The weed of crime bears bitter fruit

So, our car was stolen last week. Evaporated into thin air in the middle of a nice afternoon, parked on the street one moment, gone the next. It was our “second car,” the one my wife has been using, and nowhere near new, but still quite a shock to find it gone so quickly from our life. Fortunately it was insured, fortunately it was old, and fortunately nobody got hurt (“carjacking” is pretty darned rare here downunder).

But it still highly irritating, to find yourself victimised by some complete stranger, likely some “boy racer” type who’s taken our Subaru and zipped it around Auckland until they run into a tree, or taken it to a chop-shop for spare parts. I don’t imagine we’ll ever see it again, and frankly I’d rather it just disappeared instead of turning up ripped to bits.

For someone who reads an awful lot of comic books about brightly clad heroes beating up the bad guys, I actually haven’t been the victim of much crime so far in life. In fact, I’d pretty much never been robbed/burgled etc. before we moved to Auckland. That’s not meant to be a slam on New Zealand, actually – in America, I always lived in smaller towns, but here, I’m in a city of 1.5 million, and I imagine any equivalent size city in the states has its own problems. Any image you might have of New Zealand as some crime-free paradise is a bit too utopian to really believe.

In the nearly 6 years we’ve lived here, we’ve had one car’s window smashed in (for about $2 in pocket change sitting in the car) and now the other one stolen. I was actually far more irritated over the broken window than I was over the entirely stolen car – mainly because the former incident happened in our own driveway, while we were sleeping, and some worthless dirtbag was rifling through my car. The other happened across town, on an ostensibly “safe” street, so it didn’t feel quite so intimate.

But while I’m annoyed I’d say I recognize that on the general scale of crime this ranks pretty low – I’ve never been physically attacked, and (knock on wood) our house has never been burgled. It does make you feel more sympathy for those who are the victims of crime – and more disgust at the kind of lowlifes who think it’s a lark to steal a man’s car. Sigh. Where's Batman when you really need him?

40.

…So long time, no post. As the last entry probably indicated, it’s been a rather rough year for us. We’re dealing with everything that’s happened and getting on with our lives, but admittedly, it’s a long haul for everyone, losing two parents from the family in less than 2 months. It's a cliche, but sometimes cliches are true: Everything has changed.

Somewhere in there, I turned 40. We buried my wife’s father on a Monday, and by that weekend, we were off to Sydney, Australia, for a long-planned holiday arranged well before all the funerals and such we’ve deal with this year.

I turned 40 and we spent the day in the sunshine at Manly Beach, on gold sand and warm water, and we went out for dinner at a fine little Italian restaurant where I ordered a proper steak for the first time in eons. Sydney is one of my favourite places, and it didn’t disappoint this time. All in all, it was a good way to get a year older – I thought I’d like to make the 40th something to remember, and it was.

And now 2011 is nearly over – I’m usually a fairly positive fella, but it’s been a year with a lot more bad in it than good. Good riddance to it, and hoping for a better 2012.

Sir Peter Siddell, 1935-2011

My father-in-law Sir Peter Siddell died peacefully Monday, nearly three years after being diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor, and nearly two months to the day since his beloved wife Sylvia passed away.

To say 2011 has been a tough year for our family would be an understatement. To lose two parents, two grandparents, in less than 8 weeks is the kind of thing I hope nobody has to go through. The deaths were not surprises -- in many ways, we've been preparing for them for several years now. The year has been filled with slow declines, fading away and too many vigils, hospital visits and emergencies to count. There hasn't been a lot of time for blogging, or whatever passes for ordinary life.

Now all that's over. But it really is going to take us a terribly long time to get "over" losing Peter and Sylvia. I'm apparently going to be speaking at Sir Peter's funeral in Auckland Monday, and one of the things I will mention is how unceasingly welcome he was to this strange American joining his family, dragging his daughter around the USA and eventually bringing her home again.

Sir Peter was one of New Zealand's most famous painters, and it's a great comfort that he lived long enough to see his work recognized -- a wonderful coffee-table book of his art came out this year. And the family has a tremendous legacy left behind of his distinctive, uniquely Kiwi work.

Passed almost unnoticed this week was that it's been exactly five years since we moved back to New Zealand. We didn't know then what we'd be dealing with, or that our son would have such a short time with his New Zealand grandparents. But I'm still glad we've been here for it, that we were able to be a part of their lives and that my wife and her sister were so supportive in their final days.

We don't always know what kind of family we'll get when we marry someone. I was extraordinarily lucky and honored to be part of this one as long as I was.

More on Sir Peter's passing from local media:

* New Zealand Herald

* TVNZ

* Auckland Art Gallery

* Artists NZ

* Beattie's Book Blog

* Siddell Art

Sylvia Siddell, 1941-2011

"Max Taming The Furies," Sylvia Siddell, circa 1999

...My mother-in-law, and a wife, mother, grandmother, artist. She will be missed.

In which I discover they still make videogames

It's kind of embarrassing to admit but my game of choice on my fancy new hi-tech iPhone 4 hasn't been some flashy God of War type digital extravaganza, but instead a rather charmingly poky 20-year-old Sega videogame, Sonic The Hedgehog. I stumbled across an app download that exactly duplicates the 1991 version of Sonic, spent my $2 and was hooked, drawn in again into the land of spinning rodents and magical gold coins where I whiled away much of a summer away from college playing. Perhaps age 19 is the perfect time to spend a summer playing videogames.

I've got to admit the videogame revolution of the past two decades has mostly passed me by, and my joystick skills pretty much ended with Sega Genesis and Nintendo games in college. We don't own a PlayStation or a Wii or a Kinext or whatever they're called; I've thought about it, but I get kind of addicted to these things and I *know* 7-year-old Peter gets hooked on 'em, and it wasn't until the last couple of years I really had the spending money to buy big videogame setups anyway. The iPhone is giving me a chance to check some of the newer games out (go Angry Birds!) but, well, I tend to find stuff like Mortal Combat IV kind of... boring. I've just never been a huge fan of the shoot 'n' kill lots of things school of games.


Now, my true videogame addiction days peaked around 1983 or so with the beloved Atari 2600, which was in every '80s child's home. These games were hopelessly clunky by today's standards -- a square red dot is a knight with a sword? But your imagination filled in the technical limitations marvelously, turning "Yar's Revenge" into a sweeping galactic struggle or the hopelessly primitive castles and dragons of "Adventure" into a derring-do epic. My brother and my friends would crouch around the Atari for hours playing stuff like "Raiders of the Lost Ark," as it bleep-blooped away.

Maybe that whole recapturing childhood thing is why I'm enjoying going all retro with Sonic The Hedgehog, as the little Sega critter, while more advanced than the Atari 2600, is still pretty crude compared to some of the other slick modern games I've seen. But he's familiar, and while it may not quite have 3-D reality, the goofy little world of Sonic is still pretty exciting by my undemanding videogame standards.

The future's so bright, I've got to wear shades

How's this for making us '80s kids feel old -- 2011 is only four years away from the hoverboarding world of 2015 "Back To The Future II" predicted for us way back in 1989. Ye gods. No hoverboards but tons of iPods and iPads and iThings. (Further Future Shock amusement: 11 predictions BTTF2 got right, and 11 predictions BTTF2 got wrong.)

I turn 40 this year, too, which is a really weird thing to see on the horizon -- on 11/11/11, no less. My wee boy is nearly 7 and about to enter Year 3 at school. I sort of feel like my entire 30s whooshed by in a blur of babies, newspapers and moves. I moved from California to Oregon to New Zealand, had a high-energy kid, and I guess that accounts for that blurry feeling as we enter 2011. Where did the 2000s go?

The world young Peter is growing up in may not have hoverboards and flying cars (yet) but it is very different. P will never know a pre-digital world without the internet, texting, Facebooks, iPods and the like -- he will assume knowledge is all out there instantly, without having to dig around in libraries, just a click or two away (the other day he asked about what eels eat, then said "I guess we can just look it up on the internet").

As Arcade Fire sang in last year's song, "We Used To Wait":
"I used to write,
I used to write letters I used to sign my name
I used to sleep at night
Before the flashing lights settled deep in my brain"

It's a world where you're never out of touch if you don't want to be, where you don't sit around waiting for weeks for a letter from an old friend you've been wanting to hear from. Just send a Facebook message.

... Not that I'm gonna turn into one of those cranky old geezers complaining about the way things ain't the way they once was. The world of 2011 brings us many wonderful things that make it possible for the world to seem bigger and yet closer than ever before. But it's interesting, now that we're actually IN the future of 2011, how different from what we once imagined and yet how futuristic it actually is when you think about it.

T-t-talking about my Pepsi generation

I held a can of Pepsi the other day and was staring at it for quite a while, because that's the sort of thing I do. I've drank a lot of Pepsis in my time... for many years, it was my caffeine fix of choice, until the sugar/chemicals/calories etc. finally led me to scale back considerably. Down here in New Zealand, they're quite hard to find, so when I bought a case of Pepsi the other week it was a special treat for myself, the most Pepsi (Pepsis? Pepsum?) I've had in years.

I discovered Pepsi as a kid and it's always remained my carbonated beverage of choice (I appreciate the occasional Fanta/orange soda, and went through a Mountain Dew Code Red phase for a spell). I'd suck them down like water for years and it probably explains my dental distress over time. At one point during a summer camp in the late 1980s I had well over a dozen Pepsis during one long, very sleepless day/night. ... You think you're invincible for the longest time and don't ever imagine something sold in a supermarket might not be "good" for you, I guess.

But like I said, I've scaled back. I eventually became addicted instead to the utterly horrible coffee pretty much all newspaper kitchens specialize in. Since I drink my coffee black, there's less calories/sugar than soda to deal with. I go months now between Pepsis.

The whole Coke Vs. Pepsi thing? Well, I can tolerate Coke in a pinch, but I've always found it more bitter, less crisp. I always sympathize with the underdog, so maybe that's why I've gone with Pepsi. It's been interesting to watch how perpetually No. 2 Pepsi can't leave its can and logo design alone. While Coke goes with what has worked for decades, Pepsi has changed what feels like constantly.

I remain an aluminum purist when it comes to soda. I will and have drank it out of plastic bottles, but my battered palate tells me there is indeed a difference in the taste of a Pepsi in a bottle and one in a can. There's something comforting about the icy blue metal chilled exterior, about putting your mouth gingerly on the edge of the shiny cylinder. The experience of chugging one of those always-too-large-a-serving plasticky bottles is never the same.

I'm relatively aware now of trying to have a good (or at least non-horrible) diet, so Pepsis are rare now. But still, to pop open that can with the familiar pffsssshht and grip that chilled object, to do the motions I've done hundreds of times before -- well, some things in life are worth indulging in sometimes.

I can't run but I can walk much faster than this

So I haven't been writing as much lately, as I've been running for my life. Well, walking really rather fast.

We finally bit the bullet and bought a treadmill a couple of weeks back, as I try exploring that foreign concept called "exercise." Walking is generally my favorite way to ease the stress a bit, but between early working hours, minding the boy after school and now, winter and darkness by 5pm, it's hard to fit it in, and not at the sustained pace I need to lose some weight. Now we can go for a walk whenever we want, in the scenic environs of our humble garage.

And once you get used to the treadmill, it's not bad at all. You have to keep up with it, in a way that forces you to sweat, but you can also lose yourself in your thoughts or some music for a spell. I've been going for a fast walk on it mostly -- gingerly building up speed. I've been having a bit of a sore back because I'm not quite stretching enough, but for brief (very brief) stints I've been managing a wee spastic jog as well.

Truth is, I'll be hitting 40, dear god in heaven, in a little over a year, and things don't bounce back like they once did. For my first 30 years or so I didn't have to do much of anything to maintain myself, and I was in pretty decent health. But then I had an emergency appendectomy in 1999, and boy, I tell you it's been all downhill since then. I'm fortunate I'm still in relatively good shape considering my near-total lack of exercise in recent years, but I could still stand to lose a good 10-20 pounds. Time to do something about it before it's more than that.

Things that cheer me up today

Ah, it's Queen's Birthday weekend. Yes, that's right, I'm officially a subject of Her Majesty (a factoid which never fails to amaze this proud American) and this is the time we pay honour to her 502 years on the throne. In tribute to HRH, let's talk about the finer things in life...

* That courtesy of the Queen, we can now call him SIR Patrick Stewart. Engage!

• Winter may be irksome, but y'know, we don't get 8 feet of snow in our yard like we did in Northern California.

• That four+ years after buying this MacBook I finally got around to setting up a wi-fi connection. Freedom!

• The boy doing a dead-on Iggy Pop impersonation, without clothes on just before bedtime. When he's a teenager the video goes up on YouTube. Or whatever tube we have then.

• Nick Tosches' biography of Dean Martin, "Dino: Living High In the Dirty Business of Dreams" -- Martin's an entertainer I've never really cared about, but Tosches' apocalyptic Lester Bangs-meets-Cormac McCarthy prose really puts a jolt into this tale of fame and folly.

• Re-reading Brian Bendis's "Alias" series and being reminded that he really can be a pretty fine writer when he abandons his tropes and quirks.

• Woody Harrelson in "Zombieland." Redneck awesomeness.

• It's a little "Cathy," but warm cats purring on your chest.

• LCD Soundsystem's burbly, brooding new album 'This Is Happening.'

• Matt Smith as the new volatile Dr. Who, and even more so, chirpy redhead Amy Pond the companion.

• Hot coffee and waffles on a rainy Sunday morning.

Things that annoy me today

• Winter, which is like all of two days old already.

• New comic books shooting up from US$2.99 to US$3.99 in price. Yeah, that'll help a struggling industry. Already paring back my monthly reads list to about as low as it's been since the mid 1990s "Dark Ages" of gimmicky comics.

• That despite trying to more or less stay off the Internet for several days I didn't entirely avoid a spoiler about the "Lost" finale in the week between when it aired in the US and when it aired downunder.

• People who go on about the idiotic "celebrities die in threes rule" every time a couple famous people die. People famous and not die every single day and it's a sad thing, but you can find whatever pattern you want in it. Celebs die in sixes? Three people born in 1980 died this year, it's a curse? Sure, why not.

• That MGM has managed to screw up its finances so badly that both the next James Bond and the "Hobbit" movies (set to be filmed in New Zealand) are being delayed.

• How I didn't try to grow really really long hair back when I had a full head of hair.

• "Special edition" CDs that come out like 6 months after you first bought the CD and make you annoyed you didn't wait longer for the extra tracks. (Yes, I still buy CDs, as I am a living fossil.)

• Spoken word tracks on albums. They really don't work unless you're Bob Dylan.

• News organizations that continue to write about the Internet in a vaguely condescending, elitist tone, when that ship has sailed long ago and it might be good to get with the program rather than fight change.

• How ridiculously expensive and small in quantities over-the-counter medicine such as Tylenol is in NZ compared to the US.

• "Reboots" for movie franchises. For every solid move like "Casino Royale" you get a bunch of needless "Nightmare on Elm Street" remakes. Why does "Spider-Man" need a reboot, set for 2012, just 10 years after the first Sam Raimi movie? Ugh.

Coming soon: The flip side.

Lazy crazy daze of summer

Late December and January are a weird time in New Zealand. After four Christmases here, I'm pretty much used to the whole "Christmas in summertime" thing, and we had a gorgeous holiday weekend to boot, with much eating outdoors, hiking on sand dunes, a bit of swimming (water's still a little chilly though) and more. I even got attacked by a crab which got tangled in my swim shorts perilously close to a place you don't really want a crab with pinchy claws going, if you get what I mean.

The entire country sort of settles into a weird torpor till about mid-January or so, the "silly season" as it's called. Many people take some of their four weeks' guaranteed annual holiday time in Christmas, and the kids go on their "summer holiday" break from school -- about six weeks off. It's far more of a holiday than it is in the US, where Christmas falls in winter and students generally only get a couple weeks off. Don't try to hit the roads going out of town or find a quiet campground in NZ in January -- everyone else has the same idea. Rather than taking a big holiday time here I've been taking several 2- or 3-day breaks here and there and combining them with weekends, it's worked out very nice so I haven't had a full 'regular' week of work in a month or so, and got to spend a lot of time with my parents while they were visiting.

Stores close down (my favorite comics shop doesn't reopen til January 9 - sob!), businesses roll down the hours and the Auckland traffic is suddenly deserted. Also a really bad time if you need to get a contractor or lawyer or other service. It's actually kind of a nice time to be living in this city of 1.5 million people if you do have to work, really. Besides, when there's several fine beaches within a 10-minute drive of our house I don't get fussed about trying to leave town this time of year, I'd rather do it when the rest of the country isn't on the roads too.

Life in New Zealand: year four!

The years, they whiz by like lightning now. It was just about exactly three years ago that we were in transit – arriving in New Zealand to start our strange bold new lives, 6000 miles away from my homeland. Three years now I've been living in New Zealand, and according to my wife who keeps track of all the legal stuff (I just sign forms now and again) I'll become a citizen soon enough. (That'll make six passports for the three of us!)

It is a bit tricky now from the comfort of our little Auckland home to summon up how unrooted and nomadic we were for a spell there, back in 2006 -- packed up our old life in Oregon, a little cross-American rambling before we left, and showing up in a damp and humid Auckland spring to start anew. We're "settled" now -- bought a house, got jobs, the boy started school this year, all the usual things that make up a living.

The US is never very far away in my mind and I sometimes find myself defending it to a few folks who unfortunately have a rather broad or stereotypical view of a nation as sprawling and yes, fundamentally good as I think America is -- I never thought moving to another country meant I suddenly gave up on the US. (Indeed if I had to list a pet peeve of living in New Zealand, I'd say "people bashing America for the heck of it" would be one of 'em, but I really don't try to be too thin skinned about it -- we bash Australia a lot worse down here.)

I've covered the ups and the downs of life in NZ now for the last few years, and while I'll always be a "foreigner" here, I feel a lot more clued in than I was the very first time I visited this antipodean land more than nine (!!!) years ago now. I always tell people I honestly don't know if we'll stay here "for good" -- is there such a thing? I've moved a lot, lived in several American states and ever since finishing high school it's rare I've stayed in the same place more than four-five years or so. But we are very glad to be here, here and now, and tomorrow, as they say, is another day.

Things that I have been doing other than blogging:

• Finally finishing the 2-year project of painting pretty much every room in our house by painstakingly turning the mottled jaundice yellow Formica of our master bathroom into a shining cheerful blue and stripping the bubbling ceiling and repainting it.

• Listening to much nifty music from The 13th Floor Elevators and Roky Erickson, The Eels and Big Star.

• Having a cosmos-shattering blog crossover by meeting fellow Auckland blogger, comics fan and journalist Bob of the Tearoom of Despair, whose passionate comics posts are well worth reading.

• Watching Kenneth Branagh give a nifty smouldering performance in the dark and intense Swedish-set BBC detective series "Wallander."

• Waiting in line in hopes I get tickets for the Pavement reunion show right here in Auckland.

• Bought a new toaster after the old one reached the end of its 2 1/2 year lifespan. They sure know how to make things last these days, don't they?

• Listening to the alternating bouts of intense rain and intense sun that make an Auckland spring.

• Peter asked a girl in his class to marry him. In writing. Because he loves her. How did it go? "She said she'd play with me but only if I DON'T love her."

It was 10 years ago today...

When I think about it, the fact my wife and I got together at all is kinda remarkable. I was a long-haired college student in Oxford, Mississippi, Avril was a novice lawyer in Auckland, New Zealand. We met through the pages of a comic book, of all places (Dave Sim's Cerebus) where we became pen pals. We met in person for the first time when I was living in an impossibly dank and dinky trailer in Mississippi. She won a green card lottery and showed up on my doorstep in California about five years later, and we thought we'd see how things went.

Ten years ago today, we got married. I proposed spontaneously, while we were watching "King of the Hill" on a snowy Sunday night. And while with any marriage there have been ups and downs I can honestly say my life wouldn't have been anything near as fun as it's been with Avril by my side this last decade. We've seen Alaska and Australia, Mississippi and Mexico; we've had a terrific little boy who constantly surprises and amazes me; for the last three years I've become the one in the relationship with the strange foreign accent as we moved back to her homeland.

What was that really bad movie, "The Butterfly Effect," which shows how everything can change with a tiny incident? Sometimes when I look at my boy I think, what if I hadn't been reading Cerebus, what if we stopped exchanging letters, what if she hadn't won the green card -- who knows who I'd be now?

I'm honestly having trouble parsing the fact that it's been a bloody decade already -- somehow, the 2000s have just whizzed by like a ninja in the night. Marriage will show you the best of yourself, and sometimes, the worst of yourself. I hope it's been more of the best than the worst; and I'm still kind of stunned and happy when I think how it's all ended up since that day 16 or 17 years ago when I first got a letter from a girl in New Zealand.

You are now entering another dimension

So it's school holidays this week and on my turn, I took Peter for some daddy bonding with "Ice Age 3 in 3-D". I hadn't seen a 3-D movie in the theaters, oh, since, "Megaforce" back in the early 1980s (which now that I think of it, may not have actually been in 3-D). Anyway, "Ice Age" was all spiffy digital 3-D so it was a novelty to check out -- and while the story on these movies never quite grabs me the way the best Pixar or Disney can, it is, undoubtedly, an amazing technological achievement -- the razor-sharp clarity of the computer animation combined with pretty astounding 3-D is worth seeing at least once. A couple of scenes involving floating soap bubbles or falling snow were so remarkable that the illusion truly felt three-dimensional to me. That said, though, I still have trouble seeing 3-D as much more than a gimmick rather than a storytelling tool – yeah, it's an "Ice Age" movie so not Shakespeare, but I've yet to see 3-D be integral to a story. And the glasses, darn it, fancy as they are now they still get a bit uncomfortable after an hour or so I think. (Reportedly James Cameron's upcoming "Avatar" will take the medium in a whole new direction, though, which could be interesting indeed to see.)

Elsewhere on the internets:
• Marvel at the wooden iPod! I'd love one of these made of NZ kauri.

• If you haven't seen the newly famous "naked Air New Zealand safety ad," here it is. (Google Ads service seems to be frequently running it right here on this blog, which makes me feel kinda funny.) I just find it all rather odd, myself (the body paint is rather hard to see as body paint, really, so it's like they're just wearing tight clothes), but hey, 1,000,000 hits on YouTube can't be wrong, it's doing the job as publicity. (And what is it about New Zealand and naked advertisements, anyway? Mind you this one is a lot more, er, titillating.)

• We got an actual chain letter in the mail yesterday. In the year 2009! Don't they know that email spam is the way to go in our modern age? On the other hand, they are promising us $70,000 ***GUARANTEED*** income in six months.... Hm....

In which the years weigh heavy. Damn you, Weird Al!

Oh my God. Weird Al Yankovic's magnum opus movie "UHF" is 20 years old this year.

It's just the trigger, really. I keep having this sensation a lot lately. A heck of a lot of "20 years since..." moments so far in 2009, each of which makes me feel crepuscular and stunned. 20 years since Michael Keaton "Batman"? 20 years since the Berlin Wall? Since the Pixies' "Dolittle" and Elvis Costello's "Spike"? Next year is my 20th high school reunion which is likely no big thing to those older than I, but in my own little wee brain, egad, I am so old.

Twenty years since "UHF!" Geezus!



What's in the box?

(It's by no means a great movie but it is an eminently silly, amiable one, and I fondly recall seeing it back in the theater with my old pals in the Tomato Warriors™ back in the day. While Weird Al's music is kind of hit-or-miss, and really, you can't keep that parody thing fresh forever, "UHF" still brings back fond memories of road trips to Santa Cruz, "Wheel of Fish," the immortal "Spatula City" and more. Godspeed, Albert.)

[Weird fact: Apparently in New Zealand it was titled "The Vidiot From UHF." No foolin'.]

Accidents, plague and paranoia!

It must be the winter blues.... Random notes:

...So anyway last weekend I got into my first New Zealand car accident, thanks to a teenager driving his mum's minivan who smashed into me from behind while I was slowed on the highway waiting for a car to turn. Fortunately nobody was hurt, which was extremely good as my 5-year-old nephew was in the car, but the Subaru is a little less well for the wear. Still, it's driveable until we get it repaired. We've been hoping to get another year or so out of the rather battered 13-year-old car we bought right after we arrived as a stopgap measure, but we'll see how it goes once it's subjected to a few weeks of repairs once we go through the insurance process. Fun fact: Last time I was involved in any kind of car accident was about 10 years ago when... I was rear-ended by a teenager up at Lake Tahoe. Deja vu.

• I haven't succumbed to swine flu paranoia just yet, but let's just say increasing cases in Australia and Auckland are starting to make me a bit more nervous. Particularly as the day care centre mentioned here is the same chain Peter was going to not too many months ago... At least I remind myself they do have treatments for this stuff if the worst comes...

• Captain Crunchberries aren't a fruit? Let's sue!

• Score one for English speak! Here's your random quote of the day:
"We have learned ... that vowels are extremely important to New Zealanders."

• Courtesy of the inimitable Topless Robot, via '70s Bollywood comes the best fight scene ever for your weekend viewing pleasure -- be sure to watch to the end:

The cards we are dealt

...I haven't written a lot the last few months about my father-in-law, who some might remember took ill back around Christmas. Since then, he's been diagnosed with brain cancer and has been undergoing a combination of chemo and radiation therapy. Peter Senior has dealt with this with a remarkable combination of courage and stamina I think. He and my mother-in-law (and my wife and her sister as well) have been dealt a very hard blow these past months and it is a big, hulking thing to have to think about. The support of family and friends has been invaluable for everyone.

It occupies my thoughts often enough that I need to at least mention it now and again. I don't want to turn this into "the cancer blog," nor is it truthfully my right to do so. But I figured it might be time for a brief update. At this point, nothing is certain but he is doing fairly well all things considered. There are many things that change when you have cancer in the family -- it's a strange new dark thing for me and my wife to have to deal with. I have been incredibly fortunate up until now to have minor family bouts -- a spell of prostate cancer, that sort of thing -- that, cross fingers, have been treatable. Treatment for brain tumours is changing all the time and so far Peter Sr has responded very well to treatment, far better than the horror stories you sometimes associate with it. We don't know what the coming year holds -- but then again, does anyone?

But it certainly does put a spin on our decision to move over to New Zealand, with little Peter, 2 1/2 years ago now -- and makes us very glad we're here, where each new birthday celebrated and visit has taken on a slightly more important tone to us. I take things for granted every single day, but am trying to do so just a little less.

The update

OK, well, my father-in-law had surgery yesterday to remove as much of the brain tumour as possible, and it went well enough -- he's alive, he's coherent and happy to still be around. As for what lies ahead, we'll see -- he's going to be in hospital for a while, of course, and a lot hinges on what the biopsy tells about the tumour and if chemotherapy, etc. are needed. But we've crossed a major hurdle, and glad to have done it.

Needless to say it's been stressful on us all, there's been a lot of zipping to the hospital and young kids to look after and so forth. Thanks to those who have expressed kind thoughts here, on Facebook and through emails, Avril and I muchly appreciate it. This is the first of any of our parents to face such a life-threatening situation, and as those of you who've gone through know, it isn't easy. I'll attempt to get back to the light-hearted pop culture type posts as well in coming days, but obviously, we'll still be thinking a heck of a lot about Granddad Peter and hope he's OK.

Reality interlude

...It's been a bad week, and while I like to refrain from getting too personal and confessional on this blog, I do need to at least take a moment to talk about what's going on right now with us.

On Friday, my father-in-law was admitted to hospital after an apparent stroke. He was later diagnosed with a brain tumour. At this point, we don't know a lot other than it's on the large side and needs to be gotten out right away. He's having surgery later this week, and as you can imagine, we're all a little freaked out and things are intense right now. It's all come rather out of nowhere, and it's amazing how quickly things can change.

None of us are really religious, but that doesn't mean good thoughts don't count, so all I can say is if you can spare a few for us, we appreciate it. Obviously I may not be doing too much posting for a spell. Thanks for reading.