Running Away From Home

"They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you." - Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse

Okay, so I've tried this whole running away thing before... around 12 years ago. I had it all planned out too. BMX? Check. Sandwhich wrapped in a polka dot handkerchief? Check. Grand departure speech to make my mother miss me and feel guilty about shouting at me? Check. Too bad my mother reacted in a rather laclustre manner to the whole business. All she said was, "Okay, see you around." WTF?! My grand plan of making her miss me and regret letting me go for the rest of her life failed when, a few hours into my adventure, I got hungry and pedalled home to get more food. Only to be greeted by my mom and her sarcastic remark: "So, you're back?" Now, at age 24, and with my life in the toilet I've got this running away business figured out. Don't even mess with me. My plan is rock solid. I'm running away to become homeless in Jeffreys Bay, like I had planned almost 3 years ago. I'm going to become a surfer/bum.

The Plan

In this life one needs a Plan, a towel, a tie and a hammer to make it big. If you’re lacking any of these tools be assured that your name will never go down in the annals of history as a person who was legend. The last three items on the list are easily acquired by anyone 21st Century-savvy enough to walk into a store or two and fork out some cash (which can be acquired through begging, stealing or by being employed). The Plan, though, is the nut-kicker. Without a solid Plan things will not fall into place for you.

Have you ever see Ocean’s Eleven? Yes? Good. George Clooney and his gang are people with a rock solid Plan in that movie. So much so that they went and carried out their Plan in two more movies. That’s the sort of thing you should be aiming for with your Plan.

Everyone wants to win at life and keep on winning till the day they die. Some people are so good at winning that they do so even after they’re dead. These are the people who have their names spoken in hushed tones of reverence. They are legend and had a solid Plan.

What constitutes a solid Plan though?

First things first: a list.

Ask yourself what you want in life and jot it down, every little thing you want. A lightsaber, super powers, Wonder Woman as your girlfriend, to become a surgeon, 2.5 kids, a bat mobile, jot everything down. If you’re going to make a list, you might as well make a proper list. It’s no use messing around.

With that out of the way you have to ask yourself how much effort you will need to invest into getting the ridiculous stuff on your list. This, alas, is the part where you have to be realistic. The best way to go about attaining your desires is to get hold of money, loads of it. The more money you can get the easier it will be to get people who are much more intelligent than you are to spend all their time finding a way to get you super powers.

The coolest way of making loads of money is to rob a bank and use that money to start a lucrative crime syndicate that allows you to have your grubby paws in every cookie jar on the shelf. It is recommended that you spend a few years on this part of the Plan. Also, try avoiding going to jail if you can. If you do get caught spend your time behind bars getting a business degree of some sort and doing push-ups. Use every step in the Plan as a learning experience. The only thing that can stop you is death – avoid it at all costs.

You will know you’ve made it to the top when you find yourself at the head of a boardroom table at the top floor of a skyscraper, surrounded by shady crime bosses clad in Armani suits and whose faces are wreathed in Cuban cigar smoke. Also, you’ll be donning a very snazzy tie and own several comfortable towels. It’s at this point in your life that you can get everything on your list by means of bribery and/or intimidation by way of hammer-wielding thugs (dressed as Thor if you like). Patience, that most admirable of virtues, would be a great addition to your repertoire at this stage (if the years of working on the Plan failed to bestow it upon you – you slow learner, you) but if you do get a little impatient once in a while torture a henchman or two – it’s such a great way to release all your pent-up emotions.

That, furry friends, is how you win at life.


Disclaimer: George Clooney gives this Plan his approval as being rock solid. Also, he is Batman with nipples. That is all. As you were.

There Be Dragons!

There be dragons. That is all. As you were.

The Nerds Have Taken Over

‘Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.’
- Bill Gates

Not that long ago, in a galaxy known as the Milky Way, on a planet called Earth by its inhabitants, I read the words ‘Save A Non-Geek Today’ in a computer magazine’s Editor’s note and was amused by the seemingly farfetched concept. Little did I know that those words foretold of the tech revolution that has silently swept over the world and converted the masses into geeks without them even realising it.

A short decade ago people who spent hours playing video games, reading fantasy, sci-fi and comic books were thought to be weird and had chairs thrown at them wherever they went by their intellectually inferior peers. These people went under ‘derogatory’ labels such as nerd and geek and were generally frowned upon for their silliness and were told that they should grow up.

What people don’t know, though, is that you can’t keep a nerd down for long because he will go back to his secret lair (because we all have one of those) and hatch a plan, so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel, to take over the world! Which is exactly what happened, the nerds took over the Hollywood machine and with it the world. The message being sent out to the masses was (and I guess still is), ‘Don’t fuck with us! We know how to build guns that shoot lasers.’

There was a time when you had only a handful of television shows and movies to pick from if you had a craving for super heroes, space or medieval settings, especially if you were an adult and wanted something fantastic yet mature. Movie studios were reluctant to touch such material because they feared that they couldn’t sell it to a wide enough audience. Steven Erikson, Canadian writer of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series of fantasy novels, spent nearly a decade trying to sell his script for Gardens of the Moon and nobody wanted it because it was too ambitious! He’d walk out of studio meetings with his friend, and co-writer, Ian C. Esslemont with words such as: ‘Try something . . . simpler. Something like everything else out there. Something less . . . ambitious.’ Studios didn’t want to invest in material that audiences might find to be too complicated, which makes sense to a large extent but in the process they were grossly underestimating the intellectual capacity of audiences. People wanted something that would challenge them, hence the success of ventures such as The Matrix. People wanted to go to the cinema and be sold a fantastic story that is intelligent enough to actually buy into. People wanted, as Erikson puts it, ‘sophisticated shit’.

This, my furry friends, is where we are at, the space-age of television, cinema and literature in general. Admittedly it’s not the high-tech world envisioned by great minds like Isaac Asimov, in which the human race has conquered the stars, but strides have been made. The nerds are in charge of a large slice of the Hollywood pie and, like the gay community, we (me not so much actually, which is an outright travesty!) have the buying power to sustain that hold. Since the release of movies like The Lord of the Rings, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, 300, Sin City and others beside sci-fi and fantasy have had a ubiquitous presence in the box-office. This year has been great! Seeing releases like Thor, Priest and the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean and there are still upcoming titles like The Green Lantern and Captain America.

The masses love these movies and don’t even notice that they’re buying into the worlds of the kids they made fun of in school. Nerds have taken over almost every aspect of people’s lives. Just take a look around you at the wide-eyed uninitiated masses toting laptops, Blackberries, PSPs, DSs and hanging out on Facebook and Twitter – slavish devotees of the wonder that is technology with the nerds at the head of the revolution.

Cupboard Person of the Week

“What could I possibly be suggesting? I mean, a young woman gets rescued by a dashing commander who lets her join his crew and then goes off to save the galaxy? How could she possibly develop any kind of interest in him?”
- Tali

There's something about a girl who is shy, has beautifully curved hips that sway in a mesmerising manner when she walks, wields a shotgun with deadly accuracy and has an affinity for spaceships that makes my heart flutter. The fact that she's an alien and you never get to see her face just makes her so much more mysterious.

I'm referring, of course, to the oh-so lovely Tali'Zorah nar Rayya from the Mass Effect series of video games. She is the sweetest mechanical genius that you could ever hope to meet... with the exception of Firefly's Kaylee perhaps.

I just couldn't help falling in love with her during my countless playthroughs of the two Mass Effect games. I want to marry her and have strange babies with her.

Cupboard Person of the Week

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

- Nelson Mandela (quoting from Marianne Williamson’s Return to Love)

So I've been watching The Pick Up Artist of late and I'm quite impressed with Mystery and his wings.

I read The Game some years back and liked the concept of the seduction community because meeting women is an important area of any heterosexual male's life. It's one of those areas that you can never be too good at, it takes constant work in every other area of one's life to stay afloat in this one.

I love the fact that pick up artists like Mystery have been able to build an industry for this area of people's live. The world already caters for almost every other social and sexual need that people have (in a tacky and crass manner for the most part)so why not this area? Many people I've spoken to concerning the topic of 'pick up' think it's beneath them somehow but the sad truth is that they are still unable to approach beautiful women in many social settings. It's something worth learning is all I'm saying.

Anyhoo, back to the issue at hand, Mystery and his awesomeness!!! The guy is a freakin' tall mofo and has a scarecrow presence that's quite lovable. He's like a bony teddybear. This guy leads the sort of life that most dudes just dream about as they drive to some office in the morning and that is what I think is the coolest thing about him, he just does what he wants and is, as he calls it, the 'tribal leader' in his circle of friends. Everyone in the world should be as out there as this dude :)

My First Proper Article!!!

Pulling a Rabbit Out of My Hat

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

- Nelson Mandela (quoting from Marianne Williamson’s Return to Love)

With Nelson Mandela Day having just passed I’ve decided to take advice from Boston Legal’s Denny Crane and pull a rabbit out of my hat in order to wow the jury, by which I mean you, dear Reader of a writer fascinated by the dust bunnies under his bed. My aims for this piece are rather ambitious, given that I don’t want it to be overlong. They are as follows: introducing myself (only in my second post, forgive the rudeness) and my column (Lost in the Cosmos), doing something good for change instead of whining, promoting the awesomeness of fantasy and science fiction while I’m at it and, lastly, having a great time doing it. That ladies and gentlemen is my rabbit, which I will now proceed to pull out of my woolly hat.

My name is Nyameko Charles Siboto and I am a bookworm.

When I tell people this they assume that I just read any book that comes my way and in this they are mistaken. I consider myself well-read but I’m actually not when you take into account how much reading material exists in the multiverse! Then again, no one is well-read under those conditions. I am a fan of mythology, horror, superhero graphic novels, fantasy and science fiction. It is in these genres that I am well-read and that I revel. I’m especially a fan of fantasy as I believe that the genre is steeped in great beauty, especially the works of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien. I study Literature at the University of Johannesburg and I work there as a tutor, a job that I love immensely (don’t tell my colleagues). People say that I’m an agreeable fellow for the most part but I have days during which I am full of nonsense and annoy people by repeatedly poking them. My dream is to own a beautiful house with a magical garden outside and inside it is filled with books, comfortable armchairs, roaring fireplaces and the pantries (many of these) are filled to bursting with scrumptious food. That is to say, I want to live like a hobbit.

Peter Kreeft, one of the beautiful minds of our time in my opinion, said something along the lines of living life like poetry in one of his talks. I’m sure I don’t know what he means but it’s one of those statements that haunt my thoughts and it refuses to be exorcised. I suspect that it has something to do with my fascination with great beauty, whether it is aesthetic (the beauty of a Helen of Troy) or spiritual (the beauty of a Mother Teresa) and I endeavour to make my life beautiful in all that I do.

That is Charles, to some extent, and it is my hope that we may get to know one another better as we explore the stars and a medieval past that never was together in this column. I would like to be the Virgil and Beatrice to your Dante as I lead you on this epic journey.

Take my hand and hold on tight, we are about to find ourselves Lost in the Cosmos.

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years,
how would men believe and adore, and persevere for
many generations the remembrance of the city of God!”

- Emerson

This quote says almost everything that I would like to achieve with this column. Lost in the Cosmos wants to show that fantasy and sci-fi are very much like religion and science, their goal is to speculate on the mysteries of the universe and to ask the great questions that have ever haunted human beings from the first time they emerged from their caves and looked upon the tall trees of the great forests, the vast oceans, the majestic sun, the moon and the fiery stars and stood there in fear and trembling, faced with the sense of the numinous. Fantasy and sci-fi show us that the universe, the little portion that we know of it, is howling with holy wildness and that we are part of something substantially bigger than we ordinarily think.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to it; a rabbit being pulled from a woolly hat!

We as South Africans have the bad tendency to whine about everything that goes wrong in this great country of ours instead of going out and doing something good to change the situation. I beg you to go out and to make the remainder of this year a Nelson Mandela one, in honour of the great man and also simply to do something for someone else. To paraphrase Emerson, to leave the world having made one life breathe easier is to have succeeded as a human being. So no matter how small your contribution, it does make a difference. I am going out to Cotlands to play with the children and read to them on my off days to do my little bit for change… and to prostitute fantasy and sci-fi to the younger generation, nerdy whore that I am. :)

Brain Explosion

Greetings Reader of a slightly OCD writer,

Say, is it just me or is there just too much happening on our beloved interwebs?

There was a time when I loved the internet more than I love my mother, I lived and breathed for it. But something has changed... it scares me now. Maybe it's because I've grown older and thus am not as charmed by it as I was in the past. It just seems so chaotic that all I can do at times is stare at my homepage on my computer screen for a few minutes before closing the browser, the thought of surfing being too daunting. Everything I do online seems rather pointless most of the time and it's messing with everything else in my life. I have a bunch of Facebook friends I don't know, I can't watch TV anymore, I don't read as much as I used to, my blogs don't get the attention they deserve and I just feel uncomfortable online.

Being on the internet is like being in a house and knowing there's a dirty sock in the vicinity and that you can't put it in the laundry basket because, like cutting off a hydra's head, every time you do two more pop up to take its place. This is the thing that makes me think I'm just being anal. Chaos, after all, is a part of the internet's charm. Not knowing what you could find as you surf is exciting, it makes one feel as though one had fallen headfirst down the rabbit hole.

OCD aside, the content available online is quite overwhelming and that can be a bad thing as it results in people spending valuable time trying to keep up with the latest thingymabob.

Maybe, then, being out of the loop's not such a bad thing when it's all said and done.

Take care when you're online, Reader, there be dragons of the vilest sort here.

A Bitter Truth or Two

'Like people, animals
will become frightened and likely
do whatever you say if you
whip them enough'

- Lemony Snicket

I like Lemony Snicket, he's not the sort of writer who attempts to make you feel that the world's a better place than it is. Instead he goes out of his way to paint you a picture of the world so bleak it makes your soul wither. I've been feeling down of late - emotional woes and whatnot - and I thought a trip down to Exclusive Books's winter sale with good friends would cheer me up. Spending money I don't have on books has a strangely pleasant effect on me, it makes the world seem like a happier place.

Little did I know that Mr Snicket would be waiting for me with a bitter truth or two concerning this wondrous thing some call life. It cheers me to know that I shouldn't expect more than horseradish from life and that crossing mountains in search of wisdom's a waste of time. His book, Horseradish's a non-self-help book that's charming in its approach to not improving your life in any way whatsoever. I love it :)

Sometimes bleak literature's good for the soul, paradoxically so. Thank you for ruining my life in order to make a little better Mr Snicket.

'Sometimes even in the most
unfortunate of lives there
will occur a moment or
two of good fortune'

- Lemony Snicket

The Big Purge

Take all my vicious words
And turn them into something good
Take all my preconceptions
And let the truth be understood

Take all my prized possessions
Leave only what I need
Take all my pieces of doubt
And let me be what's underneath

- Courage, Orianthi ft. Lacey

Dear reader of a blogger who has lost his way,

I woke up the other day, as I’m prone to do at times, to find that it was May and that I’ve no money! I’m supposed to be responsible and awesome this year but I spent almost a whole month drinking, smoking (yes, me!) and eating junk food. I’ve not been home in a while, I smell funny, my face is swollen and my hand hurts from repeatedly punching a dude (yes, me, punching a dude!). Do I regret all the crap that’s been going down most of April? Not so much, most of it was loads of fun but it was out of control and I need to reign myself in, especially when it comes to spending my money on random crap when there are bills to be paid.

It is near the end of May now and I’m still stuck in that abyss of financial ruin that I managed to walk into in a manner that Erikson’s sappers would refer to as ‘wide-eyed stupid’. I’ve received many text messages with threats that a number financial institutions (which kindly paid for my varsity fees, books, rent and my... er... beer) have enlisted the services of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a chopper to blow up my house – which is not actually mine. The plan, thus, is to lay low for the next two months, stay out of everyone’s way. It also helps that it’s the winter season and that the chill affords me an excuse to stay home, catch up on my reading and dream of the wonders of gaming once I acquire finances to build an uber-PC in the summer.

Later Days :)

Cupboard Person of the Week

"I am not brushing a cow's teeth Walter, you know I have real work to do... right?"

- Astrid

Astrid, Asterisk, Astro, Asteroid, Astringent, Aspirin or whatever you want to call her, I love this woman! She's exactly my type of girl: beautiful, intelligent and plays some minor, but crucial (at times), role in an awesome television series. What more do you want from a woman? All the scrubby guys will be chasing after the female lead, who you really don't want to date when you take some time to think about it. She always has too much emotional baggage and can probably kick your ass! That's just not cool. Astrid on the other hand is just plain awesome and lovable.

Here are some more Astrid fun facts: She graduated from Haverford College with a B.A. in Music and Linguistics and a minor in Computer Science, having taken computers apart since six years old.

I'm in love. Sigh.

P.S. I should find out what the actress' name is but I really don't care. To me she's Astrid.

Final Crisis

I want it. Now! That is all.

The Church's Badassery

'To go against the Church is to go against God.'

I went to go see Priest with Ms J. on Friday and it was so much better than I expected. Then again my expectations were based purely on the theatrical poster; I’d not seen a trailer or heard anything about it beforehand. I actually thought it was based on the Thief video game series. It’s actually, rather loosely, based on a graphic novel series though. Ms J. said let’s go see it and the Beanbag was game.

Now, I rarely like movies (or any other entertainment media) that are set in a dystopian or post-apocalyptic future because, to quote my friend, Dave (referring to Fallout 3), “[they] depress me”. Such movies have to be really good for me to put up with and Priest, though it’s not an excellent movie as such, was fun to watch. It has a villain simply referred to as Black Hat in the credits dammit! That’s total badassery. Also, there’s an army of crazy, animalistic vampires (who have no eyes) on a train, hell-bent on the destruction of a totalitarian city run by the Church. The manner in which the Church runs the city is brutal and I’d not like to live there. They do have awesome warrior priests that kick some vampire ass though. You can never go wrong with Holy men and women opening a can righteous ass whupping.

There’s a lot to be said about the big, bad Church... the Big BC as I fondly know it. I’ve always been intrigued by the Church’s rather violent history back in the day (as my tutlings refer to anything that happened more than a decade ago). Rome was badass I tell you! All the ways with which they came up with to kill people would sicken many a serial killer today. On warm summer days I sit on the grass under my favourite tree and wonder what the meeting was like when a handful of respectable Elders of the Church got together and agreed that boiling a guy was the way forward. I can just see them all nodding solemnly in agreement at the suggestion. I’d put my house... wait I don’t have one... I’d put my awesome four-year-old cousin, Lennie, down on a bet that the guy to put that option on the table was one of those Rasputin types that no one seems to know is crazy even though he looks freakin’ crazy!

Maybe I’m just not good at being a Christian but what was up with all that violence!? Am I misreading my Bible? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Jesus is naught but a sweet, gentle lamb. Lord no! He is also a fierce lion that fights for love’s cause, but why did they have to get all creative about torturing and killing people? I’d go with just hanging them or something simple. Even stoning is a quite excessive for my tastes.

Let me end off by playing devil's advocate and directing you to some of the Church's atrocities throughout history.

P.S. The moral of this story is don't mess with warrior priests or the Church, they will kick your ass... and the boil you alive.

Heaven's Magic Machine

This is the magical scene that will play out in Heaven as I awake from death, as though it were a dream:

‘“Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?’ [Gandalf] said.
But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“A great Shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from his bed.’
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

I’m sitting here pretending to be marking first year English assignments but because I suffer from ADD (or whatever they call it these days) I can’t pay attention to another string of words that make no sense to anyone in the universe or any of the infinite ones parallel to ours – not even the person who wrote them. Unlike J.R.R. Tolkien my mind does not conjure up hobbits when faced with the deadly dull task of marking, mine wanders to random things instead, like whether or not there will be magic in Heaven. The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings have me convinced that there will be tonnes of it.

What sort of magic will it be though?

To use Terry Goodkind’s terms, will it be additive or subtractive? Will it be the sort of magic worked not by our souls but worked on our souls as Peter Kreeft puts it? Will it be the charming magic of animated Disney movies that sees dishes washing themselves and beautiful Princesses aroused from eternal slumber by true love’s kiss? I’m secretly hoping for dragons and centaurs. I’d love to have tea with a majestic dragon, assuming dragons care for tea that is. Imagine how big a dragon’s tea cup must be!

I went to see Thor some time back and if Heaven’s anything like Branagh’s vision of Asgard I’d be quite chuffed; all the best parts of a fantasy medieval setting merged with futuristic technology that has no side effects like pollution. It would have to be bigger than Asgard though, so as to accommodate my dragons. I’m a big fan of flashy and destructive sorcery I must say: Wizard’s fire, the fiery tempests in Dragon Age, crazy chain lightning and such. I doubt there’s place for destructive magic in Heaven though, especially since I’m referring to post-apocalyptic Heaven, when Satan and all his crazy minions have been smote down by Heaven’s awesome Secret Fire-wielding host and the Flame Imperishable has been sent to burn at the centre of the universe(s) forever and ever. Amen.

I should expect a behind-the-scenes sort of magic then I guess, only a little more overt than can be glimpsed in Nature. God is a big fan of espionage after all, what with Him always working His magic from the least likely of places and in a most covert manner. Take for an example in The Lord of the Rings He doesn’t make so much as a peeping sound but in which His presence makes all the difference.

Heaven’s magic is, no doubt, rooted in beauty – the lofty beauty of an Elvish Princess like Lúthien that captures the hearts of admirers the world over but can only be won by the most noble of beings, and yet it is a beauty as humble and accessible as a Samwise Gamgee of the Shire. Beauty alone is not enough though, for it to be truly magical it must be accompanied by truth, wisdom and all that good stuff.

Arcane arts like necromancy are out of the picture then; zombies, as cool as they may seem, are only a mockery of real life after all. Such arts are of a lower type of magic, not that of creation (or sub-creation).

I would venture to say that the purpose of magic is not to be seen but to be experienced. Real magic feeds a deep human need for wonder. It speaks to us as though we are children exploring the world and looking at everything in it with awe. Scientists experience the universe’s magic as they set out to unravel its mysteries and theists (the real ones) encounter this magic in their unshakable faith.

In the Middle-Ages it was said that God wrote two books, the Bible and Nature. The world in which we live is a magic making machine and many of us don’t even notice it. Nature is God speaking to us of love, beauty, perfection, imperfection, death and many other such lessons beside. The universe, as such, is a picture of what the magic of Heaven will be like, the sort of magic whose presence is never noted but whose absence is immediately apparent.

Cupboard Person of the Week

‘Mane of Chaos. Anomander Rake. Lord of the black-skinned Tiste Andii, who has looked down on a hundred thousand winters, who has tasted the blood of dragons, who leads the last of his kind, seated in the Throne of Sorrow and a kingdom tragic and fey – a kingdom with no land to call its own.’

This one has been a long time in coming.

The man is too cool for words to contain. He jumps out at you from Steven Erikson’s pages and grabs you by the throat as he considers whether or not to slay you with his sword, Dragnipur. This guy is one of the sons of Mother Dark (from whom he broke away), he can veer into a giant black dragon because in the distant past he drank the blood of dragons and just hung out in their realm for a while you know, because that’s how cool people roll. That’s not even his most impressive qualities, a few other people in Erikson’s world of the Malazan can do some of that stuff (one of his brothers for instance); the guy made an awesome sword, named it Vengeance and when he found that the Elder god, Draconus, had a cooler sword, Dragnipur, he romanced the guy’s daughter, teamed up with her to slay her dad, took his sword and the broke up with her. This is a super simplified version of the events that took place but it captures the badassery of Rake. Why is Dragnipur so cool you ask? All who are slain by it are drawn into a realm inside it where they have to join a line of chained souls dragging a giant wagon for eternity!

If you’re this awesome where would you live? In a fortress on a floating mass of rock named Moon’s Spawn of course.

The only thing worth saying about Rake is that every man, woman and child should just shut up and bask in his awesomeness. I want to be like him when I grow up.

Recovery

I feel like Eminem probably felt when he sat down to pen the songs for his Recovery album; I feel all sorts of bleh but I'm on the road to bigger and better things methinks.

The last two months have been all about me going through an involuntary purge of all the crap in my life, getting closer to my friends, eating junk food, meditating, drinking too much, exercising, falling in and out of love, being very broke and all sorts of other cool stuff that are probably not all that great for my health. All-in-all it's been one of those experiences that feel like you drank too much the previous night and puked all over your shoes but you're like, 'Fuck that shit, I had a great time'. You know that feeling right? Life throws all sorts of crap in your path but you take the blows like a soldier and keep living your life as best you can.

What would be cool is if I had a chainsaw and I was allowed to run around with it cutting through all the stupid stuff in my life and coming out on the other side covered in their 'blood'. I'd like that and would probably not take a shower for a while.

With that wonderful and not-at-all wibbly image I leave you to go and do something more useful with your life :) See you next week.

The Days of My Zombie Life

“It was a crazed night of forbidden science that brought Twin Sunflower into existence. Thunder crashed overhead, strange lights flickered, even the very roaring wind seemed to hiss its angry denial. But to no avail. Twin Sunflower was alive, ALIVE!” – Plants vs. Zombies Almanac

Okay, okay... I’m addicted dammit! I admit it and that’s the first step, admitting that I have a problem. I’m addicted to Pop Cap’s simple, yet ingenious, little gem of a game, Plants vs. Zombies. My life is spinning out of control and I’m neither eating, sleeping nor procreating because all my time’s spent in front of my computer screen thinking up clever strategies for my plant troopers to carry out against those dastardly zombies trying to cross the lawn and get into the house whose master’s brain I’m sworn to protect. I don’t even know who this dude is! But I’ll protect him from those zombies till my body gives out and they eat my brain. Why do you ask? Well, because I’m a soldier and soldiers never give up even if we’re facing a zombie apocalypse.

What was I saying again...? Oh, yes, I’m addicted to Plants vs. Zombies and I need help. ...*ten minutes later* Well, clearly help’s not coming so I’m going to pen down some semi-important thoughts about my life that occurred to me in the heat of vegetable warfare before I get fired, dumped, kicked, punched and generally outright ostracised from society for not moving from my computer in weeks. If I’m lucky I’ll just die from starvation, thirst and fatigue before anyone notices that I’ve not been performing my duties as a human person.

So there I was! My defences were crumbling all around me and I was on the verge of being overwhelmed by Dr Zomboss’ forces and when it occurred to me that my so-called real life is a lot like Plants vs. Zombies! Can you believe that!? From such a simple game flow the issues of life. Both the game and my life started out easy enough, plant a few peashooters here and there and things were hunky-dory. It was bliss at first; parents, teachers, bullies and zombies could be kept at bay by simple things such as hiding out in libraries and erecting wall-nuts – which sounds very dirty. But I’m older now and have these pesky things called responsibilities, which are the bane of my life. I hate ‘em, I hate ‘em, I really do! Now the zombies and life’s mundane problems just keep coming at me without any relent and the bigger the wall-nuts I erect the bigger the zombies and problems become. The whole business is throwing my Zen-like balance out of whack!!!

Shakespeare compared life to a stage but that’s because they didn’t have video games or movies then and also because he liked the theatre. Musicians probably went around telling people that life’s like a song. Modern life, I’d say (with as much authority as Shakespeare), is like a video game... a certain video game that involves plants and zombies to be exact. In life, just as in video games (RPGs especially), everyone has ridiculous expectations of you. All they do is run around expecting you to save the world from one ridiculous threat or another, just like certain members of my family and some teachers. Oh, Charles, you really could’ve done better you know. What the hell man?! It’s always the really lame people who are on my case about how I could’ve done better than I did. All the successful people are too busy being awesome to pay attention to me and when they do notice me they’re actually pretty nice and make me feel like I actually can be a bookworm who sits in a large library for a living if I put some blood, guts, sweat and tears into it. I’m not good with pressure at all, it makes me nervous, which in turn makes me feel like puking. People and zombies should give me a break once in a while! You guys can’t just keep bombarding me with weird responsibilities all the time. What’s that nameless dude in the house doing anyway? He should come out here and help me ward off Dr Zomboss’ goons. We’re in this together after all.

Look, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t look out for me and not let me know if I’m veering of the path now and then. All I ask for is a little space, you know, a little room to breathe. I’m a lazy guy who doesn’t like doing things if they seem too difficult – I’ve played video games on easy mode for years and only upgraded to normal last year – and this is not a good thing at all. Constantly wagging your finger in my face is not the best way to get me to do unpleasant things though. That’s the sort of thing that only makes me angry and will result in me throwing chairs at you. Take Plants vs. Zombies as an example; it’s nice and gradual in the manner that it ups its difficulty level. I find myself performing heroic deeds without even noticing that I did. This actually only goes on till the game decides to throw an endless horde of zombies my way and my plant defences crumble to dust and all I've worked to defend goes to hell in a rosy basket.

My point, though, is simply this: I like life, it's a thing of great beauty for the most part but it tends to get overwhelming at times and people and zombies should know when to give a dude a break. That is all. You may return to being a productive citizen. I'm off to deal with those dastardly zombies till I get kicked out of the human race or die from starvation, thirst or fatigue. Whichever comes first.

Later days.

Glory, Splendour, Hierarchy, Height, Formality

“Here is a sentence that no man who hath uttered it really believed it: I’m just as good as you are” – C.S. Lewis

I’ve been told that I’m arrogant by people who think I think I’m better than they are in some manner and this has baffled me for the longest time because I don’t have much to be arrogant about! I’m not outlandishly handsome (though I’m not ugly), I’m not wealthy as far as money goes, I don’t have the best fashion sense, I’m rarely the centre of any social gathering and though I’m intelligent I’m by no means the most intelligent person I know. I’m merely a chocolate Columbo, a winsome character in his bumbling manner. The answer to this question came to me as I was listening to Peter Kreeft’s talk on the beauty of language. In this talk he points out that people actively hate words! The very idea causes anyone who can claim any sort of humanity’s soul to cringe because, as Kreeft points out, words are not merely labels for things but rather it’s in words that things live, move and have their being, in words they come to us; language, according to Heidegger, is the house of being. It is in words and language that things first come into being and are, thus the misuse of language destroys our authentic relation to beings, because what you do to words you do to things. I’m a lover of language and when I speak I tend to do so as juggler, I love to play with words, not very ‘big’ words mind you, just your normal, everyday sort of fare and this irks people. I don’t know why but it immediately puts me on their radar as someone who is trying to belittle them, which is never my goal. I’m blessed in that the majority of my friends are more intelligent than I am so I’m always the one learning new things from them and listening in wonder at how they spin their stories. I can sit for hours on end and listen to people tell me about themselves because they are so ‘other’ from me and the words they use are like a song I cannot emulate. This obviously applies only to interesting people. Thus, it’s not people’s cold intelligence that impresses me but the way in which they present their being, if that makes sense at all.

I’m in love with beautiful words and ugly words grate my soul, which is why I cannot listen to most popular music, I can find no beauty there. I guess that this goes a long way in setting me up as an elitist. People are not happy when you tell them that the things they like are ugly. I happen to like a great many things that friends I respect tell me are ridiculous and thus my opinion on a thing should not be taken as an attack but rather as a misunderstanding thereof. I like being schooled and once you point out the beautiful side of a thing to me that is the only light in which I will see it from then on. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion is the most beautiful book I’ve ever read but most people hate it! They tell me it’s dull and unnecessarily difficult in its language usage. I understand exactly what they mean because the first time I read it grasping the language was a herculean task. This was a failing on my part though, not Tolkien’s. When I tried again a few years later I could understand the language and thus Tolkien’s poetry. The beauty I found there was like Lewis’ comment on The Lord of the Rings, lightning from a clear sky. People, especially students, have the same problem with Shakespeare; they hate him only because they don’t understand him. Once they learn how to read him they realise that no one sets up the drama to a story like that man! Mathematics is another example, I just don’t get it but when mathematicians speak of it I can see its beauty for a brief but clear instant. There’s a quote whose source I’ve forgotten that says, “Euclid alone has looked on beauty there”. That is to say that Euclid saw geometry as one would poetry and thus found beauty but we look at it from a utilitarian vantage and it’s drab and ugly from where we sit.

Going back to what I was saying before I started down this side road. I like language that portrays Glory, Splendour, Hierarchy, Height and Formality because it hearkens to a better time in humanity’s history, a history that didn’t really exist in the ordinary sense of the word but a history that’s as real as you and me nonetheless. I speak of a time that every civilization in our past strove for but failed to hit the mark. Here in South Africa many of us still remember the atrocities of Apartheid but now that I, as a black person, can look back at that sordid past with a sort of fascination it’s apparent that people like Verwoerd were racist but in their own crazy way they were trying to preserve the purity of the ‘race’ and their biggest fear was the pollution of their blood so they did what people who are afraid do, they attacked the monster before it could get a chance to attack them. Every mess that has ever been made of governments in our history was made in trying to create a Utopia. Though we fear words such as Splendour and Height it’s what our souls yearn for, our souls believe in a monarchy. Our souls want to inhabit a kingdom ruled by a just King where we all observe manners and customs. Our souls love obeying the righteous law and modern people make the mistake of seeing people who live in accordance to the universal law of humanity and thinking they’re arrogant when in fact they’re the epitome of humility.

That’s the end of my winding argument to prove that I’m not arrogant but simply aligned to the natural law of things and that I like words and thus speak a lot. Also, I’m a bit more of a saint than you are :P