I used the online Playstation store to download Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee for my PSP. I've needed a simple game to tinker at for a while now. Something I could pick up and play for half-an-hour or so. Hot Shots certainly fits the bill. I suppose I could have hacked my PSP and uploaded a ISO file onto it, but I don't have the slightest clue how to do that. I know how to get the ISO files, and upload them, but it involves de-evolving my PSP to it's Homebrew origins. Plus I still need the blank memory cards to load them onto. Seems like too much of a hassle. I noticed, however, that this download has gone up in price, and it's a dollar cheaper to download it off the American server.

Through pspfanboy.com I've heard about numerous releases in Japan that will probably never see the light of day here in North America, like Moe Moe Niji Taisen, a WWII game spood involving barely-clad anime babes in place of real soldiers. It is very necessary that I be able to play it. Check out this pic: 

What's that do for you? That's what your grandpappy fought for, foo'.

Pspfanboy.com is forced to discuss Japanese releases because that's all that's going on with the PSP on a daily basis. Right now, the PSP is huge overseas. The Japanese version of PSN store is littered with downloadable content, whereas the North American version only has a handful of games you can actually play. The hitch is these games are in Japanese, so too bad, so sad, unless you're up to reading Kanji. Plus if you're registered in North America, it'll automatically transfer you back over to your American version of the site, sans Japanese game content. If you're on their U.S. site, however, might I recommend downloading the FFVII Crisis Core Theme for the PSP. It's stylin' and free.

I made coffee today. I enjoy coffee immensely, I just don't have the patience to brew it myself. Case in point: I pulled the coffee maker out of the cupboard last night in preparation for this morning. When I opened up the cover over the filter, I noticed that the previous filter had been left in place, complete with coffee grounds which had now gone moldy. I quickly disposed of these grounds and vigorously wiped down the machine and rinsed out every removable part. I then poured hot water inside and let it steam out just as an extra precaution. This morning I opened up a fresh can of Tim Hortons Extra Fine Grounds and brewed a pot. It tasted great, but the pot has a tendency to spill when you pour it. I went through 1/4 a roll of paper towels just cleaning up the mess.

Yesterday, I made tuna melts for lunch, which for me was a late breakfast at around 3:30. I would have used diced onions and olives, but I didn't have any, so it was just mayo, cheese and tuna on bread. I think I used too much mayo. I'd like one of those cuisinarts to dice up ingredients to make my meals a little fancier. I'd get a Magic Bullet, but I heard they're too difficult to scoop out and clean afterwards. For dinner, I made chicken fajitas, but I used ground beef seasoning and soft taco shells with some Nandos sauce to make it spicier. They turned out really sloppy, but they were still good.

I don't cook very much. It's not that I don't enjoy it, I just find there's too much time involved, or I don't have the right ingredients available, or else I'm saving them for something else, (ie. I'm saving the milk for my breakfast cereal).

I realized that my musical tastes may be too eclectic after listening to my iPod selection. I downloaded the new Madonna "Hard Candy" album for shits and giggles. I also listened to Feist, which I had recently uploaded, and Billy Talent and Aerosmith. After listening to a new surge of Aerosmith songs on the radio in preparation for their new game, I can say I no longer hate them, and all is forgiven. In contrast to this, I was also listening to Insane Clown Posse and G.G. Allin. I think anyone who has G.G. Allin and Madonna on the same iPod has serious mental problems, much like G.G. Allin and Madonna themselves. Excelsior!

While questing in Nagrand today in WoW, I received a whisper asking me to come and "tank" for, "Durn." Now, I of course assumed this was Durn the Hungerer, the object of a quest series in Nagrand, so I accepted. The bounty for this quest was hefty indeed. I could finally get my hands around a decent mace that would likely last me until I was level 70 Elite. However, as I made my way to Southern Nagrand, I was told I would not be facing Durn the Hungerer. Instead, I'd be travelling to Durnholde Keep. The name was familiar to me, but not as a dungeon. As I recalled, Durnholde Keep was a ruin in Alterac Valley inhabited by a band of bandits. I of course, had to wonder why I and five over high level players were needed in such a situation, where a level 23er by himself was sufficient. This was not the Durnholde I knew, however, but the Durnholde of the past, accessible only through a time portal.

After this was semi-explained to me, I was asked, "What other Durn is there?" Well, as I just illustrated, there's at least three. This is what it's like to receive private messages in WoW. If you watch the General Chat Channel, you'll see messages like, "LFM 2, Tank and DDPs for Kara Heroic Pre-Made, then have to go." Even I don't even quite understand. Ever since the expansion, all I've heard is, "Kara." I don't even know where, or what that is, or how to get there. All I know is that it's very desirable to go to Kara, but you have to have a massive group of level 70 players with you. Going through Kara repeatedly is all some people do all day, every day.

So I agree to go to Durnholde, but first I have to get transported to some time portal cave in the middle of Tanaris, fly a dragon around, and get a very long tour. The quest itself seemed easy enough. Our goal was to go into the past as humans and break Thrall, the future leader of Ogirmar out of prison. Thrall, by the way, is the 1337. He can cold cock you with one punch, and get dressed for war in a split second, but he still needs help escaping. If I was Thrall, I could kick my way through the prison wall and anyone who got in my way. Long story short, we wiped twice, and gave up, which is commonly why I don't bother with instances or even groups. I'm not a tank, I'm not a healer. I'm just a paladin who likes dishing out Judgement. These sorts of activities are not for me. I'd rather wipe out entire villages of ogres.

The Time Portal opened up new possibilities to WoW to me, however, and I may return in full force. The idea that you can actually reenact some of WoW rich history adds new life to the game.

I just finished watching Harold and Kumar Escape From Gutanamo Bay. Not to give too much away, but it has one of those gay-ass Wedding Crasher endings. You know the one I'm taking about. You can't watch any movie with a  wedding in it and not see this scene. The guy in love shows up, tells the bride he loves her, and that the guy she's marrying in a douchebag. There's a brief scuffle, and then the bride runs off with the other dude. It all originated with The Graduate. The only difference with The Graduate and every movie that followed, is that The Graduate was more or less realistic. If you tried pulling this shit off in real life, (which has NEVER happened) you're going to get the whole family coming after you. They're going to try to kill you, and not just immediately after. If you manage to escape, they're going to come to your house later, and kill you there. Not just the groom's family either. You're going to die East-Indian battery-acid style. The only reason Dustin Hoffman escape was because he was able to barricade the door, and there just happened to be a bus going by.

The only conflict that exists in the modern Graduate style endings is with the wedding crasher and the groom. There's like a five second fight, usually involving one punch. Then everybody in attendance just sits back and accepts it. It's like the wedding crasher has just become the alpha-male and there's no use in challenging him, 'cause you'll only get beat down. As the alpha male, he's also guaranteed pussy, namely the bride.

Other than a gay-ending, the movie was what you'd expect from a Harold and Kumar sequel set one week later involving Guatanamo Bay. Harold and Kumar always deliver on their movie's title. In Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, they went to White Castle. In Harold in Kumar Escape Guatanamo Bay, Harold and Kumar escape Gutanamo Bay. Beyond that, if you have any complaints with the movie, you shouldn't have been watching it in the first place. You got what you paid for, and $8.50 doesn't get you that much anymore.

On the way to the movie, however, we passed a police scene. Two cops cars and two fire trucks passed us, and stopped outside a church with teenagers pouring out of it, looking like they just saw someone get shot. I thought it was a fire, and said to myself, "Finally, a church on fire." Unfortunately, it turns out the floor collapsed during a Christian-Rock concert, probably because there were too many kids. I can't really imagine a Christian-Rock concert rocking so hard that it broke a church. That's fairly awesome. The news said 50-60 people were hurt. They didn't say anything about fatalities, at least. I'm guessing at the most, they only fell like 8-10 feet, which isn't much, except you're falling on other people and sharp, pointy floor boards.

I've seen some half-assed endings in my life, but the ending to Countdown to Final Crisis has to be one of the worst in recent memory. Countdown to Final Crisis was a weekly series spanning 52 issues and spawning numerous miniseries and one-shots. The basic plot followed the journey of three super heroes who should be dead, mainly because they have, in fact, died. Quite spectacularly, in fact. Jason Todd, Batman's second Robin, had his head cracked in with a wrench by the Joker, and then he was blown up. You don't get much deader than that. Except, he's up and walking around, and causing problems. Donna Troy and Kyle Radner, the Green Lantern have both died as well. Their presence is causing a rift in causality itself, threatening to break down the barriers between the 52 other alternative realities, watched over by the Monitors. The Monitors have decided to kill the three heroes, like they've already killed Duella Dent, the Joker's daughter, to protect their own dimensions. Bob, a renegade Monitor, takes them on a alternative-reality hopping trip in search of Ray Palmer, The Atom, who may hold the key to saving the multi-universes.

The sub-plots focus on Jimmy Olsen, Superman's best-friend at the Daily Planet, getting super powers, getting trapped on Apokolips and finding a hot purple bug-alien girlfriend. Then there's the Piper, who's being hunted for his involvement in the murder of the Flash, and then gets called up to Apokolips because he may have the key to the Anti-Life Equation. Then there's Karate Kid from the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century, who's dying of a super-virus. Then there's Mary Marvel, who's turned evil with the help of Eclipso's dark power.

All these stories come to a head, more or less, in Countdown to Final Crisis 2. Darkseid is about to claim the powers of all the New Gods who have recently been wiped out of existence. All he has to do is kill Jimmy Olsen. Problem is: Jimmy Olsen is now a living battery for all these powers, and he uses them to curb stomp Darkseid. That's right: Darkseid. Jimmy Olsen, the photographer who can't dress himself properly and needs saving by Superman every five minutes wipes the floor with Darkseid, who holds complete control of an entire planet and can kill using the Omega Beams shooting out his eyes. Darkseid: who's taken down the JLA more times than can be counted. Darkseid: the most dangerous and powerful villain in the DC Universe. Taken down by Jimmy Olsen.

Good God. At least Jason Todd had the right idea by saying, "Screw you!" and hanging up his cape before things got retarded.

I just finished reading, "Justice League Elite," a DC Comic series that ran for twelve issues around the time that, "Identity Crisis," and, "52," were being published back in 2004-2005. The basic concept is that the Justice League Elite is a group of super heroes, metahumans and reformed super villains who work together in a covert organization loosely affiliated with the real Justice League of America that officially does not exist. Their main goal is to stop meathuman terrorism while working deep undercover. Their two most well known members are the Green Arrow, and the Flash, who are reluctant participants at best. They don black versions of their costumes, one would assume, to keep their alternative super hero identities a secret should someone catch sight of them out on the field. Yet, it wouldn't be hard to discern that the archer using green arrows might be the Green Arrow, or the super speedster in black tights is the Flash. The other members are strictly B-list, even Apache Chief, former Super Friends Native-American hero. He's not called by this more well known name, however, but by his real name, Manitou. He uses his growth powers exactly twice during the series, so you'd have to pay close attention to guess his name. The leader is a woman name Vera, who lost her arms as a child, and had them replaced with cybernetic weapon-enhanced prosthetics. She also has the technologically bestowed power to change her identity. For the first two issues, she's impersonating DC baddie Deathstroke the Terminator, a fact that doesn't really come across that well, as it's part of some convoluted plan. There's a lot of confusing stuff like that, like the fact that their other member, an alcoholic Mister Disaster, has his head cut clean off in issue one, and he's back in issue two. Apparently it was a dummy the Flash replaced with the real deal at lightspeed. He does the same to the other two members, Menagerie and Coldcast. You don't learn much about any of these lesser known DC characters. You're just expected to have heard of them before, and to know everything about them. I thought that the bug-covered Menagerie was their enemy until I saw the whole team together. Coldcast, they say, took down Superman single-handedly. Meanwhile, there's another character, Kasumi, a deadly teenage sword-wielding ninja assassin, who's really Casandra Cain, Batgirl, who's wearing a mask under her mask to work double-undercover for Batman. They have their own director who's their mouthpiece, a Muslim who's there as some kind of anti-stereotype. He doesn't do a very good job of it.

The story basically rushes into the middle of things, and with all the shape-shifting undercover disguises, it's hard to tell who's who. Kasumi and Vera as Deathstroke get hired by a superhuman terrorist group working for the CIA to wipe out a third-world country. They're told to kill everyone in their path, only they fake it, using nerve strikes, etc. The JLE's big rule is no killing, even if they're a covert operation. That little rule doesn't make one bit of sense considering what they're doing for a living. The group nearly breaks up after the genocidal leader of this terrorist nation is killed, apparently by one of their own. They basically freak out at one another, over the killing of the equivalent of Osama Bin Laden. They go into tears over doing something that should get them a medal and a parade.

Then the story gets absolutely ridiculous, with the team going after alien drug dealers, who're using a kind of heroin to cultivate some kind of energy to open a portal to the end of time so their leader can steal the, "Whorlogog," which turns out to be this sexy chick, and Vera turns into her dead brother, a mind controller limey named Manchester Black. While this is going on, Green Arrow gives the shaft to Manitou's wife, and the big chief bites the big one to save the universe. The real JLA tries to step in to save the day, and ends up having to be saved. Then everything that happens gets unmade using the Whorlogog.

It's kind of a shame, really, because otherwise the comic looks great. The characters, the group and their interplay together had great potential. They had two love triangles going on by the fourth or fifth issue, and some deepening mysteries. And the idea of a terrorist fighting supergroup is a solid one, it just didn't pay off very well.

As a subscriber to http://www.michaelmoore.com/, I occasionally receive e-mails from the big (and I mean BIG) man himself, telling me what to do, and how to think. This, obviously, makes life much simpler. He'll instruct me on whom to vote for, whine, bitch, complain, and lash out, etc.

To be honest, I haven't visited his page in many years. I first subscribed after Farenheit 9/11 came out. It was a film that connected to me on a political level. My political philosophies have since change, and I've become far less liberal in my views. My interest in American politics has waned greatly since the outset of the Iraq War, basically because of the repetition involved therein. The idea that the average voter mattered was clearly disproved by the 2000 election, and has since been a matter of, "Sit down, and shut up." People will protest and complain about Bush/Cheney/Iraq/Afghanistan/etc. to the extent that it completely encompasses their lives, like the one woman who lead a crusade against George W. after the death of her son in the Iraq War, but they don't really count for anything. American politics is a circus, and the people standing outside the ring are merely the spectators. You can boo, and throw your popcorn at it, but that elephant is still going to lay a turd.

I'm going to post what Michael Moore has mailed me:

My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore

April 21st, 2008

Friends,

I don't get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn't get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.

So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote -- and yours -- on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?

I haven't spoken publicly 'til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don't give a rat's ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there's a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word "Democratic" next to the candidate's name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don't care if the name under the Big "D" is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Yes, Senator Clinton, that's how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can't win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry "Uncle (Tom)" and give it all to you.

But that can't happen. You cast your die when you voted to start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited from entering the Promised Land.

How sad for a country that wanted to see the first woman elected to the White House. That day will come -- but it won't be you. We'll have to wait for the current Democratic governor of Kansas to run in 2016 (you read it here first!).

There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what's going on is bigger than him at this point, and that's a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

I know some of you will say, 'Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?' That's a damn good question. In November of '06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?

I'll tell you why. Because I can't stand one more friggin' minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I'm almost at the point where I don't care if the Democrats don't have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain't "Bush" and the word "Republican" is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that's good enough for me.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years. That's why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters -- that big "D" on the ballot.

Don't get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time ago.

It's foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country. Any endorsement of a Democrat must be done with this acknowledgement and a hope that one day we will have a party that'll represent the people first, and laws that allow that party an equal voice.

Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, "Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for 'spiritual counseling?' THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!"

But no, Obama won't throw that at her. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be decent. She's been through enough hurt. And so he remains silent and takes the mud she throws in his face.

That's why the crowds who come to see him are so large. That's why he'll take us down a more decent path. That's why I would vote for him if Michigan were allowed to have an election.

But the question I keep hearing is... 'can he win? Can he win in November?' In the distance we hear the siren of the death train called the Straight Talk Express. We know it's possible to hear the words "President McCain" on January 20th. We know there are still many Americans who will never vote for a black man. Hillary knows it, too. She's counting on it.

Pennsylvania, the state that gave birth to this great country, has a chance to set things right. It has not had a moment to shine like this since 1787 when our Constitution was written there. In that Constitution, they wrote that a black man or woman was only "three fifths" human. On Tuesday, the good people of Pennsylvania have a chance for redemption.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MichaelMoore.com
MMFlint@aol.com

So the message is clear: even if he's despondent, even if he doesn't believe in the candidate,  he's demanding you vote for Obama. Demanding. There's this sense around Obama like he's some kind of new messiah, and that the second you vote for him is the second the Iraq War ends, and it's simply not that simple. Even if elected, Obama's going to be forced to carry out the Iraq was for at least two to three more years. That's how messed up the Iraq situation is. Obama has no choice in it. He can't just say, "Pack up and come home." No one would let him, no matter how sensible.

There's also the sense that voting for the Democratic Party is like a substitute for going to church. That Republicans are inherently evil, and therefore the Democrats, no matter how ineffectual, are somehow a force for truth and justice. I just don't see it. I just see a group who can't seem to get it together to make any sort of meaningful difference.

I don't honestly see why anyone would want to be the U.S. President right now. It's like they're entering into a new Great Depression/Cold War/Vietnam. It's going to be years until we see any kind of turn around, probably after election 2012, and by then the cyborgs will have taken over.

I watched a segment from the animated DVD feature from DCU/Warner Bros., entitled, "Justice League: The New Frontier," based on a graphic novel by the same title. When I say based: I mean based in terms of "V for Vendetta," or, "Sin City," was based on their graphic novels of origin. With direct to DVD animated features based on comic book super heroes being all the rage right now, this is the most accurate retelling of a comic book series, right down to the animation style. It's like you're seeing the book come to life. This is contrary to the Marvel features being churned out. It began, you might say, with their "Ultimate Avengers" DVD, which was based on their alter-reality Ultimates comic book series. If not a direct retelling, it borrowed key elements without delving into the grit, like Captain America's origins and costume design. With the sequel, they strayed even farther away from the comic book series, while inversely, the comic book series was becoming more popular. Then there was the "Invincible Iron Man" DVD, which was a completely butchered reinvention of Iron Man's origin story. Marvel's coming out with another DVD soon starring never-before seen children of the Avengers, and it looks horrible, even if it was intended for a kiddy show, which it's not. I think they're trying to reach too wide a demographic, and failing. My point is: Marvel openly attacked DC over the original storyline for "Superman Returns." Their argument was that the plotlines for "Spider-Man," and "Spider-Man 2" was at least loosely based on the comics (although "Spider-Man 3" was just an abortion onscreen). The fact is, Marvel seems to be spiralling away from their comics now, whereas DC is copying it's stories. Animated featured based on graphic novels has huge potential, especially considering the catalogue at DC. Marvel could easily capitalize on the same market, but they're refusing to even copy their graphic style. They're far too into computer animation and colouring. The Marvel Universe has it's own look, and that doesn't come across in their DVDs or their movies. They even changed Spider-Man's costume for all three movies, and the Hulk in his movie, despite being a giant green steroid-freak monster, still doesn't quite look like the Hulk. At least the Batman movies has the excuse of changing Batman's costume around, because he goes through so many different costumes in the comics himself. The alterations in Superman's costume in "Superman Returns" are so minor you'd literally have to get a magnifying glass to see (his costume is made up of thousands of Superman "S's"). Yet, when Marvel has such a large amount of creative control over their animated DVD features, you get the sense they're letting themselves down.

I think I'm going to try to watch the Doctor Strange DVD and the rest of The New Frontier tomorrow, and maybe even watch the Iron Man DVD for real.

I was watching the new South Park Episode called, "Over Logging," about a world in which there was no internet, outside of a refugee camp in Cali-forn-i-a. People would emigrate there for the chance at 40 seconds a day to be online.

My girlfriend asked last night what I would do without the internets. For one thing, I wouldn't be able to masturbate anymore, which was a problem Stan Marsh had. Secondly, I wouldn't be able to download any comics, or music, or TV shows or movies. I wouldn't be able to look at some of my favourite sites to entertain myself. I wouldn't be able to watch the "Numa Numa" guy, or MSN people, or play WoW, or write blogs that no one reads.

Well today, my internet and cable went out. Fortunately, I was at work for most of the duration, so I didn't have a, "No beer and no TV makes Homer go something-something," moment. And now it's back, FOREVER! Hooray!

On the subject of the internet coming back, demonoid.com is back online too, so I can download crap I want instead of searching for hours through piratebay.com.

On the way home from work, I heard a D.J. mix of "Sweet Child of Mine," by Guns 'N Roses leading into "Come as You Are," by Nirvana. The song playing over these two songs as they led into each other, however, was "Whoop, There it Is." WTF?

Once again, I find my life imitating a cartoon. Lately, I've been attacked in WoW while questing in Terrok Forest by another played, dpsguy. You know you're teh hardcorez when you spell your name all in small letters. This player is an Alliance Rogue, so he stealths up behind you while you're battling NPCs and backstabs you to death. My first encounter happened while fighting my way through a throng of cultists. I had just finished killing off three NPCs at a time, and my health was almost gone, but I had opened up a path into the main lair. Then, all of a sudden, death. For a moment, I was shocked, wondering what had happened. Then, I see him looming over me.

Since this is a PvP server I'm on, I assume I'll be attacked at inopportune times. Once, I was even murdered in the farthest corner of Ogirmar while blacksmithing, by a Rogue who had stealthed his way through the entire city. One second, I'm hammering out a piece of armour, the next I'm lying dead. No one even saw it. If you're a Horde member anywhere near Tarren Mill on a PvP server, you will be murdered by no less than a full group of six level 70ers, repeatedly. Yet, when you're level 64 and on par with your would-be attackers, you don't expect a sneak attack.

The chat log is filled up with players calling out for dpsguy's death. If anyone could catch him in the act, I'm assuming they could carrying out on their threats. I was about to finish a difficult escort quest, when suddenly, dpsguy drops out of stealth and attacks me again. My mana was at about zero, but I had enough enough health to stay alive. He stopped, as if stunned that I had survived at all. I looked through my inventory for a quick heal, but found I had used up my supplies, so I ended up dying during the next few seconds. As I walked back to my corpse while in ghost mode, I failed the escort quest, which had been near completion.

This reminds me, of course, of the one South Park episode, Make Love, Not Warcraft, where the boys are continually attacked by another player every time they log on. He even looks the same as the enemy character in that episode.

For revenge, I'm going to go pwn some noobs. It's a vicious circle of murder and revenge.

According to the logs, this is all this player does all day, every day. It's not even an effective way to rank up honour points, considering you might have five kills in an hour this way, compared to 100+ running Alterac Valley. It's simply to be a dick, which sums up the pre-pubescent Allaince players perfectly.

In other PvP news, I ran into a Night Elf Priestess in the Blood Elf capital city. She was walking down the main road, unmolested. Shocked, I reined in my Pale Green Hawkstrider and asked her how she had survived. Not speaking the language, she did not reply. I dismounted and set up a Romantic Picnic Basket to reward her for her bravery, and we ate along with another Blood Elf Paladin. I played around with my Tonk Tank for a little while before continuing on my way to the Flight Master.

I had a dream last night that started out like an over-dramatic music video and then turned into a very odd post-apocalyptic/baseball movie. Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers was on the Golden Gate Bridge, wearing a black suit. The sky was clouded and there were parked cars everywhere. Police were trying to escort everyone off of the bridge, but there was chaos. Slow, soft music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers was playing. A brunette woman in a black dress was running towards Anthony Kiedis and you could tell by her expression that the two had some sort of history together. Before she could reach him, however, a man in a tuxedo stops her by taking her arm. She looks to him, and then he looks to Kiedis and there's this interplay. The subtext of their emotions is that she's in love with Kiedis, but in a relationship with this man. As he leads he back the other way across the bridge, in begins to crumble, and a massive flood of water drags everyone down. The last thing you see is Kiedis with his eyes closed.

The next day, you see Kiedis huddled in life raft with a few other survivors. The sky is black, and there's water everywhere.

Time passes, maybe even twenty years, and the water has receded. You see a blonde Jennifer Tilly, but she has a problem. A giant monster is trying to escape her vagina. You can see ten foot long fingers and tentacles protruding from beneath her skirt, and then slip back as she beats them away. Occasionally, these will reach out and snatch a car and toss it into the air before she can stop them.

Now, Kiedis is trying to put together a baseball team, and he wants Jennifer Tilly in more ways than one, but her condition is making it difficult. He can't even get near her. She's reluctant, but he shows her how she can use her monster vagina to play baseball. The last thing you see is a trailer screen for the movie with her wearing a red and white striped baseball uniform putting a jockstrap on and locking it in place while fingers and tentacles poke out from behind her panties.

I just wish I could remember the title.

About two weeks ago, the Abbotsford Tradex was host to Taboo, a sex convention featuring mainly vendor booths for adult items. This past day in the local news, there's an article about a mother who stormed into the Taboo show on it's second day with a photo of her fifteen-year-old daughter draped over a motorcycle, wearing fuck-me pumps and a corset. This picture was taken at Taboo, and was proof that her daughter had attended, while under-aged. It's also alleged she had consumed alcohol on the premises. Now, the mother is threatening to sue the hosts of the event on trumped up charges.

Here are some of the problems I have with this woman and her daughter: First off, they published the photo in the paper with a thumb over the girl's face. There is no way in hell anyone would have thought this girl was fifteen. I'd say 20-years-old, minimum, if I hadn't been told different. This girl is straight-up jail bait. I think publishing a photo like this in the paper borders on child porn, considering her age. I personally want to know where a girl that old gets an outfit like that, 'cause if the mother bought her those clothes, she deserves to be slapped. She's got on fuck-me pumps, the shortest skirt possible and a corset. No fifteen-year-old should be dressing like that, even if they're crashing a sex show. I don't need that kind of trouble. No one does.

Secondly: how the hell did she get to the convention? Someone over the age of consent had to be driving her and so they must have known what was going on. Probably her friends, or maybe even a boyfriend. To get into the convention legally, they had to be at least 19. 15-year-olds shouldn't be hanging out with 19-year-olds in any event. I can't see how that arrangement can happen without causing problems. If the fifteen-year old is out partying with 19-year-olds, I can guarantee there's going to be alcohol involved.

Thirdly: she likely used a fake I.D. to get in. I was there, and I saw them checking I.D.. I was probably there the same time as this 15-year-old girl was. Hell, I probably saw her walk by looking like a slut and thinking, "Man, she's hot," (and this is the kind of thing that gets men like me arrested). Maybe she was one of the girls I saw in body paint. The mother's saying that's impossible that her daughter had fake I.D., but her mother is clearly incompetent as a mother.

Let us then discuss the mother in greater detail: This is a woman who obviously has no control whatsoever over her daughter. After all, he daughter is a 15-year-old dressing like a slut and getting drunk. If she's going to sex conventions at age 15, she's obviously going to be a burned-out whore at age 19. This woman's first reaction to discovering that her daughter was at a sex show was to then go to that sex show and complain and loiter around a while. She then decided to go to her local news outlet and tell her story. So she wants everyone to know how horrible she is at being a mother and how slutty her daughter is. That's understandable.

Now, as I said, she's trying to sue the convention and the local pro-Christian media is trying to use this as an excuse to never have the convention again. They were saying they had over 200 complaints from local residents, many of whom I assume are not getting laid, and have dried up years ago, so that the merest thought of sexual encounters gives them phantom pains in their nether-regions.

My thoughts on all this are as follows: it's not reasonable to blame someone for letting a minor into an adult only event when that person looks like they're probably older than the person checking the fake I.D.. It is reasonable to blame the minor. I mean, why are all the penalties incurred by the host? Why not lay some charges against the minor? Just 'cause they'll automatically get off? Every time I play a game online, or install a new program on my computer, I have to click an, "I Agree," box on a fifteen page document, stating that my balls will be sued to the wall if I even THINK of doing something that MIGHT be slightly out of the CONTEXT of whatever the hell it is I'm supposed to be doing. So by entering these adult-only events, isn't the person agreeing that they are, in fact, an adult? Isn't the minor, therefore, breaking some arrangement? Why can't they be fined, then? In Chilliiwack, growing up, they tried to shut down every bar and club in town over minors sneaking in, and there'd always be a bouncer at the door checking I.D. So it's not like they're not trying to weed out the minors. When I was 23 and looking 29 with my flab and my bald-spot, they'd look at my I.D. and say, "This isn't you." They'd try to keep me from entering, even when I had PROPER I.D. There are checks-and-balances in place to keep minors out of these places, but they don't always work. The typical solution was to shut down the offending party, but what about the minors? They can just go to the next bar and do the same thing. There's nothing really stopping them, once they know they can get away with it the first time. So fucking take them to court and fine them. It'll stop them from drinking when they don't have any money left for their allowance.

In this case, it is the mother's fault for not looking after her kid, and it's the girl's fault, for being a dirty whore, albeit hot jail bait.

I was thinking recently about the named applied to the new wave punk. Now from the outset, EMO does appear to be very emotional, dealing mainly with issues that a brooding teenager might dwell over on their myspace page, but doesn't all music about emotion? What's a love song without love? Heavy Metal is all about pent up anger. Pop is all about feeling good. Rhythm and Blues is all about soulfulness. Punk is all about saying giving the middle finger to someone. Grunge is all about despondency. Every musical movement isn't so much about a lifestyle than about how that lifestyle makes you feel. You can pinpoint the shift in musical genres by the very way they make you feel. Country music went from being about "a tear in your beer," to being proud to be an American. If a song or a genre doesn't have this emotional kick, it's just background noise. EMO is really just the first genre to admit it's all about the emotional element. That self-destructive element of EMO might be very dangerous to the individual, and yet it says something very deep about the human condition, even if that doesn't necessarily come across in the lyrics. It's more about cause and effect, I suppose.

I've had a series of bizarre dreams lately. Last night, I dreamt I woke up with long, flowing hair. It kept changing in length and style until eventually I ended up with hair exactly like Kurt Cobain pre-suicide.

Another dream I had was like a movie based on World of Warcraft, if a really bad direction like that Bloodrayne guy made. Basically, a bunch of World of Warcraft orcs were in a prison run by a bunch of Lord of the Rings orcs. Lord Thrall broke into the dungeon to break the other orcs out. As he was escaping, all hell broke loose. A pair of LOTR orcs mistook him for another guard, and asked him which way the WoW orcs went. He pointed down an ominous tunnel with water lining the ground like a sewer. Scary noises came echoing down from it's depths. The one LOTR orc said, "I'm not going down there!"

To which, Thrall replied, "Don't worry about it. Here, take this to protect you," and he produced a tiny little knife no bigger in size than a toothbrush.

The other orc asked, "What do I get?"

To which Thrall answered by taking out a sword that looked like it could fell a mighty oak in one swoop. It looked made of some mystical stone, and it's hilt was decorated with monstrous engravings of teeth and skulls.

Now armed, the two orcs entered the tunnel, and a little blue translucent monkey, armed with a needle with with a glowing blue liquid jumped out from behind the door. It proceeded to maul them much in the way the Killer Rabbit did in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Thrall watched them die, and then said, "Fuck this," and stuck a mace against the keystone to the arc above the tunnel, collapsing it and sealing away the grim scene.

I missed a two hour meeting this morning at work, because there was a power outage at around 4:00 a.m.. I was woken up by a brief burst of noise from the radio before it died. I was supposed to wake up at 5:00 to get ready for work at 6:00. My iPod told me the time was around 3:45, which was far too early for any human being to be waking up, so I went back to bed and hoped the power came on by itself before I had to get up again. I woke up at 5:22, according to my iPod, which left me just enough time to get ready, but the power was still out, so I had to scramble around for matches and candles and there was no hot water for my shower. When I got down to my car, the clock radio told me it was 6:45. The clock on my iPod had been wrong since they changed the date for daylight savings this year, so I went back upstairs and back into bed and slept for another four hours like a normal human being instead of showing up an hour late for a two hour meeting, but now I have to show up at work at 2:00 p.m. and work until 9:00. 

Chapter 25
The Belly of the Beast

Emisa shifted uncomfortably on the worn wooden bench that lined the wall of the scretary’s office. Far from popular belief, the Gestro Headquarters, or the Protectorate as it was often called, was sparsely furnished. People imagined that the Gestro lived like royalty using their tax dollars. One step inside the head office would shatter any misperception. The room had gone without renovations for at least forty years. It was as if they had a pathological fear of decoration. The faded white plaster was flaking off of the walls, revealing deep cracks and water stains beneath. The bare concrete floor showed the wear of a thousand footsteps over untold years. Light came from three bare bulbs suspended from the ceiling like condemned men, and a desk lamp illuminating a computer console. The computer on the desk was the only source of modern technology, while the woman using it was ancient and gray as the room itself.
Dorcet beside her leaned forward and peered through the opaque glass of the office door. As he moved, the bench creaked like the doors of a haunted house. Emisa had to restrain herself from hitting him. The secretary did not bother to look up from her incessant typing. She had yet to look at them at all.
“How long is this going to take?” Dorcet whispered to her as softly as he could, which still sounded loud in that empty room.
“Shut up,” was all she could muster as a response.
Immediately after the words passed her lips, the wheel of the bank vault door of entrance began to spin, admitting one scrawny figure dressed in the blackest of blacks. His uniform cap was pulled so tightly down over his head that his eyes were completely concealed beneath it’s brim. Nevertheless, he seemed to have no trouble seeing. The brim turned towards them as he passed towards the desk. He looked like a black swan swimming through the room.
Pausing at the desk, he leaned heavily onto it with his knuckle. “I must speak to the Chief immediately,” he insisted.
The secretary, without looking at him, reached over and pressed the intercom button. “Officer Gresba is here to see you, sir.”
“Send him in...” the voice on the other end responded in a crackling voice.
She reached under the desk and pressed a button. The door buzz and Gresba immediately dodged inside.
“Gresba, who is he?” Dorcet whispered.
Emisa blanched. “He’s...” she breathed deeply, “the one who...” she couldn’t finish.
“Emisa?” Dorcet looked concerned.
“He’s the one who looks after the... camps...” she explained further.
“Ah,” Dorcet acknowledge. The full impact didn’t strike him for a few moments. “So he’s...”
“He’s the one,” Emisa nodded. “He’s the one who takes them away.”
“My Gods,” Dorcet paled alongside her. “The Devil.”
“That is what they call him,” Emisa whispered directly into her ear, “but be quiet.”
Dorcet swallowed hard, and with it, he gulped down his troubled emotions. He was begining to feel lightheaded, and it wasn’t just the stifling heat.
Minutes passed by, counted off by a row of clocks on the wall, each measuring a different time zone. Voices murmured inside the head office, sweeping to them from underneath the crack in the door.
Suddenly, the door swung open and Gresba stood in the emptiness. “You,” he bade them, “come in,” he nodded them forward.
Dorcet rose unsteadily to his feet, with Emisa clinging onto his arm. She was as frightened as he was. He felt like a grade schooler being called into the principal’s office, but the man on the other side was not the kindly Mr.Greaves, he was evil incarnate.
Shuffling through the door, Dorce laid eyes on the man who ran it all, Chief Officer Saladros, and what he beheled was a shrivled old man in a threadbare suit. His hair was completely white, an almost perfect white. It was as if all colour had been drained from his being, leaving behind only the impression of life. He was bent over the desk, as though it were the only thing keeping him upright, in his hands he held a engraved pen, bathed in the glow of a bank of monitors lined behind him.
“Do you know why I called you in here?” Saladros said in a voice that defied his great age. “Hmm...?” he leaned back in his chair, tapping the pen into his hand as he observed them. “A couple of young bucks like you?” Reaching out, he turned a computer monitor towards them, and pointed with his pen. “Do you see these lines? These represent the trajectories of 27 nuclear missles, which were launched at out nation merely four hours ago. The reason we are not all dead is due to your rebel friends.

Chapter One
Old Wounds

Under the omnipresent light of a bare bulb, she delved her slender fingers into the cigarette carton and fished around. She had been sitting in that same hard seat for two uninterrupted hours. Nicotine was her only release. The stale coffee growing cold on the table tasted as though it had been filtered through her laundry hamper. There was no decoration to the room besides the overtly obvious two-way mirror and  the blue tiles of the walls and floor. She was not held in place, but the chains were there, waiting for a more hardened criminal than her. They didn’t even consider her a threat. They should have seen her during the war.
In an expression of her contempt, she used the coffee cup as an ashtray. She had not been told she couldn’t smoke, but then she hadn’t been told she could. If no one was going to clarify things for her, she was going to take it upon herself to make her own rules.
As her cigarette grew as he patience, the door swung open and a man poked his head through and smiled at her. It was a boyish smile on a shaved smooth face. Stubble, however, wasn’t the only thing he was missing. He laid a briefcase inside the room, then came in and shut the door. His entire left arm was gone, the sleeve of his indigo blue shirt pinned to the shoulder. “So you’re the long arm of the law?” she surmised as she billowed smoke from her nostrils.
He gave her a quick look, but not anger. “You could say that,” he said as he brought the briefcase to the table. “My name is Inspector Winters,” he announced himself as he opened his case and pulled out his files. “Sorry for keeping you waiting so long,” his tone of voice made it quite clear that he was not.
“That some file there,” she noted of the fat vanilla folder he let drop on the table beside him. It was as thick as a telephone book. “Is that all for me?”
“I like a good read,” the man smiled for the first time as he sat down. “Helps me get to sleep at night. This is a no smoking facility,” he told her.
She responded by exhaling a long string of smoke.
“I’m going to have to ask you a few questions,” he said plainly.
“Oh? Really? I never thought you’d bring me to an interrogation room for questioning,” she said sarcastically. “This is the worst date I’ve ever had.”
He almost laughed, but not quite. “From what I’ve read, you’re overtly familiar with this scenario, Trina,” he leafed through her folder, “but we’re not the Gestro.”
“Of course you’re not. The Gestro doesn’t like...” her eyes were looking at something that wasn’t there.
“Yes, the war,” he explained his injury. “Some of us didn’t fare as well as you have.”
“Me? I don’t remember winning any medals,” she said.
“Because when you were through, there was no government in power who could award them. But from what I read, you appear more than deserving of your share.”
“Why thank you,” she nodded with pleasure. “But if I’m such a hero, why am I being held in this police station?”
“Because at four-eighteen this afternoon, you were involved in a car bombing that killed seventeen people,” he explained as he closed the folder.
“Involved? How delightfully vague. I love all the implications that can be read into that,” she protested.
“Both you and I know you had nothing to do to with causing this  incident, but there are other considerations. You may have been the target of this attack.”
“No,” she said simply.
“It’s a possibility,” he assured her.
“So someone knew I’d be driving by there on my moped, and had a trap waiting?” Trina was incredulous.
“You underestimate your enemies,” he told her.
“I didn’t know I had any,” she smirked.
“You, and your faction, were responsible for the dismantling of the secret police force that ruled this nation for over a hundred years. Where do you think those member went after their base of operations was destroyed? They’re still out there, and they’re still active. And likely, they want you dead.”
Trina dropped her cigarette in her cup. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not. Cases have been piling up on my desk. We’ve been trying to track down these war criminals for past two years. Some of the people who’ve been hunting them have wound up dead. My partners, for example. All in inconspicious accidents. Never outright murder. Now, this bombing is all over the news. Officially, they’re calling it an attack by the insurgent rebels, which is what I hope it is. We have people investigating that particular viewpoint as I speak And yet, another opinion is that you did it.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? she swore.
“You’ve been blacklisted, Trina. You’re a traitor to your own nation, according to the old regime. According to the new, you’re national hero. They say those who win the battle write it’s history. Well there are those who think they haven’t lost yet, and they want you as the villain. Others, like the old pencil pushers and green rookies around the water cooler, haven’t clued in to the new way of thinking yet. They’re still trapped in the Gestro’s mindset. And to them, you’re the enemy.”
“So what do you think of me?” she leaned forward to ask him.
“I think you’re in over your head, and you’ve been that way for quite some time. Until evidence proves that no threat exists against your life, I’m placing you under our protection,” he proceeded to write something down.
Trina pulled out another cigarette. “So is that it? We’ve gone from martial law to a police state?”
“It’s all we have right now,” he said regretfully. “Change is never easy.”
“I didn’t think it would be,” she ran her fingers through her matted hair.
“Are you feeling okay?” he asked her seriously.
“No,” she shook her head. “I was nearly killed by a bomb today, but it’s nothing new, I suppose. You know the difference between now and the war? During the war, a car bomb like that would never make the news. You would never even know it had happened.”
“Unless you were there...” the investigator cleared his throat.
“Bomb?” she pointed to his missing arm.
“Yes, thank you for noticing,” he gritted his teeth.
“Sorry if I’m not in the most pleasant of moods today. You see, I was nearly killed coming back from the record store and now you’re telling me that it might have been me they were after.”
“It all seems so coincidental, doesn’t it? That you, being who you are, just happen to drive by at that exact moment?” he suggested. “But it doesn’t quite fit. This wasn’t a route you took regularly, now was it? So it was not part of your daily routine. It would have to have been a spontaneous decision after following you throughout the course of that particular day. It’s too disorganized. For instance, it didn’t succeed in killing you.”
“Ruined my moped,” she said. “But you got me all worked up about some crazy-ass conspiracy theory, and then disprove it on your own? What the hell do you need me for then?”
“But then, it was hardly a likely venue for a terrorist attack. It’s a small, quiet area, with a lot of foot traffic. Why would they choose it? If they’re out to make a statement, wouldn’t there be a better target?” he debated.
“Why are you asking me?” she laughed nervously.
“Helps me think,” he admitted as he leaned back in his chair. “There’s nothing about this case I like.”
“Not even me?” she batted her eyelashes.
“Do you know the location of Gregol Manners?” he asked straightforwardly.
She flung her cup of coffee right in his face and drew back from her chair. It had long since gone cold, so it did nothing to him other than to ruin his perfectly clean shirt. “Fuck you!” she swore at him from across the room, where she had retreated. “Is that what this is all about? You want to drag that out? Fuck you!”
Reaching inside his pocket, he pulled out a handkerchief and dried his face. “Mr.Manners is on our most wanted list, and you were closer to him than anyone else.”
“Most wanted? Do you forget what he did? Did you forget that he was the one that destroyed the Gestro? The one that ended to war?”
“Then one that killed 3012 people at the Gurteph Concentration Camp?” he added.
“Fuck you! That’s a fucking Gestro lie!” she swore at him, practically in tears.
With his one hand, Winters calmly produced a file from his briefcase and opened it so that it faced her. “These are pictures from Gurteph, complete with testimony from over one thousand eye witnesses, or shall I say survivors?”
“That’s fake,” she said without looking at them. She had seen enough pictures of burned corpses on the news to last her several lifetimes.
“I’m not asking you to believe, I’m asking where he is,” Winters said as he inspected his shirt. With a grunt of frustration, he unknotted his tie.
“I don’t know,” Trina said flatly.
“So you haven’t had any contact with him in the past two years?” he asked.
Strugling with her emotions, she shook her head.
“Sources say that the two of you were lovers at one point,” Winters declared.
“So? So what the fuck do you want? I don’t know where he is. No one knows where he is. It’s like he doesn’t exist any more,” she drew on her anger to keep from crying.
“No, no one does...” he exhaled deeply. “I was commissioned by our interim government to hunt down these alleged war criminals and bring them to justice. Now no matter whatever else I believe about Gregol, I believe he was responsible for those deaths in Gurteph. You can swear at me all you want, but I was there. I visited that site. And the only horror greater than that concentration camp, was how it was ended.”
“What the fuck do you know?” she was crying now. She turned away from the two-way mirror, suddenly aware of unseen eyes watching her.
“I just want to be able to go to the victims and say that it’s over. That Gregol died in that incursion. That would be for the best. I don’t want to see him brought to justice. For a man to do something so great for his nation, and his people, and for peace, and then commit and act so vile and evil, is unthinkable. I personally don’t know if I could stand it.”
“How could you say that?” she was sobbing now. “How could you say that about him? Do you know who he was? Did you know what that thing did to him? It couldn’t have been him. Don’t you understand? It wasn’t him.”
“Then tell me what you know,” he insisted.
“I don’t know anything!” she screamed at him. “You tell me what you know!”
Winters looked at her for a long while then rose to his feet and said, “I can’t do this.” Walking up to the mirror, he repeated himself to those watching from the other side, “I can’t do this.” Turning back to her, he explained, “I’m sorry, but I had to press. I might never get another opportunity like this. Even with you in my custody, there’s no telling how safe you may be. The Gestro has it’s members everywhere, as it always has. Even likely within this building. If something were to happen to you... I’d be losing my only chance. Do you understand? I know that you shared a relationship with Mr.Manners, and that he rejected you. I also know that shortly thereafter, you voluntarily checked yourself into a privately funded mental health facility. You were treated for depression, brought upon by a series of events during the war, your breakup with Gregol, and the discovery that your parents had been killed in an attack. But at the same time as you were recovering, Gregol was growing increasingly insane. Whatever process was used to create his power was driving him mad, and it drove him to kill those people at Gurteph. Whether it was intentional, or an accidental excess of force, I don’t know. I fear it may have killed him, or else he killed himself. If I can prove it was a freak occurrence, then I can clear his name. Some of us want our heroes to stand tall, Trina. Gregol was one of mine. After the war ended, I knew we had found someone who could lead us. You knew that too, but he turned his back on all of us.”
“He never turned his back on anyone, but himself,” she explained. “All he ever wanted from life was peace, but the Gestro took that away.”
“And so he took them away. Quite effectively, but not permanently,” Winters shook his head. “You know how I can be absolutely sure it was him at Gurteph? Because I’ve been there, and I’ve been to where the Gestro headquarters once stood, and I see the same scar. It was his handiwork in both places.”
The knowledge that striking an officer inside a police station was the only thing that stayed her hand. “You don’t know anything.”
“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m here,” he straightened his lanky hair. “But all this talk of Gregol brings me to another possibility. That it was him who destroyed the vehicle this morning.”
“What?” she stammered. “Are you the one who’s crazy?”
“No. Think about it. Magic could have played a definite role in this attack, and Gregol was a pyrokinetic. The greatest who ever lived. Remember the circumstances: the non-strategic choice of location, the coincidence that you were driving by, and the spontaneity. And our investigators have yet to uncover as trace of explosives. Which would mean that it wasn’t a car bomb. The unmanned vehicle was ignited by some non-mechanical means. So no bomb. Pyrokinesis.”
“So now you’re saying I have a pyrokinetic stalker with bad aim?” she was confounded.
“The two theories I’m working with right now is that it was either a magic using Gestro, or else Gregol himself.”
“Why would Gregol want to kill me,” she was shocked, “even if he was alive?”
“Why would Gregol want to kill anyone? You said it yourself, that he was committed to pacifism. Yet, he killed those innocent prisoners at Gurteph. A concentration camp where his own father was once interned. A man doesn’t change just like that,” he snapped his fingers. “If he’s alive, he knows what he’s done, and it must be driving him further into the pits of madness. He may see you as a source of his confusion, hence the reason he may be following you. And the reason why he attempted to kill you today.”
“That’s some pretty heavy bull shit you’re trying to feed me,” she said.
“It’s not my favourite theory at the moment, I admit. But I tend to consider every possibility, no matter how remote. Once you’re able to eliminate every theory but one, then you have your answer. And  for the moment, I can’t rule it out.”
“So if that’s not your best theory, what is?” she demanded.
“A pyrokinetic Gestro with a vendetta,” he told her.
“That’s pretty far-fetched too,” she told him.
“Oh? Don’t think it could happen?” he smirked. “How do you think Dorcett died?”
Her silence expressed her utter disbelief.
“It was the Gestro,” he confirmed. “We have an admission from an active cell of the Gestro Underground, but no one has been brought to justice for the crime. Dorcett was killed by magic using assassins for his part in the destruction of their organization.”
“I was never told how he died,” she admitted.
“And you don’t want to. It was difficult to identify him and the members of his family. We tried contacting you afterwards with the details, but you had been institutionalized out of the country,” he explained. “We wanted you to know about the threat.”
“So we’re all on a hit list?” she was exasperated.
“Indeed,” he told her honestly.
“So why didn’t anyone bother to tell me about this until now? I’ve been back for months now,” she was growing angry again. Her memories of the war were becoming faint. When she thought about it now, she didn’t remember the fallen bullet shells, or bodies buried in the mud, she remembered her friends and allies. The horror of it was being filtered through the smile of one man, and her brief experience with love.
“There has been growing opposition to your allies in the past months. People are becoming frustrated with the peace effort, and Gurteph is weighing strongly in their minds. There are those, even within my own organization, that think you’d be better off dead.”
“So is that it? No one’s going to help?”
“I’m trying to help you, but you’re not making it easy,” he pulled on his damp shirt, so it didn’t cling to his skin.
“You’re not making this easy, either,” she accused. “You bring me here, tell me I’m little more than a terrorist, being chased by terrorists, and the only man I ever loved is out to kill me?”
“I’ve only presented you with possibilities,” he said in way of defence. “I don’t want you to make any decisions based on poor information.”
“But that’s the only thing you’re giving me. Poor information.”
He shrugged his one shoulder, as the other was paralysed.
“Wait...” she thought for a moment. “What decision are you talking about?”
“If you want our protection,” he explained. “If you cooperate with us, we may have a better chance of capturing this Gestro cell and bringing them to justice.”
“I thought you said I was already under your protection,” she replied suspiciously.
“Legally, I can’t hold you without charging you. But I can have my people watch you. And I will, whether you like it or not. But I’m proposing that you work with us. I can officially charge you in connection with the car bombing this morning, even though we both know you’re innocent. That will give us a cover story for removing you from the public eye and hiding you somewhere safe.”
“So you want to turn me into a fugitive for my own protection? You’re fucking nuts,” she said almost admirably.
“I’ve been told that a few times,” he admitted. “We can give you a new identity, and a new life. Or you can go back to your old life, knowing that the people around you might very well be plotting your death. It would be your decision.”
“You think I could just leave everything behind?”
“What’s there to leave?” he asked. “Face it, Trina, from my sources, you haven’t had much of a life to speak of. All your old connections have moved, or died, and you haven’t made any new ones. You don’t even have a job to speak of.”
“I’ve been a bit busy,” she glared at him.
“Haven’t we all?” he joked. “But this way, Trina, you wouldn’t be alone.”
“What do you mean?” she was confused.
“Do you know who’s the head of our Counter-Gestro Organization?” he inquired. “Emisa.”
“That traitor?” she snorted. “You think I’d want to see her?”
“Or Muney? He’s become one of our intelligence operatives, even while under our protection.”
“Muney? That perverted drunk bastard?” she shook her head and sighed. “You’re not making this any more appealing.”
“We wouldn’t mind having you on board, either,” he winked. “Some of your star power might rub off on us.”
“If you, Muney, and Emisa make up the C.G.O., we’re all in deeper shit that I ever thought,” she paced over to the mirror and tried to peer through it. “I’ll think about it, okay? But right now, I want out of this fucking place.”
“I have hotel waiting,” he explained quickly.
She gave him a look, “You move fast, don’t you Winters?”
He practically blushed. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s one of our safehouses. You can wait it out there until more information becomes available.”
“Fair enough,” she decided reluctantly. “I just need some sleep.”
His smile was almost charming.

Chapter Two
TV

“...One of the victims was former Lieutenant Trina Goodchild. As you may well remember, Lt.Goodchild was one of the founding members of the radical group, the Wolf’s Blood, which two years ago staged an armed coup against...”
Trina turned off the TV and dropped the remote beside the bed. Sighing, she lay back against the pillows with her eyes still focussed on the blank television monitor. It was obvious how the media was portraying her these days. It had only been a short while ago that she had been a hero. Then rumours about Gurteph began to circulate, and the public began to view them as criminals and traitors. She still received thousands of fan letters, but there was a fair share of death threats circulating among them. She had stopped answering letters when a letter bomb went off prematurely in her mail box. Once, she had been invited to appear on news program like the one she had just watched. On her second such interview, she had been pelted by audience members and booed off stage. That was when she turned her back on the public, and started thinking about herself. During the coup, she had been telling herself that she was doing it for the people. That she believed and cared in her own countrymen. The truth, however, was that she was only doing it for him.
And he left her.
Trina was not the only one he betrayed, she reminded herself. The man who had forgiven Emisa for handing him and Trina over to Gestro interrogators, had never forgiven the Gestro itself. What he had done to their base of operations was considered righteous and entirely necessary, but it had been excessive. He had literally razed their base to the ground. All that remained of those ground was a blackened crater. It had not just been Gestro officers who had died in that attack, she reminded herself, but citizens being detained and processed by the Gestro, as well as the families and children of the Gestro who lived in adjoining buildings. There had been a daycare centre on the third floor.
She had been given a non-smoking room, she noted with some indignity. Regardless, she lit her last cigarette and savoured it as she would her last breath. Trina tried not to think about those facts she heard only through news casts. She tried not to even watch the news, but it was too tempting of a distraction as of late. Nothing was going on with her life. As she had withdrawn from the world and society, the world had withdrawn from her. She still craved that connection she had felt during her victory parade.
Gregol had not been at that parade. He was still driven by the strange power coursing through his veins. With the Gestro in ruins, he had to see what they had done with his own eyes, to justify his own actions. So he went on a tour of the concentration camps as they were freed by the Liberated Forset Army. The Gesto officers had abandoned the camps, and left the prisoners behind. Even with the gates opened, many prisoners stayed behind. They had no where else to go. The newly founded military’s  progress in processing the freed prisoners had not been satisfying enough for Gregol, however, and he went alone to the last know outpost.
According to the accounts of the surviving prisoners of that death camp, the Gestro officers had yet to vacate. They were trying to destroy all evidence of their activities there by destroying the camp itself, and it’s prisoners. Gregol caught them, and punished them, and in his fury, killed over three thousand of the prisoners. His violent rage was somehow justified by the fact that his own father had died at that camp. This was learned later by media sources. Trina was assured that Gregol knew beforehand. His powers had given him a form of clairvoyance that led him on.
In the beginning of his assault on Gurteph, the prisoners were overjoyed. Gregol seemed like an angelic warrior who had come to their rescue. Gregol fought with pyrokinesis, an ability he had been born with, but had never been able to use until the cell had changed him. There was no defence against the streams of fire that issued forth from his hands. Bullets melted before they ever struck him, and scores of Gestro death squad officers were incinerated by his fiery blasts. But when the last Gestro lay dead, something happened to him. One witness said he began to laugh, as the fires he created spread to the buildings where many prisoners were still trapped. When he heard their screams, he did not react. Instead, he raised his hand, and struck down a male prisoner with a fireball.
Five minutes later, Gurteph was destroyed by a fiery blast. Those caught in it’s wake were instantly incinerated. Fortunately, many prisoners had escaped by that time, to live to tell the tale. Lived to blame Gregol.
There was so many possibilities surrounding that incident. Gregol may have lost control of his own powers, having never fully understood them in the first place. Gregol, overcome by the horror of the place, may have lost his grip on reality. A bomb planted by the Gestro as a failsafe may have detonated, destroying evidence of their own actions. Yet the public chose to believe that Gregol had killed the prisoners intentionally.
Trina didn’t know what she believed, and is was unsettling to find a man like Winters, who seemed  so indecisive about everything else, so certain that Gregol had killed the prisoners in his madness.
All she knew was what she had lived through. She had been holding the flashlight when she and Gregol discovered the Osurese III, buried beneath the Ruins and forgotten for over a millennia. A ship guarded by three phantoms, with a tragic tale to tell them. The Osurese III was the only ship with enough firepower to annihilate the meteor Armageddon, but had never been completed. Armageddon had come, and destroyed ancient civilization, but the missing power source for the vessel, the B.P.E.U., still existed. Gregol saw the vast potential for the craft, and knew what he had to do. He had to get the B.P.E.U. and power the ship, so he could bring it to bear against the twin governments of Ageria and Forset.
The had been Forset soldiers, drafted into a war they morally objected to. It was a perpetual war, that had last for over four generations of their families. Their enemies were alike to them in terms of race, religion and language. They saw no reason to continue to fight, save for the threat of the Gestro. The death camps waited for deserters like them, but this ship had waited longer. Gregol knew he could destroy the Gestro in one fatal blow, had he the ship to pilot.
And so Trina and the rest of the Wolf’s Blood followed him down the long tunnels to the preserved facility where the B.P.E.U. was kept. A dragon, Chandra, had lain for centuries, sensing the power of the B.P.E.U., but never quite able to reach it. She watched as they advanced through the caverns towards it,  before making herself known. They survived by breaking into the facility, where they encountered the two ghosts of the B.P.E.U.’s inventors. These ghosts warned them of the potential hazards of the B.P.E.U.. It was a device powered by magic itself. When magic was used, it created an energy source that the B.P.E.U. absorbed and stored for future use. It had not gained enough energy to be used against Armageddon, but after centuries, it was full to bursting. Gregol gratefully took the device with him, not knowing that it had already infected him. For the faintly glowing crystal of the B.P.E.U. was nothing more than a coffin for a stem cell. A cell the ghosts had injected with a mutated form of the magic virus. And that virus had leaked through the pores of the crystal, and entered into his bloodstream.
By the time they had to fight Chandra, Gregol was already being changed by the virus. Gregol thought he was sacrificing himself when he told the rest of them to run so he could stall Chandra. The virus was enhancing his latent pyrokinesis, however, and forced this power out of him. Chandra was repelled by a fireball, allowing them all to escape and get back to the ship.
Emisa, however, had betrayed them to the Gestro. Officers were waiting for them back on the surface, and she and Gregol were both subjected to interrogation.  The only thing that spared their lives was the fact that a failsafe in the ship made Gregol the only one who could pilot it, and so he did in order that the other might live. He flew it for the Gestro against Ageria, but the artificial intelligence of the ship sensed the threat against it’s pilot and crashed. The survivors of the crash, including Gregol and Trina, were captured by Agerian forces, who were far more interested in the B.P.E.U. than the ship itself. The Agerian Chief Intelligence Officer, a necromancer, saw that the cell could finally give him the power to bring the dead back to life, and he wanted to test it on Gregol and her. He first tested it to see the strength it gave it’s user. It had no effect on Trina, as she had not been born with the magic virus. For Gregol, however, it made him far more powerful than any human being had been before.
A presence inside the B.P.E.U., the life of the child the stem cell had been taken from, saw something in Gregol and reached out to him. For one brief moment, she and Gregol had shared the same mind, and then he broke free. The power surging though him, Gregol rescued them from their Agerian captors. It was a fleeting experience, for there was still one man who could pose a threat to Gregol. He was Conners, a Forset soldier who had been infused with the magic virus. He killed the Intelligence chief, and then assumed control of the experiment. Gregol was able to overpower him long enough for him to muscle his way to the Osurese III. The ship brought them back to Forset, but they were chased by nuclear missiles, launched on Conners’ orders. Having seen the Intelligence chief’s secret for rebirth he saw no need to carry on the war. He could slaughter the innocent, then bring them back to life on a whim. The ship’s A.I. was able to destroy the missiles independently, and then fulfill Gregol’s dream by destroying the Gestro headquarters. The war broke up after that. Conner, in charge of Ageria, called off his troops. In Forset, with the Gestro no longer in power, the army disbanded and reorganized as the Liberated Forset Army to take back control of the government. Gregol and the rest of the Wolf’s Blood were hailed as the true heroes of the war.
Now two years had passed, but peace was not lasting. Certain members of the Gestro had gone underground and formed terrorist cells, in a desperate coup against the interim government. The election had been delayed several times due to Gestro activity, but many were pleased with the existing government. Chancellor Harding was young and charming, and devoted to the cause of peace. He had signed a historic peace accord with President Conner only five months prior, after it became evident that Conner was no longer interested in conflict. Trina had seen the mad gleam in Conner’s eyes when he had confronted her, but his actions after the war’s end had shown him to be a reasonable governor. He had even held a democratic election, through which he campaigned and won. Only a handful knew the secrets of his origin. No one knew the full depths of his power, or the perversion of his mind. For the moment, Conner seemed content that the public adored him. They had no idea how he hated them. Ageria had killed his whole family, save for his Gestro sister, who was always at his side. The mystery surrounding him only added to his charisma. His answers were always vague when it came to the child he carried with him. A baby boy, that Conner had released from the B.P.E.U. itself. The child had existed as an entity inside the B.P.E.U., nurtured from the stem cell by it’s magical powers. When she had been subjected to experiments with the B.P.E.U., the child had visited her inside her own mind, and she had experienced it’s pain and longing. Conner had sensed that pain and the power for himself, and he extracted it from the cell with the spell of rebirth. Why he had kept the child and raised it as his own, Trina did not know. His mind did not work as hers did, which was a testament to her sanity.
At the moment, she would have traded sanity for sleep, but her memories kept her awake and alert. She stared at the ceiling as she let het cigarette burn between her lips. They had all thought Gregol had been mad when he suggested treason, but they had followed him nevertheless. He had merely been daring then, and not consumed by his own paranoias. Trina had been irrational, in her love of him. When the Wolf’s Blood had been formed as Gregol their sergeant, he had selected her as his lieutenant, and she had fallen in love with the reluctant leader. Every one of her thoughts and feelings about the war, she saw reflected in his eyes, and his careful words. Plus, he was cute. She finally found someone she could follow. Not just a leader, but a mentor, or even a messiah. He was too bold at times, so she took it upon herself to see that he was looked after. She followed him with guns drawn, ready to protect him from any peril. And after the years of effort, she was finally rewarded.
Then he left her, right after the war, saying he couldn’t love her the way she wanted.
Fuck him.
She had been a virgin when she met Gregol, and she might as well have reinstated for her old position now that he was gone. Trina had no interest in anyone else. She didn’t even know any who could even make her feel that way. She didn’t feel much of anything lately but bitterness and regret, and the drinking wasn’t helping her condition.
Trina robbed the minibar of its mini-bottles and fixed herself a drink in a plastic cup. She knew she had bigger things to think about than her ex-boyfriend, and that worrying about them would only keep her further from sleep. A little alcohol would help to dim her thoughts.
There was a knocking at the door, and Trina instinctively went for her gun. Two years wasn’t enough to kill her reflexes. Her hand clasped only the hem of her shirt, however. The twin guns she had used throughout war were likely stockpiled in some private armoury. They had been confiscated by the Forset Armed Forces, who had abducted her on behalf of the Gestro. She had considered finding a replacement for them, but there was a firearms ban.
Moments later, Winter’s peeked his head through the door. “I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said.
Trina set her drink back down on the minibar. “No,” she sighed.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Winters explained. He wore a tweed jacket draped over his shoulders like a cape, so the empty sleeves made his disability less obvious. Trina was beginning to realize how sensitive he was about it, and felt a tinge of regret for her behaviour earlier. Yet, as she recalled, he had made her feel worse. Everyone had their wounds, and he had stuck his finger in hers.
“This place isn’t that bad,” she confessed as she turned to the window. The curtains were drawn tight. “Can I ask you something?”
“What is it?” he asked as he came in and shut the door.
“Do you work for Emisa directly?” she asked as she pulled the curtain back an inch and peered out at the rainy night.
“Yes, actually. She’s our executive officer,” he explained as he pulled off his coat and set it on the back of a chair. He started to scratch his wounded shoulder, but realized what he was doing and stopped, “But it used to be the other way around.”
“Excuse me?” Trina was a little confused.
“It’s a long story,” he smiled reminiscently. “What you know now as the C.G.O. has existed for over seventy years. The clan destine nature of our organization was a matter of survival, as we were devoted Trinitists. The Gestro have hunted our kind for over a century, sending untold millions to their deaths. We were determined to rebel in kind. Blood for blood. Yet that philosophy led only to our own destruction. All of the original C.G.O. members were killed during a ghetto uprising. Outsiders, embolden by the heroics of the C.G.O. carried on their tradition, but decided on a more subtle aproach. Since then, our plans have involved smuggling accused Trinitists out of the country, sabotaging Gestro facilities, and keeping records of their activities. It was all we could do. Our numbers have never been great. Many of our kind are either relatives, friends, or welcomed sympathisers. I inherited leadership of the group when my father commited suicide two years ago. The Gestro had discovered what gods he worshipped, and he was marked for death. Ironically, the Gestro were outlawed only three months later.
“I tried to lead them as best I could, but I didn’t have the tenacity for it. In fact, I felt that it hampered my endeavours. I’m better off working behind the scenes. Once I was ejected from the armed services due to my injury,” he rubbed his scarred shoulder. “I returned my work in the force. My position gave me access to certain information that would never be available otherwise, and in addition, I could cover up the C.G.O.’s activities.
“But when the Gestro collapsed, we were able to make ourselves public. The interim government gave us the task of hunting down the remaining Gestro, due to the files we have on them. We were made an official intelligence department, and Emisa, one of our most valued members, was given leadership. She then made me her lieutenant. Since the identity of our operatives remains a secret, I kept my old position as an investigator.”
“Does that mean Emisa was working with the C.G.O. all along?” she asked.
“It does,” Winter confirmed, “since she was thirteen.”
“So she was working for the Gestro while a member of the C.G.O.?” Trina was becoming confused.
“Are you still harbouring some ill feelings against her?” Winter gave her a slight smile. “Then you should know the reason why she betrayed you to the Gestro. That move would have put her on top, giving her unlimited access to their intelligence files. It would have given us information we could have used to save hundreds, if not thousands of lives. How could she have known that they would send one of the most psychotic officers in the entire Gestro intelligence organization? To be honest, some of the Gestro are almost human, but that woman...” he shook his head. “Well she’s Ageria’s problem now.”
“So she was willing to sacrifice us all,” Trina breathed in.
“So that others wouldn’t have to be sacrificed,” Winters explained.
“Well you’ve told me something, so maybe it’s time I told you something,” Trina opened the curtain a few inches and looked outside at the street below. One of the streetlights flickered on and off. She thought to herself how she had never seen a streetlight being changed, although she reasoned that it had to happen at some point in time. They couldn’t last forever. “Did she tell you about the Gestro? What we learned?”
Winters shrugged his one shoulder. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Has she told you how the Gestro was created?” she asked, watching his reaction carefully.
“I suppose you’ll have to tell me,” he sat down on the corner of her bed to listen.
“The Gestro was originally designed as an intelligence community not unlike your own. Over the years, however, the Gestro became increasingly influenced by special interest groups. With pressure from the government, they began gathering information on the Trinitists, who were considered unpatriotic due to their anti-war stance. As the war escalated, mere suspicion gave way to full-blown paranoia. It started small. A few Trinitist activists were arrested during protests and funds to their charities were cut. Racists groups, disguised as nationalist supporters burned their churches, and wrecking the fronts of their businesses. Then, in all too short a period of time, the camps were erected”
“I know all this,” Winters complained, “and it’s not something I like to remember.”
“But you don’t know why the Trinitists were targeted,” she told him. “It’s because the Gestro were being controlled by an outside force. Dragons.”
“What?” Winters blinked.
“Long ago, the Trinitists were the ones to tame the dragons.