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

The Month That Was

My Dearest Goodbuddy,

We’ve not spoken for some time, you and I, and I hope you’re well.
November’s already upon us I see... how time does fly. Anyhow, I must say that, as per usual, October was a good month for me. There were many rough patches but hey! Who am I to go around complaining? I’m here and I’m alive, which is a good point to start building happiness from. Let me give you the lowdown of the month that was.

I kicked the month off by attending rAge with t3h Munsh and Sleuth. We had a good time messing with the new tech, talking to the assortment of strange people there and ogling the booth babes. I enjoyed the expo more than I did last year but I did miss the larger anime and tabletop gaming stands they had then. It’s all good though. My PC is also happy because I picked up blue LED fans to pimp it out and now it looks like it would be at home at a drag race in Chatsworth. I’ve come to a point where I love my PC more than most members of my family; it’s prettier, it’s more intelligent and it gives me greater joy. Now, now, you don’t have to say it. I’m materialistic I know, but matter matters.

Meadow Leigh’s sister, Pie, came to visit from the Eastern Cape and I went on a picnic to the beautiful botanical gardens in Emmerentia with the two of them. They also visited me with banana bread over the course of her stay in Jozi. Now, you must know that I have a deep love for banana bread, to the point that I have dreams about it. Yes, I know it’s strange but I really can’t help it. Then my birthday came around and I was a ball of excitement. I’m the sort of person who just loves his birthday even if nothing terribly exciting happens because at least there’s cake. Now, I spent my 23rd birthday marking English assignments, which is not the most exciting thing to be doing on any given day, but there was chocolate cake to cheer me up and books from friends to look forward to reading. People who know me always buy me books for my birthday and I’m happy with that arrangement because I really don’t want much else. My grandmother buys my handkerchiefs though... and I'm still rather unsure what one does with them so I just give her a hug and take them. I did get one gift that deviated from the norm though, a new motherboard from Ed, Leigh and Pie. I mentioned to Ed how much I hate my motherboard at some point and he remembered. After getting the new motherboard the plan was to take the old one and piss on it but I sold it to some guy who thinks he’s a friend of mine instead. I hope it explodes when’s he’s sleeping and scares him. That’s all, just scare him. Not result in his house burning down with him in it or anything as gruesome and painful as that.

I did manage to celebrate turning 23 in style though. My friend Catharine has her birthday two weeks after mine and we decided to do a joint little shindig of a thing, that is to say we went bungee jumping! You heard right. To celebrate turning 23 we went and threw ourselves off of a 100 meter high platform suspended between two cooling towers. It was the craziest experience of my life. Your brain totally shuts down as you throw yourself off that platform and the ground comes rushing up to you. It’s just not normal. Then the rope goes taut and snaps you back up and your brain switches back on and you start screaming f*ck!!! At least that was what I was screaming. It really is just the best thing ever.

To celebrate surviving the jump we went to dinner and then to a strip club – which just happens to be one of the coolest places in the world, den of iniquity though it may be. Lots of naked women in one enclosed space are more fun than they rationally should be.

The next morning I went shopping for books with Meadow Leigh, hangover and all and I picked up Steven Erikson’s Deadhouse Gates for forty bucks! That just made my day.

After all that going down I had to sleep for a week and catch up on my reading, which is what I’ve been doing.

That’s my tale for today bud.

We’ll talk later. Keep well.

2 A.M.

It's 2 A.M. and I'm sitting here just surfing the interwebs because I can't go to sleep and I'm too tired to read my Erikson book... and I feel like an Amstel because they made it look so damn sexy on that ad on TV when I was watching Snakes on a Plane with my mom and sister. Sigh.

Anyhow, I'm 23!!! This is only setting in now. I should go out and do something 23-ish to celebrate, like get a job that pays me four times the amount of money my current job is or become a Saint and make a difference in the world... or I can go out and get smashed on Amstel and pink girly drinks (which I've come to love).

Okay, I'm really tired... but I'm 23 and I have a feeling that 23 is the turning point in mine, my family, friends and random homeless dudes' lives. Let's rock this.

Later.