Who watches the Wedgeman?

In the unique style of the top five list, I proudly present The Five Best Comedy Instruments Ever:

1. The bagpipes

2. The tuba (even the name is funny!)

3. Er, drums? ("what do you call a guy who hangs around with a band? The drummer." Actually, all those jokes are about the man, not the instrument...)

4. The flute (I always hated American Pie. I think it was because they forgot to hire a writer.)

5. Sousaphone (like a tuba, but sillier. Actually, shouldn't this be higher up than the tuba if that were the case? Curse you, relentless one track mind!)

Next up, the The Five Best Comedy Fruit Ever:

1. The banana (phallic. Also slippery)

2. The melon (especially in pairs)

3. The raspberry (Monty Python know their stuff)

5. The grapefruit (as do Morecambe and Wise. Also, I guess you could have a pair like melons)

5.  The lemon, I guess? (Sometimes people make funny faces when they eat lemons... Ok, so it's a stretch. Man, this top five list thing is hard...)

And now, the Five Best Comedy Cars Ever:

1. The Skoda

2. Um, pink limousine? (Actually, I think that one has migrated from the Five Best Gay Comedy Cars Ever list)

3. Er, the Skoda again. (it's still funny, though, right?)

4. F1 cars (not actually very funny. Also, people have died driving them, which if you think about it is more tragic than comedic... yet, still funnier than...)

5. Clown cars (also tragic)

Er. The Five Best Comedy Dinosaurs Ever: (honestly, who is coming up with these ludicrous categories?)

1. Tyrannosaurus Rex (hehe, little stubby arms are funny)

2. Diplodocus (king of dinosaur stand-up. Inexplicably.)

3. Stegosaurus (funny plates are all funny)

4. Archaeopteryx (funny name. Funny looking. Negative points for possibly not really being a dinosaur.)

5. Those dinosaurs from Dinosaur Comics (is the comedy inherent to the beasts themselves or is it just the writing? Who knows?)

The Five Best Comedy Rainbows Ever: (what the fuck? Er, ok then. Here goes:)

1. Single Rainbow (Hilarious)

2. Double Rainbow (Doubly hilarious. Also inexplicably further down the list)

3. Bifrost Bridge (not hilarious. On the plus side, actually a rainbow, unlike...)

4. Dylan Moran (Hilarious)

5. My Sandman collection, which has colours on which are kinda rainbowy when they're all together. (Tragi-comic. No pun intended.)

Sometimes I see a bandwagon and some people jumping on it. Oftentimes, I jump on it too and we roll on to our destination, like an enormous, beautiful katamari. This is one of those times.

I'm rating the following games based on a few things: obviously graphical quality will only be worse the further into the past you go, so I'll try and rate them as they appeared at the time. Equally, they'll be rated partially on the influence they had on the games that followed them. I'm trying to avoid personal preference, so my list of my Five Favourite Video Games Ever would be different to this one. I'm obviously not going to include anything I've not played, that would be silly. I'm not keeping spoilers out of these, the most recent one came out around eight years ago and you've no excuse for never having played any of them. I'm only reviewing the games as they appeared on their primary system (i.e. for the first time), no GBA ports dated a couple of years later nor things appearing on the Wii virtual console.

With all that said, my own opinions do move back and forth a bit, it all depends on my mood. A bit like asking which my five favourite bands are. If I ever get around to playing GTA: IV then that might make this list. Spore too, depending a bit on what it's like. Anyway, enough equivocating, here's game number five.

5. Planescape: Torment (1999) Metacritic score: 91

You begin the game as a heavily scarred man, who knows nothing of his identity, waking up in a mortuary; your only companion, a sarcastic floating skull. Things get stranger from there. You discover you're immortal and are haunted by a question: "what can change the nature of a man?" Never before or since have I felt like every action I took had a consequence, for good or evil; law or chaos. The NPCs you can have in your party are a strange but massively compelling group. Some of the other people you meet are even more so. Highlights include challenging a rather arrogant preacher to a suicide-off (which, unsurprisingly and hilariously, you win.) and debating with a man until you convince him he does not exist. At which point he stops. The setting is a far cry from your standard D&D with Sigil, city of doors, an incredible place filled with different factions vying for control. Your group even finds itself in the middle of the Blood War on Baator and later in the Abyss at one point. The script is unparalleled, probably more dialogue than in any other game I've ever played and every single line worth reading. The very greatest thing about it? The name. Planescape is only the setting, as it were, the actual game's name is 'Torment', the one thing that drives every single character in it. Vital for heavily influencing Baldur's Gate and its sequel, which would take the importance of NPCs in your party to an even greater level, although few of them would be as cool and individual as Fall-From-Grace, Morte, Nordom, Ignus, Anna et al.

4. Super Mario 64 (1996 Japan/US, 1997 Europe) Metacritic score: 94

The level design is unbelievable. The graphics, for the time, were unbelievable. The sheer level of exploration required to get all 120 stars is unbelievable. The camera was innovative and having complete control over it was unbelievable. The entire damned game is pretty freaking unbelievable. Ok, so it lacks a bit in terms of the storyline, which is why the last few games beat it to the top, but this game did so much for the 3d platformer as a genre, I can't even begin to describe it. Oh, and the last ingredient? A healthy dose of fun. Few other games are more fun to simply jump into and go and grab a random star. This game showed the true power of the N64 and made it the must-have system (unless you preferred the Playstation, which I heard was good too). This game's existence was directly responsible for dozens of others, including the recent Super Mario Galaxy and the next one on the list.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) Metacritic score: 99

If Super Mario 64 gave some indications of what the N64 could do, then this game was the one to really let loose with everything it had. Again, the graphics for the time were absurdly good, especially things like the draw distance. This game, to my mind, took the series back to the quality of A Link to the Past, a game I have very fond memories of playing on my cousin's SNES, after the disappointing Link's Awakening. The time travelling and ability to move from being an adult to a child made was an idea that had not been implemented as well before. The dungeons were exactly the right length to dip in and out of and the use of music, not just the orchestral score (which naturally was brilliant) but also the use of the titular ocarina to teleport around. Without this, there would not have been any Majora's Mask nor Wind Waker nor Twilight Princess nor countless other similar games.

2. Deus Ex (2000) Metacritic score: 90

Terrorism. It's a complicated word these days. Deus Ex was fortunate in exactly when it was released, I doubt that a character who starts the game attacking terrorists (who have in the past blown up the Statue of Liberty) in said statue's ruins would have been approved of in late 2001. I'm reminded of the exploding buildings at the end of 1999's Fight Club film. Very much a product of its time, it owes the style mostly to The Matrix and cyberpunk more generally and its plot to numerous conspiracy theories and leftover fear about the Millennium Bug mixed with some incredibly interesting philosophical questions about the nature of humanity as found in Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell. In short, then, these are a few of my favourite things. The gameplay is sort of FPS-y with added stealthy bits taken from Thief: The Dark Project and RPG inventory management and an experience system. Quite apart from all of that, however, Deus Ex has something that is all its own. It combines these things fluidly. In any one mission, you have multiple different ways to go about things. That was, essentially, totally new for the time. The choice to be extremely stealthy one mission and then blow up everything in sight the next still staggers my mind. I've not seen any game, not even the sequel, that attempted to keep up the multiplicity of choice throughout. Not only that, but the decisions you make have huge and lasting impacts on the game as a whole. For example, when I first played it, JC's brother Paul was killed. I assumed that was scripted and 'just what happened', but no. Paul can live. Right through the whole damn game. There are almost no characters you're forced to kill at all, in fact. You can go through the entire game and just tranquilize your enemies. This was beyond mindblowing. Combined with superb set pieces and a plot that dragged you in until you practically forgot that a world existed outside this futuristic globetrot, I was stunned. Shame the sequel sucked a bit. But the one thing that the game owes the very most to? The last game on my list, of course.

1. Half-Life (1998) Metacritic score: 96

This game brought me into gaming. Sure, I'd played other things before, but this was the catalyst that made me into who I am today. This totally rewrote the book on the first-person shooter. As revolutionary as Wolfenstein 3d or Doom or anything else, but perhaps more so. It took the rest of the industry years to catch up to Valve. Even simple things at the time, like the water effects, were very cool. The AI was the best at the time bar nothing. The fights and oh dear God the beautiful, beautiful set pieces. Each one like a short movie that defied you not to drop your jaw. An example: you're in a nuclear silo of some sort, where a rocket engine is being tested. But wait, what's that banging sound? No idea. Keeps getting louder the closer you get to the centre of things. You go through a door and see a scientist grabbed by an enormous tentacle thing. And then you realise that the only way out is past a whole bunch of tentacles. Oh, by the way, they were making the banging with their enormous, razor sharp nose things. Razor sharp nose things that kill you extremely dead if they ever make contact. Scary, immersive and wonderful. This was the first FPS I played where you didn't start with a weapon. No, instead you are a scientist. So you walk around, interacting with other characters and then the entire world goes to hell. It was also the first FPS I played where they actually took away all the nifty weapons you'd found up until that point and had to get them back again. This trick was used later in nearly everything ever. Even now, I still play the game occasionally and, even if it looks pretty dated, I am still immersed and sucked right into the gameplay. The sequel undoubtedly has its fans and I'm tempted to give that the equal first position. It brought a much-needed level of humanity and plot into a game that had previously been mostly "Kill aliens. Kill soldiers. Do a jumping puzzle. Kill a helicopter. Do a teleporter puzzle." although Valve did become quite keen on the physics puzzles. Still, the vehicle sections are great, the physics engine is great, especially the gravity gun and the set pieces. Oh my yes. Yesyesyes. If you throw in Episodes 1 and 2, you only get more of the character interaction I like so much and a bit more of a feeling of the world. I'll admit that the game has its flaws, but I'm not sure there are many games out there that really are totally flawless. Anyway, time for the Honourable Mentions.

Starcraft (1998) Metacritic score: 88

Any game that is still regularly played for its perfect multiplayer balance a full 10 years after its release is worthy of this sort of list. The single player campaign is brilliant too, especially the events of Brood War. And the cinematics conjure up the sense of an epic space war at least on a par with Star Wars. Seriously, look on YouTube for the Starcraft: Brood War opening and I dare you not to get a tingle in your spine when that music starts. I'll admit that it owes a lot to Warhammer 40K for the world, but it's still a damned awesome game.

Goldeneye 007 (1997) Metacritic score: 96

The game with a sniper rifle in it that meant that essentially every single game after it also had a sniper rifle in it. Also fantastic multiplayer, even if four of you were squinting at a tiny screen and jostling for position with controllers and whatnot.

Day of the Tentacle (1993) Metacritic score: 93

I like the Monkey Island series. I like it a lot. But I played this first. Sometimes that's enough in a game to change your mind about which is best. All the classic SCUMM games fit in here, though.

Baldur's Gate (1998) Metacritic score: 91 and Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000) Metacritic score: 95

A much more accessible and traditional look at the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Following the life of your protagonist from random level 1 guy to the epic hero they become is a fantastic experience. If the isometric thing gets to you, play Neverwinter Nights, it's not as good, but I know how some people can't actually play games that don't have 3d graphics.

This has gone on for a long time. Rather longer than I'd intended. I guess I'll just have to revisit this list and see if there are many other games that I would load onto someone who had never experienced a game before. Probably a few. Thanks for reading.

Title from Anthony Burgess' book on the oh so sublime Finnegans Wake. I love it. I'm also reading lots of Samuel Beckett at the moment. I have a teensy feeling that the version of the Trilogy I have is probably better in French. Oh wells. And tonight, I'm off to see The Importance of Being Earnest at the Taliesin with Alexa and most likely a bunch of people I don't know. Should be fun.

I was also going to go to the SUCS Lightning talks last night and discuss memes and things, but they were kinda cancelled as nobody could get into the Robert Recorde Room in a silly fashion. Er, what else? The weather's been all nice, which is good. I'm still working hard on dissertationy bits, as the title and stuff kinda indicates. I'm not sure what else to talk about, really. I'm being a bit of a crap friend. The Anime soc will continue next year (that reminds me, I must get handover forms done soon), er... Nope, that's sadly most of the stuffs I have at the moment. Oh one more thing, people should read The Witness by James Jauncey, I met him at a research seminar the other day and he was quite cool. The extracts I heard from the book are great quality too. Other than that, enjoy seeing my arms, as the sun coming out means I tend to abandon my longsleeve/shortsleeve thing. On the other hand, I don't get to have the fun of looking through my jacket and coat collection for something appropriate. Oh well, some you win, some you lose.

So my aunt Jane was buried last Friday in Highgate Cemetery and I chose to speak at the memorial service held on Sunday. Here's what I said:

"This section is perhaps rather strangely entitled 'memories of a favourite aunt'. There is, however, no hyperbole or romanticism in the statement. Jane was my favourite aunt. One of the things about being very young is that there’s no pressure to treat people equally. If you have two children, you can’t possibly say to one of them that you love them more than the other, even if the first is a little angel and the second a vicious monster. Not, of course, to imply that my other aunts are monstrous in any way. It’s just that I was always closest to Jane. She always insisted we called her just 'Jane' and not 'Aunt Jane' or 'Aunty Jane' or anything like that. Because of that, I always felt treated like an equal. We had a lot of things in common: love of reading and books; of good food and drink and even of wearing black.

Going to London as a child was always interesting. There were children’s books from Victor Gollancz in the room my brother and I shared in Corsica Street and I remember reading some of them again and again, especially an illustrated version of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant.

I remember always being slightly afraid of London when I was very young. Having grown up in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, I was totally unused to all the sights, smells and especially the light pollution and noise at night. But seeing Jane and how at ease she was with buses and the tube and everything else in the big city somehow convinced me that it couldn’t be such a strange place after all.

Years later, I asked her to help me in getting some work experience. At the time, she was working for John Murray and I spent a couple of happy weeks one summer, being treated to all sorts of new experiences and Jane’s delicious sandwiches in our packed lunches, usually enjoyed in the Green Park sunshine. It was quite fun to be part of something larger than just myself for the first time and on that trip, my ‘fear’ finally left me.

The holidays we shared in Cornwall have already been discussed a little, but I wanted to say that it was always nice to be able to see Jane just relaxing, usually with a book and a cushion on the lawn. Sitting in the sun and looking totally peaceful. Jane bought me my first necklace from Polzeath one year. It was a fairly simple beaded wooden thing on a piece of elastic and fairly cheap too, as I recall, but it meant a lot to me. It was an assertion of my own identity, the first awkward teenage attempt not to turn into ones parents. I started growing my hair longer around that time too and I still have the necklace, repaired a couple of times since she first bought it, but undoubtedly the same item and certainly holding the same meaning for me.

All these memories of the past with Jane, from my very earliest to the Waitrose Cloudy Lemonade almost invariably awaiting my brother and I in recent months, will not be forgotten. They will be shared again and again with my immediate family and, if I ever settle down and have children of my own, I’ll tell them all about the amazing great aunt the never had a chance to know.

There’s a section in Neil Gaiman’s series of fantasy graphic novels where the character of Death describes herself:

“I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.” She later says to another character, who is dying and questioning why it has to be so soon.

“You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.”

That always struck a chord with me. I like to think that no matter what people say of Jane, she had her lifetime and lived it to the full. Jane was one of the very, very few people I’ve ever known who wanted nothing more from her life. She was happy with how she behaved, everything she did and all other aspects of her life. I only hope that when I die, I can say the same thing for myself.'

In spite of the fact I started crying around the Green Park section, I received quite a few compliments from the people there for my courage, bravery and for the words themselves. Other people there had given a view of Jane from the point of view of the publishing world, but I wanted to make sure that someone spoke from the heart. Every word of that was heartfelt and incredibly poignant for me. Dad asked me to share this, and I'm happy to. Maybe those of you reading this who never met her, never even knew she existed, even, will have a bit of a portrait of one of the most incredible people I've ever met.

My aunt Jane died this morning at around 1am. I miss her, I miss her a lot. Even though I knew it was going to happen, even though at times I was almost thinking that she should hurry up already, even though I knew that she's not suffering nearly as much now; I miss her. I was going to talk a bit more about what I've been doing in the last few months, but I'm not sure it's quite the time. This entry will get longer when I've had some time to collect my thoughts about her and I feel I'm able to express them properly. I'm closing this with a section where Morpheus speaks about Death from the Sandman story "The Sound of Her Wings" by Neil Gaiman:

'I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude to my sister's gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her.
Many thousands of years ago I heard a song in a dream, a mortal song that celebrated her gift. I still remember it... That forgotten poet understood her gifts. My sister has a function to perform, even as I do. The Endless have their responsibilities. I have responsibilities.
I walk by her side and the darkness lifts from my soul. I walk with her, and I hear the gentle beating of mighty wings...' 

Because the universe is an arbitrarily random and unforgiving place and the sooner you accept that you will never achieve any sort of happiness, the sooner you can get on with dying.

Well, that's one reason. I expect it probably has something to do with entropy. So I've been off doing other things for a while. One of which was revamping the anime society and massively increasing its membership, with some not inconsiderable help from Chloe, Steve and Ozzy. You people rock. One other thing I've been doing is waiting for a t-shirt (those of you who say that my life, or at least my blog, seems to revolve around t-shirts are probably right in a depressing fashion) from a website. I've been waiting since the day before the SUCS beach party 2007 (that was back in June for those out of the loop). I got bored of waiting and would recommend that nobody here ever use the useless site that is tshirtsville.com At least they managed to refund my money fairly promptly when I finally gave up. I was willing to accept a bit of a delay because I knew they'd have to get stock in from overseas, but to string me along for several months just isn't acceptable.

What else? Er, the term has started, which is nice. I've been not at all enthralled by my Writing in Professional Contexts module as of yet, but I live in hope that what is basic grammar will turn into something more relevant to, you know, actually writing in professional contexts... The other module is Angela Carter which I chose because, although I hadn't actually read any of her work, I knew she had inspired the brilliant Sarah Waters. The tutor is not one I know very well either, but she seems to be almost on the verge of obsession with Carter which can only be a good thing. Things I have learned from Carter already: It is possible to have 3 well-fleshed out female characters and 2 high-quality male characters in a book of less than 200 pages; Jesus was a bastard and God is the ultimate voyeur and finally it is possible to have your female characters raped and still be a feminist writer.

Whodathunkit? Not I. I should also mention the absurd level of kindness bestowed on me by the wonderful Kate with her tolerance for my everything and the most incredible gift she gave me of her heart. "I love my love with a K because her name is Kate and she is so very, very kind." Carter couldn't have put it better herself.

This one has been a long time coming and I think will take a bit of introduction, fortunately I have the e-mail I sent to my uncle that I think will explain it all (edited bits done by me in square brackets ([]):

"Before I get to the random favour of this e-mail's title, let me give you a bit of backstory, so you can appreciate what this means.

It all started when I went into Topman (British purveyor of stylish and fashionable clothing). Actually, that's not quite true. It all started when I was walking around the university's campus [specifically next to Level 2] and saw an advert with a blue and black longsleeved stripey top. I thought "that looks nifty." and thought no more of it. Sometime later, I went into Topman and found said t-shirt on sale for cheap I bought it and was very, very happy. [you've probably seen me wearing this, usually with another t-shirt on top of it]

I then started talking to my girlfriend [the lovely Kate] about other stripey tops I should buy/own. Blue, we agreed, looked good. Purple would look even better. Then began our hunt for a longsleeved, purple and black stripey top. The stripey thing is apparently extremely fashionable here at the moment and it seems possibe to get things in nearly any combination of two colours. Save, you might have guessed, purple and black. We looked everywhere in shops it might have appeared. And everywhere in shops it might not have done. Alternative clothing stores across the internet were scoured for weeks in an attempt to find a suitable item. Nothing, nada and zilch were the results of our efforts.

We even went into a local fabric store, boasting "the largest selection of cloths in South Wales". No joy there either. Nor in any of their catalogues. Eventually, we resolved that the cost of buying a stripey top from across the wide, wide ocean would be offset by the strength of the pound at the moment. We looked further afield, searched more sites until, finally today, there was success! I assure you that this meant a lot to us, anything we had found previously that was purple and stripey was tailored for women and therefore somewhat unsuitable. This is, I am almost certain, the only longsleeved purple and black stripey top designed for men that exists in the world today:
http://www.shopadidas.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2760133

So you'd think that would be a happy ending right there, wouldn't you? Not so, I am sad to say. They only ship to the United States. And they probably won't accept payment from my credit card either."

So I asked him to buy it and ship it to me and I would then pay him back and he did and I did and everyone was very, very happy. Especially me when my top arrived. This is me barely containing my excitement at my acquisition: http://www.sucs.org/~wedge/PurpleStripey.JPG

So now you know what it is to have a quest (I first bought the blue and black top back in December sometime) and the joys of completing it. Never let anyone tell you life isn't enough like a video game. :)

Also, if I lived in or near Jersey (possibly on a fishing boat or poorly-positioned oilrig), I'd love to visit http://www.haveaday.co.uk and find out about nifty stuff for me to do. Can't wait for term to restart and to get on with more learning.

Desperately poor paraphrasing from! Monkey Island = hooray! For anyone curious (i.e. just me, because nobody who reads this will actually get the reference), no they aren't Gwynn's monkeys (Gwynn is actually an awesome name, I just realised.)

I've been busy recently, flitting from London to Swansea to Somerset to all over the place recently. Has been very tricky to keep track or even relax properly. There's a part of me that's convinced that everything would be easier if it were just term time again already and I didn't have to worry about all my various concerns tearing me in lots of different directions over the holidays. Apologies if I wanted to see you this summer and things just failed to come together for whatever reason. Stuff is tricky is all.

On one hand, I want to write all about the various fun things I've been doing over the last seven weeks, but on the other, I've really been too busy actually living life to document lots of them and I'm sure there's a lot I'd simply forget as a result. I guess the most important thing is that I'm about to graduate. Feels strange. And not very real, almost. Maybe after the ceremony's over, I'll come to terms with things a little more. And I can't wait for all the excitement and fun that the next academic year will bring. As for after that, who knows? I'll try and keep all you people in the wide world of the internet well posted (no pun intended). See you on the flip side.

Ah, good old the 'Random' category, it's saved me from pain and suffering many a time. Niftily. Well, I'm kinda done with university for the time being. For anyone who was unaware, I'm not leaving and will be here next year doing an MA in English. Should be awesome.

Towards the end of things, I was getting a little bored with having to go to lectures week after week, but I still enjoyed the seminars which is a good sign because I've got plenty more of those next year, hopefully with people who are as enthusiastic about the subjects being discussed as I am. So what have I been doing with my spare time? Well, I finally managed to catch up with Barny and have a quiet drink and discussion of all the stuff we've both been up to recently. It only took us about two years of living in the same city. I've also started watching Cowboy Bebop, which has been brilliant so far. Interesting one-shot episodes and hints at metaplot behind everything. I've also been writing again. Which is kinda nifty. I'm not sure quite if it will come to anything or not, but I suppose it's kinda good practice for later life. I'm fairly uncertain what exactly it is I'm doing. I might have to put a small bit of it up here and get some opinions. Keats believed that he needed to enter a sort of a dreamlike state, known as 'negative capability' in order to write his poetry and I think I'm mildly the same, actually. Or perhaps not in terms of dreamlikeness, but I do seem to need a bit of sleep-deprivation, a bit of random inspiration and a bit of mild depression. And metal. Metal seriously helps with just about everything, it's remarkable.

I guess I'm increasingly looking forward to this year being over. It's been fairly long and complicated and, well, I can't wait to see what will happen next year. What's that? Optimism for the future? Whatever next, eh? 

...it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

Yes, I thought I'd head back to good old Babylon 5 for this entry's title. It seems like months since I last wrote anything (which, I suppose rather unsurprisingly, it has been) so I thought I'd do a quick update on stuff. Let's see, my aunt is very sick, which isn't nice for me, or for anyone else. I dunno, it's so strange because when I was actually physically with her, she seemed fine and most of the time when I'm not, I don't really think about it. It's just the quiet times when I have time and space to think that it hits me...

But enough about that, having not played at all since whenever the two-headed giant thing was, however long ago that took place, I've discovered a degree of ability at Magic. It was awesome to see James, Phil, Mike and myself dominating day 2 of the Swansea Future Sight prerelease together, actually. Especially considering I managed to win on day 1 :D Major props to James for winning day 2 and very kindly giving me the second t-shirt he won. It rocked my socks all the way off my feet.

Summer seems to have been and gone again. Hilarious, actually, that as soon as lectures restarted, the weather turned back to rain and doom and gloom and things. Also hilariously (if you're me or perhaps one of a small number of my friends) "I'm going to eat your sole". I may have spent entirely more time than is really sensible just laughing at that. All I need is to imagine some sort of apocalyptic anime demon in a restaurant, saying that. I'm literally cracking up. There's something a bit wrong with that. 

Another paragraph, before I collapse. My essays continue, as does my course. They are 'kinda ok', I have decided. My hair is blue. Not very blue, but a little bit. Nobody has noticed this without me first pointing it out to them (fairly unsurprising as it's fairly subtle). Right, enough of this. Most likely, you're reading this because you're my dad and you want to know what the hell's been wrong with me that means I can't send you even the briefest of e-mails to tell you. Uh, if you are, I've been working and not spending my money on Magic. Or comics. And, uh, disregard everything else. Also. And you've always been a wonderful father to me. Ok, that's enough sucking up...

I'm in love. It's been a while since it was requited. 

Sorry for any laughing/smiling/happiness this may have caused and undue worry associated with the above. I'll try and tone it down. When I'm with Kate, my mouth starts to hurt from smiling all the time. Every second we're together, I'm happy. Every second we're apart, I want us to be together again. I appreciate that this is massively slushy and probably rather out of character for me. Maybe I'm getting a bit fed up of being miserable all the time. Or being balanced but never really loving life. It's time to live at the edges of life again, I think. I may be depressed more often (although I think that's mostly to do with the circumstances of how we got together more than anything to do with her) but I'm also much happier. 

The title comes from Swansea Uni's very own Stevie Davies' Impassioned Clay which I read last year. The main character, Olivia, is discovering her attraction to her close friend Faith who is kinda oblivious (and broadly heterosexual). It struck a chord with me, the way that they were so close and hanging around all the time and Olivia feels so strongly but can't do anything at all because it would destroy their friendship and everything. I over-relate to everything in these situations. It's hilarious. Kinda. Maybe it's also a bit tragic. I don't know. Anyway, I'm happy. This can't be a terrible thing.

For anyone still wondering, no there's no such thing as absolute truth. It's all relative. Yes, this does mean that an objective reality doesn't exist, (or if it does, none of us can ever experience it) sorry if that annoys any of you.

Today, I don't really feel like Osterman, but I was mildly stuck for a title and my mind turned to the 'end' of Watchmen. My mind always ends up back there. I was also tempted by "The sound of her wings" from Sandman. Or even something from BSG (just finished season 2, it's rather good. Only about one or two eps that weren't superb. I love you, good sci-fi!), but Watchmen reminded me how I need to get back into the swing of normal university life, having had about a week off. I'm not sure quite what else I need to do right now. Re-read From Hell as I now own a copy, it's so good. 

I think I must have skipped a happy entry somewhere, because the last two seemed kinda sad. Nevermind, eh? I've been happier than in years, or months at least. Just when I begin to think my life is perhaps a little dull, it always gets exciting again. What's that thing? "May you live in interesting times". I do right now, I certainly have in the past; maybe I always will... and I love it.

The title of this post is taken from Don DeLillo's 'White Noise' and kinda sums up my worldview at the moment. It seems that what I think is pretty much irrelevant to most of my problems and the people around me. I hate myself, other people still seem to like me. I think I'm desperately unattractive and dress incredibly badly, other people seem to think the opposite. I think I am fundamentally a good person, other people disagree. I think that the world is a black and white place filled with choices that are either right or wrong, other people tell me it's grey and that right and wrong are all relative.

Heinrich's right. What good is my truth? My truth means nothing. 

It is apparently Christmas again. I seem to lack holiday cheer, though. Most of the people close to me will be fairly aware of why. It's kinda tricky, I've got lots of things to do and stuff I need to concentrate on, but my mind is constantly distracted. Oh well, there's still a few days left until the 25th so I guess I can be infected with Christmassy joy yet. Possibly.

This is the first holiday since I got to university when I can honestly say that I'd have preferred to be in Swansea. It's really strange because normally I'm keen to see my parents, but I just miss everyone and wish we could all stay around. Of course, it's not the same without the structure of lectures and is insanely quiet as soon as people start to leave. It's a very strange phenomenon, actually. Very like the weekends in the first year when campus was just totally empty. Anyway, if you're at home and missing everyone, just keep telling yourself what I am, "you'll see them all again soon enough". And distract yourself with things designed to keep you distracted. Maybe even do some revision :) I'd heard that was a good one.

People draw lines. They do it all the time. There are certain boundaries we will not cross. Broadly speaking, we don't kill each other because of the consequences (feeling freaking terrible is a consequence). Here are some lines I realised I'd unconsciously drawn with regards to being a geek:

I'm not going to play Magic at competitive events. Now, I'm good enough to win Prereleases with the right cardpool and a bit of luck so it's not a question of whether or not I'd do well, it's just something that very obviously says to me that I'm not playing for the fun of it anymore (and I'll admit I probably would enjoy it, especially if I did well). I'd have to build a competetive deck which would be a bit costly too and I'd have to learn how to pilot it and its matchups and sideboarding strategies and things. All these are ways to make a game I really enjoy unfun for me.

I'm not going to cosplay as anything or anyone. For the benefit of people who have no clue what I'm talking about (i.e. my dad. Hey dad! Hope you guys are enjoying your holiday!), cosplaying is like fancy dress but for anime or videogame characters. It's got its casual people and its obsessives like everything else. Weirder varients include crossplay (dressing as characters of the opposite sex), seifuku cosplay (dressing up as characters and having sex) and people who think of themselves as otakukin (the literal reincarnations of anime characters). No, I'm not making this up, sorry if any of you had your rosy views of the world shattered. The weirder stuff and the more obsessive people are what's putting me off this. That and the fact that I'm not pretty enough to play any of the characters I'd like to.

I'm not going to buy more geeky t-shirts than I can possibly wear. I think that one's fairly self-explanatory. This will save me cash and wardrobe space (I seem to barely have enough hangers at any given time as it is).

So, those are my lines. There are lots of others, as I'm sure some of you know but I'll talk to you about those another time. In the meantime, may I meet a girl like Rei who likes me like a girl like Asuka likes me. Did that even make sense?