Well I am finally back after a long sabbatical in which I was taking exams and bumming around. I don't have much to say at the moment I am living in someone else's house, so don't have comics on tap to revue, shortly I will be picking up the last of the current Runaways story arc, and the secret invasion Runaways and Young Avengers crossover.

In more depressing news, allow me to list my favorite authors.

David Gemmell
Robert Jordan
Terry Pratchett

Now in the last year this list must be updated.

David Gemmell - Deceased (while writing last book in a trilogy)
Robert Jordan - Deceased (while writing finale in an 11 book series possibly older than I am)
Terry Pratchett - Alzheimer's

And just recently, the most absolutely fantastic Comic book Artist, as well as a fantastic wordsmith Michael L. Turner

He passed away recently while I was on a Dive Trip at the age of 37.

I am deeply sorry.

He is in my prayers, with a special light prayer to guide his soul.

Arlyn Foord

Well for the rest of time it appears like I shall be posting via FB with an interesting new app I have discovered so GO TEAM! So excuse the lack of fancy text changes this is easier for me so nyeh :P.

Life moves on and the world keeps turning since my last post I have finished my official schooling, and come Monday I start 2 weeks of exams and then after my last exam on Monday 2 weeks from now I wait for Saturday when I will officially graduate from the United World College of South East Asia. This all seems rather overwhelming for me and my friends, so we are getting together on the 27th to fly off to Bali and spend some last time together before heading off to respective universities. I of course have yet to apply for anything and am waiting till my UMAT exam come 30th of July(doomsday). Eventually I will be applying and getting rejected and accepted from uni's and if it comes down to it I think it is more stressful doing this than applying earlier in the year for America and the UK.

Anywho enough griping about Uni. The past week or so has been a wholehearted attempt at revision, which has been widely more successful than GCSE revision. but it is not hard to improve on nothing. While performing this revision I have been using my breaks more productively than my normal computer games and cartoons. For the past few months I have been looking for religion. Interesting I know, but I have always been a devout agnostic(if I can actually say that, don't think I can). Recently though I have felt the need to find for myself the religion that rang truest with me. I figured I would start with the monotheistic religions and move from there. Judaism was tabled after a short while as it was never really something that felt right for me, something about it just never quite sat well. Islam followed shortly afterwards as although appealing was too dogmatic and confined for my taste, with little room for personal interpretation and development. Now I left Christianity to last, mainly because I knew having been brought up around it there would be a lot of familiarity and chaff to cut through before I could actually look at the religion and decide on that. Eventually I managed to separate it out, and whilst appealing, I still had enormous hang-ups about the lack of a personal relationship I felt inherent in the need for a priest or papal figure to act as a conduit to the divine.

Having looked at and dismissed these 3 large religions I looked at the more polytheistic religions, and their opinions on personal relationships with the divine. When I did I was impressed, I had found quite a few who were structured entirely around the idea that one the individual can provide the specific answers required from the gods. Here however, I encountered a different problem, a lack of familiarity. I was unable to properly connect with a lot of the beliefs that were deeply rooted in the regional cultures of these religions. So I began to look closer to home for a religion similar to those polytheistic religions I was familiar with that was more European and accessible for me.

After searching for a while it was a book in the library I picked up for a quick read to kill time(I literally finished it in 1 hour 10 mins) that turned me onto Wicca and Witchcraft. I am not one to jump hastily into something as serious as religion, so I did my research on the net and liked what I read. I also picked up a few books from the library to read. My only thoughts were that this just seemed to click, the polytheism fitted well with my personal need for balance. The basic tenant of "An it harm none, do as ye will" made so much more sense than the dogmatic natures of other religions. Finally the ritualistic nature, and calm and balance required for worship and meditation fit well with my need for very specific private space and time with which to formulate my own ideas and opinions.

As for the magic, well initially apprehensive, as I read more it made more and more sense to my romantic and rather fanciful side, and also sat right with my soul, as it were.

Well all in all I have now decided to become a Wiccan. Albeit a solitary, eclectic witch, as I am not so sure about some of the gardnerian practices. However, as Singapore is not exactly the easiest place to practice anything remotely bohemian, I am going to keep my rituals to my room and house. When I go to Australia however, I intend to find a proper teacher and learn more than I can find from books.

Anyway last but not least a bit of notification to you all. Until my exams finish and I recover from the enormous hangover I intend to have the Tuesday after I finish my exams I shall not be posting, unless I find some time. Afterwards everything shall return to normal(bar my week in Bali) and I intend to post more regularly as I am going to make this more of a journal, and less of an occasional thing.

Arlyn Foord

Blessed Be

Well Another week another series of mundane occurrences. First off though I have now decided that I shall update my LJ every Sunday, that way I can do stuff on Friday and Saturday that are fun/study related without posting to distract me.

Any way I'll start at the beginning of this week with Monday. As I am sure you are aware school is powering down for me with exam leave starting on the 24th, and my final exams looming. So I have spent the week starting Monday doing revision at school, not something you want to hear much about I am sure. Okay so I'll skip to the good bit, Friday.

Well every year the teachers at UWC attempt to rain on the grade 12's parade by preventing any and all leaver's pranks or fun. So this year in defiance, my grade staged a Where's Wally day on Friday, with everyone coming into school as normal and emerging after tutor group (after first class) dressed in jeans and a red and white striped shirt. This was rather interesting at there was little of no reaction by any teachers to this unsanctioned Mufti day. In fact all the teachers rolled quite well with it. However, we weren't going to end there.

We created something called the Great Grade 12 Splash. I will tell you tomorrow if it is a good idea for the next grade 12's to do it, I'll explain why later. Basically the night before Thursday, we all got facebook messages detailing that all of grade 12 should jump into the poll at 3pm and muck around for a while. Now on Friday afternoons there are swimming lessons of some sort going on, so most of grade 12 then interrupted them and not only that, we used the diving boards, these things are 3m high and iffy even with teacher observation. So we are in trouble all of us. We all received the following e-mail on Friday night.

To all Grade 12
 
There will be a meeting for all Grade 12 students on Monday at prompt 8:10 
in the Main Hall.  Please ensure you are all there.
 
Di

Need-less to say we are all in SO MUCH TROUBLE. Although it will be interesting to find out what Di will say to us tomorrow, as scared as I am. I mean I am really kinda scared. I need to stop thinking about it now. I really do...

Friday then proceeded with going to see the movie Awake with Matt, Mike, Vicky, Maddie, Jason, Avnee, and Rishab. It was good fun, I decided not to head out after to Newton, as I had a chem tutoring thing on Saturday.

Well Saturday involved 3 things occurring, I will only tell you of 2 though. The first was an all day Chem tutoring session, in which little of note happened. Except for may be the realisation of just how large the knowledge gap between Standard and Higher students is, it is kinda disturbing. Anyway, the second item falls here but I am choosing to omit it at the moment, i may inform you of it in a later post. Finally I marched myself off to the costume store to reserve Batman and Superman costumes for Tuesday and Wednesday of the upcoming Leaver's Week. For Monday i picked up a maroon tailed jacket and am borrowing my dad's green waist coat. Reason being I am going as the Joker, Heath Ledger's incarnation. Slightly less cool because i am piecing it together from random bits of costumes but still crazy and deeply disturbing I will post pictured on facebook maybe here if i can find out how.

Anyway no review this week, maybe next week.

Arlyn Foord

Despite the title this week has been ok. I have just been feeling like I have had the shit knocked out of me in the energy department though. I have none, I get really tired at the end of the day, so I have rediscovered something amazing

AFTERNOON NAPS

These things are fantastic I mean real grade "A" inventions, I mean whats not to like, its soft and comfy and allows me to look at high quality psychedelic personalised pornography, ladies now you know why men sleep so much.

Arlyn's Comic Book News

Now onto more interesting stuff. STOP BLOODY DELAYING RUNAWAYS. It annoys me. I am really wondering how this will end and it is killing me. On top of that YA Presents is happening too slowly, I need new stories now. I am glad to say that my predictions of a more important role for the YA in Marvel is coming as they find a name for themselves in this new world. This all revealed with an obscure little interview http://comics.ign.com/articles/859/859389p1.html and by this I now need to start reading Secret Invasion, bummer. I also really want to see how these team dynamics work out with a Skrull in both teams openly, and important ones at that.

The next issue here is one that has recently struck a nerve with me, I always enjoyed reading strong female characters, the foremost of which is of course Barbara Gordon, who I have a thing for yes. Recently with collecting No Man's Land and Robin Trades, I have grown to like Stephanie's character, she is strong willed and determined to show Batman that she is worthy. When Tim steps down she finally decides to impose upon Batman her need to impress him and takes up the mantle of Robin. The first female Robin is a bit of a milestone, Batgirl was always Batman's female counterpart, but ever a bit of a rogue, operating far more self contained. Robin however, is Batman's partner and sanctioned protege. This was truly ground-breaking. Her dismissal in my opinion was justified, her blow would have killed Zsasz, something no one affiliated with Batman should ever do, no lethal force is his first rule. She broke it, showed no remorse and was on probation, hence her dismissal, this I have no problem with, not ever here death at the hand of Black Mask.

What gets me is Dan Didio's editorial decision to not allow her a memorial in the cave. I can tell that the artists and writer's believe she should have one. In act 3 of War Games Batman tells her she was really Robin, this should be reason enough to have a memorial. Also I like to think just hidden in the pages of the scripting, Batman visits the gang war memorial built in Gotham, and lays flowers at her picture in broad daylight.

Dan, your writer's are telling you something and you should listen where is her memorial, she is waiting.

That last bit is where I will leave you tonight, no review I decided to fill you in on the cause I have decided as one that needs addressing.

Arlyn Foord

    - So dies democracy, amid the cheers and the applause of the masses.

Stephanie Brown - A Good Soldier

Sorry for not updating on Friday I was dead in the water. I would post now but I need to get a bit more study in before I head of to a party to enjoy myself. expect the weekly update and review tomorrow.

Arlyn Foord

Life, Comics, and Boredom.

Honestly not a lot happened really, between revision and tutoring I have accomplished little of noteworthy occurance, and spent too much money on comic books.


Ok sorry it is not possible to spend too much money on comic books. However, I did succeed in convincing myself to begin collecting Teen Titans trades, and am now the proud owner of vol. 1 and 2. So as I stack them up, I may offer opinions on them as I go, but I promise you a wrap up once I reach the crisis mark, after which updates will continue until I am current on the trades. At the moment I am enjoying it, but I think it is taking a bit too long to settle the group dynamic, but it looks forthcoming so I haven't given up. As for No Man's Land, I have finished, I am now the proud owner of all the 5 trades. My one beef is that it doesn't collect the Robin issues into the trades and I am expected to have read them myself (which i have). I know I promised a wrap up of the Runaways this week but the stores in Singapore have yet to get it in and as soon as i pick it up the review will be posted. In the mean time here goes my weekly review.

Review of the week:

Young Avengers Presents #1 and #2 and opinions.

Now I like the 'Young Avengers' (YA for short) and they have always interested me but mainly because I thought it would be a similar read to Runaways when I picked up their second trade. Instead they are polar opposite, just as good. Now these teenagers are realistic, but not people you expect to meet, these are very much the result of research being done into current trends then being applied religiously, then the characters being modified to fit the necessary roles in the team. These are very much the clear cut wannabe heroes, differing from the almost accidental/required heroics of the Runaways. This shines through in the group dynamic, with a much more relaxed social atmosphere but still very powerful interactions.

Now the 'YA Presents' titles appear to be the result of an editorial decision for a (very necessary) bridge from the upheavals recently, with the death of Captain America, very important to the young Captain America type, Patriot, and the instigation of the Initiative. They also touch on any of the events that relate specifically to their characters origins which may have offered in the passing time.

All in all 'Presents' appears to be an excellent set up for a promising new series that I will avidly collect from now until I run out of money in Uni.

Well only a short one from me tonight, hence the deliberate choice of a short collection of comics, as I have a lot to do this weekend, with a party to entertain for some small child, where I dress up as a Superhero (you know you want to), and a 50th of a friends dad to Bartend for all tomorrow. Sunday also promises many fantastic chances to study for school and exams, and make sure I'm ready to go back.

Arlyn Foord

    - When life gives you lemons make apple juice.

Now I am going to go sit on my roof, promises to be interesting with what looks like rain coming.

Hello everybody.





Stupidity on Skates

Now the pleasantries are out of the way I shall begin. However before we move on to the main points of my weekend round up (Which will be short, as this isn't my weekly update) allow me to say HOW MUCH I FUCKING HATE THE NEW AD ON HOTMAIL. you know the one with the webcam and video camera fighting a la star wars. It makes me want to die. It really does. It's the noise, I cannot stand the incessant whirring I must endure to check my Bali trip details. I might also point out that it is in stereo on the home page. I mean there are TWO of the bloody things it is just painful, and I mean really painful. It actually makes me want to switch to Yahoo, so to what ever divine power controls MSN and Hotmail, don't mind the picture, but FOR FUCK'S SAKE turn off the sound. please... your killing us.

Anyway WEEKENDS, gotta love 'em. I mean even on holidays, everything happens on the weekends, that is when the collective human race decides "Screw this I'm taking some time off to go out with my friends and enjoy myself/make a fool of myself in front of strangers/cause serious irreversible damage to my knees/spend too much money/get yelled at by my parents.

All of these things appear to have occurred over my weekend but focussed around my saturday. I was up far too early, i mean we are talking 10am here, that time normally only exists on weekdays when I have school. hmmm... 10am saturday shall from here on in be known as ARLYN IS ASLEEP SO LEAVE HIM ALONE time after what its discoverer feels like during its occurrence. Again I digress. I woke up and left the house at 10:30 to check my level of disposable income, which was $0 and head to Indi's house. there we fart assed aroud with his largish HDTV and I ate some of his mother's wonderful cooking. From here I shall provide an abridged version of evens. We ended up in Funan (the IT Mall) and met Bryant for comics and lunch, at which point I discovered that it is possible to spend money when you have none. So I picked up Soulfire #6 and #7 and "Robin: Days of Fire and Madness" Trade. By the way the next review will be pre-Crisis Tim Drake(only the Robin issues, Teen Titans will have to wait till I by it) and if all goes as planned the conclusion to "Runaways Dead-End Kids" and the start of Young X-Men. Anyway we had lunch and pontificated about various comics and characters, I also briefed the unenlightened pair that apparently Barbara Gordon does in fact have feeling in her pelvis and thighs but no movement, don't ask how it just is. After I dragged them present shopping for Meian and Amanda which did involve a comic store surprisingly so it wasn't all bad. Lieve showed up and my apologies to you but we were kinda having a Guys day, so we were kinda caught on the back foot when you came.

Eventually I made it home and off to the ice skating rink in a superman shirt and jeans. Once there I proceeded to fall a number of times, mainly due to the whole, "I wonder what happens if I do this as fast as I can go. So now I am bruised. The skating was enjoyable, and less similar to roller blading than I thought. After that we went to the hawker for dinner and I left early to nurse my bruises and sleep.

Sunday involved a lot of CHEMISTRY and thats pretty much it.

Well thats it for the weekend see you guys again Friday.

Arlyn Foord

    - "As sure as Day becomes Night even Gods must Die"

And now I would go sit on my roof if my knees didn't hurt so much.

The following journal will contain explicit material, subject matter and words that you really don't want your kids to hear, not only is there a chance this will offend some people, it's practically my mission statement. Coarse, Explicit, and if it goes as planned the worlds religious leaders will have to pray for our collective souls. If any of this offends you DON'T BLOODY WELL READ IT.


Introductions and inaugural ranting.

Well it has finally got to me I feel the need to have my own dedicated ranting web page.
I am not normally one for this but I have decided to use this to blow off some steam at the end of the week as well as review a few of the comic books I have read, or novels. I am fairly sure that any and all of my entries will be fairly short as when it comes to typing i am slow and lazy. Well Dinner is over and I have a whole load of new gripes with my parents, don't you just want to at times beat your head against the wall. Now this isn't the typical "You don't know what it is like!" stuff, it is closer to "you send me to get an A grade education and treat me like a 4 year old, then justify that by saying, we treat you how you act" however, they appear to fail to realise, I cannot exhibit any level of autonomy or independence and responsibility if my actions are controlled and monitored, and that I need them to relinquish some control in order to exhibit this. Now you would expect this sort of battle if maybe I was 16, and just sort of beginning to branch out, but no, I am only 17 but I am about to enter my final exams and am turning 18 in August, don't you think it is about time I was allowed to close my door at night without having to use my room as an isolation room for the dog. Well i think thats enough of that

My First Review of the Week:

Runaways #25-29

Well to kick off this weekly review I have decided to review the latest arc of the comic that really got me started on properly collecting comics. Runaways is one of the less popularised Super-hero titles of Marvel, although most anyone who has read them agrees with me they are a very good read, believable characters (apart from the powers, i know people like this, hell I dated one), excellent research into what youths are actually like and less of the normal stereotypes. Enough of an intro, warning now though for those of you who haven't read these *spoiler alert*. Plot in italics, i'm lazy so it is very short so bite me.

If you haven't read Runaways go down to the comic book store, kinokuniya, or borders and pick up one of the digests, or number 25 is on the net and here is the URL. https://subscriptions.marvel.com/digitalcomics/view.htm?iid=4056

This one starts after a little skip from where Brian K. Vaughn and Adrian Alphonse's brain child left off with an intrusion by Iron-Man. The Runaways are in New York(again) home of the Avengers(used to be) Spider-man, and everyone else in the Marvel Universe it seems! Their previous adventures here are coming back to bite them in the behind too (nice continuity tie in for a new writer). Here they are meeting the Kinpin. Hilarity ensues and they end up taking a one way trip to 1907(100 years ago for them). They then proceed to stir up trouble with the local gangs, and at the same time Nico(the magic goth chick) discovers she has ancestor's all the way back here and this old lady is exceedingly pissed off with her great^x granddaughter and want her to realise her full potential via spanish inquisition-like character building. While this is happening her boyfriend is snogging a red-head(something I always approve of), her lesbian friend's shape changing husbandwife is settling his her (i don't know anymore) it's identity crisis and hence love live, the oldest member of their team finds the parents of his late girlfriend, who died in an earlier issue and the last arc centered on him trying to resurrect her, and steals their time machine. This is all leading to a great big good old fashioned New York gang war, which gets kicked off in the 29th issue. Boy I wanna see how this is gonna turn out.

Well I appreciated the change in artist quite a bit in the change of team, Michael Ryan is excellent on the art side of things, and if my heart didn't already belong to another Michael (Michael L. Turner) I would give it to him. I have gotten a bit sick of seeing all my favorite characters constantly seemingly biting their lower lip so to create a crease in their chin, also sorry Adrian but your secondary characters have a nasty habit of having ENORMOUS heads, i mean really huge. So the new anatomically correct Michal Ryan is fantastic, pity he is only there for this arc. Now about the story and writing, I like it, I really do, I'm not one of those people who criticises Marvel for their continuity ignoring 9/11 tribute, honestly i don' care get past it. The direction Joss Whedon has taken this is good, the Runaways were begining to stagnate in San Fran and needed a breath of fresh air and a new challenge to keep them alive, and that happened. Joss pulled them out of San Fran to give them a chance to have a new writer put them back on the West Coast and back into a working and functional environment, he has also tried to diversify the characters, solve a few of their problems which have spun on for quite some time and need to be wrapped up. With the promise of a new Runaway, new fistigons for Chase, a new staff for Nico, and a new writer and artist Joss and Michael have put the team in an excellent position for the future and I salute you for doing justice to a new and relevant team to bring Marvel those highly sought younger readers.

Well that's all from me tonight and remember I do this because it is fun.

Arlyn Foord

    - Quit bitching about comic book girls being objectified, they could still kick your ass.

And now I'm going to go sit on my roof.