Mr W Phallus

I'm too young to have caught any of the hype when The Virgin Suicides originally came out, when I first watched it years ago I'm pretty sure most of the film went straight over my head anyway. I'm sure having studied the book briefly at A Level also added to my enjoyment as for most of the film I was analysing how the movie brings out the themes of the novel and comparing the two. Also thanks for reminding me about An Education, I've been meaning to watch it since it was nominated for all those Oscars.

Truly an admirable goal. Apart from the fact you haven;t completed it yet. What the hell are you waiting for!

The Virgin Suicides. I really like films (and books and TV series) that critique the superficial veneer of American suburbia. The book is great too, though I don't think I ever did read the last chapter.

Write and direct a well received (by critics) film. Meet a woman I can happily grow old with and start a family with her. Read the Hobbit to my kids. Go sky diving. Go to space. Travel to every continent. Live in America (for a while). Live in France (when I'm old). Have an interesting brush in with the law. Leave a mark on the world.

At the end of the day, the meaning of any one of those statements can change depending on how you say it. We Brits are just superior because we can understand this.

Line launching sounds a bit too Spiderman. I'm still a little bit sceptic about the gliding thing as well. But time will tell. Everything else sounds amazing.

After tonight's episode, look me in the eye and tell me the pirates one wasn't crap. Great stuff.

Just finished the Shaman storyline form Legends of the Dark Knight and its definitely going on my to buy list. I'm not a huge fan of the 80s style art overall, but there are a few moments where the it really shines. Also the covers, with the individual layers shattering were great.

I'm starting to wish I voted.

Who is that guy at the back and why is his reaction important?

Thank god for my CPU's lack of processing power is all I can say.

I'm a soft man myself. Although if any one has the hardcover Killing Joke, I hope you've looked under the slip cover. Beaut.

Basically what I'm saying is, sort of along the lines of The Death of the Author, the 'meaning' of a work of art is created not by the artist but by the viewer/reader/audience. So really, whatever the creators intentions were, at the end of the day whether something is considered art comes down to an audience's interpretation - or rather whether the audience considers it worthy of or capable of eliciting an interpretation. I do believe that a knowledge - or perhaps it would be better to say perception - of the artists intention can greatly influence our interpretation of a work of art, but in terms of actually defining art, the author's intention is not actually relevant. I do think it is possible to look at a work that someone presents as art and say 'to me this is meaningless, to me this is not art', but this can only apply to the self. Someone else may see artistic merit where you do not and vice-versa. I also think that art can be applied to pretty much any area of human creative endeavour, and in many ways is a redundant term. Edit: I spent so long composing my thoughts I got ninja'd by Ethan. Basically, I agree with what you just said.

I disagree completely. Art without an audience is nothing, nor does an artist have any control of their art once it is released into the world. Just as an artist can't dictate the meaning of their art, something that wasn't even intended to be art can still be interpreted as art. Edit: I slightly misread that, I agree that quality doesn't enter into art, but intent doesn't really enter into it either.

Welcome Panic, I wrote a song just for you. I lied

What if everyone follows that rule, huh? Then where would we be.

Edit:Should probably have made it clearer, @Kenshi about physical/digital reading. It's a mixture of cost and convenience for me. I'm sure there's probably a great comic book shop somewhere in Manchester, though hell if I'd know where to find any, but in general I find they're pretty rare. Then say you manage to find a comic book shop, and find the time to actually visit the comic shop (and bear in mind I'm pretty damn lazy), you've then got to face the extortionate cost of most comics (For example, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? cost me £10.99 and is a mere 128 pages long, I read it in about an hour), bearing in mind of course that comics can vary massively in quality - especially a superhero series which changes writers regularly - so you're not guaranteed to actually enjoy the comic. You can go the cheaper route, of course, and buy from amazon, but then you have the issue of possible damage (I'm quite anal when it comes to keeping books pristine, not that it's ever possible to), plus you can't flick through it at all, you might not even like the art style. Finally although comics in physical form have the benefit of being tactile - which is certainly nice - there are also advantages to the digital format, in particular with double page panels the lack of a page join is often welcome. The Scott Pilgrim comics are actually better quality in the version I downloaded (although I still bought them anyway, they were too good not to). I think I mentioned before in this thread that I never download Batman comics, I only buy them, but to be honest I'm considering completely forgoing that rule and simply buying the stories I enjoy the most in the form of collected editions after I've downloaded and read them. At the very least it will save me looking at my shelf and wondering whether Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? was really worth the 11 pounds I spent on it.

Yeh after HH's suggestion I downloaded Fell and whilst they are great short & sweet detective stories, I have to say the thing I like most about it is the back matter. It's nice to see the whole writing process exposed, from the writer's thought process to comparing bits of the script to the finished panel.

Dean programming is just a language. The only reason you have to specific is because you are giving instructions to a computer which is incapable on interpretation. Compare it to composing music and musical notation - you have to write it down exactly, using the correct notes. If you make a mistake the person actually performing the music will play the wrong note and will not play what you have envisioned in your head, but what is down on the page. In the same way a computer can only 'perform' the code that you give it. It is possible, however, to pick up an instrument and make music from it without using musical notation. Just the same as it is possible to create a game using an 'instrument' which in this case could be a program or software. For example, on our Minecraft server I used the world editing tools that exist in the game to make my own game-within-a-game which was a simple platformer. Obviously I could no more make a platforming game from scratch than I could write a song - Beethoven style - without actually hearing the music but I made a game none-the-less. I also refuse to believe there aren't programming jokes, puns etc. which display a non-rigid, creative use of programming language. There are certainly maths jokes. A computer won't understand them, but another human who understands programming would. Like I said, programming is just a language, a form of communicating, the fact that it is predominantly used to communicate with computers is the only reason why it is so rigid and inflexible.