If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that today is the first of December. And that means that the November Challenge is at an end. And I FUCKING NAILED IT.

Every goddamn day, baby. A couple of days I posted TWICE. Just because I COULD. And because I may have FORGOTTEN WHAT DAY IT WAS.

It got hairy at some points. The first week went all right as I took the 3 or 4 good ideas I still had waiting to be writen and wrote them, and wasn’t embarrassed by what I had writen. The second week was tougher. I went on holidays from work, (that was planned before the challenge by the way; I’m not insane enough to take time off work to do an internet project) but for some reason that made it even harder to get stuff written.

By the time I actually came back to work last week I was dreading getting out of bed every day because I’d have to find time to write the bloody blog for the day. I began seeing the world in article-sized chunks, every single thing that I saw or experienced was assesed for its value as possible material. I would come up with hilarious rants in my head about how grass is basically the most redundant plant, or how some people should be able to be legally killed under a strictly defined set of conditions. I itemised the contents of my wadrobe, before deleting the whole thing, line-by-line, softly crying.

But somehow I posted something every damn day. For that I have to thank you guys.  Blogging can be a lonely business sometimes, the feeling that you’re just throwing words into a great sucking void.

But fortunately you guys posted comments and tweeted about it and posted articles to Facebook and even came up to me personally to say you were enjoying my writing. And let me tell you- to a writer, that shit is like crack cocaine wrapped in bacon. It is a high like you cannot imagine, having someone say they not only read your stuff, but liked your stuff. And then ask for more of your stuff. That is the fucking BEST. So thank you so much to everyone who commented and emailed and everything else. You made the November Challenge go from this-

to this-

Exactly like that.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to olilolo’s other main writer, Doyle. I actually didn’t tell Doyle about the challenge until I posted the first post on Nov 1 explaining what I was going to be doing. I basically hijacked the site for a month, after he’d kept it going for three months while I had a case of “writer’s block” (laziness). So thank you for putting up with me, you sexy, hairy man.

olilolo.com now goes back to its regularly scheduled programming, except we’ve never had regularly scheduled programming, so maybe we’ll go forward to regularly scheduled programming. Doyle’s going to start posting again, and I’m going to keep posting reularly, only not every goddamn day, because seriously, if I had to fart out another olilolo article I was going to put my fist through the screen. You wonder why so many writers have drinking problems? Deadlines is the answer.

So thank you once again, and please keep reading. I can’t promise the quality is going to improve, but if you’re still here you’re a sucker for punishment and you have my respect.

In a form of self-destruction I’ve been trying to curb, I love trying new products at fast food restaurants. Every time the marketers come up with some new way to clog the arteries of the western world, I am the first in line, ready and willing to hand over my hard-earned cash to be blissfully brought one step closer to the quadruple bypass club.

So it was with great delight that I heard Hungry Jack’s (the local version of Burger King) was releasing a competitor to MacDonald’s Angus Burgers. Maccas has the Mighty Angus and the Grand Angus, but Jackas?

They have the ANGRY ANGUS

MMMM artery clogging

Not only does it have two angus beef patties, with cheese, as well as THREE different sauces, the marketers have decided to do a bit of free-asociation and throw some onion rings on there, because at this stage, you’re visiting the doctor one way or another; you may as well have some fun.

And in fact doctors have already expressed concern about the Angry Angus. It turns out that even after the changed the recipe slightly, it has twice the recommended daily dose of sodium.

But that sort of thing doesn’t deter a seasoned eating professional such as myself. So it was with confidence I sidled up to the counter at my local HJ’s and ordered an Angry.

“Please fill in this form, sir,” said the girl behind the counter.

“What is it?” I aid

“It’s a standard medical indemnity form, sir. Please list any medical defects you have, and any medication you may be on.”

“What’s this bit down the bottom,” I said, pointing to a worrying paragraph. “It says here I waive any responsibility on the part of HJ’s in the event of my death.”

“Oh yes sir,” she replied, ” that’s just a formality. “Very few people die from the Angry Angus.”

“I see. Well, that’s reassuring.”

I signed the forms and handed them back to the girl, who walked off. After a short wait, she returned carrying a tray with my meal including the fabled burger iself.

I had expected something more substantial, maybe at least a cardboard carton like the ones Maccas has. The Angry Angus simply comes in a standard paper wrapper like all other HJ’s burgers.

I unwrapped it and there it was in all its glory. Of course, it looked nothing like its picture, but then no fast food burger ever has so I wasn’t going to hold that against it.

I raised the deceptively heavy burger up to my mouth and took a bite. The flavours exploded like improvised bombs on the disputed causeway of my tongue. The rich taste of the meat and cheese, the zest of the sauces, and the tingling burn that gives the Angry Angus its Angry. It ws a surprisngly good burger.

I finished it reasonably quickly and got up to thank the girl at the counter. As I stood up though, a tight pain burned in my chest, my mouth went dry, and I let out a low groan as I slid to the floor. As I lay on the linoleum slowly blacking out, I heard the girl say “Gary come quick, we’ve got another one! Bring the trolley!” before blackness overtook me.

I came to in the alley out the back and was handed a bottle of water by a mute teenage boy with a fringe completely covering his eyes and a lip piercing. I thanked him, and walked shakily back to my car, vowing to maybe stop eating crap for a week or something.

Some higher power doesn’t want me to complete the November Challenge. I am sure of it. All this week, since returning to work from holidays, I’ve been all over the place trying to find time to squeeze out a daily article. And now, finally, not content to test me in that small way, the gods of the internet have reached up and sucked the very means by which I write out from under me.

I came home last night to find my computer displaying the Blue Screen of Death. I was understandably miffed about this, but figured a quick restart should do the trick. It did, but when I woke up in the morning, my computer had glitched. It was frozen on the screen saver, and it had weird sprites all over the screen. A restart again did the trick, for the time being.

However I’ve come home tonight, and a restart no longer does the trick. The computer seems to be working fine, but doesn’t revert back to normal display. It stays all glitchy and weird. Tomorrow is going to be taken up with trying to get it fixed, however as it’s a Dell, I’m afraid I may have to send it away to be repaired.

However, I have not learned how to use the internet with only my mind, although that is a talent I hope to some day aquire. Instead I’m using the computer in the next room, an inferior machine, but good enough to get the job done. I will not fail this challenge.

Although at this rate both my hands are going to drop off by Monday, and that would be unfortunate for a number of reasons, “not being able to blog” falling around 23rd in descending order of importance.

I’ve written a couple of times about the so-called generational divides, seperating such generational classes as Generation Y, of which I am a member, from, say, the Baby Boomers, of which my parents are members, and Gen X, of which the older, cooler guys who used to sell weed behind the bike sheds in high school are  members.

Generational issues can shake a society to its core. The activism of the Boomers who made up the core of the anti-war movement in the 60s, to those same Boomers graduating college, cutting their hair, and proceeding to drive the world into an economic black hole in the 2000s. A generation naturally shapes the world in its image, which is why we all have to be worried for the next 10 years or so, as the Boomers step aside and Gen X gets a shot at ruling the world. The generation of MTV and irony is going to be calling the shots. Start investing in bottled water.

Far from that, though, is the issue of what to call a generation. It has to be something of its time. Baby Boomers are so called because they were part of the post-WWII sex explosion which resulted from a lot of young men realising they’d just survived the biggest conflict in history, and it was time to get their bone on. Gen X was so called because of the nihilism and disconnectedness of their formative years.

But after that they started running into trouble. Generation Y was called that because it was the Generation after X. Clever, I suppose, but not exactly a defining name. Or maybe it is, in a way; Gen-Ys have perpetually lived in the shadow of their GenX older siblings. Maybe the name reflects the inferiority complex which infects most of the cohort.

“Generation Z” was just lazy, though. I mean, come ON, Generation namers. Z? Really? As in “after Y”? Someone came up with that after a long lunch, and then called it a day. How do you even get that job, anyway? Does it pay well? Cause I’m pretty sure I could waltz in and just blow them the hell away. “Generation Tyrannosaurus”. You can have that one for free, generation namers, but there’s plenty more where that came from. Call me.

Now, though, I’m really annoyed. Because you know what they’re calling the NEXT generation, the group of rugrats who’ll start appearing from next year, some of whom have already been conceived and are just waiting until January 1 so they can sally forth and lay claim to their birthright?

Generation Alpha.

Yep, you heard me. GENERATION A. They have literally just zipped back to the start of the alphabet and started over. That is lazier than the laziest man in Lazytown (A little place just west of Racistville). That is not even trying.

Oh sure, they dress it up with fancy language by saying that the generation is the first born into the 21st century, the first to properly grow up entirely in the digital age, but come on. Not to mention that it gives the little bastards a superiority complex immediately. “Ooh, we’re Generation Alpha,” they’ll txt. “Look at us on top of the generational ladder.”

Also, if you want to blame someone, blame this guy. I pretty sure he’s the one who put the idea in the generation namers’ heads.  Or possibly blame Kurt Vonnegut, a member of the Greatest Generation, who mentioned it during a commencement address back in 1994-

“Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago.”

You were a couple of decades out Kurt, but you were always ahead of your time. And as a member of the last generation people could actually be proud of, well, we can’t really stay angry at you.

Generation A. Generation Y’s kids. I hate the little bastards already. I can’t wait to suck the world dry and leave them with the husk, and then die laughing. I learnt my lessons well.

Do you think we’ve reached a point where Batman is completely unrealistic in the real world?

(Yes, it’s going to be one of those blogs today)

I mean, other than the screamingly obvious argument- that he’s a guy who dresses as a bat and fights crime, who in the real world would have either been hunted down by the National Guard or beaten to death by a gang of thugs long ago.

And, of course, the other argument that Batman as he exists in the comics, despite being ostensibly a regular human being, excels in so many different fields that he’s practically superhuman anyway. He’s an elite athelete, master scientist, inventor, engineer, field medic, linguist and let’s not forget World’s Greatest Detective. He has a superpower- it’s “being Batman”.

And all that’s been fine up til now. We read comics about a guy in red and blue tights who can fly- suspension of disbelief goes a fair old way. But more and more, I find nagging questions popping up again and again while I’m reading Batman’s adventures.

“Why hasn’t anyone just followed him back to the Batcave? It’s easy enough to do nowadays- they have spy drones that could see what you had for breakfast, you’re telling me if the government didn’t want a crazed vigilante running around they wouldn’t try to find him somehow?”

“For that matter, why haven’t the paparazzi tried to find out who he is; finding out Batman’s identity would be the scoop of the decade. And you can be damn sure they’d be more determined than the Government”.

“While we’re on the subject, hasn’t a single paparazzi or reporter noticed that Bruce Wayne behaves really strangely, even for a millionaire playboy?”

“No one is independently wealthy any more; don’t Waynetech investors get worried when they see millions directed into “off-limits research”? Especially post-GFC? Doesn’t the Government worry about what Waynetech is researching?”

I mean, those are mostly off the top of my head. And I know the basic answer to all of them is “shut up and stop overthinking it, you’re poking holes in something which doesn’t need holes poked into it to work”. And that’s true. Batman comics, as long as you ignore big picture stuff like that, are fine. Batman has all the gadgets because he’s rich. No one’s found the Batcave because he’s Batman, and doesn’t let anyone find the cave.

But something else I realised was that a lot of those questions go away if you take Batman back to the time he was created- 1939.

Back then, WW2 was just getting started. Television wasn’t widely available, and most people listened to the radio for their nightly entertainment. “Radiation” was still a near-mystical concept, not yet laden down with the baggage of Hiroshima and the Manhattan project.

The point is that in 1939, it was actually kind of plausible for a guy with unlimited funds and plenty of free time, coupled with a slight mental tilt brought about by the death of his parents, to dress as a bat and fight crime. Not in an actual “this could actually happen” way, but in a comic-booky, suspension-of-disbelief way. Bruce Wayne was a millionaire in the 40s. People back then were raised on a diet of Howard Hughes and William Randolf Hearst; people with insane amounts of money who were actually insane. After their various excesses, dressing up as a bat and beating up street toughs actually looks fairly normal.

And you can explain away all the stuff about the press and the Government; if you were rich and white in the early forties, you could literally get away with murder if you knew enough congressmen. Being a bat-themed crimefighter made you “eccentric”.

Also, suddenly all the gadgets make sense again. Batman’s tech is always a few steps in front of the real world, which has led us to currently in the comics having a Batmobile that can fly. Which is AWESOME, but also kind of implausible. Put him in the 40s and suddenly advanced crimefighting techniques and a supercomputer that doesn’t take up an entire room are impressive again.

Not to mention, most of the great Batman stories exist in a vacuum anyway. The best Batman stories ignore the real world and exist in the heightened reality of Gotham City- looming buildings, grimy streets and deep, dark alleyways. Mobsters and big bulky cars, girls in fur coats and guys in three-piece suits. Zeppelins; there are always zeppelins. Introduce a timeframe onto it, and the vision crumbles.

Batman is a Hero, like Hercules is a Hero. He has thrilling adventures, and defeats fantastic foes, and doesn’t worry if this story was set before the Trojan War or after.

And maybe it’s time we get back to that. Even a continuity whore like me loves to see just a good standalone Batman story, divorced from the pulling weight of over 70 years of backstory and plot, given a chance to fly, or at least swing on a zipline (or do we want to just go ahead and call it a Batrope?)

Remember some of the best Batman properties in recent memory have been standalone, seperate creations. Nolan’s Batman films take the dark, adult side of Batman to it’s gritty extreme. And the fantastic cartoon Batman: The Brave and the Bold takes the goofy fun of Batman in the 60s (and, yes, the TV show) without including the silly camp.

I doubt very much that DC is going to essentially remove their biggest character from ongoing continuity, but a guy can dream. I’m actually really interested to see what  Brian Azzarello does with his First Wave maxi series due out from DC Comics early next year. I had a few minor problems with the one-shot Batman/ Doc Sanvage special one-shot which was meant as a preview of the series (especially Bats blasting away at crooks with twin .45s) but overall I love the hook- go right back to the pulp style stories DC put out in the 30s, include established characters DC owns the rights to like The Spirit and the Blackhawks, and throw Batman into the mix. Take him back to his roots.

Which are, and let’s not ever forget this- he’s an insane (or at least, extremely driven) millionaire who dresses as a bat and fights crime. There’s a purity to that which I think we can all get behind.