Red Horrizon

(16) GM: Captain Jennings is a relatively older gentleman, by your reconning, being a man of about 37 he is certainly old to you though he would still consider himself young. And to be the master of his own ship, he certainly is young, though he is prematurely aged from a hard life spent mostly ship side and in deep space. He is lanky as he drifts about, and on solid ground with a decent man's gravity he walks almost as though you might imagine a spider to in slow motion, his body moving about and stepping with that awkward gait which those less acustomed to the forces of a natural planet. His scars are deep and their colour is most disconcerting when focused on due to his very pale complexion from a life lacking true and natural light, always sheltered by screens. A sharp eye would notice that he is in fact particularly strong the way he strides toward his crew member Vincent with no exertion, as most spacers are winded by the most minimal of efforts planetside.

(16) GM: He fixes his sharp gaze on you, young Vincent, finding you at the docking clamp and hatch to the spine of his precious vessel, the Pharaon.

(16) Captain Jennings: It's good that you've arrived fast, we don't have time to wait for the full crew, if I had to, I'd do this job by myself. But it shows spirit that you answered my hail and got here quick even though you're on leave!

** Captain Jennings grabs Vincent by the hand and shakes it with a firm grip, though strong and almost painful, is clearly benevolent and meant in the best way **

(18) Lithkul: Vincent looks back at the captian of the ship, waiting for words to be spoken a sign to be displayed about what is expected or what is wanted out of this meeting. Vincent didn't know why the captain had trailed to the head of the ship, he simply nodded as Captain Jennings spoke to him. Shaking the hand of the captain back firmly not to show reluctance or confusion.

(16) Captain Jennings: Come aboard, Lad!

** Captain Jennings offers a hand toward the interior of the ship gesturing for Vincent to step inside **

(18) Lithkul: Vincent comes about the ship, looking about for a few moments, and goes towards where he usually sleeps upon the ship, thinking it's really for the best to be on the ship rather then his shitty apartment.

** Captain Jennings seals the dock behind, and then closes the hatch to the ship's spine, the unusual access point being ideal for entrance from Ares when not docked with the purpose of unloading or loading cargo **

(16) Captain Jennings: Vincent, after you drop your effects off in the second mate's lodge, you can meet me in the pit.

** Captain Jennings signs down the spine of the ship, which is aligned at such an angle to the station that the minimal gravity propels you to what would be, probably more than anything else, the floor of the ship, in ay bit, the side that you would walk on while planet bound. **

** Vincent Lapkan Vincent went and dropped his bags off at the second mates lodge, making sure to stow away his gear properly, then went to the pit as the captain said to, not having much of a choice in the matter if he was going to stay on the ship **

(16) GM: There is a ladder there leading down into the crew's regular bunks, where you would normally be, and upward into two similar bunks, but each one designed solely for a single occupant, the second's quarter opposite from the captain's similar quarters, through who's open door the effects of a permanent residence are apparent

(16) GM: A shudder moves throug the ship and the intercom crackles with Jennings' voice...

(16) Captain Jennings: etter hurry y(**sss**)ur ass up t(**sss**) te p(**sss**)t, we are, el(**sss**)eve (**sss**)t (**sss**)r n(**sss**)t, (**sss**)n a hurry!

(16) Captain Jennings: G(**sss**)d damn c(**sss**)mm, can't get a s(**sss**)mple message thr(**sss**)ugh clear. Fuck(**sss**)ng sh(**sss**)p needs a wh(**sss**)le (**sss**)verhaul

(16) GM: The last bit fades out before the comm clicks off

(16) GM: The captain's curses coming through clearer than almost any other bit of his speech.

** Vincent Lapkan he looks up to the intercom laughs a bit, then keeps heading up to the pit area, having gotten used to the crappy intercoms in the ship **

(16) GM: The "Pit" as Jennings' deems it is at the other end of the spine from the quarters, passing by the ladder like steps going down into the bowels of the ship next to the lock hatch that you entered in, and the screens as well as the back of the captain's chair are visable from the exit of the crew ladders

(16) GM: There are three chairs evenly spaced in the Pit, the captain's to the far left, an observer's chair in the center, having access to some duplicate functions for extra crew, and the scanner's chair to the far right

** Captain Jennings hears Vincent step in as another shudder rocks the ship and the already very low gravity begins to feel much less powerful, though competing forces start to push in other directions and then gestures for you to take either seat **

(16) Captain Jennings: You wont be much good up here, but it's really the best show and you're the only company on board, besides, I've been a bit tight lipped, there are some things I don't want flying about this station to other more ready ships than ours....

** Vincent Lapkan took his seat, and remained silent feeling the information being told to him was of vague importance, he nodded some guessing to understand the meaning. **

(16) Captain Jennings: Hey! Do you know how to use the comm equipment?

** (20) Vincent Lapkan laughed for a bit as he didn't know how to do what was asked **

Vincent Lapkan: of course I don't know how to do that shit cappy, no one ever taught me

(16) Captain Jennings: Okay, someday you'll probably have to learn how any way but--

(16) GM: The captain interupts himself by reaching in front of you and jamming some buttons down during the last two words and bursting out suddenly:

(16) Captain Jennings: Tower! This is Pharaon, you have our information, we've just undocked and are shipping out, can you give us a heading?

** Vincent Lapkan he watched the two buttons that were being pressed and what else the captain might be doing to figure out the communications **

(16) Tower Control: L(**sss**)ud and clear, y(**sss**)u can head (**sss**)ut (**sss**)n an ;lkj%$# andard (**sss**)ut head(**sss**)ng fr(**sss**)m mart(**sss**)an (**sss**)r(**sss**)t

** Captain Jennings jams the on button again with the same settings **

Vincent Lapkan: you know I swear they were trying to talk to us captain.

(16) Captain Jennings: Copy, please repeat!

** Captain Jennings pulls my hand off the button **

(16) Captain Jennings: I'm certain they were, but heaven only knows what they said....

(16) GM: The monitors and the tiny windows show the docking clamp that you walked through no more than 10 minutes ago spining away from you, explaining the lower gravity

(16) Tower Control: Repeat, Phara(**sss**)n, ;lkj%$# andard (**sss**)utward head(**sss**)ng fr(**sss**)m Mart(**sss**)an p(**sss**)lar r(**sss**)tat(**sss**)(**sss**)n!

(16) Tower Control: Repeat, Phara(**sss**)n, ;lkj%$# andard (**sss**)utward head(**sss**)ng fr(**sss**)m Mart(**sss**)an p(**sss**)lar r(**sss**)tat(**sss**)(**sss**)n!

** Captain Jennings jams the button again **

(16) Captain Jennings: Loud and clear, thank you very much!

** Captain Jennings lets go of the button **

(16) Captain Jennings: Fucking worst comm interference ever... i'll just go this way and hope it's okay with everyone...

(16) Captain Jennings: Buckle up, Vincent.

(16) Tower Control: Have a n(**sss**)ssss(**shhhshh**) fl(**sss**)ght

** Vincent Lapkan Vincent wasn't giving a fuck but he buckled up anyways, looking highly annoyed at the comm intereferance. **

** Captain Jennings hits the dash in front of you **

(16) Captain Jennings: You too fuckers

(16) Captain Jennings: It's sad that the view leaving this hole is never as beautiful as the view coming back. I mean.. normally, in the normal frame of mind...

(16) Captain Jennings: Admitedly, sometimes... as you look out and all you see is just space... the black...

** Vincent Lapkan nodded and seemed complacent being away from the irritating noise of the comm, and was looking out into the blackness of space. **

(16) GM: The corridor lights of the spine and surrounding flourescent lights of the pit shut off leaving little but the reds of the background noise throughout the ship on and the lit console controls shining in the dark, and slowly... the stars come into focus... dim at first an then... they shine bright...

** Vincent Lapkan at first was amazed by how pretty the stars were when he first started space travel, now they seemed to be nothing but an annoyance and cheap light at the best of times. **

(16) Captain Jennings: This'll be a short ride...

(16) Captain Jennings: There's a salvage job, pirates hit some one only a day out, that's insane...

Vincent Lapkan: Let me guess...we're going into the middle of that salvage job, before the pirates have been hit, for shits and grins for them to blast us with high powered weaponry and make a bigger job for someone else...

(16) Captain Jennings: Excuse me?

Vincent Lapkan: Did anyone kill the pirates, did anyone make sure they didn't leave oh say explosives on the ruined ship to blow us to hell...

(16) Captain Jennings: Son, pirates aren't random killers... It's big enough that they hit someone this close to Martian space.. I wouldn't be surprised if it was earthers. They've started setting up their own asteroid colonies. I'm counting that the Maltese will have chased them off. I'd be shocked if the pirates weren't already hit...

(16) Captain Jennings: This your first salvage run?

(16) Captain Jennings: Either way, if they were still around they'd be guaranteed to be killed, not that we'd be worth anything to them. No cargo...I'm counting on them having had too much to cary on their own as it is.. means there will be some left for us... without the messy conscience...

Vincent Lapkan: This isn't my first salvage run, but I'm not stuipid either, if the pirates hit someone that close by, they'd have to be either fucking nuts, fucking confident they could get away with it, or got enough shit to blow someone out of the water

(16) GM: The ship begins to rumble as Jennings pushes the throttle, having set the ship in line for its course

(16) Captain Jennings: Son, your a good bullshitter

(16) Captain Jennings: By good bullshitter, I mean bad at it...

Vincent Lapkan: I learned well from my father

(16) Captain Jennings: I'd hate to have a good liar on my crew.

** Vincent Lapkan grumbled slightly, his temper always got in the way of him being able to pull off a good lie. **

(16) Captain Jennings: Don't take it so harsh.

(16) Captain Jennings: Every man lies.

Vincent Lapkan: Especially when they go planetside...and find some slinky morsels

(16) Captain Jennings: I only hire the ones who have tells. If I can't tell the lies that a man tells to my face when I'm interviewing them, then they're good liars... either they're good at lying so I don't know it or saving it for when they can do it and get away with it.

(16) Captain Jennings: Slinky morsels?

Vincent Lapkan: ...don't tell me ya ain't staring up the women's legs, otherwise I'll be calling you a liar

(16) Captain Jennings: Is that what you call a slinky morsel? I suppose a nice fine one is...

Vincent Lapkan: slinky cause they legs be going up hellvua lot more then mine, and morsel cause I want to get down at the center capp'n

(16) Captain Jennings: I see...

(16) Captain Jennings: You know, son, you don't have to act like a regular sailor.. most of them are pigs.

(16) Captain Jennings: It's not your style.

(16) Captain Jennings: And you're not good at it.

** Vincent Lapkan went quiet for now with a bit of a smirk played out on his face. Leaning back in the chair that he was in just waiting for something to happen. **

(16) Captain Jennings: Filthy earthers hit more honest ships every year..

Vincent Lapkan: Am I really that shitty at bluffing and lying...god damn...

(16) Captain Jennings: 'Leastways.. I'd bet they's earthers. The way I hear it, at least half the pirates are, and to hit this close... makes a man shudder.

(16) Captain Jennings: As I hear it, half the pirates in the belt are earthers, would make sense with the ratio of Earth/Mars stations.

Vincent Lapkan: I don't doubt it to much...lazy bastards they are half the time

(16) Captain Jennings: So your father was a bad liar too?

(16) Captain Jennings: Or just a liar?

** Vincent Lapkan kept leaning back in his chair, looking to be getting anxious to where they were going. **

Vincent Lapkan: Actually my father was a polotician, he could lie with the best of em

Vincent Lapkan: I think that's how he married my mother anyways, but that doesn't matter to much now, they're both coffin stuffers now

(16) Captain Jennings: If you'd said that he was just a liar, I'd have told you that's no news, you kindof can just asume about anyone who talks.

** Captain Jennings appraises Vincent, observing his impatient air **

** Vincent Lapkan shrugged and really didn't give a damn **

(16) Captain Jennings: You might wanna relax some, you can go sleep, study, whatever you like, the gravs from the accel will be down and you can float on back in a few minutes...

(16) Captain Jennings: I'm more than free to chat but if you're not in the mood to do anything at all, it's going to be a boring flight.

Vincent Lapkan: yeah...I'll go study for a while...might as well try to get it over with when I got nothing else to do...

** Captain Jennings knowing his conversation is less than welcome turns to the screens and watches the numbers. **

(16) GM: After about 20 minutes of relative silence, the stars spinning a bit from the ship rotation that Jennings put in to help keep the course straight, the push from the accelleration reduces to almost full weightlessness

(16) Captain Jennings: And that's that!

** Captain Jennings turns just before the accelleration ends completely **

(16) Captain Jennings: You're free to float about!

** Vincent Lapkan was waiting for the gravity to go down so he could go back and study for a while, once it went off he took off the belt that strapped him down and went back to the cabins and started studying his books. **

Games!

Ran my first roleplaying session last night with John, I am very happy with how it went, when I finish editing it, I will be posting it to keep track. *smile* I really love the game world, it’s awesome, it allows me to really have fun with a more down to earth type place that’s grimy and dealing with both not enough and too much government at the same time.

I hope John and the other two players who have not yet joined the game find it to be greatly to their liking.

I still need to get a game of Save Dr Lucky going.

Games

Spent today working on characters for the two people who are going to play in my roleplaying game, they'll be finished soon and the game will be going by sunday. I have a really cool scenario set up and it's looking to be really wicked awesome. Too bad only strangers are playing with me. Oh well. It'll be fun anyway. I'm going to leave work just a tad early so that I can get home in time for the game tonight.

Speech class was really awesome this morning. My teacher, mister something or other, was extremely cool and made a good impression on me, I can't wait for the rest of the semester.

My school books hurt me bad.

Pain.

Well, this weekend was pretty unpleasant… for the most part. I really enjoyed seeing grandma and grandpa. I love them, and grandma cooked some super awesome deliciousness food. I even got Legos on the trip. But it was a 27-hour drive for 5 hours with family, and that’s not a good exchange, especially in a car as small and uncomfortable as my mom’s.

There have been worse things in life. Presently I am very happy though because I have had 2 new people volunteer to join my game.

Had my first class today (Only because I missed the real first one yesterday). It was pretty good, a little scary. I can only be late or absent for 3 classes.

Ideas

Awesome idea for a part in short… reset… urge the player to reset themselves, and find a way to actually make it so that the player themselves feel as though they’ve been reset. Lock them out of a pre-existing area as they reset themselves and then delete the map and have every character treat them as though they’ve never been anywhere else.


Another idea for a game story… a physicist working on a time machine has his son killed in an explosion on the first floor. Due to the limitations of the technology, he can only go backward an hour and his time keeps moving forward, giving him only an hour to try to set things right before it all goes wrong permanently.

Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?

Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?


Okay, this rocks hard.... I mean, it's just totally cool to have a link now that I can just hit and instantly be blogging about a page that I've just been to without opening word or going to www.blogger.com. Now, if only this could translate to LJ just as easily... there has to be a way to hook my blogs together. Oh well, more people read Lj, wouldnt want to drown them in every webpage I find interesting.

Accomplishment!

Well, today is looking good, at random I found a role-player and introduced them to OpenRPG, soon I’ll have George’s character done and he can solo play a few times with me before I get him into the game with John. That will be tons of fun. The new player is into a different style of play but I bet I can get them into the campaign that I’m setting up for George and John.

Today, I plan on making a special blog for my novel. I’m really looking forward to seeing it up on a webpage broken up into chapters and pages.

Dreams

This weekend was really quite awesome. Especially friday where we had a lan party that included a projector allowing us to play xbox on the entire wall. Even 4 way split screen was like having a 27" all to myself. It was tons of fun, and games were played late into the night, and computers were worked on and games were played.

Today was nice and relaxing. I read more of the count of monte cristo, an awesome book if ever there was one.

Story Seeds

A couple of story ideas:

Ghosts being reflections and imprints of horrible events, someone who survived an event that should have killed them is confronted by their own ghost. I could do some really interesting things with this, what if the person gets isolated, trapped somewhere with the spirit and begins to question their own memories, whether they’re alive or dead because of the malicious ghosts presence.

I am thinking maybe the main character would be a woman who was the victim of a violent rape, who died and was resuscitated.



There are some other story ideas in my head. I also want to write a short story sometime soon, finish the Dreamer.


Another cool one is for a group of roman soldiers guarding a fleeing senator from ancient Rome, fleeing Carthage and traveling south into the heart of Africa, being surrounded and slowly confronted by as well as absorbed within the mystic culture.


That’s all I can really think of off the top of my head, I have to start working on Short now.

Post New Years' Implied blues

This weekend was incredibly awesome. We had an awesome party all day Saturday, and late into the night. About 20 or so people showed up and there was a great time to be had by all. My good friend, brother even, Chris was home from the army for the past two weeks and he had a great time at the party. Monday was the last time I saw him though, when I dropped him off with his family to leave on Tuesday back for South Carolina and Ft Bragg. I don’t know how it’s spelled, so that’s the best spelling I know.

While he was here we went to the mall on Sunday and he bought me a pair of sexy, sexy jeans, which was super duper awesome of him. I saw destroyed pants for the first time, I thought it had been a joke that they were sold. 60$ for a pair of jeans that someone ran a sander over? My god, buy a cheaper pair that is undestroyed and run the sander over it yourself, or do it the old fashioned way and go out back and have fun destroying them yourself running, jumping fences, scraping the knees against stuff.

If I know anyone who ought to be able to destroy a pair of pants it’s my buddy, Chris “The Tree Frog” Brumgard.

We almost saw the Producers again, if Chris’ brother had gone to see it on Monday we would have gone with, but they went to see a boring movie instead so we stayed and played Unreal Tournament 2004. It was the only LANing we did the entire time Chris was here. Next time I will have to have better plans in advance. Well, he did play some System Shock 2 with me, and I had fun with that, but he didn’t like it so much.

I still need to finish System Shock 2 with Jake. I haven’t played that with him in several months.

I so want to see the producers again, I want to read the score and memorize the songs. I was so inspired and just had so much fun during that movie that it was incredible.

Last night I watched Clockwork Orange for the first time while Tara, Marcia, and Kayla hung out. It was a pretty good movie, but I wouldn’t put it anywhere on my list of favorites, I may never watch it again, but it wasn’t bad.

Its a beautiful day

It’s a beautiful day; the high from yesterday’s surprise is still rocking hard. I’m going to go see Narnia again with my dad and his wife. It was a really good movie and I’m looking forward to it, they’re going to help me pick out Christmas presents for people who I want to buy somewhat nice things for.

I’m starting to get a little hungry, I don’t know what I want to get though. I’d like to go eat at Benigan’s, but I don’t know if I’ll have time before the movie.

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaahng!

Saw King Kong last night. Overall it was a really good movie, really sad, but frankly, it could really have been shorter. Some of the fights were beyond unreasonably long, stealing from the focus of the movie and feeling like they’re there to support the video game. I mean, I literally got TIRED of watching Kong beat up on dinosaurs. There were some amazingly visceral moments; Kong himself was amazing, visually and in his animation. Some moments in the film made my stomach churn hard watching the incredible but horrific events. If you hate spiders DO NOT see this film. It definitely had some graphic deaths. But so help me, how long do we need to watch a trampling dino scene that seems to kill people right and left but kills only four people? It just… amazing that you can get tired of watching giant beasts punch each other.

Tonight Scott also worked on Short with me, which looks like it could be cool. There was also a really cool moment last week where mike actually messed around with the interface for our game.

www.war-facts.com is a really cool game. I’ve enjoyed it quite a lot today. Christmas presents for all my friends shipped today. They’ll be here by next week. I also had a really awesome surprise at work, my first Christmas bonus ever! My supervisor asked me in sounding as serious and upset as possible and then when I got there it was a nice check, wow that felt good.

Plush Goodness

Well, I guess they can make anything out of plush now. I don't neccessarily advocate doing it just becaue we can, on the other hand, this is pretty wicked. Restraint, I say, is needed. This at least, is just cool.

So, I've been christmas shopping online, and I'm all hopped up on Christmas cheer, which feels like it's the only thing keeping my body from rejecting... I don't even know what, because I haven't eaten yet. It's not fair... In order to throw up the laws of science should require you to have something to reject, I mean, dry heaving is the worst feeling in the whole world.

Last night we played a game of Kill Dr. Lucky at IHOP with Marcia, Jackson, Kayla, and Travis that lasted an hour or two and was lots of fun. Mike was there too, but he didn't play, he said he had much more fun reading everyone's cards before they were played. There was lots of laughing and fun and it was a good night.

Cheapass Games is really quite a great site for really cheap but ultra fun games.

BBQ faq is the coolest ever. I'm going to host it on my site.

I Want to be Heard, and I Don't at the Same Time

I was going to post some things about how I feel today. But I'm not. It didn't make sense to me.

Seeds of a New Sort

Novel Ideas:


“How can we survive being shot at by 12 people who have trained for at least six years a piece to hit you lethally no matter what you do?”

“The answer to that is very simple. You don’t.”

“But the reason we’re all here… I mean… how can you tell us that we don’t? How can you tell us that when you did it? How did you do it?”

“I didn’t.”

The flustered student has no answer or question for that but looks as though both angry and hurt as though he is thought to be a fool.

“Nothing I did, kept me alive. There is nothing that I didn’t do that stopped me from dying. I tell you that you can’t, because you can’t, and that I didn’t, because I absolutely did not. I am alive because of many dramatic apices of random chance. A great mind once spoke of what an exhilaration it was to be shot at and missed. Every bullet fired at me was intended to kill me from the bottom of the heart of every single shooter. No man woman or child can really dodge a bullet, maybe, by some chance, dodge the gun before the bullet is fired, but not the bullet. For every single bullet that has ever missed me, there was a different reason that it missed me. And almost none of those reasons had anything to do with me. Mostly, you see, they just missed, simple as that.”






A soldier is in the army of a country that goes into civil war. The soldier is sworn to protect his country, that oath is the reason he joins and puts his life on the line.
He must ask, “What is the country that I swore to protect? Is it the ideals that founded, the people who live in it, or merely the place I was born regardless of what that becomes in the future or has been in the past? What does my oath mean, and do I have to accept what the army I swore it to accepts it to mean?”

Roleplaying

I'm dedicated to roleplaying tonight. I might ask myself why, considering my character is unconscious. So mostly I'm just there watching my new friends enjoy the game. It's lots of fun and I'm really loving it. It's felt really great to get into a regular roleplaying game and I'd like to gamemaster my own game sometime on saturday or sundays.

I haven't decided what setting yet. I'd like to do a sort of space cowboy setting, maybe something similar to the game I'm trying to put together online. The one without a name, but that everyone got mad at me for not having a name for, and the game that no one will help me with because they didnt like the color of the interface I was putting together mostly just to get the buttons and controls in the right place. Being the only one bothering to work on it, I felt a little put off, and then more so when everyone stopped working with me.

"You're welcome to change the colors, I'll send you the file."
"Okay"
File gets sent and never even opened.

Or maybe I'm just being bitter. When I get home tonight, I'm opening photoshop and playing with it. I really like the idea for the game and I'll work on it by myself if I have to.

NANoWriMo Success 2005

Well, it was really hard work. I pushed the limits of tollerance with all of my friends, but I did it. I am a NaNoWriMo winner this year. Thank you to everyone who tolerated me, it means so much to me. Thank you to everyone who read what I wrote, no matter how bad it was. Thank you so much to everyone who said that I could do it and that they wanted me to do it. How many times can I say thank you to all the people who deserve it? Not possibly enough times. This means more to me than I thought would be possible from something that seemed so trivial when I picked it up for the first time last year. Only about 20% of the people who start end up finishing. With good reason too. It's not easy. It's not easy at all. I hope to do this again next year, it would be an honor and a privledge.

Words, My Head Hurts with Words!

Well, I finally got more words done today than I got all weekend, over 2000, only took me till 2 am to do it. It’s depressing being so far behind, but I’m feeling inspired again, and I want to do another 5000 day. I need to do another 5000 day or else I’ll have to maintain 2000 every single day, and I know I don’t work well with weekends.

I’ve kicked Mario Kart DS’s butt. That is such an incredibly fun game that I just keep playing it and playing it. I’ve beaten every single grand prix mode, and now I’m on to the missions. It’s go to be the only racing game with boss fights.

My dad told me that he isn’t doing so hot financially. I worry about my family. I care about them all. He told me that Christmas was going to be tight this year, and I told him it was okay. I need to think of something to bring with me to thanksgiving dinner. I want to make something interesting, but the only stuff no one else is bringing are side dishes, which means exploring a new culinary world that I haven’t really touched on before, especially a thanksgiving-centric one.

It’s late and I need a quick 150 words so I’m going to wrap this up, finish writing, play a round of Mario Kart online, and then sleep. Have a good night all.

15000 Words 3300 Today

Chapter Seven: The Blood Stained Pacifist

The celebration was in full swing, the members of the trading caravan were dancing side by side around a great fire. Stocks of wood that had been imported and purchased from far to the east were thrown into the great inferno. Not all danced, played, and drank. The fire, though a luxury, was not to be a complete waste and great stocks of food were smoked and stewed over it. The scant few that knew how played passionately on their instruments, others beat on skins stretched over pots to the time of the music, and still others danced, sang out from their hearts, and made love out of the sight of the ever-invasive light from the fire.
Among those brothers who played instruments there was a young man with a strong back and many bruises. His skin, visible as his cloak was cast aside in the night and in the passions of the music, was a dark shade of brown from the sun, though his hair was almost white from being bleached so blonde by the unforgiving sun during his broad travels. Dark on his back, even standing out from his dark skin was the black of his fading name, an empty circle, like a name that is not a name.
His fingers danced over the holes of the small pipe with a fury and the notes that flew from it were like pips and whistles that would lift the feat of every dancer. With cheeks puffed and eyes closed the light of the fire shone off his forehead in the glistening shimmer of the sweat from his passionate exertion. Women danced close to him and he opened his eyes and danced with them, singing when he would put his pipe to the side and drink with the rest of the tribe. Nameless though he was, he competed with the best of the tribe for the temporary affections and attention of the beautiful women and the notice of the elders and for the pure thrill of competition.
All through the day there had been sparing between the youth, games of strategy, games of strength, dexterity, wit, timing, and even good old-fashioned fighting. Though not present at the evening’s celebration, the young man’s teacher had been present all day long for both days advising and encouraging.
Not quite the best in every event, the young man was far superior to any in his age range, only being bested by the most experienced. Fighting was the one exception; none came close, not even to lay a single strike on him in armed combat. In unarmed combat he still far surpassed all who opposed him, though not by so wide a margin. The man was like a furious whirl of wind with his strikes, blocks, and dodges. All fell to him, one at a time, none more successful than the last until he faced the best of the Rae’Gno in unarmed combat and took a hard blow to the belly, winding him, before he subdued the competitor.
The Rae’Gno were having a time of rare good fortune, and they had not been alone, three neighboring tribes had worked hard together and none had been denied to participate in the jubilation. So it happened that the pair of wanderers, working with a caravan of traders and selling goods were allowed to take part and make an impression, though the whole caravan took the time to relax and participate in the rare event of unwinding from their harsh lives.
It was during the morning of the third day that the old man happened to be talking to an odd man. He was eating some of his dried meat from his pouch, chewing it carefully and making it last, rather than let the events around him prompt him to wasteful action. His student was young and was doing so well, as well as working so hard that it would be shameful to deny him the chance to be a little loose for a few days and enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Busy Bee

It's been a long but very good day in which I've accomplished quite a bit. I made an A on a test, which isn't official, but with some tests you just KNOW you got all the answers right. It was an awesome book that it was based on.

I got all my writing done, or almost, I'll be finished in just a bit, I also started making Apple Chips and Banana Chips in my dehydrator with Mike, we'd been planning to do it since sunday evening but it slipped my mind. Tomorrow I have a hot date with a beautiful girl.

On wednesday I'm going to play games with Jake, but not till late, I want some more time with Pattie than I've been getting lately so I'm going to wait till she's going to sleep for school the next day.

I got to talk with Chris, next time I talk with him he'll probably be on american soil again, which should be quite fun. I sent him my novel so far to hear what he thinks of it.

I also watched the movie that I missed last wednesday, which was actually pretty enjoyable, it gave me a taste for John Quincy Adams. I thought he was a pretty depressing character, but he certainly had some good ideals. I wonder if my teacher will give me credit for the day I missed?

I beat FEAR and I beat the campaign in Advance Wars: Dual strike and both games are giving me a taste of something I havent had in a long while: Replayability. Advance Wars is full of extra campaigns and other extremely awesome aspects, I only wish there were tunnel software that would let me play it with others online. I believe that one day soon that will be quite an awesome reality. Also not too long from now games that genuinely take advantage of wi-fi internet connectivity will be out, including Mario Kart DS.

I've been beating all my games lately, Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, ummmm... you know what? That's the only three. Of the three of them, Advance Wars has probably given me the deepest most complext and longest lasting gaming experience. I'm not going to be buying any games or movies for a while even though I want them. I've done a good job in this respect, I've turned them down on sale, I've turned them down while holding them in my hand, I've turned them down again and again. I don't like doing it, I really want these things and other things, but I feel that it is invaluable experience to turn them down. I may, in effect, have to deny them to myself forever, even though I want them, just to prove that I am not a person of pure impulse and that I can let something go without buying it. If I do, then maybe I'll be able to afford a better computer sooner, because my next upgrade will require me to do everything but buy a brand new computer entirely. That's something I'm going to need. I'm looking at maybe an 80o dollar upgrade in order for it to be of any use at all.

9011 Words!

Okay, last night I reached 9000 words, only 3000 short of my goal, which I believe I might be able to make up for if I work extra hard. I'm not optomistic, but sure, anything is possible.

I just spent an hour gleaning my entire blog for spam comments, deleting every single one and turning on some anti spam measures. It's not enough for spammers to spam my blog but they have to litter it all over the place even way back in the archives, and I have a lot of archives, so this was a pretty determined action on my part. Blogger doesnt tell you where someone posted their spam, so I had to go over my entire blog with a fine toothed comb. I hope the anti spam measures prevent comment spam in the future. Sometimes people make me sick.

Chapter Four: The Usurper

Chapter Four: The Usurper

     The armor-clad warrior stepped out into the night, his hammer swinging with his easy stride. His great pain was hidden behind ash smeared and fire scored metal. The entrance to the building behind him, buried in the mountain’s side, unveiled him from the velvet shadows of an interior devoid of all life with each step. Once free from the embrace of the shaded gate he arched his arm above his head, grasping his helmet from its rear and cracking it off and removing it from his head.
     Behind the mask of the dinged helmet was a face singed, red and feverish. The hammer fell into the sand and the armor began to crack apart as he opened it up and allowed it to fall one way as he fell another, savoring the fresh air and the brief relief it brought to his raw and cooked flesh. Red flesh of his back glistened in the starlight shimmering around his inked name, Broken Spears. Several other marks were inked into his flesh, but these were by far the most prominent. Soon blisters started to form and so he spent little time relaxing and put the armor back on when his senses had fully returned from him, enduring the painful heat from his skin and the sand rubbing against the burn, each grain like a fiery spear.
     Broken Spears traveled quickly, the armor carrying his weight and moving him with superior speed and strength despite his injuries. For a the next day and the next night he walked, protected from the sun and cooled by his shell before he came to the nearest spring in the side of the mountain from which cool fresh water poured. Once again he dropped the armor about him, followed by his pack and began to wash his wounds, opening the pouch, he pulled salves and cloth which he tore into bandages for places where his blisters had begun to break and run.
He also drank deep and refilled the flasks that he carried with him. For two whole weeks he hid himself in the crack of the mountain treating his wounds with care, and suffering as scars spread across his skin. Healing was slow, and incomplete, but at that time he had rested too long. Dawning his armor, Broken Spears began the long journey home.

* * *

The evening was cool and bright with a half moon in the sky over the camp of the Clark tribe. Stars glistened across the sky and the wind blew cool, but calm, gentle enough to let the sand lay still. The Clarks were somewhat at rest, the hunters had returned and their shelters were complete for the evening, they had worked hard and all were enjoying a great feast, the greatest Clark hunters had killed well. The tribe indulged in burning a huge bonfire, despite the scarcity of fuel because they had done well at collecting and pillaging from other tribes.
The youthful tribe leader watched all and two prisoners of war were brought out and their blood was spilled at the great bonfire. Their necks were gashed and their bodies strung upside down till they drained empty, feeding the light with black pools ran into violent flames. The leader walked towards the corpses, his back to the fire and his name silhouetted against his brown skin depicting a man shackling many other men. This was a part of the name of every member of the Clark.
Other acts of violence were inscribed on there, though that was the most prominent. The name of the leader was quite long, for his acts were so diverse and he took so much pleasure in them. He was most often called Begetter of Violence. As Begetter stood before the dangling corpses he took his knife from its place on his belt and smashed the chest of the first one, striking and separating the rib cage before tearing it open, he then reached his fist into the gash and moved those hungry fingers through the soft flesh, tearing at the lungs and gripping the still heart with his fist, ripping it from its bondage within, severing it with his blade and then biting into it with a fierce passion, his lips smeared with the red of the pink flesh, as with his hands, the clear juice running down his chin.
Begetter of Violence then turned to the fire and plunged his hand into the heat before letting go, dropping the pink and red heart before stepping over to the second body, and repeating the process, though not as easily. The chest proved more difficult to shatter and separate to expose the tender organs within. Again he reached within, and tore at the dead flesh of the cadaver, letting bits run from the gaping hole before ripping what his soul desired, and once again biting deep into the strong flesh of the heart as though it were a golden red apple. His lips wrapped around it in warm embrace as his teeth pierced it before, the still warm flesh slipping down his gullet before he turned to the side and plunged this heart too into the fire with his other hand.
Reaching for the sky in celebration, all the Clark’s cheered their victory and their zealous dispatch of the prisoners. The bodies were cut down and burned, fueling the bright tongues.

A Taste of Chapter 3...

Chapter Three: Teachings

“Rocks will not be there for you every time. There will always be blows that you cannot dodge, and weapons that will break you like the surf against the shore.” The man preached openly as Learner followed. The young boy looked on, listened and paid careful attention. Always during the lessons he listened. Any other time he was free to ponder his own thoughts and wander with a blank expression, but when the old man taught a lesson he kept the boy’s attention with slow blows that a ready mind could easily dodge.
Lessons were tiring, physically and mentally. But the boy kept up with them, though every so often he caught a blow to the arm or to the ribs or in the back from a slow dodge. The old man never hit hard enough to hurt much, but the failures stung, in more ways than one. Learner wanted to succeed. He had taken after several days to calling the old man Teacher, and to hunting food for the both of them.
“You will need a proper weapon. Something with which you will be the shore against which the weapons of others will shatter against. For now though, you should find a stick. You will find your lessons less painful with one at hand.”
     Learner searched each night as he hunted. But found no weapon. For now his lessons would remain painful. But his skin toughened, and his pace quickened, and Teacher had to strike harder to make his mistakes felt, and faster to land them on Learner’s skin.
     Some days later, the pair were walking along when Teacher lashed out a fierce blow that Learner ducked, and rounded the stick, twisting his wrist giving it a second chance to land with half the strength, which Learner caught full on his forearm, flinching and falling to the ground, a great pain running through it. Teacher offered his hand to help his apprentice up.
     “I thought I told you to acquire a stick.”
     “I couldn’t find one. Suppose the wind wills me to learn without one.”
     Teacher turned and walked on, saying, “Then the wind wills you pain.”
     “Pain is the forge against which the mightiest warriors are fo-“
     A blow interrupted the retort as fast as lightning to the temple, though fast it was less powerful than the previous strike. Learner fell to the ground again and this time the old man did not offer his hand.
     “Mighty warriors die young, and do little with their short lives. It is the skilled, the quick, and the smart ones who change the world. A mighty warrior may be a rock, but I promise if you smash it against enough things it will crack and crumble and wear down to dust. Even the mountains are not immortal, only long lived because of their girth.”
     

A New Chapter

Chapter Two: A Dying Breathe

     Rebellious Child of Fear clutched his shield tight as he braced himself loosely for the blow he knew would strike hard enough to lift him off the ground as though he were only a pebble in its path.  He was not disappointed by the strike that came his arms shuddered despite their looseness and his body seemed to lose all its weight as the soles of his feet separated from the ground with a remarkable quickness. His shield smashed into his chest, the hammer behind it carrying him off and slinging him with ease into the far wall of the large room, knocking a table behind him and sending it spinning away before his shoulders struck the wall, which was, curiously, strong enough to withstand his crash.
     “Abba’Lien, I will tear your name off your back!”
     The giant rushed the wall, each crashing step resounding with metallic ring. The Abba’Lien’s vision blurred red around the edges and flickered with spots as he dropped to the ground and rolled to the left, stumbling as he stood up again backing away. He had been hit hard and did not feel that there was any length of time long enough to recover from that blow. His right arm felt separated from his shoulder and the pain was unbearable. The wall did not stand up so well against the hammer, though still better than the Child had, a spider web of cracks spread outward from behind where he had been standing a second before the sledge struck full force. Running had failed, and had been an unfitting resolution in the first place for the man who rebelled against all fear.
     No retort came from his lips as he continued to weave and roll, his whole body shuddering with pain and threatening unconsciousness with every pressure connecting against his bad shoulder. The next two blows followed through the spaces he had left with great haste, striking tables and shattering them even as flew away; toppling other identical tables out of their way as they did.
The Abba’Lien was backed against the cylindrical room build in the center of the cavernous space and nimbly rolled over the countertop at the edge of it, pulling down behind him a steel sliding door, closing the window as he moved through. It was bent inward tearing and contorting itself out of its socket before he even hit the floor. His vision left him and he screamed as he clutched at his shoulder. Like the youngest child he choked for breathe and tears poured from his eyes. He kicked backward pushing away from the counter as the enraged warrior smashed down his hammer, ripping the counter from the floor and shattering the bricks that supported it.
Rolling away onto his good arm and regaining what little energy he could, Child kicked up to his feet and ran through the tunnel of the tiny enclosed space, finding a door and running through, slamming it shut behind him.
His pursuer smashed his way through the wall with little effort. His full body armor shimmered in the dim light of the tiny windows high above. He laughed as he worked feeling stronger with each crashing impact of his weapon against a new wall as he tore through the inner ring, where the Abba’Lien had hidden. Nothing slowed his impossibly strong, and precise strikes.
“Are you ready to die, Abba’Lien?”
A wind from the nearby wall caused his cape of names to billow inward around that terrifying metal casing. It took a minute to clear his way through the cramped room smashing bits out of the way, crashing his hammer into the ceiling and smashing the ventilation pipes to the side, pinching them closed. Counters, stoves, cabinets, steel tables bolted to the ground all ripped like so many flecks of paper as he pushed them aside carefully, savoring his approach and his victim’s helplessness. The air seemed to thicken and smell of victory.
Rebellious Child of Fear looked up, a look of lucidness returning to his face as a rancid stench filled his nostrils. A look of recognition and mischief filled his blood-blinded eyes. He reached into his pouch, not even seeing the hammer swing coming and struck the floor the instant that it broke his body, a single spark flying. It was enough of a spark all the same; as the hammer smashed into his body, breaking him, fire erupted in the room exploding outward and exponentially multiplying the damage the assailant had caused, sending even the heavy suit of armor crashing to the ground outside the cylinder room.
Consciousness faded from the burning body of the Rebellious Child of Fear, and his last breath was filled with the acrid smell of his own smoldering flesh before he passed away. The armored tribesman lay in darkness as the light faded from the room with the setting sun. His cape of names burned away and the armor he wore pierced in many places with debris and in other places glowing red hot and cooking bits of the occupant in his sleep. Injured though he was, he did live, his armor also cooled, and in the darkest of the night, wake and crawl away.

Sand is Beautiful

Chapter 1: Moving Shadows

     As the sun moved across the sky, a few hours past a time once called noon, it came to pass that in the great dessert amid the remains of buildings long since worn away sat a very old man and a very young boy. The occasional roof remained, and the walls stood with ragged edges with the sun shining over them carpeting the ruins with a smattering of shadows. Like the dessert was often doing, the sands of the surrounding area were brushing over the remains, now revealing, and now hiding bits here and there with no rhyme or reason like the waves of an ocean.
     The young boy, with blonde hair that was almost white and tanned a raw dark skin that had a leathery quality almost the shade of the comfortable leggings he wore strapped about his waist with an ornamented belt, turned his bare back to the older man proudly displaying the open circle which was so recently inked upon his flesh that it was still healing.
     “My name’s still empty, “ he said in an almost comical way as he twisted his body in ways that children do so as to both converse and show off all at once.
     “You seem to have hardly had time to earn anything to put inside of it, your name hasn’t even healed.” The old man spoke with a slow deliberate tone that sounded like honey as his face changed with every word, his old lined cheeks stretching for each syllable. His eyes studied thoughtfully from a brow that was always furrowed, offering as much shade for his eyes as it could. A brief gust of wind caught at his robes billowing them a bit around them as he clutched the side where it wrapped around his shoulder. Beneath his robes was barely visible a pair of leggings similar to the boy’s though with a very plain strap and several strips of rawhide about his chest with various pouches tied loosely about them.
     “It can’t be long, though! We Re’nan are proud warriors!” As he spoke he stood up tall, straightening out his body in mimicry of a stance of battle, waving his arms about in a violent fashion.
     “Well then, in that case it certainly can’t be long at all.” The soft-spoken character stepped to the side, moving among the mottled patches of shade till he found a comfortable looking projection to rest on.
     “Why are you hiding your name?”
     “Hiding?”
     “Uh-huh…”
     “What traveler wouldn’t cover his backside from the harshness of the lady guarding the sky during their wandering?”
     “Okay, but I showed you mine!”
     The old man smiled at the youth with understanding.
     “Well then, young warrior of Re’nan, you should not be so free with showing off your name. It is foolish to trade with the expectation of returns that have not been agreed on in advance.” At this his smile twisted a little to the right while a twinkle shimmered from the eye shadowed by left side of his heavy brow.
     The boy responded with a wary but curious look, hardness in his features starting to show though the otherwise childlike mannerisms.
     “You talk funny, and I don’t know what you mean.”
     “Did you tell me that you would only show me your name if I showed you mine?”     “No…”
     “Did you hide your name that I could not see it by the light of the lady a dune away if I had wished?”
     The boyhood returned to the youth as he lowered his head as beast would and shook it, indicating he understood.
     “If you wanted to trade names, you should have asked first. It seems to me that you were more than happy to simply give yours out.”
     The young man stood up on some sandy rubble and began jumping from one tiny dune to the next, sometimes landing on fallen walls showing through the sand, sometimes exposing them with his dancing feet.
     “I know what you mean now, but it still isn’t fair.”
     The man nodded his hairless head affirmatively, though the child was facing away, lost somewhat in his play.

The Dessert

I’d like to do a story involving the dessert. I’ve had an idea for a long while and images of tribes whose names are their deeds and scared on their flesh that live in the dessert in adobe buildings. There are a lot of ideas that could really work with that, I’ll see how many I can list off the top of my head:

Gandhi figure causes great conflict and strife by using passive and peaceful resistance in a warlike region.

A figure of prophecy struggles with a higher understanding that changes the nature of what the culture’s beliefs mean.

A conflict that extinguishes a tribe and the life of the last remaining member of that tribe.

A tribe of slaves revolts and struggles for their freedom violently.

The perspective of a woman.

The edge of a spreading dessert.

A tribe tries to raise and expand an oasis.

Themes that can be strong… Water, blood, wind, sun, ink, circles, steel, history, bones, animals, plants.

Moving Day Eve

Right now I am listening to the serenity soundtrack. It is surprisingly beautiful, and I absolutely love it. I also managed to somehow find the song Information. I love that song with a passion and I thought it lost forever, as hard as that is to do now, with everyone copying everything, and yet it does happen.

It’s funny; I was thinking what to write about aside from the meager and un-amusing events of my day when my sister called. She was arrested today. It’s the first time anyone in my family has been arrested that I know of, but I never asked my dad if he ever spent any time in jail for anything. So many of my favorite authors got in little brushes with the law when they were my age for stupid fun stuff that it seems like a part of youth almost, but not so with my sister. They nailed her just for being forgetful and failing to remember to pay a bad check.

It could be me, goodness knows I’ve overdrawn my checking account before; I just use a check card, so instead of bouncing I just end up paying it back to my bank plus 25 dollars. Where she is today, I probably could have been pretty easily, and that’s pretty scary. I guess I just have someone watching over me. Something always seems to go just right for me to keep me out of real trouble.

I don’t talk about religion much, but I just feel like saying, when I talk to God, I could never bring myself to ask for much after I stopped and asked myself what I really wanted at a young age. I could always ask for something different, but then, you always want something else. I pray for just a few things, wisdom, guidance, and protection for the we who is the life of everyone whom I touch.

This post is getting kind of long for now. I’m going to be moving finally tomorrow evening. I’m going to have Jake and Joe help me and drive my dad’s truck, which I have to pick up at 9:30 in the morning. I’m just going to move everything as fast as I can, I bet I can be set up between noon and eight in the evening, even have everything put together. I’ll finally be on a wireless network, which should be much awesomeness.

Some time this week we need to carve pumpkins.

Spiders Scare Me No More

I want to make origami out of this. That would be really cool. I passed my test today; it was really easy. I really just love that time period. The American Revolution is one of the more interesting periods in history if you count the Bavarian Illuminati, the rising philosophies behind it and the changing face of government. The world will never be the same.

I slept mostly for 8 hours last night. I keep forgetting to write about it but I had a dream the other night that was really weird and stuck with me. I was in a tiny earthy tunnel, and there were six spiders in six webs above me. Each spider was long and slender and tapped its two forward legs as they spoke to me. I told them that the world was changing and a new type of government would change it. They told me that people had been trying to do that for centuries. We argued together about the way the world was going to change, and what the world had been through. I was very afraid. Then I stood up and I broke through the webs and the spiders got on me and I jerked and woke up trying to brush them off of me.

http://www.3d2toy.com/headcrab.html

Random Stuff

Long but wonderful day, I kept my contacts out at work and got about 200 pages of Lord of Light read. It is becoming such an incredible book that I will have to read it again almost immediately. I’d been piddling, and it took a week to do the first fifty pages, but now I’m on page 250.

Some books are like that, I don’t know why. I love that intangible quality that makes some books really easy fast reads and others like walking through a wall, where each paragraph is dense enough to make you lose concentration by the end of it.

Still no luck getting a bed, but Pattie gave me lots of places to look, so I’m going to start with Wal-Mart and then go to another place that she mentioned and I know how to find, though I can’t recall the name off the top of my head right now. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find something cheap that will hold me.

I’m going to give my eyes some more rest tomorrow, and hopefully that will take care of that. I am also going to go to sleep in 10 minutes because I have mid terms tomorrow.

James Brown Rules!

I feel really good today, it’s been nice and sunny. I got to go for a good long drive in my car to school and then straight to work. I’m really happy about the over time I’ve been getting even though it’s been cutting into my life some and making me feel tired. I can live with that, I really can, because my paycheck next week should come with just enough padding to make me not feel like I’m just losing money, like I’m on a downhill roll where I’m spending more than I’m making.

Sometimes it’s too easy to be wrapped up in myself and get frustrated without thinking things through. I often find that I have the power to feel good regardless of the place I’m in among other people. This is an incredible power, but part of it is being able to empathize and understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Sometimes I still disagree with them, but often, I find that at least understanding their internal justification allows me not to be mad at them for it, or mad at it for happening.

I was already feeling good today, but it made me feel extra good to read a news post by someone who seems to be able to see both sides too and feel good because of it. I may have to read more Ctrl+Alt+Del from now on. It’s always flown under my radar below other comics that I read regularly, but this news post really got my attention.

I really should list my favorites, just to give off links:
Schlock Mercenary
PvP Online
Penny-Arcade
VG Cats
Sluggy Freelance
Goats

And even though I’m a conservative, I still read I Drew This.

Oh yeah, that reminds me; everyone keeps saying that Jack Thompson’s attitude is a greater reflection of the conservatives. This is incredibly inaccurate, take a look at the great anti game crusaders of our times, Joe Lieberman, Hilary Clinton, etc.

Moving Day

It’s been extra hot today, which is sad after it was so cool and nice last night. I made sure to water my plants before I left, I am really hyped about my pepper plant. Later on tonight I will be moving the last of my things over to the house and then I will be moved, which will be a big accomplishment. Mike is going to be helping me, and I’m going to be borrowing my dad’s truck to do the big and heavy stuff, the love seat, the chairs, the desks, etc.

It could be a fairly long evening. I also need to watch Revolution sometime before I go to bed. I borrowed it yesterday to fix one of my absences. I haven’t had this smooth of a move in a long time, I really feel bad that my other roommates feel like I’m dragging my feet. I’m just being paced, I’ve always been paced, I took 2 months to actually move out of my mom’s house. This is extremely well paced for me to do it in 2 sets of trips over only a few hours. I’d still rather wait for the weekend.

GURPS, Oh Joy!

Today I created my character so that I can join a GURPS game on Thursdays between 7:30 and 10:30. I haven’t had a good role-playing session in a long time, and it should be really cool and enjoyable. I haven’t named my character yet though.

He is a failed farmer, and a retired soldier at the age of 25 after 5 years of military experience and 5 years failing at farming and walking away with only decent carpentry skills and mediocre burglary skills, which he has done for the past 3 years. Being a better thief than a carpenter makes for decent income padding definitely helps pay the bills. He is troubled by sleepless nights and a secret of treason during a combat situation, which could result in his permanent imprisonment, or even exile should he be discovered. After so many years in the military, after so many years of farming and pick pocketing, most of his military skills have rusted away with the armor he used to wear, his fast and efficient knife skills being the majority of what is left.

And that’s my character. I wish he had a name though, can’t think of a good one that fits the setting.

It’s been a long weekend, and everyone is totally moved into the new house but me, though they wish I had moved in this weekend. Maybe I should have, I really wanted to avoid doing it at the same time as everyone else, but I know Mike wishes I had moved this weekend. Oh well, I’m happy with where I’m at. I may get Alan’s bed, mom says that if he’s not there and if I can get my dad’s truck, I can have it for free tonight. It would be nice to have a bed, and since I don’t have to keep everything in my room anymore, I’ll have the space.

So, if everything goes well, tomorrow I could be sleeping on a very nice bed. Mike is going to help me move everything else tomorrow evening. Either way, I can’t stay out late tonight, because I have to be at work at 7 tomorrow. If this week is as good as last week, my paycheck could be over 900 when I get it next week.

I started writing in a real life paper with binding journal today. I wrote about history class today and how I felt about Alexander Hamilton.

System Shock 2

It was a really good day, I spent a lot of time in OpenRPG making new friends and observing some games, and then I helped move a fridge into my new house and got my key to the front door. Then I got the garage… woohoo! The tragedy is that it came at the cost of major work to Mike’s car door, which I deeply regret, that car means a lot to Mike. After all of which, I got to spend about 3 hours of actual game time working through System Shock 2 with Jake, which was awesomeness…. I have been wanting to play that game multiplayer for about 4 years now and it feel so good to finally have the means and a willing friend to do it.

Anyway, I have nothing to do tomorrow, but I’ll feel much better if I go to sleep.

Indigo Prophecy Review

Indigo Prophecy

Style: 95% Sound Quality: 90% Graphics Quality: 85% Game-play: 100% Average Quality Over Time Played: 100% Final Value: 94% at 40$

Highs: Innovative experience, awesome storytelling, intense and cinematic with interesting characters. This would be a brilliant adventure game among adventure games, and in the dessert that populates that genre currently, it is as pure ambrosia from the mouth of Zeus.

Lows: Sometimes it feels just slightly rough around the edges.

Best Played by: Anyone passionate about good story telling, adventure gamers, most RPG gamers. Absolutely anyone else, you simply cannot go wrong if you find it in the bargain bin, but it might even be worth the risk to pay full price.


Indigo Prophecy plays like a movie, and simply cannot be described any other way. It challenges in ways that no game has ever explored before. In the most novel approach to story telling through games, Indigo Prophecy pits the player against his or her own self as they are confronted with not only the task of doing their best at keeping the main character, Lucas Kane, from being arrested as it presents them with tasks such as fleeing a crime scene or hiding evidence, but also playing out the investigative duo Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, and having the opportunity to either challenge by searching for evidence and hunting down Lucas to the extent of their abilities, or, going easy and trying to not catch themselves.

The rough edges of this diamond can be found in the controls, which are on average mediocre. The best bits, oddly enough, are the arbitrary action sequences where the player is presented with what can be described as a dual Simon Says style challenge that miraculously manages, through what can be imagined to be a great effort, to feel intricately tied to the action being performed, rather than as arbitrary as it is. The meat of the game, the adventure, plays out using rather standard and occasionally unpleasant direction keys, or even awkward (admittedly, only at the worst) mouse selection.

Also feeling lackluster overall is the game's brief length. A five year old couldn't get bored of this game before it was over. Weighing in at about 7 hours of gameplay, Indigo Prophecy is a bit of a meager offering in size, despite the consistant quality. Another four to seven hours would have been heavenly, though, in truth, the brevity will make replaying it in a month a completely unintimidating task, much like rewatching a good movie, the time investment for repeated viewings are minimal.

If adventuring is occasionally awkward, the carrying out an in game conversation can be downright paralyzing as every set of conversation options is timed, and the save system wont let you go back to immediately beforehand to replay just that one moment in time over again. This can be terribly frustrating as it means recovering from a bad conversation often means replaying the entire chapter, which can get tedious as you re-watch the un-skip-able cut scenes, which would be just fine on later re-plays, but are not so fun when watched over and over again.

Each environment shimmers like a perfect little Venus di Milo. From the most ordinary diner, to the brilliant retro military base done with a filter that makes it appear as though it were an old movie, each location is crafted with a love that is extraordinary and visible in every tiny detail. The detail is even more intriguing given that each environment is experienced in very small doses and often only once at all. If every game had real love like this in it, there would be no bad games.

The story of Indigo Prophecy begins to feel rushed as the end approaches, and little things, like who exactly certain characters are seem to get totally forgotten and even talked about as though they have already been elaborated upon perfectly. Given the richness of the rest of the story, and that the rest of the ending, including the main points of interest, are so far above par, this crime proves hardly worth mentioning.

The real and true tragedy of Indigo Prophecy will be direct results of the state of adventure gaming as a dead genre. Certainly lots of people will play this game, and, lord knows, more of this direction of gaming is desperately needed and wanted by a certain crowd of niche gamers who thrive on story and characters and dialog above mindless action, and who have been rewarded over the past seven years or so with nothing at all of note. If you love adventure games, buy it now.

7 Days

It’s a really calm nice afternoon. I feel bad that I haven’t been writing every day. Worse, I’ve barely been writing once a week. I really need to get into the habit in time for NaNoWriMo. I’m going to blog it again this year. I’m going to go seven days a week, and I’m not going to get hung up on the end. I think it will be more important for me to finish the story than to make it good. After it starts getting bad I’m going to stop letting people read it, but it is going to get finished.

Maybe like last year I will be equally consumed by so many other projects that it will simply become impossible. But I am going to do everything in my power to avoid it. I want to write something good. Someday, I want to have a novel published, that would make me feel incredible.

NaNoWriMo

It’s a beautiful afternoon, and NaNoWriMo is in the air. As it is, it’s only a month a way and I am looking forward to it. Thanks to blogger I know about this wonderful celebration. I cannot express how fun it was last year and how much I expect to enjoy it this year as well with a totally different story.

Last year I failed to finish. I had fun anyway, thanks to tons of other stuff. Mitigating circumstances made it acceptable. How could I not still feel good after everything I accomplished last November? I do believe it was one of the best months ever.

Anyway, on to try again. Here’s hoping I win this year!

Many Troubles

Today is a beautiful day; I just love the cool front that we’re getting. Later this week the highs will be 80. It’s the 3rd of October, and so I will be moving out very soon. I am still lacking a bed, but that’s okay. It’s been a very busy weekend, so I’ll just have to highlight:

1) Watched serenity on Friday with Mike, couldn’t get anyone else to go. It was an awesome movie.
2) Ate dinner with my mom and Mike afterward.
3) Opened up a joint account with Mike, Marcia, and Tara (ate many candies).
4) Went to the Texas Art Supply with Mike.
5) Went to the movies with my dad, until Mary Ellen got so sick I had to come home.
6) Ate dinner with my mom while Alan raged.
7) Helped my mom move.

All in all, it’s been a very buys weekend, lots of fun. I could elaborate on any single one of those points but the most I’ll say was that Serenity was a very enjoyable ride. Some of the finer points were a little lacking, the whole story was so tightly tied together that there wasn’t anything “extra” that solely served to flesh out the universe. All the same, it gets many bonus points for being in an all too sparse genre of movies and even more bonus points for having a fresh feel. It was much better than the Star Wars prequels and it made me really want to see the series.

Almost every trailer was for a movie that I want to see.

There are some fine projects that I am anticipating work on in the future…

Ties That Bind

Territory cannot bind people together forever. The human soul is too powerful to be held together in communities based on arbitrary ideals such as location. We make relationships of all kinds and forms, and we make them best with those who resonate with us, but we do it anyway with anyone we can. As a species we cannot live in a vacuum of interpersonal communication. The wider spread and more powerful communication is, the greater chance of bonding with people who are not bound to you by territory.

As a child I moved to a new neighborhood in the fourth grade. Bullies surrounded me, and people who liked to treat me badly. I sometimes resented it; mostly I was just lonely a lot. I eventually got friends; one at a time, then lost them all and then got a whole bunch in like, one day. I’ve done pretty well. All of my friends have stuck with me for life, so far. But in my lonelier times, I found game rooms online, and I have completed a rather strong list of friends who agree with me on so many ideological grounds and such that it intrigues me. What if one day a government forms that is not defined by territory, but rather is cobbled together out of people who are sprinkled across the globe like seeds, defining a whole new sort of community?

It’s sort of a little dream. How far is it from reality? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just so far fetched it’s impossible. Then again, maybe someone reading this is a part of an online community. Spending large portions of their days being a part of something that they don’t have physical access to.

The Corpse Bride is really good.

Help is Appreciated

Got to cook for Jake’s parents for the first time today. At first Jake’s mom was just going to have a taste of the Mediterranean salmon that I was cooking, but after she had one bite she started giving me a lot of very nice compliments and she had a whole helping, and even got the recipe from me. That felt really good.

Before that, though, I went to sign the lease for the house, which felt really good. I had been kind of feeling bad because I felt like I was abandoning Chuck until I told him about it and he told me something that really hurt and not feel bad about moving out at all.

Before that, I got a first aide kit for my car since Pattie told me that I should. She’s awesome, her mom is a nurse and she knows lots of cool things. She even linked me to a website with a complete list of things to put in a first aide kit. Some days I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. Was I not fully prepared for life out on my own? On days like that, Pattie is one of the ones who helps me out and gives me the okay or helps me figure out what to do. She talked about a first aide kit like I simply should have had it without even thinking about it.

Other Worlds

I remember the first time I played Zork on my dad’s apple //c way back when I was a very young child, still living at my parents’ first house in Abilene. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was lost and confused and had no idea that all I had to do was tell it what to do. It is one of the greatest games ever made. To this day I still yank out Beyond Zork and give it a quick play through every so often, when the mood strikes.

Before Zork, the only games I knew were Space Quarks, Q-Bert, and Galaga. It revolutionized the way I thought of gaming. Funny thing was, THIS was the game that came first. Things have sort of always gone kind of backwards for computer games, and a lot of it has to do with the way they’re perceived, with the people who spend the most money on them, and a general lack of understanding of their potential, which is only recently beginning to head in the direction of being realized again. Every medium struggles to maintain its art in the face of commercialism, not that commercialism isn’t art or doesn’t produce art, but when it does it is very rare. In that way though, all good things are rare, regardless of the breeding ground for them.

Indigo Prophecy is a stepping-stone, it’s closer than lots of other games have ever come to being a story that includes and unfolds around your character without feeling contrived. When you fail, it feels like an ending, and you replay that segment. It’s not the end of the game, just an ending that is not optimal. This is a really awesome idea, and it’s been done before, if not recently. It can be done better, but the idea that greater effort is given greater reward, but that you are not punished for not putting that effort into a product is the way to go. It makes everyone happy.

Other games have gone far in advancing video gaming as a medium for telling incredible stories that incorporate and evolve around the actions of the player. Knights of the Old Republic I & II, Planescape: Torment, Gothic 1 & 2, to a lesser extent Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War. There are others of course. The player is rewarded for playing in your own style by getting an experience different from someone who plays with another style or goal, and yet still unfolding as though the overall course of events to tell a very powerful story.

To see new games heading in this direction is moving, after years of stagnation, it helps put aside the worry that games aren’t going anywhere. When Half Life came out several years ago, it broke new ground in story telling that hadn’t been touched till Doom III came out, and even still, it is not quite on par. Half Life 2 came really close. In 6 years that’s a total of 2 games that followed suit after a groundbreaking new kind of story telling experience has been discovered. F.E.A.R. comes out very soon, and it looks like it may be a very similar game. That’s exciting. After six years, three games that use this new near unbroken experience show up at once.

Maybe one day soon, there will be more real advancement. Till then, what gamers have now is awesome, and re-playable. Viva la révolution! Viva Zork!

A Myriad of Topics

Well, I find this intriguing. How can I not find that appealing? I mean, I don’t think the game would even run on a modern computer. It takes REAL style to release an expansion pack for a game that’s 8 years old and requires the full, unmodified version of the original to run. I don’t know if this is some kind of odd kindness, or if it’s 3D Realms’ way of saying to me, “You want wash wang? Or watch Wang wash wang?”

I never even played the full game, just a demo I got from a friend. Maybe from a CD. I got it from somewhere.

Today I’m doing quite a bit of reading about scene graphs and the middle colonies. You may ask, “What do those have to do with each other?” To which, I would respond, “Everything”.

I might even hand you a book about the interconnectedness of all things. I’d be joking in part, I mean, certainly there would be underlying truth to my joke, and certainly any number of people could easily draw important connections between the middle colonies and the implementation of screen graphs in Java 3D, but the most meaningful connection is that I am simply studying them separately.

Tonight I make more French onion soup. I will then proceed to feed Jake, as it were. In the literal sense, anyway, since Jake will be there.

By the way, this go problem is awesome:



If white plays well, there is only one correct move for black to survive. Black to play first.

Missing School

I missed school today. Sometime over the weekend I put together a play list in sonique, and told it to stop playing songs as soon as they were added so that I could still add songs without interrupting the ones that were playing. So when my computer opened up the song I wake up to this morning it didn’t play. Really, my computer shouldn’t even be playing it in sonique, Windows Media Player is the default program because of crap like this. Why wont my computer play mp3s in the default program to play them in? Lord only knows. It makes me mad though. I had to uninstall sonique 2 because it was what my computer opened them up in if I had it installed. And it wouldn’t play them either, it would just open them up. Why will some things just not do what they’re supposed to? I mean, if I double click on an mp3, it will just start playing in WMP, why can’t windows scheduled task do that? Then I could have whatever player I wanted installed.

I just finished watching Sesame Street at work. The first thing I saw after it was over was a chef saying that his favorite drink is a frozen pineapple. He proceeded to inform us, the audience, while demonstrating, that you begin with crushed ice and then add pineapple, honey, lime, and rum before blending. All less than 10 seconds after Maria was making funny faces at Elmo. Am I the only one who thinks there’s something a little odd about that?

Frozen Pineapples for everyone on Sesame Street! If you thought Oscar was a grouch before, wait till he’s slapping      the kids around and yelling before Bert and Ernie have to tackle him to the ground while he’s screaming, “I don’t have a problem! You ****ers have a ****ing problem, I’m going to kick your mother-****ing ***es!”

A 4000 Year Old Treasure

Today is a really nice day. I got to relax and eat more French onion soup, which came out really good, surprisingly. I’ve watched a lot of food network today, and I’ve done some reading, and I got all my homework done. Took a test and got an 80, plus wrote a paper that was over 500 words, way over. I hope there wasn’t a 1000 word limit. Right now people are baking cakes on food network. Last night I let Marcia get some practice on my car to get ready to get her driver’s license. She didn’t do that bad. I don’t think my car is the best for learning it, but I don’t think any damage was done.
I was going to let her drive some more tonight, but if she doesn’t call me soon, I won’t be able to. I have to go to sleep early tonight because I have school in the morning.

It’s a calm evening. I beat Deus Ex: Invisible War today. On to something else.

Go… I want to play lots of Go. I know just the place too. Would anyone like to play Go with me?

Absence Makes My Heart Grow Fonder

It’s a really beautiful day outside. It’s Friday. It’s already 6:30 and I’ve been active and reading with no sleeping. Life isn’t perfect, but today has been good from the moment I woke up. I can only think of one way my day could get better. I might not get online when I get home, I think I’ll re-arrange my room and do some serious cleaning. My room certainly needs it. I might even finish up all the homework for IMED 1301 so that I don’t have to do any over the weekend.

So far it looks about as fun as intro to computers. The first assignment sucks. Analyze three different websites and write a paper on them. Wow, gee. A paper that takes exactly 0 imagination and thought, and will take up several hours possibly, minimum 500 words.

Le Sigh

I might also do some writing tonight. I have an idea for a story, that’s really growing. It may be time to put it to paper.

Erecting Lingual Structures

Strange that the only day I posted this week was my day off from work. That’s kind of inverted, the idea was to post here every day I worked then avoid the weekends and holidays. Oh well, I’ve done worse things. I’ve gone months without posting in the past, and at least I’m posting regularly now, thanks to Metamucil.

I’m feeling really passionate and creative right now. I’m also listening to some awesome music, I wonder if those two things are connected?

This morning and last night I tried out a demo for a game called Indigo Prophecy, which actually looked rather boring because it was labeled as adventure, and I didn’t see anything that didn’t bring to mind anything other than the game Myst to mind. A good enough game, but only if executed awesomely. For the most part, games like that really suck the big one bad. Then, I was reading Penny Arcade yesterday, and it was brought to my attention that I was not the only one who had 0 interest in giving a second glance to that name which was tied to those pictures of questionable origin.

For the reason that it happened to be a playable demo of it on a disk with many other demos that were actually wanted, it was played, and mentioned with a glow somewhat akin to how people do after great sex. On this post coital recommendation, I downloaded the demo last night, and played it this morning, and find myself in a related state of being, with a smile creeping up on my face as I get subtle reminders of the experience.

This demo is good. Because of it I will buy that company’s product. It is different, it is a REAL adventure, and it just made me feel good inside to play. I felt tension as moments got close to over flowing and replaying those moments made me feel that way again. That is a real turn on. I will have to think of this experience as foreplay. I want the whole thing now. My mouth waters for it, my palms are sweaty. Am I the only person who gets this way over literature and stories?

It’s like my life is driven by fiction, I live 6 hours away from one of the most amazing events ever, and I am awed by that. I am compelled by how it is so surreal that it is in itself almost fictitious. I partake, and even revel in the real world, but I love and crave the fictions that are weaved by the people in the world around me. Maybe to say they drive me isn’t accurate, but I do so love them.

No use trying to fight it, you're an eight-sided die, a d8. A fine example of simple elegance, the d8 is one of the least appreciated types of dice, and is often neglected. You are known to be quiet and shy, outward traits that conceal viscous sarcasm and mean wit. You are very smart, yet wise enough to hide your intelligence the quicker they found out how smart you are, the sooner they'll put you to work, which is something you can do without. People call you dark and pessimistic, or moody and cynical. You find little point in arguing.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Eat to Live, Do Not Live to Eat

A friend said this to me in an email, “I just don't like the idea of dying because there are things I don't want to leave undone.”

And so I thought, and I replied this:

---

Well, to confront your idea of leaving things undone, don't you really have to ask yourself just what exactly it is you're doing? How do youmean "undone"? In the worst case scenario life is incidental, and(I believe in God, but God's existence and the idea that people were"designed makes them less beautiful) when you think about that, everything that we do, in any way, is more than we would have done had we incidentally not existed. In the scenario where God does exist and we each have a purpose, there is nothing more to do than what we do, otherwise we'd be going against the plan. In every single case... death is ultimately rather meaningless. It's mostly about how and whatyou do while you're alive.

Sometimes you can give your death meaning, by accomplishing something significant, but in that case, it doesn't really do you any good, unless that accomplishment is in step with doing what you feel isimportant to do. In that way, dying becomes a sort of living...

Even I get lost in that. In life, the phrase it's the journey that's important, has more meaning than anywhere else. If in your life, as a decision about how to live, you set certain goals above others, and in the course of human events, circumstances arise in which the highest service you can do to the goals that you live by, and define yourself through, is to die in some way, then, in that way, you live better by dying. In that same way, to live for the sake of living alone, is a death of sorts. To live for the sake of living.. how can any other point of view be more blind to what makes life worth living.

In simple terms, you ask, "Why live?" And after asking that, the answer, "Why not?" just doesn't seem to answer it. Does life need meaning and definition? Does a wolf or a raven live for a purpose?Someone might argue that they're almost machines, and that they live to spread their genetic patern, in a way, like the old program "life".Take basil, the herb, it lives to procreate, it flowers, and seeds, and imediately dies. Given the right climate, you can keep a basil plant alive indefinitely if you cut off all its ends before they flower and seed.

Are people no more than animals and plants? That's not a rhetorical question. You have to really answer it for yourself. For my part, I think we are more than plants and animals. I understand that this may be mere arogance on my part, but humans are so much more dependant on what we learn from each other to determine who we are than anything else. You might argue that more than half of what we are, or what we become is due to the people around us. Some people are stronger, and they make themselves in part, but still, all people are more than partly defined by the people they came from. We live for joy, for feelings, for a lot of things. In every case, a person always needs a reason to live, even if it is simply that they have no reason to die. Sometimes it's deeper than that. Sometimes it's not.

In every case, the preservation of what's worth living for, is worth dying for, because without it, there is no reason to live. When life itself, when not dying, becomes your sole reason for living, then you are clinging to, and attatching yourself to something that you are destined to lose no matter what, unless you're me and immortal. That is the best case scenario. It's like being a zombie, in a way, like losing that piece that makes you human, losing that need for something that drives you to give your life value. Life, as beautiful and precious as it is, is beautiful and precious because of what it contains and it loses every bit of that when you cease to appreciate it for the sake of it. Like something beautiful that never gets used for the sake of preserving its value. Like an old woman who dies with a 90,000 dollar beanie baby collection in her closet that was never touched, or played with, or appreciated.

You live to die. Live well, and you will die well.

---

Any thoughts? Agree, disagree?

Sleepy Sleepy

It’s been a pretty good day. I really didn’t do much, aside from a lot of work at… well… work. After that I went home, and on the way there I called Jake and decided to drop by his house for a few minutes. Ended up playing games and chatting till about 11:15 before I had to just go because it was getting so late. School was really good this morning, and it was interesting because some information about Vlad the Impaler came up. Apparently John Smith, of Jamestown(1607) was a soldier for him. Lots of really awesome info, maybe I just love history.

Been a bit of a lonely day, but you can’t have the company you want every day. I’m starting to get really tired, so off to sleep I go.

Sinus Relief

Today was a good day. Nothing really to speak of happened. I woke up, I went to work, I did my thing there, I came home, ate dinner with Mike, discussed the issues of the day, plans for the weekend. Then I rented some games and came home. It was uneventful, but satisfying. It was the first time in two months I didn’t have to worry about work tomorrow or how long I had my vehicle for. I love that feeling. It just feels really good.

Oh, I also got a neti pot, and some vicks vapor rub. Vicks for tonight, the pot for tomorrow, or when I’m feeling adventurous. It’s not that scary, it’s just.. the thought of lots of water running up my nose. It’s never been pleasant, but supposedly it works. And I’m into things that work.

Going to sleep early, I have school tomorrow. *big smiles*

Red Rover

Well, it’s really quite a beautiful day. I missed class today, which is sad, because it was the first lecture day. I made up for it by digging into the first book assigned by the professor. At least I had a good reason; I was buying my set of wheels, a ’96 Jeep Cherokee. So far, I love it quite a bit. I like owning a car with air conditioning, I like how smooth it runs, I like the paintjob, I like everything about it. I can’t wait to drive it somewhere. I feel like taking a nice long vacation and a trip somewhere when all the insurance issues are ironed out.The past two day’s I’ve spent at my mom’s house. I love her dearly, but I can’t wait to sleep at home tonight, shave, relax in front of my computer, and just in general spend some time there, maybe with some friends. Maybe not, though, maybe I’ll save all my socializing for a celebration party on Saturday or Sunday.I’m thinking quesadillas and a beer butt chicken. I’ve never had a beer butt chicken, and I’ve been meaning to try it. Maybe I’ll do something else, who knows? Anyway, I have the rest of the week to mull it over. Everyone is invited.

Beautiful Day

Strength of symbolism is really important. How often do people write entire stories that are evolved from total symbolism, but are still good? It can be argued that everything ever written is symbolic in some way, even if it isn’t intended to be. After all, it just doesn’t seem to be possible for anything we put out to not come from within somehow, redirected from somewhere. People seem to be nodes to me. But maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps somewhere there is a true creative spirit.

A lot of what I want to write about is the internal struggle of the soul against stagnation in an environment that offers no real spiritual challenges, where happiness is ultimately achieved through the loss of everything they feel worthwhile. I look around at the works that touch people the most. It’s clear I’m not the only one.

I’m going to start posting story ideas every time I have one.

Illuminated Thoughts

Well, I went to see the Brothers Grimm with Mike, Tara, Marcia, and Jackson. It was an enjoyable enough movie. I was shocked to get a couple of electrifying moments out of it, despite a disappointing ending. My favorite part: The Evil Pillsbury Dough Boy. It was just good to spend some time with friends. Got to talk about all kinds of things. Most of the previews were really bad. All but a couple were “based on a true story”. Aeon Flux looked really cool, though. I want to see that. But maybe it’s just my infatuation with the Illuminati talking.

I have exposed another soul to the Principia Discordia and the secret that absolutely all things are true. Deep truths reside in everything. In ways that only a total lack of respect for the subject matter can reveal. Which is perfect for me, having never respected anything in my life, it is right up my alley. Along with hearts, moons, stars, clovers, horseshoes, pots of gold, rainbows and red balloons there are plenty of treasures to be had from eating whatever you please on any day of the week, even if you are a Fenderson and carefully studying perls of wisdom.

Anyway, sometime in the next few days, I will begin work on a new story that’s been brewing inside of me, if it hasn’t slipped away completely, because right now I can’t remember it at all. Maybe it was going to be a series of short stories… Le Sigh, I should have written it down at least.

I still want to write about my funeral home, but there was something else that I wanted to write about really badly that I thought was really cool. Oh well, it will come to me later, and if it doesn’t, something new will, and it will brew inside.

I found this amusing:  Little boy goes to his father and asks "Daddy, how was I born?" The father answers: "Well, son, I guess one day you will need to find out anyway! Your Mom and I first got together in a chat room on Yahoo. Then I set up a date via e-mail with your Mom and we met at a cyber-cafe. We sneaked into a secluded room, where your mother agreed to a download from my hard drive. As soon as I was ready to upload, we discovered that neither one of us had used a firewall, and since it was too late to hit the delete button, nine months later a blessed little Pop-Up appeared and said: You've Got Male!

The Bad Man

Google Talk is pretty cool. There’s no really right way to emphasize how unimpressive it is though. Yahoo is much nicer, we both agree, but when I told Mike he got really mad at me and told me I should uninstall it. Then he started barking and I think I heard some ancient Latin that sounded really threatening while his head started spinning.

Feelings... and Feints

I love beaches. The vastness of the ocean before me acts as a reflection within me. Somehow looking out to the curved edge of the world lets me feel the same depth within me. I can imagine that I would shed a tear looking out over that right now. I like being afraid of small things. I don’t like being afraid of hurting people, or of being hurt by people.

I like to think about other people. I can tell you a total stranger’s entire life story. I’ll look at them, and in their face I will see their childhood, their pains, the lives and deaths they’ve witnessed. Sometime I can see them dying years later, and it’s like watching a flower wilt. I may be right, I may be wrong, I may get bits and pieces right or wrong, but I get a feeling. So why am I afraid to look inside myself? Why does it hurt to ask myself why I do things? What drives me? What keeps me in the same place? What makes me cry when I’m sad, or cry out when I experience great joy?

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the type of person I wanted to be. In a lot of ways I am. What I’m not, mostly I’m on the right track for. But there are some things that just make me feel like I’m not what I wanted to be. Maybe I didn’t know what I wanted to be; maybe I just had a dream. But aren’t dreams one of the most powerful messengers of the psyche.

I like cheese.