I Remember Star Wars

I don't exactly remember the first time I ever saw Star Wars, having watched it so many times I probably couldn't manage a guess that would be anywhere in the neighborhood. I had action figures, miniature playsets, the original and (first round) special edition releases on those terrible, bulky VHS cassettes, comics, books, the TCG cards of both the "adult" and the Young Jedi series, games for the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, XBox and PC.

Broadcast Log

SESSION STARTED: JH4637-883B

All we wanted to do was warn people. There are laws against temporal interference, so we knew they would come after us eventually but when they came, we were so incredibly unprepared.

We couldn't stand the way things had gotten. People falling over dead left and right, those around them rushing to feed on the corpses before they even hit the ground. Pity all those who only passed out and fell. They never woke up. Friends and relatives would pile up by the walls, shouting their disapproval, screaming for someone to send help out from the inner cities. The wealthy districts.

The few of us who weren't concerned with our monetary stores and actually had a genuine interest in helping them were prohibited under penalty of death. No weakness could be shown, lest they gather in greater numbers and rise against us. The walls and the guards would deter them, but there is always strength in numbers and where there's a will, there's a way.

After some time of those like myself voicing our displeasure with the way of things, they stripped us of all our possessions and funds, gave us a single day's clothing, hauled us to the wall, forced us to climb ropes down, threw each of us a knife, retracted the ropes and walked away. We adapted. We had to or we would be consumed by the squalor and desperation surrounding us. Those of us within the scientific community gathered and began working to reconstruct the temporal rift generators that were so plentiful within the walls, that the protected elite used for recreation.

After several changes that came about as a result of careless time travelers, rules and guidelines were laid down regarding what the users could and could not do during their visits.

We knew that if we could make it back to that day, if we could warn them about what would happen, how bad things would get, we could change our world for the better. It took us years to reproduce what had been only a few months' work in our labs but finally, we were ready. We made it back to that day, to that place, when crowds of unimaginable size, the likes of which had never been seen nor would be again. All those poor fools standing around, occasional shouts of encouragement rising up only to quiet a few moments later. They didn't have the slightest clue what they were supporting. As it's always been, the masses were just going along with what was fed to them. For that, they deserved what was coming, but the future generations that would suffer relentlessly for their ancestors' stupidity did not deserve the conditions in which they were forced to live. We couldn't just sit by and let the world go further to hell when we knew how to fix it, when we knew we could fix it, when we knew we were the only ones capable of doing it. After we had stepped through the gate, our coconspirators would have smashed the device, leaving us in this time wih nothing to mark us as a part of the world, with no way to establish a place here in any kind of easy manner, and no way back to our time, to see how different everything ended up being.

We pushed ourselves to our physical and mental limits to get there in time. Before we could even attempt to make a difference, they came out of nowhere. The weapons fire cut most of us down; only a few escaped alive. Those of us that did, they immediately set out hunting. From here, I've seen all but one of my friends being dragged screaming back to the place it first happened. Some screamed for mercy, some begged for their lives to be spared in exchange for information as to the whereabouts of the others. Only one fought with every fiber of his being, cursing and attacking his captors all the way there. But in the end, all of their screams were summaries in the night, the gunshots were the end of the pages, and the stomping, marching boots were the beginning of the next chapter.

I know they'll find me soon. They've been getting increasingly thorough as they comb the surrounding areas time and time again. All this time, all this suffering, terror and regret I've gone through, the effort that was brought to an abrupt end before it could even really begin, it doesn't all have to be for naught. Once I finish this message, I will be broadcasting it worldwide along wih records and documents gathered to show the everyday atrocities going on in my time. You can make a difference, it's not too late yet. Rise up and stop them from carrying it out. Even if you don't succeed once, as long as someone can stop them from finishi

SESSION ENDED: JH4637-883B



SESSION STARTED: JH4637-883C

Pranksters have accessed the broadcast terminal.

Disregard the previous broadcast under penalty of death.

One and only warning.

SESSION ENDED: JH4637-883C

Stitches

Preceding words stand firm, as sentiments and suggestions also. The mind its own worst enemy, it must look beyond the biological battery to combust misfortune and ignite a fuse on evolving environmentally expelled quantities and qualities of factors pertaining to levels of acceptibility of professional, social and recreational presence.

Less Human Than Human

Almost every time someone tells you about something, you can almost guarantee that if it was a person who was different from them in any way (Because we're all the same, right?), they will be sure to emphasize the differences.

Music Is What Feelings Sound Like

I pride myself on having a wide taste in music. There are very few genres I haven't like altogether. For the most part, rap is about the only thing that I can't stomach. Sure, I enjoy the occasional Snoop, Dre or Eminem track but for the most part, when I fire up ye olde mp3 collection, I'm after a certain sound. Sometimes I want to hear roaring guitars with a vocalist whose primal growls are just as powerful. Sometimes I'm in the mood for something that makes me wish I in a pub having a good old time with close friends. Other times, it's a powerful or soothing orchestral experience I'm looking for. Through Pandora Internet radio and its stupidly now-limited-per-month free listening, I've discovered several bands I was more than happy to add to my collection. Recently, though, through a channel created with multiple artists, I discovered an artist named Heinz Strobl who releases albums under the name Gandalf. In listening to these serene, beautifully melodic pieces, it feelsas if the very act of skipping to the next track or even pausing the current track is one of the most atrocious crimes I could ever commit. I have yet to make it through the whole history of his works but even what I have heard has instilled more peace in me than I've felt in years. It is the ultimate collection for relaxing, calming down, waking up, going to sleep or anything else one would associate with the concept of soothing. There aren't enough words in all the languages of all the worlds to do it justice and I cannot recommend it strongly enough to anyone searching for the perfect expression of calm and soothing.

Gandalf - Colors of a New Dawn
Gandalf - In The Presence of Angels

Water Time

Here comes water time. Time to get wet, get the cretins in the pool. Time to show off the chicken legs. Not my cup of tea, but it's all for the kids. Family fun is good. They don't get enough of that. I get in the way a lot. Grouchy, too. All the time. But this weekend, we take the cretins to the water park. Let them have fun. Have a blast. Throw one monstrous fit when it's time to go. Don't look forward to that either. I think there's a Trace Adkins concert somewhere in there, too. Not usually my cup of tea either. But I like to think I'm pretty wide on the musical entertainment plane. Plane like of existence. Not those giant heavy, metal airboats. F those things. Water time. Time for water.

6 Crappy Things On the Internet (And Possibly Better Alternatives)

In recent days, I've given into a streak of curiosity about several things that are apparently quite popular or successful on this world wide web of ours. Not only have I wasted precious seconds of my life that I would like dearly to demand a refund for, but I'm quite certain I've lost several million braincells just by allowing these things to load in my home. Not every item on the list is something that has sprung up suddenly, as I typically don't jump into trends as soon as I hear about them. I also have not personally investigated each and every item on the list, and others I have spent hours on. Even after spending a mere handful of seconds on some of these, I have spent an untold additional amount of time boggling over the lack of sense one must have to actually enjoy some of them. So here they are in no particular order.

Don't Read Ahead

I remember being in elementary school or grade school or whatever it's called wherever else. This particular memory is about several situations of the same nature that I found myself in time and again. Not any particular event on one particular day, but an event that happened many times on many different days and across several different teachers as well.

TSA: Terrorism Supplied by Airlines

A recent headline in my CNN news app read "Contempt for security a red flag for TSA". I looked at the title for a few moments before reading the article, wondering if perhaps it was supposed to be something more realistic, along the lines of "Contempt for violations of personal space makes TSA want to fondle uncomfortable passengers even more."

(Non)Acknowledgement

This year holds the twenty-sixth anniversary of the day of my birth or, as those who continue to ignore common rules of language call it, my twenty-sixth birthday. It's not a birthday. A birthday is the day of your birth. You are not born every year, you have an anniversary of that day. Anyway, more to the point of this bit of babble: This year's anniversary of my birth will be the last time I acknowledge any difference between this date and any other because it is, after all, just another day.

Low Standards

My current writing project is taking somewhat of a back seat to my new plan: Write a pretty crappy novel that's still better than Twilight, without trying. This will let me get experience in the realm of authorhood without having to put the story(ies) that I actually care about in danger of getting stuck in Publication Limbo because of a lack of experience with interacting with the publishing world.

Now all I need is a pseudonym to credit the awful piece to, to keep my own good name innocent and clear of the awful.

If Twilight, as well-written as it is (lol), can sell so well, then I have all the confidence in the world that I can do better without trying.

I Sell Eye Cells

I was in a dark back alley in Moscow the other night, peddling my wares, typically consisting of miniature, manually-directed, counterfeit rainstorms, when a man stumbled around the corner, bumped into me and fell down. When I asked him what the problem was, he informed me that his eyes weren't what they used to be. They were now very large marzipans who had marzed off to join the parade. So I sat down on a cat that I found to be quite a comfortable chair, pulled my pipe out from under the sink and pondered the meaning of this strange man's words. Three years later, when I was a small cabbage, it struck me. I decided I wasn't fond of this since the impact had left a large odor not entirely unlike a smell in my nostrils. So I set out to find this fellow, and ask him a few questions. After a tenure search and a decade of trying to find this man, one of my associates, with whom I had no link whatsoever, got fed up with my constant lack of chain supplies. Complimenting me on the meal, though there was no cornbread involved, he swiftly turned into a door. The force of the collision shook him such that he wet himself in fear. Furious at him for diving into my already-low supply of liquid fear, I struck him. Two innings later we both agreed to put down the bats. I related to my Corynorhinus townsendii that his ears made him look stupid, to which he responded, "Sonar doesn't count as looking."

I apologized profusely. I was unaware quantity was involved. Turns out, she's been married for years.

It's Fraeedey

So by now, many of us have had the great displeasure of being exposed to the abomination of what passes for a song these days called Friday, not so much sang as cawed like an exploding crow caught in a jet engine by this talentless cretin of a rich kid named Rebecca Black, who only had this musical apocalypse (non)crafted by a company of which the sole intent is to acquire any free-floating monetary sums from parents who have even less real value in themselves than their untalented crotchspawn flush daily, in order to allow these delusional, tone deaf leeches to garble unintelligibly into a studio microphone, allowing further tone deaf "professionals" to further mutilate their recorded vocal excrement with autotuning, a dead giveaway of the massive void in the "artist"'s essence where any self-respecting musician would actually have talent and experience stored up.

The Battle of Hungeria

Trying to sleep. It's morning. Not crack-of-dawn early, but still only three digits on the very non-analog clock, and as I clash with consciousness, making every dodge, block and parry against its relentless onslaught of distraction, noise and light, the illuminated red numerals tick by at an alarming rate, average though it may be. Finally I am driving back waking moments, retreating into the outermost fringes of the realm of slumber.

Silly Newborns

Come on, now. So you're operating on the intellectual minimum processes designed to express your discomfort to your parental units, eat and expel waste. So in all these years of new births, why have you not acquired the ability to comprehend when something is being done to improve whatever state you may be expressing dissatisfaction with so that you can chill out and make the process easier and therefor quicker?

As a parental unit, I would greatly appreciate your cooperation when I'm trying to change you out of an outfit you've managed to soak during one of your nigh-hourly sessions of practicing to be a lawn sprinkler. Instead, you squirm and writhe like a worm on a hook, thrash your legs around and somehow manage to end up in a position ninety degrees from that in which you started, all the while continuing to wail at the top of your little lungs as you fail throughout the entire process to realize that I'm trying to relieve and improve your discomfort. Then, once I've gotten you into a dry diaper and clothes and after I get you fed, you commence the post-feeding ritual of spitting up all over your fresh clothes. Stop that, please. Thank you.