Thomas Ouphe

A theory gaining some ground in the scientific community is that the whole universe is an artificial creation, like a computer game or the Matrix. There are, apparently, lines of code in the fabric of the universe that make this a dead give away (philosophically speaking).  The chances are that we all live in some cosmological playpen, like the Holodeck in Star Trek the Next Generation. And, yes the holograms became sentien t and have started to kill each other. The truly terrifying aspect of this concept is not that the thought that all life is meaningless and without purpose, or even that all of our suffering (the one thing we can truly hold sacrosanct) is for nothing. The truly terrifying aspect is the thought that I may have become stuck on the second level, got bored and spent my whole life playing the mini-games. None of this really concerned me much until one day as I was on my way to Tesco, I saw the evidence of it. In giant twelve-foot letters, covering both cloud and vapo...

If this building existed, it was never as good as its story . When I was nineteen years old, I dated a mildly attractive and thoroughly surly girl by the name of Petunia.  OK, I have forgotten her real name but Petunia will serve well enough for this story.  She was a scientist in training who looked at everything in the world and asked two significant questions:    Why had it been created? What possible use was it to her? Petunia and I were not together long before she figured out that in regards to myself the answers to those questions were “out of spite to her principles,” and “none at all.”  After two months of sparse and abrasive contact, intermittently peppered with a kiss or two, the relationship fell into death throws in a popular   Birkenhead   drinking establishment where she told me that her father had warned her about boys like me.     What she meant by that was not that I was a sexual predator but rather that I was an idiot ...

Different personalities, it's this easy. A Comedy of Errors seems like an odd play to open the Complete Works of Shakespeare with.  First of all, it's not very funny.  Second of all, it's a bit of a mess. The basic idea is a lot like Van Damme's Double Impact, identical twins (separated at birth) show up in the same area and their easily mistaken identity causes a sequence of needless conflicts.  That said, it is a lot less structured than Double Impact and has a much less gratifying conclusion.  The twins in Double Impact defeat a crime syndicate, all the two Antipholus brothers manage is figuring out they're brothers.  And they don't even figure that out, their dad tells them. Shakespeare wastes some good opportunities for comedy and depth by having one Antipholus attracted to the other's sister in law rather than his shrew of a wife. And, disappointingly, nothing comes of that either. Additionally, the two Antipholus brothers are pretty much carbon copi...