The Wolves of the Calla

I went down to a second hand bookstore that allows you to bring in your old books and they give you credit which you can then use in the store. I saw a copy of The Wolves of the Calla which I just had to get at any cost. After begging and threatening to burst into tears (because my credit wasn't enough) the nice girl at the rigster said I can take it. I'm downright chuffed!

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

Old School Gaming Nostalgia

My goodbuddies are six feet deep into the PlayStation emulation scene (Lex Luth is deep into all sorts of emulation when it comes to video games...) and they got Tekken 3 for me which I remember playing in shady shops where even shadier people would stand around the arcade machines smoking what I presume were cigarettes, waiting to prey on some young victim to put in his hard-earned money (by which I really mean his mother's hard-earned money) into the machine so they can challenge him and kick his behind with Paul (everyone plays with Paul!). With some practice I became fairly good (with Hwoarang I might add) and I could hold my own against those buggers but then they'd simply intimidate me by flashing a knife and telling me to stop pushing buttons. Naturally I'd throw the match and walk away with what little dignity I had left.

A friend of a friend was playing Tekken 3 last night and my goodness! He still remembers all those peoples' combos. He totally owned the scene and now I'm determined to practice until I utterly defeat him! Mwahahaha, mwahahaha, mwahahaha ... *cough, cough*.

P.S. Yoshimitsu reminds me of Mayuri Kurotsuchi from Bleach....

The Kindness of Strangers

It's dead refreshing to meet people who show simple kindness to other people. I refer to such individuals as Happy People (not very imaginative am I) because they always seem to be in a state of bliss and even when they are feeling blue they manage to muster a radiant smile. What I find interesting is that the majority of these Happy People that I run into are women, most men I run into are a rather dull bunch who seem to have nothing interesting happening in their lives. Don't get me wrong here, there are many jovial dudes on the planet and many girls who are puddleglums but it seems that girls are generally (my mom says generalising is bad!) happier. Most of the girls I attend class with are jovial people with a wide range of interests such as learning new languages and travelling (many of them have been to the USA, Europe and one girl went to Israel last year). The guys I meet on campus all seem to have one thing in common; they all are primarily interested in girls. If they happen to do something vaguely interesting like playing tennis with golf sticks it's with the aim of attracting girls. I love girls and some of them are even ridiculously attractive but it's pretty cool doing something other than chasing after them sometimes (says the single guy). That little observation aside, I notice that the puddlglums of this world are always getting irritated by people who are happier than they are because they are dead focused on spreading the glumness. They tend to be of the opinion that happy people are not aware of reality. I'm aware that the world we live in is scary and I'm not going to add to that by being glum. To all the people out there that are extending a kind hand to others, much love.

P.S. Be kind to other people and you will be happier!

P.P.S. Check these people out http://www.sohp.com/

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. - John Milton

The Blogosphere

I've been hearing from quite a number of sour pusses about the nature of blogging lately and most of these people are of the view that blogging is stupid because people are narcissistic so they'll write about what they had for breakfast and how they think some random person is hot. The term web log suggests, to me at least, an electronic diary/journal that is published on the interwebs for all to see and thus if you find watching paint dry fascinating and absolutely have to rave about it I don't see why you shouldn't. No one is forced to read your blog, it's like going to the movies where you choose what you want to watch. Thus if you don't like blogs stop reading them and then going all over the show whining about it you puddleglum!

Of Madness and Prince Caspian

I'm very sad to see that the madness that is xenophobia continues and it has spread to other areas of SA, most notably to where I live. Pockets of people in my neighbourhood were trying to start something yesterday but the police quickly squashed it. Most of the shops were closed and people holed up in their houses. I was outside yesterday afternoon and it was eerily quiet in the street. I always asked myself how the Rwandan Genocide just happened over night, how does violence just erupt on such a massive scale? Well I think I'm seeing evidence of this now. This whole saga just makes me want to projectile vomit on the perpetrators.

Moving on to a brighter topic ^_^

The Prince Caspian movie is being released on the 6th of June and in preparation I re-read the book yesterday and the same mob mentality as we have in SA is featured in the book and the whole thing stems from people misunderstanding each other like the Old Narnians mistake Caspian as having the same intentions as Miraz because he is a Telmarine. All the nonsense aside I'm looking forward to how the Prince Caspian movie is going to turn out and with me writing exams it's probably the only 'fun' thing I'll be doing for some time. I've been running around mentioning Prince Caspian to all my non-literary friends and I suspect that most of them are irritated by me being so kiddish... that explains why no one replies to my text messages of late.

Hypocritical South Africa

South Africans are a rubbish bunch it seems. I was watching the news this morning and the xenophobic attacks in Alexandra are dominating headlines. South Africans living in Alexandra are blaming foreigners (mostly people from Zimbabwe) for the high crime rates and for apparently taking jobs that should be given to South Africans and thus they decided to form a mob to get rid of the foreigners by breaking into their homes and beating them up. These people are such hypocrites! Just a few weeks back racism (in South Africa racism is only noted when the perpetrator is white – talk about double standards) was making headlines and people were complaining all over the place that white people are looking down on them and treating them like sub-humans. Those same people then turn around and treat foreigners like sub-humans. One would think that people who know how it feels to be ostracized for some arbitrary reason like skin colour or funny toes would have the wisdom to not go and do the same thing to other people. I hate being one of those pessimistic people who sit around and say that the country is going to hell in a basket but with the realities of racism (by which I mean acts of racism perpetrated by all parties; black, white, coloured, Elvish, etc), the energy crisis and crime in the country the situation looks rather grim.

There are many people, though, who are being proactive in trying to eradicate injustices. To all those people who are fighting the good fight against these social ills please don't lose courage.

Respekt :)

Teach us . . .
To give and not to count the cost;
To fight and not heed the wounds;
To toil and not seek for rest . . .

-St. Ignatius Loyola

Goodbuddies-inc, t3h Book Club

I've gone and changed things with no one's consent again. The semi-existent book club known as Inklings Too is being changed to Goodbuddies-inc because I feel that the former name is restrictive to doing what the original Inklings society did. So what I'm doing is changing the name to Goodbuddies-inc because that's what the club is about; people getting together, talking about interesting reads and meeting weird and wonderful people. We're having meetings on the first Friday of every month from the 6th of June from 15:00 till we all pass out from virgin Cuba libres and can't find our way home. The meetings would take place at the Green Dragon Inn if we could afford a machine that allows for inter dimensional travel but since we can't we will have to settle for The Wee Pub, which happens to be situated in-between a comic book store and a secondhand book store for atmosphere. Anyone who wants to show up and talk about books, anime, comics, my toenails* and meet strangers who probably share similar interest and have weird ones of their own send me an e-mail (fr33charles@gmail.com). There's no official membership as such, we're just people who meet at a pub and talk about books and things – it's fun and it's somewhere to show off your amazing beer guzzling skills.


* This topic will only commence after a barrel or two of beer I suspect :)

Today my goodbuddy, Lex Luth, and I went to Melvlille to check out a bookstore and Outer Limits, a joint that sells comic books, and I found a jewel there (a silmaril as it were), a dusty looking copy of The Silmarillion that I hope no one buys before I get my paws on it. We also discovered this really awesome looking Irish pub called The Wee Pub which I think will be a brilliant venue for our Inklings Too book club meets.

Disclaimer: this is not an image of the actual pub but it's in the same style. Mad Hatter FTW!