Thursday today is the new Sunday of ages ago

Well, the new regime of 'regular posting' can hardly be said to be going well really, although regular writing is faring a little better. I have logged on and written little bits of this every couple of days for the last two weeks or so, without actually having written enough in any one session to make me feel like it's finished, and thus ready to post yet. As I type this sentence though, the plan is to make this particular sitting the coup de grace as it were, so I guess if you're reading it, it worked. That said, I have had that intention on a couple of previous occasions in the life of the post though, so it could be I'll fail again, and have to come back and rework this entire bit I'm writing here to better reflect the accuracy of the actual posting time, and no-one will ever read it. Thinking about it, that means that the more I write here now explaining how the effort I am making to produce these particular few sentences may turn out to be rendered irrelevant and unnecessary, the more taxing and thus potentially more irrelevant and unnecessary that effort (potentially) becomes. With me? I'm not even sure I'm with me, so let's hope I get the bloody thing over and done with and it doesn't join the ghosts of several other long tinkered-with but never posted posts of the last year or so. Be warned now though: this is rambling and random, and, for the sake of another 'ra' word, let's say, er, 'rampant' (for no good descriptive reason whatsoever).

Questions of potential future-past topicality relevance aside, I might have got the promised posting done 3 weekends ago, but I was too, too hungover. That particular weekend turned out to be draining. Draining bottles of beer into my digestive system. At 5pm on that Sunday I staggered out to pre-season cricket practice, and a clue to the general tenor of Friday and Saturday evenings could be inferred from what one bowler said as he came down the net towards me to retrieve his ball:

Lachlan: "What smells like booze?"
Me: "Er, my sweat does."

I will say that the sweating and the mind-focussing required during a good half hour of having a hard leather projectile hurled in one's direction does wonders for a hangover, although the quality of batting during this period could hardly be described as brilliant. Hopefully some of the more terrible shots were purged before getting into the season proper, although results to date at least, with scores of 7, 49, and 7 suggest that there are some kinks to iron out yet. The 49 wasn't even that good, either, and it was in a 'trial' game last weekend, when we played on both Saturday and Sunday, so it didn't really count apart from meaning I ran around a bit more and had perhaps more early season apres-cricket hurting than usual.

Previous to these couple of games, the last official cricket "trial" game I played in was when I was 12, and the wicketkeeper (the wicketkeeper mind, not the batsman) had a tooth cracked by the first ball of the match. There was no such repeat of any event this time round, but I did get to bowl, which these days occurs with about the same frequency in matches as players having their tooths chipped. One ball in my 2 overs was flighted magnificently, beat the batsman in the air, passed under the false shot it had lured him into and missed the leg stump by about 2 inches (and subsequently went past the keeper, who obviously like me had been convinced it was going to hit the stumps.) If I devote an entire sentence to this one 5 second incident from a week ago, it is only because that particular delivery is likely to be my bowling highlight of the season to come, if not the next 4 or 5 years.

Anyway, as I was mentioning, three (I keep on having to edit this number) weekends ago, a busy weekend was had, which may be of little interest to anyone by now, what with this fast-paced world we live in; but I went to the trouble of writing all this down, so I'm afraid you're stuck with it . On the Friday I went to see the final night of Courting Temptation, which was pretty good; I had full confidence that it would win any Madcap award I might happen to be nominated in, or certainly beat me anyway, and in this I turned out to be right. Then it was round to Dan and Lisa's house for a few farewell drinks for a drama friend, Gemma, who's off to Cambridge to become (more of) a maths genius, although I hope she'll follow my encouragement and also become a Communist spy. She'd get away with it, too; she smiles all the time, even when she's just walking along. No-one would ever suspect.

We then hightailed it to the after party of the show, where I assumed my alter ego of Beer Fairy, and, fluttering my magic, er, yeasty (but diaphonous) wings, summoned said beverage from thin air. General revelry continued until the arrival of a noise control officer, who I found at the door on returning from briefly having run down the street to see exactly where I was for the purposes of a cell phone conversation. I jogged round the corner slightly out of breath, took my phone down from my ear having finished talking to Andrew (and his very friendly-sounding sober driver) and there was our uniformed Armourguard friend.

"Hmmm" I said, "Where are we, sort of north of town... [we weren't. I was confused.] ...you'd be 762, then?" I queried nonchalantly.

He gave me a quizzical look. "Er...no, but that's very close" (from where I know now Matt and Jeff's house was, I figure he was actually probably 761). "Why, what's going on?"

Of course, I only thought about this afterwards, but given the running around the corner, the phone, the rough demonstration of some sort of insider knowledge of security company workings, and an understanding of the fact that not-a-few security guards fancy themselves as genuine authority figures - 'hell, I'm virtually the police' - who do a crucial job in holding back the forces of chaos that threaten to overwhelm our society, the perfect response to this given the prevailing circumstances would have been something along the lines of:

"There's no time for that now. Come with me - the Prime Minister needs your help."

Who knows where that might have led us, but in the end I mentioned I had used to work for Armourguard and left him to give Matt a very gentle telling off for his party being too loud. Shortly after that we fled the scene, not wishing to be associated with such a noisy rabble.

Saturday featured Mr Caygill's stag night, scene of Laser Strike, beer and BBQ, and things that were Pete's fault. Now, it may seem I might be making excuses for my own poor performance (I did OK in the first game, badly in the second. I've done better in the past) , but I'm not that convinced of the merits of Laser Strike. Firstly, I'm just not that inclined to really dodge. Why? Oh, sure, it's the aim of the game not to get hit very often, I guess... it's just that motivation wise, 3 clanking noises followed by my gun not working for 10 seconds is somehow less of an incentive to really get out of the way than, say, the thought of a speeding paintball thwacking painfully into my actual body. That, plus the actual technology, where you can only hit people on the chest and the upper half of their back, tends to creates situations that are just sort of laughable. I'm sure it would be a terrible, terrible way of actually preparing troops for combat. Round the corner your newly trained men would charge, into a line of the enemy... and rather than taking cover, fanning out, or hitting the deck, they would cunningly and confidently pivot and continue their advance - but, and this is the clever part, they would continue it sideways! "Look you poor fools, look if you dare at my profile! Can't hit me now, can you? Ahahahahahaaaaa!" would be their triumphant cry, moments before they were all mercilessly gunned down. See also "Surrender now, helpless enemy, for although my head, neck and shoulders may protrude above this wall / out from this window frame / round this corner, my one weak area, the torso, is protected! Protected, do you hear me? I am impervious to your weapons fire! IMPERVI -" [splat].

This last peculiarity quite often leads to the plainly ridiculous situation of two opponents positioned all of about 3 metres apart and each stationed behind a low wall or a gap or something in such a way that there's nothing for anyone to hit, and yet blasting intently away with their lasers at each others' heads for some reason with utter futility. I think it wasn't until about the 4th or 5th time I found myself in this situation that I realised how very silly it was, and stopped shooting at the head of whoever it was and, despite the fact that they were still blasting away, perhaps hoping some unusual birth defect would mean my forehead would register as a legitimate target with the computerised scoring system, tried starting up a conversation with them instead. Again, not a situation likely to occur in paintball, or in actual armed conflict. I wonder if the game would be improved if the lasers actually burned small holes in you? Hmmm, very probably not. Besides, as I learned at Boy's High School, there's no need for fancy computerised equipment you want to play that particular game - you simply give all 30 people in your 4th form Science class a magnifying glass each and send them outside on a very hot summer's day to make 'observations'. 'Observations' - sure.

I briefly interrupt this post now to tell you that 'Smiley Faces' by Gnarls Barkely is a great song with a cool video. You should all go and watch it if you haven't already.

Anyway, from the running around in the dark of Laser Strike it was on to sitting in Si's comparitvely well-lit house for drinking what was really a considerable amount of beer, eating what was a considerable amount of barbequeued meat and talking a considerable amount about World of Warcraft. This resulted in:

1) Most of us taking that extra little step towards eventual heart disease. (Mog did go to the effort of making a salad, the creation of which was an exercise in an exisquisitely pure form of perfunctoriness)

2) Most of us taking a rather large step, a stride even, towards inebriation (in the short term). Some were unsatisfied with a mere stride and elected to make a full-on long-jump. One individual in particular who shall remain anonymous (but only to spambots. It was xxJamesxx) made a Jesse Owens-like effort in this department and went on to have 3 gold medals (for Overindulgence, Being Picked On in Drinking Games and oh, let's just say I came up with a third one) awarded to him by a pissed-off Hitler (er, of Drinking in Moderation). OK, it's clear to me that I just stretched that metaphor way too far and it consequently snapped, but you get the idea.

3) Most of us conducted at least one conversation during the evening that was at least 50 percent slang / acronyms. E.g:

NERD 1: So now I have my epics, my pally was doing 10,000 DOT in AQ40 on Tuesday.

NERD 2: Don't you get all the aggro from the add mobs ?

NERD 1: Yeah, but our tank has AMRAAMs.

While I think World of Warcraft is a pretty cool game, and I played it enough that I can sometimes keep up with these conversations (or get the gist anyway), listening to (and participating in a few) of these conversations can tend to make me somehow glad I don't play it. Possibly it is because while I self-identify as a geek/nerd, it's nice to have that one area where I can go "yup, not that nerdy in regards to this particular thing." It used to be Magic cards filling this role for me, some stereotypically nerdy thing that I could look at and go "just don't care"; now it's World of Warcraft (although I might even play again in the future sometime, and I certainly think it's a lot better than Magic, which I always thought was kind of non-fun as a game, if not downright evil besides). It's good to have this one thing I can use to (irrationally) reassure myself that I'm not quite at Steve Urkel levels yet.

Anyway, was there a point to this story? I forget. We'll just say "...and that was a good night" and leave it at that.

Next weekend saw the Madcap Awards occur, with considerably less controversy and significantly less attendance than last year. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't win anything, which I was OK with, but I was kind of hoping I would solely so I could abuse LAWSOC in my acceptance speech. I'm not sure what their problem as a unit is exactly, but my experience (been to 3 or 4 of these things now) they tend to come to the awards en masse, sit at the back and become inordinately aggrieved at the fact they have not won every single award - even the ones they aren't nominated in. Those outside the university theatre sphere might have to picture the following Oscar night scenario: the 5 nominees are pictured there on the screen, and when the winner is announced, 2 or 3 of people who haven't won can be seen immediately raising their hands to their mouth and yelling "BOOOOOOOOOOOO!" This is was LAWSOC actually does. I can't really explain this, except perhaps on the level that the Pink Palace is a strange insular little section of the university, and in over there in their strange miniverse the Law Revue is seen as really good, I mean did you see it, people were walking and talking simultaneously! Now that's theatre.

I hesitate to level the accusation at them that they never go and see any of the other shows - although even the judge representing them seems to generally attend about 50 to 60 percent of the shows he or she is supposed to go to - because I do not go out of my way to see the Law Revue each year myself. But I went along last year when Karen was a Madcaps judge and got 2 free tickets to everything, and in my humble opinion the show was not worth the money we paid. It was the most cringingly awful thing I had seen on a stage since I went to the Sheila Wynn Shakespeare Festival one year (a school competition) and this one poor bastard was on stage by himself doing a sililoquy, and his brain just went ping! in the middle of it, and he stood there by himself in an awful silence, staring wildly at the ceiling. And stood there. And stood there. And stood there. No-one came to his rescue, no-one prompted him...and still he stood there. After what seemed like about 30 years he started saying "shit...shit...shit...shit" under his breath (but loud enough so that it was completely audible to everyone in the audience) like some kind of Buddhist chant, until finally one of his cast mates decided to charge on without a cue and save him. By this stage though, in terms of limiting the damage, the arriving aid was sort of the theatrical equivalent of say, Bush and pals announcing tomorrow that after careful consideration, they have decided to mobilise some reserve units this week and dispatch them to the Little Big Horn to be ready to assist Colonel Custer if needed with the potentially nasty Indian situation (The unfortunate reality that this event may actually be within the realms of possibility should hopefully not detract from its effectiveness as an example). Suffice to say, it was bad.

But (to return to what I was talking about in the first place) the Law Revue, at least last year, was as bad, all the more so because it was deliberate. Jokes such as 'Polynesians are stupid', 'Maori are violent criminals' and 'Asians are bad drivers' (and the sad thing is, in the preceding words, the level of sophistication of the alleged 'humour' is completely unaltered in any way) are already wrong in all kinds of ways I don't have time to get into, but when delivered by privileged white Law students nuggeted up and wearing afro wigs - well dear God. Sample dialogue: in the old cliched "different types of people as species in a wildlife documentarty" skit, the "rarest of all species, the Maori law student" (who was wearing a bush shirt, naturally) opened a book, looked at it upside down and said something like "Oh Dad, if I can only learn to read, I'll finally be able to defend you in a way other than using my fists". I wince even recollecting it. This is without even mentioning the big finale scene that was 'Porn Court': "Erection, your honour!" etc.

To produce that sort of unfunny, downright offensive, and not even well acted material (and then to brush all criticism aside as 'political correctness' in Canta as they did, when several people wrote in to say "Oh dear God, what was that thing?") , and then turn up expecting to win not just a few awards, but seemingly everything - well, I don't claim that everything Musoc, Dramasoc or Comedy Club produce is the most sublime piece of theatre ever, but still - I can only assume they really do live in their own hermetically sealed headspaces. So following the continual booing and general loutish behaviour from the back of the room throughout the awards, I was half-hoping to win the Best Comedy one so I could get up and say something like "I'm honoured to have won this in a year with so many strong contenders - in fact I even heard the Law Revue was funny this year." They may have tried to lynch me, but I think probably half the room would have immediately sprung to my defence with reasonable ferocity. It might have been interesting; it would have certainly got the Performing Arts Clubs vs. Lawsoc No-Holds Barred Street Brawl that we seem to have been building up towards for a number of years now finally over and done with. But sadly for my chances of inciting a riot, I didn't win. I did pick up Best Costume award however (randomly).

So, I'm sure I did other weekend things on the Saturday evening, but my last casual throwaway 'so I went to the Madcaps' line seems to have developed into quite the full-blown rant, and if I continue to treat these other experiences in the same way we'll never get anywhere fast. Time for a couple of general non-weekendy things.

First though, I have been wanting to point people at this, which happened about the time I started writing this post. I saw it in passing in The Press and was sort of casually staggered by. Just read it - I mean I guess what really hit me about it was that whole "thank God I live in New Zealand" that you get from time-to-time when you hear about things like this around the place. I can say without doubt that I guess you would call the overall stability of the country I live in is something I take utterly forgranted 99.7 percent of the time. You get used to wars and earthquakes on the news, and get sort of innured to numbers - 50,000 dead, a million homeless - but it takes sentences such as "prisoners responded to the raid with guns, grenades and knives, but were overpowered and taken to another jail" occasionally to make you stop and go "What? Why did the prisoners have grenades? Hang on, they didn't just have grenades, they had cocaine laboratories? Didn't it say they were prisoners? Wha...what?" and remind you that soooooo much of the world at large is totally outside your own cosy little sphere of experience.

Well, I found it interesting anyway.

In other news, local man Ben Allan continues to fail to find a job. I made the mistake of thinking I might have a reasonable chance with the latest couple of applications I made, but this week I have received one 'no thanks' letter and one deafening silence until the day of follow-up interviews came and went. Nothing particularly new there then, but it's fair to say I am growing well sick of the whole thing, if not outright despondent on occasions. I was talking to Mum in the car tonight about brother Josh and how he's earning somewhere up in the 40,000 range after working less than two years for a hose company, for God's sake, and had probably my first really serious 'why, why, why did I even go to university. Why?' moment. In fact, the three Allan boys have earning power which is in inverse proportion to their highest qualification achieved. I am coming distant 3rd, and this bites, not because I am in competition with them or anything, but because although I'm not quite here yet, it does make me feel increasingly that I would love to find a suitable face to somehow act as a representative of the education system at large, tempted as I am at times to grab a frying pan and riff on a certain scene from 'Throw Momma From The Train':

(CHCH) EMPLOYMENT SECTOR: Who's this?

BEN: Oh, this is the education system. He's just been telling me how useful getting a Masters degree is, isn't that great?

EMPLOYMENT SECTOR: Pfffft, no it isn't!

BEN (to EDUCATION SYSTEM): You lied to me! (Slaps EDUCATION SYSTEM upside the head with frying pan.)

EDUCATION SYSTEM / FRYING PAN: (dong!)

That particular frying pan-on-head-sound would make me feel a lot better, I'm sure of it. In the meantime I continue to plug away, but - sigh - I'll probably have to go and talk to the delightful folks at WINZ in short order. It's when I contemplate this possible course of action that I start to feel the same way as Homer did a week or two ago - "I'm sure there's plenty of great jobs out there! Look at this one for instance - truck driver in Iraq!"

Anyway, I'm sure I had more specific things to add to this, but I suspect if I don't post this right about now, it won't get ever get done, just become a longer and even less relevant diary entry stored in internet format for no particular reason. So tell you what, when I think of them, if I do I'll come write them down in another new and exciting post. I'd promise "soon", but we all tend to know how that goes. For now though, it's time to stop suddenly without even finishing my current