Tuesday 15 February 2000

Pic of the day: Sometimes the path lies in shadow; yet still we believe that in the end it shall lead us out into the light.

Not quite the best of days, I guess. Though it is still quite a way to go before the days of which I must say: I have no pleasure in them.

I did not sleep much last night. For reasons of my childhood illness, I have a particularly uneasy relationship with anything that restricts my breathing, be it a throat infection or an allergic reaction, or water if it comes that far. If I were completely rational, I would probably worry more about eating fat and not working out enough: Statistically, this is most likely to kill me at my current stretch of the life road. But I am not fully rational; I am human, at least to some extent. :)

Anyway, I got a little sleep in the morning and came late to work. There were enough things to do there that I did not fall asleep at my desk. Plus, I am less likely to do that the later I arrive, for some reason. I think the length of the workday is what does it: The longer I work, the more tired I get. Brainwork will do that to me. Sadly, it is not always possible to get any sleep even in a long workday. Sleeping for five or at worst ten minutes will restore me greatly. I do not know why this is. In the same way, sleeping on the bus home will leave me active for several hours, while otherwise I have to nap. Today I came home, wrote some e-mail, got very tired, put on Brahm's Lullaby (the legal MP3 version) and fell asleep at once. It was harder to wake up afterwards, but reading the last issue of Legion did the trick.

Yes, sadly. The Legion of Superheroes came out with its last issue recently, issue 125. There will be a new series featuring many of the same characters, I hear. To be honest, this entire long run has been inferior to the old incarnation, in my humble opinion. On average, that is. They both had their ups and downs. Though I must admit that I love the scathing remarks of the communist teleporting worm, Gates. Anyway, the Legion is gone, supposedly forever. Two less series to buy.

Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes was not a mainstay of my childhood - Donald Duck & Co was - but I did get my hands on some issues now and again, and they made a deep and lasting impression on me. (The Norwegian translation was "Rommets Helter", meaning Heroes of Space; but it was definitely the same youngsters as LSH.) I may have mentioned how I, a couple years ago, happened to get my hands on an old black and white Norwegian translation of the story about the ghost of Ferro. It was an eerie feeling to start reading it and then the story came back to me in great detail before I had even turned the page. And I did not even own that issue when it came out in my childhood. I must have read it somewhere else.

It is a funny thing how I can remember so much that I read when I was a boy, but so little that I lived.

The thing that truly interested me about the Legion of Superheroes was not the battles; it was the teamwork. The way very different people related to each other: The cooperation, competition, rivalry, the crushes and the infighting. The same goes for the other superhero group comics that I've liked: X-men (and the various other X groups), Justice League, and lately Young Justice, which is perhaps my all time favorite in that department. The interaction between the juvenile super characters is hilarious much of the time, because it is just too realistic. The other groups tended to be too adult for their own good. I guess saving the world will do that to people. I guess I shall find out soon myself, what with the World Year project. :)

Another contender for all time favorite super team must have been the new mutants in the time when Doug and Warlock were working together: A boy and a robot having a friendship so intimate that sometimes they integrated into one composite being for a while, then separated again. I guess it reflects a bit of my own relationship with computers..

I guess that's why things interest us, isn't it? Because we recognize ourselves in it? Perhaps some people like to focus more on the difference. But there must be a core of similarity. We must be able to relate. Luckily there is so much in common in all humans. Despite small differences in height, weight, color, language and customs: We are all close relatives, really. Not just our genetic heritage: Even our cultures have never fully had time to separate. I have read that all languages on Earth can be traced back to one common ancestral language. And some of our beliefs seem to be shared with most of the world too: The belief in an afterlife, for instance, seems to pop up in every culture from remote stone age tribes to advanced civilizations, on every continent. Then again, it could be not culture but nature. Perhaps we are made in such a way that certain things are bound to occur to us again and again. Everywhere and at all times.

The world is starting to get a chance to find out now. We can look through windows half a world away and see how much others are like us, and how much we each are unique. It may not be the best of days, but it may just be the best of times.