Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Diatribes and Debates, SCIENCE!, Writing | Tags: Book, Books, Comparisons, E-readers, Gibberish, Kindle, Love, Reality, sci-fi, Wordy Nonsense
(Also available on my Tumblr.)
I’m one of those lucky people who owns a Kindle.
It was a Christmas gift, which I tell you only to impress you by continuing ‘I’ve only had to charge it once since I received it.’ Stand-by battery life is just shy of a month and a half, which impressed me at least.
Anyway, I’ve given it a fair amount of use over these two months; downloaded a number of ‘books’, checked out the note-writing system and all that jazz. It’s a beautifully designed device and system, very intuitive. One qualm I have is the page-turning buttons on the sides. Both sides of the device are adorned with a large ‘>’ marked button beneath a smaller ‘<’ marked one. At first I found myself hitting the right hand ‘>’ (or ‘next page’) button to turn, predictably, forward in the book and the left hand ‘>’ in an attempt to flip back a page, which led to some small confusion. It’s a small annoyance, and I adjusted quickly enough. In fact the dual-sided controls are proving to be a wonderful idea as I find myself doing other things while reading.
The screen is excellent. It’s virtually glare-free, so reading in bright sunlight isn’t the rage inducing shit-fest that a phone or tablet screen would tend to be (without accoutrements, anyway).
This is because of the ‘E-Ink’ system, which uses microcapsules of negatively-charged black pigment and positively-charged white pigment which can be arranged an re-arranged according to the whims of two electrode layers above and below.
Here’s a picture that I stole from Wikipedia of the microcapsules in question.
Research tells me a colour version has been available since 2010 that is capable of displaying 4096 colours alongside 16 shades of grey. That’s a real headfuck when you think about the science behind it.
Enough of the technical details, though, let’s talk about the experience:
Reading the Kindle is not unlike reading a ‘book’. Presumably that’s what the creators were going for. The display looks like paper for the most part, which gives you a little jolt when you spot a blinking cursor moving about on it because a part of your mind screams “BUT PAPER IS A STATIC OBJECT! GOD HELP US ALL!” for a split second.
The most striking thing I’ve noticed, though, is right up at the top in the title; I’m not reading any ‘books’ right now.
I of course mean that in the literal sense, I’m a voracious reader and tend to have at least three ‘books’ on the go simultaneously, which I do right now except all of them are virtual.
There was no change-over anxiety, there was no jarring sense of loss (or gain), there wasn’t even any recognition of the fact until just before I started writing this. I simply hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t using physical ‘books’ any more.
That’s not to say I won’t from now on; I love ‘books’. I love the way they feel, look, sound and smell. ‘Books’ appeal to me both aesthetically and in terms of their content, like I’m some sort of lovelorn fool besotted with some intelligent, beautiful, perfect woman.
All I’m saying is her, referring to physical ‘books’ as a singular feminine entity for the purposes of this metaphor (keep up), younger and sleeker sister, meaning virtual ‘books’ on an e-reader like the Kindle (Still with me?), is equally attractive. Or is that ‘are equally attractive’? I’ve ruined my own metaphor there.
It’s very helpful to a style of reader like myself who when travelling would normally pack a couple of oft chunky, frequently fairly weighty ‘books’ into a bag to the detriment of other, possibly more important, items. Like food, bug-spray or an anti-wild-animal knife. Having the ability to dip into roughly 1000 ‘books’ (according to the marketing spiel) on a device no larger than a couple of take-away menus stacked together is a life-saver. Not having to remember page numbers or find lost bookmarks is good too; when you close (leave? quit?) a ‘book’ on the Kindle it helpfully remembers exactly what page you were on, for every single ‘book’.
By the way, I’m putting ‘book’ in inverted commas because this whole experience has rocked the paradigm and now I’m unsure what to call either of these items. If a physical object with paper pages and printed ink is a ‘book’, then the virtual, ones-and-zeros, differentially-charged microcapsules type almost needs to be something else. The trouble with that is I find the term ‘e-book’ slightly demeaning. It’s the same content, compared side-by-side, and ‘e-book’ reminds me of some terribly formatted, childishly written guide to making bombs from bleach and tinfoil.
So basically they are both ‘books’ until I can adjust my brain into thinking of them both as just books.
Apropos of all this, here’s my view:
I felt strangely about e-readers when they first made an appearance on the market, because my love of physical ‘books’ set me at odds with the idea that one could transition without some gargantuan effort. I felt like switching would have a huge impact on a part of my life that I love dearly.
It has not.
If anything it has merely extended the ways in which I enjoy the written word, which is really all ‘books’ are for anyway, despite all my posturing and declarations of love for the objects themselves the content is what drives anyone’s love of reading.
So this isn’t the end of physical ‘books’ as far as I can see, not for some long time at least, but it isn’t a failed experimental attempt at sci-fi futurism either. It’s a system that works, and it works really bloody well.
It’s not a replacement, it’s an augmentation.
Plus, I just really like it.
I love ‘books’. Doesn’t matter how I read them.
Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Diatribes and Debates, Writing | Tags: block, frustration, self-indulgent nonsense, write, writer's block, writers, writing
‘Writer’s block’ is a term that almost everyone has heard and a state that a good many people have experienced.
It is the name given to a feeling or belief that one is simply ‘unable’ to write experienced over a period of time, anything from a day or two up to years at a time.
But what is it?
Some people believe that it does not exist. Acclaimed author Warren Ellis, the man behind the seminal comic Transmetropolitan, has stated “… [Someone with ‘writer’s block’] isn’t a fucking writer anymore. The job is getting up in the morning and fucking writing.”
This, while harsh, is a fairly erudite explanation of how it feels to be ‘afflicted’.
I’m of the opinion, seeing as I have a lot of time to think about this kind of thing, that writer’s block can be classified as a very mild psychological breakdown.
Let me tell you my experience(s) with this particular ailment:
I’ve run into writer’s block a couple of times and it has a very distinct feeling about it. It’s not even remotely similar to what one might feel in school, say, when faced with an essay or exam and cannot think what to write next. That’s a momentary frustration that can be overcome by remembering that you do in fact know the answer to the question.
Writer’s block is more insidious than that. It’s a slithery, slimy bastard that sneaks into your mind and squats there, nibbling on your brain every now and then when it gets bored. It’s sneaky, in that it makes you want to write, then stops you from doing it.
Now, I say ‘stops you’; there’s actually nothing physically stopping you from putting words on the page. There isn’t even anything hindering your vocabulary or fiddling with the way you write. It just feels like there is.
That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion that this situation is, or at least is caused by, a very low-lying crisis of confidence or even an existential one. I’ve gone to write something and caught myself thinking ‘What’s the point?’ or ‘Why even bother?’ The belief that you could write something, but it would ultimately be terrible, unreadable drivel is a prime factor of writer’s block.
I’m forcing myself to write this through a hefty bought of it, and I can tell you that the horrible little gremlin in my head is telling me to delete every word and start over. I can also tell you that if I did delete every word the gremlin would then tell me there’s no point in starting again, and I’d probably abandon the piece altogether.
It’s that aspect that is the most interesting to me, and I wonder if people who don’t suffer from writer’s block are simply happier, more enthusiastic, more optimistic people.
It conjures the image of the tortured artist, slashing yesterday’s paintings in a fit of rage because they are ‘awful’, even after a gallery has offered to buy them. As cliché as that seems, that’s roughly what one can expect to be going on in a writer’s head when they tell you they have this malady. It’s very cyclic, to the point that it’s almost bipolar.
As I said; it comes in waves. There are periods of time where, at least for me, I feel like everything I write is gold dust and I can’t put a word wrong. There are others where I feel like every single idea I have is shit or stolen or stupid or a stupid, shitty idea that I stole. It’s so hard to fight through that and produce something, because even if you do part of you still thinks ‘This is awful. I must destroy all evidence of its existence.’
There are vast novels floating in the void or filling the shelves of Deaths library with my name on the cover because I’ve written something then immediately confined it to oblivion. (I like to think destroyed literature ends up somewhere).
There are ways around it, however. Forcing oneself to write something, anything, is one way, as long as you can convince yourself to keep going and then not to delete it upon completion. That’s part of the reason I like writing in notebooks; it’s not as easy to delete a physical object. There are exercises you can find in books and online that claim to help with writer’s block. Any and all writers will give you no end of various kinds of advice, some of it useful, some of it not.
The trouble is it’s a very personal problem. The prevailing feeling is that you know you can’t write right now, even though people tell you that you can. The truth of the matter, however, is that those people are right. You can still do it, you just feel like if you try to you’ll produce something sub-par.
Maybe you will, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fix it. Or write something else.
Writer’s block is as personal as writing itself, in that you may have certain music you like to listen to as you write, or certain sounds or sights that completely throw you off kilter and stop you being able to think straight.
As though to provide evidence to myself, I’m really struggling to write this last paragraph. Something in my head is screaming that this is all self-indulgent nonsense and to get rid of it immediately, but I refuse to give in.
That’s really all one can do in this situation. Dig in your heels, bite down on a stick and force yourself forwards. Of course you can still write; you just need to remember that.
J Bov.
Filed under: Diatribes and Debates, Philosophical Bollocks, SCIENCE!, Writing | Tags: 2010, 2011, hope, humanity, learned, learning, new year
So 2010 is almost over, the starting point of a new decade grinds slowly into the middle. What have we learned this year?
Nothing we didn’t know already, basically. Tories are evil, Lib Dems are spineless and Labour are practically useless.
We’ve learned that charges will be dug up out of nowhere so America can get somebody they think has wronged them ( Support Assange).
We’ve learned that some people fear science while others fear religion, with both sides willing to call for genecide.
We’ve also learned that protesting doesn’t work and neither does rioting. It’s impossible to change someone else’s mind for them.
We’ve learned that snow get’s boring very quickly and that here in England we still can’t deal with it.
On top of these things, we’ve learned that TV will continue to aim for the lowest common denominator and succeed in making stars out of preening idiot nobodies.
We’ve learned that the music industry is far from dead, but it is senile now.
Is it all bad? Looks that way, but when evil rushed from the box there was one thing left inside. Quivering in the corner right at the bottom, cold and naked, was hope.
We’ve learned that privately funded space flight is not just theoretically possible; it’s a viable option and probably the only way the layman will get off this rock. That’s exciting.
We’ve learned that a cure for HIV is closer than ever. So too, cancer.
We’ve learned that stem cells are essentially magic cures for almost any genetic defect, if only people would take the research seriously.
We’ve learned that at least some people care what happens to them and others.
We’ve learned that there are always voices from the dark telling us that we’re cared for and that we’ll be okay if we just hang in there.
We’ve learned that there are whole nations committed to making sure this planet doesn’t become a burned out, inhospitable Venus clone.
We’ve seen pictures of the Earth taken from the window of the ISS.
We’ve witnessed changing attitudes towards race and sexuality.
We’ve seen people seriously considering the medical and economic benefits of legalizing a substance that is only illegal in the first place because a man who hated Mexicans wanted to monopolize the paper industry.
We’ve seen great art created and people engaging with it.
We’ve seen kids becoming genuinely excited about reading books. Sure, shit books, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Personally I’ve learned something quite important. It’s the same as it ever was. We go around and around again and every time it gets a little bit better, we care a little bit more about people instead of things, everything gets a little bit easier.
We can have frank discussions about controversial subjects and we can research controversial topics with less incoherent, uneducated screaming.
So yes, 2010 is drawing ever closer to being an entry in history books. But despite how it may look right now, I think we’re going to be okay. If we just hang in there, we’ll be okay.
Filed under: Angry Slurred Shouting, Diatribes and Debates, Gibberish, People, Writing | Tags: apocalypse, armageddon, Cameron, Clegg, dream, dreams, end of the world, horror, nightmare, politics, rage
I’d always assumed that when the world ended I’d be with my friends and family in a meadow on a hill, watching a city crumble in the distance. The sunset would paint the sky purple and red and orange, Sigur Ros would be playing from somewhere in the background and we’d talk about the good times.
As the end drew near we’d exchange our goodbyes, crack some jokes and then there would be quiet and peace; drawing comfort from the futility of worrying about anything. A bitter-sweet ending, an idealized finale.
That’s why last nights dream struck me to my soul.
The world was ending, but my friends and family weren’t there. They were away on some exotic beach, being massaged by supermodels and chuckling to themselves, this I knew. Nor was I in a meadow. Instead I was on a bus, surrounded by knobheads, the reek of urine ruining my journey.
Occasionally someone would flick the back of my head and when I turned to glare at them I missed the crumbling city behind me, turning around in time to see just settling dust, a horrible grey in the garish yellow midday sunlight. The bus was now parked, but nobody got off.
From the window I could see the panic, hear the running feet. Here and there was looting, I saw a group of children repeatedly stabbing an elderly shopkeeper for a mars bar.
Over the din I could hear Jedward being played from some invisible speakers.
Then, projected enormously against the wreckage, began an endlessly looping video of David Cameron violently robbing a poor, old woman. Perhaps because it was projected onto an uneven ruin, perhaps not, he had taken on the aspect of a six-limbed monster bedecked in hideous spines and scale-like plates. From between two of the plates grew the constantly, sickly grinning face of Nick Clegg, like a tumor.
I could see both Milibands and the rest of Labour springing to and fro, wearing signs which read “the end is nigh!” While I couldn’t question the validity of their warning, I also couldn’t shake the feeling that they were slightly late to this party.
Suddenly I was on my feet; I grabbed and shook madly the nearest person to me.
I continued to shake him as I heard myself screaming; “No! This can’t be the end! It can’t all end like this, can it!? We worked harder than this, didn’t we!? DIDN’T WE!?”
His face remained impassive, staring straight ahead rather than watching the world fall apart around him.
He squinted at me through the pudgy rolls of flab around his eyes, unblinking, and without a word he put another handful of fries into his idiot mouth.
I began to yell incoherently, a wordlessly protest that any sane person would echo. I yelled alone. The insistent sound of a siren began then.
I awoke with a start, drenched in cold sweat, slapping my alarm to stop its wailing. I looked about myself; everything was as it should be, from my window I could see a thin mist, rising quickly in the bright but gentle morning light.
I breathed a sigh of relief and after my morning ministrations I made a cup of tea. I lit my first cigarette of the day and, mug in hand, waited for my jangled nerves to calm.
Sufficiently relaxed and now assured that what I had seen was only a terrible dream, I turned on the television. Eventually, bored of sitcoms, I made a huge mistake; I switched to the news.
I haven’t stopped screaming since.
Filed under: Diatribes and Debates, Gibberish, Philosophical Bollocks, SCIENCE! | Tags: Asimo, emotions, genius, important, robots, sad
I’ve always thought robots were cool. They really are; most males aged about 10 and up think this. Some move on and stop caring, forgetting about what were essentially characters of stories that could well have been human. Others, like myself, maintain a viewpoint of robots as not just cool characters, but important elements in the technological evolution of humanity.
That’s why I love Asimov’s robot stories. Many of these involve robots as parables for the human condition. Emotional tales of machines that are sometimes more ‘human’ than their creators.
There’s one point stuck in my memory where I realised the emotional significance of robots:
A group of primary school children in Japan were introduced to Asimo, Honda’s advanced robot that’s capable of running, climbing stairs and so on.
After some brief introductions (Asimo bows and waves hell to the children) there were many questions.
What does Asimo do for fun? (Dances, apparently).
How much did he cost?
How fast can he run?
Then after a short pause a tentative hand is raised from the back of the group.
One small boy, who will grow into a genius in my opinion, asked a question that is beautiful in it’s simplicity and scope. A question that signifies an important turning point in this child’s life, whether he knows it or not.
The question, after seeing Asimo standing stock still awaiting commands, was thus:
“Is he sad?”
Isn’t that wonderful?
In response the spokesperson hastily replied ‘Oh, no, Asimo isn’t sad! Look!’
Then, to prove how happy he was, the people by the controls made Asimo dance.
It bares repeating.
They made him dance.
That’s heartbreaking. I can’t be the only person who thinks so. When I’m quite tired it brings me close to tears, if I’m honest.
This story is so touching. It’s so sad.
Some people will be confused, to those people I say sorry, I can’t explain myself. It just hits me right in the heart whenever I remember it.
J Bov.
Filed under: Diatribes and Debates, Gibberish, Philosophical Bollocks, SCIENCE! | Tags: aspects, bollocks, chair, holism, holistic, philosophical, philosophy, rambling, reductionism, reductionist
Consider this:
If a robot can be shown a chair and told ‘this is a chair’, then be shown a totally different (chair like) object and identify it as a chair also, rather than, say, a stool, or differentiate between a stool and, for example, a side-table of similar size, it’s more than likely that there is no separate, definable ‘chair-ness’ inherant in the object.
Rather, it is a construction of building blocks that form a recognisable form, based on or bourne out of it’s function. A simply defined, easily recognisable piece of learned information; a chair has a base or legs, a platform for sitting and a vertical portion to rest your back against. A machine or robot could simply learn to look for these basic parts and match them to available data, remembering (to a degree) what a chair should be or have. A sort of educated inference if it hasn’t seen the specific object before.
This is, of course, unless the robot has access to a different form of ‘thinking’ than it was programmed with. Some combination of processors that gave rise to another kind of intelligence. The ghost in the machine, if you will. An indefinable quality that allows it to recognise the inherant ‘chair-ness’ of an object alongside is physical attributes as a chair. Even if we can’t recogninse or find this ability in the robots programming or build, perhaps simply because an intelligence with the same ability created the one in question it is just naturally endowed with it also; it’s programmed in unknowingly as part of the ability to recognise objects.
Perhaps the question isn’t of holistic (the whole is more than the sum of it’s parts) or reductionist (there is only the simply defined building blocks or parts that define an object and it’s function) viewpoints; it’s possible there is a third way to view this.
This leads to the more pertinent question, or rather suggestion:
An object, in this case a chair, does have or contain a definable ‘chair-ness’, but this attribute is not above and beyond the sum of it’s parts. The physical objects that make it up, it’s visible, testable components (legs, a seat, a backrest etc.) combined with it’s definite function (for sitting, resting etc.) give the object it’s undefinable attribute as a ‘chair’ (in whatever language you care to mention).
It is X type of object because it has Y and it is for Z, where X is a quality that can only really but determined by personal experience rather than explanation. One could explain the components and the function of the chair, but not communicate in any real way its ‘chair’ aspect.
This may be the very reason we have one name for it, rather than a sentence explaining its form and function. Obviously it’s partly for the sake of expendiency, but perhaps the need to consolidate its nature into one word also defines its aspect, or is a product thereof. We see it’s ‘chair-ness’ so we call it a chair. Not implying that chairs existed long before we had a name for them, just that the object has an attribute we can use one word to define. Of course it could well be that because we have one word for the object, this adds to its ‘chair-ness’, one more part of it to be added to the whole, the name somehow begets or at least contributes to the aspect of this object.
Obviously, this all depends on whether the fucking thing exists in the first place.
Before I begin let me say this: I enjoyed the film quite a lot. It’s nice to sit for three hours not thinking and escape to a wonderfully crafted world that isn’t this one.
I will be getting it when it comes out on DVD and I’ll probably watch it lots as a time-killer.
On the other hand, my qualms with it are that aside from the admittedly thin ‘Dances With Wolves’ comparison (it’s not actually all that similar), every other thing in it is from elsewhere:
• Ripley (because let’s be honest, she is Dr. Ripley in this) is channelling some ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ throughout.
• The Impressing and riding of the dragons is from Anne McCaffrey’s (infinitely superior) ‘Dragonriders of Pern’ series.
• The crippled protagonist using a remotely controlled body to perform tasks on a hostile alien world is from ‘Call Me Joe’ by Poul Anderson.
• Floating islands are old hat. As are energy vortices that knock out electronic guidance systems.
• Tree-dwelling natives are habitually used to show how connected they are to nature. (See: Elves)
• What little we see of the human tech is very ‘Alien’-esque
• The planet being a sentient being that the natives can connect to or ‘access’ like it’s the fucking internet is from somewhere, I don’t remember where, but I’ve read it before.
• Almost the whole finer plot is lifted from a novella by Ursula K. Le Guin called ‘The Word for World is Forest’.
• Helicopter pilot woman IS pvt. Vasquez from ‘Aliens’.
“I will gain the trust of these natives. I am one of them now. Humans are doing something that I was fully aware and part of but I see it is bad now. I will stop them by becoming THE BEST NATIVE! I win.” Roll credits.
It’s stagnant, it’s badly paced, it’s escapist fantasy that could have been written by a twelve-year-old and everyone saying “ZOMG BEST FILM EVER!!! 400 BILLION OUT OF 5!!!” is a moron who needs to read a fucking book once in a while.
Yes, the effects were good, but I don’t read a book because I like the typeface. I don’t play a game because the controls are great, those are supposed to be EXTRAS. I don’t want to watch a three-hour-long 3D motion-capture demonstration.
(A generous) 7 out of 10
or
(A realistic) 3 out of 5
I like it. But it simply isn’t good.
Filed under: Angry Slurred Shouting
I went to Youtube again. I need to stop, it’s going to give me a stomach ulcer or something.
I watched the clip from Network (look it up) where Howard Beale goes mental and tries to get some response from the viewers at home. “I dont have to tell you things are bad, everybody knows things are bad.”
It ends with him encouraging people to yell out of their windows “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” Charlie Brooker, as an homage, once suggested holding a nationwide minutes inarticulate noise. 1 minute a year where we stand in the streets and scream blindly at the sky in an effort to feel more real.
Of course then I saw the video responses.
Pretty people, sponsored video-bloggers, putting their expensive camera outside their window and leaning out to do their best Gen-X ‘angry’ tone, sounding like HAL when Dave’s half-way done with his circuits, and saying ‘I’m mad as hell, I’m not going to take this anymore.’
Take what? What aren’t you going to take? You don’t know cold war tensions, you dont know what it was like in the grips of a real economic depression.
Most of these videos ended with “Now make your own response!” white text on black backgrounds. “Oh please pay attention to me! Ignore the fact that the film I’m raping is fucking superb and that I got the quote wrong, respond to my video.”
No. You don’t get it, clearly you didn’t understand the scene and are simply using it as an excuse to latch onto a fad and shout at your camera. You are a parasite, you are a worm. You are what this scene is a railing against.
So amazingly self-obsessed, these folks, I was flicking through the other videos of one and it was entitled ‘babysitting nightmare’ or somesuch bullshit.
It was honest to god five minutes of this girl saying it was annoying to babysit because the kid was crying while she tried to watch TV or call her boyfriend. I could honestly have been fired off the Earth in a cannon at that point and I wouldn’t have cared. The furthest you can be from something on Earth is 12,450 miles, that isn’t far enough away from a place where people like that can exist.
I know I subject myself to these things, it’s my own fault, but I can’t help t. Misery loves company, and in this case misery loves a crippling hatred of most human beings and their every thought, breath or action.
Choke on a fish bone.
Boat-owners.
I’m listening to DeVotchKa.
I say I’m listening to DeVotchKa, it’s more that they’re happening while I do other stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like them, they’re great but they’ve got this syndrome that music has picked up since the millenium. It just exists. Certain pieces of music I will listen to properly; actually sit or lie down and do nothing but listen to it. Certain music just seems to happen while I perform certain tasks. It’s content, not music.
It’s such a shame, and maybe I’ll spend some quality time with this DeVotchKa album (How It Ends, if you cared). So far though it’s all been quite similar to itself and we’ve heard the kind of folkish foreign music so often it’s kind of dull now. Gogol Bordello is to blame, but also to some degree are the Arcade Fire and if we really want to take it back, I blame the Polyphonic Spree. Their music was good and I like it a lot, but it just sort of floats around in the air and tell us nothing and asks us nothing and then it’s over.
I have no segway into this, but I’ll try to tag it on the end:
Originality seems to have vanished from modern music, which is why I’ve recently turned to jazz to get my fix. Thursday night has become Jazz Night for me and a few friends. We go to the local jazz bar, possibly after having suited up and enjoy some good quality music by live artists. Last week was some very epic free jazz that was a joy to hear. Talented musicians actually playing instead of backing up a terrible singer.
You know what else gets my goat? Pop stars claiming to be rock musicians. Pink is the main culprit, but so many do it.
You’re pop. You are no better than Westlife and Britney Spears. You are not rock. Zeppelin and Sabbath were rock. Wolfmother tried, bless ‘em. (I once asked someone what they thought of Wolfmother, they said “Zeppelin and Sabbath already happened”. Burn).
Aside from all this; how am I? I finished my first year of Uni and am currently enjoying my free time, a lot of which is being spent in The Strip Comics, my friend’s comic shop that opened in my home town recently. I’ve fallen in love with comics like never before and am really looking forward to Blackest Night. Which will be epic.
Anyway, adieu.
Bov.
