Avoid haemorrhoids... and make magazines

I had a health scare the other day. In an otherwise innocuous tutorial about job applications, a renowned doctor casually joked that we shouldn’t spend too long on the toilet for fear of haemorrhoids. Everyone laughed. I froze.

Woah woah woah, hang on a sec (I said in my head) – has this been verified? As in, by scientists and stuff? Why had no one warned me?

Why had no one seen the huge pile of reading material tucked away next to the bath and thought: ‘Egad! This is surely a man whose overly dedicated toilet efforts put him at risk of bum-based discomfort’? And now I’m worrying: Is it too late?

I’ve always read on the toilet and, as articles aren’t always short, I don’t always make it out quickly. But to me, going to the loo without reading material is like brushing my teeth without paste. Whilst staying in Dundee’s University halls for a stint, I would sneakily stuff The Times down the leg of my baggy joggers when strolling down the corridor to the W.C. I doubt people would have minded all that much, but actually getting seen taking the offending (and soon to be offensive) item is like that dreaded silence when two people are in adjacent lavatories and try to quietly attend to nature whilst willing their splashes to sound casual and un-awkward. You both know that you know, but don’t want to actually publicly acknowledge it.

But in the comfort of my flat I can pile away, stacking magazines and newspapers in my lavatorial library. And you’d be surprised at how many houses I’ve been to that do the same. I’ve read all sorts, from Cosmopolitan to Muscle and Fitness. I once read Of Mice and Men whilst on the porcelain throne. It was good.

But more than any other type of publication, I have re-read, pored over and often skimmed through my towering collection of magazines about video games. Now, before you drop the newspaper in disgust - suddenly feeling that you can’t possibly relate to someone so cool he erects pillars of gaming literature in his room – first look at my picture up there and let it dawn upon you: it’s difficult to relate to someone as attractive as me anyway.

The point is that I’ve almost certainly read more about gaming than I’ve actually played. It’s partly because I have no choice now: I have to keep up to speed on my specialist topic in case I ever get on to Mastermind.

But more than that, reading games magazines is a personal pleasure. Like a monthly concert of great bands playing new renditions of songs you love. Or for me, a 12-times-a-year fix of great writers finding new ways to pin-down with words the adventures played through my fingers.

It’s why I used to eagerly anticipate every new issue of N64 magazine, and was part-raised on its diet of oddball humour and passionate writing. Now I play much less but still look forward to the new issue of Edge magazine (for the discerning gamer), and throughout last week I excitedly told several uninterested people why it was so amazing that the new Zelda game got given a fabled Edge [10].

They didn’t understand, really. And probably wouldn’t understand why I supplemented my childhood explorations around Birmingham with adventures in Hyrule to save a pixelated princess. They wouldn’t really understand why every time a new Zelda game came out I’d fish out old issues of N64, NGC and Edge magazine to re-read their pieces on old Zelda games, to remember through print what I’d forgotten in memory.

And now? My mental bank bursting at the seams with magazine-sentences, tethered to my experience as much as any game characters or stories. Like when Edge gave the stunning Half-Life 2 [10], saying that its developer Valve had ‘hit the high note no other developer could reach’.

I’ve read that sentence many times in the loo, because magazines aren’t like web-pages. They don’t disappear with a click or float pristine on a screen. They lose their crispness, and become well-thumbed. They crinkle, crease and crumple. But importantly they remain, piled up with pride at being complete and self-contained. They aren’t tied to the infinity of clickable choices on the internet, but lay out their choice wares on their pages for you to peruse and dip into; tempting you with articles you’d never bother clicking on whilst browsing the internet. But unlike newspapers (bar the illustrious Felix of course) they are not one-day-stands of news and jokes, but a spine-bound, page-wrapped gift of writing to be opened again and again.

And opened again is exactly what I did a few weeks ago to Imperial College’s late games magazine Another Castle, after excavating it at random from a paper pile in my bathroom.

And thanks to that random inspirational blast from the past I’m now working with Felix Games to make a new games magazine this year, one beautifully designed and packed with interesting, funny contributions by Imperial College’s game-playing community, whether you’re a casual fan of Snake or a hardcore CoD veteran. I want it to be a magazine that hits the high notes no commercial publication could reach.

But most of all, I want to make a magazine worth getting haemorrhoids for.

Get in touch to find out more - This is a public service announcement to all gamers/writers/people at Imperial! We are looking for budding writers! Your idea can be one-sentence or a whole feature. Wait, that’s not all, we’re also looking for artists and designers. If you’re willing to help us direct, produce, research (play games), collate and design the magazine then we want you.

Email: omar.hafeez-bore06@imperial.ac.uk or games.felix@imperial.ac.uk