Dwarf's Corner: weblog of corewar fan

From time to time (OK, OK, more than often, especially in recent times) I read comic books. During my childhood I read rather funny and humorous stories like “Tytus, Romek and Atomek” and “Kajko i Kokosz”. It was a more than a decade ago when I was a kid. These were adventerous stories (particularly, the latter, heavily based on “Asterix and Obelix” series) with no any serious essence and a bit wishy-washy. Then, I discovered aforementioned “Asterix and Obelix” and read all the issues number of times. Drawn with a skillful hand, with a very laughable story, adventures of two brave Gauls have attracted my attention for quite an amount of time (few years to be more precise, please don’t laugh). But hold it now, all you comic-dislikers. Your pleas that comic books are for kids, seem to be no-brainers for these that cannot follow real literature and are coarse as well, so all these pleas are no more. Nowadays comic books are as respectable as fiction of best sort.

This weekend I had a pleasure to familiarize myself with Sandman and Darksad; and even though these are comic books they’re definitely not to be read by children.

Sandman: Preludes & nocturnes is a story about an archetypical master of dreams, Morpheus, who — by means of magical ritual — gets caught and has been detained for seven decades. After his spectacular escape he retaliates and regains his magic tools: a poach of sand, a mask and a dreamstone.

The story is very rich and “multithreaded”. There’re archetypical elements of man’s dream (a victim, a witch …) and there’s a villain; there’s a guilt and punishment and even one can find a humorous parts (e.g. the Death yelling at Sandman). Definetely, Sandman requires as much attention as every book does. I, for this example, had to read the story twice as to catch all the subtleties authors have introduced (though it really does not imply anything except I may be considered as inattentive reader).

Blacksad is set in different reality — taken directly from Chandler’s criminal stories where righteous are not that good and sometimes evil is not that dark-minded as one would like it to be. However, instead of being men, characters are sketched as animals. Due to this manipulation the whole story becomes more cruel: a polar fox is killed with a screwdriver and looks kind of grotesque with a handgrip sticking oout of his eyehole; a reader feels really sorry for an old magpie killed during a turmoil in an abandonded factory. Maybe it’s this, maybe it’s the script in general but the whole story is so bitter and grievous I felt depressed after reading the comics (comics, so much inproper word).

For me, comic books get out of the shadow of a bad reputation that followed them from the sixties or seventies. They’re not a child stories (and to be read by children, he says again, but nothing can be more true) anymore carrying sometimes a dark and quite serious matters. Sandman and Blacksad can be regarded as best proofs of this thesis and all of you who decide to read these books would find it verified.

So beat it, bastards.

Dwarf’s Corner will be soon ported to WordPress.

Polish educational system is pretty straightforward: a primary school, in which the educations lasts 6 years; after passing exams, one proceeds to medium school (called gimnazjum, does one know a western counterpart for this?). At last, after positively passing all tests, one is allowed to attend to secondary school, in which education is finalised with a so-called “matura” exam (this would be an equivalent of O/A-level tests, I think). A “matura” is somewhat one really has to pass if he/she thinks of being someone (not to mention it is quite simple test, passed by more than 90% of pupils). Beginning of may is the time when maturas are taken; this year matural exam is pretty peculiar for it’s being taken by two of Polish deputies. Yes, no typo here — at least two of Polish deputies have not taken the exam everyone has to take.

Renata Beger and Danuta Hojarska (both are from a populist Samoobrona—Selfdefense party) apparently were too “busy” to pass the exam during secondary school. To clarify things: they both are in their mid-forties, I expect, so — assuming that one finishes secondary school at 19 years of age — it’s pretty clear that ladies are out of schedule, least to say. Danuta Hojarska is also known from her problems with the Polish law and judicial system (she was accused of falsifying formal documents, I can’t recall what was the verdict).

The real problem is that Samoobrona is second (or first, depending on the company that makes up the survey) party in Poland. It seems that populist slogans proclaimed by Samoobrona finds a fertile soil among non-educated Poles. Stupids cuddle up with stupids. Hell.

Couple of weeks ago policeman shoot down a teenager. By mistake. They thought it was a longly hunted gangster. Apparently, without any warning, they opened fire. The guy took a hit in his head. The other one was severly wounded and is hospitalized at the moment.

Two days ago there was a student party in city of Lodz. At 2 A.M. a band of hooligans started to riot among academics raising havoc. A police was called and during pacification a 19-year old guy was killed and 23-year woman was wounded in the head. It seems that instead of rubber bullets, piercing ones were used. By mistake.

Amibiguity — it is the best word to describe what I feel when I start to think of those two events. Unfortunate accidents (I wouldn’t dare to name them incidents), least to say, and I feel so sorry for families of both victims. This really shouldn’t have happened.

But then again, it’s police job to prevent and fight against the crime. The first guy — as spokesman claims — tried to escape and rammed police car. In the latter case, riots were raised by hooligans and police tried to counteract. I’d be more happy, however, if instead of a student, a soccer fan — or even a dozen of them — was killed. I would not complain at all.

Now, on TV, one can hear voices yelling: “we do not trust the police”, “policemen are murderers”. From the more balanced side it is said that too less money is spent on police training. This can only be seconded.

Chiefs of policemen who shooted the crowd have demitted.

It’s been about 10 weeks since I started the page. To be honest, I never have really known what I am going to write about, whether my weblog is going to be devoted to one topic exclusively or it’ll gain a medium popularity. After these 10 weeks, I realised that (at least to me) this page is a medium for my personal thoughts, a bit of poltics and Polish reality and other things that wander through my mind from time to time. Wishing to reach wider community, I’ve decided to post in English and even though my skills do not match my expectations hopefully I get along with it (do I? sometimes while browsing through my past entries I found tens of errors that need correction, sigh). Anyway, to me this page was an average weblog that didn’t not make its mark among thousands of similar sites. Till now.

From time to time, I check out my webpage statistics. To my astonishment, Yesterday I found out that a have a day readership of 60 surfers that on regular basis come and read my scribbles; for others this may not that much but to me it is very heartfelt news. Hence, I’d like to thank all my readers for patience and good will that makes them visit this page regularly. Hundredfold thank you, folks. Because of you Dwarf’s Corner stands out from the Internet rubbish and I really feel like having someone to write for. Thanks, once again.

Having said this, may I ask who my readers are? I am aware of three readers: Kinga, Roy and Steve. But who are the others? I am anxious to get to know — even just a bit — you better.