The Lethargy of the Long-Distance Blogger

Bloggy blog blog.

No apologies for the delay between posts; you all know what to expect. If I make more claims about how it'll be different next time, I just end up sounding like a drug addict (I've changed, I swear!). The simple fact of the matter is I most often feel like writing late at night, and these days, despite the lack of a job, I am quite busy late at night (and although I am not by nature a cruel person, there's something somehow satisfying in stringing Dave along and watching as his comments get more and more exasperated). I've been watching DVDs, reading, or playing Halo 2 for example - although the length of time I have now had the game without having finished it yet - in fact, I have only really had 2 decent sessions at it - is proving somewhat shameful to me, Ben Allan of the marathon 'why stop for sleep?' gaming sessions. Of course, having the game without owning the console needed to play it does make it a bit trickier, but this is a pretty poor excuse. I haven't actually been completely desperate to play it, but the possibilities of its unexplored levels have been taunting me from the back of my mind for a few days, and Dave can expect to find his X-Box removed from him very soon, forcibly at gunpoint if necessary.

In fact, it's lucky I find time to sleep or eat let alone blog, with all the games screaming out for attention at the moment. Fable needs finishing, I barely scratched the surface of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and I haven't even seen Half Life 2 yet. It's just a matter of having no life for while... I came to the conclusion a while ago that I enjoy games on almost the same level I enjoy movies - I'm there largely for the visuals and more importantly the story, which is why I find it important to play games through to the end where possible and why (apart from obviously enjoying the odd bout of Counter Strike or similar) I don't get so wrapped up in games that never come to any kind of resolution (e.g, The Sims. What's that all about?). This is good I suppose in that I am unlikely to disappear into a MMORPG (unless maybe it's this one, or perhaps this one) and never emerge again, turning down opportunities to socialise with excuses like 'sorry I can't, there's a fraternity raid on Doohickey Fortress tonight and I'm trying to get my 22nd level Chaos Night Dwelf the Spork of Giant Hermit Crab Charming', but it does mean I'll start playing a game and think 'hmm, this isn't that great. Still, better play through to the end to see what happens.' I am one of the dwindling breed; the people for who the single player part of the game is still of more importance than the multiplayer elements. So Halo 2 is being hailed as the greatest console multiplayer experience of all time...so what? That's certainly a good bonus, but I'm more interested in seeing what happens when political upheaval in the Covenant hierarchy causes the hardliner Brute ranks to make a push for power and activate the Delta Halo, little knowing their deluded religious beliefs will cause the extinction of sentient life in the galaxy...and how will Master Chief and the Arbiter stop them? (Probable answer: extensive applied use of firearms). So unfinished games to me are like leaving a movie halfway through (which I have never done). I hate missing the ending, and quite often I find it difficult to leave the game (and thus the story) halfway through - hence the marathon gaming sessions. Among many witty things professional quote-producer ("if you don't like my opinion of you, you can always improve") Ashleigh Brilliant has come up with: "my main aim in life is to see what happens next". I don't think that would be a bad summation of the way I go about playing games - or indeed doing things in general.

Not that this is always a good thing. All of a sudden this year seems to have been spent doing largely nothing. This will not prevent it from going down in Ben history as the Year of Karen (I'm applying to the Chinese calendar people to get this officially recognised), one of the all-time greats, but while this one aspect of things is certainly doubleplus good in a life progress kind of a way, and fantabulous in its own right, in other areas I have been much like a balsa log raft (tending to drift along and absorb liquid). I was pretty damned surprised when I suddenly looked up from whatever I was mucking around with at the time and discovered it was mid to late November. Wasn't it October like, five minutes ago? Did the month of say, July, actually go to the effort of occurring this year? I started off having a break, and now 8 months later, I, er, still seem to be having it. 8 months? Couldn't have someone been giving me updates? "Hey Ben, just so you know, it's September now. Heads up." As they say of course, time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies like a banana. But I can't help but feel I should have made more progress in some areas. Like the 'getting a job' area, or the 'moving out of home' area, or the 'malaria's scarier' area. Despite a small success the other day when after a 7 hour argument I convinced an old lady at the bus stop that whooping cough was, comparitively speaking, nothing to worry about, I would have to say that total gains this year in the first two departments have been statistically estimated to be zero, with a percentage margin for error of plus or minus zero (It's a percent!) Such lethargy seems to extend into other areas and the days go past rather rapidly (crikey, it's nearly my birthday). I have become the most useless e-mail correspondent in the world for example, probably sending fewer lately than Amazonian Indians deep in the rainforest who don't even know what e-mail is. Then when I am eventually forced to make a choice between writing one of these, or up and blowing Dave away to put him out of his misery, and choose the former, it takes it out of me even more to try and write the long, long overdue individual e-mails to all those people I should definitely talking to more (pathetic shout-outs at this point to James T, James C, Teena, Pen, Lis, Dan, Michelle, Sarah, Emma, Leland, Traci, Chris and any other people who may justifiably be wondering whether or not I may have actually died). What a slacker.

Interestingly, I'm wondering if the best solution to all this at this point might well be "the year's a write-off, start again next year" (could we have accidentally stumbled across the creed that is the answer to all mankind's problems?) but I'm not sure this attitude will be helpful in producing some direction...in fact browsing through my drawer of attitudes, I've noticed that probably none of the ones labelled 'Prevalent' will prove useful (and that I need to replace my 'Sarcastic Apathy', as the old one is worn out from constant use). It's not that I haven't actually been applying for jobs - I have, lots of them, and ones I want to get, too - but I'm certainly not applying with all the 'anything, anywhere' verve WINZ legally required of me earlier in the year for, because I don't want one I will actively hate. I tried one of those on for a year, and in a surprise move, I actively hated it. So I'm not sure whither to at this point. I think trying to make some moolah in some kind of temporary fashion over the holidays will be a good idea, and will at least get me out of the house. Probably the first order of business is to be paid sometime within the next 3 weeks to go and live on Quail Island for 3 days on behalf of the good folks at the Quail Island Restoration Trust, about which the New Zealand National Parks and Conservation Organisation has to say this:

Island Restoration – Volunteers do not quail at the challenge (ha, quail, and it's Quail Island, do you see what they've done there....? Ah, never mind)

Otamahua, also known as Quail Island, stands in Lyttelton Harbour, near Christchurch. The Foundation has stepped in to assist a committed group of volunteers with a replanting project. Total pest eradication, and the planting of 8000 trees per annum, would be a daunting challenge to some. However, the Otamahua/Quail Island Ecological Restoration Trust has completed four years of a 15 year project, with the work being carried out by enthusiastic volunteers, who have successfully gained the support of DoC, the community, business groups, local Iwi, and tertiary education providers.

In addition to the relentless tree planting, the Trust has eliminated hedgehogs and breeding rabbit pairs, and is determined to win the battle against mice and rats in the near future. Bird life has increased, including a small population of white-flippered penguins. Increasing numbers of the common skink have also been observed.

I've been one such 'enthusiastic volunteer' on about 3 occasions now (local Iwi are tripping over themselves to support me), and I can indeed confirm I have seen increasing numbers of the common skink (last time I was there I saw 2, and on previous visits I didn't see any). I haven't seen the penguins yet, but I'll keep an eye out. But although this passage does sum up quite nicely what Dad's mate Colin Burrows who is sort of running the thing has been doing, I'm amused by that description of 'relentless tree planting'. While 'relentless' technically just sort of means 'continuing without abatement of any sort' I suppose, it seems to me to have taken on certain connotations, as words do. Thus when they talk about 'relentless' tree planting, I sort of imagine myself running around the island with a basket of saplings in one hand and a basket of hand grenades in the other, tossing the explosives out left and right, running over to one of the resulting holes, smashing a baby tree savagely into it roots first and yelling "Get the hell in there, you carbon dioxide loving piece of fauna bastard!" And that is in fact what we've been doing. Such relentless tree planting has been quite fun unpaid work, but what they want to actually pay Calum and myself to do is roam the island with a backpack (attached to a FLAMETHROWER! Ahem, sorry, got carried away there for a minute...) and spray death on a tree that is the wrong type of tree. It's an ugly tree. A bug tree. All well and good, except Cal and I are not super world-expert-on-NZ natives botanist guys, unlike Colin, and suspect we might run into a...

Cal and I: "Er, that tree?"

Colin or one of his cohorts: "No! That's a completely different tree! They're incredibly rare in Canterbury! (Colin tends to occasionally point these super rare trees out, so we won't stand on them.) For the sake of all that is holy, don't spray that tree!"

Cal and I: "Ah. This one then?"

Colin: That's a signpost.

Cal and I: Oh yes. Right you are.

...sort of situation. Oh well, hopefully the guy instructing us will point out an easy way to spot and distinguish the evil ones, so we won't have to take the Texas justice system approach to things, and execute a thousand innocent trees rather than let one guilty tree escape. I'm also hoping that contracting leprosy before heading over will not be part of the employment contract; if not, this should be a good and relatively fun way to get hold of some Chrissy present money. The fabled $19 an hour asparagus-picking position that seemingly all of Christchurch seems to know about will also be investigated, possibly tomorrow I think.

There's not much else to report of late, without ratcheting up my brain a couple of notches and actually trying to think what's happened, which is a task I'm struggling with at this late hour...been reading books and watching films and waiting for Karen to get home, really. Although as Tim demanded it, I will re-tell my sporting story from last Saturday. We were losing horribly in an attempt to make the opposition bat again, and I batted 2 hours before lunch for about 25. During this I and the other batsmen in our team were getting sledged pretty constantly and quite nastily for batting slowly as we tried to save the game. After lunch one of these sledgers (although not the worst offender, sadly) came on to bowl left arm off spin, and I hit 14 runs off his first over, including a six cleanly over long- on (back over the bowler's head). That shut him up pretty effectively, although he took his hat back from the umpire muttering about how I was flukey and generally crap. Anyway, he came on to bowl again an over later, and his first offering was a waist high full toss which I over mid-wicket - waaaay past the boundary, way over a hedge, over to the far side of the Horticultural Centre car park and through the back windscreen of a Fiat Uno. That was the end of him sledging. I can tell you it was pretty satisfying standing around with a smug sort of a 'take that, beeearrrrch' look on my face, watching him try to avoid eye contact with me as his team mates spent 5 minutes trying to recover the ball from the back seat of the locked vehicle into which I had deposited it (somebody with long arms eventually managed to unlock the back door by sticking a stump through the hole in the windscreen). Hell yes, cricket rocks like that. Despite the fact we lost the game horribly by 10 wickets (I scored 52, that reliable batsman extras picked up something like 35 and the next highest score was 16 - I guess as young impressionable players we'd been inspired to emulate our national side's second innings batting performance against Oz - er, a day before they performed it) this was an undoubted highlight of my cricketing career. I mean the first six was actually technically speaking a much better and harder to play shot - but it didn't go through a car window. I left a note apologising on the car as there was no sign of the owner, and I actually had to struggle to stop myself from writing something like 'if it's any consolation, I really got hold of it'. Probably just as well I didn't, although several people who seemed to be in the know about these things informed me I wasn't legally liable anyway.

Anyway, it may be time to bring this to a close and try and remember what else I wanted to rabbit on about later (got to give Dave the occasional crumb, after all), but speaking of quotes as I was (some time ago), the American Film Institute (not to be confused with Armed Forces Insurance - 'Insuring Military Leaders Since 1887', apparently) is doing another of their annual top 100 film stuff lists, and this time around, it's movie quotes. The list of 400 nominated quotes to be pared down by voting members is here (in glorious PDF format). Such obvious contenders (indeed, automatic inclusions one would think) as "Here's looking at you, kid" and "Do you feel lucky, punk?" are there, but it's good to see that they've included heaps of quotes that come from movies that wouldn't be regarded as film classics...the first quote on the list is from Ace Ventura, and there's "Excellent!" by Bill and Ted and "Schwing!" from Wayne and Garth, a couple each from Swingers ("Vegas, baby."), Caddyshack, Animal House ("Over? Did you say 'over'? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour? Hell, no!") and many more... there are even 3 nominees from Airplane. Extremely amusing as the scene is, who would think this would be nominated as one of the top 100 quotes of American Film history:

CAPTAIN OVEUR: You ever been in a cockpit before?

JOEY: No sir, I've never been up in a plane before.

CAPTAIN OVEUR: You ever seen a grown man naked?

In case you're wondering (and I know you all are), there are four from the Star Wars films:

HAN: "May the Force be with you."

LEIA "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."

DARTH (who else): "I am your father."

YODA: "Do or do not. There is no try."

The second one seems an odd choice to me (what about "you don't need to see my identification"?), but I would back the first and third to get in, although my personal favourite is the Yoda one. Worth a look anyway, if you've got 10 minutes or so to browse over the list. Share your favourites or your indignation at the non-inclusion of your own nominations in the comments, should you feel the need...

UPDATE: it's amazing what licensing fees you can pay for when you have an advertising budget probably bigger than the GNP of many African nations. Comedy. Watch it.

And now a sudden end to proceedings.