April 5, 2005

Hi everybody! I hope you’re doing good. April is National Poetry Month and Barnes and Noble bookstore was holding a contest with some of the schools in the area to see who could submit poems. I don’t know how many schools entered but mine was one of them. I submitted one I called Poison.

Just about everybody in my class submitted one too and yesterday my teacher gave us the results. There were three people who got “honorable mention” and I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t one of them. Then when she called out my name and told the class that I was one of the finalists, I got really excited. I don’t know how many other finalists there are but I’m just happy to be one of them.

Thank you all for your support!

I wrote a short little poem last night about April. I didn’t give it a name because I used the letters of April to describe how it feels to me. I hope you like it!

Amazingly beautiful sunsets
Pink and purple flowers start to grow in the garden
Raindrops fall like life from the sky
Icicles are replaced by ice cream cones
Lovely

I hope I get to see some of you soon!

Bye!

borgo says - Standard disclaimers apply

Seriously folks, I know it doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of things but if you could have seen the look on her face when she was telling me the story, well, lets just say it was something special. In world full of troubles, both of our own personal doings and in other things in which we have no control, the smile that she wore was a start. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Love,

Bob & Anna

I just deleted my first node: A daylog in which jclast breaks one of the cardinal rules of e2.

Yesterday, I spent the better part of my morning crafting what I thought to be a fine node, a shining example of what a writeup about an excellent video game should be. I had raised the bar, and I was proud. It turns out I was wrong. My creation was only allowed to accrue three votes (all upvotes, by the way) before I sent it to Node Heaven. You see, my subject of choice, Ubisoft's Beyond Good & Evil, had already been noded. I had mistakenly searched for Beyond Good and Evil and found writeups dealing only with an essay by Friedrich Nietzsche.

I should have looked at the softlinks more closely. I'm lucky that I caught my duplicate effort before somebody else did. I now have my first non-boring resident of Node Heaven, and I do not mourn my loss because I have learned from the experience. I have only lost the potential for XP, which doesn't really matter to me any more. It mattered when I was level 1 because I wanted to vote, to contribute to the community. Now that I can, I'm not bitter about the loss of a node. So I lost a couple of hours and some potential votes. I still have the satisfaction of producing what I think is a good node. And now I also know that I have it in me to thin the herd.

But seriously, if you play video games, give Beyond Good & Evil a try. It's cheap (I got mine for $20), it's got a great story, it's engaging, and the main character is attractive without being slutty (a rarity in female video game characters these days).

It started out so cool. Even with freakin Jade Croscola as our supposed leader, this could have been a cool heist, after all my complaining the last time I wrote. We were gonna make some kind of name for ourselves.

Well, we did, but not how we figured. Man, this Hardcore Ninja Crimelord deal is gonna be harder to achieve than me and Sevon thought.

We got into the building, no problem. Like I said the other day, not much in the way of security. The target was performing on the stage, and I swear, we didn't know it was a cancer fundraiser. I mean, me and Sevon, we ain't exactly choirboys, you know what I'm saying, but we wouldn't of been so hepped up about the job if we knew we were messing with a cancer fundraiser. Jade never told us that. That wasn't part of the deal. Still, it's not like we're in a highly ethical business, you know what I'm saying? And this mascot's doing this dance on stage, like the one from Napoleon Dynamite, and I'm hiding in the wings, kind of getting into it, and then I get the signal and that just pulls me back to, like, reality.

So I come out with my weapons, not my Ninja weapon, because my speciality is the bo staff and it's not really the best weapon for crowd control, you know what I'm saying? No, I got this like major prototype from the U.S. army, this cool space laser deal, and I am holding back the crowd and any wannabee heroes. Man, I just love the power. It's such a rush.

So then Sevon and Jade interrupt this tiger mascot who's dancing and he starts getting all panicky, but he's doing it bigtime, like he still thinks this is part of the show. At least that's what I thought. We grab the thing and run.

Ha! Big laffs. Slipping out, Jade breaks her katanna. Yeah, Jade, always going on about having a Hattori Hanzo Sword! Hattori Hanzo my butt, Jade. You either got taken or you're lying so either way, she's like a poseur or a looser or maybe both, so I don't feel bad we skipped out on her Eeeeevilness Jade Croscola.

The cops came, but we faked them out good and they went in pursuit of some other guys in a van.

But we're getting closer to Jade's lame-o headquarters, and that's when it gets all spooky.

I thought this was some guy in a suit, whatever jade said. No, man. The tiger is real. I mean, there was like no zipper or nothing, you know what I'm saying? We got a genuine, smiley furry anthropomurf or whatever they're called in our possession, or custody, or whatever they call it.

He's real, man. It hurts my head just thinking about it. And Jade's just like all, "what did you guys think?" What did we freakin' think???? We thought we were kidnapping like some guy in a suit. Ok, so this is a bigger score than I figured, but tell me it's not a little scary.

Then the Tiger breaks free. Man, we had him tied and everything, and we spent all night studying those knots in the old Boy Scouts Manual, and he just breaks out and we're fumbling for our weapons. Mine like misfires and Jade of course reaches for a sword she freaking doesn't have anymore. We end up conking him on the head and its like he gets this total personality change, he's not so smiley now and he's ready to attack and then everything just goes whack, you know what I'm saying? I think we like injured him or something when he hit his head. I think that he's forgotten who he is and has become like, all jungle wild with amnesia.

We tried to regroup and stuff, but we couldn't, and we lost him. We last saw him going east down the 403. A real freaking man-tiger thing.

And Jade starts yelling her face off and that's when Sevon and me quit.

Things are only going worse.

Turns out that Tiger had some powerful friends. Man, buzz has it we got both Superman and Lex Luthor gunning for whoever kidnapped the tiger. And the people back at that Saunders place? There's a LOT of them, and they're seriously POd at us, you know what I'm saying? They find out I was involved and I'm gonna be sailing down a certain creek with no paddle. And we don't even know where the Tiger is now! Man, this sucks. We gotta be lying low now for awhile, and I don't think I'll be adding anything more to this site. The kicker is, the tiger like grabs a random bunch of papers as he's running out and they turn out to be like all these internet horror stories I printed out to read if we had to go into hiding. Icing on the crapola Croscola cake.

Hey, look, it's worse for Jade "Wah! They said it was a Halfori Hanso sword" Croscola. She actually has an online diary, that can be found right here and she's just so like whiney and everything. Man, this chick is supposed to be the local tough ninjette? We gotta get us a new employer.

Or maybe we gotta find ourselves another line of work. Crime just looks so freaking glamorous in the like movies and on A&E and stuff, but man, it's just a real good way of getting alot of people after your butt, you know what I'm saying?

Maybe when this blows over we could be Ninja cancer fundraisers.