Back home, have a bath then watch the end of DOCTOR WHO which Kristan taped for me while I was away. More wonderful, inspirational pop art pulp madness, and what intrigues me most are the numerous, absolutely coincidental, similarities to my comic FINAL CRISIS (the machine made of worlds, the conquered Earth with its network of freedom fighters linked by a secret communications system, the reality-wiping weapon, the frantic scene changes, etc etc) which leads me to believe that creative people, particularly those writing or recording with a mass or populist audience in mind, have all begun to tell a very similar, very post-9/11 (call it ‘post Cycle 23’) story (how I think this ties in to the ‘Cycle 24’ solar magnetic field reversal that began on January 10th this year, and which is also responsible for an increased cultural interest in ‘psychedelia’ of all kinds, is something I hope to explore in more depth in an upcoming column if I can be arsed - see here and also here for a background on some of the material I‘ll be referencing when I unroll the arcane secrets of ‘culture magic‘ and ‘prophecy’).

It strikes me that, as the gap between the reality of the 9/11 trauma and our memory of it stretches to become mere history, the beleaguered ‘West’ has begun to tell itself a new kind of collective fairy tale - this ’ultimate’ story of the breakdown of all values, all self-deception and the heroic return from the brink. I find it quite heartening that the figure of the superhero has risen to dominate mass consciousness in its response to the suffocating blind alley of Terror Def Con 1. I’d go so far even as to suggest that the superhero is at least a more responsible and more forward-looking fantasy self-image for a traumatized, technologically-driven world than the gangster or the soldier.

Ah but who gives a fuck? For we’re all just dust in the end, yar! ‘The Dark Knight’s a really good film though.