Today has been a strange day. For me; I don't know about you. From the beginning, as soon as I woke up, it seemed pretty obvious to me that the day didn't want me to be entirely happy. Nor did it want me to be crushed with sadness, but perhaps, just slightly melancholy...

Yesterday, I said some things to a dear friend of mine that I really shouldn't have. I didn't find out why I shouldn't have said those things until just now. Again, I wish to apologise to this friend. If you're reading this, you know who you are.

The day began with me waking up trying to remember a dream I'd had. I did, eventually, manage to get hold of the dream - they're slippery things at the best of times, always wriggling away from your grasp the harder you hold on, like eels. I can't recite the contents of that dream here because they're very... personal, but suffice it to say that it left me feeling just a little bit regretful and lonesome.

I got up and went into town to poison both my mind and my body - the mental toxins were ingested at the bank, where all sorts of numbers and legal rigamarole were forced through my ears, and the physical poison was given to me at the Subway down the road, where I forced gods know how many chemicals down my throat. Over these happenings, we shall pass a discreet veil...

Only a few steps away from the shop, in a narrow grey street that looks soul-crushing at the best of times, and in this weather looked as though someone had left the aura of a mausoleum behind in it, I found a butterfly.

It was a rather large one, crawling around over the pedestrian area. It had the most beautiful wings, perfectly shaped and coloured in brilliant patterns of orange bows on a velvet background, like bridges over blackness, with occasional white blotches. However, I knew that cars came down here once in a while, and besides, someone could tread on it. It seemed to me that the creature was in poor shape - I don't know much about the normal behaviour of the butterfly, but it seemed to me to be rather slow. Slow enough, in fact, that it allowed itself to be gently handled onto the book I had with me. I didn't know whether it was just the weather or ill health that was making it so taciturn, but I knew one thing absolutely for certain: it could not remain here.

I didn't know where to go, and for a while walked around holding the butterfly up on my book, shielding it from the bitterly cold wind. Even if it didn't move quickly it hung on for grim life, and seemed to go to whichever side of the book I was holding it, slowly dragging itself toward my hand.

In the end I thought of a place to put it down and went there; a pleasantly grassy area next to the Morrison's where there are a few trees and a children's playground. A river ran by as well, and there was plenty of undergrowth to hide in. It was the only place I could think of to bring the butterfly that wouldn't result in it being run over, crushed or otherwise having its perfectly-patterned, fragile wings trampled in this seemingly grey and inhospitable urban landscape. It had never occurred to me before that there were so few green areas in our downtown, but there it is. If there were more they'd probably be taken away by the council, for reasons of litter and vandalism, no doubt. The playground I dropped off the butterly near to is often littered about with various bits of garbage - and beer cans, strangely enough for a children's play area.

So my trek across the town with the butterfly was come to an end. I stopped in a small clutch of trees and attempted to brush it off onto one of them without hurting it. It seemed to take a dislike to the living leaves I offered it and instead fluttered down to the fallen foliage below, there resting itself on a curling brown leaf.

On my way home it rained lightly, and was still that same bitter cold, blowing in the wind. I wrote an apology to my friend, wrote to another friend about my dream, and then wrote this.

Now it is written, and I can stop writing. For now.

I have just come back from dinner at our family's favourite local Indian restaurant and have been mulling this over for some time. However, as Antoine de Saint-Exuper is claimed to have said: 'Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.' This is a saying I happen to find agreeable, so the post proper will consist of a mere three lines. It follows:

As I was preparing to go out for dinner, I was thinking how it could be said to be morally reprehensible, possibly even dangerously right-wing, to make children go to school by law.

As I was having dinner, I overheard a teenage girl at a nearby table asking how to spell 'awkward'.

Make of it what you will.

I've known the reason why I will never be a great artist for a while now, but it's taken some matzo for me to come out and actually say it.

The simple reason is this:

Breasts.

The full reason takes a little more explanation (although not much more).

I will never be a great artist because I want to draw the human form. I'm fascinated by it and everything about it; the only thing that I could find anywhere NEAR as scintillating is bird wings. (Don't even get me STARTED on angels.)

However, to draw the human form would require drawing both men and women, which... eh. How do I put this?

My attitude toward most people is screwed up enough, but when it comes to females... I just can't envision drawing a female character without her sexuality becoming apparent to me. Maybe it's because I'm just a lonesome teenage boy. At least, I'm hoping it is: that would suggest that the problem is at least remediable.

Anyways, for whatever reason, I am incapable of drawing the female form. I just can't do it. The idea of creating such a beautiful creature, line by line, curve by sinuous curve... It's too much.

Perhaps if there weren't such a difference in sexual characteristics betwixt the two sexes, it might be easier. Which is why it's the fault of all females for having breasts; not my fault for being socially and sexually stunted. Go away. I don't want to talk to you anymore.

(At least, not until the next 'blog post.)

I believe that everyone has the right to believe whatever they want to.

I believe that everyone has the right to live in a world that is as free from fear, oppression, suffering and misery as is humanly possible.

I believe that everyone has at least a little bit of good in them, just by being human, whether they're rich or poor, powerful or not, no matter how many people may say they are totally evil.

I believe that everyone has the capacity to think for themselves, and should do so as often as possible, because I believe that things we call 'evil' and 'bad' arise mostly from unthinkingness.

I believe that absolutes exist only in the imagination - this applies especially to moral absolutes.

I believe that everyone likes to think in absolutes, because it makes things simpler to understand, which is why we have such trouble understanding the world.

I believe that everything humans do and say is true - even lies and deceit, because even falsehoods must be based on a truth of some kind.

I believe that everyone's beliefs are, eventually, contradictory, because reality is strange like that.

I believe that, at some point in my future, most likely several points, I will believe everything here to be utter bullshit - and then I'll recover and keep going.

I believe that everyone has the right to be wrong.

Sorry for worrying you, everyone. If you read the recent depressing-type post (which I have now deleted) you probably thought (quite reasonably) that I was in an extremely bad mood.

Well I was. Was. Which is to say, I am no longer. So, please, don't worry about me. Of course I thank you for your concern - I'm thankful that I have such friends who would check up on me.

So I guess I'm just saying the alert's over. I wrote that earlier 'blog post in a fit of emotional pique, and I'm okay now. ^_^

Byeee...!

I am an agnostic because, first and foremost, I cannot categorically deny that a god of some kind exists, somewhere out there. As anyone who is familiar with the Measurement Problem will know, for something to exist, it must be observed - and yet when I am not observing things, they do not go away in the space of time that I am not observing them. I do not leave the room only to come back a few moments later and discover that it has been replaced by blank, empty space - the room will still be there (in all probability). These things being true, I can only assume that (a) the room continued to exist even when I wasn't observing it or (b) it was packed away in some storage area until its recall was required by my return to the area, kinda like when you visit an area in a videogame (only with no loading times).

Therefore, who am I, a being who is clearly not omniscient, to say that there is not some godlike being somewhere in the vastness that is everything? I think it was Bertrand Russell who came up with the idea of a china teapot revolving around the moon - if said teapot is too small to be detected by any measuring equipment we humans possess, who can then say that the teapot does not exist? It's the problem I have outlined before in my 'blog: namely, it is impossible to prove that something, which does not exist, does not exist. It's astoundingly easy to prove the positive existence of something which does exist: just observe it. However, observation of nothing is incredibly difficult, for obvious reasons - one might say impossible. To clarify further: it is the difference between nothing and 'not-being' (i.e.: nothing never existed anyway, but not-being is the negative existence of something which is meant to exist).

So, for the reasons outlined above, I cannot say with any certainty that a god does not exist. However, what I can say, with absolute certainty, is that a god could not possibly exist in the way in which several well-known and popular religions claim it to.

You probably already know the three virtues that this god is supposed to have: omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence. That's all well and good, until you realise that such things cannot possibly exist.

For a start: omnipotence. This would allow a god to create a rock, yes? Would the god be able to create a rock so heavy that he/she/it could not lift it?

And that's pretty much where it all falls down. Would the god be able to create knowledge so incredibly difficult to comprehend that the god itself could not know it? Would the god be able to create for itself a trial of its own goodness so trying that it would not be able to pass it?

Obviously, something is wrong with this classical idea of god. It can't be all-powerful, for the very simple reason that reality (at least, the one logical people live in) does not like absolutes. In the same way that one cannot fill any given space entirely with matter (a plenum), there is no way in which one can take all the matter out of a space (fact: perfect vacuums do not exist, no matter what your Physics teacher might have told you). Possibly the only absolute that is at all true is the following: no absolute is true in real space - and I'm even going out on a limb with that one.

So, no, I am not an atheist - rather an agnostic. But, for those of you wishing me to take that one step closer to actually taking a side on the issue, I am starting to think of myself as antireligious. As I have said before, I have no problem with the idea of a deity. It's the crazy acts that strangely alogical people in ridiculously powerful organisations perpetrate in the name of said deity that get me riled.

I sometimes like to think of the god that all theists believe in as an individual who's just trying to do their best with the insane amount of power they have, scared to death of making mistakes that could kill millions of people and constantly annoyed and depressed by the many stupid misinterpretations of its will that must be made everyday. There are all these commandments and rules and edicts and so on - but what if this god just wants us all to get along?

This is mostly for my own benefit, so you don't have to read this. I mean, you can, if you have absolutely nothing else to do. I'm not going to shoot you if you do. That shotgun barrel which has just been placed so very gently against the back of your head that you can't even feel it has nothing to do with that at all.

So, where was I? Oh yes -

The world of humanity, that is to say Earth, is patriarchal. We all know this. It is established fact. One hardly has to have much mental acuity, or even be wide awake, to see that most of the world's leaders (in fact, pretty much ALL of the world's leaders) are men.

However, there is a certain branch of thinking that holds this to be unfair, immoral, impracticable, imbalanced, mean, cruel, petty, bourgeois, hungry (strike out that which does not apply). I happen to be one of them. These people are usually called 'feminists'. I thought at first that wanting women to have as much power as men was merely egalitarianism, but apparently it is not so.

Now, the thing I wanted to jot down was this idea: men and women have certain biological roles that were assigned to them by Mother Nature (Where's the father, eh? Next time you're wondering why everything's so screwed-up, just remember that Ma Nature had to carry everything by herself!). This too, I think you will agree, is established fact. Some people say 'How weird would it be if men were the ones who had babies?', but this makes no sense because a man who has a baby is, in effect, a woman. Or, at the very least, a very physiologically confused individual.

This, in case you were wondering, is where it is going. The role of women, viewed from a purely biological perspective vis a vis the continuation of the human race and so on (which is not, I wish to stress, the only view we should take, as both humanity and reality are more complex than mere survival), is to bear children and, due to their aptitude at emotional sensitivity, see that the children develop well. The role of the man, therefore, is to protect the women and children. Testosterone reduces a man's (indeed, anyone's) emotional sensitivity, which is ideal for a soldier - you don't want the ones who hold power constantly breaking down and blubbering all the time (not that women do that, but, uh... anyway).

That's kinda the problem. It is wired into us at the most basic level that women nurture and men protect. Unfortunately, to protect, one must wield power, and to wield power one must set up a system of government. I think you can see where this leads - men are the ones who will inevitably be driven to create the government and thereby set themselves in positions of power within it.

Needless to say, in this enlightened age we have gone beyond mere survival (at least, the 'civilised', developed world has), and therefore women can choose to walk the corridors of power should they so wish, and men to help raise the children and so on. Even so, I feel it will take quite a while for women to ever be quite as powerful as men - if that ever becomes the case. I hope it does and that someday the world will be ruled equally by both sexes, but it will inevitably take much effort and determination on the part of men as well as women. Just 'cuz you're a feminist, don't mean you're female.

Yeah, I said it. The most popular MMORPG out there is a stinking pile of fetid horse-droppings. It sucks so hard that I sold my vacuum-cleaner and used WoW to clean my floor instead. I am of course referring to that much-loved 'net game known in full as World of Warcraft.

Now, I'm sure you've all heard the horror-stories - like the one about the kid who played the third expansion pack Wrath of the Lich King non-stop for several days without pause until he passed out. Frankly, I can't see what the attraction is. And before you say anything - YES, I have played it. Many times. Very rarely did the game make me feel as though I'd accomplished something: the only thing it really gave me was a sense of being part of something extremely huge and detailed, at the cost of becoming even more bored and frustrated due to how frikkin' repetitive the game is - not to mention how much waiting you have to do if you want to do anything with other people. The perpetrators of this monstrosity, Blizzard, laud the multiplayer aspect of the game to the skies, as do all the people who use it, but, call me unreasonable if you like, if it takes an entire night to organise and carry out a decent-sized raid, I think there might be something wrong. Remember that this is a game, not Second Life. At least the people there, by accepting to sell their souls to SL, are acknowledging that their First Life is perhaps somewhat substandard.

And let's say that you decide to go it on your own in WoW, like I often did, and thus avoid all the tedious waiting (not to mention the arguing - is it just me or is almost the entirety of WoW populated by asshats?). This will entail one of two things: questing or grinding. Questing is pretty self-explanatory, but for those not in the know, 'grinding' is the repetitive killing of monsters to earn experience and thereby gain levels - an extraordinarily tedious process, you may be rest assured. Questing is almost as bad, but not quite. I don't need to explain the plot of any one quest as an example, because they all follow this exact formula:

1. Receive quest from quest-giver (those people with the ridiculous yellow exclamation-marks floating above their heads, in other words).
2. Go kill monster(s), using the same bloody moves over and over again to kill them.
3. (Optional step.) Die because your computer keeps freezing at vital moments. (Or you just suck.)
4. Retrieve item(s) from monster(s) dead carcass(es).
5. Go back to quest-giver ('You've traded it in for a question-mark, I see!') to receive reward.
6. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's the mind-numbing inevitability of it all that gets me down. At first I admired WoW for the sheer depth and scale of its mythos and the stories about its various races, but the gameplay mechanics are sooo bloody repetitive that it palls for me within the hour I start playing.

I thought the whole point of being addicted to something was that it allowed you to escape from reality. However, it turns out that WoW is depressingly like real life: the same bloody thing over and over and over and over and over and (ad nauseam).

In my various random ramblings across the Internet, courtesy of the awesomeness that is StumbleUpon, I have noticed a certain recurring trend with the comments one tends to find appended to Internet articles and the like. Each and every comment you will find on a comments list will tend to fall into one or more of these categories, and will often go in this order as well:

1) Sycophants

Commenters who slavishly support whatever ideological standpoint it is the article is written about. You can usually spot Sycophants by their seeming lack of any grammar or punctuation whatsoever. These are the kind of people who write 'cool update soon plz' on fanfiction reviews (as a completely hypothetical example). In short, people who, while well-intentioned, probably don't have the minimum two brain cells required to rub together to create some brain-sparks.

2) Fans

Think of Fans as the evolution of Sycophants: those one step further up the chain of the group called 'Appreciaters' (for reasons that will become evident soon). Fans dig the article in question and heartily approve of whatever viewpoint it stands up for. Fans tend to be able to form sentences properly, although spelling may be incorrect from time to time. The stage is now set for the Appreciaters to be challenged by:

3) The Hater

The Hater is the Devil incarnate to all Appreciaters, for there is only ever one - and there always is one, believe me. It may be possible that there is some far-flung corner of the 'net in which everyone is able to get along and play nicely, but if so then I have not yet found it. The Hater is completely, absolutely and totally opposed to whatever the article may be about and will insult both the author of the article and anyone who shows even the slightest modicum of appreciation for it. The Hater, strangely enough, tends to be quite literate, if impervious to reason, operating on some kind of twisted personal logic that bears no relation to that employed by anyone else. The Hater is pathologically stubborn and will NEVER admit that they might possibly be even slightly wrong in any way.

4) Hater-Haters

The Hater's arrival will herald an entire mess of comments from Hater-Haters. The H-H's favourite weapon is self-righteousness and a sense of 'holier-than-thou'ness. The H-H's defence mechanism upon being insulted by the Hater (or any of his minions, as below) is to make a tactical withdrawal under the guise of injured innocence before striking back in a furious splurge of hurt feelings and spite. However, they are as yet only the foot-soldiers, and not capable of mounting much resistance.

5) Mini-Haters

Much in the same way that any Dark Lord worth his salt will have an army of base minions, in the Hater's wake will come a wave of Mini-Haters. It is possible that one or two Minis may crop up before the advent of the Hater, but they only ever show up in force after the Hater has arrived, as though protected by the Hater's shield of relative intellect. M-Hs are the antagonistic equivalent of Sycophants and rarely contribute anything more meaningful than a volley of badly-spelled swearwords and strangely-constructed insults that probably made sense in the M-H's head before they were typed (if indeed any cogitation occurred at all).

6) Voices of Reason

When it seems as though the Hater-Haters are about to be overwhelmed, the Appreciaters bring out the first of their big guns: the Voices of Reason. These Commenters are absolutely convinced that their superior intellect and calm demeanour will win the day via carefully-structured arguments built mainly from basic logic and common sense. Unfortunately, however sensible a Voice of Reason may be, they always neglect one important fact: the Hater simply wades through reason like a big thing that walks through something without caring about the something that it's walking through. If you can come up with a metaphor for that, you're a better man than I, Gungadin.

7) Linkers/Quoters

Either very lazy or very unimaginative, L/Qs will never resort to writing more than a paragraph of their own words: instead what they will do, without fail, is provide a link to some site or a quote from some source that they believe says all that needs to be said. They will often accompany said link or quote with a single smug sentence that says something annoyingly glib like ''Nuff said.' or 'In conclusion: you're wrong.' This kind of Commenter is nauseatingly common.

8) Snipers

Commenters whose belief in their own comedic prowess oft outstrips by far their ability to coherently argue. They are a study in the logical fallacy of ad hominem - namely, attacking the person rather than the argument - whose main function is to demoralise the enemy as much as possible, often whilst hiding behind the arguments of other, more sophisticated Commenters on their side, be they Appreciaters or Haters. Snipers tend to pick off the lesser targets in a bid not to attract too much attention.

9) Piss-Takers

Commenters who masquerade under the banner of the opposite side. Their function is of course satirical, aiming to caricature the opposition and thus demonstrate by logical extension how ridiculous they are, but unless a P-T goes incredibly over-the-top it can be difficult to discern their allegiance thanks to the sensitivity-stripping qualities of the text-based Internet, and thus Piss-Takers are sometimes targeted by their own side - especially by the lesser ranks who are too stupid to understand satire.

10) Mediators

Commenters who attempt to bring the two sides together or otherwise defuse the tension. Extremely rare. In fact, I fear I may be the only one. When I'm in a good mood.

(Brought to you by the awesome goodness of StumbleUpon.)

Today, my dear brethren (and sistren... in fact, just sistren so far), I bring to you two Truly Awesome Things, one of them following from the other. I assure you that they are both full of Win, and if I can get enough people behind me, they shall indeed be promoted to Epick Win. (I like to spell it with a 'k' on the end 'cuz it looks gnarly.)

The first Truly Awesome Thing is StumbleUpon. If you haven't heard of it yet, I'm not surprised. (What, did you think I was gonna brand you a caveman/woman/person simply for not knowing about this piece of obscure yet still Truly Awesome technology? Gimme a break: I'm not that arrogant. I'm more arrogant.) Either way, go to www.stumbleupon.com and check out what all the fuss is about. If you download the SU bar, I guarantee you many a happy hour of browsing cool and interesting websites.

The second Truly Awesome Thing demonstrates just how awesome StumbleUpon, and by extension the Internet, both are. I came across a particular site, and on it is a particular video. I shall display both below, because I find them both so stunningly awesome and am proud to have such a video on my 'blog.

That Truly Awesome Website Address In Full
http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2002/WhyCantIOwnACanadian_10-02.html

That Truly Awesome West Wing Excerpt in Full

Enjoy. ^-^

WHY does a certain kind of person (you know who you are!) more often than not reply to the perceived insult of a much-loved activity with the question 'Well, can you do it?', just so they can say 'Then shut up.' when you inevitably reply that you can't?!

This is stupid. The fact that something is difficult does not make it automatically worth doing. Hacking one's own head off with a plastic ruler is difficult, but that doesn't make it worth doing!

Gah. I don't know why I got so angry. Perhaps it's a by-product of the euphoric elation one receives as a result of posting twice on the same day (yeah, right). The only reason I really put up this post was because I'd had the thought of this argument earlier whilst playing Guitar Hero: Metallica (yes, they have paid me to plug for them) and subsequently thought that it was pretty good and that I should write it down before I forgot about it.

I promptly forgot about it. Several hours later whilst trawling through my earlier 'blog entries (because I was bored beyond... well, going to bed, at any rate) I remembered the argument and decided to put it up as a Personal Message on my Windows Live Messenger. However, there is a character-limit to it and I couldn't think of any suitably abbreviated form in which I could write the argument there, so instead I decided to post it on my LiveJournal 'blog.

Wow. Writing about why I wrote it took more writing than actually writing it. Ciao, folks. ^-^

P.S. If you see a banner advert for the game mentioned in the post or any paraphernalia thereto related, please let me know. It shall be final and definitive proof that the corporations are spying on me. And you, too. What, did you think that guy following you around all day was just coincidence? Sure, suuuure he's your uncle. I believe you. Now go and play in the garden. No you can't have cake. That's for me.

P. P. S. Note to self: write shorter Post-Scripts so you can remember what it is you intended to write for the Post-Post-Script. OOOH YEAH - as much as I hate asking you guys to take even a bit more of a slice outta your precious personal time (I'm sure you've got your hands full with all kindsa stuff right now - sorting out the walruses, taking in the gravity, throwing up the wall - I understand), I would very much appreciate it if you'd actually bother to COMMENT on one or two of my posts. Or three. The more you comment on, the less of a chance there is that I'll send a grue after you. You do not want a grue on your tail. Seriously. (Although personally I would be more worried about the fact that I had a tail.)

Imagine that you are in a competely empty space - a universe yet to be created, which has no end, no boundaries, nothing in it but you.

Let us also say that you do not even have your own form - that nothing exists in this void save your own consciousness, existing at some point in this timeless, spaceless universe.

In addition, posit that you have complete power over said universe - godlike omnipotence with which you may enforce your will, even should it be to create something from nothing.

Absolute freedom, total and complete.

What is the first thing you'd do?

You could move anywhere you liked in this universe - although of course the word 'move' is quite without meaning in a universe which is a completely blank canvas. You wouldn't even have to go from point A through point B to get to point C: you'd already be there. All points are one: one point is all.

Would you create something? An anchor point in the blankness, perhaps? A single point somewhere in the void which you would designate its centre. That point would be the point of origin, from where both space and time begin - 0, 0, 0, 0.

But then you would no longer have complete freedom. Everywhere you travelled in this suddenly centred void would merely be a point in reference to the centre you created.

Would you inflate this centrepoint - make it larger, spherical, give yourself legs with which to stand, give the sphere gravity to allow you to stand on it, make it larger still, fill it with things you imagine out of nothing to fulfill your needs, make living things to amuse you as they grow, pass the time filling your world with things that serve no functional purpose but seem beautiful to you...?

Would you simply replicate the world in which you were born, with all its many imperfections?

Would you imprison yourself, merely so you could relate to your bars and define yourself by your cell?

Would you give yourself walls to defy infinity and claim that you have a form; a shape...

...a thing which you can call your self?

I just felt like writing something, but I wasn't exactly sure what. So, I guess I could start with a thought I was having. It's do with the fact that it's often my more emotive or personal posts that get comments. My more academic ones often pass under the radar. So, to make this fun, I will now include a representation of a kitten.
There. Hopefully that will increase the amount of comments. (Her name's Jishino, in case you're interested. Anyone who can figure out why gets a cybercookie.)

Another thing I wanted to write about is my recent fascination with anime. Being half-Japanese, I have always been at least slightly interested in this field, but recently something I'm not entirely sure of (probably extreme boredom) has pushed me to watch a string of anime-series.

It started off a while ago with Avatar: The Last Airbender. Now, now - I know what you're going to say. ...Oh. Well, I thought I knew what you were gonna say. Anyway - Avatar is criticised by hardcore anime-fans (referred to from hereon in as 'otaku's, a Japanese word meaning, more or less, 'nerd', which has found meaning in English as anyone with detailed knowledge of anime and/or manga) as not actually being anime, and I can see where they're coming from. One of my otaku friends dislikes Avatar, purportedly because of said fact.

...Aaaand now that I've used the term otaku, I have to post this YouTube video, for obvious reasons. (I've only just worked out how to post audiovisual material so please don't hit me.)

Seriously - MC Frontalot rocks your socks. Or he will, as soon as you listen to his work. That is, if you're a nerd. If you're not, you'll probably just think I'm incredibly sad. Or you might already.

Alright, back to the topic. So, why do I love Avatar? Weeell, it actually started off with a crush on the lead female, Katara. As in, a fictional character. A certain reader (you know who you are) will probably make a disparaging remark at this point.

Anyways, that's beside the point. After that came, oddly enough, Azumangah Daioh. I came across it one extremely boring evening whilst searching YouTube for mudkips (don't ask), the link between them being AMV Hell and its various movies. Said anime is rather girly, one has to admit, but then I've never really been one for machoness. Dear mater says I have a 'lollita complex', which is very possibly true. If you're scratching your head at this point, you can probably find it somewhere on Wikipedia. (Ah, how I love Wikipedia.)

After that came The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I felt obliged to watch it because it had been so thoroughly endorsed by one of my otaku friends (no, not that one - another one) after I mentioned that I'd just finished Azumangah and needed a new anime. Seriously, it's like a drugs habit - if you don't have an anime you can fall back on and watch at any time you start to feel badly jittery.

Suzumiya was good enough to keep me entertained for perhaps two weeks or so, if that (only thirteen episodes? HA!), but I felt that the absolute best was Episode 12. It was the most 'real' episode of them all, and knocked me into a profound reverie for most of dinner. It takes quite a bit to do that - dinner is awesome!

I suppose it was only natural that, after those previous two, I should then progress onto Lucky Star - an anime that makes plenty of references to Suzumiya, as well as Keroro Gunsou (Sergeant Frog, to you English types, which I have seen quite a bit of) and many others that I haven't seen.

...

...

...-Sorry, I forgot I was writing a 'blog. Uh... yeah. Anyways, I just wanted to alert everyone to the fact that I have now finished watching Lucky Star and am in need of a new series to rely on.

The reason I got distracted for so long was this AWESOME website:

http://onceuponawin.com

I cannot possibly overstate how excellent said website is.

Anyways - toodles, chaps and chappettes.

As an author, I've often wondered about what it is exactly that makes a character compelling; what it is that makes us empathise with a character and want to follow every last one of their adventures. Well, I think I've finally ascertained that final magic ingredient that makes a character leap from just good to excellent, and you, you lucky few, are gunna be the first to find out what it is.

However, before I can start explaining that, I need to lay some groundwork (as usual). After all, this is a complicated theorem and I'm not gunna be able to explain it right off the bat. First I need to get a bat, which requires going to the store to get it, and the store's a looong way away so first I have to get in the car and DRIVE there, which requires getting a driving license and (I think you get the picture)

Sooo, groundwork. As followers of my work may (or may not) know, I am an ardent fan of the poet Keats, and as such am familiar with several of his casual letters. He had several theories about the formation of that vast and complex being, the human, one of which was the 'Vale of Soul-Making', as he referred to it. Let's see if I can find the original quotation... *pulls out book*

-HALF AN HOUR LATER-

...WHA-? Ooooh... sorry. Um. Yeah. Ya see, thing is, whenever I start reading any of Keats's stuff, I can't help but continue on with it. Well, I have at least GOT a quotation I can use: Keats sometimes gets rather confused in his letters, which is extraordinary considering he's habitually a verse-poet. Lessee here... oh yes: 'Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where a heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!' (GAWD but he had some weird ideas about capitalisation...)

Anyway: this is the central idea upon which my thesis is based. Keats's philosophising led him to believe (or, so I interpret) that we all come into this world like blank sheets of paper. Sure, there is something there which could be said to be a soul, but it is as yet empty, and therefore not properly a Soul (or Intelligence; as I said he gets rather confused at times) as Keats would have had it. Therefore, it needs to be filled up with something before it can be said to be a proper human soul.

But what with? Well, Keats was part of the Romantic movement, and I'm something of a romantic too, so we're both in agreement on this one: to come to terms with a reality in which abstract concepts cannot possibly exist, one must learn that they cannot through a process of suffering. Basically, learning from mistakes - but this is not an intellectual process, it must be stressed. The mind is a thing of intelligence - the soul (or the Heart: Keats REALLY needed to get all that sorted out before writing about it) is a thing of emotion.

To grow as a person, one must suffer. It is inevitable. As anyone who has watched Little Miss Sunshine will know, the French writer Proust once said that, near the end of his life, he looked back on his whole life and decided that only the bits he'd suffered had actually been at all useful to his art. Obviously you need to be happy, but if you're not depressed every now and then you're never going to grow. Suffering is a sign that you're up against something that you find difficult to deal with, and you're never going to develop unless you have to deal with a challenge - it stands to sense.

Obviously it would be rather difficult for us to study this in reality - however, that's not what I'm talking about. If you scroll back up the page to the beginning of this post (man, that seems like such a long time ago) you will recall that I am in fact talking about how this applies to fictional characters, so I shall set about applying this with my usual vim and viguour, and with the aid of two characters that happen to be particular favourites of mine.

First off - Doctor Johannes Faustus, as portrayed in Chrisopher 'Kit' Marlowe's masterpiece Doctor Faustus. Anyone with intimate knowledge of the play (i.e.: anyone in my English Literature class who has actually DONE THE WORK) will know that Faustus begins the play with high aspirations: he wants to learn about the universe so he can impress people by telling them fancy stuff and have rule o'er all the elements and bladdah blee, bladdah bloo. However, during Acts 3 and 4 he kinda loses his trail a bit and, instead of all the high-minded stuff he said he'd do, basically goes on a grand tour of the world to play base tricks on people and cheat them out of various things in a very petty way.

Now, you might ask, what is there about this character that could possibly recommend itself to me? Well, I'll tell you. During the fifth and final Act, Faustus's debauchery finally catches up with him: the deal he made with Satan is finally up, and after twenty-four years of cavorting about pointedly not doing the things he said he would, he must now render up his soul. This, ladies and gentlemen, is where the true beauty of both the play and this character lies - when Faustus is reduced a fear-stricken (but still oddly articulate) wreck, and desperately tries to worm his way out of having to pay the ultimate price of ETERNAL DAMNATION (!!!) for his sins. It was at this moment that a merely good play became, for me, truly great.

The odd thing is, I went for quite a while thinking that the middle acts were crap. The fourth Act is almost definitely penned by some inferior hand (save for that beautiful soliloquy in Scene Um), and I thought that the middle Acts merely brought down the tone of what was otherwise a quite excellent play. HowEVAH (I have GOT to stop using that word), in time I came to realise that this was in fact a contributory factor to the play. If Faustus was merely a superhuman character with no perceivable faults, we wouldn't empathise with him nearly as much when his inevitable end finally comes.

And that's kinda the point. A perfect character with no flaws (or, on the other hand, a completely flawed character with nothing noble about them) just is not realistic. We all like to see our heroes fall - not permanently, of course, otherwise they won't be able to get back up and keep coming back every week for another thrilling episode, but nonetheless we like to see our heroes challenged by a darker, altogether more seamy side. To illustrate this point, I will refer to the second character I promised you. What, you hadn't forgotten about her, had you?

Namely, Nausicaa, of Hayo Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. (Note: there's meant to be a little umlaut over the top of the last 'a' of her name, and also over the first letter of 'umlaut', but I have no idea how to do those things on here. Curse you, LJ!) Trust me: the 'of the' bits sound a lot better in the original Japanese (Kaze no Tani no Naushika, if you're wondering). Why do I bring her up? Weeerll, (I keep using that rhetorical device!) she undergoes a similarly character-shaking/-shaping experience in which she faces her darker side.

Ya see, her father is murdered by enemy soldiers, and when she arrives on the scene and sees him lying dead, she immediately FLIPS out and murders all the soldiers responsible. We might not think of this as such a big deal if Nausicaa were a guy, but it's exactly because she's a sweet nature-loving tree-hugging whatchamacallit that it's so shocking. (I mean, seriously. Her hair rises like an angry cat's.) This is completed by a scene soon after in which she confesses to her mentor Yupa that she's afraid of her anger and doesn't want to kill anymore. If I had to name a particular point in the movie (yes, I know it's originally a manga, but *I* have only seen the anime-movie) in which I felt a connection to Nausicaa, it would be in that scene.

And that's the point, really. Characters that are mostly noble and yet still are troubled by character traits normally belonging to evil characters seem somehow more real, and therefore make us much more likely to identify with them. Most heroes/heroines are far too one-dimensional, in that they're just good in the beginning, good during the middle and good during the end. Where's the development? Where's the conflict? Where's the ANGST?

This is a device I intend to use in future character-creation, so if you find yourself absolutely adoring any of the characters in my novels-yet-to-be, this is probably why. Oh - and yes, you can use this for yourself, if you absolutely MUST. But I'm still gunna be more famous than you. And with more money. So there.

Wow. Will you look at that. I've actually updated within a millenium of the previous post.

Hello me-fans. I just thought I'd like to add a little addendum to my post of... two days ago, was it? I can't be sure. Time is merely a matter of numbers to me, and I've never been all that good at maths...

For my Film Studies course (which I have now finished, BTW - done the exams an' everything) I was one of an unlucky number who had to study the self-indulgent sentiment-fests that are Richard Curtis' most famous works, namely: Notting Hill, About a Boy and Love Actually. Never have I seen more pathetically fluffy, rom-commy, chick-flicky drivel.

Naw, I kid. I enjoyed Love Actually immensely. The other two films were crap, but anything with Keira Knightley in it gets my thumbs-up every time. There may be those that say she's a useless actress and that may be so - that's not why I'm infatuated at her. But that's beside the point. (I may write another 'blog later chronicling my Keira-centred fantasies, but for now, the show must go on.)

No, I haven't digressed. The reason I bring up said films is because studying them in my Film Studies AS Level course gave me a unique vantage-point on the messages they send, namely: people are what matter. Upper-middle class people with jobs and no real financial problems, to be sure, but still people. Oh - and don't forget the token eccentric. She must wear strange woolen garments that looked like they've been knitted by a blind monk in Nepal and have hair that looks as though it has been styled by that selfsame monk.

Basically, the conclusion of each movie (or 'closure', as we Film Studies types call it) features the protagonist happily surrounded by friends and family and everyone's in love with each other and it's all so wonderfully wonderful that you could just hit Curtis with a brick. If you're the type to do that. Personally I'm not, but if you are please send me details of what it was like once you have.

(DISCLAIMER: IN NO WAY DOES THE AUTHOR OF THIS 'BLOG ENDORSE THE HITTING OF RICHARD CURTIS IN THE FACE WITH A LARGE, AERODYNAMICALLY-SHAPED CINDERBLOCK. THIS 'BLOG IS ENTIRELY FOR PURPOSES OF ENTERTAINMENT AND DOES NOT CONDONE VIOLENCE OF ANY SORT, ESPECIALLY THAT LEVELLED AT RICHARD CURTIS. WITH OR WITHOUT BRICKS.)

To continue: everyone that's good in Curtis films is faithful to their friends and family and always helps out and has a job and is basically a pillar of the community and contributor to society in every way short of actually achieving universal enlightment and becoming a supreme being in order to better take care of loved ones. Anyone who does anything bad (or doesn't do anything good, which is the same thing in a Curtis film) comes to regret it and comes clean by the end of the film, so that they can then be included in the big happy ending. (Aside from the American character Sarah in Love Actually, oddly enough. In fact, the portrayal of Americans in both Love Actually and Notting Hill is perfectly abhorrent. Not in About a Boy, thankfully - they're not even in that one.)

I'd like to be able to refute completely and utterly that what the blinkered Richard Curtis says is true, but I'm afraid it is - for me, in any case. I need people to need me. It's a fundamental requirement of my - mind? Body? Soul? I have no idea, but I need them.

I came up with a reason why this might be so. Whenever I'm alone, I am inevitably reduced to the state of playing games on my XBox or woefully graphics-inadequate computer. Naturally, spending so long playing games means that I often finish them within days of having bought them.

Whilst trawling through the various post-apocalyptic settings of Fallout 3 (a superlative game, if you're interested) I realised that I had in fact explored every corner of the game (at least, every corner of the game that doesn't lose my incredibly minute attention span). And then, as you do, I became bored with the game. And yet I felt compelled to keep playing. Why? Because I had no-one else to talk to.

And that is pretty much the long and the short of it. A game will never change. You can mod it, you can get the sequels, you can even hack the script and rewrite it, but ultimately that's what you (or some other human) is doing to it. Being by yourself means exploring the fullest depth of the inanimate objects around you (if you're curious comme moi), which inevitably means you must come to an end.

People never come to an end. I mean, they die, sure, but if there were no limit imposed upon the human lifespan, we would forever continue to change. And that's why I need people. They are endlessly entertaining. No matter how much you play the game (converse), there will always be something new lurking around the corner. You can never possibly know everything about a person, and that's why I find them so fascinating.

In my darker moments, I think - no, I know that happiness is merely the denial of every piece of bullshit that goes on in this world. As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss. Immersing myself in someone else's problems somehow makes it seem a bit better...

Okay. So, it's been an incredibly long time since my last post. In fact, it's been sooooo long that, if I were to make an apologetic gesture which would be appropriate for the length of time it's taken me to update, I'd probably have to gut myself with a fishfork. That being the case, I think it would be best to leave the apology out this time.

If I updated more often, you would have about a month ago been the receiver of the joyful news that I have FINISHED ALL MY COURSEWORK and handed it in, more or less on time. However, now that's out of the way, it seems that the worry-centres of my mind have found something else to fixate on.

Namely, my loneliness. So far, I have racked up a total of two failed relationships. Not many, I know, but it's still enough ammunition to feed my irrational insecurities. It means a number of things: that I suck at getting together with girls, that I suck at picking the right ones, that I suck at maintaining relationships and that I suck at being with the girls I actually want to be with and think I would have a chance with.

Now I know what you're thinking: 'Oh my GOD, the previously witty, intelligent, insightful and extremely arrogant writer of this blog has now descended to spouting self-pitying bullshit.' Well, you're right. But, as I said earlier, it is my default nature to be self-pitying: because I have now finished my coursework, I need something else to be depressed about. And if the title of the post didn't give you any hints, you seriously need to work on that perspicacity of yours.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem. Lots of people are lonely all over the world, and they manage to deal with it, raight? Well, maybe not - you've also got all sorts of loonies in the world who tee off at people exactly because they're lonely. I'm willing to bet that if some kind girl had taken it upon herself to pay some attention to Seung Hui-Cho (look him up), he wouldn't have ended up doing what he did. Or maybe he would have ended up violating her. I don't know.

The point is, I'm not going to get all psycho over this, so don't worry. It's not that bad. To tell the truth, the mere fact that I'm writing this down means I am therefore much less likely to do something violent as a result. However, I never would anyway. I'm simply not the kind of person who slashes others up - or even myself, for that matter. There are two principle reasons for this: 1) I think human life is too precious to waste in that way and 2) I'm just far, far too lazy.

Still, the point remains. In fact, it kinda scares me because... well, I haven't told anyone this, and I have to keep typing continuously so my brain doesn't kick in and stop my fingers from pouring out what is churning in my heart, but every single girl at College reminds me how lonely I am, and WOE BETIDE if a girl shows ANY kind of affection towards me - even unthinkingly - for I shall then have a crush on said girl FOR EVER.

As you've probably guessed, I have as a result crushes on pretty much every girl at College that I know. But wait - it gets worse. This is... kinda hard for me to say. But I've got to say it. If I don't say it to the Internet I might never be able to say it to any one person. I've got to get this off my chest even if nobody ever reads this.

Whenever I sit next to or near a girl (not in class, BTW: I'm always professional when it counts) I always get the urge to touch them; an urge I normally manage to restrain. Normally. It's not even sexual contact I desire: even just touching them on the skin of the arm gratifies me. Yes, yes - I am extremely creepy and sick in the head. Make your comment and get it over with already.

Whether this is a perversion unique to me or a desire all males share, I can't be sure. I do, however, know that I find it rather repugnant, since it is an invasion of privacy and, if they knew why I was so innocently poking them and hugging them, would be sexual harrassment as well.

There. I've got it down on paper... or webspace. Whatever it's called, I've got it down on it.

Now... please don't think I'm weird... or do, but please have the courtesy to at least pretend that you don't when writing your comment...

Sorry it's been so long blah terribly sorry blee. I need to get these thoughts down pronto an' I don't got no time for proper grammar, darnit!

Okay, so what was it I needed to get down? Oh yes: the theory of how I think. It goes something like this.

As you know, I have had coursework. You may be surprising to learn that I still have coursework, unless of course you're one of my tutors. Just on the complete offchance that Mr Terry Cook reads this: why oh why did you have to put your faith in me?

In any case, I think I may have finally worked out exactly why it is that I find it so difficult to buckle down to coursework. The reason? Emotion. Namely, I have too much of it. I've devoted myself so entirely to feeling lately that, when I have to do something which requires a lack thereof, it has become harder to do... and guess which task in particular requires that lack? That's right - College work.

You see, all my emotions are tangled up together in one huge ball of emotion-yarn. I've tried balancing out my emotions and making myself happy and forcing myself to feel productive and all that crud, but the thing is it don't work. All the emotions are tied together, 'cuz to untangle that big ball o' yarn would mean untangling me, which I don't plan on doing anytime soon.

Normally this isn't a problem 'cuz I'm very self-confident (yah right), but when it comes to coursework I have a whole boatload of fear (read: GUILT) attached to it. Why's that? Because I've put it off so long. I think you can see how it's becoming a vicious circle, huh?

However, all hope is not lost. Granted, I spent the last few days of College this last term in relative Hell (it wasn't actual Hell or even all that bad Hell - it was just Hell from where I happened to be at the time), but now that the holidays have come I'm using all my time away from my tutors (read: GUILT-TRIP INDUCERS) to try and foster a positive attitude and...

Wait. I said that doesn't work, didn't I? Damn, I need to stop writing these things at unearthly hours of the morning... oh yes! Yes, here's the scheme: today, I managed to get quite a bit of coursework done. Admittedly I didn't finish any today and didn't reach the target I set myself because it turned out that the work I'd done before was absolute crap and needed to be redone (it's difficult being a perfectionist), but I got it to a point where I could springboard into finishing it after another good day's work. And how?

Well, it's all thanks to my saviour in more ways that one: Hayao Miyazaki, head of Studio Ghibli (a producer I'm doing my Media coursework on, BTW). You see, I could feel myself starting to slide down that slippery slope of paralysing fear once more (seriously, it's like mind-ice or something), so I quickly put something on to distract myself. When I realised that I couldn't actually wear the DVD, I decided to put it on - sorry, in the TV instead. It was Grave of the Fireflies. I'd bought it a while ago in my quest to watch every single Ghibli feature ever made, and guess what? Halfway through, I felt good enough to return to my work and did a good chunk of it.

It worked for a very simple reason. Those who know of classical tragedy and catharsis and all that jazz will be familiar with the idea of purging one's emotions through expression of fear and pity for some perceived character. Well, Grave of the Fireflies did just that - and quite beautifully, I might add. I was moved to my core. Instead of balancing my ball of emotion-yarn, it threw the whole lot out the window so I could work with a mind blissfully emptied of all other things. It was like waking up whilst still awake.

The only problem is, emotions don't stop being generated by my busy little mind just because I've purged them once. A couple of hours afterwards I was all guilted-up again, so I watched the rest of Fireflies and, once more, it worked like a charm. But, inevitably, the same thing happened, and this time I had no more Fireflies left to watch. I'm afraid I'm gonna haveta root through the rest o' ma DVDs to find some tragic-type stuff... real tearjerker things, you know...

Oh - and if I never manage to post again, it's probably because Mr Cook has murdered me in a fit of apoplectic 'WTF is WRONG with you?!' 'not-finishing-coursework' rage. (Seriously. He scary. He don't even have to shout to be scary. Imagine what he must be like when he does shout. O.O)

I've just been struck by a particularly striking (DUH) similarity betwixt two fictional creations from two of my favourite fictional universes. They are, in case you were wondering, the Space Marines (Warhammer 40,000) and the Brotherhood of Steel (the Fallout series).

I'm sure it's a comparison that has been drawn by others before me. After all, what with the huge suits of armour, the high-tech weaponry and the strict code of honour and discipline, it's only inevitable that people might, in the same way that I did, sit there for a few hours playing Fallout 3 before the penny finally drops, initiating a splintering crash.

I just find it fascinating (I find a lot of things fascinating, but not always in italics) that this kind of thing has been replicated in popular culture. Both the Marines and the BoS are of course modelled after the chivalric knights of yore - just updated for the technological requirements of a dystopian future.
 
A touch of romanticism, perhaps? More than likely, I'd say. I know for a fact that I would relish the chance to march around in bulky armour dispensing justice with a huge sword. There's just something about the male mindset (and the lesbian mindset, I don't know? XP) that naturally inclines towards armour and swords - possibly stored in the same part of the brain that houses a desire to drive sports-cars and operate heavy machinery.

So, the only question left to be asked is of course which is more badass; the Marines or the BoS? Weeell, I'm inclined to throw my weight behind the Space Marines. Why, you ask?

...Actually, it's just hit me that it's nearly 1 in the morning here. I should probably get some sleep. I can list the reasons why the Space Marines kick the Brotherhood's butts 10 times outta 10, so yah.

Signing off...