What happened?

I'm still around, just not here. One day I hope to change that; start doing some creative writing again.

Until then, I've got a Facebook page where you can enjoy various updates, particularly Game of Thrones-related (those recaps owe it all to this blog; poor thing, how I have neglected you).

If you like Game of Thrones and/or my recaps, my buddy Stu and I started a Raven On companion podcast for Season Five. You can go back and listen to the episodes online. It's just two GoT nerds shooting the breeze.

I still jibber-jabber on Twitter.

I write for Brisbane Times.

I'm doing a show called Speed: The Movie, The Play at the Brisbane Powerhouse from September 30 to October 17. It's the 1994 action thriller Speed, staged on an actual bus, with designer low-fi special effects. It's always hard for me to give myself credit for anything good, but damn this show is good. It's fun, silly, clever and I'm so proud of it. Come and see it.

And I'm trying to work out how I can be a better writer, blogger, creative type, friend and adult in general. All suggestions warmly accepted.

Signs of China

Beijing: A City of Strangeness and Wonder That Is Wonderfully Photogenic

The Greatest Prank to Go Unnoticed

I've just wrapped up ten days in the Big Apple, New York City. 

Our travel party included: my grandmother, Queen Pat, who had never been and decided that at 89, she was finally ready; my friend Amy, with whom I would perform in a NY Improv Festival; and our friend Daren, aka Dazzler, who had wanted to go in April but then tweaked his schedule when he heard we were all going, and wouldn't it be more fun to party on as a big group?

Thing about Dazzler though, is that he wanted to keep his American jaunt secret, so he could pop up in the States and surprise all his friends on Facebook.

Whaddya gonna do? Spoil his big thing? So Amy and I kept radio silence.

Daren turned up in Los Angeles and posted, but didn't mention he was joining us in New York.

So we concocted an awesome photo bombing plan, that turned the first few days of our trip into a game of 'Where's Dazzler?'

For reference, here is Dazzler in NY:

And here are the shots Amy and I took and posted on Facebook, just waiting for somebody to ping to the ruse.

Times Square:

Empire State Building:

Statue of Liberty:

In a Broadway theatre:

And in front of the PIT theatre, home of the Improv festival:

But nobody pinged! People on Facebook kept liking our pictures, but nobody seem to work out that the bloke in the striped beanie seemed to show up a lot.

Eventually we posted a video where Daren derides the great art of Impro (jokingly of course - well, I think), and a few people liked it.

POSTSCRIPT

Once Amy left us in New York, Daren and I made a silly 'We miss you' picture.

I've just met up with Amy in Edinburgh, where she now lives. So we decided to replicate:

After posting that on Facebook this morning, I received a brilliant response from my friend Scott:

Hats off to you sir, some fine work. I hope this means our awesome prank did tickle people's fancies. 

In Tents

I've been telling folks here at Woodford that the last time I put up a tent was ten years ago, but it's actually longer.

Some focused reflection on years gone by has confirmed that the last time I was responsible for erecting a nylon horror from beyond the stars was Year 10 camp, and I was 14. That's more than half my life ago.

I borrowed this tent from a work colleague late on Friday night, before heading up to the Folk Festival on Saturday morning. It took some hours for organisers to figure out my assigned camping spot, so it was only around 5pm that I was able to unload the mighty tent and realise... "I have absolutely no idea how to do this."

But never fear! I would push on. It would be like brain training, those exercises in logic and problem solving that you do to improve your grey matter.

The tent came with no instructions, but rather two long interconnected poles, and one short one, plus twelve tent pegs. I did not have a "hammer" or anything useful like that, so I started by laying out the tent and driving the pegs into the semi-hard ground with the palms of my hands. 

When I stayed in a Mongolian ger, it had a chimney in the middle, so I first tried to emulate that by shoving the short pole smack bang in the middle of the tent.

I then realised there was no way to secure such an arrangement, and besides, it was not conducive to setting up the air mattress I had brought along.

So I looked at the blue tent next to me, which had a curved pole across its entryway, forming a sort of patio in front of the dome. All right, I thought, I'll give that a go.

Not quite the same. My rapidly overheating brain eventually pinged that the two long interconnected poles needed to run corner to corner, crossing at the top of the tent. I took a punt and ran them under the tent, remembering that the last tent I erected had poles on the inside.

I clipped the clips to the outside of the material, then grabbed the silver cover sheet to go over the top. It didn't seem to fit properly. Then I remembered - the shorter pole! It must have to attach to the cover somehow. 

I tried a range of positions, but none seemed right.

Eventually I gave up on ever finding a purpose for the shorter rod. I enlisted the help of Maeve, a kindly young volunteer at the camping HQ, who hadn't seen a tent like mine before either. 

We redraped the cover as best we could, then Maeve, bless her, grabbed a hammer and thrust in the remaining tent pegs to hold it down.

It wasn't quite right, but still, I had to get my car out of the way and get to my first "Game On" panel show.

I've since discovered (thanks to mercy cries on Twitter) that these types of tents are supposed to have the poles on the outside of the tent, and underneath the cover. Similarly if it rains and I don't have that air gap between the two, the tent will leak.

So I need to reconfigure my tent. Problem is, it's already over 30 degrees and climbing. Frankly the tent can stuff it.

Treasure hunt!

Greetings, one and all.

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and a relaxed and fun-filled Boxing Day.

I am enjoying my first official holidays over the Christmas/New Year period in some years. I had hoped to perhaps write something every day, but that ambition was promptly sunk by the prospect of doing not terribly much at all. 

One thing I did manage to pull off, however, was a super fun Christmas treasure hunt for The Wah. 

I had bought him a very shiny new present, but I felt it was something that required working for. Given that we had a quiet Christmas at home this year (our respective families being out of town), I thought it might help add some extra zest to the morning.

I worked out all the locations for clues a few days beforehand, wrote them up in dodgy rhyme, then printed out and sealed them on Christmas Eve.

The Wah is a very light sleeper, so it was some kind of Christmas miracle that I was able to get up and out of the house at 6 o'clock in the morning without him catching me in the act. I walked around our local park, planted the clues and buried the present (something I was a bit uncertain how to do until I surreptitiously managed to borrow a gardening trowel from our friend Dan). There was the odd jogger and dog-walker out, but no one paid much attention.

As I wandered back home, I did feel a small amount of fear at the fact I'd buried a rather expensive bit of kit in a public place. Had someone found any one of the clues, and had half a brain, they probably would've been able to uncover it. That would've been a fun insurance claim to make.

Thankfully they were all still there when The Wah opened his card with the first clue and we set off on a brisk jaunt to find the treasure.

I suppose treasure hunts are usually considered as activities for children and/or pirates, but The Wah seemed to enjoy it. I would heartily recommend it for anyone wanting to give a fun experience along with a present - or hell, just do it for fun one day.  It's fun for the recepient, but for the mastermind it's entertaining as well, as you watch the person try to figure out riddles and give as many - or as few - hints as you want!

Tomorrow I'm heading up to the Woodford Folk Festival, where I shall be a panellist on the comedy quiz show "Game On" for four nights (Saturday 28, Sunday 29, Monday 30, Tuesday 31). It's on at 7.30pm in the GreenHouse each night, if you're planning to be at the event at all during those times. 

I'm hoping to do more blogging while at Woodford to see in the New Year with a renewed vigour for this poor, neglected site.

Uninspired & Terrified

It's a sad day to realise that not only do you feel like you have nothing to say, but that you feel something akin to fear in saying anything at all.

Here it comes - the obligatory "Gee, I don't blog much anymore, do I?" post.

I've been avoiding it all year, truth be told. I read a "Tips for How to Blog Properly" type of list once that said you should never write such a post because it will frustrate your readers. Instead, you should just post when you are inspired.

But it's been so long since I was inspired, hasn't it? My last few posts have been relatively run of the mill. I couldn't even summon the energy to write in more detail about my beloved He Died With a Felafel in His Hand adventure at the Powerhouse. You'd think I could've mustered up some juicy titbits about staging a production, or lyrical prose about the transience of art and shared human experiences in the performance realm.

But no. I was too busy living the production, being responsible for as much detail as possible, and trying to keep my own head above water during a stressful time that it all went in a blur and now almost feels like a dream just out of reach. Like a massage with a feather, leaving just a faint sensation of having been drawn across your skin.

I write all day, (almost) every day for work now, you see. I enjoy my job as an arts writer, but it uses a lot of the creative energy that I used to dollop out on blogging. I have to find a way into arts stories, write them in an interesting and hopefully dynamic way. I spend a lot of time on trying to make what I write something people will want to read. It's not a task that I can ever imagine finishing to my complete satisfaction. There will always be more to try, more to do.

When something happens and I get the faint spark of an idea for a blog post, it is hard to capture that and keep it sacred, keep it away from the gaping maw of the internet, whose job it is to write, rewrite, attack, counter-attack and reposte on every conceivable topic all before I've had my lunch on any given day.

There's so much on the internet, you see. So much sturm und drang, so much opinion, so many articles about what does and does not constitute equality/sexism/douchebaggery/right/wrong, so much goddamned commentary about rape that it makes me want to scream.

I'm not an expert on anything, so why should I throw my voice into the beast? What good does it do? What the hell do I know? At a time in my life where I'm slowly growing more confident in my own skills to achieve certain things, I have simultaneously never felt dumber. Apart from a few dodgy puns, I'm at a loss to explain what kind of contribution I can make.

Putting out any kind of "statement" now seems risky. Given the aforementioned state of "feeling dumb", I constantly feel that I am "wrong", that what I think is abhorrent to others and a stigma on me. All of it - their opinions, my opinions, are tiring.

The other night I tweeted about tattoos...

Girls in the valley - you have such lovely legs, why ruin them with tattoos?
— Natalie Bochenski (@girlclumsy) November 16, 2013

...which prompted a few narky responses about my use of the word 'ruin'. I was called out for being judgemental and/or making women feel bad about their bodies.

I got a bit flustered by that, and metaphorically threw my hands up. "There's just no point saying anything," I thought.

I felt angered because I'm really quite the feminist, and actually believe in freedom of choice. I honestly am happy for people to tattoo the words to Nine Inch Nails' Closer on their forehead if it's what they want.

But you know what? I WAS judging. Because I personally hate tattoos. I loathe them, on men and women. My brain's particular pleasure centres find them displeasing. I do actually think that when you're a young woman with slim toned legs that I personally would strangle a newborn kitten for, that tattoos flung carelessly about your thighs do "ruin" them.

(Here I feel compelled to give a disclaimer: I think I'm personally ruining my body through all number of other factors - poor diet, not enough exercise, sun exposure, etc. So I don't feel "superior", I just feel "judgy").

I do accept reasons that people get tattoos done - remembering or honouring family members or friends, for the beauty they find in them, and most importantly of all, because they fricking well just want some fricking tattoos, and despite the best efforts of the Queensland government, we don't yet live in a total police state.

Now, I hear you wondering, and I myself am pondering, what the frick does it matter if I hate tattoos or not? Maybe I should just shut the hell up and let people get on with their lives. Which is absolutely true.

But it proved to me that I have just gone quiet on so many things. Even just writing the above about disliking tattoos has me fearful of copping an earful.

I've just shut up because I'm honestly too tired to argue, and because I'm tired of being "wrong" all the time. And if I've just shut up about something so trivial (ie tattoos), what else have I shut up about?

Pretty much everything.

I've been listening to the song Roar by Katy Perry a lot recently. I know it's just gummy candy pop with a cute video clip, but a few of its lyrics seem to issue a warning that's hit me right in the girly brain meats.

"I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything."

I would like to stand for something. For several things, even. More importantly, I would like to be able to articulate my position without fear of causing offence and being "wrong".

Hopefully my next post will be about what those things are.*

*Beyond "Say no to tattoos", obviously.