An Evil Cradling

"I think it was D.H Lawrence, speaking about the act of writing, who said that writers throw up their sickness in books."

Brian Keenan was a Northern Irish school teacher who came to Beruit, Lebanon to teach at it's prominent university in 1985. He certainly knew the dangers of working in country wrapped in political chaos, but he had no idea how much it would impact his own writings, teachings and relationships.

Keenan was captured and taken hostage by the Shi'ite the same year, and was passed about among several terrorist groups around Lebanon for five years before his safe release. In 1992 he wrote down his experiences in An Evil Cradling.

I was adamant to hate the book from first glance. I was assigned to read it for an English course at the time that Ken Bigley was captured and executed in Iraq. I was angry that the college would want to play on the sensationalist media ring around Bigley's death to encourage us to read about Keenan's hostage crisis, which occurred two decades ago. It didn't feel right for a 17 year old student to imagine themselves in Bigley's or Keenan's shoes like it was a museum of horrors.

Despite my intial misgivings I warmed to the book like I never thought I could. Keenan takes you right from the beginning of his life, he shows you he was no pompous self important Westerner poking about in another country's dealings. He grew up in a working class family in Belfast, he knew the terrors of living in a war strife country because he ws born in one. He was simply "jumping from one fire into another".

Keenan was captured on his way to work by a group of men with guns leapt out of an old Mercedes and bundled him into the back. Keenan spent his first few months of incarceration alone in a tiny cell with no explanation of his kidnapping. Chapters Into The Dark and Music are the most proflic within the book. As Keenan's rational mind begins to accept his situation, his semi conscious one takes flight. He begins to hallucinate and dream, he sinks himself into the microscopic world of his cell and is lulled into this new kind of reality. This explains the title of the book, An Evil Cradling, the familiarity and boundaries of an imprisoned man can make him fearful of ever leaving. In Music, Keenan listens to the rattling of the pipes and fans in his slapdash concrete hole and dances to an audial hallucination which seems to finally wake him from his adopted state.

The greatest introduction ever in the history of storytelling (and apparantly all true) is John McCarthy's first greeting to Keenan.
"Fuck me it's Ben Gunn." Gunn, being the wild straggly haired man in Robinson Crusoe who was forgotten by man, time, and readers of the book it seems.

It's more likely that you have heard of McCarthy, who was a 29 year old English television journalist when he was taken hostage. His position in the media and the furious release campaigns held by then girlfriend Jill Morell meant you couldn't read a newspaper or switch on the TV in England without hearing his name.

As the book progresses you learn more about Keenan and McCarthy's struggles. The beatings, the guards and their conflicted minds, the fear of never seeing the sunlight before they died. However terrible these things were, a love story begins to emerge. Despite Keenan's archetypal Irishness and resentment towards middle classers like McCarthy, their friendship evolves so much so that even a look or a insulting joke to one another would soothe the worst tortures the guards could offer. Keenan takes on a fatherly stance and urges the youthful McCarthy to have courage at the lowest points, and McCarthy checks Keenan's stubborness and aggressive stance when it could lead him into trouble.

The two men are moved into new cells around the country, sometimes joined by the American hostages and even Terry Waite, former spokesperson for the Archbishop of Canterbury, who despite travelling to Lebanon as an envoy became a hostage too. The interactions with the other imprisoned men shows just how Keenan and McCarthy's platonic relationship became an unconditional source of companionship which helped the men accept their situation.

These events happened almost three decades ago, and an Evil Cradling almost two, but it is still a relevant read. I am glad I never turned away from the book after all, because it has been the single most important piece of writing I have ever read. Keenan says he threw up his 'sickness' to write this memoir, to relive these awful events to act as a kind of therapy. He needed to do this to validate his experiences and to release them from his body and into a more universal consciousness. An Evil Cradling reveals the toxic existence of humanity, whether in lies in the East or Western world, but more importantly it shows companionship and unrelenting love are essential for human survival.

The sad case of the book

As promised I've stopped talking about games and moved further afield to have a gripe at a culture which is slowly forgetting books.

I left a certain chain store which boasted to be the 'biggest stationary retailer in the UK' last week. I was only a morning girl, but every time I walked into the shop it would fill me with dread and despair. And here are a few reasons why.

1. They used to make me wear a huge bright blue shirt with 'OMG LOTTERY, BUY YOUR DAMN TICKETS NOW YOU CRETINOUS PAUPERS!' or something along those lines scrawled in huge letters across my chest so a. every damn customer were coerced into buying a ticket and b. made it acceptable for creepy old men to stare at my chest as I counted out all their pennies for them.

2. Over the years the store which once was a tidy, civilised place to browse through books or pick up a few paintbrushes had started to resemble a huge bric a brac sale. Everything is loud and gawdy, the shelves are heaving with so many folders and papery shit they have dominoed and are left strewn across the gummy floor. Nothing is ever where it was supposed to be, hell even I could never find things for the customers!

3. Customers are ruder than ever these days, if a transaction isn't done at lightening speed then it is your fault. If the queues are long, if products are overpriced, if it's too cold, if it's too hot, if a certain shaped bag has run out, if the lighting isn't atmospheric, if the books don't dance off the shelves and nestle into the customer's arms singing soothing lullabies, then it is YOUR fault. I once had a man morph from a gentille old dear out shopping with his wife into a screaming, vein bursting scarlet faced gimp simply because the gift cards we sold did not come with envelopes. Of course you get the lovely chuckly customers who talk about the weather or the kind of day they are having and that's nice, but sadly single celled organisms floating at the bottom of the ocean get more respect than you do.

4. Since when has paper become so damn expensive? 'oh a writing pad, that will be 4.99, that tiny, slighly sparkly greeting card, that's 6.99' - wha?? Paper is so overpriced in these stores it would be cheaper to chisel 'Happy Golden Anniversary Deirdre and Bert' into slabs of marble and send them to respective loved ones, prefably not by post.

5. What counts as 'books' these days stretches far beyond the realms of sanity. I don't know whether to blame the general public for dumbing down or the media/retail corporate bastards for shovelling flavouress celebrity gruel in our throats, but top sellers consist of autobiographies of has-been tv stars and pop tartlette nonsense like the bloody Twilight Saga. It fills me with a great sense of despair, and it's saddening to see good fiction go to waste when entities (I reject the notion that she's a person but figure of media imagination) like Jordan get into the top ten for crappy stories about twee little ponies that are not even written by he/she/it.

6. I don't like the idea of a stationary shop selling so much frigging chocolate and foodstuffs. My counter was microscopic enough without towers of dairy bars swaying recklessly each time a customer breezed past. You couldn't walk anyway with tripping over a half opened box of 600 Guylian belgian shells. Thank God I left before Easter.

The Dog Dilemma

There's always that infuriating point in game when everything grinds to a halt because you need to compete one bloody pointless task.

I was playing Lord of The Rings today (don't judge me, it's a substitute for my RPG withdrawal) and yet again I get stumped on a supposidely easy part of the game. As the young Frodo Baggins (played by a piece of wood) you have to collect a handful of herbs for one of the crusty hobbits before leaving the shire. He insists its for his rhematism but I suspect he and his hairy footed friends are tripping out on 'herbal tea' like the surviving members of a psychdelic dad band. The herbs are easy to pluck from the surrounding greenery until you reach Farmer Maggot's land. Two fenced off fields, both containing the last two batch of herbs are guarded by Maggot's dribbling, gnashing hobbit hungry wolves. You have to jump over the fences undetected and grab the herbs without being seen, which sounds a lot easier that it actually is. Nothing is fluent in the game, the controls are jerky and lurch the camera about in the fashion of Frank from Shameless, and attempting to jump over silly pieces of fence with your tiny legs mostly ends in a fail and you need about a mile run up to clear a two foot space.

My grumblings follow suit when I had another similar experience with the 'Dog Dilemma' in a game. Remember the 1995 highly pixelated pc game Full Throttle? anyone? you know, the one where you play a motorcycle dude Ben in a futuristic landscape where badasses like the protagonist shun hovercrafts for the thrill of archiac mechanical...anyone? no?

Well the game was fun until I shamefully got stumped in an early problem solver. You have to retrieve a spanner, a wrench or something from a junkyard but it's guarded by a little shit of a bulldog. I wouldn't mind so much about failing again and again to distract the dog only if it didn't keep repeating the same cut sequence again and AGAIN! I think I learned how to grab Little Shit's attention away from me with something of meat variety but the sequence still haunts my thoughts and dreams.

Unfortunately I don't have the gamer frame of mind. If I can't do something the first time I squeal and beat my fists on the keyboard, screaming gibberish like a sexully frustrated ape. I don't like failure, or persistence. I don't like playing the parts in games where tact is vital to success. I'm as tactless as a worn blob of blue tac which once held up tinsel in your living room but has lost it's hue and is slowly gliding down the wall on its own trail of grease. I prefer games where yes, a little thinking can be done but otherwise you blast gun ho into a swarm of enemies splicing them with a big fecking sword. The only way the LOTR could improve in my eyes is if Frodo could steal some rockets from Gandalf's cart and do some target practice on the pathetic wolves.

More irritating tactful objectives include the 'protect the gimp' quests as favoured by the likes of Oblivion. You finish a task for some posh self important character(yay!)only to get the job of babysitting their cousin/auntie/bit on the side through a hazardous cavern (gah.) So you have to defend yourself in a full front attack whilst ensuring your foppish protectee doesn't trip over and die from a vicious looking leaf left carelessly on the floor. I'm exaggerating of course but these characters are so suseptible to death you wonder how they got through at least twenty years of life without accidentally brutally stabbing themselves with a fork whilst spearing peas on thier dinner plate.

As predicted I've given up on LOTR and I'm waiting for the distilled evil that is Wow to download onto my pc. Maybe one day when I grow a pair (figuratively of course) I'll ditch the fantasy games and scare myself silly with Bioshock or something of equal pant-pooping fun.

Oblivion

This time last year I was a final year uni student/bum in a house of gamers. Whilst they were all playing co-op games like Left 4 Dead (with microphones so they could talk to each other during gameplay *sigh*) I immersed myself in the scenic yet horribly glitchy world of Oblivion.

Firstly you choose a race which include a couple of human species, sexy elf types or wierd lizard creatures. Customisation is very advanced and you can alter pretty much anything, from the colour of your hair to the width of the bridge of your nose, not that it matters at all. However the designers seem to have forgotten about female traits, no matter how much you thin out those chunky thighs or give your character a mop of blonde hair they still end up looking like neanderthal butch lady lovers from ye old days past.

The main plotline involves finding the illegitimate son of Emperor Septim who rather rudely snuffs it within seconds of meeting you. You veer in and out of sewers in the city's prison (for some unknown reason you were an inmate there) punching rats dressed only in a piece of sack cloth. Then you find a sword on a dead guard hooray! and proceed out of the stinky sewers into the lovely crisp air of the kingdom of Cyrodil hooray!

Like most fantasy adventure games you follow a number of sub plots by carrying out pointless tasks for the morons of the land like a Medieval runner. One of the aspects of the game I really dislike is the characterisation of the task givers or other cretinous extras milling around town centres. The task givers insist on giving you an oral presentation of their woes like they think you would give a shit. They bitch, moan and whine about their troubles, which apparantly will all be fixed with the retrieval of, oh I don't know, a piece of sweetbread or acting as pest control by cutting rats into ribbons in someone's cellar.

Saying this it is a fantastic game for any bad tempered, easily angered gamers out there. Keep leveling up your weapons or destructive spells (my favourite being the fireball) then stand in the middle of a busy town like the Imperial City and start a massacre on the unsuspecting citizens. Once you slay your first victim expect to see the whole town descend on you in a blazing fury. Of course the average townie doesn't have any weapons so they will laughably try to beat you to death with tiny frail fists. Just watch out for the guards.

The landscape of Oblivion is absolutely massive and fully exploratory. You can travel all over the country, go in forests, swim in the (almost) endless ocean and climb the highest hills providing you have the stamina! Because the country is so vast (including the island add ons) you have the opportunity to fast travel on your map providing you've travelled to the destination before. However it's enjoyable jumping on the fastest horse and galloping across the changing scenery and as the day turns to night and so forth.

Although horses are fast and pretty enough to appeal to the most cutesy of girls they are useless in battle. If you are riding along and get attacked by the inevitable wolf or bandit you have to dismount each time and tackle them head on which is a nuisance when it happens so bleeding much. Also don't leave your horse stranded in the wilderness as they are likely to get attacked and killed like my poor Black Blade *sob*

Commerce is a big deal in Oblivion. You need money to buy the best spells from mage guilds, weapons, clothing or anything else you fancy. You can earn money by being a do gooder and carrying out the relentess tasks, collecting herbs and things to make potions, or simply by stealing from people and breaking into houses and yoinking anything lying around. There are consequences for being a bad ass and a lot of the time the guards catch you even if noone saw you pinch their stuff. Same goes for murdering innocent folk, the guard's spidey senses are immediately alerted. It's also a good idea to go raiding in the many caverns to find lots of goodies.

So what to do now you have stacks of gold? Buy a horse! horses are very expensive but make travelling especially through harsh terrain easier, and dare I say, a lot more fun. You are also encouraged to buy houses in a few of the towns as resting areas and places to stash your loot. My favourite house was in the town of Cheydinhal because it is by far the prettiest and resembles the pink Disney castle (hee hee!) the downside is it costs even more to furnish your house and once you empty your funds for a few velvet curtains and lacquered dressers you realise it's utterly pointless to the gameplay.

Anyway I've gabbled enough about Oblivion, there are so many glitches, and the characters are the flattest I've ever seen in a game but it is really one of those games that suck you in from the beginning. Once you have ranked the highest in your clans and skills, bought every posh house in the country and can blast you enemies from 20 feet away you feel like the King (or Queen) of bloody everything.

Starship Titanic

Another adventure game close to my heart was Starship Titanic, created by Hitchhiker's Douglas Adams. Intially Adams referred to his idea of an 'unsinkable' starship in the first Hitchhikers books and twenty or so years later it became the legendary game.

The sypnosis: you are the homey Arthur Dent type pottering around your quaint little house, and one eventful night just before you are about to play some video games on your computer, a massive spaceship plummets through the roof of your house spoiling the whole ruddy evening. A robot with oversized ear muffs descends down a flight of steps from the ship muttering 'oh dear oh dear' in a plummy English accent. Your home life is pretty much screwed so you might as well accept his invitation to board the ship and help him fix it, either that or sit in your ruined home rocking back and forth in corner.

What really made the hype around the game was the fact that it was one of the first games without a set script as the protagonist. You communicate with the A.I on the ship by typing into the PET (Personal Electronic Thing) much like you would on an IM programme. The beauty of this is that you had the freedom to peruse the ship, randomly insulting the bots or using your natural charm to wittle information out of them. Of course the creators were fully aware that immature moron gamers like myself would begin the verbally abuse the bots once the novelty wore off. Enough 'shut up bitch', 'sex me up' or 'your mum' comments and the bots will soon bite back. I think Fortillian the 'Blargish' Bar Bot called me a bastard once...

The PET actually allows for great gameplay, instead of being given a list of medicore tasks slumped on your inventory like so many adventure games, Starship Titanic is telling you 'Yeah, go figure it out for yourselves you lazy sods.' It is essentially what you say and how you interact with the Bots which gives you clues on what the feck you do. Remember Marvin from the HHGG? well all the bots on the ship are also A.I created out of real human personalities. Speak to Nobby the Lift Bot and he will tell you stories of fighting in numerous wars, or approach Marsinta the Desk Bot who will look at you with disgust and turn you away unless you tell her how pretty she is. Sadly the only humans on the ship are deaded, thrown in the garage or other lovely places so social interaction is concentrated on the bots alone.

The design of the whole cosmic hotel is utterly spectacular. Every grand hall, restuarant or bedroom suite is made beautifully. Much like Myst you can get enough enjoyment just by wandering around. It's also has quite an insane sense of humour thanks to the voice talents of Terry Jones as the irriatingly neurotic parrot and John Cleese as the smarmy bomb. Adams also voices the rather revolting Suc-u-bus system, 'I suck, I blow, anything else I don't know.'

So yes, Starship Titanic moulded my love for Adams and his work, it's over ten years old now but still looks just as fresh and beautiful as when I first played it. Now where's my towel?

A short history of my gaming life

I've been naughty and not updated for ages! here is a lovely long piece about the marvellous world of RPG (role playing games for those newbs out there)and the wonderful memories

I'm not a gamer, but I do love and appreciate watching a video game and getting stucked right into its world.

It all started when my brother ditched his commodore, chucked the gameboy and began to buy games for our lovely super tech PC (Windows 95 ftw!) I would creep upstairs as quietly as an extremely clumsy nine year old girl could manage and peek into the computer room, mesmerised by the flickering sparkliness on the screen. At first he would tell me to shove off and annoy someone else like a good little cretin, but I soon learned that if I stopped my childish gabbling and just sat quietly he would let me watch. I watched as he blasted aliens into large gunky messes as Duke Nukem, fought through robot military bases in MDK and it wasn't long until I was cheering him on 'Yeah get him right between the eyes...cut him up, blow his brains out!!'

The potence behind these RPGs was addictive, my brother wasn't the weedy bespectacled nerd boy with a wafro, but some muscular bastard with a crew cut and a machine gun that instantly made everyone his bitch.

A few years later and the high profile adventure games started circulating the nerd vortex. They had a mixed reception from an audience so used to being Mr Explodey McStab Stab who were now challenged to stop and think and look at the pretty sights as they solve a logical puzzle. Myst has to be the mother of all adventure games.

Based on Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island, is it essentially about this bearded wonder called Atreus (who I secretly fancied) who creates massive and stunningly beautiful worlds which can be visited using a series of portals within books. Not surprisingly Atreus's dream of peace and lovey dovey hair braiding serenity all goes to shit thanks to several family members (never trust Grampop!)and you as the mysterious visitor have to clean up the cosmic doggie doo within a series of complicated puzzles and codes around the worlds.

Complicated is putting it lightly.
Both Myst, Riven and all their associated games are repulsively hard to complete. When I was playing it most of the time I was wandering round the pretty sunlit beaches and tribal villages like the lost child I actually was. No hints, no glimpses of answers, no Arthur (I will get into this later) to provide amusing yet helpful quips to shove you in the right direction. The trouble with Myst is that it is made by genuises, for genuises. I played Myst IV: Revelation about four years ago and like the dumbass I am I clutched hold of the walkthrough as I plodded through the delicious landscapes, no doubt with dribble down my chin.

A more accessible adventure game, and personally one of my favourites was The Journeyman Project 3. You are professional time traveller and Matt LeBlanc doppleganger Gage Blackwood who wears a massive jumpsuit which is reminscient of on old submarine diver.Your job is to clean after 'Judas' time travellers and naughty sods who have clumsily stumbled over the historical landscape like that neighbour who steps dog shit into your nice clean magnolia carpets.

Like so many games of this kind you have the knawing feel of loneliness after the two dimensional Genghis Khan or that spaced out Buddha run out of things to say and give you the fuck off face. However, nestled inside your spacesuit is a little marvel of A.I and his name is Arthur. He resembles some sort of armadillo helmet with large googley eyes with an engaging, adorable yet sharp sense of humour. I loved him as a kid, and I still do today, it was like a buddy road trip on an epic scale. In adventure games when you solve a puzzle something clicks into place,a door opens or whatever and you either whoop and cheer to yourself, which is slightly pathetic, or say 'meh' and trample on, your achievments unnoticed. In JMP3, Arthur does the whooping for you, pats you on the back (well in a figurative sense) and feeds you more snappy tidbits from his repetoire. If he could high five, you can bet he would.

This concludes this section of my gaming entry...when I'm more awake I will continue with part deux.

Why I should never live with other members of the species

It is my last night as a lodger, hooray!

Ok so my landlords weren't all that bad, they made me dinner tonight and have said no more about the tea spillage incident. I'm the clumisiest woman ever.

The whole lodging thing is a wierd setup. You essentially live out your days in your bedroom, afraid of creeping out too much in case you step over the invisible boundaries that cut you off of places to bump into your landlords. Even if you do recklessly bounce out of your room every now and then, you are guaranteed to see 'them', the residents of the house and exhange a few hellos and embarassed chuckles along the way. The most in depth conversation I've had with Mr Chan was about the assorted wildlife of the garden. I have this annoying habit of repetitavely saying 'Oh really??' in a high voice when I cannot find anything else to comment on in a lack lustre conversation.

Living with other people than your parents is a real eye opener, instead of showing up everyone else's flaws, you begin to realise what an anal, tetchy grumpster you are. Two years ago I moved into student house with an assortment of friends. These are people I don't even talk to anymore, I think the whole experience scarred us all. I fell out with my friend Lis because as a self confessed grumpster, her little ways got on my nerves. The cackle of a laugh, the gibbering alcohol stained nonsense that poured out her mouth. It wasn't long before bitchiness ensued. The squalid surroundings that became our home became outweighed by my own glowering anal cleaniness and resentment. I would be on my hands and knees scrubbing one of the boy's vomit off the carpet or scrubbing the brown tracks of the toilet bowl, muttering to myself like some mad housewife.

And then came little Miss Hump-a-lot, who really was a nice respectable girl, but her sexcapades at the reasonable hours of the day used to have me stamping and seething in my room. Not because I wasn't getting some, just that my lovely bitter nature was eeking out anyway it could.

So living with people other than your parents, it's not all shits and giggles and instead of coming away with a greater perspective and tolerance for your fellow bipeds, you think 'Holy crap, when did I become the passive agressive, bitter and sexually frustrated cleaning compulsive?

And a single pink elephant has cascaded off the conveyor belt!