4 AM in the Morning

Half my life
is in books' written pages
Lived and learned from fools and
from sages - Aerosmith, Dream On

It’s four in the morning and I can’t sleep, I’ve been tossing and turning for the last hour... I might as well wake up and do something useful with my life. I’ve considered getting dressed and walking to the nearby pub for a beer or two but people having been getting mugged in the morning on my street of late – and I’m too lazy to actually get dressed. I wonder if that huge bouncer guy at the pub would let me in wearing only boxers and a wrinkled T-shirt...? Probably not. There’s also the fact that I have to be up in a few hours to mark a pile of portfolios and a beer or two (which really means six) wouldn’t go a long way in setting the mood for that sort of thing.

Don’t worry too much about it though, I’ll just sit here for a bit and kick the ol’ bull with you guys. You hear about the clown who assaulted the chicken crossing the road? Well, neither did I, it must have been quite a scene I imagine. What was cool, though, was chatting to one of the crazier (which should be interpreted as meaning über cool in this here instance) tutors at the English Department. We were talking about some of the crazy things she’s done in her life and why she did them. She tells me that at some point she got tired of reading about things and wanted to experience them firsthand. If you want to know what falling in love is like, allow yourself to be swept off of your feet on that euphoric wave of gushy feelings instead of believing what some author (even if they’re really clever) tells you. People like me tend to read about things and then think we’ve done them and thus have the wrong idea about them, which is not good depending on how you’re looking at it. The moral of the story you ask? Books are really awesome but at some point you’ve got to add to the Great Tapestry by actually getting out there and living (whatever that means).

That's my mini-ramble for the morning :) Later.

Bats on the Brian

"'But I don't want to go among mad people' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad.'
'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,' said the Cat, 'Or you wouldn't have come here.'"
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventure in Wonderland

"You're in the real world now and the lunatics have taken over the Asylum."
- The Joker, Arkham Asylum, A Serious House on Serious Earth

Okay, I officially have Bats on the brain; the guy is taking over my life and I'm losing the little that remains of my sanity - assuming I was sane to begin with. I've probably played the Arkham Asylum video game demo hundreds of times and I'm rather sad that I won't be able to afford the full version when it comes out on PC later this month. I'll make a plan though, something like stealing my neighbour's cat, Mr Ginger, and selling him. The game is getting rave reviews on consoles and people are even comparing it to BioShock. I just love the Detective Mode and the silent take downs, there's nothing more satisfying than swinging from gargoyle to gargoyle and swooping down and taking out an enemy and then disappearing before his friends see you. You then sit and watch as the villains in the room get nervous wondering who's next and jumping at their own shadows.

I've also just finished reading the graphic novel, Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, which is surprisingly good - I'd go as far as to say that it's even better than The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. I just love how dark it is and how it messes with your mind. If you're into psychology you'll notice some of Carl Jung's archetypes in it and another cool aspect is how The Joker raises the question in the reader's mind: which is the real loony bin, the asylum or the real world? Amadeus Arkham converted his ancestral home into an asylum for the criminally insane because he thought that he could help insane people and thus achieve a triumph of reason over the irrational and other cool stuff like that.

Speaking of The Joker, he's always an interesting character to read about. In Arkham Asylum one of the psychiatrists notes that he cannot be properly defined as insane, she suspects that he is an example of someone with some kind of super-sanity: "A brilliant new modification of human perception. More suited to urban life at the end of the twentieth century." The novel has a very postmodern edge to it and asks whether identity is stable or not. In one scene of the novel one of the asylum's inmates suggests that they take off Bats' mask so they can see who he really is underneath. The Joker intervenes and says that the mask is Bats' real identity. So, you see there's a lot of fun to be had with this novel.

All-in-all, Arkham Asylum is an awesome graphic novel that caters for people interested in exploring the darker corners of the human mind.

Spring Has Sprung

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When [September] is scarcely here

- Emily Dickinson

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown —
Who ponders this tremendous scene —
This whole Experiment of Green —
As if it were his own!

- Emily Dickinson

Ah, 'tis the Spring, it has finally arrived and I feel so gosh-darn good because of it. Winter totally kills my skinny frame and I'm never all that sad to see the bugger go. Spring makes everyone think of the colour green (which is my favourite colour if you're interested in knowing that sort of thing about me) but it makes me think of yellow. For some reason everything that's yellow catches my eye in Spring: take the lemon tree outside my house for instance, it looks so much more beautiful in Spring.