Existence - the real Heaven and Hell?

I'm feeling a bit philosophical today, as I often am and I got reading some articles about the Matrix and some of the philosophy and metaphorical elements to it.
Now say what you like about the Matrix trilogy, but when the first film came out it was a sensation - no question. The effects, the choreography of the fight scenes, the plot... it all added up to a blockbuster. Thing is, if you are a half way intelligent person, it really made you think. If you were a halfway intelligent person with a curious personality or an interest in philosophy, it not only made you think, it made you puzzle over it for some time. What a way to bring philosophy to the masses!

I believe that subjective experience is all we have and that all of the subjective experiences and the associated emotional and rational responses we had to those experiences form our personalities to the greater extent. The word for this is Weltanschaaung, a German word that basically means the 'world view', or the summation of your life's experiences. This is distinctly different, but at the same time, intertwined with memory. Your Weltanschaaung is obviously held in your memory, but it's not just 'memories' in the traditional sense. It is your memories of everything that has happened to you and your responses to those incidents. It is the starting point for any new experience - your brain first refers to your Weltanschaaung to see if you have encountered something like this before and if so, how you responded as a point of reference.

It has been said that the only constant is change. People tend to think of themselves as unchanging - that I am me, no matter what happens to me. If I were to lose an arm, I would still be me. Obviously this has to do with the seperation of body and mind, but there is an argument to be made that the two are intrinsically linked - if the body dies, so does the mind and vice versa.
However, people do change, both physically and in their personalities. Tastes change in food, clothes, friends etc. Every ten years you effectively grow a new skeletal system, due to cell replacement. Every month your topmost layer of skin in completely replaced. You form new opinions based on new information. You may have a discussion with someone and come to ally yourself with a point of view they have, in which case do you assimilate a part of their personality? If this is the case, and we are creatures of flux, how can we define ourselves as constant, individual personalities?

The power of the mind is awesome, in the literal sense of the word and can affect a person's day to day experience of the world. People with cognitive disfunctions will experience the world in a much different way from someone without those disfunctions.
There is a culture, (and I'm sorry but I cannot remember which,) that believes that Heaven and Hell are real, but exist only in the minds of everyone. They believe that you pass through Heaven and Hell several times per day and that these concepts of Heaven and Hell are not places, but states of being - joy and misery. Everyone has the power to decide to be happy or unhappy - to let things get to you or to let things go, but it's not always easy to do so.
Strangely, I've never really done much thinking on the concept of Heaven, but I have thought a lot about Hell - again in more abstract terms than thinking of it as an actual place to be transported to after death.
My thinking is along the same lines as above - that it is a state of being that can be influenced by outside events but ultimately exists only in the mind of the individual.
However, I did think about what I would do if I were given the task of creating a human Hell. For me, Hell would not be about fire and brimstone or sulpherous boiling lakes. It would not contain demons engaging in painful tortures.
My Hell would be about frustration. To me, frustration is a far more insidious feeling than pain. Pain can be ignored or treated and is always transient at best. Pain will break people, but frustration is what sends them mad.
My Hell would be a place whereby the average person would be set upon by desirable enticements, (which could be a range of things, from money and possesions, to small amounts of power, to love...) designed to foster longing, only to be thwarted by other societal issues. My Hell would be a place where there was a great disparity between those in power and those without, but that those in power would knowingly foster hope in those without, whilst being safe and comfortable in the knowledge that 99% of people would never achieve what they hope for. This would be achieved by allowing people certain, small rewards which are completely negligable, token gestures to those in power, but which to those without represent the possibility of becoming one of the elite and therefore fosters hope.
Hope is the key to my Hell because without it, people would give up. If there is truly no hope left in a situation then people have no choice but to give up, but if even the tiniest glimmer of hope exists, they will work and fight and die in order to achieve the unachievable.

So, in short, my Hell would be somewhere where you work for things that are either ultimately trivial, or at best, transient whilst being constantly frustrated by your lack of any real power to change things, but being spurred on by the hope that one day you will be able to. Sound like anywhere you know?

Taking all that into consideration, I can honestly say that the last month of my life has been Hell.

Where's the damn strip?

Sorry there hasn't been a new episode of Exotic Soup for a couple of weeks - I've been ridiculously busy at work. We've been moving premises and I've been responsible for setting up all the IT for the new site. We've bought all new servers so I've had to plan and set up an IT infrastructure from scratch, which is something I've never done before.

The weekend just gone was my first day off in 3 weeks and I've been working long hours, so it's been difficult to find time. In fact the only reason I got a strip online a couple of weeks ago is because I already had it drawn and scanned so I just needed to upload it. I should've done a strip last weekend but I needed the time just to relax and catch up on some sleep!

In addition to this, my girlfriend and I sadly called it a day last week. She has a new job in a different city and between the distance and both our busy schedules it became apparent that we would not be able to spend much time together - if any, for the next 6 months or so, so we decided to just be friends. As far as break ups go, it was all very amicable and we're still good friends so you could call it easy, but break ups are never easy so this last week has been hard.

I promise I'll have one up for this week and we will finally find out what type of animal Alex is! Stay tuned.

A little dinosaur!

As always there are things I'm happy with about this week's strip and things I think I could have done better. For example, I've just remembered that I ruled one of the panel borders too long and didn't fix it in Photoshop. That's going to bug me now but I'm going to leave it as a reminder to tidy up my work for future.
Drawing a strip is a weird kind of process. I start out with the pencils and sometimes leave things a bit rough if I know what I want to do and sometimes tighten the pencils up so I have a definite line to follow while inking. Then you ink it and almost always it comes out a little different than you expected. Sometimes better, sometimes worse and sometimes just different.
Usually the dialogue will change right up to the point where I write it onto the finished panels. If I think something can be said more succinctly or if a line is the slightest bit ambiguous, I'll reword it.
It's a very organic process, much as I hate to use that amazingly pretentious term, but it fits.
Anyway, I have to thank my Mum for the 'little dinosaur' quote regarding Alex, which if you've read the strip over at web comics nation you'll see I have done.
I was going to do a double issue this week, to celebrate getting to double figures, but time was a factor and also because I already have next week's strip drawn, (actually it was the first strip I drew, but more on that next week,) and it looks like I'm going to be working thte next couple of weekends, (I'll be going to work today for a few hours shortly,) so I can just post the strip without having to worry about it this weekend.
I think that's about it for now, time is against me this week.
Enjoy this week's strip - Ka-spoot!

Exotic Soup - the blog...

(For some reason this post refuses to appear in bold, no matter how I edit it...)

Ok, so it's been a while since I posted. Obviously I've been a bit busy - at work, at home and just generally. Mostly I've been working on my webcomic and the accompanying website, listed above.

Previously this blog was just a place to vent my metaphysical spleen, but it was a bit aimless and that's no way to run a blog, dammit!

So, what with the comic being a serious ongoing project of mine, I've decided to post an accompanying blog to the comic, so from now on I'll post once a week, as I do with the comic, although maybe not at the same time, but probably pretty close.
I did get part of the name for the strip from the blog - the 'soup' part sounded great with the word 'Exotic', which at one time was all I could think of for the name of the strip.
So this blog will be mostly about the comic, which is good because I'm keeping to my once a week updates schedule on the comic, (a fact that I am proud of,) so I think I can manage a once a week blog post too, and having the comic as a main topic will give me something to write about if I get stuck.

I may still wander off into topics of personal interest and debate, kind of like Scott Adams, (of Dilbert fame,) does with his, of which I am a regular reader.
By the way, I remember that Scott had a thing set up whereby if anyone mentions his name and the word Dilbert on a blog, it sent a message to his blackberry telling him, so if you're reading this Scott - Hi! I'm a big fan of the blog and cartoons. Please check out my webcomic if you have a couple of minutes spare. There's only 9 strips so far, so it's still in it's infancy and won't take long to read. Thanks.

For anyone else reading this - Hi! Check out the strip! Leave comments on the strip or blog or email me: mike at exotic soup dot co dot uk - I'd love to hear your feedback.

Until next week: Ka-spoot! (If you've read the strips, you'll understand...)

Comics!!!

When I was a kid and adults asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, my answer varied from week to week and depending on who was asking. I guess that's like a lot, if not most kids - one week I wanted to be a policeman, the next an astronaut. At one stage I even wanted to be a footballer!

As I got a bit older I found myself completely bemused by the whole job thing. I remember thinking that there were certain jobs I could see a clear path to - like doctor, lawyer, pharmacist etc. For these types of jobs, you kind of had to have decided by the time you were 10, (or your parents decided for you,) and you had your life mapped out for the next 10 or so years.

That thought scared the hell out of me. I've always been a bit of a 'live in the now' type of person. Planning for the future does not come easy to me, so planning the next 10 years just seemed like lunacy. What if I decide I don't like it half way through? Is all that training and planning wasted? Of course this exact thing happens to many people; they have their career decided for them by their parents at an early age and then half way through they quit and their parents are disappointed and angry because their child has a mind and tastes of its own. Some even finish the training before deciding it's not for them, others still work at it for years before quitting to do something that makes them happy. The most unlucky ones wait for retirement.

Anyway, there seemed to me to be an awful lot of jobs that I'd maybe heard of but didn't know much about, like quantity surveyor, radio DJ, event organiser etc, that I had no idea how you would get into a job like that and these jobs were probably in the majority when you looked at it.

I now believe that a great proportion of people are in the jobs they are in by accident, or if not accident, then one thing led to another and one day they woke up and they were a wedding planner or someone that fixes LED's in aeroplane cockpits or something.

So I was overwhelmed by the possibilities as a child, worried that in all these weird and wonderful sounding professions, there might be one that was perfect for me, but how would I know what it was or how to get into it?

Of course people first ask what you are interested in. "Well, what do you like to do?" they say, "do you like Maths? Be an accountant! Do you like English? Be a teacher? Do you like problem solving? Be an IT technician or engineer!" and so on.

It's funny, but although most young boys profess to want to be a fireman or policeman at some stage, no one ever asks, "Do you like dealing with violent offenders and being abused? Do you like incredibly hot plasma and extinguishing it?"

So by the time it came to do my GCSE's, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had sat in front of the careers teacher a year or so before and told him I was interested in art. He smiled, quite genuinely and told me he liked art too, and had I ever thought about joining the army?

Even at 10 I was resolutely unimpressed with him. I think that the army leaflets were close to hand, or perhaps every boy got an army leaflet that day, (maybe he was on commission,) or maybe he was just a realist and knew that the likelihood of a young boy from the North of England ever making a living from art were somewhat akin to the chances of a hedgehog crossing a 50 lane autobahn filled only with fast lanes containing turbo charged steam rollers.

I once told my stepdad that I wanted to be a cartoonist and got a similar response. Don't get me wrong, I love my stepdad to bits, but he again is a realist and told me I should think about getting a proper job. I'm all for pragmatism, but I'm also for nuturing the hopes of the young, unless they want to get famous from one of those god-awful reality talent shows, in which case, you're on your own.

The two don't have to be mutually exclusive though - many writers and creative people hold down day jobs to be able to afford to live and work on their passions in their spare time.

I did this myself for quite some time when I wanted to be a 3d artist, working in the day, then experimenting with 3d art in the evenings.

So a little while back I remembered my cartooning dreams. Along with my writing and 3d art dreams, they've been going for quite some time. I dug out some old ideas I'd written down for a comic series, and also went through some material I'd written for a sitcom and long story short, I started my comic. After reading 4 books of Liberty Meadows by Frank Cho, (if you are the slightest bit interested in the funnies, pick them up,) I decided on simple, 4 panel strips. I could tell a short gag, or else have a running story over several strips, but most of all I could handle drawing 4 panels. Not a whole graphic novel that sounds like a great idea but you get bored of after only roughing out the first page, but just 4 little panels.
I liked the snappy pacing - obviously I can have more than 4 panels or less or whatever, but 4 works well for most things and it forces you into the realms of brevity, which of course, is the soul of wit.
So, I get to write, (I think I've got about 20 or more strips written so far,) and draw, and try to be funny, which is something else I enjoy.

The web has allowed me a home for my new opus, called Exotic Soup, (keeping the soup element of this blog,) on webcomicsnation.com, which is a great little site that has everything in place, including RSS feeds, email lists... blah blah. I'm proud to say that despite my tendency to not follow ideas through to completion, I now have 3 episodes online! Hit the link to see them.

Who knows, I may end up earning my living as a cartoonist yet.

IBS

So I went to the Doctor who, despite my concerns that he was a locum, was very helpful, as well as very nice. He had me diagnosed inside of five minutes - I definitely have IBS. I've been having problems with this for around ten years and as with a lot of people, I never really went to the Doctor because I put it down to other things.
However, it's really good to finally know what I have as it now means I can manage it and help to alleviate the symptoms. there is no cure as such, but learning what will and won't cause a reaction can help lessen the symptoms.
A while back I suddenly started eating differently. I'm not totally sure what triggered it, but it was in part due to problems I was having at the time. I stopped eating about half the amount of food I would normally eat and would sometimes only eat an apple for lunch, (no breakfast,) and maybe some peanuts and cheese for my evening meal or a can of macaroni cheese or something like that.
I learned to only eat when my stomach actually rumbled, because that way I would know I was definitely hungry. Most people in western societies eat for all the wrong reasons. We eat because we are thirsty - seriously, apparently research shows that around 30% of the time we think we are hungry, we actually are thirsty, so next time you feel peckish, instead of having a bar of chocolate or something, have a drink of fruit juice instead and see how you feel 5-10 minutes later. Often you will find the hunger subsides.
Worse than that is when we eat out of boredom or because we are down. This is totally unnecessary and can be prevented, (at least I found in my case,) by taking your mind off whatever it is you're doing and finding something else to occupy you.
I found that if I listened to my body, it would tell me when I was hungry and when I was thirsty or even when I had had enough to eat and was full. Once I'd learned to listen properly, I found I actually didn't need to eat as much as I was doing and could easily get by on a lot less food with no adverse effects. If you start eating less, your stomach shrinks. Presumably this is an evolutionary effect - if food is scarce, your body reacts by needing less food. I know - go tell that to the starving thousands in Africa and all around the world right? Little comfort for people with no food.
I lost a fair bit of weight during this period, dropping from about 13-14 stones to 11 and a half. I cut out lots of things I had previously eaten and drunk. I drank almost no coffee, (big change for me,) I ate only small portions of bread, (when I was at my heaviest I was 15 stones and would have at least 3 slices of bread with pretty much every meal - one while I was waiting for the food to cook, one with the meal and the last one to mop up with,) and cut out a lot of other stuff. As I said, I'm not sure why I did this - I didn't consciously go on a diet or plan to lose weight. I didn't consciously drop specific things from my diet, it just kind of happened.
Strangely, I'd never felt better. At the time I put this down to feeling happy about being able to fit into any pair of jeans, my now flat stomach, (I never quite got a six-pack, but it was flat for possibly the first time ever,) and the confidence these things brought me. I've pretty much always been a little overweight - nothing chronic, not obese, not really even what you would call 'fat' but overweight. It came as a bit of a shock to notice how much being overweight affected my self image, but in a good way because I felt so much better. As well as my stomach, my face got thinner. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it no longer looked like a potato with a beard, but I had cheekbones and a stong jawline. OK, so I was never so overweight that I couldn't see these things, but now they had that extra gleam of definition!
What I didn't realise however, was that one of the big reasons I was so happy was that my symptoms had gone into remission. I was happy because I felt so much better health wise - not having the stomach cramps, the bloating etc. Sometimes I used to eat only a small meal but my stomach looked like I'd eaten a Viking feast to myself.
That's the problem with IBS, it's very easy to overlook the symptoms, or put them down to something else. In my case, it had been going on for so long, that it just became part of everyday life. Some days were worse than others, that was all. The other problem is that the symptoms vary from person to person. Some are affected in the throat, some in the stomach, some in the bowels or anus. See the link for a list of symptoms. If you have more than one, see a Doctor. My symptoms span the stomach and the small and large bowels, although I do sometimes get a funny reaction in my throat - not like a golf ball like the list says, but it gets irritated, so maybe I span all four categories.
Anyway, I slipped back into somewhere between being my thinnest and my biggest and back into some old bad habits, like eating probably a little too much again, starting to eat bread more often, drinking too much coffee, (maybe up to 10 cups a day,) and so on. I went back up to 13 stone, where I now sit. The symptoms returned and it was only then that I realised that they had dissapeared at all.
I thought back and decided to cut out wheat to see if I had an intolerance. I did that for a week and it's a little tough, because there are more things out there with wheat in them than you realise, even if it's only wheat flour. I felt better, but not totally, so the next week I cut out dairy too. Again, I felt better but not totally. Then I shared a bottle of red wine with my girlfriend and had a large bar of dark chocolate, thinking it would be ok because there was no milk in it. The next day I spent an hour or so curled up on my GF's bed clutching my guts. Apparently, chocolate and alchohol are two common irritants.
So this last week I had no wheat, dairy, coffee, chocolate or alcohol and felt better for the most part. My bloating after meals reduced somewhat but some of the other symptoms were still present, such as excessive burping. Apparently that may be caused by legumes, so I think a week without those may help. The Doctor told me to avoid wheat and dairy, spicy or greasy foods and also try to avoid stress (he recommended listening to classical music, which I do sometimes anyway).
Anyway I urge anyone with symptoms to see a Doctor. even now I'm thinking of things that I've been suffering with for years and finding out that it can be attributed to IBS, just another symptom.
Also check out Wikipedia's page on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irritable_bowel_syndrome
for more info and especially Sophie's IBS tales blog: http://www.ibstales.com/blog/ and website: http://www.irritable-bowel-syndrome.ws/
Lastly, I'm also a vegetarian (that topic is for another post however,) so it means cutting out things from an already reduced diet, which would worry me apart from the fact that I did it before and felt great - not like I was lacking anything at all. At least now when people ask, "You're a vegetarian? What do you eat?" I'll be able to list the entire catalogue of what I eat inside of two minutes!

Dietry requirements

Well, too long has passed since I posted again, but I wonder if that's such a big problem as currently my readership seems to extend to , uh... me.
Oh well. If you are reading this, say Hi in the comments and make my day.

So despite not solving the mystery of dark matter, what else have I been up to? Well spending a lot of time with my wonderful GF for one thing, which is always nice. recently we had a couple of trips out to Winchester and Bath, which reminds me, if you ever happen to find yourself in Bath, go have a meal at a place called De Muth's. My housemate took me there last week, (to thank me for driving out to Bath to give her her purse, which she had left at home, meaning she couldn't pay to get out of the car park. Normally this would just be an oversight, but she went to Bath to do some shopping! Heh.) and it was just amazing. It's a veggie restaurant, but don't let that put the non veggies of you off. They cater for all sorts of dietry requirements and it was the tastiest meal I've had in as long as I can remember.

Speaking of dietry requirements, I've been struggling off and on with stomach problems over the last 10 years or so and after my GF did some research, I think I may have IBS. I've just chalked it up to different things over the years, such as just eating too much, but I've decided to do something about it. For the last couple of weeks I've given up wheat and the last week I've also given up dairy, coffee, alcohol and chocolate. so far I have been a little better and have a doctor's appointment for tomorrow to see about getting tested.
I felt better after giving up wheat, so wondered if it was just an intolerance to that but then drank a few glasses of red wine and ate some dark chocolate, (no dairy,) and the next morning I had to lay curled up on the bed for a while I was in so much discomfort. Apparently chocolate and alcohol are two of the worst things to trigger an attack. Bah.

So now I have to watch my GF buy a bottle of red wine and then go home to a cup of tea with soya milk. Not so much fun.