LUDIC LOG

Nicholas Andrew Fimple, known to those who do as Nicky Bloodhead, is very angry. This is not as unseemly on him as it would be on others; for when the plans for Nicky were drafted, his designers realized that he would be very angry very much of the time, and built him accordingly. He is tall and lean, wiry and sharp: not the kind of shape you'd want to stub your toe on. His hair is an organic testament to why you shouldn't try to give yourself a mohawk; a spiky shock of blond jutting out in unsettling directions and the rest pared to the bone, this unfortunate as it allows onlookers to see in its sickening entirety the vein in his temple which throbs hectically when he is angry, which as has been mentioned is pretty much all of the time. The head as well as the rest of the body is festooned with scars that are surprising not so much because they are so extreme, but rather because they are in such great number in one so young.

There is, naturally, a cigarette in his mouth; he would look as odd without one as he would if you removed his nose. He is dressed in clothes that were once happy in their roles: steel-toed work boots that once bravely protected the feet of some working Joe; blue jeans that once encased the legs of some coltish young fellow a-courting; a white t-shirt no doubt worn by a clean-cut, respectable businessman beneath a smart Oxford grey; and indeed that Oxford grey itself, albeit unbuttoned, untucked, and sans its customary power tie. But now these happy clothes have met a common and sorry fate: torn, ripped, adorned with rebellious and off-color slogans, gouged through with safety pins (some decorative and some functional), infrequently ironed, and generally humiliated by the thankless task of covering Nicky Bloodhead's body.

It is not, mind you, that Nick is unhandsome. In fact, he has a striking face that, placed on someone else with different ideas about personal expression, might even be considered angelic. And he does have an impressive physique: although cigarettes, liquor, drugs, and a cavalier attitude towards his physical health will eventually take their toll, at the moment he is young and quick; while slender, he is more of a dancer than an artist, and his muscles dart like electric eels beneath his much-slighted skin when he moves. He fights, and he usually wins; although as those scars will attest, it is often quite a Phyrric victory.

So to impugn Nicky Bloodhead based on his appearance only is unfair and imprecise; let us impugn him for some other reason. There is, after all, something wrong with the boy. It is not merely his filthy language; who notices foul language these days? It is not merely that his demeanor, appearance, habits, culture, and couture mark him as a punk; many people dress thus and listen thence, but are not nearly so hated and feared by the public at large (no doubt much to their disappointment) as is Nick. It is not even that he is perpetually angry and hostile; this is America in the 21st century, after all. What it all boils down to, basically, is that Nicky Bloodhead is a Bad Influence. One glance at him, one earful of the deceptively gentle voice clues you in that this is the kind of hellion that your mother cautioned you about hanging around with. Nicky will lead you astray, in the Biblical sense of the word, and you won't even know it's happening until it's already too late and you're damned, like one of the heavy metal kids in a Chick Publications illustrated gospel tract.

Nicky Bloodhead will get you into TROUBLE. He may not be the devil himself, but he certainly gives the impression of being a very dedicated understudy. Behind his ice blue eyes lies the soul of a Bad Boy, and if he's struggling to get out, the struggle is timid and one-sided.