Hey guys. I know I haven't blogged in a bit, sorry. In the time since my last blog I started playing Resistance 2, got the demo for Brutal Legend, and finally started Psychonauts. I also introduced Braid to a professor of mine. Her constant audible gasps as we played was very rewarding. She is a trained painter and was shocked by the artistry behind the story, puzzles, graphics, and music. I told her to wait until we got to the end and she would never view games the same. She teaches programming at my school and I am working on a project for her class called The Lovely Loss. It is a piece of interactive art in the form of a website. Basically, yesterday I saw a film called Bright Star, which is about the romantic poet John Keats and the love of his (short) life Fanny Pawn. Being a poet I adored listening to recitations of some of his most famous work, and on the long bus ride back I started working through some lines in my head. They went a little something like this:

How warily I watch the withered woods of despair whittle away at my rapidly wilting will

How bitter look the cheery blossoms that in bloom once blissfully bathed my battered bosom

When I got home I started adding some more lines, and continued on this morning. It suddenly occurred to me that this was a rather cliche romantic poem, but one that I still enjoyed writing. I wondered how I could turn it into something more powerful, and then a thought occurred to me. You see taking Psychology of Women has gotten me to think about how much of the world is written from a man's perspective. So I began wondering what the muses of these famous poets felt about their famous relationships. So I decided to write a dual poem. In the second version, the same experience is written from the woman's perspective. In the background of the man's version the viewer will see a happy photograph of the lovers. By clicking on the woman in the picture the page flips to the woman's perspective. Here we see the man and woman in a less happy situation. By clicking on the man we travel to the next stanza. In this way the viewer goes through the poem stanza by stanza comparing the experiences of the man and woman.

I haven't written the woman's part yet, but I will now share with you the complete male half of the poem. Imagine this with a separate page for each stanza and you'll get the idea.

How warily I watch the withered woods of despair whittle away at my rapidly wilting will

How bitter look the cheery blossoms that in bloom once blissfully bathed my battered bosom

How the lilacs of love that before lulled me into a languid lapse of lackaday

Now freeze in a fearsome fire and forever forgo the fervent flame that festooned the flower to my figure

Alas, by allowing admission into the avenues of my heart there arose an avalanche of aching desire and ardent passion

So strong were it that the rapid removal of this rose rallied in me a rancid rupture of reason

And though I grasped at the gaping gorge in my person, I gradually gutted my feelings

And lay gasping on the ground

In this emptiness, eerie etchings enveloped my vision and I sat entranced as I viewed each erroneous episode in which I endeavored to endear her enchanting beauty to my person evolve into an eon of ecstasy as I extracted from memory every erotic evening that my courtship eventually lead to.

How therapeutic are the thistle and thorn, so seductive in their sweet and sylvan serenade of sadism

So now dear debauchery deliver this deuce from his decadent dullness. Destroy all that is dank and drab and fill me with a delightful darkness

Let me writhe upon my warted balcony. Leave me longing in a foggy forest, alone without anyone to remind me of the rancor and rage her grievances forever gouged in my erstwhile evanescent self.

And let me say so long love. So long.

Any suggestions would be welcome and appreciated. I specifically would like to know how the stanza with the 'e' alliteration sounded to you guys.

Moving on, I am working on a paper about the pro-technology aspects of Ghost in the Shell. I wasn't planning on actually watching the movies again, but I may need some more examples as my draft right now isn't even close to the required length. But I have to watch Alien for the same **** so I may just put in some long quotes (maybe Descartes' mind-body dualism writings, or part of the Ghost in the Machine book on which the anime bases its philosophy) and comment on their relationship to the film's theories on life and technology. If you guys haven't watched these movies, they are just incredible. I'd highly recommend them.

Finally, to Kelly, do you have any firm dates you want me to come yet? I need to buy train tickets which will probably be hard to come by for that part of the year so the sooner you get back to me the better. Also, if you sent a reply to my old email (the one with loop in the name) I wont get it as it's my school email and they block foreign mail from coming. So send it to my gmail address or just PM me here. I can't wait to try some of your cooking!