Beast & Field - The Webzine for Hunters

A FRANK DISCUSSION WITH THE CHILDREN OF NEW ZEALAND

2009-07-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

Kids know nothing, right? Otherwise why would they need to go to school? I recently had a frank and furious discussion with the children of New Zealand (not all of them) about the environment, the recession, and the Nanna Economy. Here is a partial transcript. Their "ideas"—if you could call them that—included greater social responsibility, an innovation-led response to environmental issues, an end to the physical discipline of children, less consumerism, and a rehabilitative prison system. I know, ridiculous.

ON MY LOGO

2009-06-28T17:07:00.000-07:00

Many people (some) have asked about the logo, above. Where did it come from, and what exactly does it symbolise? Well, it’s an old family crest. The dragon symbolises awesomeness, obviously, though it’s an awesomeness that comes with a hefty price, for a dragon’s life is a lonely one. (We all fear that moment on a date where we go to kiss her goodnight and accidentally sneeze on her face. But what if sneezing on her meant she was instantly consumed in a roaring red plume of hellfire? That would be embarrassing. And what stops fire shooting out during coitus? How would that be explained to the elderly couple who live above? I digress.) The wings symbolise our power to take our awesomeness to other locations where it might be appreciated, while the guitars represent the awesomeness that can be unleashed like a dragon’s-fire from our soul.

So I hope that explains that. Oh, and the shield. The Celts called it “Aberffewk”, which roughly means, “Sneeze-guard”.

RICKY GERVAIS

2009-06-28T16:23:00.000-07:00

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of considerable fame must be a total dick-wizard. But the sumptuously famed Ricky Gervais could not have been lovelier or more accommodating.

Here's the profile I wrote on him which ran in Sunday Magazine.

ON CREATING TENSION IN YOUR WRITING

2009-06-28T16:20:00.000-07:00

Tension. Without it, your writing is boring. With it, your writing is awesome. Tension forces the reader to love your words, but also to fear them. Many writers are afraid to use too much tension in their plots. They think kids can't handle it. Think again. Tension is what hooks readers of any age and keeps them turning the pages. Authors employ many methods to increase the pressure on their characters. Here are a few you can try:

1. Cliffhangers. End every chapter on a cliffhanger, like this: “‘We’d better go,’ said Lucy, ‘the pirates will be back soon.’ Now read the next chapter, or I’ll kill Mummy.”

2. Illustrations: Make a crude drawing of a scary clown cutting someone’s head off and write ‘You’ underneath it. Slip the picture inside the pages.

3. Have a friend dress up as a scary pirate. Then have him sneak into the child’s room and stand in the corner. Make sure he is holding the book. Then, when the child comes in, have your friend turn a flashlight on under his face and say, “Would ye be looking for this?”

This creates tension.

Now here’s some writing advice that doesn’t suck. In fact, it could be all you ever need.

ON THE SUPERSTITIOUS WRITER

2009-06-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

“I suppose my superstitiousness could be termed a quirk. I have to add up all numbers: there are some people I never telephone because their number adds up to an unlucky figure. Or I won’t accept a hotel room for the same reason. I will not tolerate the presence of yellow roses — which is sad, because they’re my favourite flower.

I can’t allow three cigarette butts in the same ashtray. Won’t travel on a plane with two nuns. Won’t begin or end anything on a Friday. It’s endless, the things I can’t and won’t. But I derive some curious comfort from obeying these primitive concepts.”—Truman Capote, The Paris Review Interviews vol. 1.

There’s a prize for anyone who writes a joke that begins: “Truman Capote was on a plane with two nuns …”

The Paris Review interview website is here, for your gorging.

ROBBIE COOPER

2009-06-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

If you the have time you might want to look at the photographic work of Robbie Cooper. His series on people matched with their online avatars is stunning.

HAIKU: PRINCE

2009-06-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

Being back in the country gives me the opportunity to undertake simple pursuits, such as brewing my own hooch, or exploring forms of pastoral poetry. While browsing the collected lyrics of Prince the other day, I had a thought that if he had not become an international recording artist and sexologist, he could easily have been a master of the Haiku.

[Extracts from ‘Hallucination Rain’, the collected haiku of Prince.]

Moon

If I don't find my destiny soon
I'll die in your arms
Under the cherry moon

Cherry Wine

I give 'em some cherry wine
Then we play some pool
And they watch me bank the six and the nine.

Love

Because something near your leg
Is haunting u, such a disgrace
U're rock hard in a funky place, ow!

17 Days

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
17 days

Dawn

All I'm sayin' is that
I wanna smack it all night long
On and on until the early morn'

Clams

What about the clams on the shore?
Souls in progress, here come the fisherman
Soul no more

Sister

Hey, I saw your sister skatin'
On the lake this afternoon
Good heaven, how she's grown

The Pier

U'd make me leave the lights on
I'd pay money just 2 C
Your happy dancin’ silhouette upon the pier

Soup

Is this the same soup as usual?
It feels strange
Hallucination rain

Snowman II

The ocean swallows the shore
I could still see him smiling
When my snowman is no more, no more

Doves

How can you just leave me standing?
Alone in the world
So cold

June

In September my cousin tried reefer 4 the very first time
Now he's doing horse
It's June

ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE FRONTIER

2009-06-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

As a frontiersman—because that’s what I’m calling myself now—I have to adopt the habits and language of the frontier. In accordance with country law, every item I have must be exchanged for something rugged—my trainers for a pair of boots, my wool hat for a sturdy helmet designed to repel falling logs or teams of angry hawks—and every standard measure I know must be exchanged for something mysterious. Thus, my supplies for this week: a kinch of heating oil, a fatt of bacon, 9 hands of wood, 8 market fusts of berry wine, 4 &9/8ths swods of molasses, a shid of rye meal, 9 barlycorns of stewing apples, a crack of whittling tobacco, and a host of other things I just made up.

A word is a beautiful bird: appreciated greatly when it’s flitting around our heads; but mourned only by the last hunter to hold it’s limp body to the fading light and admire its elegant plumage; or, more accurately, by the last lexicographer to pause above its entry in his dictionary proof and give a heavy sigh before he strikes it through.

Here's a nice Deutsche Welle story about one man's efforts to keep fine old German words alive (via Languagehat.) Who would ever think that "Spielautomat" (slot machine) is a finer word than "Groschengrab"? (Literally, "Penny grave.")

And here 's a Times story about the Collins dictionary people's efforts to enlist celebs to save 24 endangered English words.

A DISSIMULATION OF OMENS (OR, WHY AM I SEEING KITTENS?)

2009-06-17T14:53:00.000-07:00

The fantail is, by both definitions, a curious bird. When you leave the house they flit gaily around your head and feet, and when you walk somewhere they follow. You can understand why people think they’re an omen—though of what is not exactly clear. I have an Aunt who says fantails are harbingers of death, while my Nanna says they herald an impending birth. Could it be both? A zombie baby? Someone on Facebook said a fantail was only bad luck if it came inside. I have one who comes in each day at 4ish and flies around the house for 30 minutes. No good? Someone else said they were the spirits of dead relatives, which might explain why the bird leaves when I undress. Whether any of these theories are true, or whether fantails (Rhipidura fulginosa, Piwakawaka,) are seeking not your soul, but just the sweet taste of the tiny bugs you disturb as you walk, is irrelevant. The pure fact of the matter is that strolling through a quiet glade with several birds flitting around your head makes you feel like a sage of the woods.

Eerie things happen when you're alone in the country. The other day I took a can of diesel and set several huge piles of logs alight. In the evening I went back to check I hadn't set fire to anything important, like a forest. I sat and watched for a while, and as the sun dipped behind the blaze I felt like a Pagan hermit must have felt when he maintained his property. On the way home I rounded a bend to find my way blocked by a tiny, black kitten. He sat in the middle of the track, considering everything and nothing. How he got there and what his mission was I’ll never know. The kitten inclined its head and looked at me, wide-eyed, and I stared back from my stationary vehicle. Then he hopped brightly off into the bushes, leaving me to ponder. Eventually I shrugged and drove off. How the kitten got so far from anywhere is not for me to know. Luckily, in rural lore, a black kitten in your path means just a teensy bit of bad luck.

ON BECOMING DUMBER

2009-06-15T02:28:00.000-07:00

'“The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.'

I'm sorry, what was that? I wasn't listening.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

On Rural Social Networking

2009-06-12T17:56:00.000-07:00

I am writing from the wilderness. I am connected to you by a 28000bps thread of hope. There is no cellular coverage here, in the place I am, wherever that is. The place I am is a yawning chasm in Google Maps. Is it even possible for you to imagine what that’s like to be surfing at a top speed of 28000bps? For a start, it mocks the word “Surfing.” What you’re doing is floating, miles out at sea, hoping that the tide will slop you inch by inch towards an island in the distance. 13000 to 28000bps is like waiting for a glacier to download, and then, just as the glacier is almost done, an elderly Inuit gentleman steps out of a cave and goes, “You have been disconnected. Sorry.” The glacier resets, the man goes back inside.

Being back in the country is nothing like I imagined. I thought teams of rustic locals would arrive at my door bearing whole pigs and casks of home-stewed cognac, or to invite me to a pagan barn orgy. But no. I’m back in the place I grew up and rediscovering a complex network that through the years has continued to evolve without me, and without regard for what I might have done or become in the time since I left. Though I might imagine it occasionally pausing over its cup of gumboot tea to say, “I wonder whatever happened to that Matthew,” it in fact has no real curiosity about the things outside its daily motions. In much the same way as we run back to our social networking services after an absence, eager to see if anyone has queried our lack of tweets or status updates, I longed to see some evidence of my having been missed here. But delightfully, there wasn’t any. A social networking system is not designed to register the missing. And yet the reason that the phenomenon is so addictive is precisely because we believe it knows our absence.

This post took 12 minutes to write and 14 to upload.

On Ruby, and Her Tendency to Take Her Love to Town

2009-06-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

As a child, my Mum’s music confused and beguiled me. It contained strong themes and adult situations. There were jiltings, adulteries, crippled narrators whose wives, despite all pleading, still liked to take their love to town, hotels that you could check in to, but, for some reason, could not leave, and other scenarios that were beyond my understanding. We learn arguably as much about the world from our mother’s music as we do from her stern directives and gentle admonitions. Mum’s music was with us, always. We took it to town, to sporting fixtures, and on long journeys. The cassettes would warp and wrinkle in the heat of the car so that it sounded as if the band Air Supply was performing I’m All Out of Love while wearing space helmets full of jelly. What joy.

At home our Mum liked to turn her music up loud enough that she could listen to it while vacuuming. Sometimes it seemed to us as if we lived inside a giant stereogram. Her music would make the walls of my bedroom pulse. I remember, particularly, standing in a paddock, miles from home, on a beautiful summer day, watching the breeze shift the grass and toss the seed-heads, and hearing Born To Run wafting faintly over the hills to see me. There was no escape from Mum’s music.

My Pulitzer-winning analysis of the song Hotel California was so well received that I’ve decided to continue the series ‘Know Your Popular Country-Themed Music.’ This time I’ve chosen the Kenny Rogers classic: Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town, the aching, lovelorn lyric about a crippled war veteran and his wayward pet chimpanzee, Ruby. Please enjoy.

Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town

Link Love: Heidi & Rose

2009-05-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

These two young comedians are the self described Anne Franks of comedy. I met Heidi at the comedy club recently and she charmed the whiskers off me. You might consider visiting their site, or even attending their brand new show, if you're in the area. It's called 'A Guide to the Uncool'.

http://heidiandrose.wordpress.com/

On Our National Flag

2009-05-14T23:13:00.000-07:00

Some people have been in touch wondering whether I would ever get around to uploading my ideas for the redesign of the New Zealand flag. Not many, but some. It's a very graphics-heavy story, so difficult to place on my primitive website, but if you would like to see it, then please send an email and I will send you a sumptuous PDF file, in lurid technicolor, free of charge. It is my gift to you.

On the Term: 'Mind Fuck'

2009-05-09T19:03:00.000-07:00

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary:

English

Noun

mind fuck (plural mind fucks)

1. (psychology) a situation which calls into question the way your mind currently sees a certain idea or the world in general

1973, Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison, University of Michigan/Doubleday, page 322,

"One day there was a big cockroach on the wall and a woman hit it with her shoe and it screamed. I swear it screamed. That was about it for me. It was really a mind fuck."

Or, an audio-visual example:

To The Stockholders

2009-05-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

With the new financial year arriving it's time to deliver my annual report to the stockholders. I like to think I have been a strong, decisive CEO. I have been compared to Captain James Cook, (and not just because I got beaten up on a trip to Hawaii.) Yet sheer brilliance is sometimes not enough. It is true that many experts failed to foresee the impact of speculation in mortgage-backed derivatives and its effect on the banking system. I was one who did, and as proof I’d like to point you towards my 2003 white-paper: Speculation in Mortgage-backed Derivatives: How It Will Make Us Rich As Popes. The bare fact is that a million economists working for a million years on a million stock-screens could not have predicted the terrifying chain-reaction that would result from granting an Appalachian racoon farmer a loan to buy his first relaxin’-shack.

Here is my report:

http://suddainfeatures.blogspot.com/2009/05/annual-report-200809.html

On the Coming End

2009-05-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

2009 is going to be a very big year. There’ll be famine, zombie hordes, nuclear hellfire, all-singing-all-dancing tween-legions, Necro-Mutants, an outbreak of weaponised smallpox—and that’s just what’s happening in the cinemas. Of course there’ll be non-fictional challenges too: The global economy is poised delicately on the edge of the abyss, mother earth palavers in agony, even the pigs have turned on us, and the price of cheese is simply outrageous.

This is my magazine feature on all the other times the world was supposed to end.

http://suddainfeatures.blogspot.com/2009/05/dear-jesus-did-not-come-and-other-days.html

On The Iconography of the Human Skull

2009-05-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

Imagine you’re sitting down to brainstorm a brand identity for the entire human species. What images would make your list? Bleeding Heart? Flaming sword? Chimp with an Uzi? Those are all excellent suggestions, but if you want an icon that captures the hopeless thrill of existence, the fact that we rise from dust, return to dust, and do a lot of dusting in between, you’d struggle to find a better insignia than the human skull (or possibly the chimp.)

The skull icon holds a unique place in human culture. Other symbols evoke “Power,” or “Glory,” but few can capture the terrifying duality of human life. “Behold!” it says, “I drink mead from the skull of my enemy whilst riding in my boat—which is also made entirely from skulls—am I not a total bad-ass?” But it also says: “Is life not fleeting? I am so depressed. More mead!” The skull anchors us within the mortal realm, reminds us that life is but a blink, yet consoles us with the fact that while we’re here we can wreak havoc.

Here's a short essay I wrote on the skull icon:

http://suddainfeatures.blogspot.com/2009/05/skull-filled-with-joy.html

On Becoming a Tribe of Desensitised Gore-chimps

2009-05-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

It’s clear that violent games, films, and television shows are turning our young into a bunch of orifice-desensitised gore-chimps. It's fun to gaze whimsically over our shoulder at the programs we watched when we were kids: shows about genies and witches and space-Martians, and pre-historic citizens who used living creatures as household appliances; shows about the plight of captured soldiers in a Nazi prison camp during the Second World War; comedies about the antics of bitter, battle-fatigued, alcoholic surgeons forced to perform horrifying surgical procedures with rusty instruments on adolescent soldiers in a makeshift hospital during the vicious and blood-soaked Korean war. They were gentler times. And the games! Sweet mercy. Today it’s all jacking cars and murdering prostitutes. We had simple games about a giant mouth who swallowed endless pills while being pursued through a labyrinth by a horde of ghosts. That’s just the difference between today and the good old days, I guess.

Here is a vintage cartoon about a starving duck who goes on a murderous axe rampage. Lovely.

The Virus

2008-11-26T06:36:00.000-08:00

It came to MIT in the middle of the night while the students were sleeping, it moved from room to room, examining objects, a pair of glasses, a retainer, a cube-shaped puzzle of some kind. It gazed upon the students while they slept, it gently stroked their thick hair, their luxurious moustaches. So peaceful. So peaceful. Then, it got to work. Soon the world would know its name, would know its power. Fortunately the students were safe; their computers weren’t. The virus, if you could call it a virus, was like a virus, it was everywhere … and nowhere. It was both those things.

What this clip demonstrates, apart from the importance of inoculating ourselves against the growing menace of computer viruses, is the urgent need for the creation of a TV show called Mark Eichin: Virus Hunter, the story of a seemingly ordinary computer student who by night hunts viruses, aided only by his enormous brain, and his robo-dog sidekick, IQ.

Tomorrow's World

2008-11-26T06:28:00.000-08:00

The Internet is a confusing realm and many people have questions about it: What is it? What is it made from? If I give it my credit card details does it become me? Is it true that I can destroy it only by entering its secret name into Google and hitting "I'm feeling lucky"? There are answers to all these questions, but I wouldn’t want to bore you. The video below might help. Unfortunately, what the internet is today will be gone tomorrow, and the incredible tools you see here will soon be redundant. What amazing features will the web gift us in the future? Holographic food for the needy? Nano-porn? Recipes? Special software that detects Internet pirates and dispatches swarms of robot hell-wasps to sting them to death? Undoubtedly, yes.

Why I Love Japan Big Fun

2008-11-25T08:38:00.000-08:00

What makes a great public service message? Well, it should be non-hysterical, presented in a way that doesn't incite alarm amongst the populace. It should outline its central idea clearly, following it up with a series of simple steps that the citizenry can implement. It should be non-partisan and treat all people equally. If the message is going to hark back to a time when things were better, it should give sound reasons for a return to old values. Also, everyone should be dancing, even livestock.

I love Japan so much that sometimes it hurts.

An Apology

2008-11-05T07:09:00.000-08:00

I want to apologise to subscribers and regular visitors for not updating my site. Want to apologise, but can’t. The truth is my priorities have been elsewhere. I have been very busy helping a Nigerian investment firm with a transaction that should ensure my financial independence from “The man” and “The man’s wife”. That should go through this week. Then there’s my letter-writing campaign to the dozens of movies, television shows, and hit musicals that have stolen my ideas. Then there’s actually writing things, which can sometimes take up an entire morning. Then there’s all the book signings and literary award ceremonies that I have to attend in my mind. I just want to warn you that you are about to be drowned in such a Tsunami of web-only content that you will want to personally come around to my house and smash me in the face. Only, where am I? That’s the question.

London’s Burning

2008-11-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

I’m in London. I was lucky enough to arrive in time see the local economy collapse like a house constructed of cards that are also coated in a poisonous nerve-toxin, so that when you try to build the house again, you die horribly. Canary Wharf burns like a sun in the distance, turning night into unquenchable daylight. Traders, naked save for crude loincloths stapled together from charred office supplies, dance on the roofs of skyscrapers while holding signs written in their own blood, or perhaps the blood of a co-worker. “Send brie!” That was one of them. The government and the police are paralysed. They have now cordoned off the entire financial district and left it as a kind of abode of anarchy, a fearful pit of hell where rival gangs of former traders fight for control of streets once paved with money. It’s like Escape from Absolom meets 28 Days meets You’ve Got Mail, and I need 12 million to make it. Call me on my cell.

The Economy: Killing in the Name Of

2008-11-05T06:56:00.000-08:00

The economic crisis is beginning to bite very deep, with many lower-income people losing their homes, and many wealthy people having to switch to store-brand gouda. It is true that few experts predicted the impact of speculation in mortgage-backed derivatives and its effect on the banking system. I was one who did, and as proof I’d like to point you towards my 2003 white-paper: Speculation in Mortgage-backed Derivatives: How It Will Make Us Rich As Popes. What most people fail to understand is the way that our modern economy obeys the law of the jungle. It’s something that the world famous economist Elton John called ‘The Circle of Life’. When he wrote …

It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Til we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle The Circle of Life

[John, E. Rice T—1999, Warner Music] … he was both foreshadowing today’s crisis, and pointing out how it is just the natural order of things. Many of you probably misunderstand the law of the jungle. You think it means kill or be killed, but killing isn’t always necessary; sometimes it is best to badly injure your prey so that it can be used as bait. Also, it is very important when you sit down to a lavish feast to consume as much as you possibly can in one sitting, even if it’s too much and others are hungry. Also, never sleep, because if you get up in the night to eat leftovers you might have to fight a rodent for it. These are all laws of the jungle.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn13671-evolution-myths-survival-of-the-fittest-justifies-everyone-for-themselves.html