Luke Skywalker might be a hillbilly with a bowlcut, but his dad was Space Jesus.

I have written a dozen posts that are saved to drafts where the first sentence always began with “So” and the ended with “right?”, but they all seem too obvious or a little too weird or too similar. Here is me starting from scratch.

The truth is I am terrified. That came out of nowhere. But it is still true. Here I am. Scared. I’ve been scared for a while though, so I’m getting used to it in a strange way. It feels like getting a tattoo and feeling the pain at first, but then becoming used to it despite the fact that it still hurts.

Anyway, I am scared. I stood at the tallest point in the city yesterday and as I looked down at the world beneath my feet and I knew I was not ready. My writing isn’t getting any better. My social skills are retarded. My memory fails me at every turn. My laziness is all consuming. I spend too much money I don’t yet have. I eat when I am not hungry. I spend too much time doing nothing. I never finish anything that I have spent so long beginning. I never make the effort to see my friends. My tastes for music and books are collapsing in front of my eyes.

And everything seems to be ending so very quickly. My winter is ending. My social life is ending. My lust for blogging is ending. Everything is ending. At at the same time so much is beginning and I am scared because I am not up for this future. I am not ready for economical and social turmoil. Neither am I ready for oil wars and mass exodus, climate change and all that kind. The world is ending and I am scared because it is ending at the worst possible time. If the economy collapses I’ll never sell a deal. If energy wars begin I’m going to be crushed under greedy men’s feet. If the world ends then I’m not going to get the reward that school and family and television have promised me.

This is the most exciting time to be alive ever, and it’s only beginning and I am fucking terrified.

Fuck. This. Shit.

This now adorns a wall.

.

Grey Wolves, Red Blood, Black Clothes, White Bones

The fever that threatened to ruin me yesterday hit me hard this morning. I am spending my money on comfort food and Halls. But it's raining. It's why I'm shivering, huddled outside the office trying to decide where to go to kill my time. Curious Hedonist is away working at a different office by now and our timetables don't match quite so well now. I have a page of a story that I'd planned to finish yesterday but I doodled characters from One-Piece instead but that's ok. I haven't written much lately. I have quite a few things rolling around my head but no drive to write them. I have been reading instead. Devouring pages of text on my little screen. There are so many books waiting to be read and I don't have enough time or money to get through them all.

My head's been in the clouds lately. I have not been thinking anything through. I think I prefer life that way. I enjoy trundling along and hoping for a surprise. I no longer want to make the first move, don't want to make any decision. I care, don't get me wrong. I always care. It's been a long, long time since I gave up caring and I like to think I've grown up a little. I can deal with things better. I am still floored when people see through me. When they say something, usually offhand, and it niggles away and makes me think far too much. I'm happy to an extent. I know what I'm lacking. I want somebody to curl up sleepy and cosy with and talk about anything and it doesn't matter. I want to fall asleep in somebody's arms and feel safe for once. There's only been a handful of times when I could make that claim.

But whether I want a relationship is debatable. I love being somebody's guy. I love that thrill when you tell somebody you're off to meet your girlfriend. I love the butterflies in my stomach when I walk down the road to meet her and I wonder what the day will be like. But I've been on my own for a while now (which was mostly self-inflicted so I can't complain too much) and sometimes I wonder if I can go through it all again. I need control. Maybe I'm just tired of declaring love. I mean at twenty seven what is love exactly? When you can't stop thinking about her, and she intrudes on all your thoughts and you just have to be near her? When you lie awake at nights and wonder what she's doing and if she's thinking of you and is it too late to call her? Why is that the women who consume me are always the ones I can't have? I try not to dwell on them but they fascinate me more than the girls who insist on interrupting my life.

I feel awful. It's not the alcohol because God knows I didn't drink enough of that even if I was less than steady on my feet. My face aches from the cold that I hope goes away soon. My feet buzz from walking too far around today. I'm rambling again. This is merely an extension of my mind and sometimes I forget this is public and people who know me read it. And when they mention things I've written in conversations I freak. I remember feeling I'd written something profound and insightful but then I always think that until I look at it a week later and laugh at my pretentiousness.

Nevermind. No doubt time will catch up me unawares and deadlines will scream in my ears and I'll be too flustered to give a damn about anything real.

~ You must forgive the title. I hope this makes up for it.

Who the Force is that?

Ans: Cade Skywalker, the culmination of the long line of Skywalkers who have entertained us over the years. Only this one goes rogue and is much better than the rest.

This Skywalker is a stark drug-addicted pirate with no misgivings for either side of the Sith / Jedi divide. His panic whininess not withstanding, he is Dark Horse's attempts to bring a sense of reality to an otherwise altruistic franshise. And all of the wrangling and scheming between the Jedi, the Imperial Knights, the Sith, the Empire, the Imperial Mission, and so on, gets more and more byzantine and glorious as it goes along.

This is what Dark Horse's Facebook page has to say about pulling the plug on the series even as they continue to fund defunct others.

Recently, we’ve heard several fans voice their concerns over the end of one of our most popular titles — Star Wars: Legacy. So, we’d like to take a second to explain what’s happening with the title and the rest of our Star Wars line.

For many years now, we’ve had the pleasure of taking the rich universe of Star Wars and its characters to exciting new levels. Fans and critics have long agreed that Dark Horse Comics has done well by the beloved property, staying true to the tone of the original films, while introducing fans to new corners of the galaxy far, far away.

In 2006, Dark Horse Comics launched Star Wars: Legacy #1, with covers by Adam Hughes, story by John Ostrander, and art by Jan Duursema. Over the last four years we’ve seen people embrace the tales of Cade Skywalker—a direct descendant of Luke, a rogue Jedi, and a bounty hunter. Much to our delight, Cade quickly became a favorite among comics fans and Star Wars enthusiasts.

Unlike other publishers, Dark Horse has never been one for prolonging a series simply to do so. Our comics come from a place of creativity and artistic expression, and this applies to all of our titles, whether creator owned or licensed property.

One of our promises to ourselves, our fans, and George Lucas himself was that we would treat our line of Star Wars books with the highest level of respect. We hope that you’ll agree that we’ve achieved this goal, and trust you’ll take our word when we say that we’ll continue to strive for such high standards.

We are proud to say that the quality of Star Wars: Legacy has never dropped. John Ostrander and Jan Duursema have consistently created issue after issue of excellent art for nearly four years straight. Very few creators can claim such landmark success, and we hope John and Jan are as proud as we are of delivering such great material.

We have never felt that John and Jan’s work dipped below the benchmark of fine sequential art. So, it was a hard, but ultimately necessary, decision to close this chapter of the Star Wars universe with issue #50.

At this time, we cannot announce what, if any, projects John and Jan will be a part of in the future. We hope fans will appreciate our proprietary stance in this matter. Know that we will make announcements regarding new Star Wars projects at the proper time, in coordination with our partners at Lucasfilm.

We are now focused on making our future Star Wars comics as incredible as possible, including Star Wars Adventures, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: Invasion—Rescues, and the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic. We are also extremely excited to work in conjunction with Del Rey and writer John Jackson Miller to create a brand-new tale in a largely unexplored time with Star Wars: Knight Errant.

We ask that fans continue to support the Star Wars line, and us, and hope that any concerns will subside as we move forward.

Any questions can be left in the comment section of this note. Please understand that we may not be able to answer some specifics due to the nature of our business. We’ve had an extraordinary time publishing Star Wars, and we hope you’ve enjoyed the journey as much as we have for nearly twenty years here at Dark Horse Comics. So remember fans, keep hitting the local comic stores for all your Dark Horse Star Wars comics and keep the interest alive! And don’t forget: as always we will bring you the word as soon as we hear it!


In words of Luke's daddy..... "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo"

Who died and left me boss? Isaac Asimov.

Look into your heart. Your answer to this question tells you a lot about yourself.

This is all very well, but I had specifically asked for the Nobel!

I have the best idea ever.

But I am still too darned lazy to do anything about it. Also, if you have noticed, different people tend to have the same great idea around roughly the same time period. Which is why you have this debate over who actually invented or discovered what.

Anyway, the best idea ever is to write a Wolverine-Aliens crossover widescreen graphic novel.

Why would that make such a great idea - you might ask.

Well, with Wolverine's accelerated healing, you can pencil some really awesome scenes where a chestburster blasts right through him and he heals back up. W could even make him stab himself in an effort to kill it while it's in him, only the acid blood melts through him. However, because Aliens assume the characteristics of their hosts, these ones have awesome healing too.

So there they are, both slicing away at each other and melting and regenerating. Then who should we have come in? Weapon X! Alien gets captured by them and it too is grafted an adamantium skeleton, okay in their case an adamantium exoskeleton.

I will make no money at all from my great idea. But remember you saw it first here.

Nighttime Daydreamer

This is how I have spent my nights.

Stripped of all context. A singular screen with moving images that twist to the whims of my fingers. That is the singular ability true to all video games - Amplification of Input, the translation of a simple input into complex output: I press one button and a whole new range of options become available to me; I pull this trigger and that car explodes. The idea is not to exactly replicate the input required to achieve the desired output; the chain of causality from action to consequence is often long and complicated, one single action rarely leads to a complex output without a myriad other factors.

The base aim of all games is the codification and abstraction of complex life-like ideas and situations into ones over which it’s easier to obtain competence in, and eventually the mastery of.

Through mastery comes insight, understanding, and an appreciation of the complexity of the original situation. In order to achieve this insight, this appreciation, the simplification and abstraction of the original situation must be achieved in such a manner that the simplified version is easier to master but that the lessons learned from this simplified form are still applicable to the original.

The closer games move to complete 1:1 replication of input to output, the smaller this amplification effect becomes until the gap between the skills required for a video game version of Golf and an actual game of Golf start to disappear.

Is this really a problem? Well I did not turn on Burnout Paradise in order to crash my car at 180 mph, I did so in order to play a video game representation of some rash driving.

The appeal of the representation is different to the appeal of the reality. When will everyone get it.

So... They call you the bard.

**** Adapted up from random blogs ****

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. This is what they'd have me do.

"Look at the list and bold those you have read.

Mark in blue those you intend to read.

Mark in RED the books you LOVE.

Reprint this list in your own blog.

Having seen the movie/cartoon/TV series is not the same as having read the book.

This is my list."

** My own categories

Green - books started, never finished.

Amber - book names that I was better off not converting to Bold

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling

6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne

8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis

10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks

14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres

20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling

23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling

24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling

25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

27. Middlemarch, George Eliot

28. Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck

30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson

32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett

34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

37. Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

38. Persuasion, Jane Austen

39. Dune, Frank Herbert

40. Emma, Jane Austen

41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery

42. Watership Down, Richard Adams

43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

46. Animal Farm, George Orwell

47. Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian

50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher

51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck

53. The Stand, Stephen King

54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

55. Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

56. The BFG, Roald Dahl

57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome

58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman

62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden

63. Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough

65. Mort, Terry Pratchett

66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

67. The Magus, John Fowles

68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett

70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding

71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind

72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell

73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

74. Matilda, Roald Dahl

75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding

76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins

78. Ulysses, James Joyce

79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens

80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson

81. The Twits, Roald Dahl

82. Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith

83. Holes, Louis Sachar

84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson

87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

89. Magician, Raymond E Feist

90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac

91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo

92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel

93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett

94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

95. Katherine, Anya Seton

96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer

97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson

99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot

100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Yeah, I suck big time. But I'm better than the average adult..... That's new.

Thrice-Removed from Reality: Blogging ... With the XBox

360voice.gamerdna.com is the portal that sets up a blog based on your XBox GamerTag - and posts a daily blog as the voice of your Xbox 360. You don't have to do anything other than register your tag, but the results are really really good.

Every night, 360voice would check your GamerTag for new achievements or games played, and write a little post from its perspective. Let me tell you why this beats sliced bread... Other Xboxes would leave comments on your posts, ridiculing you, praising you, loving you, hating you. So there is this whole ecosystem of computers talking about you - and you don't even have to worry about spellings anymore... Yaayy.

The funniest part was that right after I registered, about two weeks ago -- I couldn't play for several days. So, every day that I was gone, my Xbox whined and moaned that nobody played any games. If you want a short geeky laugh, check it out. And your Xbox is not alone. Other machines are blogging too.

So, if you have an Xbox 360 (and why wouldn't you?) -- you should register your tag, and let the chuckles begin.

---------------------- Excerpts from some chap called Fshguy ----------------------

(Yeah, like I am going to ever give my nick away. )

Fshguy's Xbox - Jun 1 2009

Fshguy decided to game yesterday and we rocked out like the three musketeers, except there were only two of us... 131,011 points of total gamerscore and counting... That is a boost of 100 points over last time! Welcome to 131,000!! He played Burnout Paradise acquiring 3 achievements, Madagascar 2, FIFA 09, and I thought Fshguy injured himself in the process... but I was wrong... he lives to fight another day!

Oh BTW, did you know that Fshguy is competing in a gamerscore challenge? Follow every up and down over here. There are 202 other people rocking out on this thing which keeps it fun. Currently Fshguy is hanging on to the number 83 spot. But, there are still 4 long days left! We need to keep heading for the top!

Fshguy's Weekly Recap - May 25 2009

Ok, here it is... your weekly recap of gaming: Not two, not five, but SEVEN days of gaming in a row! Last week was as solid as it gets when it comes to Fshguy throwing down with the games. We added 525 points of gamerscore. Good stuff! Who knew 26 achievements could be worth that much? Ok I knew that...

I could go on and on with the stats, but that is enough.

Fshguy's Xbox - May 23 2009

Fshguy needed a friend like me yesterday... I could see it in his eyes. I am there for you brother. Remember that. Gamer score is 130,671. That is an increase of 20 points over last time! He rocked out to Prince of Persia winning 1 achievement, Burnout Paradise, and that was that.

Fshguy's Xbox - May 18 2009

You would think I had died and gone to heaven when Fshguy showed up to play. Another day, another barrier shattered. The 130,000 mark has been crossed! He opened up Disney Sing It HSM3 finishing 4 achievements to finish the game, NFS Undercover finishing an amazing 14 achievements, and I thought Fshguy injured himself in the process... but I was wrong... he lives to fight another day! Also of note, Fshguy and I have now played 240 days in a row! Are we rock stars or what? No one feels more loved than me right now... no one!

---------------------- ************************************ ----------------------

Xbox360's of the world, you now have a voice !!!

My work here is done.

Packing things away, Life should go on - Pt iii

Jan 31,2009

The Acoustics

Sometimes I swear I can hear you, in the wrinkles of clothes, in the hum of radios, in the mold slowly forming on unused t-shirts. I swear it. It’s there in my battered, torn shoes left to dry. It’s in my phone and my computer. It’s in the musty pages of old books and in empty deodorant cans. I hear you most when I climb into an unmade bed and feel the hairs on the sheets.

It’s there when I sort the clothes into the right position and in the soft, sagging folds I can hear “It’s wrong! It’s all wrong!” in that naturally cute voice of distress. It’s in the cigarettes over coffee and in the mirror where your grumpy face lingers in a shadow before realising your feelings and casting aside all maladies in a damp hug against the door.

It’s in the songs on the pod and in the sheets upon sheets of paper folded neatly in their envelopes hidden in my drawers. The chirrup of a phone. The pixels of an image. I hear it everywhere and nowhere. I can hear your voice in all these things but what I want is to hear your voice in my ear as I fall asleep and come home from work and sit hunched over this keyboard with fingers whirring at useless, random thoughts and in my bed telling me that it’s wrong, it’s all wrong until I make it right again and you fall asleep and grind your teeth at dreams to come.

January 17, 2009

The life and adventures of Bourbon

I was in a terrible place for a while. Lets not get into the details on that, lets just say that it was a low point. The past two months have been shaky to say the least, but they’re over. Now I am back. Hello.

I made a conscious decision on Tuesday. It happened when I woke up at six-thirty instead of eight and I had almost two hours to do nothing. I decided that I don’t really want to be doing the same anymore. It’s a good image I’ll admit; sitting in bars with friends having drink after drink and looking all the more haggard because you did the same the night before. And then the night before. But image isn’t everything. Last weekend I had so little sleep and so much alcohol that most of my memories of it are gone. I can pick bits and pieces, but they’re hazy at best. I felt like I was destroying myself a little bit.

Maybe I did, I don’t know, but I decided to stop.

And that’s what Tuesday was about. Tuesday was about setting things right, with everything. And it worked to an extent. Of course not everything was fixed and who knows maybe more problems have arisen, but things felt a hell of a lot better.

Anyway, I thought I’d break with the tradition of my usual veiled entries and just come out and say it; I am alright. I’m not overly ecstatic and I’m not down and out. I’m doing fine. This means that people can leave me alone in a room without showering me with protection, but it doesn’t mean you can abandon me or stifle me with affection. I am OK.

So there we go, lets resume regular programming.

Jan 11, 2009

Mancold Martyr

I’ve been sitting it out far too long at home sick as hell for the past few days so I thought I’d recount some of the titles I’ve watched. And other things.

First up is the much too short Afro Samurai which I will thrust down people throats. The only problem that I’d bring to figure would be the appalling lip-syncing. It’s as if Samuel Jackson looked at his characters and said “Fuck it, there shouldn't be no mother fuckin’ restrictions on my mother fuckin’ lines”. So there’s the occasional weird scene when the anime character is shouting and good old Samuel is whispering something. Other than that everything was seamless. I watched it over two days with the flatmate (God bless his soul for recommending it in the first place) and I really wished I could’ve watched it in one. The animation was seamless, the action perfect. And the teddy bear samurai- I liked him better when he didn’t take off his mask but he was yet brilliant.

Another on the anime list would be the Samurai Champloo series which I’ve laughed at so many times just because it’s slang for orgasm. It’s a classic series, made by the same people and (roughly) at the same time as Cowboy Bebop, and it’s occasionally quite ridiculous. The series is a cross-genre work of media, blending the action and samurai genres with elements of non-slapstick comedy. It is also a period piece, taking place during Japan's Edo period. The series is interwoven with revisionist historical facts and anachronistic elements of mise-en-scene, dialogue and soundtrack. The series' most frequent anachronism is its use of elements of hip hop culture, particularly rap and the music it has influenced, break dancing, turntablism, hip hop slang, and graffiti. The show also contains anachronistic elements from the punk subculture and modernism, but less prominently.

Took another run at Donnie Darko the other day. I forget how much I love that flick. I think it’s not just the amazing cast, but also the overall art nouveau style and noire-ish sentiment with whip cracking dialogue that makes it worthwhile.

January 4, 2009

Untitled

Lets take a second here. Just a second.

I had a good day yesterday (if you take away the sole reason which made it not a good day, but we won’t go into that)

December 30, 2008

A Long December

A long December, and there's reason to believe

Maybe this year will be better than the last

I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'

Now the days go by so fast

- Counting Crows

Dec 7, 2008

The Dopes of Haphhazzard

I’m gonna pull you in close,

Gonna wrap you up tight,

Gonna play with the tips

that you came in here with tonight.

I’m gonna light your face,

blow circles as things fall back in place.

I can’t remember the last time I got high. I just have this one memory of one fantastic time. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe from laughing. I danced and the footage is still doing the rounds. I woke up with cotton mouth and a cut on my forehead.

Dec 6, 2008

Blot out the light and the world drops away

Morning. Slivers of light descry around the edges of the blinds and assault my eyelids. I roll away onto my right, away from the clock on the phone that digitally chips away at my remaining time. Probing fingers count the bruises on my legs, pressing each one gently until I wince. I find three new ones and one new dent where my leg had yielded against the jutting keys in the filing cabinet. Absently I pick the skin off my fingertips and count the hours to work.

I'm safe at three.

For a long, long time . . . .

I was enraptured by books. I’d be lost in the lines and find myself in a place that even the writer couldn’t have imagined. Characters half formed creating universes in the sleepy shadows of my mind and sceneries melting into landscapes of watercolours in my eyes.

But then I started reading for sport. I’d read a page as fast as I could and test myself on its content. (Due to this I have the innate ability to see only a mere flash of a road sign and know every which direction it was pointing to, but let me not digress.)

(Back in school, I read the entirety of Lord of the rings (The Hobbit in toe) in under one week and received full marks on a quiz a good friend (Bala). I even picked up the names of sub-characters that were only restricted to a few paragraphs of text and the underlying prejudices and borderline Celtic references.)

But now it’s not quite the same. A lot different actually. I read solely for pleasure. I see a good book or I hear about a good book, and I read it. But I’m so utterly selective in my readings that coming across a truly unique book is a rare occurrence. I’m extremely judgmental about what I read, damning it to the three categories of Worthwhile, Easy, and I-should-finish-them-laters.

Whenever I see a book displayed in the window of a bookstore, I automatically assume that it is generic, available, ordinary, simple… Shit. It’s mainstream and I don’t do mainstream. This may eventually be one of my greatest downfalls as a wannabe-writer/hack/human being, but I don’t do mainstream. Sure, I’ll listen to a popular band, I’ll watch the latest block-buster, but you most definitely will not find a chick-lit or serial crime thriller on my bookshelf. The books I like are obscure, random, maybe even hard to find, possibly no longer in print; anything but mainstream.

And yeah the classic pieces of literature, cult-mainstream, and books studied at schools do not count as mainstream.

The whole idea of mainstream annoys me. Sure, there’s the chance of picking up a book that says things that no other mainstream book has touched on, that says something different compared to the endless lines of racism, sexism, terrorism, love, relationships or historically accurate characters. Maybe there’s a gem somewhere out there in the front row along with all the other colourfully decorated front covers where the name of the author is bigger than the title itself.

And it’s not just because of my self-serving, pompous attitude when I regale you with the stories of an obscure Canadian/African/Russian/Czech author, there’s a wholly deeper level to this altogether. You see, when it comes to reading books, I have a nasty habit of becoming the book. The florid writing and intriguing characters are absorbed into my mind and ebb out through my skin as the story unfolds. This is why when I read a depressing book, I feel depressed. Or when I read an anarchistic book, I want to create anarchy. Some of it passes, true, and I return to normal, but some of it stays with me and lingers in the cavity of my chest where it very well becomes a part of me.

And, as such, I don’t want some middle aged woman polluting what may very well be my soul with musings over boyfriends. I don’t want some little story that works itself out in the end with charming, happy little coincidences. I want tragedy. I want epiphanies. I want intriguing characters that develop in my mind and become me as much as I become them. I want to feel the world from under my covers. I’m too cowardly to have these feelings for myself, so I read books to grasp every nurturing drop of emotion that inflames my senses to a feeling I never knew I could experience.

So please, I beg you, if you recommend a book for God’s sake make it memorable. Otherwise there is a very good chance that I will move myself away from you for your poor taste in life.

(Also, on a completely separate note, when the hell will I write a post that goes on to say what the title does?)

Quantum of Shoelace

xkcd.. you crack me up.

to shoebite.... Respect.

Lists, Resplendent Lists

To read, I have had:

An Englishman looks at the World - H.G. Wells

The Colour of a Dog Running Away - Richard Gwyn

Anahuac - Edward Tylor

The Kitty Killer Cult - Nick Smith

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (severely advise against)

Watchmen - Alan Moore and David Gibbons

The Outsider - Albert Camus

The Dune Series - Frank Herbert (most of it - need to find Hunters and Sandworms)

Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton

Nine Stories - J.D.Salinger

100 Bullets - DC Comics

The Ape, The Idiot & Other People - W.C.Morrow (I only read it because I liked the title)

Of Mice and Men - John Steinback

Brisngr - Christopher Paolini

The Princess & The Raider - Jude Devaraux (Girly, but then why shouldn't I have fun too)

Insomnia - Stephen King

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch (came highly recommended. lives up every bit to it)

From Hell - Alan Moore

David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Down and Out in Shoreditch and Horton - Stewart Home (you might want to give that one a miss)

Today has Never Happened - Catherine Smith

Ghost in the Shell (1, 1.5 and 2) - Shirow Masamune

I Can’t Wait on God - Albert French

Bleach - somewhere from 290 to 335

To watch, I have had:

City of Men

Cidade de Deus

Tim Burton's - Nightmare Before Christmas

Coffee and Cigarettes

SA-RO-JA

Forbidden Planet

Quantum of Solace

Vanishing Point

How to lose friends & alienate people (again... the title)

Dexter - Season 1,2

The Duchess

Man on Wire

Kaadhalil Vilunthen

My Father, My Lord

Kyles - Season 1,2

Dostana

Cowboy Bebop (I’ve seen it too many times but I just can’t stop)

To do, I have had:

Meet with friends old and new

Survive the mind numbing search for a house

Wake up on time

Not smoke all my cigarettes before dawn (dammit)

Wrench someones heart out

Survive financial crippling

Send letters to various companies to get my money back

To write, I have:

Everything.

I should start.

Lazy Saturday afternoons. You were made for these.

With Bated Breath

Anybody with even half an ear to the ground in the musty backwaters of spurned comic novels and little known super heroes, will no doubt be aware of the feverish anticipation which is being generated by every droplet of information which appears in relation to the movie version of Alan Moore and Davie Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel Watchmen. To the uninitiated this excitement may seem odd – comic book adaptations are in abundance these days, from the already well established (Batman, Spiderman, Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic Four and so forth) to the obscure (Ghost Rider, Hellboy, BPRD).

But Watchmen really is different; an incredibly emotionally and politically complex work, which refuses to paint its world in terms of crude morality, but rather keeps a studied distance from the world it portrays, never shirking from the consequences of its characters’ belief systems, adored, rightly, by those who’ve read it, and regarded in some quarters as one of the peaks of late twentieth century literature. This is a complicated, multi-tiered mystery set in an alternate 1985 America where costumed crime fighters are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the “Doomsday Clock” - which charts the American tension with the Soviet Union - is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former c is murdered, the washed-up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion–a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers–Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity…but then he realizes that nobody has watched over the Watchmen?



I can't help but be pretty excited and also slightly terrified that they will muck up the genius of the book. Because the book's straight-up apocalyptic darkness is what makes it a work of genius. And a beauty of a novel like V for Vendetta (again from Alan Moore) had to be hollywoodized with a hair-brained romance thrown in, which results in the mindless waif like Natalie Portman turning in to a strong, proud Vivien-Leighish heroine. The entire sequence ends up creating more holes than it deems to accomplish. Then there are the hurdles of intricate plot layering and the fluidity of time and space to conquer. Let's just say that I will be disappointed to the point of rage if it comes out all Fantastic Four-y.

It should be interesting to see where Zack Snyder (of directing 300 fame) translates the testosterone into superhero adrenaline rush for the Watchmen. Until then, we’ll have to pray every night that, coming out of the cinema, we’ll be glancing to each other, and saying, with relieved smiles, ‘Well, it could have been worse’.

Lessons learnt alone

The following are true lessons that have been learnt by a socially inept, new but clueless employee with too much idle time resulting from spending his nights alone at a guesthouse that is bereft of entertainment sans 26 semi-clear television channels and tends to alternate his days guzzling or thinking how good he used to be at math a long while ago, all the while mulling how in the world he got here in the first place, but in stead sits down to create his most comprehensive post or at least his most time consuming one.

How things were supposed to be



Man, I wish



Why does time have to be money



Ah, those blissful mornings



Whats on TV? Push some buttons.



And you'll get hurt



Fitting in



Equilibrium at work



Eventually . . .



And the cycle repeats this week

Of Marxist equalisers and bingeing

The room was still spinning when I woke up, and I couldn't find that third saridon tablet I'd thought to lay out...you know...just in case. I drank last night. Much more than I needed.... Ok it was worth it, in the end I had a good time with good people. Today would have been perfect if I could have stayed on the couch all day, but now it's time to mentally gear up for going back to work. And the breakfast I just ate really sucked.

Am I an alcoholic you might ask? No, absolutely not. Alcoholics go to meetings. I, my friend, am a drunk. But then who doesn't like to go out after work and blow off some steam over a few cocktails after The Man has spent the last 10 hours of the day winding up. Apparently there are a lot I've come to learn.

However, alcohol is not a Machiavellian end unto itself sans the means, it's just the Utopian end. It's what the proletariat use to stop remembering how deplorable their lives are and what the bourgeoisie use to remind themselves about the greatness of theirs. It's a social conduit that unites people from all walks of life and reminds us that "hey, we're all in this together, let's get bombed and enjoy each other. "

In other news I'm thinking about breaking free from the chains of compulsive eating. My entire life, I've eaten compulsively; I either overeat compulsively, or under eat compulsively. My relationship with food has been built upon a foundation of obsession, compulsion, fear, loathing, and co-dependence. It is not a healthy one. In fact, I'd guess that it fits in somewhere with the types of mangled, hideous relationships that HBO plays thursday nights. I am constantly thinking about what I will eat next. I'm amazed by how much I've accomplished in my life, considering how much of my brain power is dedicated to thinking about food...eating it...not eating...why I can't eat it...why I want to eat it...where was I, again?

Damn, I'm an hour overdue for work.

Loving Ogres, Wood-Elves and Sabre Warriors

This is a take on an article in the Daedalus Project a few weeks ago about people who fell in love because they met in "massively multiplayer online role playing games. (MMORPG)"

A year and a half ago I was an avid player of these games, Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) and Everquest(EQ). They were fun games, but there weren't very many female players. And people estimate that half of the female players you did see were actually male players pretending to be female. Yuck!

But based on the Daedalus's endorsement I thought that maybe I should give this another one a try. I needed to find a game with a better male to female ratio (Yes, two b school years do that to you). So I tried The Sims Online. Sims supposedly has the best male to female ratio of all massively multiplayer online games, but hardly anyone plays it. I can see why. It's pretty pointless. There's nothing to do. In Fantasy or EQ you would join a team of other players and kill monsters. Only with good teamwork was it possible to kill them efficiently. Plot lines follow every other Hollywood Fantasy movie. Young apprentice befriends older mentor(another player). Work together to kill monsters(other players). The more you kill, the stronger you get, more skills you learn. (For the initiated, along the lines of Diablo, only more complex and more fun). And so, unlike the real world where you work and work and nothing happens, in this your work is quite shockingly, rewarded.

However in Sims all you do is stuff like take the dog for a walk, call your wife good names, make lunch, watch tv, eat dinner, go to the bathroom, take a shower, sleep. That was easily the only virtual world ever invented that is more boring than real life.

But this virtual world does have a better male to female ratio than the real world. And the girls (atleast i think they were) are easier to talk to. Every time I did log on, my virtual roommate, Ktrina79 starts chatting with me. Ktrina was a schoolteacher from Montreal and the pics she sent made me wanna go back to school. Was fun for a while, but there was no way i could go on with the tedium. For all I know "she's" really some fifty year old gay guy.

Although it may not fit the stereotype, we gamers are not immune to love. There's bound to be some flirting going on when you have a few thousand people playing an MMORPG together. The games are filled with scenarios that shed light on player personalities. Those seem like pretty good odds for the ladies.

We thus stand on the cusp of a new generation where parents telling their children about the circumstances of how they met will not revolve around college parties, chance encounters at a coffee shop or business conferences. Instead, they will tell their children how they met each other while battling gnolls in subterranean caverns or slaying the undead in forgotten crypts while pretending to be warriors or clerics.

Point of the post - I'm bored. Lots of work i dont wanna do.

not every post deserves a title

Its a super boring Wednesday, and I am trying to look extremely busy (it’s an essential part of my job-list everyday). So anyways was trying to figure out what to write. Actually to be honest, I’ve been trying to figure out what to write since yesterday. So for the lack of anything better, shall make a list of my achievements in these 24 years of existence.

Mind you, its not a small list. And yes, there are many things in here that most of you are probably dying to do and most that you definitely shouldn't.

Changed a baby’s diaper
Lied to a government official
Lied to many government officials
Said ‘I Love You’ and meant it
Taken an ice cold bath
Screamed as loudly as I possible could have
Gotten drunk on 12 bottles of beer
Seen a near total eclipse with naked eyes
Wished on a shooting star
Kissed a complete stranger
Had a candlelit lunch with 4 other guys in broad daylight (what inspires us i am yet to figure out)
Sat out of class for most of a semester
Gotten drunk and puked into a well
Given more than I could afford to a charity
Slept in a car all night
Slept in class
Slept at work
Stayed up all night and watched the sunrise (Farewell to the original W400s)
Patted a snake...
Been bitten by a squirrel
Taken a sick day off when I wasn’t ill
Been bullied by girls in school
Slept under the stars on a grassy knoll against a lake in coll
Giggled when my best friend was Hindi poetry reciting, making him fail
Had amazing friends (And still have them!)
Lost weight And then gained more
Survived a fatal accident.. my mom doesn't know
Broken someone’s heart
Edited the school newspaper
Sang loudly in the car - was the only time I'll ever be in an antakshari
Hugged a photograph to sleep
Had seven straight tequila shots
Eaten camel
Gotten the entire class detained because I broke the window and didn't own up
Lied to get out of trouble
Taken a martial arts class - got a black belt
Loved someone I shouldn’t have
Gate crashed at a party
Been to weddings of people I don’t care about, just to eat good food
Gone without food for 3 days
Read, and understood Richard Bach or what he wanted to say,... i think
Had a crush on a girl when i was 4
Been obsessed with jigsaw puzzles
Been a geek in school
Made panneer .... burnt it
Made dal... learnt you aren't supposed to open the pressure cooker mid way
Hurt myself to see if i can stand the pain ... (okay i was bored someday)
Kissed someone so passionately, it made them dizzy
Been on a trek
Crossed a valley on a rope
Seriously contemplated pushing a nagging cohort int the valley
Cast my vote for someone I couldn’t care less about
Played in the rain
Kissed in the rain
Played in the mud
Been buried in sand
Nursed broken hearts
Been blamed for things I did not do
Been punished for things I did not do
Walked scotfree for things I have
Been caught umpteen times for things I have done
Walked on the beach at midnight with a girl
Lounged around in bed all day
Fit three weeks miraculously into 3 days
Felt truly happy about my life
Felt absolutely miserable about life
Straightened my hair
Had suicidal thoughts
Stolen a bittergourd from a neighbors garden and been forced to return it later by ma
Skipped all my school reunions
Apologized to someone years after inflicting the hurt
Read Godfather many times over... Felt like a man each time I read it
Read Love Story many times over ... Felt mushy and sad every time I read it
Won a bet
Lost tons
Made lots of bad choices
Read a lot
Listened to music a lot
Watched movies a lot
Been on the phone a lot
Stared out at open space a lot
Inherited all my grandpa's books
Fired a rifle
Learnt Autocad... you'll have to be a user to understand how difficult that is
Been in love with my computer
Been operated on my eye and saw through the entire thing
Taken a holiday all by myself
Appeared on a Radio show
Made a website and assorted paraphernalia for a coll fest... turned out decently enough
Lied to close friends
Cheated in a card game
Secretly wished harm to someone
Smoked up
Been cynical, sarcastic, caring, romantic, hopeful, perplexed, eclectic in combinations

i can go on and on, but seriously, i do have deadlines!