Whew... it's been exactly two months since my last post in this diary. I've started college and all, and find it just as dreafully boring as high school. The curriculum here apparently assumes that all incoming students have led utterly sedentary and socially-lacking lives up until this point and feels the need to teach us things we *should* already know. These would be things like how to talk, how to write, and how to read. Sorry if I sound a bit pompous, but didn't we all learn how to read starting at about age 5? And those of us in "wholesome" families, perhaps earlier? And writing naturally came only about a year behind that, and speaking! By the gods, I learned to speak before I could even form complex thoughts! As did we all, I sincerely hope. Unless you were raised by wolves and recently returned to civilization, that's probably the case.

In any event, I'm having less fun than I hoped and have more free time than I know what to do with. But I'm making progress. I've put the finishing touches on my novel, "Rose Prophecy" and am awaiting only a few proofreading sessions from various family members before I package it up and send it off to publishers, hoping I can get a foot in the proverbial door. But let me tell you, publishers really don't make it easy. All the big ones have the policy, "Don't come to us. We'll come to you," and in a few cases they accept manuscripts from agents, but never from the author. After spending many hours searching the Internet, I found two corporate publishers with adequate information about themselves on their website, as well as an invitation to prospecting authors. A whole two. And this isn't counting the vanity/subsidy publshers and print-on-demand publishers. I need something that doesn't cost money, because that's something I don't really have. I don't mean to make big bucks with my first submission, but if I do, yay for me.

In any case, I'm gonna see where these publishers take me. I hope one of them accepts my manuscript, though the one of them seems to be the type to say, "We'll publish your work as long as you have at least hal a brain." So, I hope I can say to look for my works on shelves soon. Wish me luck, hm?

So I've found this little twit on here who thinks that I'm too stupid to realize a film-ripped image when I see one. I'm busy warning him about it, but he insists that it took him one and a half years to TRACE an image from Cowboy Bebop and post it online. At 14 years of age, nobody has that patience anyway. But this picture, it's just a screenshot from one of the episodes. The little snot didn't even remove the DVD rip artifacts from it; you can see the screen cutoffs! I'm insulted. *fumes at stupid people*

Character reactions:

When faced with a dragon...

Elliaryn: "My soul, come to my call and defend me from this foe!"

NightHawk: "... Rose..."

Kelart: "When a foe is of a size/ that his chest just meets my eyes,/then I believe 'twould be most wise/ to turn around and run away,/ and, as it seems they always say,/ live to fight another day."

Jynx: "Kelart, stop complaining and blast it with your lyre."

When meeting an attractive member of the opposite sex...

Elliaryn: "Greetings, my lady."

NightHawk: "..."

Kelart: "Bathe my soul and light my eyes,/ woe, the legends, they tell but lies/ of thy beauty, O divine!/ I would that thou be one day mine!"

Jynx: "... Kelart, get away from her."

Calculate "t" and find whether vectors g and h are parallel with the equations "g: (x|y|z)= (1|2|3)+ t(0|2|1); h: (x|y|z)= (1|0|2)+ t(1|0|5)".

Elliaryn: "..."

NightHawk: "..."

Kelart: "..."

Jynx: "..."

Kelart (again): "..."

Kelart (yet again): "... ... When a foe is of a size..."

Jynx (again): "Kelart... ... nevermind."

Cures: Headache and stuffy nose
Possible side effects: Headache, stuffy nose, nose bleeding, hemophilia, baldness, blisters, death, brain damage, loss of limbs, rashes, acne, and diarrhea.

For those of you wishing you could see a softer, more serious, and more human side of your good buddy NightHawk, well, this is your jackpot... *sigh* This is another one of my incresingly frequent emotion dumps, so those of you who hopefully don't care, just read over this.
I don't like to do this, as I'm one of those people who almost always has control over his emotions. In fact, almost 98% of the time you'll find me in good spirits. But all that changed when I came on exchange to Switzerland. We were warned beforehand that such an undertaking would be a rollercoaster ride of emotions, but as I've never even been on such a ride before, I wasn't and still am not prepared to face hill after hill. I'm riding one of those rickety, wooden ones, too, so the car bumps and wobbles, and my knee keeps slamming into the side whenever it turns.
Like today was another downhill rush. I don't really feel like getting into the nitty-gritty of it, but I'll probably end up doing so anyway. I had to go to this meeting, and basically, it ended up that I'm a lazy bum who spends too much time doing solitary activities involving English, rather than hanging out with my incredibly loud and sometimes outright obnoxious host family and speaking German, talking about unexciting stuff like the latest law upon which all Swiss peopl recently voted that states that all sidewalks must be kept clean of rubble. Okay, so I exaggerate, but it's basically like that. This old asshole stood up I front of the entire club and told everyone that I'm the aforementioned bum and need a kick to the butt to get me going. That wasn't thrilling.
Then my host father turned all of a sudden into a school-Nazi, saying that the 42 hours I spend every week in a school building simply aren't enough. I need 48 hours of school in order to experience Switzerland's culture. Honestly, if all Swiss culture revolves this way around school, then count me out and get me on the next flight back to King Bushland. America might be filled with people who need to have their heads stuffed into blenders, but at least I wouldn't have to put up with all this instability which is foreign to me. And the school. 42 hours is 7 more hours per week than I spent in class in America.
So, as I usually do whenever I reach the top of the next hill and begin the earthward plummet to the ground (hey, this safety bar is rather loose...), I begun to look at all the other things about myself that bother me. Namely my social inactivity. And my poor skills at building decent relationships with the right people. Namely women/ladies/whatever you want to call the female half of the human race (I've had too many people get pissed when I say "girl" or "woman" that I'm probably going to stop trying and just be a hermit for the rest of my life. Or just a bachelor. A very rich bachelor, and I'll lord it over you all!!!)
So while I'm rushing downward, feeling an acidic wind ripping the skin off my face and hands clenched to the safety bar of this old coaster (my face, however, is NOT wrapped around the bar... though it might as well be. Eh, take it as you will), I'm getting this glorious reminder of everything about myself that annoys myself. But I don't know how to fix these problems. I know myself better than anyone. But I don't know other people well. Sometimes when I meet someone, of either sex, interested in simple friendship, things go well. Other times I realize from the beginning that it's a lost cause.
To put things bluntly, I have to admit that I've gone almost all my life without someone actually caring for me in a way more than just the way friends do (you see, I'll never directly admit to being lonely, I'm STILL beating around the gods-bedamned bush... I think I just contradicted myself...). I've had two "relationships" that I can remember that lasted for more than three days, and neither of them lasted more than two weeks. Believe you me, whatever twisted man who is the matchmaker of this world put me at the bottom of the list. Maybe because he does it alphabetically?
What's worse, I'm terribly afraid to actually go to someone whom I've known for a time and for whom I have feeling for and actually say something to the effect of, "I love you." That is the one phrase that I have NEVER, ever in my entire life said, not to anybody. Don't even bother to ask if there are ANY exceptions. It's such a binding phrase, one that should have more meaning to it than it really does today. I suppose that's rather old-fashioned of me, but I've always felt that love should be the one thing with which one never plays. But along with that feeling comes a fear of actually using it, in case it turns out that I must break such a bond, or have that bond broken upon me. Like over the head with a 2x4.
*chuckle* I think I can hear the groans of many of my female readers at suffering such an encounter with such a weak-kneed young man. Let me know if I'm wrong, because I often am, despite my claims of sentience and intelligence.
Well... I'm looking at the time and thinking of everything else I have to do tonight (nothing), and wondering how long I can go on without bursting a vein or something. For some reason I feel better already, though I'll probably feel stupid later when some really strange (female) person reads this and writes to me, "dont wrry ill be ur tru luv its wut uv ben lookin 4 rite? ~hottstuf" (if this is your actual screenname, don't write to me and complain. It's a random name I just made up. Though if you do complain anyway, I just might find a use for you as a MEAT HOOK TESTER. Copy?)
Then again, such a psychological shock just might be what it takes to bring back the good old, practical NightHawk before I start kicking some ass again. But until I find a way to let out these feelings (remember, I'd NEVER admit to these...), I think I'll just be a whiney, depressed brat.

NightHawk Falconis

"... Rose shall cry."

Thought I'd do something new today. Movie review! "House of Flying Daggers."

There is little more enjoyable in modern-day life than taking a smooth ride on a train into the big city to witness cinematic masterpieces with a friend or two. Despite the high prices of both tickets and refreshments, it is usually an experience that leaves one with a sensation of awe as they become immersed in the myriad of camera shots, bloody war scenes, heart-wrenching romances, and surpriesing plot twists. Then again, there are movies that have both the best and the worst of two worlds. "House of Flying Daggers" is one such specimen to which one must say, "How could they???"
The opening scene of the movie was admittedly rather awe-inspiring as a beautiful, blind Chinese girl twirled an intricate dance, competing with a man who threw beans at standing drums. The contest was to see whether or not she could hit the drums in the same order in which the beans were thrown. The choreography left nothing to be desired, and I was completely drawn into the rhapsody of the beating drums and whirling cloth before this girl revealed her true nature: an assassin who operates for the House of Flying Daggers, a group of rebels dedicated to undermining the government.
This movie was rife with beautiful battle scenes, and the camerawork was nothing short of masterful. However, as I stated previously, this movie had bits and pieces from both ends of the spectrum.
First, I must say that I cannot talk about the plot without spoiling it, but fear not; there is nothing much to interest you here. The entire movie, for one, used about twelve different actors the entire time except for a very short shot of an enraptured audience at the beginning of the movie. Or maybe I was just looking over my shoulder at the time, as we were situated at the very front of the theater. The basic plot of this movie was terribly linear and became progressively worse as the movie unfolded. This blind girl from the House of Flying Daggers needed help in getting back to the northlands, where her guildhouse was situated deep in the bamboo forests.
Oddly enough, she was aided by a man who was a loyal member of the current governmental system. I won't go into the various plot twists, as with every movie made in the Orient tends to be rife with strange flips and double-crossings. But it pained me to see such wonderful battle choreography and terrific acting deeply cut by random love-scenes that had absolutely no place in such a film. After each battle, the two main characters, Jin and Mei, would fall to the ground in each other's arms, though every time, one of the two would push the other away or run off on his/her own as though this were some epic romance saga, which it isn't.
As time progesses and my bladder pains me more and more from the Coca-Cola I quickly imbibed, it turns out that the girl is not actually blind, and that half of the characters thought to be in the Chinese government was actually allies of the HFD. After reaching the HFD headquarters, Mei is told to execute Jin after pushing away her own former lover in favor of the mischievious warrior (she has only been with Jin for a few days). It wouldn't have been so bad if the creators of this film had left it with that--either that she had killed him, or that she had let him go and was returning to the HFD, never to see him again. In such a case, I would never have written a review, because while it was a sub-par film in regards to plot the entire time, the ending was what really pulled everything together--did I say that? I meant the ending was what finally pulled the entrails out of this dying beast.
As it turns out, Mei chases after Jin, but is stopped by her former lover out in the fields as his dagger flies through the air and burys itself in her heart. At the same time, Jin turns around on his horse and decides to ride back to Mei, but he comes across her cold, stiff body several minutes after her former lover leaves. Somehow, she's still breathing and warns Jin that the other man was just about to attack him, and Jin manages to get away.
The following fight scene, while once more wonderfully choreographed, was rife with big, annoying, weirdnesses that one can only expect of a film originating in China. At some point the director took a look at the film and said, "Wa, gnai chai woogawa ni mani engzhou!" which translates into, "Hey, we should put some snow in here just for effect, even though it's still early autumn in the rest of the film!" And everyone else nodded their heads, bowed, and inserted some CG snow intot he fight scene. I suppose it might have been there to represent the coldness in the hearts of these people for making such a plot-empty film, but oh, well.
So it begins to snow as our two warriors happily hack each other to pieces, blood staining the snow as their breath becomes shorter and shorter. Finally, just when it seems that Mei's former lover is about to kill Jin with one of his daggers, Mei, who must have been lying there for several months already, stands up and warns him not to kill Jin. They jibber for a moment in Chinese while I madly read the German subtitles, and basically, she says she would destroy herself if the mand threw his dagger at Jin. Personally, were I one of the two men, I'd have given her such a look and said, "What??! You’re not dead? Die, you demon!" and given her a few good schlags of my sword just to make sure the deed had been done once and for all. This woman was like the Chinese Rasputin, or something, because she just wouldn't die.
So the other man makes like he's going to throw the dagger at Jin, and Mei pulls the dagger from her own heart and throws it out to stop the other dagger. Blood pours out of her heart in slow motion that looks more like Code Red Mountain Dew that's been sitting open for a few days, and only then does she see that the other man hadn't thrown the dager at all. Finally, she falls down for the third time in the movie, and this time, I figure that if she's not dead yet, then she deserves to live just for being such a sport and letting the directors place her in such a movie. It turns out to be a bit of a Romeo and Juliet movie, though it never shows Jin dying. In fact, it leaves several loose ends disappointingly open, as it shows the governmental troops advancing on the HFD, but never shows an outcome, and the movie suddenly ends there. Perhaps they will explain these events in a sequel, but I won't be seeing it anytime soon, so someone with the misfortune of actually viewing the next film will have to tell my how things turn out.
The bottom line is that while there are some good Chinese movies in theaters, this wasn't one of them. The beautiful acting and camera angles were corrupted by the empty and outright strange plot. I suppose that if you haven't seen this movie, it might be good for a rental--if someone else pays for it.
So I will wrap up this warning against a bad movie here and remind you of one key principle in theater movie-going. Always take a friend along so that whenever a storywriter messes up a film with this much potential, you at least have something upon which you can take out your anger--like your friend's head as you schlag them with the armrest you ripped out of the seat.
Thank you for reading, and remember, make good movie choices.

If you don't know D&D well, then you probably won't get this.

"Hey, what are your character attributes?"
*looking over page* "I'm a 10th-level elf!"
... "Um, but what class are you?"
*looks at page confusedly* "I'm a 10th-level elf..."
... "No, no what race, what class are you???"
*looks at page once more* "Race? I'm a 10th-level elf!"
... "You're playing 1st Edition, aren't you?"
... "I dunno, but I'm a 10th-level elf!"
*sigh*

Ach, wow... today's probable just going to be a blogging day LOL I'm totally a mess. tore up my right thigh just before taking a huge splinter in my left foot, and it's probably infected O.o oh, well. Who needs feet, anyway? XD

I've kinda been really bored lately. Like, I'm still doing all this analyzing and realizing of things I used to be amazed at. Even though I'm in another country right now, I'm still in the same world. Gravity still holds me down, water is wet, and the sun burns my skin. Nothing different. The joy at first was like, I was away from everyone I knew, and I didn't know where I was, I could get lost easily. Then there were the new people I met, which was even better, and even now all our relationships are groing each day. But there are some things that... are simply disappointing. Sure I'm somewhere else, meeting new people, and speaking a different language, but somehow, it's still all the same. My friends are different but we somehow have the same jokes here as back home. The land is different, but what the hell does that mean? It's better for photos, I guess. But would something new happen to me? PLEASE?

NightHawk Falconis

"... Rose shall cry."

So dogs look at the world around them, and they see that humans pet them and feed them and care for them, and make everything good. They smile happily and say, "Wow, such magnificent beings... the must be gods!" Cats look at the world around them, and they see that humans pet them and feed them and care for them, and make everything good. They smile silkily and say, "Look at them serving me... I must be a god!"

Whee!!! Okay, to anyone in my comic/wiki: I've got things up and ready. I know of only one person who can read this at the moment, but... oh, well. I have a keenspace account ready, and once I get it verified I'll do some more STUFF and post the URL somewhere so everyone can come and gape at our antics. I have to say that for now the art isn't going to be the most wonderful stuff in the world. Our family has a scanner, but no art programs other than paint, and I swear, there are NO quality art supply stores that carry so much as one Crayola marker. They have some other nice felt tip markers, but not the right colors and they're WAY too expensive. "How did you get around that, Jeff?" you ask. Well, I'm using my mystical, magical, wonderful, glorious, beautiful Pocket PC to do that job. I found a nice art program for PPC, but the size limit for each picture is only 240x320 portrait (though I can do landscape once I turn it into a JPEG. Um, so yeah, that's it for now. I'll go write the introduction at Shatter - Alpha - Out There, and we can FINALLY get started.

So, I'm thinking I need someone to follow me around and like, announce a running commentary of my initial thoughts on any given situation 24/7. Because that would be some prime comedy material right there. Seriously, every time someone says something or does something wither odd or that would normally make me uncomfortable, or even just plain annoying, these great comments just like, spit out from the side of my head and I have to try not to laugh. Like I get these people all the time here who just like, say weird things. Like conversation starters. I could go on for ages on how NOT to open a conversation. Like, what do you do when someone you've never met before comes and randomly asks something awfully personal? "Wow, I think you're attractive, do you wipe your ass broad side or shortside?" I kinda pause and think something at first along the lines of, "WTF, mate?" about a second before something like, "What, is there a new brand of broadside toilet paper?" Okay, so that's a little extreme. But I get people saying things like how beautiful I am (I'm a guy, gods damn it all... being called beautiful like, squicks me. Don't do it, because then I go all cute! ARGH LOL) And that's where my question comes in. What do I say then? Do I thank them normally and go about my merry business? Do I pull an RL and go *blush*? Or do I pull out a feather duster and dance with it? I dunno. Someone message me with an answer O.o

Ach, time for a new rant. This one, however, is different, not about Bush, not about family matters, not about the latest booger I pulled from my nose that was three sizes too small. Though I don't remember ever mentioning that before. Correst me if I'm wrong.

This one is a little about Elftown. However, it's not about the site, but about some of the people and the policies here.

For some of you, this part may be old news, but for others (like, member numbers 60,000+) it may be new. When I first signed on to Elftown, it was very small. I made it grow to 4080 people the moment I signed up. There were a bunch of community wikis and people to chat with, and I quickly integrated myself into a few different groups of people. The funny thing was, I didn't know anyone who was an asshole, or who was overly childish at the time.

Time marched on as it is so often wont to do, and Eftown grew... and grew... and grew...

I look at it now with over 100,000 members and around 30,000 active members, and I go, "Jeez, what was wrong with just a couple thousand people?"

Okay, okay, call me a Nazi, call me a xenophobe, call be an ass, I don't care, but I've kind of always been a fan of the original idea of Elftown: a community for Elfwood writers and artists, and more and more often I find that I wish it ha stayed that way. On the downside, there are MANY, many people here that I would never have met if that rule had truly been implemented. I'd say that about 75% of the cool people I've met here would still be strangers to me. But on the other hand, there isn't one Elftown Asshole here that I know personally (i.e. there may be some I do not know, or course!) who is also an Elfwood artist or writer.

And I find that Elftown and its more serious, hardcore participants sometimes suffer the annoyances of these people who come here, sign up with a name like "~~69SexyBabe69~~" or something (if that's your login, then it is mere coincidence) and do nothing but message people with things like, "do u wnt 2 cYbEr w/ me?im $eXXy ya?" Or others who also refuse to speak in proper English. 7334, people, is NOT a real language. I'm sure you feel special because not many people can decode your 3rd-grade writing, but I CAN, but I still wish you'd stop. Better yet, go transform into a bunch of lemmings and run off a cliff, because we don't need illiterate pea-brains like you, hear? Your stupidity is interfering with my meditations, you useless waste of air.

Now, I've sidetracked and sidetracked, and gone off into tangents on those. But my point is, why isn't there a rule here about stupidity in general. Elftown is NOT a cybering site, it's not a site to flood my inbox with annoying messages, and it's not the place to totally bash other people ALL THE TIME. I've seen hundreds of peoples' houses where they totally bash on one particular group of people. We have wiki-wars between opposing people, like the fuck-brained pro-lifers and the equally fuck-brained pro-choicers. The place is turning quickly into the Bush Administration, and that is NOT a good thing, people!!!

I have to say that I don't find it enjoyable to go to someone's house page and see them bashing people for no reason, particularly when I fit into one of their "stereotypes." We've got anti-gays (not targeting me), anti-atheists (targeting me), anti-shits-too-far-to-the-left-side (???), etc, etc. I've even fun into at least a hundred dickheads who are anti-inexperience. That earns a real big, WTF???. People saying how dumb someone is just because they're still learning how to do something! What is this? Are you really that dumb, or did they squirt CoolWhip into your head at the baby factory? Because, now, correct me if I'm wrong, but at some point in your life, before you were an almighty expert at your trade (mostly GAMING, you fuckers), you were also new at whatever skill it is that you now take for granted.

So my big question is: why can't we get rid of some of these fuckers and send them to hell so we don't have to be bothered by them? I know, some people are going to whine to me about being the Hitler of the Internet, but step back and take a look at about 70% of all the members here--the ones who are active, even. Most of them don't even belong in a fantasy-based site. Because isn't that what Elftown was originally intended to be? We're fantasy-based, and we've got people coming here and clogging my inbox with "wanna cyber? im 12 and sexxxyo ~wink~" ; people with no desire to actually do anything involved with Elftown's theme.

Well, I'm not ET administration, and I'm not even in fact a very well-known member, so I'll shut my mouth and continue building funds for a server computer and broadband of my own. Or maybe I'll just join an otherkin IRC channel and pretend like I belong. But to all you people who are here just because half your middle school is and who have no real interest in fantasy art or writing, I extand a heartfelt, "Fuck you with a burning log. Welcome to Hell."

So, like I promised, here's rant #2. This one's not about stuff happening in Switzerland, but about what's going on in the US.

I've been listening to RantRadio and checking the news and all sorts of shit, and I just wanna know, WHY DID A COMPLETE FUCK-BRAIN LIKE GEORGE W. BUSH GET ELECTED INTO OFFICE?????? Okay, seriously, the guy has trouble saying words more complex than "pretzel," and funny thing is, he was almost defeated by one of those. But here's my scoop on it: King Bush. That's all there is to it. Give him whatever name you want, he's the king, the emperor, the dictator, whatever the fuck you want to call him. In case there are any morons out there who believe everything they hear on ABC and FOX news, here's a little news for you, especially about the elections. This little tidbit of information might interest some other people as well. I find it quite strange that Bush won the popular vote when in almost all of the election centers, the exit poll had numbers of people voting for Kerry that vastly surpassed the number of people who voted for bush. Sound a little strange to you? Second of all, some of the voting machines had "problems," which, in the Republican Dictionary, means "tricks."
In many of the states that Bush won, the voting machines were found to have numbers like -1,000,000 votes for Kerry, or other strange numbers. Some of them refused to even output any votes for Kerry at all. But why didn't any of them get strange input values for Bush? BECAUSE HE TOLD THEM TO PROGRAM THEM FOR HIM!
Okay, seriously, if there is anyone here who is still a Bush supporter, then seriously, get offline, never come back, and do us all a favor and go stuff an ice pick in your eye socket. Because we're on the road to Nazi Germany here, folks. George Bush keeps making new laws: being gay is illegal, democrats can't do this, liberals can't do that. He's even made his own international law that states that after 9/11, we will attack countries before they can get us. All evil countries must be brought to their knees. Do you know what that means? That means that all Bush has to do is say, "Oh, you're evil," and he sends his army out to pillage and destroy.
The obvious question is, "Who's next?" But my question is, "Why hasn't anyone stepped up and stopped this fucker?" Seriously, I don't know anyone who supports Bush, I really don't, and we ALL want to go and evict him from the White House. In fact, before Bush remedied this threat to his position, there was a statement in the Constitution that says that we "have the right to rise up in arms against a corrupt president." WHY HASN'T ANYONE DONE ANYTHING???

Okay, I was at school the other day, and this girl from my Rotary club comes up to me and shows me this cut-out from the paper. It has a map of North America, but instead of USA and Canada it has "The United States of Canada" in blue, which is Canada and the democratic states in blue, and then below it, colored in green, is "Jesusland." It sounds funny, but the sad thing is, it's true! It's utterly true! King Bush only got back in office because he went out there and pulled the hoods over all those Christians, saying that God wanted him in office, and guess what, the dumbfucks that they are, they went out and they VOTED FOR HIM. These are the people who need to be put together in a field and filled with bullets UNTIL THEY ARE DEAD.

And what's with this war on terror? I know I'm just the thousandth person you've heard say this, but THERE IS NO TERROR. The only terrorist here is in the White House, making our laws and rasing our taxes. Okay, so we had a couple of planes zooming around and blowing shit up, and then we went and bombed their asses apart, and that was okay. But then where did Iraq come from in this spiel? Well? He was like, "Um, Iraq, we know you have weapons of mass destruction." Then, even after they were told there were none, he was like, "Well, we think you have weapons of mass destruction. Hell, you thwarted my daddy ten years back, and that's all the reason I need to bomb your asses." So he went and did it. Then it was, "Well, we'll find them sometime. We know they're here." And in the meantime, Korea's in te background going, "Ah, excuse me, but WE have weapons of mass destruction." And Bush isn't listening. "Well, we thought you had weapons of mass destruction, where are they?" And Korea's like, "Helloooo? WE HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS." And Bush is like, "Okay, well, we thought you had weapons of mass destruction. You don't, bu we destoyed your government, so we'll do th work for you, and oh, whaddaya know, you've got a bunch of oil you can give us in repayment for capturing that lying bastard, eh?" And Korea's finally giving up, you know, "Well. We've got weapons of mass destruction. But nobody's listening. Hmm... let's crack open a beer and get a party going in the meantime."

Does anybody see anything wrong in this picture? --Actually, I should ask, "Does anybody NOT see anything wrong with this picture."

Okay, this one I got just recently, folks. Apparently, the Attorney General just like, bashed the Supreme Court Judges when they disagreed with Bush's thoughts on the handling of prisoners in the War on Oil. I mean, Terror.

This second one I got just afterwards. An order from the White House (aka King Bush) has declared that the US is going to "purge the Central Intelligence Agency of all agents disloyal to the president." Basically, anyone in the CIA who has ever spoken against the Bush OR is a democrat, is being fired from the CIA. So now not only does he have an army working solely under his command, but he also has an investigation team devoted to none other.

Just you watch, come 2008, when the elections are about to begin, he'll start playing with his alert level again, and I'll be damned if it doesn't go to like, double-rainbow: uber-emergency. "Get your children inside and make sure you vote for me. We are in such a state of terror and emergency that there is nobody else who can handle the situation. Out of my concern for the country I am offering myself as a candidate for the next election. Vote for me or we're all gonna die." Stupid redneck. Anyway, I'm done with this one. I've vented enough, at least for today.

This here is kinda just a dump from what I had previ usly in my bio:


NightHawk first arrived at ET in the Castle of Valhalla (unknown version number) but soon ventured into town and arrived at the Elven Temple Airitane_27_02_03, where he met Leara and Sotalean for the first time. After their meeting, he returned to his room in the castle.
The next day, he met with Anathoth, who overrode his plans to speak further with the two females. The two of them fought in a battle that shall live forever in memory as the day NightHawk was first hit during a battle AnathothvsNightHawk.
NightHawk went and created his home after the battle and invited Anathoth to NightHawk's Home in the Trees for a chat, after which he also invited Leara on a bit of a date at NightHawk and Leara's Date.
Later, he returned to the temple, and he and Leara flirted contentedly for a while before they met Anathoth again.
Soon after, Anathoth invaded Leara's Room (unknown version number), where she realized her feelings for the raven-haired elf rather than the white-haired elf.
NightHawk confronted Anathoth in his own home later, revealing his true power--and only a taste of it at that NightHawk's Training Grounds (scroll down until after his time with Wild-Sabre), where Leara accidentally interfered with his powers, almost killing him. She nursed him back to health, and they parted for a time.
Then they were called on a mission by [Magus Ferox], which was to retrieve an item, the Endless Rain, from another plane of existence, so that they could seal up the malign entity that was called Venetsalath, into Anathoth's body.
From NightHawk's Magic Emporium (go to the earliest cleanup), they ventured to Cape Girardeau, where the two of them were almost killed by a train.
After terrorizing the locals, a young boy, later identified under the alias "Anathoth," rescued them from local officials and traveled with them for a short while, during which they met up with [Greve].
Entering a tavern called Death, they became separated in the hustle and bustle. Leara is abducted by the "real" Anathoth and is bound to him with intangible chains before he releases her to join the others again.
Jennifer, a woman the meet in the bar, takes them to her place, Thalamus, to recuperate and to speak with them. Seh does know where the Endless Rain is, and she takes them all to see Altimus at the Chamber of Secrets (go to page version # 150).
Altimus does not give up the sword so easily, however, and they fight him for it. Venetsalath (in Anathoth's form) appears in the midst of all this, and they stop him in his tracks by stoppping time for him.
They all decide to try and dive into Venetsalath's Soul to see if Anathoth can be found there, but they find only tattered remains and contaminated thoughts that Venetsalath forces into their minds.
After finding out where Leara's true feelings lie, NightHawk reatreats to NightHawk's Room to grieve.
But then, his real wife, whom he had thought to be dead, returned to his side. After convincing him that she really was who she said she was, they went on adventures together with love as their bond.

September 5, 2004:
Okay, sorry but I have to vent, because NOW I'm pissed...

So, for all of you who may not know or perhaps have forgotten, I am currently in Switzerland (but 5 minutes after you read this try to remember where I am--I bet you'll say Sweden!). I've been here away from my family in the USA for a month, and will be here for another 10-11 months more.

Now I know that it's natural for me to be having problems and feeling pissed at this point in time; I've been forewarned on several occasions, but this is MY way of dealing with it, so there.

First off, I got here and we were all (my host family and I) like, "Whoo-hoo, you're in Switzerland! Yay!" for like a week. Um, now they're like, "Why are you hanging around here? You have free transportation and you're not doing a whole lot." Well, first I'm freaking tired and am trying not to swear right now. Don't ask me why. I don't know. Second is that I'd LOVE to go somewhere, but NOBODY wants to COME with ME. Well, I can't blame my host mother; she has a tough time working to pay the bills and stuff, and my little host brother has lots of school and other responsibilities. Once again, though, it's the little (and sometimes COSTLY) things that are adding up to critical mass again. My older host brother is now done with school and has pretty much nothing to do but hang with his girlfriend and stuff, and that's cool. But when he's not doing anything terribly important and I want to do SOMETHING and talk to SOMEBODY, he seems to be busy. Like for the past two weeks, he's been wanting to buy these SD cards for his digital camera, but they're terribly expensive here, so I offered to have my dad order them and a few things that I need and send them all in a care package (if I don't forget, I'll get to that later). But every day it's, "Oh, I'm busy making my millionth hiphop CD and graffiti. Let's do it tomorrow." And it's difficult to order stuff online when this little PPC I'm using doesn't support the websites and I can't use his computer. And there are things I REALLY could use. My rollerblades, for one, since I have to get myself places w/o a car, and my feet aren't all that fast long-distance, and it's a pain to have to lock up the bike wherever I go, but rollerbades are fast AND allowed pretty much EVERYWHERE.  The second thing is that my awesome little, fold-up keyboard broke yesterday, so I'm writing all this by tapping on this ridiculous little screen. I'm fast at it, but it's lagging right now and if I miss the spacebar by too much, it clears EVERYTHING I write, which is why I'm using Pocket Word to write all this. So that's annoying. Not to mention that I'm covered in bug bites, because these people live with doors and windows OPEN with NO SCREENS, and they adamantly refuse to believe that mosquitos and spiders bite even as I look at a mosquito full of NightHawk juices, and by the way, yes that spider DOES think I'd make a nice meal. A little bony perhaps, but hey, who can complain about a free, warm meal, right?

The second thing is back to the part with going places. They're like, "Well, why don't you go with somebody you met at the language school?" Well, I would, but first I have to meet them, and we all live more than an hour apart by averaging wait times for trains and buses and stuff. By car, it'd be about a half-hour at most. So we could meet for lunch but that's about it. Second, nobody seems to be home, or else I haven't figured out the damn phone. Whatever happened to the ones where you can pick it up, hear the dial tone, and just dial??? This phone has more keys (yeah, buttons, I know) than a fucking (see, I knew I couldn't do it) PIANO.

So everyone is expecting quite a bit too much from your friendly neighborhood American who only speaks mediocre German at best. I'm not really used to going places that I want to by myself just to see things. I'm a stay-at-home person... Like, people go to see neat houses and I get dragged along, and while it might be slightly interesting, I'd much rather be curled up on a couch with a mug of warm tea (or a Coke in summer), writing my novel, about characters that I know better than I will ever know myself... All that and I'm used to being alone, but maybe that part of me is fading into the past, I don't know. I've reached that part in life when you realize that, oh, by the way, the world is NOT your own little eggshell, and YES, you are expected to do something useful now. I'm starting to think seriously about what I'm going to do with my life (and of course I start thinking about this FAR from where I belong), doing all those adult calculations that just last year I laughed at.

I can tell that this is going to be MUCH longer. If you've read this far, congratulations, but Kansas is still a LONG way from here... And I'm running low on battery power... Oh, well... We'll see how far this takes us, hm?

I mean, what happened to the safe little world that American schools craft for us? Life's a bitch; why aren't we taught that little bit of information? I can tell you all three angle measurements and side lengths of any triangle, but have learned little truly applicable information. What we SHOULD be learning is how to survive; we need to know that the world is not a soft landing BEFORE we jump. Sure, they all tell us, "Yes, the world is a difficult place." But that doesn't help to deal with it. Where's Honors Deal With It Level 3 and AP Take Over the World? I mean, THOSE are important classes. Emotions Ed would be handy, too.

Ah, fuck it, I should just break down now...

But I seem to have forgotten how to cry. I'm here, me against the world, with no allies at my side, and I'm expected to know how to live right out of high school. That's a CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT, folks. You don't learn that there. I feel some emotions, mostly Annoyance and Anger, but when I'm comfortable and content I can be Happy and Humorous (or should that be Humored?). But even when I know I should be sad, I can't even see Sadness on the horizon. "Boys don't cry," they say. Well, fuck them with a rocket launcher. I haven't had a good cry in at least seven years, though I want to. Last month, when my friend was in the rollover accident, I wanted to cry with relief that he was all right, but even then I couldn't.

I think that, I know that crying won't solve much. But it would be nice to cry with someone I loved, I guess. I wouldn't know, though, since I've been by self all my life. Does that make me lonely? Probably; if longing for companionship is what the game's all about, then yes, you could say I suffer from a SLIGHTLY mortal case of loneliness. But does that make me desperate? Hell, no. I have a gut feeling that when I meet the right person, I'll know I can stop being a loner, and my gut feelings have always been right so far, but who knows? Maybe I won't know until it's too late, or maybe I'll find the wrong person.

Hang on, I need to switch to my other battery, the friggin' huge, nuclear power battery (okay, it's lithium-ion. So sue me.)

Ah, fresh battery and no more lag... Now where was I? I dearly hope I haven't run out of things to say, not just yet. I think that, by laying myself bare, even before people whom I may have never met, I may better come to terms with myself and my revelations which, while not so profound, I believe are understandable. I mean, like I've said, I'm at that junction in the road where it splits into a million different paths and have only now realized that I'm traveling on VERY LONG, ONE-WAY road. The only way things will get better is if I make them better, which is one of my true but not-so-profound realizations that people usually make before I do. So I'm a bit slow at figuring these important things out. I have a different set of priorities, so kiss my ass. Fun should ALWAYS come before work, if any.

I think the only thing going for me is that I met a nice person today. Yes, she's a she, but not what half of you are thinking. Actually, I get along a lot better with women, maybe because I have no passion for aggression and competition that most other human males have. She's from around the Zürick area and made my day about twenty times better, just because I had someone to talk to who seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say, and she had things to say in which I was interested. That, and school (real school, not that crappy language course I took for three weeks) starts tomorrow. Normally, I'd be nonplussed, but I can at least meet some interesting people. Of course, if luck bitch-slaps me again, I'll still be nonplussed, but my good ol' gut doesn't sense anything bad coming tomorrow *gurgle* (shhh, quiet, I'll feed you soon). But crappersnaps, I spilled chocolate ice cream on my pants and--nevermind. The laundry is finally done, so now I have some jeans to wear. Unexciti, but--crap, where's my other pair? I bet they've been shipped to the wrong room. Bah, I'll get 'em from my little host bro tomorrow.

Well, after all that, I think I'm feeling a little better now, at least. Gotta get some things de for tomorrow, and it's like, 9:40 pm now. Oh well. But if you ACTUALLY read this whole thing, then here's a cookie. Hmm, maybe that's not enough. Here, have an apple pie...

Let the games go on!

"Feel my wrath and taste my fire,
As I spit flames from my gold lyre!"