I just thought I should write something here; it's been quite some time.

Work's been keeping me very busy. I have little time for anything else. I've also become some sort of an alcoholic (?), but not quite. I just enjoy my liquor more than I ever used to, especially the milk-based liqueurs. Yummy. And cocktails. Having bartenders for friends is a really good deal. I've also recently developed an acute appreciation of house and trance-like music. There's this one song I cannot get out of my head but I have no idea who sang it so I can't even download it...

I think it's been pretty obvious that I've started on a comic craze recently. I read Gaiman's 1602 about 2 weeks ago. It was good, I liked how he redeveloped the characters in a different setting. Loved the art. But I just didn't appreciate how the best that the writer of an acclaimed contemporary comic genre, the writer of crazy-ass Sandman, could come up with was a Save-The-World plot. That was such a huge let down. No complexities, no multiple layers. Plenty of espionage and politics but the 'end of the world' thing was just not cutting it for me. I still like Gaiman though.

A few weeks back, I was reading the first few pages of Alan Moore's "Watchman" and I really enjoyed it. I've been putting off buying it for some time now. I probably shall do so tomorrow or on Monday. I have DVD's due tomorrow to return to the library@esplanade too.

Modules list for the new academic year 07/08 will be out on Monday. I am pretty excited to know what's going to be offered. If I qualify for honours, I'll probably do something on comics. It feels good to have something specific to work towards other than a mundane, boring BA.

I have decided to put _Dune_ aside until further notice. It's not that it's boring or badly written.. I've been reading it regularly and yet I'm nowhere near the end, which is extremely frustrating. So. I've moved on to _Kim_ and another Gaiman comic recommendation I bought last week from Kinokuniya.

I'm currently juggling between The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman and Dune. Oh man, it is exasperating me to no end that the latter doesn't seem to finish. I mean it's well-written and all but I've been reading it since the start of the month and I'm still not done? Maybe all this means I should stop having so many late nights. I quite miss the way my room looks during sunset and chilling out infront of the telly, channel surfing and drinking milk.

excitedness

I got Seth's _A Suitable Boy_ at a steal for $6, in perfect condition too!

dune

Dune is so good. It's taking me forever to get through it but I'm glad for the never-ending feeling.

Mr. Punch

Mr. Punch denies the conventions of the literary tradition in its very title - 'tragical comedy' instead of 'tragicomedy', as it is usually known. Immediately, I got the feeling that Gaiman is trying to make comics into a literary field of its own without the usual embellishments and fancy extrapolating that comes with literature as we know it today. There is depth and weight to what he has to say in his comics and I don't think the issue is whether he does it well (some parts of Mr. Punch came off as a bit contrived but when seen in the framework of the visual and emotional aesthetics that Gaiman & McKean were trying to achieve, I think it balanced out pretty well), but rather how he does it. Mr. Punch is the best example of this. It is a simple plot and could well be substituted for any other plot, but the execution of story; his use of symbolism, the idea of a theater, an immoral, mad stage puppet - a non-being - at the plot center; shifts in the direction of reminiscing; using space and time (both literally and figuratively: for the reader and the microcosm of experience within the book itself) to tell a story.. all these are ideas laden and rich with meaning and depth, left there to be picked out and understood. Gaiman drops hints only insofar as writing the story itself - apart from that, all the work is left to the reader, which is what I really like about the story and McKean's art direction. It's like a juicy fruit, a fat grape, James' giant peach - so much can be made out of it.

punch

Fendi, a bartender from work, turned out to be a comic fan. We swapped comics: the first three issues of Fables for Mr. Punch. The art looks great and I can't wait to get started.