are magpies singing their quardle-oodle-ardle-wardle-doodle outside. It’s gonna be a good day.

Walking with monsters

Happy thanksgiving, my American friends!

I had such an exciting walk this morning. I listened to the Imaginary Worlds podcast episode about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which points out the similarities between the current refugee crisis and the reading of the Monster as dispossessed humanity after the 1815 Tambora eruption. Recommended.

Then I found a Coscinasterias muricata Verrill (with ten arms, not eleven).

They’re a keystone predator. I used to find them all the time at the beach, but not for years. We’ve had a problem with recreational overfishing and it badly affects the marine habitat. Maybe they’re recovering. And wouldn’t it be cool if they ate peoples? Kids would grow up know never to fall asleep on the sand, but drunk teenagers often do foolish things . . .

Then horses! HORSES!

Plus the rain held off until the second I got back to my car.

And now I get to write all day after a week packed with errands and appointments. It doesn’t get any better than this.

“A bayonet makes a very acceptable toasting fork,” and other advice from a WWI diary

In 1914 my great-grandfather was part of the New Zealand Mounted Brigade who left New Zealand to fight in World War I as part of the ANZACs . They thought they were going to Europe, but they ended up in the Sinai Desert in Egypt, fighting the Turkish forces. I still have his army-issued 1918 diary. He wrote in cursive, often in pencil, and sadly I can’t understand most of it.

The journal is cool, though. It’s tiny: a smidgen over 4″ x 2 ¾”. It has a week on two pages with a Sunday start, but there’s practically no space to write for Sunday. Maybe one was not suppose to fight on the Sabbath.

The journal is missing the cover and the end pages; it starts on page 7 with a guide to flags.



Then there are sections on:

Headings for reports
Field Kitchen (i.e. how to dig a trench to set one up in)
Penetration of Rifle Bullets
Rifle Definitions
Rifles used by Fighting Powers
Calender for Five Years (1916-1920)
Some Useful Knots
List of Abbreviations for Military Terms
How to Set a Map
To Find the North by Your Watch
Control by Whistle
British Orders and Medals
British, French and German Guns
British and German Rifles



Conventional Signs & Lettering Used in Military Field Sketching
V.T.C Badges of Rank
Hints for Judging Distances
Finding Your Direction by Night
First Aid in Case of Accidents (Accidents?? Not in case of, you  know, being in a WAR??)
Aeronautical Terms and their Meaning (the “enclosed shelter for the pilot of a biplane” is a nacelle, not a cockpit)
The Position of Main Arteries and Points of Compression
French, Belgian and English Money Table
Bugle Calls (Reville, Cookhouse, Lights Out, Alarm)



Soldier’s Vocabulary. (Fancy some tea with dood and teeny??)
Semaphore Signaling
Semaphore Alphabet
Morse Alphabet
Special Signals
Station Signals
Badges of Rank
The Soldiers’ Guide to French (“La dirigible attend! Ou trouver a manger pour nos chevaux?”)



March Discipline
Care of the Feet
Relative Rank of the Officers of the Navy and Army
Daily Wants’ Dictionary (a “load” of straw = 36 “trusses” of 36 lbs each)
Calendar for 1917
Calendar for 1918

Each weeks’ two-page spread also contains useful field knowledge along the bottom edge – just like the way a Hobonichi has a quote;

Make a Salt and pepper shaker from bamboo
Hint to keep the head on a hatchet
How to keep eggs fresh in camp
How to cut a bottle
Make a canvas belt into a first aid kit
How to build a camp oven
How to carry a rope
Make a soap shaker from bamboo
A novel camp fire stunt (collect ashes in your kettle to light the gas for light)
Make shift trench cooking utensils from “knick-knacks” e.g. the titular bayonet, use a steel helmet as a wash basin.
An emergency pack sack (made from a sack)
How to carry safety pins
Use an old cocoa tin filled with oily rags as a lantern
How to break large sticks
Extracting salt from the sea
Pin your bedding down with kilt pins to prevent draughts at night
Make a sling from a roller bandage
Diagram for a handy bicycle kit
Protecting food in the open
Make a portable cot for a bivouac
How to sew a pocket for your signaling manual
Make a handy brazier from a petrol tin
How to trim a lamp wick
Cure squeaking boots (this involves getting “two wooden pegs” from “your shoemaker” and driving them into the centre of the soles)
Admiral’s flags
An ingenious lamp from gun oil
How a head woodman marks trees for woodcutters
Types of spurs
How to “slip” (unhook) railway carriages
The mark for condemned equipment, clothing, and stores
War department markings
Using a bucket to help a yacht beat a strong tide
Train tail lamps
Ascertaining n a vessel’s speed
The sign which indicate telegrams may be sent from this railway station
The compound eye of a beetle (I get the feeling the authors were scraping the bottom of the barrel by now)
How porters light the lamps on top of trains
That the long pennant flown on a vessel is called a “whip” and is to show that Britain – “Mistress of the Sea” – “could whip all other countries from the sea.”
 Choose a penknife with a clutch and spring to prevent slipping
How an electric bell-pull works
Signals of distress
How to keep the tongue of a shoe in place
The meaning of numbers on ladders (spoiler: it indiates the number of rungs)
If you burn a fingertip, “a good cure” is to put the fingertip on your ear lobe for “instant relief.” Apparently.
Special “India rubber bands” can be bought for bicycle handlebars to protect the metal plating
Horse chestnut trees are marked with tiny horse shoes
A skull and crossbones on a sign means people should not approach
How to pierce a coin using a cork and a sewing cotton bobbin
How to make a homemade weather glass (a barometer?)
Erect your tent like a sundial to get a “bar of sunshine that will travel round the interior”
The purpose of hoop guards on telegraph poles
Harbor signals

And you know, 98 years later, I would still love 90% all this stuff in a journal. It could be a Just In Case survival planner, with guides on snaring animals, fishing, first aid, and field survival. Think we could persuade Hobonichi to do a 2018 centennial superflu slash zombie edition?

Sooo, this is a game…

NSFW, I guess? Contains animated penises, assholes, and penises being inserted into assholes. Also jizzing. Because of course it does.

Perhaps it’s a metaphor for 2016 in its entirety.

Kia kaha, Kaikoura

Lovely little seaside town Kaikoura – a top option for my relocation out of Auckland – has been badly hit by this morning’s earthquakes.

That’s about 4,000 residents and 1,100 tourists with no water, power, or sewerage, and all roads in and out closed by multiple landslides. No stores are open. Water won’t be restored for days. A navy frigate is on the way to evacuate the tourists.

There are dozens of these along the coast road i.e. the ONLY road.
The blue line is where the rail line is supposed to be. The red line is where it is, pulled away like a piece of lace poorly tacked to a hem.
Marooned cows
If the earthquakes had happened during daylight hours there’d be a lot more casualties.

Awesome M/M author Gillian St Kevern was evacuated after the tsunami warning and spent an uncomfortable night waiting to be allowed back home. There were small tsunamis around parts of the coast, luckily only a few feet high at the largest.

There’s a special place in hell for the assholes who burgled the homes of people who evacuated.

I’ll match the value of all book sales this week, under all my pen names, to go to Kaikoura Red Cross.

All photos by Newshub.