Maggie woke up to see the lizard sitting comfortably over the now stationary fan. She hated lizards; this one particularly so because it was huge, scaly, and somehow reaffirmed the alien status of the place she lived in. It had a body like baby croc, she thought, and big beady eyes staring at her with lizardly lust. Sweating more than she had in her entire life, Maggie got up to draw the curtains back, but one glance outside made her change her mind. The electricity kicked back in, the table fan whirred back to life, and the bastard lizard lazily moved down to the table, one eye still leching. She had tried telling the manager (Ha! Manager! Seedy-motherfucker-who-ran-this-joint, more like), but it just hid itself every time the slimy bastard came to the room. He was more interested in the underwear anyway, the fucker. Last night she had closed the hole in the wall with her bag, but it found a way out from somewhere else. Today morning she actually hit it with her shoes, but it got up again and licked her bag. She was never going to touch the bag again.
The phone rang again. She finally got up and put on a tee shirt. She knew the little hole in front of the phone was where the Ukrainian lesbian prostitute dancer from next door was standing, trying to get a peek. As she picked it up, the lizard moved away from the table, almost as if it knew who it was on the line.
“Uhrr… Hello?”
Maggie hated her own voice in the mornings.
There was no mistaking the smoked out voice from the other end.
“Firangi bhenchod, it’s time.”
She hated it when he called her Firangi.

She broke my heart, I wanted her dead;
I mused when I was lying in my bed.
Loneliness drives you to extremes;
Sometimes you begin to see all in red.

I called him on the phone, made a deal under the veil;
He said there was a discount on the second hit, their summer sale.
His deal kept on getting better, unitl I could afford everyone dead;
I was scared as he smiled and said, “Sir, we can get them for you wholesale”.

–Inspired by a story I read a long time back. I know it doesn’t make sense, though.

I believe there is a comic book out there for everyone. There, I’ve said it.

Most people think that comic books equal superheroes. They couldn’t be farther from the truth. Super heroes is a genre. Just like drama, action, horror. Comic books are a medium. A very under-appreciated medium at that. Every single genre from horror to romantic comedy, from espionage to science fiction, from drama to social commentary is being covered in the medium right now. The Graphic novel influx in India has just begun, and the quality of the literature being published in the genre, as a whole, is arguable never been better. What is a Graphic Novel? The wikipedia has some interesting informationor you could take one minute and read this far more entertaining definition by artbabe. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Back? Right, then. Like I said, there’s a graphic novel/comic book out there for everyone right now, they just might not know it yet. I believe that is the case with videogames too, but the spread across all genres in videogames is not so varied or dense. Plus the fact that all of you, whoever is reading this, you read. Which automatically means if a graphic novel is from your favourite genre, or is suitably well written and presented, you are more than likely to get entertained by it.

Sample this: in any given month, the number one selling book sells at most 250,000 units. In it’s opening weekend, something as universally panned as Catwoman sold 1,670,000 tickets. I think this is because most people are not aware that there exists material that would entertain them more than the latest syrup coated family wedding flick.

Though I am a misanthropist when I want to be, I refuse to believe people are so stupid that they will shun Sin City for Aashiqui Banaya Aapney. I don’t believe that at least a third of the people who watch Law and Order wouldn’t enjoy Gotham Central. I don’t believe for one second that one Lord of The Rings fan out of ten wouldn’t enjoy Conan. Likewise for George Romero fans and The Walking Dead. You can’t tell me that at least 10 percent of Ludlum fans wouldn’t enjoy Sleeper or Queen and Country. What about movies like Lost in Translation? Wouldn’t one person out of a hundred who liked the movie enjoy something like Blankets?

Not to mention older fans. People who just stopped reading comics after the superhero glut. They might be persuaded to pick up Transmetropolitan, and see that spandex and tights are not the be all and end all of comics. Won’t an old Superman fan love to see what they did in Red Son or Birthright? Or a wouldn’t Spider-man fan like to see the new Ultimate Spider-man line, and see what they’ve done to their favorite character?

If they were aware of these books.

This is where it all boils down, the point of the whole thing. Comment to this post, and I will recommend a Graphic Novel for you. If you think I don’t know you that well, please tell me three things from different genres, irrespective of media, that have recently caught your fancy, or that you like/love/enjoy a lot. If you don’t know how to get your hands on it, I will tell you.
One of you, and I mean a sum total of one from here and my LJ, gets to win a GraphicNovel I recommended to them, either digital or dead tree, depending on my poverty levels.

And the people who are even better read than I am (*cough* beatzo, gotjanx *cough*), start talking to your friends. Ask your pal who never misses an episode of CSI if he has heard of Gotham Central. Tell your girlfriend about Sandman. Tell your office mate who loves noir about Sin City. Tell your sister brother about Bone. Tell anyone about Planetary. Help me out with this post, let people know.

There is a comic book out there for everyone, and I want to help anyone interested enough to get started. If you’re still not sure about anything, email me at trceuvw02@sneakemail.com. I’ll be more than happy.

Next, videogames.

There are probably many reasons why Cakes did not want to eat the last rat on the plate. First of all, it was a rat. Not to make that last part any less horrifying, but the rat wasn’t even dead. It was in a quasi dead state; Cakes remembered that one time he got drunk at Kong’s flat and woke up feeling like a small caterpillar in a loud, shiny, uncomfortable world.
The rat was Cakes with a hangover. Only smaller, dirtier, and far, far smellier. Cakes hated the fact that he was being offered a chance to eat himself, after the old women had all taken one each. The short, ugly one was staring at him now. Hard. He gulped. Twice.

The gulping was not helping at all. All six of them were now staring at him, all six short ugly old women, except the one to his right, who was tall and ugly. Between them they had about 10 and a half beady eyes to stare him with, and twelve very wrinkled, gnarly, yet impossibly strong hands to force feed him hungover rats with.

Cakes gave the scenario much thought and decided the best course of action was to faint. He promptly proceeded to do so.

I was bored…

…and wrote this:

What purpose does a deteriorating building, nay, an unhappy meeting of wood, stone, cement and mortar; serve being on the dockside of a busy seafaring town? One purpose at least was apparent from the uproarious sounds coming from within. The more investigative might notice the stench of ale, the fighting noises, and the sailors entering quickly, and departing even more so, seeing as they were mostly thrown out, and they might conclude that it was a bar of much ill-repute and favored by sailors who laid anchor here. The observant, however might reach the same conclusion by looking at a battered, worn-down sign on the place that said, “Happy Sailor Bar and Inn”.

In its present delapidated state it actually said “Hap y S lor Bar n In “, but that is neither here nor there. It existed in a symbiotic relationship with the whore house next door, whose sign, unfortunately, had long since been used as firewood. The resident occupants of said neighboring building made sure that the rooms above the Inn saw more activity than is usual for a place meant to rest the sea-wearied bones of sailors.

The bar itself was a purulent place full of raucous sea hardened rapscallions, who by the sound and looks of it, had no room for remorse or decency. It wasn’t a clean place either; the never cleaned floor and tables were home to life forms grown exclusively on old ale, and food gone bad. It was the kind of place no decent person in his right state of mind would even contemplate to enter. But it served the best damn ale in the entire quad-island region, and the whores were by far the least swindling. These facts, of course invited all sorts of bandits, pirates, and your general variety of ne’er-do-gooders.

A lone venturer entered through the smelly doorway, straight into the putrid stench that seemed strangely at home in this place. He sidestepped over people lying on the floor. Some inebriated, some wounded badly, most were both. Empty bottles, clearly thrown as a strong point in an argument, whizzed by as he ducked them. Slurs and insults involving his ancestors and livestock followed suit as he ignored them too. Strange and greedy looks followed the small parcel he hung with his sword on his waist, as he made his way to the bar.

The bartender, who was also the innkeeper, approached. He was balding man of short stature, his small deep-set eyes weary from all the years of tending to misfits. You could tell the maleficence of the place somehow had an adverse affect on him, despite his round, fat torso. He gave a humorless, unwelcome smile, exposing the shiny golden color of his teeth, and said, “What�s it gonna be?�

The man stared directly through the thick air into the barkeep’s eyes and slowly said, “Surprise me”. The bartender gave a smirk that told the man he knew this was his first time here. He moved briskly behind the counter, and started commixing a beverage. He returned in less than two minutes and set the dirtiest mug ever seen all of quad -island region, filled with a frothing, bubbling orange liquid, in front of him.

The man muttered a tiny “Thanks”, and set about drinking his drink quickly. No sooner had the liquid touched his tongue and the roof of his mouth, all the nerves, all the senses in his body started throbbing and screaming to his brain that this was not fit for human consumption. His tongue longed for the sweet taste of rat-poison as the vile liquid violated the synapses in mouth and…

BLARCH!

The man spewed whatever it was he had drunk all over the bar. He turned to the bartender and screamed, “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?�

A disconcerting quiet descended over the bar as the bartender looked up. His voice or face showed no sign of humor as he replied, “A Surprise”.

I intend to do something more with this, though.