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And my mp3 player, having arrived to an empty house today, shall be delivered tomorrow. Awesomenessousity. Or... something.

Shaboing.

Absolutely sublime in some parts:

About every five minutes I want one of my helicopters to crash, completely on its own, for some fucking reason.

The whole world is shocked. Because people were physically harmed.

In a war.

But I want to lose points off my Public Support meter every time one of those monsters accidentally impales a schoolgirl in a horrific bloody mess that will shock all but the Japanese.

And so on.

Rockfish.

Made by Blur studio, extremely good looking CGI short, with some nifty machines and such. A little reminiscent of UT2k3 maybe. Enjoy.

Some seriously painful ouchies dealt out as 30 Giant Hornets annihilate a hive of ~30,000 European bees.

Sadistically horrific, and disturbing. But it's only bees, I suppose.

Yes.

Is that not some of the smoothest flash ever?

So, my Dad just left the room after launching a nice philippic on me about just how fucking much of a faliure I am to him. "You make me ill... you really do".

You have any idea how hard it is to argue with a solicitor? He has an answer to everything. What's his job? He argues! For a living! He argues and writes on stupid bits of paper about boats and land and accident claims. And damn it if I shouldn't work as well.

He labels me as someone wasting their time, not trying, not caring about anything, with a sort of arrogance that everything will turn out fine.

And the most disturbing thing?

He couldn't be any closer to the mark.

But I mean, fuck it all. What's the point. That's not even a damn question. That's some idiotic teenager raging about how the world has it in for them.
Let's say I become like my Dad. Moderately successful, earns enough money, when joined with Mum's salary, to support a family of four in a nice village, send my sister and I to private schools to get education, the bloody apex of a middle class setting. And yet what's the reward? Stress. Me. Will people particularly miss him when he finally retires? Not that I can tell of, he works from home now. So he's got me, the useless fuckwit who doesn't try, and my brilliant, straight-As-in-her-GCSEs sister. Joy.
I don't wanna end up like him. I don't want to end up like my sister, either. Incarcerated in a room of paper and ink? Constantly? Working until my nerves shatter? No thanks.

And what if I do poorly? I'll look back, and I'll moan, and I'll say "Why the hell didn't I do better at school?"

I have no idea what to do. I know I should work, I know I should revise and study and try, but I don't WANT to. Sounds pathetic, doesn't it? The sheer effort of working crushes me. I can't concentrate. I'll stare at my maths book, and I'll be off rewriting Air Hex in my head, or wondering vaguely when my next break is. Fuck it if I LEARN anything.

I just don't know what to do. I'm fucking crying as I write this.

I know what I WANT. I want a career in advertising. Yeah. A chance to let loose some creative energy. I want to go on a road trip around America, crass as it sounds. I want to visit Japan. And maybe, just do something I enjoy that isn't on the computer.

Therein lies the dilemma. I don't enjoy anything EXCEPT the stuff I find online. I find no satisfaction in work, physical or mental. I'm in a horrible state when it comes to relationships, having plenty of friends but only one true companion, and girls generally like me, but I always feel if I could just get the right moment... I dunno, there's way too much here.

I don't even know why I wrote this. I'm not expecting to receive any helpful replies. I just need to talk, and sad as it sounds, who's the person I can confide in at the end? The internet.

...

I dunno. I just don't know at all.

And booze, lots of booze.

Belgium. Lovely. See you in five days.

(This the right forum? Whatever).

Pirates of the Carribean appears to have re-introduced the concept of heroes to Hollywood. I went to see Skarsky & Hutch (which is pretty good, it oozes style), and saw two trailers that I found very interesting.

1) Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow.
What a brilliant, brilliant name! Robots go to war with humans, and only the buff leather-coat-wearing supahdude played by (I think) Jude Law can stop them! It also has Angelina Jolie in it - wearing an eyepatch!. Much funness, and completely over the top.

2) Van Helsing.
God damn, this looks like it may just evolve into a cult film. He takes on Wolfman, Dracula and Frankenstein at least, and has all sorts of nifty gadgets, like a shuriken-style unfolding silver cross. It's the kind of movie that could almost be a comedy, from what I've seen. Looks enjoyable.

[Air Hex.]

Air Hex.[/u]

Prologue:

Kerryn raced the sunset again. She grinned fiercely as she pushed her glider past slipstreams and darted around spectral clouds. The wind whipped her short black hair into her face as it buffeted the small craft. Stretched taut, the sun making her a flashing point of light in the air, she spiralled and weaved in the sky. Kerryn often pitted herself against the sunset, but the sunset always won. She let the darkness overtake her, and flew on towards her destination.

Chapter 1:

Kerryn touched lightly on the grass once, twice, and then ran into a landing. She shouldered her glider, wearing it like a backpack with the wings protruding outwards, and looked around. It was a typical wanderer's campsite. It had been here long enough to make a mark â€" some trees had been felled, and there was a large pile of ash where the nightly fire would burn, but the travellers would not permanently scar the earth. She recognised the proud badge of the Clan Maralah painted on the side of one of the wagons, and knew she could find shelter here. Fondling the visor around her neck, she strolled up to the leader's tent. Flinging aside the curtain, she yelled inside.
“You disgrace! I travel all the way here from places you've never even seen and there's no food waiting?” she shouted in mock fury. The man inside the tent stared at her in bewilderment, then his eyes suddenly widened in recognition. He leapt up, overturning his stool, and ran towards Kerryn, scooping her up in his huge arms.
“Kerryn! You little skycrawler, where have you been for so long?” Kerryn laughed.
“Let go, Warrick, you're crushing me!” She wriggled free of his grip, and smiled at Warrick. She had known him for years, since she was six and had lost her parents, and her tribe. Her face flickered slightly at the memory. Kerryn's tribe â€" Peregrine â€" had been stormed by an unknown band in a night of fire and blood, and had been all slain, but for Kerryn. She had hidden, clutching her glider close to her. When it was over, the taint of burning had hung in the air. No-one knew who the assailants were or why they attacked, but Kerryn had promised to herself that one day, she would find out. She replied to Warrick's question with glassy brightness.
“Oh, you know, here and there. Flying over the sea and shore, mainly, sticking to the eastern coast. There were some nasty tangles with some bandits, but nothing I couldn't shake off with my glider,” she patted its wings over her shoulder fondly. “I dropped in on Clan Fanalow as well; I managed to get some… interesting information”. She said it casually, but Warrick knew her better than that. Leaning forward, he asked her,
“What sort of information would this be, then?” He paused for a second, and, helped by a disappointed look from Kerryn, seemed to remember himself. He sat bolt upright with a cry: “Good grief, lass, the food! I'll bet you're starving! Tell you what, stay overnight, and we can discuss this over some proper sustenance, hmm?”
“That sounds like a fine idea,” said Kerryn, leaning back and stretching. It was good to be back with friendly folk again.

‘Maralah' roughly translated as ‘born in an earthquake', and its people were proud of the name. They had a reputation for having an unusually harmonious relationship with the soil - after only a few days, even a skilled tracker would have trouble deducting that the Maralah had been this way, if the tribe did not want to people to know. With this heritage came many traditions, bound in the embers of flickering fire. Not all were still held, but for every ritual that died, a new one bounded forward from the flames, bought on by the cold solitude of the late night. As Kerryn ate, some Maralah youths entertained the elders with an age-old play of how the Maralah were formed. Kerryn laughed as a boy, pretending to be Taran the Founder, thrust a wooden sword savagely at a wild boar, played by a boy wearing a real animal skin. As the giant boar toppled over, thus saving the early clan, she applauded and chuckled along with the rest of the audience. At times like this she wondered why she did not join one of the many tribes she knew, but the answer was always clear. She sighed into the heat of the flames, and turned to see Warrick watching her. He spoke first.
“So, this rumor…?” Kerryn stared at the fire, and replied quietly,
“What I heard is that there's a new forge-town developing, in the south this time. Kiffton was the name I heard”. She frowned, and waved the chicken leg she was holding vaguely. “It's just gossip, but it's worrying. Forge-towns are never good news. Especially for you”. She turned to see Warrick's reaction. The big man was deep in thought. This would be the third forge-town in as many cycles. They usually ended up being huge messes of cities. Murder and exploitation become rife, and many people became slaves in all but name to the swaggering steel-mill owners. For the Maralah, so bound to the earth, it was a travesty. They blamed it on the choking smog that the factories belched out, and the grime of the streets. It wasn't healthy for people, they said. It killed them as sure as asphyxiation. When Smelt, the first forge-town, had appeared in the north-west, people had reluctantly acknowledged the need for its existence. It was built on a huge seam of iron ore, and could sustain enough of an economy to make steel, the most precious material in the Midlands. Previously, the only steel in this part of the world could be obtained in small amounts at huge prices, from local quarrying businesses. Now that had all changed. Smelt had begat Bearnstoke, another forge-town, again at the foot of the north-western mountains, but built around a river for trade overseas. It had enjoyed exclusive resource deals with Smelt, and rumor spread of military partnerships being formed. And now there was a third… Warrick cleared his throat.
“I suppose bandits will be lining the north-west to south roads like dead leaves now?”
“That's one probable consequence,” Kerryn admitted. “Warrick, you do know if people continue like this, there will be no land left untainted”.
“I know”. There was a silence between the two, marred by the merriment around the campfire. Kerryn could see the news was weighing heavily on her friend, and she quietly excused herself to check her glider. When she left, Warrick sighed heavily, and clasped his hands under his chin, the fire dancing behind his closed eyelids.

Kerryn eyed her glider critically, shifting from foot to foot in the cold night air. Having taken it off her back, she was routinely checking for wear and tear. The glider was mainly white, with two silver tags on the tips of each wing, individually about a foot wide. The actual wing itself was about five feet in length, its shape a thick wedge. The wings could fold in, but Kerryn preferred to have them out, ready for an impulse launch. The two wings then met in the center, where a large, hub-like object made up the main body of the apparatus. It had a narrow, rectangular slot in the back, from where the thruster propulsion system hissed out a steady, fiery blue-white tail. It was surprisingly quiet, even without the noise of the air. The glider was made up of a smooth material, warm to the touch. Kerryn didn't know what it was, and it often bothered her. It made her think of her parents, and her tribe. Was this technology the reason for the raider's attack? She stroked the elegant wings, and realized she was crying again. She cried too much, she told herself, but that didn't stop the pain, that didn't stop the constant memory of that night. She didn't want anyone to see her like this. Buckling the glider's belt fast around her waist, she gripped the handles on the underside of the wings and pressed the small button that started the thruster. She spiraled high into the air and shot out for an evening's flight, crystalline tears tumbling to the distant landscape, far below. On the ground, Warrick watched her leave a dim trail in the sky.

So nifty.

It may not work the first time around FYI.

It also reminds me of a quote:

"It's like jello on legs!"

You'll see what I mean.

Yipee skippy, aren't I the poetic wench around here.

Poetry.com will be publishing one of my poems. Unfortunately it's $50 to buy the book, with a $10 deposit. So screw that. Blasted scammers.

Anyway, I'm willing to bet the book is incredibly pretentious and full of 'artistic' people who love talking about themselves and souls and trying to be 'meaningful', and we of course know that I'm obviously nothing like that.

Anyhoo, although with a cynical eye it's no great acheivement, I thought I might as well let y'all know. I could win $1000 or even $10,000 (highly unlikely), which would be pretty damn cool, even if I would only get £560 and £5,600.

(£1 = $1.82 at the moment).

Brilliant!

I'm not gonna sign up, but just bringing it to your attention.

Evil.

It's hard.
I'll provide straight answers rather than clues, but see how you do first.

EDIT:

Whilst on the subjects of games, this little beauty is great fun and makes you think about how things interact, and the pig rules.

Batman!

Have fun, and keep walking when you're on the 'moving' platforms. Trust me on this. Oh, and watch out for disturbed earth on the like 9th screen.

[Night Beat]

And here are the results:

Night Beat

It's a copper's life, come to think of it.

Chrome and brick and light and shadow,
Hollow people flutter through the alleys.
Inebriation in word and mind and sweet obliteration gulped down with relish.
The night is a cityscape wide mile high pure energy raw primal pillar column freak dance dance motion sphere of instinct and there are endless beds for the quick-flash and wild lovers, where the sheets will grow cold in the morning.
The beat of the city, casually imperceptible, with it's life
Blood drained from banks and breweries. It echoes through silenced
Passages of grime and grit, where the neon lies shimmering on the ground, Coarse reflections and gaudy disregard.

And then the party hour is past, and denizens of twilight emerge.
They have nowhere, they have no-one, bar the guarded peers.
And like ravens they will drift down streets in black,
With harsh cries and gutteral laughs. In them, the crime
That has not yet come to pass, and the scream of ten thousand victims
Will reverberate down generations. Sneering and jibing.

It's darkest before dawn on the streets of a city, where fugitives hide and run from the law,
And ravens patrol alleys and courtyards and doorways, and sink deeper into the criminal maw.
And, deathly sombre, they caw.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Concerns

A noose of hot silk,
a dagger of cold cream,
chocolate poison.

But were you to have little,
Sly in suburbia,
how scripts may have changed.

And drugs and drink and sex and violence and we love you Woodstock!
Maybe this was better.

Indulgence is a warm path to death,
but it's scent is misguiding - beguiling and fresh,
and how pretty the butterflies are off the road.

You. Wealth and luxury.
Death, such an irony - was it that you were not satisfied? surely not.
Yet, a troubled thing, brittle cling on reality. And you may leave
and wander to the butterflies, off the path

------------------------------------------------------------------

Adrenaline

I'm going down to the stores,
Bristol, wave a pistol,
Two shots to the ceiling gets their attention, and then:
"Oy, wot d'y'think yer doin', sunshine!?"
No time to linger, a shot to the arm, watch the
Finger massaging the trigger, this is bigger than I reckoned.
Sirens in the distance, silence amongst the shelves,
Perforated by whimpers from the weak and stupid, stupid, STUPID idea
To rob a store? What more can I ask for if I want the law to run riot?
This is mental, this is madness, drop the oranges, run for it, down the street,
Still with the gun out? Yells in the distance - dart into an alley...
...and breathe.

Pounding over, respectable citizen, not me officer, I was in Manchester.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Feedback is oh so welcome.

If you're paranoid, steer clear.

Now frankly, I don't believe it, but it's very very detailed, all feasible (bear in mind when it was written), and no-one seems to find flaws in his story.

However, like I said, I don't hold for that kind of thing.
Nevertheless, it's highly... unsettling...

http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/

'Nuff said.

Any comments? can you find YOU?

I had one starting line and a subject matter in my head. So I wrote. It may not be very good, but. Meh.

A noose of hot silk,
a dagger of cold cream,
chocolate poison.

But were you to have little,
a wolf in urban kitchens,
how scripts may have changed.

And drugs and drink and sex and violence and we love you Woodstock!
Maybe this was better.

Indulgence is a warm path to death,
but it's scent is misguiding - beguiling and fresh,
and how pretty the butterflies are off the road.

You. Wealth and luxury.
Death, such an irony - was it that you were not satisfied? surely not.
Yet, a troubled thing, brittle cling on reality. And you may leave
and wander to the butterflies, off the path.


---------------------------------------

If anyone figures out what the poem is about, I'll be quite happy.

In brief, I have totally screwed up this computer. Or rather, my printer has. It wasn't installable on ME so I installed XP, which confused a whole bunch of file paths and generally messed up the pc. Now, my modem won't reinstall and my printer is just about the only thing that works properly - ironically. I've put 7 gigs of data onto CDs - about all the stuff I can't install again or need. Trouble is, my recovery disks are set for a windows 95 system, and won't work. So, this may take awhile. Which is really, REALLY annoying.

So now you know.


EDIT: whoops, wrong board.