I’m in this terrible writing class. While it’s certainly not the worst class I’ve ever taken, it’s by far the stupidest. Nevermind the fact that we haven’t been taught a single thing, unless you count “your stories must be super-saturated with elaborate ‘sensory details’” as learning something. It seems every person in the class, save for a select few individuals, has some kind of mentally retarding disease.

For the past several weeks we’ve been critiquing our fellow classmates’ work. We each exchanged copies of each other’s manuscripts so that each day we can arrange ourselves in the “circle of love” and critique three other students’ stories for two hours. Joy. Of course, most of said stories are pretty bland. A select few are gut-wrenchingly awful. The few good pieces are destroyed either by a class who does not understand them or an author’s comments on their own work, as they explain in excruciating detail why their piece is the most symbolic thing ever written.

Yesterday my short story was critiqued. It was a piece of crap, I have no delusions about that. Don’t worry though, I’ll be sure to upload it here, glorifying it as a new article, just as soon as I can find a teaser image to go with it. Its craptitude wasn’t enough to prevent me from getting an A on it, an especially impressive feat considering many of my classmates got Cs on their stories, and with good reason. Still, the real joy came yesterday. The in-class critique itself was interesting, if completely unhelpful. Comments ranged from “I liked the details” to “I didn’t understand what was going on.” In short, the exact same comments every other short story has received.

As part of this critiquing assignment, we’re made to “mark up” our fellow students’ manuscripts, underlining segments we liked, suggesting how to improve the piece, and correcting any grammatical errors which may be present. It’s all pretty standard fare. After class yesterday, I got a chance to read over my marked up manuscripts and found the comments exceedingly entertaining. I’m sure dorkclub.com’s readership doesn’t consists of the smartest people on Earth. Hell, I read it and account for more than 20% of our daily hits. However, I’m sure when I use the phrase “the only object on my person,” you’re all more than capable of understanding what I’m saying. It is English, after all. Apparently it’s too much for college-level English students. Of the twenty-three manuscripts returned to me, eighteen had that phrase circled, underlined, or otherwise marked with some sort of comment dictating the reader was unable to understand it. The best comment was “handcuffs?,” (OMFG punctuation nightmare) if only because there were no handcuffs in the entire piece.

Still better, was several people’s tendency to confuse the first person narrator with me. It’s a fiction class, team, despite some students’ failure to realize so. No, I never murdered anybody. Neither did my father. Also, I’ve never found any dead eight-year-old girls in the woods, despite the fact that some of you thought so.

The best part is, my “unique thing about me” which I presented to the class on the first day of class was that I ran my own website – dorkclub.com. Hopefully some of them are reading right now.

Wedge55 no longer loves you. There will be no more stories about Germany — no more Vonich blades, kernel32, or canned fish. And no more Cuba.

Manatee no longer loves you. There will be no more social commentary, ninja forests, or odd seven-dimensional boys.

Piyonugget no longer loves you. There will be no more tales of his sexual misadventures or his thoughts on logic/God.

ShootMe no longer loves you (he never did).

Henceforth, this page shall be a degenerate malestrom of whatever I dinæ know! issues from me.

In other words, no change. Go about your DORK clubbing as usual, plz k thx lol wtf.

(vector_black likes things)

chapter 1

Falling asleep is
a wonderful thing
watch me
go
go
go

chapter 2

my statistically
normal
normal
statistically
normal
normal
lovely tea

cease-fire & conclusion

I am content and you are content today and every day.

[A. intent
B. concept
C. task to maneuver units
D. task to support units]

(vector_black angry roommate course)

I am interested in you! Your history fascinates me — where are you from? And where are you going?

I was blurting and carrying on with a basic cluster of friends this afternoon when one of them, quite without warning, gave me The Look. The one that lets you know you’ve said something moronic, the kind of thing that temporarily knocks one’s social standing to zero. As I said, this was entirely without warning or preamble, so I was quite surprised. Of course, I was talking about her family in an unsavory manner, so that may have had something to do with it.

But back to my original question –

(vector_black sits down)

PopcornChicken gets the Cool Person of the Week award, snatching the title from last week’s recipient, Pat Nixon, by bringing this to my attention. Cool beans.

In stupider news, I did this today. I am the king of pathetic.

Also: this site may or may not be slowly undergoing some design changes over the course of the next couple days, with Mario Kart: Double Dash!!’s level of face-rockingness being the deciding factor. So if you show up and find nothing but a bunch of broken images and the word “sperm,” just consider it part of the evolutionary process.

God is thought of as many different things. Generally God is thought of an idea of a god(s). I think of God as some sort of being that control’s. Specifically, I think of God as some asshole who decides how shitty my life is. Because, let’s face the facts. My life could only be this shitty by the grand design of some major architect.

I do not see any other explanation for the course of actions that have transpired in my short life span. The only explanation must be one that has some being of power that controls my life. In other words, the shittiness of my life is not my fault at all, but rather the work of some malevolent power who decides to punish me in different manners he sees fit.

(Piyonugget realizes that not all people believe in God(s), and Piyonugget is not even offering that god does or does not exist. In fact Piyonugget realizes the inherent flaw in believing in God. However, Piyonugget does not care either way, because Piyonugget is probably the asshole who is making your life shitty like his own.)

He jumped very high to be as exceptional as he could be. But his friend could jump just as high as he could! He despaired of ever impressing the girl and lived the rest of his life in mediocrity.

For all her persistence, she never did get it quite right. No matter how clear the image was in her mind, it wouldn’t render on canvass. Instead of trying harder, she let the easel sit in the corner. She also never wrote her novel, her song, or her play.

But someone among all these people was fantastically successful.

(vector_black sits down)

With Shonen Jump’s now infamous Final Fantasy XII spread floating through every website with “game” in it’s URL (plus a few choice extras), tonight seems like a great night for a Final Fantasy related update. However, rather than discuss, at length, Square-Enix’s reason for including completely interchangeable male and female heroes in their latest FF installment (honestly, can you tell the difference?), I think I’ll use this opportunity to cement my opinions on Final Fantasy X-2. Celebrate the relevance.

Final Fantasy X-2 looks pretty damned cool, and not just because the game stars three scantily clad females who understand the importance of butt cleavage even more so than Manatee (OMG CG GRRRLZ R HOTT). Though I’ve never played Final Fantasy X, and have no desire to do so, X-2’s fast paced, narrative-light gamplay really appeals to me. With thirteen job classes to chose from, including the absolutely ridiculous Singer and Gun Mage (it’s a Blue Mage, apparently) and sporting an extremely light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek narrative that favors exploration to straight linear progression, X-2 seems like a console RPG I could actually enjoy, especially after the intense RPG burnout I’ve been left with since playing through the RPG-heavy library of the PS1. That’s right, the entire library. I’ll be sure to save it a spot on my ever-growing list of PS2 games I’ll buy along with my backward compatible PS6. (That list consists of Ico.)

In further related news, Crystal Chronicles should not be allowed to exist.

Fun fact: I had to read through two reviews and a handful of previews before I was able to piece together all the above facts (all three of them). Is it really so hard to include information on the actual game your reviewing/previewing rather than rambling aimlessly about nothing in particular for 500 words? GamePro says yes.

There once was a man named Peter Jennings who was the anchorman and beloved king of a far-away land. He did his job, and gracefully.

(vector_black sees your dinner)

Though I have seen the events of existence play through my mind infinite times, there is a singular moment which replays twice for every other. It is important, but I do not know why. Doom does not know why. It is the beginning.

Cuba and I are standing atop a concrete wall encircling the perimeter of the city. It was constructed, years ago, from random pieces of the highways and buildings which did not survive the first attack, snakes of rebar jutting from all sides. It has not failed us yet. He is not the Cuba Gooding Jr. who lives now. He is different, darker. He is the Cuba I will meet for the first time in tens year’s time. He is no longer Vonich.

I see the sun rise over the horizon, bathing the world in a dusty white glow. We are in London, the London that was. The London that is lies below us. Beneath it waits the object of Doom’s desire. I can feel their presence, their proximity – Doom and Carmack. They are close. They bring with them the combined might of Germany and Kernel32: an army of Striders, human killers, Tracers, Vonich killers, and Breeders, those which do not kill, but create. An army of machines. Though they could destroy us with the forces already present, they await the arrival of an army from halfway across the world, an army fresh from destroying Tokyo. An army which will arrive any minute.

There are no humans left alive on the Earth. The only survivors now reside below. Below London.

Cuba’s back is turned to me as I begin to speak – begin to recite my lines. Though I’ve gone over them more times than there are numbers, my voice still shakes with uncertainty. “Should we succeed today, there may yet be a world left to remember what we accomplish,” I hear myself saying.

Cuba does not turn to face me, his figure is enshrouded in a gray cloak, torn and tattered from years of pain. Years of life. It flaps in the breeze like the wings of giant bat. Or a demon. I continue. I have no time to waste. It is the first time I have had a chance to speak with Cuba without his demon present. I will not get another. “Will our defenses hold?” I ask.

“You already know the answer.”

“Perhaps. But tell me, Cuba, what do you believe?”

“I believe I am ready to die. I believe I should have done so years ago. This world doesn’t need me, WORDZ, you know that.”

“But do you believe we will win?”

Cuba snorts, laughing to himself at the punchline to a joke only he can hear. “No. But we can fight.”

He motions towards me, behind me, to the army we have assembled. Ranks of Vonich and Yaw Kuh Buh fill the streets behind us, the select few who were able to become something other than what they were meant to be. In the distance, I see The Last Guardian decent a flight of stairs to the city below. She cannot help us now. She has something else more important worth protecting.

I nod in agreement. “And tell me, Cuba, before the fight beings, what did The Whisperers tell you all those years ago? What have you seen?”

“You already know that too.”

“I don’t know everything. Some things are foggy, holes left in an imperfect mind.”

Cuba grins, confident in the fact that he still holds some secrets. “They didn’t tell me anything that matters, nothing that will effect today’s outcome.”

“At least promise me this: before we die, will you tell me what they told you?”

“Before we die, I will.”

Behind us a single person is slowly ascending the wall, his footfalls against the concrete are louder than they should be. I turn just in time to see Cuba’s demon standing behind us, the twisted form of what was once a human boy. He sways slowly from side to side, chewing on his lower lip, drawing blood. From his belt hang two cans of tuna fish – two Vonich blades.

Above us, the SEMS wall begins to flicker and then disappears. We received no word from the power stations, the attack came too quickly. The air begins to fill with a dry, electric heat as the loud whirling of the machine’s Bulbs, that which grants metal life, surrounds us. It is so thick I can barely hear my own heartbeat. It is getting louder. The battle will be over in six hours, then we will know what fate has in store for us. Six hours I was plunged into the past after receiving sight. Six hours from the end I will lose it. Doom finds this hilarious.

“Don’t worry,” the demon says, his voice echoing through a dozen worlds, “it will be over soon.”

Then I go blind.