Yeah, well, to be fair it would take a LOT of liquor in the first place...

...and thus the Prohibition was repealed. Quickly.

Vampires Are Mostly Dead. And They Eat Blood.

You know what? I'm tired of 'sexy vampires'. Really. The whole goddam meme stems from Bram Stoker's Victorian-era morals; his obsession with sex, and his vision of vampirism as a metaphor for syphilis and similar STDs. And of course, as the 20th century faded into a miasma of recursive, self-cannibalising pop culture, death itself got sexualised and vampires became the symbol of sexy death.

And it is boring me shitless. Really.

'Twilight' is dreadful pap. And the Sookie Stackhouse stuff that's now become 'True Blood' on TV? Eh: I read one of the books, and I seriously wish I had that two hours of my life back. Abysmal. Cardboard. Crap.

This stuff was shite when Buffy was swooning about over unobtainable tall-dark-and-fangsome sorts, but at least it came with half-interesting dialogue. It was turgid, over-written tripe when Anne Rice first interviewed some tosser in an old suit down in New Orleans - and folks? That was published in nineteen fucking seventy-six. Get. Over. It.

It's a dumbing down, a simplification -- a stripping away of depth and dimensions leaving only surface. What started out as a literary metaphor with at least a half-measure of subtlety has become a flat, day-glow icon with all the interest and all the intrigue of a 'no smoking' sign. It's friggin' boring... and it's wayyyyy over-ripe for satire and parody.

So where's my "Not Another Sexy Vampire Movie?" How come nobody's done the Joke Vampire Film yet? I mean a real one, not the half-assed version with perpetual fake tan tragic George Hamilton zipped into Count Dracula's inevitable tuxedo. 'Love At First Bite' had moments of fun, but not enough of 'em. There's much more to be had.

Here's my concept:

Jack Black stars in "Fangs", a movie about a fat, angry, anti-social, sexually deprived smart-mouthed loser who courts attention from an uber-smoothie vampire so he can get 'turned' and finally, finally become the babe magnet he's always secretly known himself to be.

Naturally, since this is a Hollywood comedy, Count Jack will meet and woo the babe of his dreams, but not with his newfound vampiric abilities - no, she will (of course) be charmed by his wit and courage, and by the sensitive, caring man hidden beneath his unlovable exterior (which he gains the confidence to show because he knows he's now that most irresistable of sex machines, a vampire.) And of course, she's not aware he's become a vampire. In fact, she's probably a deadly vampire hunter, so he not only has to conceal his identity from her, but he has to figure out how to regain his humanity before she twigs and he becomes stake-fodder.

In the meantime, of course, we get all the right moments of fun: newly transformed Jack Black putting on his tux and cloak for the first time, trying to check himself out in the mirror... damn! Messing with his new vampire powers: using that hyper-lunatic Jack Black stare to 'hypnotise' the doorman at the trendy nightclub that always used to turn him away. Then plying his smoothie routine on the babes, except that he's only half-shaved, his hair is sticking out weirdly, and his bow tie is completely fucked up 'cause he couldn't see his own reflection.

Of course when he finally does pull his first vamp-whore, he discovers she's all "no sex until the biting happens", and he's not really sure about that biting thing. Montage: multiple attempts to chomp her neck, with different versions of Fail every time... until he finally manages to bite down, and she screams in pain and tells him angrily that he's got to extrude his goddam fangs first, jackass...

So he drinks her blood, which upsets his stomach, but at last, when he gets back from the bathroom, there she is: all dazed from blood-loss, in fetching deshabille, bleeding gently on the satin sheets of his carefully prepared vamp love-nest... and of course, Count Jack discovers that vampires can't actually get a goddam erection because they're mostly fucking dead, and they don't have a heartbeat with which to pump blood into their dicks.

And it's all downhill from there. You can see where it goes: Black realises that if he can kill his mentor-vamp before the legendary three days post-bite have expired, he can go back to being human. So he contacts the vampire killers, and meets the uber-babe, and has to go the Big Lie, explaining that he really wants this vampire dead because it killed his whole family. Including his dog.

Meanwhile, to keep up appearances he uses fake tan (turns violent orange) and wears lots of sunscreen. He takes all kinds of increasingly complicated measures to try and shave -- think multiple webcams and computer screens... he discover's he's too damned fat to sleep in the coffin he bought... the blood craving gets to be too much and he finally snacks on a derelict, and winds up hilariously drunk as a result... more hilarity when he goes to the toilet and pisses blood for the first time... taking the advice of another vampire and updating his wardrobe...

...actually, that last one is worth a few scenes in its own right. The tux simply isn't his 'vampire look', so he tries to go shopping for clothes, but can't cross doorways until he's invited. Eventually he gets turned onto a specialist vamp boutique, but since he's not a 'smoothie', the staff take the piss out of him and he winds up dressed like some kind of vampire pimp...

... a moment in which he gets exposed to the sun, burns and smokes, and screams "Jesus, shit, when does the sparkling thing happen?"

... a moment when an entire cluster of smoothie vamps are revealed to be the gayest of gay, stereotypical fag-types who talk about hair product and clothes and interior design, and do each other's shaving... maybe one of them shaves Count Jack in an incredibly, uncomfortably home-erotic bondage routine?

And of course, through the whole film we get Jack Black doing his finest 'Bela Lugosi As Ladykiller' impression. Complete with bad Transylvanian accent every time he exerts his vampiric powers. (He can't help it. He's seen the movie too many times.)

The end? In the inevitable showdown with his mentor, Count Jack is forced into a decision when the mentor-vamp takes the love interest hostage. Count Jack can save her, but it means he'll miss the deadline and he'll lose his humanity permanently. Of course he chooses to save the girl, and of course she recovers at the vital instant, and between the two of them they manage to kill the Big Bad Vampire, restore Count Jack to mere Jack... and then all we have is the coda in which newly-rehumanized Jack thinks he doesn't stand a chance with the uber-babe now that he no longer has his supervampire sexiness - but of course she shows him what the audience already knows: that it's his inner man she's in love with, blah blah blah...

Ugh. Why do I do this to myself?

Because it's so horribly obvious. And because somebody ought to do it. And I suppose that now, if somebody actually does, I can point to this blog post and jump up and down until they cut me in on the profits. Or something.

But mostly because all of you, now -- each and every one of you -- is permanently stuck with a vision of Jack Black, half-shaved, in a tuxedo and cloak, trying to put the vampire moves on a series of uninterested babes. And if I have to have that kind of image in my head, so do you!

Anyway. It's better than still more goddam sparkly Twilight bullshit.

Ow.

Is there a job worse than fencing? In the entire panoply of peculiarly rural time-sinks, is there another task so flat-out irritating and painful as putting up a fence?

I don't imagine so. Putting up even the crappiest sort of fence calls for a truly stupid array of tools and gear. And rather a lot of that gear is cantankerous beyond belief. Fencing wire, for example: I swear that shit is sentient, and stone cold vicious. You clip off a couple metres of the stuff, you absolutely better be dead-cert prepared for two things. First, the piece you clip off is going to recoil suddenly and dramatically, and the now-sharp end is going to lunge for the softest, most vulnerable part of your anatomy it can find. Second, the remaining coil of wire is also going to adjust itself drastically, and either take its own shot at your eyes (groin, shin, hand, lip, ear... whatever it can see) or just hurl itself to the ground in a tangle of truly Gordian complexity.

And that's just the wire. Don't forget all the other shit: pickets and droppers and anchors and clips and strainers and staples and cutters and drivers and hammers and spades and fence-post diggers and... hell with it. Sure, you usually don't need the whole goddam shebang for one fence, but even the simplest piece of fencing requires a disturbingly large list of crap.

Why am I whining about fencing right now? Because my goddam head still hurts, is why. Yesterday I went out to sink the last couple of star pickets for the strawberry patch -- having already put in the six by three-metre upright treated pine posts which will hold the overhead netting, of course.

D'you know how you sink a star picket? (If you haven't got a you-beaut multi-thousand-dollar hi-tech usually-goddam-broken attachment for your megatractor, that is. Which I don't.) You use a bit of very heavy steel piping. One end is open. The other is capped with a heavy plate welded in place. Two heavy, welded handles grace the sides of the thing. You stick your star picket pointy-end into the ground. Then you slide your picket-driver over the top until the welded plate hits the flat end of the star picket.

Then, using a hell of a lot of strength and force, you lift the picket driver so it slides back up the picket, and you slam it back down again. A lot. Repeatedly. Until by main force, you drive the bastard into the ground to the depth you desire.

Those of you thinking 'why doesn't he just use a sledge?' are desperately inexperienced in the ways of Star Picket Evil. Suffice it to say that if you are foolish enough to attempt the Sledge Hammer approach, you're likely to kill yourself, the hammer, or the picket -- or even all three at once, plus a couple of bystanders, if you get enough English on the picket when it springs out of the ground under the combined influence of a misaligned hammerblow and an unexpected rock buried in the earth...

Anyway, it wasn't a particularly big job. This is a six by three enclosure. I'm using six treated pine poles as mentioned before to lift the netting, and I put a star picket into the gap between each of the two poles, ensuring that the fence will be supported every one and a half metres. Sturdy, and easy to maintain.

It was late afternoon. I was tired. My attention wandered. I mean... for fuck's sake, how much concentration can one bring to bear when banging one stupid chunk of metal down on another? Duh. Duh. Duh. Dang dang dang dang dang... the noise is goddam deafening, yeah. Jeez, I wonder if I've got enough wonton wrappers? I got a bit of extra pork mince so I could --

jEEZUS OWW FUCK CRAP OW FUCK!

And that, my friends, was my response when the picket-driver rebounded just a little bit high, and instead of coming straight down on the picket, the bottom edge of the driver hung up on the top of the picket... and that heavy chunk of steel pipe promptly fell straight forward and cracked itself onto the top of my forehead.

I must have come very close to splitting my scalp outright. Certainly the top layer of skin got bashed and stripped away, but I didn't bleed much at all, which is a wonder. Scalp wounds are major bleeders. But oh, my, the pain of it. The sudden, blinding impact. The instant of christ what the fuck ow ow ow ow my head really hurts!

No real harm done. That particular part of the skull is one of the densest, hardest bones in the body, and an impact barely sufficient to macerate the skin is hardly enough to cause real injury.

Pain, though. Lots of pain. And outrage.

I finished driving the last couple of pickets, and put away all the gear. I even made a point of not being crabby for the rest of the evening, despite the headache -- though I admit I was less than sympathetic about Elder Son's mouth ulcer crisis.

I will finish that goddam fence, of course. I just have to keep reminding myself how very good home-grown Tasmanian strawberries taste.

Meanwhile, I had a nice email from the opera libretto people. Apparently the words I've sent them are in the right sort of ballpark, which is nice. The task is reasonably challenging: part of the story develops in near-Elizabethan English, while another part unfolds in the kind of late 18th-century language you'd know from Byron and Shelley and their ilk. I have to move back and forth between the two without losing the thread or my own focus.

What I'm doing is writing the stuff, then correcting for Elizabethan/Byronic, then working to enhance the imagery. After that, there's another editing pass to get the Elizabethan/Byronic flavour right. And then there's another pass in which I read the stuff aloud.

Why? Well... somebody's gotta sing this stuff, or at least sing lines derived from it. I don't want the poor fockers looking at the lyrics/words and being overcome with an immediate desire to assassinate the writer. I want the words to come at least reasonably easily and rhythmically off the tongue - and the only way I can make that work is by reciting it myself.

Of course, there's inevitably some adjustment. Unless you've done this kind of thing, you won't realise how different the written word is from spoken language -- or even operatically sung stuff. Without going into too much detail, there's a certain natural rhythm to spoken language, and you have to work with it, or you make your dialogue nigh useless. (Shakespeare was a complete God at this stuff. Go look up 'iambic pentameter' sometime.)

So. Once the words are adjusted for speakasingability, then there's yet another pass to ensure the Elizabethan/Byronic thing hasn't gone fubar. After all, there's no point in adjusting your hi-falutin' lyrical content for vocalisation if you're just going to jam it full of contemporary stuff. Nope: gotta stay in the appropriate idiom.

Thus the positive feedback was much appreciated, and I am inspired to stay home tonight and crank out a few more scenes.

Of course, part of the staying-at-home is the kids. The daughter has an increasingly wet and chunky cough that messes with her sleep. And the Elder Son, who is almost never ill, has come down with a headache and vomiting. Ergo this is not a one-parent night, and so I'll stay here, keep an eye on the little buggers so Nat can sleep, and meanwhile put in a few extra yards on this opera stuff. Got me a bottle of red to deal with the lingering headache from the picket-driver; the fire is going nice and warm, and I've a few good hours before morning...

Gaming Interlude

I don’t suppose it will surprise anyone if I mention that for many years, I was a player of table-top role-playing games. Not the painted-miniature sort of things, but the complicated dice-rolling games. Like Dungeons and Dragons, yeah.

And it was a total fuckload of fun. (Why else would I bother?)

RPGs got a bad rap for a while there, associated heavily with the geekiest of nerddom. (Like I ever gave a flying fart.) But then, I was never one for memorising rules and arguing over which specialist combat table to use: I liked the storytelling aspect of the games, and I made the most of it. Made a lot of friends, spent a lot of time in imaginary worlds doing wild shit. List the games I’ve been part of... yeah, that would go on for a while. I’ve been superheroes and space travellers. I've played wizards and warriors and thieves and spies. I’ve been a half-mad monster-hunter with his trench-coat pockets full of dynamite. I’ve been a master of super-science, battling fiendish villains from the worst of the pulp fiction era. I’ve been good guys and bad guys, monsters and men of all kinds, and I completely goddam enjoyed myself.

When I shifted here to Tasmania, the gaming was something I knew I’d really miss. I figured I could stay in touch with friends; I was already used to living three hundred kilometres from them. But we still used to get together every month or so, break out the dice and lose a weekend to junk food and booze and wild storytelling. Down here? Well, I didn’t know anybody who might play, for starters. (Except Tansy. In Hobart. And that’s a long way when you’ve got kids.) And of course, it’s hard to explain to people who don’t understand why a man of forty-odd might want to play nerdy table-top games like that... so I quietly let that side of my life go, and got on with being a dad, and a writer, and a martial arts instructor, and all that other stuff.

Still. I really missed it. At its best, a good role-playing game is like fast-moving, plot-driven improv theatre. Everybody’s got a job, something to be or do to keep the story rolling along, and the game master has to be on top of things at all times. Keeping a tale unfolding while five or six different wannabe heroes are all trying to go in different directions and screw things up in their own unique fashion — that’s damned difficult. Holding their interest while you do it is even harder. And subtly guiding the whole show so that the story unrolls beautifully and the players think it’s all their own doing, and keeping it up for four or five hours at a stretch: that’s one hell of a challenge. Seriously: writing a novel is goddam difficult, but keeping a game campaign happening is one hell of a good way to practice.

So why am I mentioning this? Well... because I sorta figured that these games also do a lot more than entertain.

In a proper Role-Playing Game, the players must literally take on the problems and the personalities of their characters. They need to think ahead and plan carefully. They need to consider each other’s part in any action. They need to negotiate, often quite intensely. They need to be able to react quickly and improvise when needed. In short, a really good player has to show a range of complex thinking skills.

Then there’s the matter of imagination. There’s no screen here. Sure, some people play with miniatures and little wipe-clean map-boards to display terrain — but you don’t have to. In fact, that kind of thing just slows it down. All that business of measuring distances on a simulation surface... dull. Much better if the player asks ‘Am I close enough to jump over the table and punch out the drunken barbarian?', leaving it up to the Game Master to say ‘yes’, or ‘no’, or add something else to it, such as ‘sure, but don’t forget there’s a big puddle of ale on the floor. Step in that and you’ll probably slip and fall instead of making the jump.’

The best games are a fluid, ever-changing narration negotiated between the Game Master and the players, with the dice providing (apparently) neutral moderation. They’re feats of concentration and vivid imagination, and they’re near as entertaining to listen in on as they are to be part of. The mental challenge they provide to the Game Master is a real kick; I always enjoyed that job. But more importantly, the wide range of mental challenges that a good RPG puts to the players is potentially very valuable.

Imagine you have a smart kid, hooked on imaginative narrative in a big way. Now imagine he lives in a small town where most of his contemporaries are far more interested in footy and whatever cartoon show is currently providing a crop of spin-off toys to K-mart. A smart kid, naturally talented in communication, can really be a handful. He can be highly manipulative, for example: not because he’s so very smart (if he was really smart, he’d soon learn that manipulation is a fool’s game) but because he can naturally and easily talk his way around most of the kids he knows. He can be moody, and sullen, and bored if he doesn’t get enough input. He can be temperamental. And while one day he will need adult levels of sophistication, right now most of the adults around him are more than impressed enough by his vocabulary and his eclectic general knowledge that he can get away with far too much.

That was me, age 10. Yep. And yes, that’s the Elder Son now, more or less.

By inclination he’s a decent kid. There’s no malice in him. But like any kid, he’s fundamentally self-focused, and since he can communicate quickly and think quickly, he very naturally uses his talents to manipulate situations and people to suit himself. Of course, that’s not super-easy at home. I remember this time of life, how it felt, what I wanted, and how I went about trying to achieve it. I have, in fact, a very unfair advantage in this game, and I’m sure it pisses Elder Son off no end. But at school? And elsewhere?

Imagine you took that kid, and in the guise of a game — a game that involved all his favourite kinds of magic and monsters, treasure and rescues, villains and heroes and exploration and all the wonderful stuff that goes with that kind of story-telling — you made it necessary for him to take on the role of an adult. A member of a team, or an interdependent group. Imagine now that the other players in that group need his skills and abilities to help them survive the story; and that he needs them just as much.

Now you know what I’m doing.

Today, I ran my first fantasy RPG session in maybe a decade. It involved Elder Son and Younger Son, and a couple of the very bright lads from down the hill, who are just a couple years older than my two. I’ve sketched up the basics of a useful set of rules, and I laid out the very simplest of plots and settings, and I expected it might go for two, maybe three hours.

It lasted four, and could easily have gone longer. The boys had a marvellous time. First they uncovered a changeling baby in a little coastal village. Then, realising that meant there must be a nest of vile gobliny evilness somewhere around, they teamed up with a local ranger-type, and tracked the goblins to an old, ruined Roman-era villa in the deep forest. By the time Natalie came home, Younger Son had sneaked in and recovered the baby while the others kept up a satisfyingly violent distraction...

The upshot? Very happy boys with lots of stories to tell. All kinds of odd bits of subtle history. (For example: did you know that a hypocaust is an ancient Roman system of central heating? The boys know that now: that was how Younger Son sneaked into the ruined villa.) Heaps of discussion and negotiation and turn-taking — nobody dominating the storyline, everybody taking part where they could. Planning ahead. Improvisation. Truckloads of imagination.

And then there’s me. Yeah, sure: I’m telling stories on the fly with a bunch of young kids. But you know what? They’re at least as challenging and imaginative as grown-up players would be. Maybe even more.

That was fun, and I’d earned it. I’ve worked damned hard these last two weeks of holidays, and hardly taken much time at all to be with the boys. It was great to spend an afternoon that way — and even better to see them learning to enjoy something I’ve had so much fun from down the years. We’ll do this again — or so I was told, with great vigour and enthusiasm — and I’m already looking forward to it.

Just for the hell of it, I’ll put the rules and the background information for the game here. I don’t think anybody needs ‘em. RPG systems are a dime a dozen, and then some. But who knows? Maybe someone else will see an opportunity to have some fun too.

What Is It With Cats And Vomit?

Goddam animal.

I hate that noise they make. You know the one: like someone quietly saying 'Ork! Ork! Ork' into a paper bag. You hear it from a room or two away, you know it's already too late. But you're gonna try. You've got to try. You dash in, jump over a piece of furniture, and there's the fucking cat. Hunched. Head down. Tail flat. And that goddam 'Ork! Ork! Ork!' shit keeps going on, and every time the cat says 'Ork' it's whole body jerks.

So you grab the cat around the middle, heave it up and sprint for the Great Outdoors, just in time for the Arrival Of The Grotesque. Cat gives a squirm, says 'Ork' a little louder, and suddenly you're holding not a cat, but a vaguely warm and furry sort of gun designed to project hideous and disgusting blobs of... stuff... at random around the room. Brown stuff. Cat-food scented stuff. Wet, sticky, fucking horrible stuff.

So you put the cat down somewhere relatively harmless, and you fetch the paper towels and the cleaning solution and the eucalyptus oil to kill the stink. You work at it for a minute or two, gathering all the gloppy lumps into a paper bundle that you can stuff into the garbage. Then you clean up the residue, and de-stench the place.

And when you look around, where's the cat? Oh, he's back at the food bowl, stuffing yet more pre-vomit mix into his furry fucking face. Mmmmm-yeah, love that crunchy kitty treat! Gotta get it in me, else what can I vomit all over the rug?

Crapulent animal.

Sunny winter's day today. Nat took the kids for a bike ride. More accurately, she rode to the neighbour's place, recruited STILL MORE kids, and went riding farther. I wanted to work in peace, but the moment Natalie and the kids looked like leaving, a couple visitors arrived. Oh, and the goddam dog broke his chain, and went chasing after Nat and the kids. I had to call him back, fix his chain, and tie him up. No way he can be allowed to go with them: he's completely bloody unreliable in the company of bicycles. They act on his tiny, doggy brain much as trampolines do: a total, intelligence-annihilating provocation of chaos. He simply cannot see a bicycle with a kid on it without trying to chew on the front tyre. Which is hard on the kid, hard on the bike, and even hard on the stupid dog (I've seen Elder Son run over the dog's face at least once), but it doesn't stop him. Dumbass dog.

Anyway, I wished the visitors good day, and zipped down the hill to Scottsdale. Got a new, stronger chain from the hardware store. Picked up dinner supplies in Woolworths. (We're having curried lamb and sweet potato tonight, with home-made pita bread and salad. The boys will love it. The daughter will spit chips, and be sent to bed early because her mother is not here.)

Halfway through the shopping, I got a phone call from Nat. She and the kids, having ridden a long way downhill, didn't want to make the ride back uphill -- and could I collect them on the way home?

Well, yeah. Naturally.

So I collected Nat, and my three, and two of the neighbours kids. Dropped off kids with neighbours. Headed home, ran the pump, did some gardening, set up the curry. Wrote for a bit. Washed laundry. Washed dishes. Put the trailer away properly once Natalie got back. (Yeah, I refused to go back down the hill and fetch the bikes from where they were left. Figured I didn't have to own that job.)

Now Natalie is off to the Launceston General. Or more accurately, she's off to Sunday Night music at the Royal Oak, but later she's going to do an all-nighter at the LGH, keeping up her skills in Obs/Gyn. So it's just me and the kids for the evening. Curry and Dr Who, and then when they finally go to bed, I get another couple thousand words in.

I hope.

In Space, No-One Can Hear You Fart

Presumably, anyway. Unless you leave your intercom open, I suppose.

I know. That isn't a spacesuit. But... I have no idea what the hell it really is. And the hideous turgor of the thing! Whatever that suit is, if she DID fart, the whole thing would probably just pop.

A Moment Or So To Spare

Working hard at the moment, trying to make up for lost time in writing and all. I'm way behind on emails, though. And Facebook? Don't make me laugh. I just don't have the time.

Today was good, even though it's School Holidays. Natalie did the morning in Launceston, at the hospital, and the kids went down to play with the Viking Brood at the nursery. Given most of the morning to myself, I achieved 3000 useful words. This is good.

I also did a lot of laundry, and nailed some more decking boards onto the landing in the garage. I've built a platform there at the back, rather than a stair up to the storage loft: a big, solid, deck-like landing, with a short ladder anchored to the building frame leading up to the loft, and another short ladder leading down. The dog can't climb ladders, and the landing is too high for him to jump up, so I can use the loft space without worrying about the stupid creature.

Wheels are turning fast now. I'm behind on virtually everything, I've got school holidays like a rash, and as soon as they end I'll be doing an Introductory Martial Arts Class at the primary school, just to take up one extra afternoon per week. Yeah. (Reminds me. Must send a copy of my paperwork to the relevant people...)

Anyway, I'm still alive and all. Elder Son got over his croop, for which we are all infinitely grateful. Oh, and there was an all-too-brief visit from the wonderful Rowena, along with her partner and the youngest of her Mighty Brood. We managed a kind of hectic post-lunch luncheon, with a bit of walking-around-in-the-rain thrown in, but it was definitely too short. Maybe next time.

Well, I've got an hour or two before bed yet so I'm going back to the writing. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this URL, which leads to an article on the ABC website. If you've been reading around here recently, you'll probably get a chuckle out of the viewpoint of the writer -- but he does state his case rather well, doesn't he?

RSPT: Money We Deserve