I could post in my blog...

I could watch more TV.
I could make lunch.
I could play Borderlands. Again.
I could play Final Fantasy... even though I'm stuck.
I could post in my blog...
I could play Nintendogs.
I could post in my blog...
I could read Jack London! Again.
I could post in my blog.
I should post in my blog.
I'm going to post in my blog.
Now.
Right now.
I could play Nintendogs?
Post!
In!
Blog!
Fine.

I know exactly why I avoid doing this so much. To be a writer requires constant practice. It is not a skill like breathing, bicycling or cracking all your knuckles in one go that is learned, perfected, and never thought about again. If you slack off for a month, even a week or a couple of days, you will be coming back to the iron cold with none of the fire of life, no flexibility. What results is often disaster. Total garbage. I hate that. I hate not being able to spew beautiful prose instantly, on command, like some kind of machine built for this. Instead I fumble in everything I write. Sure, I am capable of fantastic verbiage and am prone, on occasion, to even write a few, precious lines of poetry. But this is rare, like picking out the shark's tooth from among the innumerable billions of other blackish triangly-shaped thingies that pepper the shelly beaches of St. Augustine.

I am certain that "blackish, triangly-shaped thingies" is exactly how every shark's tooth hunter thinks of those false, deceitful particles.

So I put it off. I tip-toe around it thinking: "It's too soon. I've got nothing new to say. I'll wait until something worth writing about has taken place." Something worth writing about is taking place every single moment of every single day that a writer is alive. But I lie to myself anyway.

It is hard to write for an audience primed to let fly with criticism. I think it is harder still to write for a silent audience that comes and goes with the strength of my talent like the tide with the waxing and waning of the moon. Hardest of all is writing for an army of Yes-Men and, while it serves to stroke my ego, is probably my least favorite kind of audience. And then of course there is my family. If anyone is able to tell me my writing is trash it is my family. They hold no illusions when it comes to my talent. It makes them honest, which I both love and hate.

The cat still has fleas. I took her to the vet and they applied some kind of stuff that was supposed to kill the damn things and still they live, hitching rides on our beloved Cricket into the confines of my bedsheets where they pester me all night with their insatiable appetites. I will kill them all!

A fairy tale on the fly

this story is one that I made up when a friend of mine was feeling really down. she asked that i write a story to her over an IM that involved a ship. that was her only requirement. so i fabricated and typed out a full fairy tale in one go, without so much as taking a minute to think about it. i just typed it out. this is that story, copy pasted from the conversation window.




alright

5/2/09 4:32 PM



lemme think

5/2/09 4:33 PM



ok

5/2/09 4:33 PM



once there was a kingdom, overlooking the sea.

5/2/09 4:33 PM



and in this kingdom, trading by ship was very important.

5/2/09 4:33 PM



all the best traders had the fastest ships.

5/2/09 4:34 PM



one day the king, who only had a daughter for his heir, decided it was time to decide whom she should marry.

5/2/09 4:34 PM



so he went to his daughter and asked her what she wanted to do.

5/2/09 4:35 PM



she told him, "Father, I will marry whichever man can sail through the Devil's Teeth the fastest, for only a man of true spirit, strength, and love for his crew, could ever do such a thing."

5/2/09 4:35 PM



so the king agreed, very proud of how wise his daughter was.

5/2/09 4:36 PM



he sent out a decree, calling for all the fastest traders and merchant captains to summon their crews and report to the mouth of the Devil's Teeth, a strait of horrible currents and sharp coral shoals, for the biggest race to ever be held in the kingdom.

5/2/09 4:38 PM



a young man, brave and strong, but sorely poor, heard of this decree and desperately wanted to participate in the race as a captain, but, as he was only a poor crewman, he could not afford his own ship.

5/2/09 4:38 PM



upset at his stock in life, he wandered the beaches along the kingdom's shoreline, singing a dirge to himself in a pure and beautiful voice.

5/2/09 4:39 PM



suddenly, he heard a voice from one of the many caves that dotted the cliffs along the shore.

5/2/09 4:39 PM



rushing inside, he found the perfectly preserved remains of a beautiful roman trireme

5/2/09 4:41 PM



the trireme called out to him, "Young man! Never have I heard a song so beautiful. Long have I been tired of the waves of this world, but hearing your song has brought my old hull back to life and i wish to race through the sea again. Only sing to me, and I will take you wherever you want to go faster than any other ship in the world."

5/2/09 4:42 PM



the young man was overjoyed! he had his own ship now, and one fast enough to win the princesses heart. so he built some rollers and towed the ship out to the sea. singing to it, he fairly flew into the harbor, the bow bairly touching the waves.

5/2/09 4:43 PM



he gathered for himself all the boys he had served with him in the past, facing storm after storm as cabin boys and crew together, and he formed a crew as trustworthy as any that had ever been seen.

5/2/09 4:44 PM



with his crew on board, the young man sailed the ship to the mouth of the Devil's Teeth. the crew marveled at how the ship sailed so fast, almost without their assistance. and the young man sang joyfully.

5/2/09 4:45 PM



the princess was at the starting place as well, surveying the ships, when she saw the young man and saw his ship and heard his voice.

5/2/09 4:45 PM



she was entranced.

5/2/09 4:45 PM



she called out to him, "Young man, I pray that it is you who will win this race, for I feel that I love you already!"

5/2/09 4:46 PM



the man could not answer, for he had to continue singing, but he sang all the louder, to let her know he had heard her words.

5/2/09 4:46 PM



the race began.

5/2/09 4:46 PM



the young man sang to his ship and the trireme pushed out ahead of the compitition wihtout trouble.

5/2/09 4:47 PM



his ship and crew were full of high spirits and they relished the thrill of the race.

5/2/09 4:48 PM



however, once they had reached the halfway mark, a storm came over the horizon.

5/2/09 4:48 PM



it was the largest storm that had ever been seen.

5/2/09 4:48 PM



all of the other ships in the Devil's Teeth were wrecked.

5/2/09 4:49 PM



men called out to the young man from the waves, cryining for him to rescue them.

5/2/09 4:49 PM



the young man heard them, and responded with a song that was hard and biting as the wind, defying the waves to take the men's lives. the triremem responded swiftly, and moved from wreck to wreck, rescuing the men who lost their ships.

5/2/09 4:50 PM



however, the young man's voice began to flag. his throat was sore and his lungs were tired.

5/2/09 4:50 PM



however, there were more ships to be saved.

5/2/09 4:51 PM



his crew urged him to continue onward, that he could not possibly save them all, but he would not listen. he continued to sing.

5/2/09 4:51 PM



the trireme rescued the remianing survivors, and began it's journey once more through the Devil'

5/2/09 4:51 PM



s Teeth

5/2/09 4:51 PM



however, the man knew his voice would not last much longer

5/2/09 4:52 PM



he sailed the trireme to a small, rocky outcropping, big enough for the men to take safe refuge on, and forced them out of the ship. he knew he would not make it to the finish, but he also knew he would not give up. with tears in his eyes, he bid his crew goodbye,a and they wept openly.

5/2/09 4:53 PM



with his remaining strength, he sang the ship to the end of the race.

5/2/09 4:53 PM



the sun was now shining, the storm all spent, but the man's voice was so weak, the trireme was floundering in the waves

5/2/09 4:54 PM



the princess, waiting at the finish, saw her love's ship approach, but also saw how slow and labored it was.

5/2/09 4:54 PM



she reached out her hand to him, her heart full to bursting at his bravery.

5/2/09 4:55 PM



the young man responded with one, final note, full of adoration and acceptance.

5/2/09 4:55 PM



and the trireme sank beneath the waves.

5/2/09 4:55 PM



the king was broken hearted at the young man's death, and asked his daughter what she would have him do.

5/2/09 4:56 PM



"Father, I will not marry, for my husband is drowned. Instead I will rule this kingdom as I know he would have, bravely and with a heart of love, never giving up hope."

5/2/09 4:56 PM



and for the rest of her days, she ruled the kingdom as a wise and well loved ruler, never once regretting her decision to remain unmarried.

5/2/09 4:57 PM



and when she passed away, she was buried at sea, at the very spot where her true love had drowned.

5/2/09 4:57 PM



the end

Jordan is icumen in!

My baby is coming back!

Jordan has been away in Malaysia for a week and a half and I have been abjectly miserable the whole while. Because she's been in a foreign country, we couldn't talk over the phone at all and could only occasionally use Skype to talk. This is painful for the two of us since we usually communicate via phone or Skype at least 4 times a day. The poor thing had to sit in her hotel room, alone, and wait until 1:00 am before she could get onto a plane to take her to Singapore. All alone in a foreign country in a hotel room with no one to talk to... I would have gone insane. I'm extremely glad she's tougher then me.

She landed in Detroit earlier today and she'll be landing in Chattanooga at around 11:00 tonight. Then it'll be back to constant phone conversations. I'm so happy.

Ah ha! Rewritten, tweaked, and saved in a back-up file, this time.

Query: What is our status?

Sensors indicate status is critical.

Epidermal layer breeched. Status: Critical.

Arterial Functions: Critical. Class III Hemorrhage detected. Erythrocyte levels at 62% and falling.

Resetting Function Priorities... Erythrocyte Production: Priority.

Commencing Epidermal Repairs.

Primary Life-Support Systems operating at 48%.

Warning. System Shut-Down imminent. Engaging Secondary Life-Support Systems.

Secondary Systems engaged. Operation at 59%.

Heart Rate has increased.

Erythrocyte Production has increased.

Epidermal Repairs at 12% completion.

Query: Is this sufficient?

Calculating necessary BPM for survival... BPM insufficient.

System Shut-Down unavoidable under current conditions.

Query: What happened to us?

Critical damage to Thorax detected. Chassis Integrity: Compromised.

Foreign Object detected.

Query: What is it?

Calculating mass, structure and chemical composition of FO... Complete. 0.262857 ounces of dense, metallic material, primarily Pb 204, detected.

Query: What is it?

Synthesizing list of possible identification from System Database... Complete. 71 possible results.

Query: What is it!?

Most probable result: Lead Bullet. 9mm hollow point round. Government issue.

Query: We’ve been shot?

Sensors indicate Bullet Object is lodged within thoracic cavity. Presence of Bullet object is reducing Primary and Secondary System output and hindering Arterial Functions.

Query: Are we going to die?

Commencing purge of Bullet Object... Bullet Object successfully purged.

Arterial Functions increasing.

Primary Life-Support System operating at 54%.

Secondary Life-Support System operating at 68%.

Assertion: We don’t want to die.

BPM rising. Calculating likelihood of survival... Complete. System Shut-Down avoidable. Chance of Survival at 1%.

Assertion: We don’t want to die!

Warning. Anomaly detected.

BPM rising.

Primary and Secondary System operation levels increasing.

Arterial Functions approaching maximum load.

BPM rising.

BPM rising.

Epidermal Repairs: 40% complete.

46% complete.

58% complete.

75% complete.

Warning. Systems operating beyond overload capacity.

Anomaly detected.

Assertion: I. Will. Not. Die!

Anomaly detected.

Epidermal repairs are complete. Knitting successful.

Hemorrhaging has ceased.

Erythrocyte levels within acceptable range.

Arterial Functions: Normal.

Primary and Secondary Life-Support Systems: Normal.

Homeostasis achieved. All Systems are Green.

Assertion: This is good. Good.

Engaging External Sensor Array. Audible stimulus detected.

Analyzing... Complete. Stimulus identified as Speech. Speaker identified as Charles Howard, head of Research and Engineering at BioTech Laboratories.

“Android A7-Theta has proven more resilient than the other four subjects, continuing system operation throughout the Severe Chest Trauma test. It has not ceased to function. The reason for A7-Theta’s survival is unknown. Therefore I will be attempting another test to discern if its behavior is not an outlier in the data. Commencing with Severe Cranial Trauma test, 9mm, Hollow Point round in 3, 2, 1...”

Appeal: God help us.

Rough. Don't like it much. Neither will you.

So I accidentally deleted my last two posts. Completely frustrated, I kinda refused to re-write them. A state of mind I plan to remedy soon. However, until then I thought I'd go ahead and throw something out there for the people who like to read this blog. This is a short section of a long story I've had rattling around in my mind for a while. It's based on a Dungeons and Dragons universe. I became somewhat fascinated with the idea of a barbarian as defined by the Barbarian class in D&D a few months ago and wondered if I could bring that character a little more to life. What resulted is really rough, disjointed and confusing, but I'll go ahead and throw it out there anyway. Also, it's the first time I've ever written from a woman's perspective.

I was behind the bar hiding at the barkeep’s feet when the first of the men came in. I heard the barkeep begin to yell in indignation, his kind old voice angry and raw, but he was cut short. Literally. His blood splattered my upturned face. It was hot and salty on my lips. Slowly he collapsed, his knees driving hard into my chest, his severed head landing on my groin, pouring red and warm over my sleeping gown. I made no sound. I heard commands in rough voices. I heard chairs overturned. I heard men screaming outside. I couldn’t breathe. The barkeep’s blood filled my mouth and my eyes. I tried to move out from underneath his body, digging my fingernails into the wooden floor until they threatened to crack. I grabbed at anything, everything, trying to get him off of me. I was almost overcome with panic. I felt the scream beginning to rise in my throat, the scream that would get me killed, just like the sweet old man who’d done his best to hide a young woman from danger. The scream was so close to tearing itself out of my throat when, abruptly, my hand brushed an iron ring.

I grabbed hold of it and swallowed the scream. Footsteps thudded across the floor on the other side of the bar. Carefully, so carefully, I tugged on the ring. The barkeep’s body moved. Small, cold pieces of metal shifted beneath my fingers and I felt the thought stab me like a knife.

Keys.

The barkeep’s keys. They were clipped to his belt with a little spring loaded hook. The keys gave me hope. I knew what to do. I knew how I was going to survive. If... but I couldn’t think about uncertainty. Only the first step. I shimmied out from under the poor old man’s body, using his belt to pull him quietly to the side. The footsteps still made the floor groan only a few yards away. Wiping the blood from my face as best I could with my hands I studied the clip and released it. The keys were heavy in my hands. They felt like salvation. One of them, a terrible, damning key, would be my salvation. My weapon. I kept my breathing shallow despite the urge to suck air like a blacksmith’s bellows. Minutes passed. Eventually, the feet of the men who’d cut the barkeep down treaded upstairs. I peered over the bar with a clawing beast behind my breasts.

The room was empty. I ran for my life.

The door gave way to a night as cold as the grave, bursting with blinding, ice-filled wind. I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction and I thanked the stars for that. All around were the sounds of men dying. The smell of death, butchered meat and voided bowels, filled my head. The warm blood began to congeal on my face and in my hair. It made my gown stick to my naked body. Barefoot I ran through the calf-deep snow, stumbling and falling through drifts and cutting my feet on hidden stones. The granary was burning. I could see the glow through the frozen wind. I used that fel light as a guide to the center of town where the bear post stood.

I ran for what seemed like ages. I thought for sure I must have missed it in the storm. I could no longer feel my feet or my face and I was stumbling more often than I managed to run. I thought for sure I would die of cold when, finally, I spotted it. Off to the left stood the bear post, just as thick and imposing as it ever was during the day. Now, in the night with the moaning of the wind, it evoked images of the monstrous cave bears that were once chained there for sport. On this night, however, I hoped to find a different bear at the post. One who walked on two legs. One who knew me for what I was the moment he saw me. I prayed to every god I could that the barbarian was still alive.

I slogged the last six feet to the base of the post. The snow had been driven hard against it. It was thigh deep and freezing against my crotch before I could reach out and touch the post. Digging frantically with numb hands, I scraped my knuckles against heavy chains. I pulled them as hard as I could. Slowly an arm broke free of the drift. It was thick with muscle, a hand as large as a spade, but the skin was almost blue with cold. I thought my heart would stop. Refusing to believe I’d made it this far only to be defeated, I continued to dig until I’d uncovered a head and a pair of shoulders. His short beard was crystalled with ice. His lips were purple. I was sobbing like a child.

I saw torches through the storm and knew that I’d soon be found. Unwilling to give up on the frozen beast manacled to the post, I began searching for the little key that matched his bonds. My fingers fumbled over the clinking ring of metal. Voices began to come through the storm. They were close, their blades no doubt wet with the cooling gore of Root’s population. I continued to cry. When a tiny key sifted itself out from the others in my hand, I knew I’d found the one. None of the others were small enough to fit the lock. I couldn’t stop the shout of joy and disbelief that escaped me. I knew immediately that I’d been heard. Angry calls erupted all around me. They would see me in seconds. I plunged the key into the manacles and twisted, hard. It refused to budge. My fingers slipped and my thumb split across the pad, dripping red on the snow. The lock was frozen. A heavy hand grabbed my hair and pulled. Hard. The scream I had swallowed in the bar returned, flying from my mouth, fueled by fear and sorrow and defeat. I keened like a banshee.

I heard a deep voice remark on the novelty of finding a woman. There was laughter. I saw a beard, red lips, and someone was kissing my throat. I clawed at his eyes, trying to push him away and screamed again. Hotter blood blossomed at my finger tips. I had scored a wound. There was swearing and a fist found my left eye. Blackness feathered the corner of my vision. When it cleared seconds later, I found myself lying in the snow, face to face with the ice-wreathed barbarian.

Why! I wanted to shout at him. Why are you doing this to me! You were supposed to save me! Save Me!

More hands grabbed at my gown, lifting me out of the snow. Some clamped onto my wrists like iron while others took a moment to explore the softer parts of me. Someone expressed distaste at the size of my breasts. Someone else offered to take the first speaker’s turn in addition to his own. Tears filled my eyes as I looked into the dead face of my would-be savior. His eyes were like the ice surrounding him, but somehow even colder, less hospitable. More brutal. My heart stopped. In my frantic attempts to unlock the chains that tied him to the bear post, I hadn’t taken time to notice much, I did specifically remember one detail. His eyes. They had been closed. The silent pleas for help I’d fostered only moments before came to life.

“Save me! Barbarian, save me please!”

The hands faltered. So did the arguing about who was going first. Questions were asked. A large, dark shape moved out of the group that held me and trudged through the snow toward the exposed torso of the buried man. The raider looked closely at the frozen face, the purple lips. The eyes were closed again. He turned back to his comrades and laughed about a man turned into ice. There were chuckles all around. Someone asked if the ice-man would break if struck. The inspecting raider lifted a hand axe out of a loop on his belt and took a wide stance. He lifted the axe high with one arm. The snow exploded.

Nothing could have prepared my attackers for the rage of the barbarian. Still chained, he rose naked from the snow like leviathan from the crushing depths. Wrapping his massive left hand around the raider’s uplifted wrist, he twisted and punched the backside of the raider’s elbow with unbelievable force. Blood and bone erupted through skin and the barbarian’s victim fell writhing to the ground where he would bleed to death in seconds. Stunned at the sudden, brutal display, none of the other villains could move. The barbarian’s presence seemed to hypnotize, holding the men hostage to their own fear. He glared at them with those eyes like spears. Ice cracked as he lifted frozen chains and stretched them to their limit.

A man beside me shouted for someone to shoot. He’s chained! He’s chained! he said. Another man stumbled to the front, pushing me aside, as desperate to nock an arrow as I had been to find a key only a minute ago. He never got the chance. The frozen chains were thick but brittle. With a grunt, muscles bulging for half a second, the monster of a man broke the chains that had bound him tight. The archer dropped his bow and tried to draw a sword but was too late. Fingers locked into a double fist, hands like hammers dropped and snuffed out a life like a candle. The barbarian roared his challenge. What happened next was chaos.

The raiders drew their weapons and charged. The barbarian lifted the hand axe and sword of the first men to fall and met them like a falling star meets the earth. There was an explosion of ice and blood and death the likes of which I had never seen except in nightmares. With a sweep of the sword, one man lost his head and another watched his entrails spill out onto the ground like a waterfall. The axe broke a horned helmet in two, severing the two halves of a brain. While the axe was stuck, a raider stepped in close and tried to hamstring the barbarian but the huge man was as fast as an elf. He kicked out and knocked the man down. Then, crouching low over the fallen man, the barbarian twisted and broke his enemy’s neck under his knee. With a flourish, he rose again and split a man’s face from cheek to cheek with the tip of the sword.

Fighting not so much with practiced skill as with unbridled joy and bloody instinct, the barbarian received several cuts and heavy blows, but none of the raiders could manage to get close enough for a killing wound without being slaughtered first. More men came running from nearby in the storm, leaving the looting of the village to see what the screaming was about. One was caught with a thrown sword through the chest before he got within twenty feet. The barbarian merely grabbed another one off the pile of bodies at his feet and continued to fight. He was laughing now. The light from the granary back-lit his bulk as he killed again and again and again, gales of laughter building inside him. Blood coated his naked form like a baby at birth. He fought with sword and axe and fist and even with teeth, actually biting the throat out of one man like an animal.

That gave the remaining men pause. They began to look at the bodies that littered the earth around the barbarian. They began to understand what I’d done. I’d doomed them all to die. None who stood against this massive man would survive. I watched them try to rally themselves against the evil I’d loosed against them. I watched them fail. One by one the barbarian killed them all. Not a single man survived in Root. All the villagers, visiting trappers and peddlers had been murdered by the troop of thirty or so raiders and every one of the raiders had in turn been destroyed by the barbarian. And to think I had objected when, captured by hunters, the people of Root had insisted on chaining the barbarian to the bear post until a slave trader came to buy him.

When the last man fell, the barbarian stopped laughing. Steam rolled off of his shoulders in clouds and blood dripped from his hair and his fingers, spotting the snow. Sighing deep in his chest, he dropped his weapons and began to scrounge among the bodies around him. He clothed himself in the fur cloaks of his enemies, wrapping them like a kilt around his hips to cover his nakedness and to keep warm. I tried to speak to him, but my voice was so small the wind blew it away. Even so, he seemed to suddenly remember that he was not alone. He approached me, stood over me, and watched me with those eyes. I could not stop myself from shaking. He knelt and scooped snow into his hands. When he reached toward me, I screamed. Like lightning he cupped the back of my neck and pulled my face close to his. He gazed into me and the scream cut off.

His eyes no longer held the vicious fury they had reveled in only moments ago. With a start, I realized how absolutely exhausted he was. He should have been dead in the cold, but he got up and killed thirty men. I was suddenly aware of just how close he was to collapsing. So, reassured by his changed demeanor that he was unlikely to kill me, I allowed him to rub snow across my face. It came away black with blood.

“You are bathing me,” I said almost delirious. Too exhausted to respond, he simply scooped up another handful of snow and smeared more blood off of me. He stood me up and lifted my sleeping gown over my head, throwing it into the snow. I didn’t even realize I was standing naked before him until he suddenly wrapped me in another large fur cloak and lifted me off the ground. The fur was gloriously warm and soft against my skin. Slowly, he carried me to the tavern. It was one of the only buildings that hadn’t been burned before the barbarian awoke. He laid me in front of the fire, threw a wooden chair into the flames, and collapsed next to me, curling around me and smothering me in the hot stink of his body. I gagged and nearly threw up, but my gorge held and I kept from losing what food I’d eaten earlier that day. The barbarian did not seem to notice. I tried to roll away from him, fear of rape rising once again in my chest.

“Please,” I gasped, “Don’t.”

He scooped me closer to him again with a quick, final motion. He grumbled at me in his thick dialect. He told me I was too cold and would probably die without the heat from his body. He promised not to touch me so long as I stayed between him and the fire. Relief filled me as the terror of the past hours took its toll on my body. I passed quickly into unconsciousness, feeling safe for the first time that night.

Another slow morning.

I don't have class until 2:00. At Covenant, I would have probably stayed in bed all day except for brief forays into the Great Hall for food. I would have watched cheesy anime or episodes of Castle and Lie to Me for hours. I would have eaten lots of Cheezits.

However, since I'm not at Covenant and I'm in St. Augustine, Florida attending class at Flagler College for a year, I'm sitting on my little brother's bed thinking of anything to do.

It's weird not have my friends around. I miss them so. And I simply cannot stand the majority of students at Flagler. (I promise you Gabe if you keep interrupting class with your stupid attempts at informing everyone in the room that you and the professor are, like, so close you're, like, friends or something, I'm going to strangle you. If, of course, Professor Young doesn't do it first. He really doesn't like you Gabe. Get over it.)

I'm done with homework... for the most part. Got a paper due next week. Nothing that needs to be stressed about right this instant.

I've played Test Drive Unlimited 2 enough to be sick and tired of the crappy physics engine. Nevertheless I will inevitably be drawn into slinging my back-heavy Audi sports car around corners again in about an hour or so. That game is deeply flawed and yet so absorbingly entertaining. I spent four hours straight searching the islands for wrecked cars so I could refurbish them and make them drivable again. A Jaguar race car, a Shelby Daytona race car, a '64 Beetle, a classic Citröen 2 CV, a dune buggy, and an AC Cobra. Now any car nut can tell you what at least four of these cars look like. And anyone, upon seeing any of these cars, would probably want to drive it. The game is so full of just amazing vehicles you can't help but want to collect them all. An Arial Atom? For 50K? Yeah. I'll take it.

Still, I wish the game designers had smoothed the roads out so I wouldn't bottom out every single time I pass over the tiniest of bumps in an SUV.

I'm going to be writing my final paper for history class on Kristallnacht. The first step in writing the paper is completed. I know how to spell Kristallnacht.

What the aytch ee double hockeysticks?

Are people actually reading my blog?

I've got well over a thousand views and I know they're not all from me or Jordan. Baileigh occasionally reads it, I think. That's still only three people. Well, Katy follows it. So maybe she reads it too? All the others who follow my blog don't ever say anything to me about it so I assume they're not really reading it either.

Also... I was checking my stats and I got a hit from someone in Germany. Since when have Germans been interested in me? Maybe someone was searching for David Hasselhoff and they misspelled... it... as Alan Cheney...?

There is literally no reason why I should have gotten upwards of 20 views just yesterday. 20 separate people cannot be reading this crap. Even if some of them logged in to read it multiple times from different IP addresses, that would still mean at least 10 different people read what I posted yesterday. Or something. I really have no idea how this works.

I'll tell you what though, I've been thinking about starting a webcomic. Or something. I've discovered that if you advertise other web comics or online stores like Amazon on your blog and people click those links and buy something, the site they bought from sees that they came from a link on your blog and then they pay you a percentage of the money that was just spent. Apparently a lot of people know this. That's why Jeph Jaques has so many advertisements on his Questionable Content webcomic page. He's making bank by selling his own merch and advertising other groups merchandise as well. There's a lot of money to be made doing something like that. Too bad I can't draw.

Writing sucks. So many times I hear artists say, "Man, I wish I could write like you. That's an amazing talent." They have no idea. No one is going to spend $20 on a well written paragraph at a comicon. Forget that a well written paragraph could take as long as a month to get right, no one would want to buy it unless it was a full size book which could take years to produce and most likely will not get published. However, fanboys and girls will open a friggin' vein and bleed gold for a half-assed cartoon of their two favorite characters from a manga or a comic in an awkwardly sexual situation. Writers can't earn to save their lives. Artists can spend a week in focus on a particular painting and sell it for $200 bucks. If I could earn $200 bucks a week writing, I'd wouldn't be driving a car with a dented front bumper. So you know what artists? Just... shut up. Nyah.

I promised Jordan I would post... so here it is. Yay...

Jordan and I have been dating for over a year now. This is... unbelievable to me. We're talking about marriage. Planning our lives together. I never seriously considered this as a possibility. Someone like her... I've just always assumed that kind of girl was just out of my league.

Before anyone objects, I should probably unpack that statement. It's not just girls as beautiful and wonderful as Jordan that I thought were out of my league, it was all of them. I don't want to sound like I'm digging for pity, but a lot of what I'm about to say is pretty sad stuff. Know in advance that I'm not looking for anyone to feel sorry for me.

I've been a loser all my life. From the day my older brother decided he didn't like me, which was day two by the way, to my first few months at Covenant. As a kid I was constantly teased and picked on by my brother. As soon as I got into school I alienated myself by being a smart ass. No one wanted to be friends with the kid who knew everything. I don't know when it first started but after a while I got it into my head that I just wasn't cool enough. And I don't mean just not cool enough for some people, I mean everyone. I had friends, but they only wanted to hang out when it was just me and them. If I hung out in a group, I was the butt of every joke. No one wanted to admit they really liked me. It was uncool to be too close of friends with Alan Cheney.

This of course led to distorted views of girls. I liked girls. A lot. Probably too much. I would watch them in class and daydream about how they'd one day realize how, even though I was skinny and had buck teeth and freckles that I was much nicer than the other boys and they'd want to be my girlfriend. At the same time, though, I hated them. I hated them for laughing at me when I said something uncool. I would hate them so it wouldn't hurt when they made fun of me or made disgusted faces when their friends teased them about going on a date with me. They always said stuff like, "It's not that he's not a nice guy... I just don't think of him that way." No one thought of me that way. At least not till high school and those girls were desperate wrecks who I knew would have made horrifying girlfriends and I had enough intelligence to avoid them.

I did date a little in high school. Two girls seriously, one girl very casually. None of them were Christians. None of them were interested in the things I claimed were most important to me. I can't say those relationships were mistakes, but I can say I handled them badly. I always assumed they really didn't want anything to do with me. I couldn't trust them when they said they really liked me. I knew, somewhere in the darker parts of my head, that they were just waiting for something better to come along. I ended up breaking a couple hearts because I just couldn't accept a girl's affections. It was for the best, in the end I think. I dunno. It was really just a huge mess.

Needless to say I was a ruinous car wreck of a romantic when I got to Covenant. I dated one girl my freshman year. She was very sweet to put up with me as long as she did, but she eventually broke up with me because I was so damn clingy. I couldn't stand the thought of losing my girlfriend, the one shred of proof that I was something to somebody. I smothered her to the point that she couldn't take it any more and finally she ended things with me. Everything went kinda downhill from there.

I got involved in bad relationships with girls who cared nothing for me as a person, only for what I could provide for them as a man. I basically whored myself out to get female attention. I wanted so bad for someone to just LOVE ME ALREADY! I did things I'm not proud of, things I sometimes visibly cringe when I remember. I was a prostitute and I wasn't even getting paid. I told myself it was okay. I told myself I knew they were using me but it was okay because I was using them too. When I look back on it now... I can't believe how stupid I was.

So yeah. Never would have thought I'd find a woman who I could genuinely love. I was so wrapped up in the mentality that love was like currency. I could say sweet things to a girl and she'd let me kiss her mouth for a little while and then we'd go our separate ways. That all began to change when I met Jordan.

It wasn't love at first sight. Not by a long shot. To be perfectly honest, I went about choosing Jordan as a pursuit based on some of the most selfish, ridiculous logic imaginable. I picked her because she was younger and therefore easier prey, because she was the prettiest of the younger girls I spent time around, and because I thought, just maybe, if I played my cards right, I could fool her into thinking I was a nice guy long enough to get enough affection to hold me over until I could fool someone else. I'm not kidding, I was a disgusting parasite.

What I didn't count on was Jordan kicking my selfish ass all up and down the mountain.

She fell for my charms easily enough but she balked at how fast she was giving in to her affection for me. She dumped me after 30 hours. I know because we both counted. I couldn't believe it. I'd worked so hard to get myself a source of attention and *poof* it was gone. I was pretty thunderstruck. So thunderstruck, in fact, that I kinda forgot that I'd only been interested in her as a source of affection. I began to spend time with her as just a friend. This proved to be my blessed, glorious undoing.

I fell in love. True love. Not just a ravenous hunger for attention but a genuine and powerful concern that the object of my love should be happy, all the time, as much as I can make it so. I couldn't believe it. In my utter disbelief of what was happening, I confessed my love to Jordan. She told me if I ever told her I loved her again she'd stab me with a fork. Immediately, I told her I loved her once again. She scratched the skin pretty good, but it was a regular dining hall fork and not one of those spear-sharp grill forks or I'd have bled like a stuck pig.

Anyway, things progressed from there. I tried once or twice to find the same love I had for Jordan for someone else, but nothing could be done. I simply couldn't get her out of my head. I pursued her doggedly for a year straight before she agreed to date me again.

She broke up with me after another 30 hours.

This time, I was devastated. I couldn't feel anything. There was a hollow place in my chest and no matter how deep a breath I took the hollow spot would not fill up. This went on for a few days. I can't actually remember much from that time period except this feeling that it was all over and I was certain to never love someone the right way again.

Then, on September 18th, 2010, on the night that the Kilter dance was being held, Jordan called my phone. I was attending the dance with a sweet friend named Mary who'd been kind enough to ask me to go with her. To this day I don't know if Mary is aware of what an enormous kindness that was. Mary was going as Wendy from Peter Pan and she had asked me to dress as Peter. I was trying on my finished costume when the phone rang. Jordan said she urgently needed to speak with me. Still hurt, I almost told her to leave me alone. But Jordan had been my friend for a year now. I loved her, even if she didn't love me back. I agreed to come down from my dorm room.

She met me at the bottom of the stairs. I was expecting laughter, because I was dressed in full Pan regalia, but instead all I got was this open, beseeching look. Right there, with me in Pan mode, standing about four steps above and her below like Romeo to my Juliet, she told me she'd made a mistake. She told me she wanted another chance. She told me she wanted ME. (I probably looked like an idiot receiving a confession of love in a green felt cap with a red feather in it.)

Needless to say, I was really cool about it. I told her I would think about it. The following week I felt like I was walking on air. I was an absolute fool in love. When the week ended and I asked her if she was still sure she wanted to do this, she said "Yes." Confidently. I thought I would die. So we started dating. I haven't looked back. I can't say the same for Jordan. Sometimes she tells me some ridiculous story about how I'm so perfect and she doesn't deserve me and I should break up with her but see, I know the truth. I know what I used to be and I know that she is the reason I'm so "perfect" now. Without her I'd just be a big old bag of douche looking for his next hook-up.

So yeah. This story isn't for pity. It's so Jordan will know why she shouldn't say I'm too good for her and why I'll never let her go and why I love her so much. Jordan is my God-sent angel and through her I have seen His work in redeeming me. And that's the post, yo. Deal with it.

Musings upon Rock N' Roll by Skrillex

sun down sun up
hammer down and throw it out
g’won get yer head up
this is what it’s all about
feel the jam and beat
shake your bones like you’re alive
get up out your seat
dominate, reverberate the hive
we’ve all got dancing sins
kick it out, this time with soul
hello again, to all my friends
together we can play some rock and roll

A review I wrote about my bike for MinimalBike.com

My Windsor Clockwork is my first road bike. I’ve ridden fixies and complex, multi-geared road machines belonging to friends before and, at the time I was riding those bikes, I didn’t actually enjoy them at all. The way the bikes forced you to lean forward and place the weight of your torso on your arms seemed awkward to me, having been brought up riding BMX style Huffys and beach cruisers. I didn’t like the narrow seats. I’ve got a skinny butt with no padding and the stiff, almost iron hard seats I associated with road bikes gave me goosebumps when I imagined riding on one. Also, the wire-thin wheels gave me serious pause. I couldn’t see something so dainty handling the punishment I typically dished out to the bikes I rode. So it wasn’t until recently that I considered purchasing a full-on road bike.
I suppose I came to the decision the same way anyone who buys a bike like this does. I wanted a new bike. Something I could ride both leisurely and for exercise. Something cool and fast that would work well with an urban environment. An image kept resurfacing in my head: I wanted an AK-47 for a bike. Something that wouldn’t break, that would perform, and that could do whatever I wanted it to on the roads of my home town. I decided immediately I didn’t want anything with multiple gears. They were too high-maintenance for my taste. My past bikes had all been multi-geared and after a week began to shift incorrectly. I hated that. Eventually a ghostly concept of what I wanted began to appear in my head. However, I wasn’t sure of anything until my little brother introduced BikesDirect to me.
Both of my brothers had used BikesDirect to purchase a pair of road bikes they were enjoying intensely. And by intensely, I mean every morning at the crack of dawn for 12 to 24 miles. I saw how much fun they were having, and how great a work out they were getting, and I decided I needed to pay the website a visit. Scrolling through the pages of single speed bikes I began eliminating everything that didn’t quite suit my tastes. It wasn’t long before I’d narrowed everything down to a few Windsors. The Hour, the Timeline, and the Clockwork. Knowing my brother had already purchased the Hour, and that it came as a fixed gear and not the free gear style I was favoring, I eventually chose the Clockwork out of the remaining two bikes due to the slender frame and classic lines. At $299.99, it was precisely at my $300 budget. Within a week it was on my porch in a box.
My younger brother, having already gone through the assembly procedure for a bike from BikesDirect, helped me assemble my Clockwork within an hour. On the first test ride I noticed the wheels needed some serious truing, they creaked and made popping sounds for the first few minutes I was on the bike, but the bike rode well enough for the initial test ride. After a $25 visit to the bike shop for some truing, my Clockwork was ready to run flat-out. I had been warned by my brothers that BikesDirect keeps cost down by using lower-quality parts and expected trouble with my bike within the first few weeks of riding but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s been a full summer season since I bought my bike and I have not needed to replace a tube, true the wheels a second time, or repair anything on the bike. The chain creaks and clicks occasionally, but that’s nothing that can’t be fixed with some chain lubrication. Admittedly I don’t ride as hard or as often as some cyclists, but 24 to 48 miles a week is enough for me to say the Clockwork can hold its own.
Essentially, it’s exactly what I wanted. An AK-47 of a bike. Classic lines, durability and reliability, and it performs well. I can out-sprint traffic down town, climb uphill without coming out of the saddle, and handle minor bumps and potholes without breaking a spoke. The chromoly steel frame is not as light as aluminum or carbon fiber and the free-wheel cog is too big for the kind of speed a fixed-gear rider might enjoy, but I wouldn’t trade my $300 Clockwork for any of the other bikes in the same price range.
I plan on making a few small modifications to really turn this bike into the machine I feel best suits my riding style. A back rack with some panniers to hold my school books when I ride to class down town, a pair of tough wheels and some durable, hard compound tires, and a leather saddle to finish off the classic look are the primary mods I’d like to make. Other customizations, like colored grip tape, compact, drop-angle bars and possibly a custom airbrush paint scheme are all secondary changes I may consider in the future. As for now, I’m content to leave the bike exactly as I received it from BikesDirect; A classy Windsor Clockwork that does what I need it to do.

Work

No work tomorrow.

This is good. I have come to hate work. Each day is an eight hour battle to reach the ultimate goal: going home. I don't even understand why I do it any more. I don't use the money. I don't need the experience. All I know is that quitting now would infuriate my mother and possibly leave me with less ability to buy things in the future.

Mom would prefer I continue to work there. She hears me come home beaten and abused by angry people all day long. She sees how much I hate it. She knows it's ruining me and making me an angrier, more hateful person and she won't stop insisting I continue onward. She rides me like a foundering horse. I don't even know why. She isn't going to pay for anything for me again. She stopped doing that last year. It's not like me working keeps her from paying. I just take out loans. She's so obsessed with me not being in debt, with me working, she doesn't care that I daily fantasize about cutting loose and screaming at the children who cry about not getting candy from the shelf next to the register. One woman in particular has made me want to slap her on several occasions. Nothing would please me more than to tell my boss that his teenage daughter is a pot head and a whore. I hate everything about my job.

I am unappreciated, mistreated, undervalued and condescended to. When one of my coworkers speaks to me, she speaks slowly because she thinks I am stupid. I can never understand her. She moves along a completely illogical path of thought that I can never follow. This leads her to believe I am slow and, therefore, she discounts every idea I present and insists on telling me how to do my job. I have been reduced to a drone. Creativity is discouraged. Free thought is looked down on. Sweep the floor, take out the trash, ring up the customers. Do it right and we won't punish you. Do it wrong and we'll passive-aggressively attack you. We'll leave notes. We'll drop hints. We'll whisper and conspire and titter while you shuffle by, carrying on about your mindless work. Stupid. Useless. Boy.

Today I was scheduled to come in at 10:00 am and leave at 5:00 pm. The only other cashier working was scheduled to come in at 11:00 and leave at 5:30. She came in early, at 9:50, because she didn't read the schedule and as a result the manager announced that she had the right to leave at 5:00 and I must stay an extra half hour because I was the second person to come to work. "First in, first out." he said. I was punished because I came when I was asked to come. She was rewarded for not reading the schedule.

You know why people shoot up office buildings? Because fear is a kind of respect. And when you are mistreated for long enough, it becomes the only kind of respect you feel like you can get.

I'm being trained. God wants me patient. If I can't be patient with these people, the how can I be patient with Jordan? With our children, someday? This is a painful boot camp. I don't like it at all.

Invaders Must Die

So Liz wants to draw some of my comic idea. This greatly pleases me. No artist has shown interest in my idea for a while and it'd be awesome to get some free art for the concept. I'm not sure how I could story-board it for her, but I bet there is a how-to online somewhere. I'll be a comic story writer in no time. Maybe I could even find a profession doing this. Who knows?

I was thinking, before I go on into the story of the Creature Comforts I could do a dynamic comic to the tune of Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy. It's a fantastic song and I can just envision SuPa Fox getting over-excited about saving the world from alien robot invaders and Gunny saving his butt at the end. It wouldn't involve anything other than the relationship between Sullivan and Gunther so it wouldn't be too complex. Also, since the comic wouldn't involve either character actually speaking, I wouldn't have to rely on voice actors. Only sound effects to preface the song's beginning, like an air raid siren or something. I don't know if Liz would be up for such a large project, but I can always ask.

Spring Break

It's spring break. I'm home with Jack, Paul and Callie. I've missed them a lot more than I thought I would. David is here, having stayed last night with us. He's waiting for Zach to show up with his new car so they can head south for the remainder of the break. No church today. David was exhausted and I didn't want to leave him in a stranger's house alone while we went to service, so Jack and I stayed home. Played Little Big Planet last night with Paul and Jack. Paul is the worst gamer ever, haha. Mom and Dad will be home tomorrow from their trip to the mountains. I look forward to their arrival as well as the arrival of my new iPod. Life is good. I'll probably call Jordan later today to see if she's going to be able to meet up with her family. I hope she does. That's all for now.

An exercise in plain, blank verse.

A beautiful and precious girl, a sweet
And tender soul whose face is backlit hard
By rainbow shades of color from a tall,
Imposing sheet of bright chromatic glass
Inside a college chapel filled with sounds
Of gospel teaching, psalms and heaven's gates
Is drawn to read the glossy paperback
She cradles in her lap wherein a girl,
A different girl, is faced with illness, pain,
Despair and death and has no light to shine
Upon her face or rainbow shades to bathe
and wash her pains away like how the girl,
The other girl, who sits inside a small
And cozy chapel does so very well.

Star Skipping

So Jordan has left me to my own devices for the next thirty minutes while she attends a hall prayer and praise. This is fine, since she's been bugging me to update my blog for a long time now. Over a month. I have no idea why she wants me to write. It's not like I can be creative every single time I write and produce something interesting to read. No one can. But still she insists. So here's yet another addition to the blog.

What's happened since the last time I posted? I managed to come back to school by taking out a student loan. I'm so poor right now, since the money hasn't come through yet, I can't even afford books. I need to get on top of accepting the loan from my account. I should have had that done by Friday. Anyway, I'm here again. Just like I wanted to be. Just like Jordan doesn't want to be.

I hate that she hates it here. She's told me that, if not for me, she wouldn't have even bothered coming back. Which terrifies me. I've never wanted to be that important in someone's life. It's a heavy burden to bear and not one I'm sure I have the guts for. Legs like pencils do not a Grecian column make. I wish she had more here to love than just me. I don't want to be the center of her world just yet.

What I do want is to skip through time like a stone on the mirrored waters of a crystal lake, reflecting the pinpoint stars with a face so black I could step out and fall down through a hole in the ground, tumbling through an infinite ocean of burning lights for eternity, watching them swirl around me, the center of their universe, until I waste away to dust, a myriad of sparkling motes that join the heavenly lights who tango on the face of the lake. I can't imagine a fate more irresponsible and, therefore, more tempting.

I've seen pictures taken by cameras specially tuned to observe how the stars change location in the sky over a period of time. It really does make me wish I could speed up or slow down time to watch such magnificent things myself, instead of having to flip through a magazine for a glossy still shot.

Jordan is back, so we're going to go watch some anime. Her kiss tasted like apples. Because she eats packets of apple cider mix.