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THE GAIAN PRESS - Issue 13.0 - February '06


IN THIS ISSUE:
1. The Neighborhood Watch - Gaian news for our attention deficit generation.
2. Honorable Mentions - Writing submitted and scouted by the best.
3. Geek Chic - A Girl's Guide to Geekdom.
4. Point! What's Your Point? - Anti-social, anti-state, anti-you.
5. Quilled Ramblings - Rambles by Xeheqlar, your Quilled Rambler to the world of facts!
6. Story, Dammit! - Bringing you the importance of Story and Plot in our lives.
7. Best of Issue - As voted by the members of the Press.
8. Beyond the Box - A collecition of essays written by past BOI winners.
9. The Afterthought - Preview for the next issue and then some.

















PART I. Poetry
Listed in alphabetical order by author.

Duplicity (Her), by Bane is on Fire!
Off my cloud., by TRP
Slanguage and Cigaretiquette, by Laverne Terres
Waiting Implement, by Asta Chantrea Orra
Weight, by Lea Fealith



Duplicity (Her)
By Bane is on Fire!

i.
The day impacts, boldly waking
us from sleep's shallow edge.
Daybreak, heartbeat, another downtown
coffee downed. Eyes are
laid out in her mind, clicking
furiously with esoteric charm.

She unravels into the smooth sun-swept
day, brilliant as the winter cloak
falls in flakes around her.
Taking the time to breathe,
she is in-kept with the light.

No promises, she whispers softly, carrying
the weight, What we can't have we
must take.

ii.
can't sleep in the night
she won't stop breathing

running she and i in different currents
on different frequencies never stopping
the breathing seems so difficult

so difficult to breathe

electricity in water and she is
energized
her harsh breath has been cut o---

Off my cloud.
By TRP

"i would be eight other people and then difficulties vanish
only as one i contain the complications"

the ceiling unfolds
like origami shapes
in air and takes
back the precious clock
to a falling shock
a stupid kid
a shooting star
laying on
the counter
for everyone
passing by....

---------------------------------------its a synthetic reply
--------------------------------------- (not a happy hi)

Slanguage and Cigaretiquette
By Laverne Terres

He said chickadee,
'cause that's what they've been
calling me.
The chick with the car
and her very own language;
with rehab for sophistication.

Behind their backs, gang hangers
rewrite official business men's
term papers,
and their leader woman

cavorts to the conversation tones.

But I still give slang to the new boys,
the ones I meet, who
offer a smoke ever-why time.
I, ever-why time, convince
it's too much of a decision
to pick a cigarette.

He stuck around
after his initiation smoke,
trying to let this slanguage
slip into his fog.

Waiting Implement
By Asta Chantrea Orra

I am an empty instrument
oooooooooOf delicate blown glass
oooooooooReady to be filled
oooooooooWith another person s sorrow
ooooooooooooooooooAnother human s pain
oooooooooTill brimming with emotion
ooooooooooooooooooI overflow onto a piece of paper
ooooooooooooooooooBarely able to direct the flow
ooooooooooooooooooThat wears temporary paths on my heart
ooooooooooooooooooAs my whole being is caught up
ooooooooooooooooooIn the tidal sensation

Weight
By Lea Fealith

Don't bring me down upon myself
The weight of one body is heavy enough for me
Pin my feet to the dirt to keep me from touching the sun and
Burning away doesn't seem like a problem
We all face things too bright to really see

Tint my eyes and push me towards truth
The closer I am the hotter I'll be
Frizzleing up
We are all the quintessence of dust
Flecks of Flesh Floating around, if you please
And as light as we are, I find you heavy
Because you are on top of me
Bringing me down upon myself.



PART II. Prose
Listed in alphbetical order by author.

The Badger Brigade, by Hemp Fandango
The Office of the Dead, by S. M. Sargent
Of Statues and Men, by Bookie



The Badger Brigade
By Hemp Fandango

Chapter Eleven: Back to the 80s Movie Reference, Part Two
Can you believe there's going to be a part three? WTF me.

"And so I thought he said 'I've got the rhythm down my pants'." Elsie laughed airily. "Which was clearly wrong."

Megan, Elsie and Peter had been walking through the halls of Hogwarts for only ten minutes, but Elsie had been delivering a constant stream of chatter throughout. Megan lingered behind and tuned her long ago, but poor Peter was stuck next to her, listening with a glazed look in his eyes.

'They should be done eating by now,' Megan thought, as Elsie rambled on. 'Why are these halls so empty?'

'How would I know?' Muffins irritable voice came. 'Incidentally, are you planning on doing anything about her?' he asked, jerking his head towards the rambler.

'What am I, your mother?' Megan snorted. 'You're a big cat. If you want something done, do it yourself.'

'I'd like to keep a low profile,' Muffins said, his ears flattened against his head. 'I think she's a... you know. One of them.' He shuddered.

"...I'll have to revise my five-year plan, as a result. Isn't that annoying, old bean? Don't you hate it when your hard work is destroyed by a silent menace?" Elsie said, waving her hand about irritably.

"Can't say I do," Peter mumbled.

'Yeah, she's terrifying,' Megan thought dryly. 'I don't think she's one of them, Muffins. She's too... dumb.'

Muffins sneered. 'It doesn't take much intelligence to be a hunter, kid. You just have to be smarter than your prey.'

Megan was about to reply when a new voice cut across her thoughts.

"Attention, ladies."

Megan stopped. A crisp, clear voice filled her thoughts, drowning out all other sound and filling her with dread.

"Polaris," she breathed.

"We're having an emergency meeting in the Uncommon Room in fifteen minutes. All must attend. That is all."

The voice died away, and the everyday sounds around her returned but Megan didn't notice.

That b***h. How dare she just barge into people's heads like that? What gave her the right...?

An All Call. Polaris had only used it once since Megan joined the group, all those months ago. Well, twice now. The last time Polaris pulled that particular move was when she announced her plans for Hogwarts domination.

Bile rose in her throat at the memory of Polaris' then-golden eyes glowing with excitement. Golden eyes that were supposed to put one in mind of a cat, but always reminded Megan of snakes...

'Wake up, dammit!' Muffins snapped. Megan jerked back into reality. She looked down and saw Muffins' scarred face glaring up at her. 'You've been staring at nothing for two minutes.'

"It was Polaris," she hissed, fists clenching.

"Who?"

Megan's head snapped up to face Peter and Elsie, the latter giving her a shrewd look.

"Who's Polaris?" Peter asked suspiciously.

Megan hesitated for a moment. "A star," she replied shortly. Can we keep moving please? I'd like to leave here as soon as possible."

"And go where, exactly?" Elsie asked.

Megan restrained a snarl. Having Polaris in her head, even for a moment, was like rubbing a cheese grater across her nerves. Elsie hadn't exactly endeared herself to Megan, and now she was finding it difficult to resist the urge to wipe that look on her face off with the Blackjack.

Elsie narrowed her eyes and moved closer. "Where are you going to go, Elm, when all is said and done?"

Megan glared back. "None of your business."

They maintained their locked gaze for several seconds, the air between them charged with tension. It broke as Elsie smiled suddenly.

"Very good, old bean," she said. "Now, where was I...?"

***

Alex stared at the golden badge, listening to the sound of two people having a heated argument on the other side.

"I can't believe you told her-"

"I said I was sorry, what more do you want-"

"I want you to stop talking! Right now!"

"Well, that's a little rude-"

Alex buried her face in her unoccupied hand. Her stomach felt as if it had been filled with lead.

'Now, now,' the weak voice of optimism said. 'They might be fighting about something unrelated. You might not be stuck in the past. It could just be a misunderstanding and one day you'll look back and laaaaaugh.'

'You're stuck in the past.' The flat, more familiar voice of pessimism said. 'You and your idiot friends messed around with time, and now you're stuck in a time period of hideous fashion and disco.'

The cold hard truth hit Alex like a tonne of bricks. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out the world.

"Alex? Are you still there?" the badge squeaked.

"Unfortunately," Alex muttered.

"Liz tells me you used the purification spell?"

Alex blinked. Purification spell? Oh, yes. Crazy blue haired girl. Another problem on her ever-growing list.

"Yeah, that's right," she replied glumly. "It didn't work though."

There was a moment of stunned silence on the other end. "Do you know why?" Sara finally asked.

Alex rolled her eyes. "Of course not," she said. "I was rather hoping you would, as a matter of fact."

"Well... I'm afraid that, at this particular moment in time, I actually don't know what happened. As such." Alex could hear the torment in Sara's voice as she admitted ignorance. She recovered quickly. "But it isn't unexpected."

"It bloody well is," Alex said angrily. "I thought that was how we were supposed to defeat those TGs and now you're telling me you didn't think the spell would work?"

"I never said that, Alex," the badge said patiently. "But if you'll recall, I did mention that the spell had not been well tested at the first Brigade meeting."

Alex sighed in frustration. "I don't care about this right now, because it doesn't look like I'm getting home anyway!" she said, her voice rising.

"You will get home," the badge said firmly. "I promised you, didn't I?"

"Ho, yes. How could I forget? I guess there's nothing to worry about after all," Alex said sarcastically.

"There's no reason to be snide," the badge said in a hurt tone.

There were several reasons to be snide, in Alex's opinion, but she didn't voice it. Instead she just scowled and banged her head against the wall she was sitting against.

'The worst part is, I could probably adjust to this past after a while. It's being stuck here with those crazy TGs and bloody, bloody Snape that I can't stand,' she thought bitterly. 'That greasy b*****d, why does he have to be here? And why do Those Girls keep throwing themselves at him? What's the appeal?'

Well, they're crazy, aren't they? Plus some of them are half unicorn, and unicorns are attracted to virgins.

"What!? Are you sure?" Sara's voice came suddenly. There was a faint sound of voices. Alex frowned and brought the badge up to her ear.

"...disappeared with the rest of them," came the faint voice of one of the Slytherins from earlier.

"You let her get away?!?!" Elizabeth shrieked, causing Alex to jerk away from the badge.

"We didn't let her," came the huffy reply. The familiar sinking feeling returned to Alex. They let her get away? That must mean the portal was closed. Then...

"It's true," she mumbled, her hand dropping to her side limply. "I'm stuck in the 70s."

"Alex, I'll be in contact with you later," Sara said curtly before the line went dead. Alex could barely hear her over the sound of disco music and hell inside her head.

She could, however, hear the sudden and loud explosion outside the classroom door, followed by panicked screams. She was on her feet and running towards the door before she fully understood what she was doing. She threw the door open and stuck her head out into the hall. She began coughing immediately, as the hall was full of a blue haze that stung her eyes. She squinted to see the faint figure of the TG in who had earlier claimed to be Snape's sister flee down the hall, screaming like a banshee.

"Come back here, brother!!"

Alex stared until the TG vanished in the haze. She stepped out into the haze, rubbing at her eyes.

"Ouch!" said a voice from the floor. "You stepped on my arm, you horrible woman."

Alex stepped back in surprise. "Snape?"

The figure pulled himself up and waved his wand irritably. The haze cleared almost instantly.

"I think I over did the viper scales," he muttered. He turned to give Alex, who was giving him a look of surprise, a baleful glare. "What?" he snapped.

"How did you-?" She stopped abruptly as she caught sight of a pool of grey-blue liquid surrounded by shards of glass. "A potion," she said. "Of course."

"Of course," he said briskly. "While they were in the middle of their bickering, I simply distracted them with a Haze Draught."

Alex quirked a brow, but she was mildly impressed in spite of herself. Haze Draught could be tricky to make, especially one with that kind of potency. She nudged the halo of broken glass with her trainers.

"Alright," she said. "But what caused them to run off like that? Your sister sounded as if she was chasing you."

He radiated smugness. "Yes, well, I enchanted my cloak to rush off down the hall." Indeed, he was only dressed in his Slytherin uniform. "In all that haze, how could they tell the difference? It wasn't as if they were very clever to begin with." The last sentence was delivered at a brisk walk. "And she's not my sister," he added over his shoulder.

Alex hesitated, looking at the hall Snape's sister had vanished. She should follow, really. It was her job to do, after all.

Then again, it looked as if she had a while to go before she was going anywhere - if she was going anywhere - and the TGs would be hard to catch up to. And even if she did, what then? The purification spell was about as effective as cat-based security system.

'Ah, screw 'em,' Alex thought as she plodded after Snape. 'What other chance will I have to physically intimidate Snape?'

***

Serpentia hurried down the halls with a small group of her kind, all were abuzz with Polaris' message.

"I wonder what it's going to be about?" a small girl with raven black hair asked for the umpteenth time.

"Don't know," came the usual answer from a busty girl with golden curls.

"It's got to be big news. Remember last time?"

The busty girl nodded. "We had a party afterwards," she said wistfully. "It lasted all night."

"I hope it's big news. I gave up a lot to come here," Serpentia said bitterly, thinking of her lost chance to snog Draco and get a unicorn. The loss of the unicorn stung the most. She had never gotten around to getting a pet, which was particularly embarrassing. Everyone had an animal companion. Even that scruffy squib girl had a cat.

"It's got to be big news," the girl with small wings repeated firmly. "She wouldn't interrupt our important business for nothing."

Serpentia remained silent, but meaningfully so.

***

Sara rubbed her temples, her eyes squeezed closed.

"Tell me again," she said warily.

Edwina rolled her eyes. "You still won't like it," she said in a sarcastic sing-song. "Wossname suddenly runs off while you were in the lav and your dim friend was dreaming about butterflies or whatever it is she thinks about when she stares at nothing." Elizabeth blushed and stared at her feet.

"It was unicorns," she mumbled. Edwina rolled her eyes.

"What about you?" Sara countered. "What were you and Parkinson doing?"

Pansy shrugged. "We were preoccupied with important matters."


"You were doing your nails," Elizabeth pointed out.

"Anyway," Edwina continued, ignoring Elizabeth, "we rushed after her but she saw us and suddenly got a burst of super speed and left us behind." Edwina shrugged. "Couldn't be helped."

Sara's brow furrowed. "Super speed?" Sara asked. "Did she mention she had that before?"

"Possibly," Pansy said. "Admittedly, I wasn't paying much attention."

"I wonder why she would leave," Elizabeth mused. "She seemed really pleased at the chance to get some attention."

"I wonder how we're going to get Alex out of the past without her," Sara muttered. Elizabeth was right, though. The girl did look starved for attention, and was desperate and stupid enough to seek it from a group of Brigadiers. Were they all like that or was Serpentia just a special case? It did take them an awful long time to hook a TG...

The three girls stared at Sara's blank expression for some time.

"Anyway," Pansy said. "What are we supposed to do now?"

"I don't know," Elizabeth admitted, wringing her hands. "I don't know, but I'm sure we'll think of something." After all, Sara made a promise and a Hufflepuff doesn't go back on their word.

***

Alex and Snape ambled down the halls in thick, busy silence. Alex was trying to think of ways to needle her future professor, while said future professor was firmly ignoring her.

Alex thought of a myriad of insults but every time she tried to speak one aloud, the words caught in her throat, which made her cross. As much as she hated to admit it, he still intimidated her, which was ridiculous. He was so little! So scrawny, so puny, so short! And yet...

And yet, in her mind's eye, she could see what he would become. It wasn't hard; his heavy robes billowed out behind him and was already stalking, giving Alex the familiar impression of a vulture.

Besides, wasn't this messing with the space-time thingy anyway? Would Snape recognize her as the Hufflepuff he met back in his sixth year in the future? Wait, if that was true, wouldn't he have recognized her sooner, before this whole mess happened? Or was this mess supposed to happen, or was it the TGs who were messing with the time-space wossname? Would the future she returned to be the future she left behind or would there be giant insects or a big-brother like figure in charge, or maybe this was all supposed to happen, like the time-space thing planned for this all along and she was meant to get stuck in time--

She winced as her thoughts knotted themselves unpleasantly. Time travel was harder than she had anticipated.

"I'm looking for a place
I'm searching for a face
Is anybody here I know
Cause nothing's going right and
Everythings a mess
And no one likes to be alone.."

The music carried down the halls, the echoes making the words almost incoherent, but could not disguise the beauty of the voice. Alex and Snape froze in their tracks at the sound and exchanged glances.

"They sing a lot," Alex muttered. "I don't know why."

"It's revolting," Snape hissed.

"At least it's not disco."

Alex paused, listening with a pained expression. 'That's definitely one of Them. I guess I should... confront her?' She hesitated. 'Maybe I should just stay here. With Snape.'

"Yeah, I have to go," she said. Without a glance backwards, she ran off down the hall, towards the voice.

The song finally ended. Alex breathed a sigh of relief and began to edge forward. As soon as the echoes died, she could hear a new voice.

"I'm so sorry," the whispers carried down the halls like a breeze. The speaker was male. "I didn't mean to hurt you so."

"It wasn't you," came the pain-filled reply. "It was just... just..." The TG then dissolved sobs. Alex peered around the corner and saw a tall, rather handsome dark haired boy standing over a pretty black haired girl. She had fallen to her knees and her long raven hair hung over her trembling shoulders, hiding her face from view.

Alex ducked from view and flattened herself against the wall, breathing deeply. What were her options? She could rush in there and fire the Purification spell and hope for the best -- which worked so well last time. No, this time she would need to plan.

Alex scowled. She didn't like having to be the one to come up with a plan. Plotting out your moves in advanced ruined the fun.

"You're my brother's best mate."

Alex rolled her eyes and indulged her morbid curiosity, peeking around the corner.

The TG was staring up soulfully at the handsome young man. And he was rather handsome, Alex had to admit. His long black hair was tousled and his white shirt untucked and unbuttoned, giving him a slight rakish air. She couldn't make out his features, but she didn't need to; she knew instinctively they would hold a melancholy expression.

She looked at the TG and her insides clenched. Long black hair, sparkling violet eyes obscured behind thin framed glasses; pale, flawless skin. She recognized her from the picture immediately. This was Amethyst Potter.

Alex's mind raced. 'Maybe I should just use a regular curse and see where things go from there,' she thought. 'It's a strategy that's always served me well in the past.' She took a deep breath, steeled herself and stepped out from behind the corner.

By now the young man had pulled Amethyst to her feet and embarrassed her tenderly. They were too preoccupied to notice the tall Hufflepuff walk into the scene. Somehow that was even more unnerving. She swallowed and opened her mouth to speak --

"Don't." It was a simple word, but there was such force behind it, such vehemence that Alex's jaw snapped shut instantly. She blinked. Amethyst pushed away from the now confused boy.

"Amethyst, what-" the boy began but was silenced by Amethyst putting her fingers to his lips, her eyes locked on Alex's face.

"Shhh," she whispered. "Go and get my brother."

He looked at Alex curiously and looked as though he wanted to say more. He sighed, shook his head and complied.

Amethyst grinned unpleasantly. Her eyes -- so purple that they must be her namesake -- flickered to Alex's own hazel for a moment and Alex flinched.

"You're Alex," she said. It wasn't a question.

'How the hell could she have known that?' Alex drew herself up to her full height and narrowed her eyes. "I am," she said, sounding braver than she felt. "And you're Amethyst." She had hoped the cryptic way she said the TG's name would have freaked her out, but Amethyst just smiled beautifully.

"Most people know my name," she said happily. "You, on the other hand, are a nobody." She thrust out her hands and a stream of violet light exploded from them. Alex gasped and dodged behind the corner where she had previously hid, panting.

She cursed. 'Wandless magic. Of course.'

Amethyst chuckled softly. "You can't hide from me, Alexandra Miriam Worth."

"'Miriam'?" a voice beside her whispered. She jumped. The shadows and brickwork beside her suddenly became Snape.

"How did you do that?" she demanded. "Do you have an Invisibility Cloak?" He gave her a smug look.

"Any half-wit with a black cloak can disappear," he said. Alex rolled her eyes.

"Come out, come out, Alexandra," Amethyst sang. "You can't hide from me." She paused and sighed. "I can hear you talking to Snivvy, Alexandra. Why don't you come out and end this?"

"I'm quite comfortable here, thank you. Why don't you come over here and end this?" Alex countered. She paused. "'Snivvy'?" she whispered. Snape gave her a very nasty look.

"Never mind that," he growled.

"Snivvy?"

"I would rather you came out to face me, Alexandra," Amethyst said impatiently. "So you can die on your feet, instead of cringing behind a wall."

"That's really thoughtful of you, you lazy ********," Alex snarled back. "But I'd rather die cringing than die doing what you tell me to. Seriously, just come over here."

"Are you planning anything?" Snape asked.

A fleeting look of panic flickered across her face. "Sure," she said. "When she comes around the corner, I will shoot her with a hex of some kind."

"Oh, wonderful strategy," he drawled. "I can't possibly imagine that failing."

She bit back a curse. He was right though, as much as she hated to admit it. A situation like this called for some finesse, some cunning. She sat in silent thought. 'What do TGs like the most?' she pondered. And then it came to her. 'Oh right. Attention.'

***

Sirius Black hurried down the halls of Hogwarts. He wasn't exactly sure what was going on, but he had a feeling something bad was going to happen to his beloved. With every step that took him further from Amethyst, his fear and confusion increased. What if that was the last time he ever saw her? What if that harmless Hufflepuff was actually Voldemort or working for him? Or maybe she was another jealous fangirl of his out for revenge. Poor Amethyst had been dealing with a lot of those lately...

As he rounded the corner, he came face to face with a small group of students his age. One of them resembled a scarecrow dressed in Ravenclaw robes, another was just a scrawny girl not wearing any robes (which wasn't that unusual these days) and the last was Peter.

"Sirius!" he called out as Sirius swore under his breath.

"I don't have time right now," he snapped as he whipped past them. Peter looked mildly hurt but wasn't deterred. He rushed to keep up pace with Sirius.

"Why?" he asked, panting slightly. "What's going on?"

"Amethyst is in trouble," Sirius answered shortly.

"Ame-what?" Soon the scarecrow was at his side, her long legs making it easier for her to keep up. "Who's in trouble now?"

Sirius looked at her strangely. "Are you a prefect?"

"Sure."

His confusion increased. "And you don't know Amethyst??"

"I think I might," she said brightly. "Tall girl, black hair, and, I'm just guessing here, purple eyes?"

He scowled. "They're not just purple," he corrected hotly. "They're her namesake. Amethyst. Like beautiful precious stones."

"Actually," the girl said, "I think it's just purple quartz."

He stared at her blankly. "Amethyst," she said. "The stone? It's just purple quartz."

He continued to stare.

"Coloured by sulfur, I think."

Stare.

"I'll, um, I'll just see myself out."

She stopped and allowed Peter and Sirius rushed on. "I guess we lost our ally," she muttered as she watched Peter go. "Amethyst, eh? It's always a stone of some sort. Or a natural phenomenon, like the time I tangled with Storm. Or was it Tempest? Ah, who cares. Me an' little miss 'Elm' better go and take care of this little nuisance and then I'll take care of her." She paused. "Although if she hasn't interrupted my monologue by now, she's probably gone." She glanced behind her, at the empty hallway beyond. "Yep, she's gone. Good thing too, seeing as I think I just lost my well crafted British accent."

She paused again, and reached inside her robes and felt the reassuring pressure of her peace maker. She smiled. "Right," she said to no one. "Let's do this."

***

The Uncommon room emptied slowly, everyone abuzz with the latest news. Serpentia shot a beaming Polaris an admiring look. She knew the girl was a talented leader but she was really outdoing herself.

The plan was perfect. Serpentia could see no flaw at all. Hogwarts was their home now, wasn't it? Polaris was right: they should make it more homely, more welcoming. Changing it from a frankly dank and damp Scottish castle into the proper home base of a group of talented, beautiful, and unique individuals; into a real castle.

She saw the change begin as she stepped out from behind the statue. The floors weren't just gleaming, they were sparkling. Thick, richly coloured tapestries grew from the walls. She sighed happily. This was worth putting off her chance to snog Draco. Finally, after years of searching and traveling, they had a home.

She skipped happily down the halls. Behind her, Hogwarts changed.

***

"That's it?" Snape said after she explained her idea in a hurried whispered. "That's your plan?"

"Yes," Alex snapped. "And unless you're willing to jump out there and take her on, you can shut the hell up."

Snape rolled his eyes. "I'll leave the idiotic heroics to those more suited to it."

Alex grit her teeth and focused hard on the task at hand and not on satisfying it would be to hex the little wanker into the next world. Without another word, she burst out from behind the corner.

"Amethyst, I've been thinking--" The words faltered from her throat as she took in the scene in front of her. Amethyst was no longer facing her, but instead had focused her attention on a rather short, scrawny girl with curly hair and a ratty looking cat at her heels. Both girls glanced at Alex briefly.

"Oh, it's you," Amethyst said lightly. "Come to die, have you?" she asked. Before Alex could respond, she went on, "I was just having a lovely chat with Maria here."

"Megan," the girl correctly shortly.

"Mm, lovely. She's and I work in the same business," she said, suppressing a yawn. "And now she's going to help me kill you and Snivvy. Well," she laughed as Megan reached into her jean pockets. "We won't kill Snivvy. He needs to stick around long enough to try to rape me."

"That's..." Alex struggled for an appropriate word, "interesting?"

"It will be. What a pity you won't get to see it," she said, smiling pleasantly.

"Yeah, that's a crying shame," she said, biting back the bile rising in her throat. Amethyst pulled out her wand, and Alex threw up her hands. "I'm not here to attack you!" she cried. "I'm just here to tell you... um... I think you're... neat."

Amethyst hesitated. "Really?" she asked suspiciously. "How neat?"

"Very neat. Stupendously neat." Alex went on hurriedly. "I mean, you're just so damn neat I can hardly stand it." She swallowed and her gaze flickered to Megan. "And I think your scrawny friend is... er..." she faltered. "She's kind of interesting."

"But not as interesting as me," Amethyst said sharply. "She's only a janitor."

Alex did a double take. "She's a what?"

Amethyst giggled. "Yes, just a lowly janitor. Isn't that--" Lightning quick, Megan struck out against Amethyst's back, her fist a beige and black blur. Amethyst shrieked and to her knees.

"What the hell--" she screamed, but Megan cut her off.

"This," she said, holding up the black object strapped to her hand, "is a Blackjack. It's a weapon favored by crooked and impatient coppers, which is exactly where I got it from. This particular model cannot deliver deadly blows -- even if I want it to -- but trust me when I say it can give you one hell of a headache."

Amethyst gave her a look of pure loathing and began to struggle to her feet. "Polaris will hear of this--" She stopped dead at the feeling of a wand poking the back of her head.

"Purus Morbis!"

***

The girls crowded together, staring around them fearfully. Hogwarts was changing. Everything was becoming shinier and more expensive looking, like a fairy tale castle and it was all fronted by a ring of multicolored sparkles. It was bizarre to watch. The floor beneath them remained the same cold, hard stone but around them was marble.

"Can you explain this, Marigold?" Pansy asked, her voice faint with fear.

"I... I..." Sara struggled, watching wide eyed as a statue of a hunchback was enveloped by the sparkles. A moment later, the sparkles oozed off, leaving behind a marble swan, its neck raised and wings outstretched. "No," she said at last.

"Everything's going crazy!" Elizabeth exclaimed, backing further away. "It's like Hogwarts is becoming one of Them!"

Sara watched the sparkles devour a flickering torch, replacing it with a flickering candle. "It's all so pointless," she muttered. "They're just making it look better."

"Not really," Edwina said, wrinkling her nose. "It's quite tacky. Honestly, these girls have no taste."

"It's not touching us though," Sara observed. Every time the sparkles tried to get close, they would scatter into the air and vanish.

"Our tremendous sense of style repels them," Pansy hypothesized.

Sara and Elizabeth rolled their eyes. "That's certainly something to consider," Sara muttered. The sparkles, apparently satisfied, moved away into one of the classrooms.

"I hate to do this, but we need to leave. I can't think with all this garbage around," Sara said, frustrated. Elizabeth looked at her, alarmed.

"What about Alex?" she asked. Sara winced.

"I'll think of something," she said, sounding more certain than she felt. "I told her I wouldn't leave her behind."

The sparkles streamed from the classroom and down the hall, onto their next target. Sara watched them go.

"Let's go," she said. Without a look back, they fled. Behind them, Hogwarts was changed.

The Office of the Dead
By S. M. Sargent

The perpetual jazz theme played over the sound of dozens of crazed telephones shrieking and rattling free of their hooks. Having heard and memorized every jazz note that ever existed in Heaven and Earth not a Dirge in the Office of the Dead could claim fanaticism over the music genre, although most did know the name of every jazz musician who had ever played, big or small, but this was not a sign of adoration. At first there had been a brief surge of enthusiasm for jazz when Management at last gave the Dirges music to drown out the eternal ringing din. Dirges one and all wanted to know everything about it and a great many longed for drums and saxophones and harmonicas to make music of their own. That was decades ago. Elevator music--to which it is cynically referred--continues to play in the Office of the Dead to his day; rumor has it, because Management is concerned that to remove the jazz would case mass hysteria while switching to the latest genres of human music would incite a rebellion of the Dirges. Rock and Roll is of particular worry.

Humanity has given Management numerous wonderful ideas in the past. Telephones were among the greatest steps taken to 'modernize' the Office. Dry wall, indoor heating, florescent lights, carpet, and fake plants have also been incorporated for something called 'aesthetics', which the Dirges are now quite fond of. The swiveling chair, the water cooler, the coffee machine, and glazed donuts are especially celebrated by the Dirges, who for countless millennia worked an eight-thousand seven-hundred and sixty hour shift that included weekends and all holidays, with no breaks, no vacation time, and no pay, until early in the 20th century when an American soul thought up worker's rights. Apparently Management liked the idea. An eight-thousand hours a year shift was fine when the world was young and cruel and souls were always anxious to get on to Heaven, but the modern candy coated world of shiny things and dopamine was obese with gluttony, making souls averse to walk the path to the afterlife; and it was of no help that this generation languished in sin, so the new arrivals had an even greater reason to be incorrigible to the point where a Dirge would need to lie to get them off the line. Although, they still don t get paid.

Epaphroditos, Ed to his friends, was sitting on the couch in the break room with his face hidden behind a fresh copy of The New York Times. Fresh putting it lightly. This edition wasn t due to print until January 4th, 2011. Jephthah stormed in, interrupting the New Year's resolution of Charlie Brown with a premature shout of, "Good grief!"

Like most of the Dirges Jephthah, now Jasper, shed his Biblical name in favor of a modern pesudom. This was a shame, the name Jephthah was once well known amongst angels. That is not to say that Michael, Uriel, Gabriel, and Raphael are any less known because of Jephthah, although he did fight along side them. And though his wolfish grin was not the subject of great works of art, and though he inspired no poetry, embodied no message of faith to mankind, he was an incomparable Cherub with a fiery spirit and fearless courage in battle, and in this he had been unrivaled. Had been, until that same brashness felled him here, in Purgatory. Times being what they were old names no longer humbled lost souls into submission, there for Management decreed that all Dirges must adopt new names, although in Jasper's case the switch was made with less logic than exasperation. Ed lowered the newsprint to peer over at him suspiciously and the confetti of black fluff that tagged along at his heels.

Cherubs are a flamboyant sort--not the pudgy winged toddlers sans pants that are so often depicted in art. Jasper had been a warrior, though he was at a loss for brawn these days, and as once he strutted feathers bright and painted for war gloomy wings of black now hung from his slumping shoulders.

Zipping from left to right like an enraged humming bird Jasper swooped over the selection of donuts, snatched up a pink frosted one with red and white sprinkles, grabbed a Styrofoam cup, and pushed then stabbed then blasphemed the coffee machine. Ed's bright blue eyes shined with mirth. "Et tu, Brute?"

"Oh, shove it." Jasper thwacked the machine.

"I wouldn't smack it. You're only going to make things worse."

"It's making me feel better."

"Bad day?"

"When isn't it?"

Ed shrugged. "Sit down, take a load off, you deserve it. You know the water cooler is still working."

Jasper sighed, slamming the Styrofoam cup on top of the stack again. But he wanted coffee with his donut. Since when does one dunk pastries in water? Ed followed Jasper's march around the break room, landing on him again as he slumped down on the arm of the couch, one raven feathered wing let to droop over the sofa. Squinting his face Ed tugged back his wings and huddled behind the newspaper, afraid to touch those gangly appendages 'lest he contract the dreaded cynicism flu. "You're molting again."

Faking ignorance, Jasper bit a chunk out of his pink donut. Ed snapped the newspaper disapprovingly. Highway Blues composed by Marc Seales played. Between Mr. Seales music and the innumerable spazing telephones it was impossible to hear the coo-coo clock counting seconds on the wall. "That's new. Management sure has crappy taste."

Ed glanced up. The house shaped box hung on the wall above the water cooler and was a surprising change from the smooth round clock that had always been there before. Management was quick, it was often the case that new carpeting would spring up underfoot, and new halls sometimes popped out of walls in the blink of an eye. The coo-coo clock was pleasantly brown, made from real wood and fixed with hand crafted maple leaves and branches, a swinging brass pendulum, and pine cones hanging from chain linked strings. The clock also featured a set of tiny doors above the face from which a wood pecker would surely appear and sing merrily on the coming of the hour. Just like the last clock the digits circled 24 hours military time, yet another concept borrowed from the mortal reality.

Originally when Management decided to add clocks to the d cor they took up an entire wall with black and white clocks each clicking to its own individual time zone. This was short lived, however, because the time piece collective made such a racket when combined with the telephones and elevator music that the mere sound of it drove Dirges like Jasper to temporary psychosis.

No one was sure about the practical aspect of clocks in a realm that exists outside of normal time. Their best guess was that Management thought clocks were aesthetic in some way, or that they were using them to measure Dirges breaks.

"I don't know," said Ed after a moment. "I think it's kind of cute."

Jasper sneered. "Looks creepy to me."

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

At hearing this Jasper gagged and his wings tossed a flurry of feathers into the air, as if a fire cracker had gone off under his seat. "What?!" Ed pinched his cheeks and grinned. "Where are you getting this junk?"

"William Shakespeare wrote it."

"Who?"

"William Shakespeare; he was a European playwright in the 16th century A.D. Very famous on Earth, they've made his plays into movies and books now. Homo Sapians still enjoy him."

Jasper was dubious. Human beings didn't have the sense of time to remember events or people that took place long ago, as Jasper had discerned after centuries of working in the Office of the Dead, and Ed had been stuck here since the 14th century when he lost his job as a Watcher angel for being too permisquious. This habit of constructing fictional characters was a recent development in Ed and it had Jasper slightly concerned. "I've never heard of him."

"Oh." Ed suddenly looked up and folded his paper, tucking it under his arm and getting off the couch. He shook his wings, bouncing shimmers of blue light from iridescent black feathers, and stretched. "Well that's about it for me. Take care, Jasper."

"That goes double for you," Jasper muttered. Scooting over to take Ed's place, Jasper leaned to examine the disheveled pile of magazines and newspapers left here courtesy of Management. Jazz magazines made up the bulk of the pile. During the aforementioned jazz craze Management had kindly indulged them with articles covering the genre from top to bottom. Jasper had read them all before. Underneath those were scattered pages from newspapers, the most recent having been printed in 1945. Jasper frowned over the lack of interesting things to read.

That obnoxious coo-coo clock was the first novelty he'd seen in ages.

Code of the Ninja
Courtesy of The One and Only Jahoclave

5 - ninja ninja ninja ninja ninja - The ninja approves of this; failure to cohere with the ninja's decision is a grave mistake.
4 - ninja ninja ninja ninja - The ninja enjoys this, but he finds flaws.
3 - ninja ninja ninja - The ninja would rather date your sister, but since you may not have one he will take this instead.
2 - ninja ninja - The ninja warns you that he was only marginally impressed.
1 - ninja - If proper confession is made, the ninja will forgive you for taking part in this.
0 - xp - If you are looking for an invigorating experience I would suggest poking your eye out before this; the ninja does not approve.



Editor's Note: We're currently lacking in submissions for this department, so feel free to type up a little review (using the ninja's code, of course) to be published for the next issue! Books, music, anime, just about anything goes! So hop on that shiny soapbox already, my critical friend, I know you have something to say...



Writer Review: Essentially Shelley
By Marvin Ghey

When discussing Percy Bysshe Shelley, readers of Romantic poetry, if they are scarcely familiar with the poet, may be faced with some unpleasant associations: thoughts of flowery, overly dramatic and terribly sophisticated language; an unending political motivation; and even an overall sappy, sometimes pseudo-poetic effect. To be fair to today s readers, there are grounds for such ideas. The case of Shelley and his position in literary history leads one in several directions, ranging from revolutionary genius to overrated blowhard; similarly, matters of Percy Shelley s life and literary work seem to lead the reader and observer from one extreme to the next, ranging from Romantic idealist to somewhat of a hypocrite.

Shelley, while introduced to some readers early (most notably for poems such as Ode to the West Wind or Ozymandias) is somewhat out of favor in today s literary scene. His close friend, John Keats, along with the older philosophers of Romanticism, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, seem to garner far more respect than Shelley. These authors may indeed have produced better poetic material and refined their ideas to a greater degree, but I doubt if they or any other writer of the Romantic Movement, excepting perhaps Byron lived a more Romantic life than Shelley.

The best way to discover Shelley s true essence encompassing both his life and poetry is to apply the somewhat clich d idea of The Man, The Myth, The Legend. Percy Bysshe Shelley brings together most if not all of the ideological aspects of Romanticism through his life and works: As a human being he strives to create a better, freer world around him, through politics and personal life; Shelley defies ideas of myth, in that many of the outrageous tales told about him and his closest friends and relatives may have been true; and the literary work of Shelley, though sometimes not as refined as that of other key figures of the Age, holds up Romantic ideals and presents a picture of revolutionary nineteenth-century England. Through this inspection, Percy Bysshe Shelley can be recognized as perhaps not the best of the Romantics, but as a quintessential model of everything readers today expect a Romantic poet to be.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born August 4, 1792, the son of Sir Timothy Shelley, a minor, land-holding English nobleman. As eldest son, Percy Shelley was to inherit not only a seat in Parliament, but his grandfather s large estate, as well. An all-out prankster as a young man, Shelley would later cause trouble on a level that would have him disinherited and disowned by his father (Simkin). Shelley began writing poetry while attending college at Eton, where he began studies in 1804. His first publication, however, was a gothic novel in 1810, Zastrozzi, in which Shelley expresses his own atheistic and political opinions through the novel s villain. Published after his transfer to Oxford University, the novel was the first in a serious of works that would ultimately lead to his expulsion from the university and the aforementioned break with his father. Also in this first year he published two collections of poetry, one with fellow student Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the other with Elizabeth Shelley, his sister ( Percy Bysshe Shelley Poetry Exhibit ).

It was 1811 s The Necessity of Atheism for which Shelley was expelled. Not a work of poetry or fiction, the piece was instead an essay questioning the English people s perfunctory adherence to the Christian faith. More so, the pamphlet was a call for people to release themselves from the burden of the religion Shelley s idea, repeated time and again through his work, that religion must be reformed and thrown off before true social change could take place. The writing of the pamphlet might have been forgiven or slid under the eyes of the Oxford authorities had Shelley not sent copies directly to every bishop and head of the college (Coates). The result was indeed expulsion (Simkin); Percy s refusal to recant and avow himself a Christian to reenter the school caused his father to sever ties with his son ( Percy Bysshe Shelley Poetry Exhibit ).

It may have been, however, his elopement to Scotland with sixteen year old Harriet Westbrook that same year which wrung out the last of Sir Timothy s patience. News of the scandal was widespread, deeply embarrassing both the noble family and the Westbrooks, fairly prosperous London tavern owners. After a brief stay in Scotland, nineteen year old Shelley and his wife left for Ireland in 1812 (Coates). Here Shelley produced more revolutionary poetry and political essays, including one of his more famous, An Address to the Irish People, in which he called on the Irish to rise against their English oppressors, as well as give up their Roman Catholicism in favor or atheism. The essay, along with another, Proposals for an Association of Philanthropists, were ultimately refused by the Irish (Shelley himself realizing that his material revealed a poor understanding of Irish politics) (Coates), but they clearly show the fire that seemed to drive the young, blossoming poet s life.

A good example of young Shelley s revolutionary ardor is his 1812 poem The Devil s Walk. Written as a sort of response to The Devil s Thoughts, a poem by Southey and Coleridge, the piece attacks the church and government by relating them to the devil (Keach). As Satan walks the streets of London, dressed as a well-to-do Englishman, he observes a self-righteous bishop, saying without the Devil In your carriage you would not ride (38-40). He also encounters the brainless King and his imps (40-44) around the throne, and paints a picture of the prince-regent,

Fat as that Prince's maudlin brain,
Which addled by some gilded toy,
Tired, gives his sweetmeat, and again
Cries for it, like a humoured boy, (67-70)

considered so outrageous that Shelley s servant was arrested for distributing the poem (Keach). Attacks on the injustices and inhumanity of war were also throughout the piece, creating even more cause to distress the English government, involved in a war with France at the time.

The Devil s Walk, along with his calls for revolution in Dublin, left Shelley under watch by the Home Secretary of England (Coates). He did not end his efforts, however; he re-presented these ideas in other works, including his lengthy Revolt of Islam (briefly published and quickly banned in its original forms) and Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem. Shelley was fortunate enough to evade jail time or other persecution until he ultimately left Britain for the political safety of Italy, toward the end of his life.

Any myth surrounding Percy Bysshe Shelley easily pales in juxtaposition to the truth. There are, however, some scattered stories concerning Shelley that are questionable. One involves a possible assassination attempt. While living southern Wales (during which time Shelley composed The Devil s Walk and Queen Mab) shortly after the failed Irish revolutionary expedition, Shelley was supposedly attacked in the night by an unknown person. The claim is hardly verifiable, and has been explained by some as a hallucination or fabrication by the poet. Others suspect the government, which already had a steady eye on Shelley, or local business owners displeased with Shelley s continuing flow of revolutionary doctrine. The Shelleys did, however, immediately vacate the house and area, never to return, and thus lending a measure of credence to the tale (Coates).

Another tale rooted firmly in theory and knowledge of Shelley s promiscuity is that Shelley, while living in Europe, had an illicit affair with his wife s sister, at this time married to Mary Godwin, daughter of philosopher Charles Godwin and early feminist thinker William Wollstonecraft. Claire Claremont, briefly the mistress of Lord Byron, had traveled and lived with the Shelleys since their elopement to the mainland of Europe. Shelley was documented as a supporter of free love a nineteenth-century hippie , in his own way and bought Claire musical instruments and several other nice gifts. He even bestowed one of his chief poetry notebooks on her, an edition that has been very helpful in later collecting together the complete works of Shelley and editing them into what is believed to have been the poet s ultimately desired goal (Rogers 2: 403-404).

To Constantia, Singing, is believed by some to have been a tribute to Claire, with its references to a beautiful musician. The poem was originally published sans its last line, a hearty (quite sappy) vow of love for the woman, and is believed to have been so done to avoid scandal concerning Shelley and Claire: Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget (44). The dates, however, do not concur: The poem was written months before the supposed affair, at a time when Percy Shelley was traveling and Claire Claremont had returned to London to give birth to Lord Byron s child (Rogers 2: 404); she was, during this time, still quite obsessed with the English lord. In light of the surrounding circumstances, details, and dates, it seems unlikely that the affair actually occurred; at the very least, I agree with Rogers that the poem To Constantia, Singing can hardly be seen as indicative of such a tryst (2: 404).

Another of Shelley s attempts is perhaps deserving of attention, though it is certain to have happened, is Shelley s attempts and desires to create a utopian society. While not an often mentioned or key portion of Shelley s life, and less mythical than mentionable, it is interesting to note that this poet desired to do what so many other Romantics (including Coleridge and Southey, and Thoreau in the American movement) tried and failed to accomplish. He tried this briefly during his stay in Wales, where he was refused by most of his friends and acquaintances, including his later close friend and conspirator Leigh Hunt, and was attempting to establish a utopian commune in Italy with Hunt and Byron when he was killed in a boating accident shortly before his thirtieth birthday (Coates).

An air of mystery and mystique surrounds portions of Shelley s life. His extremely radical lifestyle and beliefs mark him as a true bad boy, probably the chiefly recognized politically and socially revolutionary poet of the movement. He held many of the same ideals as the Romantic ideas, but in many areas especially the extend to which he rebelled Shelley surpasses his peers.

Shelley s legendary qualities can perhaps chiefly be attributed to the quality and endurance of some of his major and well-known works. Shelley s output was fairly prolific; his earliest work, produced around the ages of 18-20, has largely been ignored in favor of the later work, the greatest portion of which was produced in the last four years of his life. Among the mentionable and respected titles are On Mutability and the ambitious Revolt of Islam, as well as his homage to Keats, Adonias, written entirely in difficult Spenserian stanzas. Along with these are Ode to the West Wind and Ozymandias, two excellent examples of Shelley s mode and methods of writing.

Ode to the West Wind finds Shelley contemplating nature and the movement of the seasons. Beautiful descriptions of nature abound throughout his work, true to the Romantic inclination. Lines 33-36 find in a dream:

old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them!

The first stanza, however, where the wind chariotest seeds to their dark wintry bed each like a corpse in its grave and blows the pestilence-stricken multitude, uses this imagery to implicate something larger than the changing of the seasons. Along with the closing stanza s longing for a new birth, and the ending, hopeful line of If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind, Shelley s entire piece becomes a metaphor for a desire for change; the West Wind, with the militaristic images of the opening stanza, and Shelley s well-known political views, seems very likely to be a metaphor for revolution. This piece seems particularly powerful, however, not because it is a rallying cry for social change; instead, Shelley s deft maneuvering of political ideas into a very descriptive nature scene provides a startling comparison of which the reader cannot help but take notice. The careful attention to language and the overall motif of the wind are what make Shelley at his best here: focusing on the solid and concrete to convey his message, without resorting to overly flowery or polysyllabic language as he has sometimes tends to do (Mellor 161-164).

With Ozymandias, Shelley uses one of the hallmarks of Romantic interest: the ancient and exotic. Opening with I met a traveller from an antique land,/ Who said makes it obvious that the speaker is trying to play on these ideas; the fact it is a traveler relating the tale lends it an additional folklore quality. The description of the statue (depicting an ancient Egyptian ruler) again show Shelley at the height of his descriptive power, with Ozymandias s frown,/ And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command. His words, engraved on the pedestal of the now shattered and half sunken monument, My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,/ Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair! impress the idea on the reader that Shelley sets forth with the ending. Around the colossal wreck of Ozymandias s statue, boundless and bare/ The lone and level sands stretch far away. In this way, Shelley reminds us that all things come to an end: Empires fail and are covered by the sands of time, notoriety being a fleeting prize. Perhaps, too, this poem reflects the speaker s thoughts on writing; all the works a writer produces may too fall along the wayside and be forgotten some day.

In Ode to the West Wind, Shelley produces a work comparable to the series of odes written by his friend and contemporary John Keats; with the sonnet Ozymandias, he produces a memorable work in the favored form of the Romantic s literary hero, William Shakespeare. Such feats are surely not the marks of a hack or charlatan; indeed, Percy Bysshe Shelley s works show him to be a true Romantic at the heart of the movement. His life exemplifies what the young members of the Romantic Era glorified and exemplified right up to his tragic death in 1822, at the age of 29. He was freewheeling, adventurous, and benevolent to his fellow man, and he certainly had a grasp on the Romantic concepts of love. His bold political activism and attempts at social reform add to the mix, making him a formidable figure in both literature and a noticeable proponent of nineteenth-century freedom. Percy Bysshe Shelley remains a remarkable force in history: poet; political theorist, dissident, and essayist; and all in all true Romantic.

Works Cited

Coates, Chris. Egality! liberty! poetry!. 19 July 2004. 24 Nov. 2004. www.utopia-britannica.org.uk/pages/Liberty,egality,poetry.htm>.

Keach, William. Young Shelley. Romantic Circles Praxis Series. Ed. Neil Fraistat. Aug. 1997. University of Maryland. 9 Sep. 2004. praxis/earlyshelley/keach/keach.html>.

Mellor, Anne K. Choosing a Text of Frankenstein to Teach. New York: MLA, 1990: 31-37. Rpt. in Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: contexts, nineteenth-century responses, and criticism. Ed. Hunter, J. Paul. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1996. 160-166.

Percy Bysshe Shelley Poetry Exhibit. 10 Nov. 2004. The Academy of American Poets. 15 Nov. 2004. .

Rogers, Neville, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Vols 1 and 2. Glasgow: Oxford University Press, 1975. 4 vols.

Simkin, John. Percy Bysshe Shelley. 12 May 2002. Sparticus Educational. 9 Sep. 2004 .



Movie Review: Memoirs of a Geisha
Directed by Rob Marshall
By Rushifa

This movie was, in a word, gorgeous. The pacing feels a bit forced at times, which is a problem with many movie adaptations from books, but it doesn t detract from the overall flow of the film.

Memoirs of a Geisha is the story of a young Japanese girl sent to live and work in Kyoto. When their parents fall on hard times, she and her sister are sold, Chiyo to a Geisha Okiya, and her sister into prostitution. Alone and unhappy, Chiyo at first protests her change of lifestyle, but eventually comes to except it, and give it all she has. Her rivalry with the older Geisha in her Okiya, Hatsumomo, and her friendship and sisterhood with her mentor, Mameha, shape her growth and development as a successful young geisha.

Running along side Chiyo s success is the love-story between her and an older businessman. One day, when Chiyo is still unable to except her new life as a Geisha, the Chairman comes along and cheers her up by buying her a snack. As a result of his unlikely kindness, Chiyo develops a crush on him which inspires her to succeed as a Geisha, and eventually be near him. With this new determination, Chiyo is able to rise higher and higher, breaking records and charming men with her talented dancing and skilled manners.

I enjoyed this movie. The cinematography was well done and the sets and character design were beautiful. There were some lovely dance scenes, as well as a few more artsy scenes which didn t really add anything, but were pretty to look at. As a movie, it was a success, but as an adaptation of a good book, it missed the mark. Many scenes were omitted, as was to be expected considering the book was very long, but there were a few unnecessary added scenes, and subtle changes in the plot which seemed to serve no purpose.

Personally, I have never liked the romance in this story. Although I am a romantic, and a lover of Japanese culture, I would have preferred the story be about Chiyo's personal growth, instead of her unlikely and unhealthy relationship with a much older man. The ending, which I will not give away, did not satisfy me because it did not prove anything, did not define anything. I suppose the excuse for this can be that it was written as if it were someone's real story, and thus would not perfectly fit any definition of literature; but it was fiction, and written by an outsider to the culture and gender which the story surrounds, and it simply missed the mark. If anything, the movie made it even worse by cutting out key after-the-fact scenes.

3- ninja ninja ninja -characters
2- ninja ninja -storyline
5- ninja ninja ninja ninja ninja -style
2- ninja ninja -substance
3- ninja ninja ninja -overall

Got a bone to pick with the reviewer? Want to suggest a work for review? Dying to hear about a new media or genre? Contact Rushifa with your questions and comments.



The Best of the Best
Directed by Deabus Amor

As the 13th issue rolls around, we can't help but reflect on the fact that here we are, alive and kicking. Over the year we've filled our archives to the brim with poetry and prose -- some beautiful, some meaningful, some light and airy... but always written with the greatest of skill.

And amongst these treasures lie those deemed "The Best of the Best" as our motto goes.

12 months of Best of Issue winners languish in honored places in our archives.

Many have drifted away to Real Life, never to be seen or heard again. We wish them much glory in all their creative endeavours, hoping that they nourish their talents and continue to grace the world with it.

Amongst these BOI Winners that we remember fondly are

- The Mad Poet of Ishtar for her poem Socio-Political (De)volution. The very first to be granted this title in our feldgling 1st issue.

- 811 Apropos / Apropos Krause for Blink

- Lost Tacos for Lucid Dream

Yet there are some have stuck with us, matching the Press blow for blow in these Gaian waters. They battle their muses and expound written gold, and for them is this tribute. We hear from the writers themselves what propelled them to write in the first place, how they have grown since, and what they ate for breakfast.

Ok, maybe not the last one.


From the desk of Danube, her fictional story Make A Wish featured in our 2nd issue, a reflection on her growth this past year. Along with this is a peek at her new writings through her enclosed story The Resistance of Warped Wood

Danube

The Rickety Writer s Chair
At Sea
February 26th, 2006

Dearest fellows in the art of writing,

Oh, how the year has changed me. Oh, how the year has challenged me! My only hope is that my words can lessen the burden of the muse upon your shoulders, lift the weight of artistic vision from your mind, release the hold of the driving demon upon your heart. That same driving demon that wrested its grip upon my spirit, forcing me forward into the depths of the written word amidst strange city buildings in a cold darkness familiar to the particular area of the world in which I reside.

During my journey I had many teachers. These teachers took many forms, being both literal and metaphoric. As Aristotle teaches in his writings on Rhetoric, that which can be done, can be done better with training and with teaching. Thus I honed my craft under those who would be deemed professionals, though often they would fail in their duties as my instructors, I looked past their short comings to see that the same force that drove me onward also drove on my instructors. And that shared aspect acted as a highway on which information traveled into my mind, stretching it larger, until it grew beyond its former boundaries. Even as the former boundaries of my skills expanded, the capabilities of those skills grew with practical application.

So the question presents itself: is it entirely necessary for the artist called writer to study under another for the expansion of mind, and the learning of skills? No. For so long as the writer is driven forward by that calling, by that demon that wrests its claws about the heart, that drives its whip against our naked backs as we bare our artistic soul to its lash, the writer will always have a maddening thirst to grow forward and send the song of the spirit out into the darkest abyss of the often silent audience. This burning lust will always drive the writer to improve; to strive; and, above all, to write.

The burning lust that drives so many writers and artists on also drives me on. Some say they write because they have always written; some say they write because it will make good money; some say they write because they have the means, and therefore the will; but I say I write because it is in my bones, and no matter how I try to write it out, no matter how I try to escape that demanding beast by feeding it, the more I feed that creature the more it wants to be fed. And it can never be escaped.

So if the beast resides in your bones, and if the demon drives you to the brink of madness until you must make yourself its b***h, be ready to cast a collar about the creature to take it under your control. Only then will you capture the wild abilities which are truly your own, and the demon will be not what drives you but what you drive to your destined success. Make it your chariot; your soapbox; your mount. Make it yield to your desires and your drives, and you will wield a weapon more powerful than any other. Heed my words and you will not find yourself sorry for a source of inspiration, nor lacking in a lust for creativity. Indeed, my teachers thus far have taught me these lessons, and to these experiences I am grateful. So I bid you use your uncontrollable demons, your uncollared creatures, and use them to your advantage. Only when you have controlled that which you deemed uncontrollable will you find the place that I have found--the place of creative bliss and ultimate sanctuary.

And when you have reached that place and captured your own wild drives and desires, take joy and celebrate, for you have accomplished something truly wonderful--something truly grand. And so I bid you adieu, and wish you the best of luck on your journey. May my experiences serve to further yours, and may the road be kind to the weary traveller.

Ever your humble servant,

SN Danube

RN A.N. Chipman

Encl.

The Resistance of Warped Wood

James closed his eyes against the glare of her smile. Here he didn t have stage lights beating down on his naked face, neck and hands as he plucked out chords on the six strings of his guitar. Instead, he had to face her unrelenting smile. Every time he looked up from his corner she would be there, sitting with her friend. Smiling and laughing as she sipped at her tea. Playfully; almost torturously. Every week she would wear that tight red top, so hot it made him burn.

About ready there, James? Tim said as he sauntered over and rested his hand on a nearby table. Andrea ll be done her set in a minute, and you re up next.

James nodded, bending his head closer to the box of his guitar, his musical lover, to make sure he had tuned her just right. To make sure she would sing upon the touch of his fingertips. He stroked his calloused fingers over her strings and she hummed in his arms as his digits glided along her fretted neck and strummed across her stringed belly.

She hummed softly away from the din of the rest of the coffee shop, ferreted away in a quieter corner so James could ready her for the upcoming battle with the stage. Looking up, James watched the room. Some of the people talked against Andrea s performance, and some sat in silent wonder, unmoving. Others bounced their legs to the beat, snapped their fingers or sang along.

Andrea finished up her set to the applause of the tiny group. Tim stepped up to the mic and said, Next is James Alwood, he s becoming a regular here at Open Mic night. Let s hear it for James.

James stood from his seat and walked evenly to sit on the stool behind the microphone. Tilting his head down he looked out at the small gathering, sending his penetrating gaze out at the apathetics, idiots, and hippies. The applause was significantly less than it was for Andrea. All but a few looked away as he met their eyes, and that one women just kept smiling. The tension in his chest twisted around itself as the lights glared off her clean, straight teeth.

Lifting his hand to the mic, James adjusted it and set it against his mouth.

I m going to sing Throttled by Left Breathing, he said as he looked down along the smooth, brown wood of his guitar and began the song. He felt the heat of his breath brush back against his mouth as he whispered the words into the microphone. His lady purred on his lap as he stroked her, and she sang just right for him, oh so smooth and even.

As the song progressed, the muscles in his throat grew tense and fought against him as he struggled to form the right notes, the right manipulation of words and the right mood. The woman was still smiling, and it made things harder. James felt throttled every time he sang this song, but it was appropriate to the piece. Yet, no matter what song he demanded of his guitar, she always delivered.

As he finished, James looked up from under his brows at the small group. The applause was hesitant; half-hearted. He expected so much more for laying his soul out for them to see; for baring his heart to a group of strangers every week. James felt no disappointment, only anger at their inability to see him straight and give him what he deserved.

He pocketed the anger into the performance of his next song, and slowly the tension crept from his shoulders and down his arms, twisting deeper into his body as he made his lady buzz. His bitter heart thumped in his chest, and at the end the applause came again, a bit better than before but no better for his demanding stare.

One more song, and it was good thing too. His throat was dry like death and he was having trouble keeping the smooth rhythms of the songs he had written in his dark hours. As he strummed out the starting notes of the last song, he watched the smiling woman.

She leaned over to her friend and laughed, revealing the soft rise and fall of her cleavage over the bright red V of her shirt. She stirred the tea bag in her mug and glanced over at James, smiled softly then looked away quickly from his denigrating stare. He could tell he made her uncomfortable, and it gave him some kind of perverse pleasure.

She clapped for him when the song ended but it was hesitant like the rest. James felt better now that he knew she wasn t some kind of smiling demon that came every week to mock his pain. She could have other emotions as well.

Returning to his seat in the corner again, James gingerly replaced his guitar to his gig bag along with his pick. He ran his hand along her side in thanks before zipping her up in the airless, black vinyl sack.

James hadn t named her yet. It was one of those things guitarists were always supposed to do that James hadn t. Guess he hadn t found a proper name yet, even if he had had her for many years. Every name was always a bit off, always not quite right. He imagined the names the other musicians in the room probably had for their musical lovers. Probably fluffy-pooky folk music names like Lordes, Lillian, or Bobby.

After a few more sets, James grew tired of listening to the gentle tones of the folk music and supposed alternative country. He slid his gig bag onto his back and started for the door, glancing down at the smiling woman as he left, distaste worn plainly on his lips.

She looked up at him and smiled so big that her eyes became orbs hidden behind her cherubic cheeks.

I liked your set tonight, she said.

James turned and looked back at her as he left the coffee shop. He nodded and raised his hand to her. It was more a knee-jerk reaction than a conscious one, and he regretted the acknowledgement.

As he turned his back to her and walked away, the muscles in his face shifted. It was a peculiar feeling, like the resistance of wood when trying to straighten the neck of a guitar that had warped out of shape from the heat. James felt his mouth widen and the pressure on his cheeks increase. After a moment he realized why it felt so strange. He had held the grimace on his face for so long, he had forgotten what it felt like to smile.

Next to the limelight is our 5th Best of Issue Winner and published author, Hawthorne, for his poem Epiphany. With his many creative projects in the works, we will surely see his name lining our bookshelves someday.

HAWTHORNE

When I wrote Epiphany, I was in PEI, Canada visiting my friend Dr. Valentine and pretty much living out of the comic book store that he works at. That story is a new thing for me, mostly because I am at heart a novelist and writing very short fiction is quite difficult for me. Those who don t know I have a book published, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson, and you can find it on Amazon.com

Since writing Epiphany, I have embarked on yet another long fiction project called Mill Avenue Vexations. The original idea for this started way back in 2003, but I didn t succeed in kicking it off until about 2005 when Dr. Valentine produced some artwork for the first volume.

Vexations is a serialized novella, published in volumes of about 6-7k words each (representing about 3-4 chapters at a time.) It is set in Tempe, Arizona and centered around the main drag of Tempe, near Arizona State University, called Mill Ave. A place where I spent more than half my life growing up, being a street rat, and now returning as an author.

You can find more information on that project at http://www.millvexations.com and there is also a Gaia thread dedicated to it in the Original Stories/Prose forum. Insofar, this project has produced two volumes, one Christmas tribute, and I am currently working on a series of comics. The first one is tentatively set to come out in late April. It may not be where I want to completely focus all of my work as Vexations isn t intended to make money but it is a welcome distraction.

My primary publishing focus is on juvenile fiction with my Knight Investigators series, which starts with The Specter in the Spectacles. Although it is currently in print, my editor and I are working on revamping it (as a pilot) and a series of other books for presentation to a more traditional publisher.

It may be something of a long haul to get there, but I think if I can build on whatever popularity or street-cred I can generate with Vexations; publications in smaller magazines and zines (short stories and articles); and whatever else I can hopefully pull down from the literary community; then I will eventually reach the goal of actually having a series published.

I may be prolific, but I lack the energy to actually go out and get an agent or a publisher currently, so I m hoping a resume and a portfolio of previously published works will give me the foot-in-the-door that I need to get started.

Meanwhile, Cthuloid entities from beyond space and time will destroy Tempe, a taxicab driver will save the city from destruction, and life will continue on.

Next is a writer who has been with the Press since it's very beginning, entertaining our audiences with tales of comic rivalry set in J.K. Rowling's world. Yes, it is Hemp Fandango, Badger Brigade author and 9th BOI winner.

HEMP FANDANGO

Why did I start writing the Badger Brigade? Could it be that I wanted to make fun of Mary Sues? Could it be that I really wanted to show that Hufflepuffs aren't always useless or nice or meek? Could it be that I wanted to prove to myself that OCs can be well written? Could I just want the attention? All of the above, I think. The main reason, however, is this: it seemed like fun. And it was. And it still is.

Although fun in a different sort of way. When I started, I told myself I wouldn't take it all that seriously. It was so easy to write that I think chapters one and two were updated within a week or two of each other. Those days are long gone. Now people are lucky if I update within six months.

If I could go back and change one thing, I wouldn't just talk about doing it, I would do it. In fact, I have done it. In one of the earlier chapters I introduced a romantic/slash subplot in a scene with several new characters. A few chapters later I realised I would have no time for any more subplots (especially ones that had no real connection to the main plot) and went back and edited the entire scene out. That's the biggest example I can think of. I do a lot of little edits whenever I reread the BB.

In my defense, when I started the BB I only had a vague idea where I was heading with it and how it was going to end. As a result, many things were done spur of the moment, such as the introduction of Edwina and Megan. But now that I've passed the half-way mark, the ending is pretty clear. I know where I'm going now.

I don't think the BB is perfect. I wish it had a tighter plot with a much faster pace. I wish it had more subtle foreshadowing (or any foreshadowing at all), I wish I could use better metaphors and just had a better handle on writing devices in general. I wish I wouldn't introduce ideas and characters one chapter and then don't mention them for five chapters (can anyone remember that Sues turn into taffy?). I like to think I put plot and characterization before making fun of cliches, but sometimes I wonder...

But I love to write the dialogue, and I love the characters. I love writing about a Hufflepuff who is surly and a bit of a bully. I love, love, love writing about The Chosen, especially their little side adventures. I like the humour and the character interaction. I like writing about a Mary Sue whose only special power is the amazing ability to clean things. I like Mr Muffins.

And I love that, for some reason, people just keep reading it.

In the end, even though it has its faults, I'm proud to of the Badger Brigade.

Jasper Riddle, our 11th BOI Winner for the wonderfully deviant The Christmas Man, is not ashamed to admit that she is a novice in the world of writing. If one were to reach the pinnacle of their abilities...where would the fun be? It is in learning that we create, and with a novel in the works, we wish Jasper much by way of inspiration.

JASPER RIDDLE

Someone once asked me: Why do you write? What makes you think that people will read your stuff?

It s a good question, I guess, but I didn t have to think about it too much I write because that s what I do. I m not an athlete, nor a scholar; there s nothing I want to proclaim to the world, nor a lesson I want to teach. I write for myself. And that s what every good writer should keep in mind that even if they don t become rich and famous, they took an idea and stuck with it until they had it all written down, and then they polished it up, added and took out ideas until it was perfect, then got it published. It s nice to see your work sitting there with its pretty cover and new-book smell. And it doesn t matter how long it takes you my current work is over a year old and I m not even halfway through.

People regularly ask how I come up with ideas. Well, I don t; they come to me. Like The Christmas Man; I didn t sit around thinking about it it came to me in German class when I learned the literal translation of a word and thought: Hey, what if Santa Claus wasn t the nice guy that everyone makes him out to be? From there, it was simple enough to jot down in diary format this allowed me to get everything down before the inspiration vanished. Looking back at it, I want to expand upon it more toss out the diary format and give it more life try to scare someone instead of make them think or laugh. And since it s only a rough draft, I can do that. But now isn t the right time you need time to let it sit before you can go back and see with unglamoured eyes.

Sometimes, I wonder how I ve changed as a writer. I ve gotten better, yes, but I m still a novice, and not ashamed to admit it I ll look back at my old writing and cringe. It s pretty evident that I was leeching off my reading material. I look at my current stuff, and I love it to pieces, but then I read a book and think: Gee, I wish I could write like them. So I get back to work with the hope that someday, I will be that good.

Speaking of which, I really should get back to work on my novel. Maybe you should get back to yours, too.

-Jasper

Serieve's Note: Phew. We started early and still pushed for time, but with all those submissions, it was hard to vote! Let me tell you, pretty much everyone who submitted in the last thread is going to be published in the Press sooner or later, they were that good. For those not included in this issue, it will just have to be later. Thank you to all our readers for their support. A special thanks to the 111 members for all their (major) help, and of course thanks to my fellow staff members, who all exerted a little more effort than usual this go around. Happy Anniversary!

THE GAIAN PRESS - Issue 14.0 - March '06


IN THIS ISSUE:
1. The Neighborhood Watch - Gaian news for our attention deficit generation.
2. Honorable Mentions - Writing submitted and scouted by the best.
3. Geek Chic - A Girl's Guide to Geekdom.
4. Point! What's Your Point? - Anti-social, anti-state, anti-you.
5. Best of Issue - As voted by the members of the Press.
6. La Revue - Advice on things to do or not to do.
7. The Afterthought - Preview for the next issue and then some.















PART I. Poetry
Listed in alphabetical order by author.

A Live, by Apropos Krause
Dreamer, by Scary Fairy
"Dreams, In Color", by Lebki
Perfection, by Aderyn



A Live
By Apropos Krause

Somehow I always expected less,
More gray and cloudy[ness]
than bright sk[eyes] and vibrancy
So now I m a[way]ke,
First time since I lived,
And yet I m not livid.
Not being a live is
A hard [con]cept except
You don tcan twon t wrap
Your mind around it.
Just [un]like being alive.
You are.

Dreamer
By Scary Fairy

Thought bubbles arise
with lofty promises
of bowing down
to be worthy of the monarchy.

Ink races across the alarm
and my hopes
are twisted from existance
with drops of White-
Out snow.

Two million sketches
into this dim-witted future,
and I'll revisit
my cartoon thought
balloons
that no one seems to notice.

"Dreams, In Color"
By Lebki

---------------------------------------i.

Crystalline pool, the depths of which you have never seen!
Have only dreamed.
You're swimming!
Effortlessly, in this atmosphere of shimmering water.
No cares in the world, just child's play,
Cool blue in-ground light nothingness.
Drift a little. Then turn around and look up at the sky.

Can you believe people live there,
Spend their lives in a waterless prison?
Now how can you go back?

I have seen muddy spring bake in a summer oven,
Have seen blooms flourish, wither, and die:
The white-pink apple blossoms sacrificed
For the forbidden fruit;
The mulberry-colored clover flowers host bumbling bees.
The trees, eternal, push forth dark-colored leaves
From soft buds.
And lucky four-leaf clovers
Are picked, preserved, and forgotten.
Have you ever felt so alone as when you weren't here?

I think it's time to tell you why
You never met your mother.

---------------------------------------ii.

She had a dream:

Here comes Mister Happy Yellow Face,
Grinning a wide-mouthed embrace.
Say cheese (Can you say freeze?)--
No one can be that cheerful. Please.
Happiness-keeper, you sunny guy,
Everything you stand for is a lie.

Some day you'll drive off a cliff
-------------(goodbye cruel world)
And I'll be the only one smiling.


---------------------------------------iii.

She said, I've got the blues.
No reason to wake up; hit the snooze.
Or smash it. I don't care.
Either way, I'll still have my despair.

The sandman must be sick tonight.
There was no one sprinkling my dreams with
Sweet nothingness.
Why should I say that God loves me, or exists?
Whenever I prayed for a snow day, I got rain.
It's raining now.
Rain droplets, liquid sapphires on my head.

She said, I'll do it tonight.

I'm so sorry, my son. I wish I could give you sunshine,
But all I have is a leaky umbrella and a battered soul.
Maybe if you don't know me, you won't grow up so sad.

(Hit the snooze and go back to bed,
Is sleeping what it's like to be dead?)

---------------------------------------iv.

--------------------------------Slip slide aquamarine
--------------------------Pink coral on yellow sand
--------------------------------It's all just a living dream
--------------------------So come on, Miriam, take my hand...

---------------------------------------v.

Hate, the anti-love all victims feel:

I'm seeing red flags of this disease
One for each horseman, fluttering on the breeze.
Is it madness when it feels so right?
O stifling heat!
Blood was pulsing in my veins, all I wanted was
To break, blow up, blow out--
---------------------------but not die.
It's irrational to want to die, leaking dangerously into insanity.
But anger is stoked, and somehow is not ludicrous;
(Get lost in the beat,
The passion's fired up and so is the heat)
Wars come, go, and come back again.
People are massacred, and new ones replace them.
(Now work with me: who does the killing?)

You will see this, the fields strewn with bodies,
Washed red with blood instead of water.
"How?" you will gasp. "How can these people bleed so much?"
And my reply is that anyone bleeds, if only he is stabbed.
How is this not ludicrous?

---------------------------------------vi.

Rewind: Sunshine, eighteen glorious years ago.
Come in my window: it's open wide.
Pour molten, golden heat onto my bedside.
You're gorgeous, queen of morning and of noon;
Tell me this will last forever, 'cause I'm never leaving June.

I picked up the baby and told Miriam a story:
I was driving north, and an unfamiliar forest was to my right.
Then came a break in the trees (an entrance to a church)
And in one glorious three-second burst,
The dawn's sun-lit fingers (As if gold had sublimated,
As if liquid gold had evaporated and poured into that tree-break),
Crept out and lovingly shone on me.
I said, "God exists. I see him now."

But if that were true, it wouldn't have been dark again.
If that were true, it wouldn't be raining now.

(Oh my baby, said Miriam, How were your dreams?
Did you dream in color?)

---------------------------------------vii.

I held her hand the night she died.
Rain streaked the windows; fog peered into the glass,
That bandit of the night, cloaked in watery shadows.
Remember the blue, clear-glass skies so long ago?
How could I know that under those skies,
She was crying?
I have never in my life seen so much blood,
Been as afraid as when I heard that single shot.
It was cold when the ambulance came, colder when
She was pulled in.

The baby's crying, but I want to scream louder.
Scream of how she left me in this eternal night.

In her vase bloomed blue and white flowers,
Baby's breath, the night her breath ran out.

Perfection
By Aderyn

The ultimate curse,
Cause and effect
Of narrowed eyes
And fatal stabs.

Invincible will of
Friendless power,
Loveless wealth,
Useless talent.

Born to this path,
A towering maze
Of menacing cornflowers,
Shrouded in loneliness.

For every goddess,
Bonds are eternal
And freedom is lost
Forever.



PART II. Prose
Listed in alphbetical order by author.

Daydreamer, by radioactive alchemist
Fallen, by Raye Dragonmage
Your Luck Just Ran Out, by Rikku Abdul



Daydreamer
By radioactive alchemist

My companion dragged his heavy sword back up to his shoulder, getting ready to strike again at the dragon, the great golden-green serpent with fiery breath that blocked our path, prevented us from entering the cave where the princess was held captive. As he brought it up, I muttered a spell under my breath, moved my hands so, and summoned a wall of protection against the dragon's blasting flames. Another spell, quickly, to make my friend's sword able to pierce the dragon's tough hide. His sword glowed, and he raised it above his head, ready to--

"Mr. Blue! Please pay attention, and read us the next paragraph."

...strike. I sat up in my chair, ignoring the giggles of the girl behind me. "I'm afraid I've lost my place," I informed the teacher politely. She scowled.

"We're at the paragraph that starts with 'It was all very well to say 'drink me.'"

I started immediately, continuing the teacher's sentence. "...but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. I would say she's not very wise if she chased a rabbit down a hole in the first place, wouldn't you say?" I asked, looking up. I liked to one-up teachers which pointless questions, or ones they couldn't answer, or ones that just got them angry--because they couldn't do anything about me. I was a perfect A student, a few of the teachers even adored me enough to not care if I didn't participate in class, and the principal was one of my father's good friends.

"I'm not asking for a running commentary from you, Mr. Blue. Just read the paragraph."

"Very well," I replied with a sigh. It wasn't really a burden; I didn't know how many times before this I'd read Alice in Wonderland and I practically knew it by heart. Alice was kind of like me; at the end it all seems a dream. I'd rather live down Alice's rabbit hole than in reality. "'No, I'll look first,' she said, 'and see whether it's marked "poison" or not;' for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker would burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink too much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you sooner or later. However, this bottle was not marked 'poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off." I opened my mouth to make a comment on the stories Alice had read and what her parents or her nanny had been thinking, and how it was different back in those days, kids were raised right; and the fact that that combination probably wouldn't taste the greatest--but the teacher called on the next person and he began reading. I kept my thoughts to myself, and sunk back into my own world until the teacher yanked me out again to read another paragraph.

Thankfully, the bell rang before she could get back to me.



I always walked home from school when the weather was nice, instead of taking the bus. Even though I lived a few miles from school and it took me a good hour to walk home, it was quieter than the bus and I was attracted to quiet like a bee to honey, however off that analogy may be since bees are attracted to pollen, and make it into honey themselves. Or perhaps it's about how they'll defend their honey. I'll defend my quiet, if I have to. Sure I can still tune out the noise, but why waste the extra effort when I can take a nice walk instead? And buses are always bouncing up and down on their nonexistent hydraulics, and disrupting me, and then I have to worry about keeping track of which stop is mine, where if I'm walking it's sort of automatic and I can get home no matter how immersed I am in my thoughts, without thinking about it at all. The human mind is a funny thing, mine probably more than most.

I stepped through my door to the other world--an imaginary door, mind you, but that was how I got myself into the proper mindset. There were different doors to different places; they were all different. Some were normal-looking doors, others were huge and metal with massive rivets, some were wooden, some had carvings, or lettering. Behind each door was something different, a new place for me to go and explore. If it was a new door, I could only guess what was on the other side. The look of the door usually reflected what was beyond it, but not always. That was the fun part.

It was easier to go through when I was walking along, because then I could physically walk through the door (well, as if it was there, at least, but of course it really wasn't except to me); when I was sitting still I had to do it mentally, with a door in my mind or behind my eyelids. It was somehow less...solid that way, and I was more easily drawn out--good, because I had to use that technique in school. When I was just walking along, or when I locked myself in the privacy of my own room, I went through physically. Of course it was only pretend, only my imagination, and I longed for it to be real even though I knew that was impossible, that it would never happen. I may not be in touch with reality most of the time, but at least I know how to distinguish between them and I'm mature enough to realize they are only fantasies, that they only exist within me--and no one else.

This afternoon, waiting for me on the other side was kingship over a country at war. I had a beautiful young daughter; my wife the queen had been dead many a year and the Princess was the only light in my life. But alas, she fell ill--and the only one who could cure her was on the enemies' side. My only options were to let her, my daughter, die peacefully and leave me all alone; or I could hand her over for marriage to the ruler of the enemy kingdom. She would be cured, and the war would end--but for how long? And I would never see her again. Ah, cruel fate! What must I do? She lies in her silken gown on her silken sheets, hot with the fever that will not end except when her body cools in death...what am I, her father, to do? If I hand her over to the enemy, it is for the greater good of the people. The fighting will stop, there will be rejoicing in the streets; trumpets will sound from the turrets and the bells in the churches will ring out the glad news of the end of a war marked by a joyous wedding where the two enemies become allies.

But could I hand her over to the cruel hand of an old man, who wanted her only for her beauty and innocence? Of course I could not. I was a selfish man, guarding her like she was my only treasure, the jewel of the kingdom. Better for her to die and go to heaven, to be immortalized in a tomb of stone than for her to suffer; then I would know where she was, and that she was happy and at peace; and then I would be as well. Every day, I would go to her grave and speak to her, leave her fragrant flowers that she could no longer smell, jewelry and trinkets that she could no longer wear or enjoy.

Ah, the follies of man. Her funeral was a solemn affair, but wonderful; she spread out now in her silken burial shroud, her face as white and as soft as the wings of the doves who landed at her window and were fed breadcrumbs from her dainty hands! A spray of lilies clasped to her chest, bound by a silver chain on which there was a silver cross. Her open coffin was white and silver, fitting for a princess, my daughter. No black for her, no, death was something to be celebrated, her moving on. I had the mourners wear white. I myself wore white and silver, my mantle made of the white, soft fur of the snow-fox from the distant mountains. It kept me warm in the chilly wind that swept through the churchyard, heralding fall's approach.

Into the mausoleum her coffin was carried, and laid to rest on the central slab where the recently deceased are put in a position of reverence. The coffin before her, that of my departed wife, the queen, was moved to the back in the narrow slot that waited for her. I made my chamberlain promise that my dear daughter would not be put back there; she was to stay on the pedestal forever, even if I in my coffin when I was finally laid to rest had to go directly to the back.

When the mourners departed, I stayed in the mausoleum with her, talking to her, directing my voice to where she resided in heaven. There, all alone, I wept; but not for long at all. When I returned to my castle, it was to prepare myself for the next battle. Even in grief, the war could not be forgotten. The very next day I marched out with my loyal troops to the battlefront, all of us with white ribbons pinned to our breast. We fought for the memory of the Princess.

I fell in battle, slain by an enemy sword as I stepped through the front door of my house and out of the world of my thoughts. Even though I had been in the role of the king, I felt satisfied by his fate--after all, he had let his daughter die. I never dwelled on them for long afterwards, however; there were always more waiting behind more doors, a never-ending succession of them.

Toeing off my shoes by the front door, I dropped my bag there to wait for me until morning. I always did my homework over the lunch hour, since it was the noisiest time of the day and harder to get into the right mindset to step though the door. Unless I had a paper to write or a project to do, I never took my bag upstairs. It was a perpetual stranger to my carpet.

I raided the fridge and the cupboards for something to eat; lunch was hours behind me and dinner equally far away. My mother didn't get home until six-thirty, then waited until a quarter after seven to start making dinner, because my father didn't get home until eight. It was the same schedule, every night. My grandpa had been in the Navy, and my father had gone to a military school (hence the bad pun on my father's name, Navy Blue). His military background shows through into normal life, even though he hasn't followed his father into the service, exactly; he's an engineer for Lockheed-Martin, which I guess is sort of related because they make planes for the government.

According to the digital green of the microwave, it was only a little after four. Lunch was way back there at eleven, and I was a teenaged boy--I liked my food, almost as much as I liked stepping through the door and escaping reality. If I'd had a mini-fridge and a microwave in my room, my family would probably never see me again. I'd asked for such, but of course had been denied them because my parents knew that. I was stuck with having to come downstairs if I wanted anything to eat, and of course I had to come down to eat dinner. I probably wouldn't have missed that, anyway; my mother is a professional cook slash cake-decorator and works at a high-end bakery that does a lot of wedding cakes and such. We're always spoiled when it comes to dessert.

Some of that dessert happened to be left in the fridge, in the form of a jelly roll; I took part of that as well as the makings of a sandwich up to my room. I could hear Magic doing something incredibly annoying and noisy in her own room, which was across the hall; it sounded like she had one or two of her friends over. She was seven, but my parents had deemed her old enough to be responsible enough to have friends over when nobody was home--even though she definitely wasn't responsible. I don't know how they managed to go wrong raising her, especially with my father's method, but she is literally a wild child. I think she's just hyperactive, but my mother insists that it's just a stage and she'll grow out of it. She's been saying that since Magic was four.

I tried to ignore the noise she and her friend(s) were making, and went into my own room. I shut and locked the door tightly before depositing the plate on my desk and sitting down. While I ate I checked my email; there was the usual junk, and one email from my father saying that he would be home late again that night because they were working on some sort of big secret project and the deadline was the end of the month which happened to be only a week away. It didn't really mean anything to me, since I hardly ever saw him anyway. Email was the prime mode of communication between me and my parents; the dinner table was second. "Family night," every Sunday night, came in third. Family night was mostly meant to get me out of my room for a more extended period of time. It was only one night out of the week, so I put up with it. That, however, was four days away, it being a Thursday.

I finished snacking, leaving a bit of the jelly roll in case I felt hungry again before dinner, and tidied up my room because Thursday meant vacuuming day, which meant our rooms had to be clean. I wasn't a messy person, but there were some of my books lying around and some clothes that had missed the hamper and fallen to the ground around it instead--or in the case of one sock, landed in the wastebasket. I put the clothes in the hamper and the books back on the shelves, dusted a bit to make it look like I'd at least tried, and then I got down to my own personal business, locating a door that would keep me occupied until I was called down for dinner.

Sometimes I just took the first door, but other times I would try a few times until I found one that looked promising. The discarded doors usually showed up again a few days later, so it wasn't like I was missing out on anything that might be behind them. And of course sometimes the ones I'd left unfinished came back so I could go in and finish them, and if there was a particular one I enjoyed I could summon it up at will. Quite a few of my favorites were like those never-ending games, sort of like...oh, Dungeons and Dragons. I could always find new things to do, new places to explore. Others were a set scenario, like the one on the way home, and others were sort of like RPG games, where I had to complete a challenge or a quest or something before it ended--those usually ended up being the ones I went back to finish, because they could take a while.

I was aware, of course, that I was probably unique in the way I thought. I really didn't have a big enough imagination to pull all these ideas from, I didn't think, so I knew they had to come from somewhere. Maybe one door led to a place, a real place, where all the different ideas were kept; or maybe they were all real worlds, with real people, and I was able for a short while to enter them in my mind.

Of course I knew that none of that could possibly be true, but it was still fun to think it might be. Maybe I really did just have that much of an imagination. After all, when I was feeling lazy I liked to read instead; my bookshelves were chock-full of fantasy novels and novellas, trilogies, classics, cheap knockoffs of bestsellers and the bestsellers themselves, anything I could find. There was a used bookstore downtown, and my allowance was twenty dollars a week. Anything I wanted that was out of my budget my parents would buy for me (unless of course it was something like the mini-fridge), but I wasn't spoiled by any means--mostly because I didn't ask for nor want nor need much. I'm easy to keep satisfied, because I can satisfy myself just fine. I never get bored. I never really complain, unless Magic is making too much noise. If we go somewhere as a family, I go along and try to participate without 'drifting off,' as my mother puts it. She's wrong, though; I don't drift, I plunge in headfirst and am swallowed by it.

When I'm in my room, my bookcase becomes my portal and I imagine it changing into the door. Maybe it's because of the books and what they contain; I don't really know--that's just how it is, and how it's always been. I remember the day I first discovered the doors; it was my tenth birthday, and I wasn't doing anything special, just being left to myself as usual. The only thing that happened to me that day to show it was my birthday was a cake and a present of fifty dollars from my parents. Other than that, it was a normal day, even if it happened to be raining. I was in my room, like usually, and playing the "imagination game" like every child will do. But I was upset, it felt too childish that day for some reason, and I wanted to refine it. So I created the doors, just like that, and the bookcase was always where they appeared. For that reason I've never moved the bookcase from its spot, even though I don't think moving it would disrupt anything--it's just...sort of sentimental being right there, I suppose. Where it all started. When I was ten, I thought that maybe it was a magic bookcase; and for a while that was the only place the doors appeared. Later, they started appearing elsewhere: in front of me when I was walking, behind my closed eyes, sometimes inside the pages of my school books. I could control when they appeared, of course, and where (to a degree); but never what they will look like unless I have a certain one in mind, and certainly never what's behind them, unless I've been there before and even then, in the never-ending ones, sometimes I wind up in a completely different part of the world from the location I left.

But I wasn't thinking about any door in particular, except that I wanted a new one, fairly long. If that was what I knew I wanted, then only those kinds of doors would show up--it was just a matter of choosing which door looked promising, and what sort of thing I was in the mood for. I wasn't entirely sure what I was in the mood for; I was feeling lazy but I knew I wasn't in the mood to read a book because that would take even more effort--I'd have to get up off the bed where I'd lain down, for one. Sighing, I rolled over onto my back, looking at the bookcase upside-down. I wondered if the door would be upside-down if I did it that way, so I tried it; sadly, the door was right-side up. I didn't like the look of the door, it was too plain, so I erased it as I rolled back over and tried again. Again, it didn't seem right; I was being picky. I tried again, and again. I knew there wasn't a limit to the number of doors that existed so I wasn't worried about exhausting the supply, but I'd never had to go through more than seven or eight doors at most to find one that satisfied me. I found myself getting up into the late teens, but they were all too plain. I wanted something more exciting, but they weren't changing to fit my mood. They'd always changed before. I tried going for a familiar door, but it wouldn't appear--the same plain, wooden doors in differing shades just kept showing up, doors that told me nothing about what was behind them and they were so plain that I didn't want to waste time checking them out.

Finally, the plain, square doorframe that surrounded the plain doors wavered and changed into a high stone arch. The door was still plain, but at least it was a little different than the rest. It had heavy iron reinforcements, like a castle door, and the wood was worn down. The door handle was just an iron ring, worn smooth like many hands had grasped it. The stones that ringed the door were also smooth, and looked like they didn't really belong with the door itself. It intrigued me, and that was good.

Like all the doors that appeared before me, it was insubstantial, and I could still see the bookcase faintly behind it. What wasn't usual was the faint wisps of fog coming off the doorframe and from the crack underneath the door, and its slow but steady solidification. I didn't want to lose it now that I'd found it, but since I'd seen it I should be able to bring it back again. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and counted to ten. It was a sure way to get rid of any door. Opening my eyes again, I was faced with the same door, now looking entirely solid and real. The fog was gone except for a few wisps still curling at the foot of the stones and licking at my carpet, testing it before disintegrating into nothing and disappearing.

Rather than being scared, or wary, or any other things I may have felt that would have stopped me from going through, I was excited. It was real, which meant that everything else had to be real as well, that they were not just my ideas but they were actual worlds and now, finally, one was being opened to me, for me to go into for real, physically. Not taking my eyes off the door--just in case--I got up off my bed and approached it. I was almost afraid to reach out and touch it, for fear it wouldn't really be there and it would turn out it was all a dream, that I'd fallen asleep on my bed without knowing it and that I would wake up sorely disappointed.

Without thinking more about it, I reached out and grasped the iron ring. It was smooth and cold, like I would have expected it to be. There weren't any hinges on my side, so I assumed the door opened inwards, and I pushed against the wood with my hand. When the door didn't budge I put my shoulder up against it and tried more pressure. It gave slowly, letting out a massive creaking protest as though it hadn't been opened in ages. I let it go and it swung inwards. Looking down at the point where the grass on the other side met my carpet and seeing it bending over into my room with the light breeze the swept out of the door, it seemed so...natural. Not strange at all, like I'd always known something like that would happen and I was already used to it.

I looked up, past the grass and into the dense forest beyond. I couldn't tell what time it was on the other side, because the trees obscured the sky, but it was fairly dark underneath the leaves. Reaching behind me with one hand I felt around on my desk, picking up the first thing my hand encountered which happened to be my favorite pencil, the red one. Leaning down, I tossed it through the doorway and watched as it came to rest on the spongy grass, a bright spot of red in the muted greens and browns of the forest. Of course I wasn't about to lose my pencil, and of course I was going to go through the door and get it back and of course I was going to go in farther and explore and treat it just like it was a regular thing, only I would actually be there and it wouldn't all just be a daydream, something in my mind.

I didn't want to take my eyes off the door, and for once I regretted not bringing my backpack upstairs. There was nothing I could do about it, though, so I'd just have to go in empty-handed and hope someone would be nice enough to help me out. The world on the other side seemed pleasant enough, not monsters or dangerous things that I could see. I retreated to my closet, backwards, still not taking my eyes off the door, and got out the pair of boots that I kept stored there. They weren't ones I wore regularly, which was why they weren't downstairs in the hall closet; they were army boots that my father had gotten for me last year. Since they were the only pair available and I wasn't about to go in barefoot, I sat down on the floor and put them on--keeping my eyes on fixed on the door the whole time, of course.

Once the boots were on, I really had no excuse not to go through the door. I stood up and approached it once more, feeling the light, warm breeze that blew through into my room and ruffled the pages of the book on my desk and the stray hairs that always managed to escape from my ponytail. I squared my shoulders, and stepped off my carpet and onto the soft grass. My pencil had rolled quite a way in, and I made it my first goal to get to it--and only then would I allow myself to explore this place. As I bent down to pick my pencil up out of the grass, a gust of wind stirred up. I heard the door creaking behind me, and, clutching my pencil tightly, I whirled around just as the door slammed shut.

Editor's Note: If you would like to continue this story, please go here.

Fallen
By Raye Dragonmage

I spin around faster and faster, giggling with my friends as we swirl around and around, singing about ashes and falling down, then we tumble to the grass and lie, laughing, for minutes on end in a futile attempt to catch our breath. A cool breeze whips over the hilltop, ruffling everyone's hair and kissing flushed cheeks with barely-felt lips.

I scramble to my feet and run down the hill towards the playground below, singing, "Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall DOWN!" A few of my friends follow me, laughing and trying to catch my pigtails as they stream out behind me. But I have a head start, and they can't get up enough speed to catch me without going head over heels down the hill.

I stop in confusion as the playground before me, and the voices of my friends behind me, suddenly vanish. Instead, I'm standing on a cobblestone street, and the ground seems farther away; I'm taller, much taller. People lay around me, dying as I watch them. I try to run, but my feet seem to be glued to the ground. I let out a pathetic whining noise, like I'm five years old again, and scared of the dark. But it's not the dark I'm afraid of: it's the horror of the plague wiping out a third of Europe's population right before my eyes.

A few yards away, a group of scrawny children run by. Out of one of their pockets falls a single flower. That's right... they thought flowers could protect against the plague, I think vaguely. I feel sick, scared, and I want to run after those kids, to get out of there. I want to be back with my friends, playing on a hill, with nothing but the thought of losing the next game of hopscotch to scare me.

And suddenly, I'm there. I'm laying on my back, the sun above me, and my friends are giggling all around me as a cool breeze whips over the hilltop, ruffling everyone's hair and kissing flushed cheeks with barely-felt lips. It was a dream, lost in a moment of pondering with closed eyes, unreal, at least to my five-year-old self. I smile and pick myself up, pulling up two of my friends with me. Everyone helps each other to their feet, and we start the game again. "Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall DOWN!" I'm laughing with everyone else, but unlike them, my giggles don't hold the emotion. I feel hollowed out and scared by what I've seen. For some reason, our game doesn't seem so innocent anymore. I tumble to the grass again, and manage to rip my jeans as I do so. I'll get it from Mommy when I get home later. But now, that doesn't seem to matter. Someone pulls me to my feet, and we start twirling again. "Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall DOWN!" But haven't we fallen far enough?

Your Luck Just Ran Out
By Rikku Abdul

When I turned down the offer to go to Cara s house, I had automatically gotten the feeling that I would regret it. But I had a paper to write, and I knew I wouldn t get anything done while I was there. And it s not that I have priority issues it s just that when one s friend owns an air hockey table and a large assortment of video games, one can and will be tempted. So I went home, thinking that I would go straight to the computer and start writing that paper. This didn t happen, however, seeing as Carrie was already there. She insisted that she had to talk to her friends for like a few minutes, and it was, like, really important. Like an idiot, I believed her. And so began the chain of events that started this whole thing. And to think if I d just kicked her off the computer this whole mess could ve been avoided.

I waited for a while in the next room, and a few minutes turned into a half hour. The sounds of her clicking the mouse and typing told me that she wasn t planning on surrendering her position anytime soon, and I wasn t about to try to make her, either. I knew how Carrie was. If anyone tried to pry her away from the computer she grew claws and fangs and fought like her life depended on it. Instead, I headed for the bathroom, thinking that she d be done on the computer after I d taken a shower.

No such luck, of course. Ryan was still in the shower, exactly where he d been when I d walked into the house nearly an hour ago. He d been in there so long that I could smell the steam from outside the room. It was several minutes later when the sound of running water stopped.

Hurry up, Ryan! I yelled at him, knocking on the door. Seriously, how long does it take to take a shower?

He emerged a minute later, a thick, warm cloud of steam billowing out behind him.

I swear, Ryan; if you used all the hot water...

He just smirked, flipped a piece of hair out his face, and responded with a nonchalant Whatever as he walked away. I was about to head into the foggy bathroom when I realized I had no clothes to change into. On the way back, the pessimistic voice in my head said, You watch. You ll get back there and Carrie will be in the bathroom.

Stupid pessimistic voice. Why does it always have to be right? On the bright side, the computer was free. I d get the stupid paper out of the way, and with some hope there d be some hot water left after my sister got done taking one of her routine hour-long showers okay, maybe they re not really that long, but they seem that way sometimes.

Maybe I should ve asked for a self-help book last Christmas. I wouldn t have known it then, but it really would ve done me a lot of good right now. The idealistic title for said book would be along the lines of Optimism Why One Should Never Succumb to its Distorted Ways. Or maybe it could ve been something like 101 Reasons to Put Your Idiot Sister and Smart-Mouthed Brother up For Adoption. It was right after I d entered Microsoft Word and finished banishing the stupid talking paper clip that the power decided to start flashing on and off at ten second intervals. I just sat there for a moment, waiting to see if the computer would ever even get back to the desktop. It was amusing for a while, but it didn t take long for it to become annoying.

Yeah, yeah, I thought as Windows XP came back to the screen for what could have been the millionth time. Yes, computer. You remember what operating system you run on. Good for you. I get it already. It followed a routine; it would let me log onto my name and it would say Welcome, and sometimes it got to play its little song, and then it shut off with a flash. It didn t seem like such a big deal at first, but when you multiply that sequence by thirty, it begins to get a bit repetitive.

I think I d read somewhere that a prisoner could go insane from sitting in a cell and listening to the sound of water droplets falling. I wondered if my situation was any different.

And then there was a sudden, yet short-lived ray of hope the power stopped flashing and for a moment I thought it would actually stay on for good. But when desktop finally came back, the computer froze. I did exactly what the computer teachers always tell you not to do but you do anyway just to annoy them; I started clicking repetitively on the Microsoft Word icon.

Stupid piece of

I didn t finish that sentence. The power turned off again. And didn t come back on. I groaned in frustration and put my head down on the desk. I heard someone come in the room, and I instantly looked up to glare at whoever it might be one of my favorite stress-relieving methods had always been to glare and snap at anyone around me. Ryan was standing there with his usual smirk plastered to his face. At times I d questioned if his face was stuck that way.

What s wrong with you? He asked. I thought your special time of the month ended a week ago.

Could you please shut up? I snapped at him. And how the heck do you know anything about that?

You do realize that shut up and please sorta contradict each other, don t you? I mean, they re really on opposite sides of the politeness spectrum. Oh, and as for that last question? One can just tell.

He might ve said more, he might not have. If he did say anything, I wasn t listening. I just put my head down on the desk and listened to the howling wind outside. The howling in my head seemed to harmonize with it. If that stupid computer weren t worth ten years of my allowance, I might have just thrown it out into the street to be run over by someone s Cadillac. And if it weren t illegal, I might have killed Ryan. Unfortunately, I don t think I d be getting that great a raise in my allowance anytime soon, and the world s not fair, so I would still be penalized for killing my brother. I m afraid the excuse We ve only lost another idiot or Hey, it s called natural selection. Smart beats stupid. What can ya do? wouldn t work. Too bad.

It was at least another fifteen minutes before Carrie was finally done in the bathroom. I gave up on the computer and headed for the bathroom.

I don t know what I expected. What I do know is I was an idiot to believe the water was going to be even remotely warm. My siblings showers had probably taken over an hour combined, and since the water heater was off, whatever hot water was left wouldn t stay warm for long. In short, the shower was not pleasant, and it did not nearly as long as my siblings had.

I spent a large chunk of time after this trying to pry the fully-charged laptop from my little sister. I wanna play Solitaire! she d whined, to which I retaliated with, Go play Solitaire with real cards. She seemed a little confused at first. I don t think Carrie even realized that Solitaire could in fact be played with real cards. She was always a bit slow. Maybe it s because the food at the middle school has little or no nutritional value not that I can say differently about the high school food but actually, I think it s probably because she spent too long staring at the Solitaire cards and MSN Messenger on the computer screen. Fried her brains out.

I did actually manage to finish that paper and save it to a floppy disk. No, the laptop did not explode in my face, or get pop spilled on it so the keyboard wouldn t work, or become a makeshift football for Ryan to practice with indoors, might I add though for a while I feared that any of the above could happen.

The power still had not turned back on by the time I was done with the paper, and it was nine o clock according to the guy on the radio. As we sat there amusing ourselves with dominoes, watching the laptop s screensaver, doing terrible accents that were a cross between an Old Englishman and a pirate long story; it d be best not to ask and listening to crappy 80 s music, I wondered how long the power would be out. Maybe, just maybe, the whole town still wouldn t have power in the morning, and school would be cancelled!

My dreams were crushed when my mother came in to the room with a cup of fresh Burger King coffee. They ve got power downtown... I thought. Carrie asked if anyone else had power. Apparently, almost the whole town did, besides our neighborhood. And it was just at that moment that I remembered the school had back-up generators.

It was sort of fun for a while, the power being out. We had ten million candles going good thing my mom has a zillion mostly-decorative candles sitting around for no reason. We actually started the fireplace, which we hadn t done in a really long time. My mom did get angry when she realized that Ryan had left the refrigerator door open for a good ten minutes by accident, however. It was fun to watch, though, I have to admit. It wasn t at all fun to go to bed, however, considering the heaters didn t work, and we would in fact have to get up to go to school tomorrow.

Is there a moral to this story? Does my idealistic title for that self-help book about siblings apply here? I don t know, seeing as how it all could have just been one big coincidence. The lesson I probably should ve learned was not to procrastinate on my school assignments. But taking into consideration the fact that I m slow to learn and quick to procrastinate in learning from my mistakes, I don t know how well that one got through to me.

I did learn this, though buy your sister a deck of cards for her next birthday, and always get in the shower first, if at all possible. I don t know how well that applies to anyone else, but it s a lesson well-learned for me, and I don t think I ll forget it anytime soon.

#2 Maestro, Maestro!
By Bane is on Fire!

Those who know me know that my main passion, aside from writing, is music. I m a singer, trained in choral and jazz singing, as well as musical theatre. What exactly do these two fields of writing and music have in common, aside from attracting pretentious art snobs?

A whole lot, that s for sure.

On the surface, the two are simply different forms of art. Writing uses words to craft a story, music uses notes. But what exactly happens if we choose to look at writing as if it were music? Does the world stop turning? Do babies develop super-powers and challenge our governments? Does NBC s Thursday night lineup become funny again?

Sadly, none of these amazing things happen. However, we ll try it anyway.

Elements of Music

To start, we re going to take musical theory and break it down in simple, bite-sized elements. We ll begin with the single most important part (in most cases) of a musical piece the melody line. The melody of a musical piece is comparable to a story s plot every cascade, every descent, every climax is felt in both a melody and a story s plot. Now, if your story *just* has a plot, or if your song *just* has a melody, it s not going to be very compelling. But from this, we build.

Second, there are the harmony lines. In most instrumental and choral vocal compositions, there will be harmony lines. For instance, you ve got an Alto saxophone playing your melody. Then, if you re playing with a sax ensemble, you add in another Alto saxophone, a Tenor saxophone and a Baritone saxophone. Each of these three saxophones will take a different harmony line, and they all come together with the melody line. We can compare this to a story you ve got your melody line (plot), and it s complimented and augmented by the harmony lines (subplots and characters).

Many pieces of music have some kind of a bass line a foundation on which the rest of the song is set. The bass line serves to ground the music, and the parts above the bass line, with a feeling of pulse and energy that should be continued throughout the piece. In a story, you also often need to develop grounding elements. Perhaps it s a continuing conflict that holds your characters down. Perhaps it s a character that sets the tone of the story, and keeps it constant throughout.

A vital element of any musical piece is the tempo. Stories also have a tempo how fast does your story move? How is your story paced? And just like in music, when you change your tempo in a story in can have a variety of effects on the reader. If your story is a fast-paced thriller, and then you spend eighteen pages in the middle describing a pastoral setting, it will be jarring. But just like with music, it depends on the skill of the composer to determine whether the gambit will pay off.

Rhythm. Without rhythm, all music would essentially sound the same. And if your story has no rhythm, it won t go anywhere. When writing, there is a definite idea of using rhythms to determine the flow of your story. The way you craft each paragraph, each sentence, each exchange of dialogue this is rhythm.

So there you have music and writing, both composed of the same simple artistic elements. Does this mean there aren t differences between the two works? Of course not, but for the purpose of this short article, let s pretend there are. Hooray!

While I used compared writing to music in this article, you could certainly use a multitude of other art forms to compare to writing. Painting, sculpture, acting any of these things. So what was the point of using music?

A lot of writers today write simply because they think it s easy. And honestly, writing is probably the most accessible art form out there. But while it s easy to break into, like any other art form, it is composed of several vital elements. Just like you can t be a successful singer or musician without understanding rhythm and tempo, you can t be a successful writer without understanding flow and tone.

Happy writing!




#3 The Mark of Quality
By Rushifa

So, what exactly constitutes something "good." A good game, a good book, a good movie. How do you know? It seems to me there are two ways of approaching the worth of something: the big picture, and the little picture.

Ok, Big Picture first. Is it original? Is it land breaking, paradigm shattering, metaphor transcending? In the grand scheme of things, is it likely to be remembered as one of the best, one of the first, one of the only? Is it the "expert's" favorite, the lasting mark of excellence, the highest honor and the best of the genre.

Small Picture. Is it fun? Do you enjoy it? Would you shell out massive amounts of money for a special addition of it? A sequel? Action figures? Merchandise?

All too often, one of these categories is looked at separately from, or considered more real, more important, more genuine, than the other. I say you can't have one without the other. The big picture details are generally considered more "high brow" and "intellectual" than the small picture's, but I don't think this is a fair assessment. Many things have been good without being enjoyable, and many enjoyable without being a mark of achievement.

I think the true judge of something s worth is not an aspect which can be judged by any general overseer. When it comes down to it, the worth of something, anything, is whether or not it makes you think. This can't be judged by an outside source because it's very personal, very internal. It doesn't even have to be something challenging your beliefs, but rather something that inspires you, something that makes you feel less alone, less alienated. It's not passive, pointless fluff, but something that touches you somehow, whether it's changing your view of the world or simply engaging your mind for an hour.



Point! What s Your Point?
#14 The Day Rap Dies
Jeff A. Van Booven

There is a plague running rampant in this country. It's an unstoppable force that no doctor will ever be able to cure, no medicine will stop it. It is an inexplicable exception that we as a people need to combat full force. This problem... This problem is white people dancing to rap music.

Rap music in and of itself is already terrible, but to add white people to it; now that's just asking for your eyes to be gouged out. Dancing is many things, but flailing about your arms like a ******** chicken is not one of them. The Charleston used to drive parents batshit insane, but at least it had steps you were supposed to follow. Nowadays I swear these kids are trying to perform some sort of atomic bonding. The object of dancing is not to see if it is possible to bypass your partner's electrons. Some certain religions claimed dancing was 'sex with clothes on' and now, they're absolutely right. Sad, isn't it?

So, the real question, what is so good about these no talent assholes who berate women, talk about sex and drugs, etc? It's about damn time talent was a requirement in the entertainment industry again. I'm tired of watching the same old crap on T.V. There's no need for twenty sap shows that have no plot, no writers, and do the same old stories again, and again. The W.B. could be condensed into a single show and nobody would be the wiser. Do we really need both the O.C. and Laguna Beach? Pop culture my friends, it's a ******** talentless disease.

The day rap dies, it's the day I'll ******** cheer from the gorram mountain top. I'll tell you one thing though, the only way the next generation of children could be worse is if they actually were just having sex, and yet, somehow I think it'll happen.

There is still hope though, in a few billion or so years, the sun'll explode.



Songs of Zion- Chapter 1, Part 1
By Triste-chan

Seta Romanji
I. The Way The World Ends

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
- T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men


My head hurt.

It hurt in so many ways at once. All at once, it was a dull ache, an odd, itching, irritated pain, a stinging pain, a raw bleeding pain, a numb pain, a sharp pain pounding with the erratic beat of my heart. My forehead, my ears, my jaw, my eyes, they all hurt. For a moment, I was afraid that I was blind. Then I realized that my eyes were closed. For the moment, at least, I refrained from opening them, fearing what I might see. Paranoia filled me. What would it be? A gloating serial killer standing over me, preparing for the kill? Monsters? Would it be one of the things from my dreams, things that skin people alive and turn the skins into lasagna? Or perhaps macaroni? I considered laughing, but my head really hurt, damnit.

I started to get up from the ground with excruciating lethargy, panting. The air, dry and cold, scraped against my throat. I propped myself up with my arms, and then rested for a moment, nearly overcome by vertigo. I felt wet blood on my hands, seeping from the outside of the marquist's handiwork, coating the marque stones with slick, presumably red liquid.

Where am I?

The thought echoed in my head and spirals in my head, disquieting in both its intensity and its utter futility.

* * *

24 Hours and 36 Minutes Earlier

Falling. I was falling, and I knew it, and for once it didn't bother me at all. The world rushed past me and the wind boomed in my ears and I hit the ground, and everything stopped. Ouch.

"You're ******** crazy, Romanji."

A peal of insane laughter escaped my lips. "I am happy."

Skuld gave me a weird look. I stared at him without turning my head, my eyes wide and wild. "Why?" he inquired. He was leaning against a brick wall, standing so close to the street that he could probably feel a draft as people rushed past.

"I had a nightmare last night," I explained. "Woke up screaming and crying. It was awful."

He looked suspicious. "Are you going to give me your philosophical crap again? Something about how dreams aren't real and that makes you feel better or something? Some 'positive thinking' bullshit?"

"What? ******** no." An old Janevian woman with a long black tail walked by and gave me a look of disapproval, and it occurred to me that we were in the middle of a city, and that I should shut up. I closed my eyes and took in the sounds: the sound of cars honking and engines revving up, like the sound of rabid animals yelping and snarling. The sound of motorcycles weaving through traffic and cab drivers cussing them out rang out. I could hear base lines from radios, a homeless girl playing guitar and singing a mournful song about love found and lost, the staccato sounds of city percussion: balls bouncing, heels clicking, fingers snapping impatiently. For a moment, everything seemed to fall into place as if this were all an elaborate song. The illusion passed quickly. "No, that's not it," I whispered so that I could barely hear myself over the clamor. "I woke up screaming, you see. And the priestesses heard me, so they came into my room, and I told them that I had a nightmare. And they've been nice to me all day. One of them bought me a gift and everything."

"A gift?"

"Yeah, a necklace. A ******** necklace." I grinned. "Isn't that just bloody grand?" Somewhere, I heard a foreign girl screaming obscenities in Kaeltsa. I heard a smack and the girl swore again, but she sounded pained. It occurred to me that I was hearing a part of someone's life, and I felt as if I was invading. I wondered if the girl deserved it, and who had hit her. I opened my eyes and glanced at Skuld.

He shrugged. "It's just a necklace."

"I know. And I don't even like it that much. But it's the symbolism of the action." The breeze picked up and I could smell pollution. I could smell meat-on-a-stick from the stand on the corner. I could smell blood and sweat from the marquist's shop down the street. Some kid was getting his marques today. I could smell garbage sitting in the alley where I was lying on the ground at that very moment. The wind carried the sound of a group of friends laughing. For a moment I thought I smelled Sidhe, but they only came out at night in the city of Oasanev.

"Undossa. There you go again." I could barely discern Skuld's voice in the torrent of cell phones ringing, over the blare of music blaring on car radios.

"Yeah, yeah, but hear me out. See, we Romanji aren't supposed to wear jewelry. At all. And the priestess knows that. Yet she bought me a ******** necklace. It's supposed to be an action saying, '******** your Romanji traditions, ******** your so-called genetic superiority, ******** everything that's kept you separate from the rest of the world, everything that's kept you alone.' It's supposed to be a gesture of... friendship, perhaps. Or a social lifeline, maybe."

He rolled his eyes. "So what are you going to do with it?"

I stared up into the sky, looking at the sun through the city haze. I spread my arms out with my palms facing up so that I could feel my marque stones pressing against the ground. I closed my eyes and concentrated, feeling the power of my psychi ousia, my elemental soul, flowing through my hands in time with my heartbeat. I felt the pulse get stronger and stronger, flaring up and causing an odd tickling sensation. Then, release. I exhaled loudly.

"Well?" He prompted.

"I'm going to ignore the gesture behind it... and keep the necklace. Such is the Romanji way." I threw him a mock-wise look and snickered.

He looked uncomfortable and a little amused. "Whatever. Hey, I thought your brother kept a silver chain? Didn't you say that?"

"Well, he does."

He stared at me with cool hazel eyes. "So why can't you wear a necklace when he can?"

"Aerarchos never really followed the rules," I said. "And he didn't have to, really." Skuld looked at me skeptically. "Well, back when he still lived with me, we didn't really have to do much of anything as far as traditions go. The main branch didn't have any power over us because my mother was so influential with the clan."

"Influential? How come?" he asked, not at all concerned about the answer.

"Scared the s**t out of them. She was crazy. Really crazy. So Aerarchos and I, we didn't have to follow any rules back then. Now that mom's kicked it, I have to crawl back on my hands and knees. But he ran off, so he's home free. I dunno if he still has his chain, though."

"Ah," he said, trying to hide his disinterest and failing miserably. "Can I see the necklace?" he asked.

I rolled over to my side and unzipped my bag, ruffling through it for a moment before losing patience and dumping it all on the ground. The result was an avalanche of white - cigarettes and paper and tampons and a medical kit fell to the ground, followed by a clinking sound and a flash of copper.

"What the hell do you have tampons for?" he inquired. He examined his fingernails for a moment, and kicked a tuft of grass that had sprung up in the cracks of the pavement, like the last bit of life in sun season before the moon season's first snow.

"That time of month," I sat up and adjusted myself so that I was sitting cross-legged on the hot black pavement. The sun beat down on my shoulders, piercing the cold, sharp air to warm me up somewhat. The back of my head was still bleeding a little bit from the fall, or rather, the landing. "Don't worry, my cramps are just about finished, so I'm not dangerous."

He stared. "Oh. Oh. Wow. Holy s**t."

Oh, I thought. Oh yeah. "Er, yeah. Just to clear things up, I am in fact a girl."

"I just figured that out, yeah. Holy s**t. Um, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." He sounded a little panicky.

"What's your problem?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes, fidgeting. "Dude, you're a ******** girl, you moron," he snapped. "I've been seen all over town horsing around with a female. I'm trying to get a job with the church."

I shrugged defensively. "It's no big deal."

He sighed. "Set, I know you're not an Aethyrist, but try to keep up. I'm not supposed to flirt with girls. Particularly not younger ones."

"The church's standards aren't as high as you think," I said. "Really. As long as you're not loud about it, they don't care. And since when do you flirt with me?"

"I don't," he replied. "You're missing the point. You shouldn't lie about this s**t."

"I never said I was male."

"You never said you weren't, and you look like a guy. No offense," he added, grimacing. "a*****e."

I snorted.

He sighed. "So what the hell is the deal with you anyway? Are you, like, a transvestite, or are you trying to be a guy, or what?"

I turned to look at the street. "I'm just a girl who looks like a guy," I replied.

"And actively goes out of her way to look like a guy, and talks like a guy, and acts like a guy. You're trying to be a guy, right?"

I looked back at him. Bullshit, I thought flippantly, though secretly I filed the idea away for further examination, probably during math class. I winked at him. "The world may never know," I replied.

* * *

17 Hours and 42 Minutes Earlier

Upon hearing the library door open, I craned my neck instinctively to see who it was. A priestess, one our keepers. She was only a noviate, so she had no scry-scarring on her face over than two nasty scars on the outer corner of each eye. We weren't particularly close, since she seemed to enjoy dealing with younger children, and I was already 19, and four years away from being an adult. Still, I knew her well enough to feel comfortable when talking to her. She was pretty much your typical Itanevian, with skin somewhere in between the dark color of the Janevians and the pallid complexion of the Kaels. Wrinkles had just started to form on her face, and she wasn't terribly pretty, but she was healthy and had a lively air about her. Even her voice was rich and full of life.

"Good day, Kyria Seta."

I went back to my notes. "The last person who called me that was a whore," I chirped.

Kyria Tzadkiel chuckled, but it was the odd laughter of a priestess, both offended and impressed. She sat down beside me on the tattered couch, moving a small stack of papers and books to the side. "What are you doing?"

I toyed with the pendant she had given me a few hours earlier. It was a tiny vial that I assumed was filled with plain water, but it was impossible to tell due to the reddish tint of the glass. The chain was made of copper and seemed to be sturdy enough, but the necklace was probably not particularly expensive. "I'm writing a paper."

"Ah." She nodded in approval, causing her short blonde hair to bounce. "That's good. Is it interesting?"

"Yes. Ok, no. It's boring as ******** as what?" asked Tzadkiel accusingly. A southern Janevian girl and her boyfriend giggled behind a shelf. An older boy, who was trying to read some book written in a strange language, grabbed her short, scaly tail and yanked it without looking up. Tzadkiel jumped to her feet and scolded the boy in a shrill voice. "Oi, stop that! Stop it!" He grinned, but desisted. The brat looked rather miffed.

"You've got a book from Assiah?" I asked. "What is it?"

He smirked. "Kama Sutra. You wouldn't like it. Maybe Tzadkiel would like to see what I've learned from it, though." He went back to reading.

Tzadkiel looked embarrassed and annoyed. "It's outdated and ridiculous, dear. You're wasting your time reading ******** that," I said, curious. The boy was new to the ward, and I hadn't known that he was into Assiahan literature. I hadn't been interested in it before now, but if it made Tzadkiel uncomfortable, it had to be at least a little bit awesome.

She glared. "Do you think swearing makes you look cool?" she asked.

"No," I lied. "I don't care what anyone else thinks."

She snorted. "I'll bet." She sat back down, smoothing her skirt. The older boy snickered. "Can I read what you have so far?"

I blinked. "Um, sure." I handed her the papers I had been scribbling notes on.

She squinted and pushed a few strands of hair out of her eyes. The red-orange marque on her forehead glittered as she touched it. "You copied these excerpts from the book?"

"Yeah, the assignment was to copy only the relevant portions and still get the same essential meaning across. Some note taking s**t. Stuff. Sorry."

"Here we are, from Demonlogy: A Look at Tartarus from Gaea. Jiskadr, was this written in Assiah?"

I nodded. "It was written by a woman from Assiah in the year 1999. It was all about our world, and its connection to Assiah, the Earth, and the way we've grown together."

"Oh? And how have we grown together?"

"Going to be Socratic about it, are you?" She raised an eyebrow. "Socratic. There's an example. That's a word from Assiah. Our own language has been greatly affected by the languages of Assiah. We took many words from them, and they took many words from us." She gestured for me to go on. "That's because so much of their culture has been imported in to our own cities, and vice versa."

"And why has their culture had such a huge effect on ours? And why has our culture affected them?"

I inhaled deeply. "Well, because of all the trading we've done with them. So much of what we trade is... entertainment, cultural, uh, things, technology. There isn't much trading of foods, really. We export a lot of our own fuel and gemstones, since Assiah is so short of them. At the same time, they provide us with other natural resources and products."

"Right you are. But how could the trading of such resources cause cultural blending? What cultural value do these things have?"

"You ask a lot of questions. Anyway, there are a number of reasons. Firstly, the people who negotiated the trades and the people who did the actual shipping ended up spending a lot of time in Assiah. They brought back information about Assiahan technology, which was totally new to us. On the flip side, their own agents brought back our magic and marques. The people of Tartarus wanted the technology just as the Assiahans wanted the magic; people began to trade that as well. More importantly, people began to move back and forth. Assiahan entrepreneurs would move into Tartarus and bring their technology, along with factory workers who could speak their languages and work their steel. People from Tartarus would go to Assiah and offer their magic services."

"So we started trading people, you're saying? Do you know why people from Assiah wanted to come here?"

I wanted to say 'duh,' but that would actually pissed her off, which was not what I was looking for. "Since they had magic, they had something that no Assiahans had. They had something new to offer. Anyway, we started by trading our knowledge and eventually we became almost as one world, since we traded languages and entertainment as well. And religions too, sort of. Like, all those Christian types came over. What do you call them, uh, you know, those people. With the 'body and blood of Christ.' Catholics?" She nodded. "Yes. They came over and tried to convert a lot of our people, but it didn't work. Obviously."

She smiled. "When I was going through initiation, I met a woman who was Catholic. Lovely girl. But you know, she still was able to work for the Church, even though she had a completely different religious belief." I could hear from her voice that she was going to start ranting about how tolerant and wonderful the Church was. "And you know, Seta, she continued to follow her own religion, her own beliefs. She still worshipped the Christian gods alongside ours."

"Er, gods? Plural?"

She squinted. "Yes, gods, plural. Why?"

"I thought Catholics only had one god."

"Ah, that's a common misconception," she said. "Catholics have one main god that is divided into three different personalities. One is merely called god, one is called Logos or Yeshua, and the last is called Holy Ghost. They are all part of one deity called Trinity. They also have lesser gods that they call saints. And there is Dolores, who I believe is the main female deity of the religion. A virgin goddess of fertility, if I recall correctly. And then there is Shaitan or Satan, who is the god of Sheol, the Christian afterlife. Then there are angels and demons, who are spirits of light and dark."

Kama Sutra boy chuckled and muttered something about someone name 'Aquinas' spinning in his grave, whatever that meant. I ignored him. "Oh? I heard it differently. I thought that Christians were only supposed to worship one god." I replied.

Tzadkiel blinked, still smiling. "Seta, if they could only worship one god, how would they pay homage to our deities as well?"

I clenched my teeth. I hated being wrong. "I suppose they'd have to break the laws of their own religion."

"No, no. The woman I met back in initiation was very happy where she was, and devout in her religious beliefs. A model Catholic, to be sure." She still had that smile on her face and it was starting to bother me. You know, because being happy is a terrible crime and all.

"Singing the songs of Zion for you, was she?" said Kama Sutra boy.

Tzadkiel turned to him. "What?"

He turned around to look at us. "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and we wept when we remembered Zion. We hung our lyres upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away demanded of us song, for there they that wasted us demanded of us mirth, saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' Yet how shall we sing the Lord's songs in this foreign land? If I forget thee, o Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her skill. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue be cleaved to the roof of my mouth if I do not love Jerusalem over my greatest joy. Remember, o Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem, who cried out, 'Raze it, raze it to the foundation thereof!' O daughter of Babylon who will be destroyed, joyous shall be the one who rewards you as you have us, joyous shall be the one who dashes your little ones against the jagged rocks." He smirked. "Psalm 137," he explained, turning back to his book. Without looking back up, he said, "If you'd like, Kyria, I could recite the Kama Sutra to you as well."

Editor's Note: If you would like to continue reading this story, please see the author's site located here.



Code of the Ninja
Courtesy of The One and Only Jahoclave

5 - ninja ninja ninja ninja ninja - The ninja approves of this; failure to cohere with the ninja's decision is a grave mistake.
4 - ninja ninja ninja ninja - The ninja enjoys this, but he finds flaws.
3 - ninja ninja ninja - The ninja would rather date your sister, but since you may not have one he will take this instead.
2 - ninja ninja - The ninja warns you that he was only marginally impressed.
1 - ninja - If proper confession is made, the ninja will forgive you for taking part in this.
0 - xp - If you are looking for an invigorating experience I would suggest poking your eye out before this; the ninja does not approve.



Editor's Note: We're currently lacking in submissions for this department, so feel free to type up a little review (using the ninja's code, of course) to be published for the next issue! Books, music, anime, just about anything goes! So hop on that shiny soapbox already, my critical friend, I know you have something to say...



Movie Review: Silent Hill
Directed by Christophe Gans
By Rushifa



This movie has been long anticipated by fans of the games. Although I've only played some of the 4th game (which, I'm told, while a good game, is not very "typical" of the series), I went in with a few specific expectations. For the most part, I left satisfied.

Plot wise, Silent Hill follows Rose, whose daughter Sharon is haunted by nightmares and sleep walking. A search for the cause of her repressed memories leads Rose toe Silent Hill, the town which may be Sharon's birth place. With Dad left behind and uninformed, Rose takes Sharon on a car trip to try to get to the bottom of her past. After a car crash and the disappearance of Sharon, Rose teams up with a sexy police woman named Cybil as they try to survive the abandoned city and find her daughter.

I'm not a big fan of horror, and I always prefer psychological thrillers to blood and gut horror. Most of the movie was the former, but a few scenes delved needlessly into the latter. There were some obvious fan-pleasers, and some cg which will definitely not stand up to the test of time.

The end was horribly disappointing, or at least the climax was. The actual note the movie leaves off on, however, gains it back some of the points it lost for cheesy special effects and unnecessary gore in the latter half of the movie.

4 - ninja ninja ninja ninja - for Characters
3 - ninja ninja ninja - for Storyline
2 - ninja ninja - for Style
2 - ninja ninja - for Substance
3 - ninja ninja ninja - Overall

Got a bone to pick with the reviewer? Want to suggest a work for review? Dying to hear about a new media or genre? Contact Rushifa with your questions and comments.



Serieve's Note: This issue caught up on older submissions. We've stored many fiction pieces done by brilliant minds at our guild, but I never like to put a lot of fiction into one issue. I pushed myself this time. Anyway, I also set a new procrastination record this time. sweatdrop The staff didn't vote for Best of Issue until publishing day. Next issue will most likely have a lot of fiction in it also.

THE GAIAN PRESS - Issue 16.0 - May '06


IN THIS ISSUE:
1. The Neighborhood Watch - Gaian news for our attention deficit generation.
2. Honorable Mentions - Writing submitted and scouted by the best.
3. Geek Chic - A Girl's Guide to Geekdom.
4. Point! What's Your Point? - Anti-social, anti-state, anti-you.
5. Best of Issue - As voted by the members of the Press.
6. La Revue - Advice on things to do or not to do.
7. The Afterthought - Preview for the next issue and then some.















PART I. Poetry
Listed in alphabetical order by title.

Afterlife After Life by Krause
four ways to look at the sun by Onion
nightmares, by heart of glass
terrible labor, by Laverne Terres
Viva la Classique, by PiousCorn



Afterlife After Life
By Krause

Saint Peter, I always expected less,
more gray and cumulo-stratus
than bright sk[eyes] and vibrancy.
Obsidian non-Euclidian
replacing fluted marble
and marble flutes.
My afterlife after life
never had mileum aureum.

I always found my gold
on Earth: leaves falling
in autumn, last month s playmate s
lengthy locks, cr me brule
Life un-through being lived
And yet I m not livid.
No, that s untrue.
Muscles tense and veins bulge,
teeth clench and words sputter.

It was your time becomes
A hard [con]cept except
for blind Faith and her friends
following each other over cliff s edge.
I don tcan twon t wrap my fatty bacon
around the tender filet mignon.
It s the cooks job. My life
came out rare, not well-done.

four ways to look at the sun
Onion

i.

like an egg
the sun drops
and shatters
into a yolky mess
we choose to call night.
time and only time
will reform its shell
where all the king's horses
and men
would fail.

ii.

i imagine the fish
in the pacific ocean
watching it descend
like an atom bomb
toward their coral beds
know from experience
it will never touch them.
it will burn a new thing called
tomorrow instead.

iii.

we called it <********> in high school,
the furtive kiss from cherry to virgin tip
of a cigarette;
i stand waiting on the spine of the roof,
cupping my hands, but i know no wind
will put the sun out.
it must be stomped into the black clay,
always one horizon from reach.

iv.

god is a cyclops
forever rolling it.

nightmares
By heart of glass

the leviathans must have
curdled from the soot gathering
in the troposphere, straddling
under saturnine winter heights

then, tangy & silent, water creaming
under the phony bows of Lotos,
brine popped the surface with the
flowering surprise of perennials.

they must have slid like wind in
wheat-fields, perhaps supplely
folded into subconscious shapes

until the ocean fell awake
&, sweat-soaked, checked the stars.

terrible labor
By Laverne Terres

Tonight, it tried to be beautiful,
casting off its casual plus fours
and untucked shirts.
It stood strong in
the dining tables and chairs,
spread in the sandstone tiles
outside supermarkets.
It bent in the walls,
protecting our bare
skin and sensitive eyes.

It tried to be beautiful, showing
the town to dusty paths
and yellow unmown fields, offering
a bouquet of bony oaks, maples, ash.
They were something held dear
in the hearts of the
next generation
antiquists.

Tomorrow, the crude white sheet
covers its shriveled motherhood,
and what good the trees aren't
that seat us instead of fueling flames.

Viva la Classique
By PiousCorn

Monotonous repetition,
The riffs breaking,
Accompanied by soaring trills.

Sounds to you,
Like cheap hypnosis,
A dirty dangerous thrill.

Accursed blessing,
Shadowed light,
The gift of modern day.

You may scorn,
But into your brain,
It seems to make its way.

Cry pardon, you scream,
But it seems to me,
That you are tainting what I say.

Deeper it digs,
Rooting like pigs,
As slowly you re driven insane.



PART II. Prose
Listed in alphabetical order by title.

Anything, Everything And Nothing At All, by Prairie_Fire
Flies, by Sera
Prologue: Ageless by Kobreck
What Great War? by Vannak



Anything, Everything And Nothing At All
By Prairie_Fire

I once heard a rumor that said I d sold my soul to the devil so that I would live forever.

On that same token, I ve also heard rumors saying I was born without a soul.

Curious, I know.

Now, a rumor can never become fact unless it s confirmed. My problem is that I don t know which of these delicious tid-bits I should deem as true. As far as I know I ve never met the devil and I m sure if I did he d find something of more value in my keep than just my immortal being. As for not having a soul, well, if I were a betting man I m afraid I d have to bet against myself on that one. Seems like the odds are pretty even there and even never seems to go in my favor.

Those are the facts, a.k.a., the unimportant things. What is important you ask? Okay, since you asked, what s most important is the story itself, not tiny, irrelevant, pointless details like the truth. Who wants to hear the truth anyway? A judge? A jury? Not the executioner, he doesn t give a s**t. I mean, seriously, wouldn t you respect George Washington more if instead of ponying up to chopping down that cherry tree he instead told his folks that a gang of Indians all cracked out on peyote came and stole the tree but before they could sacrifice it s plentiful blossoms to their heathen thunder god or whatever George came in and scalped them all on their own tomahawks? He could have even made his own scalps out of like horse hair and tree bark or mud, who knows, the point is we could have a more honorable monument to Washington of him proudly holding some Indian skull caps instead of some phallic ivory tower and an idiotic, moralistic story if George had just been a decent liar, or better yet, a decent story teller.

That s what I do you know. Well, not professionally of course. You think I could afford these clothes, these shoes, this watch on a storyteller s salary? Well, the watch yeah, maybe, I bought it from a street vendor in New Orleans, sixteen bucks. But it s a real Rolex, trust me. Anyway, no, unfortunately I can t live off my yarns, but if I could I d be a richer man than I am now and believe you and me that s saying something. I run a hotel in a little town. It s safe to say I do quite well for someone my age. Twenty-seven years young and I ll never have to worry about money a day in my life. This would be a good time to thank my mother and father for being so good and leaving behind their business to me, but, I think I m going to use my Get Out Of Being Guilty About Your Dead Parents Free pass and just move this conversation along past go and collect two hundred dollars. Ca-ching!

Okay, before I have to start paying Parker Brothers any royalties, let s get this conversation back on track. Now, people love to hear a good story. And there s a lot of them to be told here in Wooden Nickel. That s where I m from, Wooden Nickel Washington. Never heard of it, right? Don t worry, not too many people have. Like I said it s a little town. The worst kind of clich , you know? Some dumpy old Hicksville all the way out in the boonies, one street, Main Street of course, going right through the center; white trash drunks from the factories raising hell every night at the local bar before going home to their bruised up wives. Cops are a bunch of corrupt sons of whores so they won t do nothing about that. Then there s the well-to-do blue bloods who live on the coastline in their palatial mansions. The factory owners of course, their noses always in each others business, talking s**t whenever their boney backs are turned on one another as they live out their droll, sexless lives until the day they finally sit down to their final meal of Vicodin and red wine and do the only generous thing they ll ever do in their lives and give their two-faced friends an excuse to go out and buy a new little black dress.

Damn, can you say tangent? Sorry, in case you haven t noticed I tend to do that every now and again. I ll be honest with you. I ve once or twice okay six times have suffered what doctors like to call severe head trauma. Don t look at me like that, it s not so bad, plus, how many people can say they have pieces of their own skull in their sock drawer? Or how many people can say they ve been told by fourteen medical professionals that they re lucky to be alive? Okay, yeah, it s not winning the Pulitzer, but bragging rights is bragging rights, am I right? Right.

So... what were we talking about?



Flies
By Sera

There are always flies buzzing around me. I don t know why. I m not the Fly Queen. But lately, there s always been two or three of these little flies buzzing around me. It s very strange, that. I m a clean person. Take a shower every day, wash my hair every two days. I don t go to dumps, and I live in the suburbs. Essentially, I never see these flies.

But they re buzzing around me, drunken pepper dots whirling around in the air, tickling my hand and then flying off once again. It s annoying. And I didn t used to have flies, until that Halloween night. And I sincerely doubt the flies came from bobbing for apples.

I only remember bits and pieces of Halloween night. A dare, laughter, and an old lady with an eye patch, clad in a black dress and holding a crooked brown cane. Her bony fingers grab my hair, and I don t remember what happened after that.

She haunts me, the old lady. More than the flies. Every time I close my eyes, I see the old crone, her skin wrinkled and her lips dry parchment. She s saying something, the lady with the pure blue glass eye. Her mouth is moving.

I cannot hear her.

-----

I m at school. Just walking down the hallway, staring at my brown shoes, moving onto my Literature class. My Lit teacher was being cranky of late. She claimed that her best friend went to jail, but that didn t explain the gigantic red D slashed over my essay. It was my best one yet, too. I felt sad.

Hey, Emmie! Look up. There she is, the little Asian girl with long brown hair and almond-shaped eyes. She has a cherubic happy face, but this time, her friends surrounded her. All of them had the round face shape, happy happy happy. I tug at my own hand-me-down jacket, and smile back.

Tell them how pretty my eyes are! she demands, lisping like she always does. It just adds to her adorability, of course. They were all so cute. In a way, they were the Elite Girls. I wasn t even a half member.

Oh, not again, one of the girls said, rolling her eyes. She had a sharp face, with high cheekbones and elegant wavy black hair, befitting chocolate skin.

No, tell them! the girl said pleadingly, tugging at my jacket. Tell them my eyes are beautiful. Entrapped in their games? Er okay.

They re . . . beautiful?

Yay! the girl cheered, throwing up her arms in delight. I glance closer to her eyes, almost out of curiosity.

The moment I admitted those words, her eyes suddenly became very pretty. They were sparkling, elegant and rich and refined all at once. A hazel kind of brown, I judged, very befitting for her. But looking closer, I saw some kind of sadness.

Stepping back, I could see the throng of girls all had that sad look on their face. I got this feeling, an unpleasant feeling, that I had to go somewhere. An urgent feeling that I had to go somewhere now. And that floating feeling that the girl and her friends only cared about her pretty eyes because they were trying to say good-bye. I had to go somewhere, quickly quickly, and I couldn t be late . . . I had to leave those girls, and leave them now.

I woke up, my face covered in sweat. I didn t move from underneath my covers. The morning was gray and cold. I was confused. Why were they saying good-bye? I wasn t going anywhere any time soon.

Right?

------

This time, I was actually at school. I could tell. The cold was biting at my nose and face, and I was yearning for gloves in Sunny California. Pulling my shabby jacket around me, I glanced up down the hallway. I didn t see the happy girl, but I saw a girl I had known in middle school her name was Sing, if I could recall correctly. I hadn t seen her for a long time, and I was surprised to see her here, like something out of a distant memory, a cloudy memory in my mind.

But the look on her face looked haunted and gaunt, even though she was still chubby and happy. Sing was a bit on the pudgy side, her face as flat as a dinner place with tiny bumps for noses and eyes and mouth. But today, this cast a different effect on her. It was as if something was after her, and I didn t know what.

Sing glanced at me, and still had that haunted look on her face as she passed me. If anything, it grew more rigid, and she looked away.

A dreamy face from a past memory.

---

I m sitting in Spanish class. The teacher is conjugating on the board, and I feel uncomfortable in the festive room. It s decorated in bright yellows and shining reds, and streamers everywhere. I take a break from the bright pink worksheet, glancing outside the window.

I saw a girl bobbing up and down. Strange. Her pale face was appearing and disappearing as she stalked between shutters and doors. She was pretty, with soulful and sweet brown eyes and a pouty mouth with porcelain white skin. She looked happy, chipper.

Who is she? I indicated outside.

My partner barely looks up. Who s who?

I glance back outside. The bobbing girl had disappeared again, leaving me nothing but a wistful memory.

-----

I m sitting by the road, holding my books. My stomach had hurt suddenly. My parents had hugged me good-bye today. They usually didn t. We were a distant family, and hugs were rare.

The old lady s house used to be inside the forest. I can t find it anymore. I m scared. The memory of the crone haunts me, and it s something I can t outrun. What is she saying?

A fly buzzes past me. I swat it away.

This is a dangerous highway. There s three accidents annually at this intersection alone. My friend lived near here, but then she moved. Actually, she moved a little after Halloween.

Double dog dare you, she says slowly, licking her index finger generally, and sucking on it gently. She had that strange habit. Double dog dare you . . . to go to that crone s house, inside the forest.
What? I m scared. It was a full moon tonight, and the woods were dark. Crickets chirped eerily and owls hooted at the most insane times. Even my own footsteps were scaring the s**t out of me.

It s Halloween! Don t you want to go? she asks, swinging her candy basket around. Come on . . . how about this? You just touch her house, and I ll give you all my candy.

I bite my lower lip. Will you come with me?

I ll wait here, Emmie. There s nothing to worry about.

I shiver, and pull my jacket closer. And I put my candy basket down.

Creeping through the forest makes me scared. The leaves crunch underneath my footsteps, and I have this feeling that somebody s watching me. Just . . . watching me, with eerie eyes. But I can t see anybody when I look around.

An owl hoots. I begin to jog, all my muscles feeling stiff. Darkness surrounds me. The trees have faces and long branches, stretching out to touch me, to grab me. I see the crone s house ahead. It s an old-fashioned house, with a porch and all. I figure all I have to do is touch the fence, then run away. But my feet won t move.

Finally, I begin to step forward. Each step resonates loudly throughout the forest. I keep my eyes on the windows in the house. There are no lights on. Perhaps she s out trick-or-treating too.

One more step. Nobody moves. The forest is silent, holding its breath for me.

With creaking fingers, I gently touch the fence. Breathing a soft sigh of relief, I looked up at the window, which was right in front of me now. An old lady, her skin wrinkled and with one eerie blue eye, stares down at me, her face scowled angrily.

The contrasting sight makes me scream, and I run. I keep on running throughout the forest, knowing that old lady is still standing at the window, glaring at me as I run. Will she send dogs after me? Will she curse me? I m screaming and running and screaming. Then there are the bright lights.

There was a trucking incident, where a drunk driver didn t see a little girl running out on the road. I bite my lower lip and draw blood. Then I stand up, and I turn around. I know who s there. The old lady, hobbling on her cane, nods to me solemnly, with her eerie blue eyes.

Hello, Emmie.

I can hear her now. The flies are still buzzing around me, but I don t mind anymore. And I feel sadness, grief, and relief all at the same time.

It s time for you to come with me. Her voice is like sandpaper. I don t mind. I reach out and touch her hand, and she holds onto me tight. Don t run away again, she warns, and I smile and nod. Then we walk into the light, just as the sun rises and touches the flies.



Prologue: Ageless
By Kobreck

Dry leaves, stirred up by the breeze of my passing, danced across the paved stone behind me, settling as I paused to look up at the house. The October chill reached my fingers even through the heavy fabric of my overcoat; it was cold, too cold for this time of year. I fancied I saw winter's first flakes darting across the dark shutters of the house, but they were only more leaves. Too many leaves, covering the dead grass of the weed-filled lawn and collecting in the gutters. Bare, the trees reached up--here one bending over the broken fountain and clogging the stagnant water with leaves, there one leaning towards the house and scratching at the windows as if it was asking to be let in.

It saddened me to see the house in such a state. When I'd left six years before it had been a happy place, full of music and people. Now... Now it stood there, alone, looking haunted--and it was I who had come to haunt it. Would I find that those visions still danced through the halls and that the ghostly music still played in an echo of those times, nearly covered up by the dry rustling of mice underneath the floorboards?

The leaves stirred again as I moved on, whispering at my heels and asking me why I'd returned to this place--what had led me here, pulled me back? Even I couldn't answer that; or, if I could, I didn't want to. I reached the porch; more leaves tumbled through the holes in the rotted wood as I pushed them aside with my shoes, sounding for safe passage to the door.

I wondered, for a moment, if she would be there to greet me--but no, she was gone, gone with the music and the freshness of spring air and the evening dew--and I was left with this: the cold and an empty house and leaves everywhere. The door opened at my touch, unlatched by wind and weather, and the corroded bronze knob came away in my hand. I let it drop.

As I moved through the dark hallways and empty rooms, trying to bring back the memories, it occurred to me that perhaps I was only a memory as well. Lost. How did they remember me, the girls in their crinoline and muslin as they batted their eyelashes and laughed lightly behind their powdered hands? Was I the foreign gentleman, the tall dark and handsome stranger with a smile and a dance for each of them? Or was I unremembered, lost amid the wine and the heavy perfume and the other men who were more open to their invitations?

Would things have been different if I had stayed, ageless as the world spun around me and time passed me by?

----------

I struck a match, the hiss of the flame flaring up loud in the empty room. It flickered, blown by a ghost wind as I held it up while removing the glass shield of the lamp before lighting the wick. After sputtering for a moment and sending up a tendril of smoke then lost to the darkness, it caught. The flame steadied, an inconsequential beacon in the growing shadows. I blew the match out, and let the charred wood drop to the rug where it smoldered among the damp leaves.

It mattered not whether the match caught or not. All would go up in flames before the night was over. That was how it had to be--build bridges, get over them, and burn them behind you. Six years was too long to keep holding on to what was no longer there. It was my curse to cling to the past. Everything passed me by, faded into oblivion, but I kept going and kept the memories close.

Smoke curled up from the leaves, but no fire. In a sudden fit of anger I backhanded the lamp, sending it flying across the room with a crash and the shattering of glass in the dark. Why did I continue to hope that she would still be there, waiting for me in the upstairs bedroom? Let the flames consume her. What did I care? It was over; she was gone. There had been nothing there in the first place, nothing but coy glances and a few kisses underneath the rose-covered trellis when no one was looking. Let it end, let it go.

I left the house, now a larger beacon in the night that called the fireman's claxon into business. No one saw me; a shadow within the shadows, not touched by the light of the fire as it leapt up and licked the sky. It was done. I turned my back to the house and moved on, hoping that for a while I could move ahead before the past caught up with me again.

Editor's Note: If you would like to keep track of this story, click here.



What Great War?
By Vannak

By some 90th year, this chair, the sky and my wife begin to finally feel like something new; and when I breathe, they momentarily inch their way about the world. I'm not a man of much prayer, but when I turn to my wife and say, "You think God will remember me?" she looks over to me as though I had just admitted I'm still hiding arsenic under my tongue from which ever war it was I fought in.

I just look down, guilty. She only responds with a sigh before she goes about rocking in her chair, slowly, as though going too fast may burn up her remaining hours. I myself am not as cautious. Her hand quickly finds its own way into my hand, and they breathe together. We are facing each other, rocking slowly as lovers do, and our rings clink together.

There s a spark between us and the world, and it's like being teenagers all over again, being high off of whatever we could inhale. Gunfire, cigarettes, air, or a small girl's nervous, shaking breath. I stand up and sit in a bench beside her, so that her hands are draped across her body, gently forcing her to face me.
I've spit out that little pill. The war's been over.
Now I am in my wife's arms, and remember, I am old now. I am wise now.
From my experience, I whisper to her as she sleeps, of how I never meant to keep those vows sacred.
She's asleep.

#5 Of So Many Pieces
By Rushifa

On a large scale, I've only moved once: 4 years ago when my family changed houses. With the start of college, however, life has become a bit more eventful. I've helped friends move, and undergone a move to and from the dorms. With each move, I undergo the same sense of insecurity. It's not about losing or breaking precious items, it's about a shift in perspective.

It's amazing that, no matter how hard we work or what we do, our life can be packed into just so many boxes, so many little pieces.

What I feel, staring out at countless brown boxes containing my cherished possessions and memories, is merely the tip of a bigger iceberg. The realization I face is not just about moving, but about growing up. We work all our young lives looking forward to the time when we will be "grown ups," but when we're faced with it in reality, it's a lot more frightening then one would think.

Living without parents is certainly a learning experience. I found myself missing the little things, like having someone to share a morning pot of tea with, or someone to make home-cooked meals, do the shopping, provide transportation. There are ups and downs, of course. A freedom comes with living in a dorm which can not be achieved at home. A freedom to stay up as late as I want, but the responsibility of being well rested for an early class.

I'm not yet an adult. I'm 19, barely started on my college career, and certainly not ready for all the responsibilities and definitions of adulthood. But I'm getting there, one box at a time.



Point! What?s Your Point?
#16 The X-Box Age
Jeff A. Van Booven

Well, I couldn't help but take some offense to the opening catch paragraph of Kenneth R. Gregg's latest column, even though it had very little to do with the column at all.

“This is the "X-Box Age" when kids grow up to think reality is a video game, with point scores and multiple characters that can be "All You Can Be." Death is pixilated on a computer monitor far away from the injuries and pain of the battlefield; where strategy and tactics aren't the unpredictable, messy things that actually happen in war; where the goals are nice little short-range "Game Over" entries on a screen; and where there are no long-term effects from the weapons – no children killed, no financial loss, no dreams ended. That's not war. Never was. Never will be. ”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/gregg2.html

Now, I'd like to start out by pointing out that there is no proof what-so-ever in existence to validate his claim that kids think that reality is a video game. It's unfounded, it's a lie, and to any kid, teen, or child it's a stereotype that shouldn't be pressed upon them.

He may be right about how video games aren't really a very good representative of war, and I tend to agree with him on that point. In fact, it's been one of the biggest complaints I've had about war games is that they don't seem realistic. World War II was never fought with lone soldiers, yet nearly all the games out treat it that way. Call of Duty II was a joke in regards to squad dynamics. They were nothing more than cannon fodder. Aside from that, any game that aptly even showed the damage of war, put in innocent civilians would instantly be put on the AO list and banned from Wal-Mart and any major retailer, even though it's showing what really happens and would supposedly teach kids what war is really like, which seems to me like it would fill Jack Thompson with a smug grin. What is lost is a grand educational opportunity as well. Think about those lovely load screens. Imagine what a nice page of what actually went on could do for a person's knowledge of the war. War games as there are, are undramatic pieces of s**t simply because we have too much vested in “protecting” the youth of today from reality. You want to know why kids don't understand reality, we're too damn busy shielding them from it in any way possibly.

We might as well hang “Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate” on the delivery room doors for today's children, because they pretty much have no hope from the get go if we keep up our deliberate attack on childhood. Think about it, we can't even let our kids play outside anymore because they might be kidnapped. They can't play rough because they might get hurt. And competitiveness is right out because it might hurt their self-esteem. On top of that they're all supposed to play nice with one another because they're peers just because they're the same age. You know, our modern model of education would damn near make Marx proud.

Kids used to go out and rough-house in the woods, build forts, and shoot guns. We all know that in today's society guns only kill people. A kid could hurt himself hammering. And oh dear you'd be lucky to even find woods. The only thing left is sports, which some kids might just not enjoy, because they are in fact competitive, and not very creative at all. We don't encourage creativity, expression, thought in our children. We do expect teamwork, unity, conformity.

I'm not even surprised that kids wind up in the house playing video games all day. I truly am not at all. As interesting as it is, asphalt doesn't lead to much. Video games however, allow you to become something. To do something greater. Save planets. Discover treasure. Explore. Create. Become. What do we offer our kids of today? School work. Pressure to become a uniformed servant of the state. A wage slave. Expression and free thought aren't something we encourage, and yet it's any wonder why we have mind-drones for teenagers?

Parents also wonder why they can't connect with their kids... Perhaps they might actually try finding interest in things their kids like? Shooting used to be a great example of this. A father teaching his son to shoot. How to handle a gun properly. The works. Father and son, together. Now days what do you get? Take an interest in your kids and you might just find that they'll respond to you.

I've been through the educational system as well. My impression, might as well get working on calling ourselves the Peoples' Republic of the United States, because if I've learned anything there, we love to bring ourselves down to the lowest common denominator. We refuse to accept that some people are naturally going to be better than others. We refuse to accept intelligence, and worst of all, we refuse creativity and free thought. Nothing is a better example than our English departments and Literary Analysis. We can spent entire high school careers trying to teach the symbolism inherit in outdated novels to kids who don't care and get nothing but people who now hate to read. Why does this happen, because for one, the kids don't connect to feminism and the civil rights movement... On top of that, most of the classes are centered on this should be your opinion rather than lets discuss what you got out of this book. What's even sillier is that we don't even bother to truly encourage free expression.

You want kids to recognize reality, then give them reality. Don't give them a war as a chapter of names and dates. Give them reality. Give them what really happened. Don't give them Jeopardy. This problem isn't one caused by video games, it's one caused by adults, politicians, and educators. It's cause by parents who refuse to let kids be kids. To let boys be boys. To let creativity reign.

And on top of that, look at how society has taken away from children. For example, there used to be a field and a nice wooded area with a stream and paths where I lived. A few years back corporate religion came in and took over the wooded area, built themselves a fancy church, thinned out the woods, and put up no trespassing signs all over. Now it's a baseball diamond that gets little use, a volleyball court I've never seen used, and a Frisbee golf course. Interesting how what was once a land of nature and creativity has been turned into a land of competitive sports for a select few, by an institution no less than a church, whom practices greed proselytizing for it's youth group. They actually have a competition where the youth group is split up to teams, and the team that gets the most people to come to the youth group meetings wins a trip. A trip these kids are so desperate to win, that they'll invite known, vocal, atheists, who would do nothing more than argue completely against the religious institutions should they come. Is this what religion is these days? Corporate Greed? Churches used to be built by the sweat and labour of the congregation, now they're hired out to subcontractors to build elaborate houses of God; an ironic joke if I ever saw one.

Now the field, it's been turned into a subdivision of similar looking houses. Plain, ugly, houses, standing in a row. You want kids to think, the environment we're creating sure isn't going to get that done.

On top of all this, I'd hate to say it, but a lot of kids are in fact very concerned about what is going on in this country. They may not be fourteen, and rightly why should a fourteen year old have politics as a major concern, but the many eighteen and nineteen years old that I know have a large majority of very vocal people when it comes to politics, many of whom are fervently anti-war. These aren't kids who were indoctrinated into these beliefs by their parents. We're talking overly religious, bible-belt teens who still think that this is an immoral and unjust war we've got going now. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is not our battle cry. Teenagers these days are not just the mindless drones that the powers that be have tried to make us. We give a damn, we are capable of thinking for ourselves. And should anybody think otherwise, they've got something coming, because not all teens are mindless indoctrinated idiots. Even in America, the land of the ignorant, bigoted, and dumb there are still many shining beacons of hope whom America desperately needs to rise and set a new course for the century, one that doesn't send this country into Byzantium.

The X-Box is only a console, it is not a generation that hasn't even come of age.



So Much Of This Is True.
By Laverne Terres

We lived close to the street way back when, closer to the street than the rest of the apartments below us. So you can tell how the economy's 'improved', I guess, ever since I was born. I mean, since now we don't have the sort of scare that came up in the suburbs all the time. Then again, now we don't have that sort of clean air.

Wrong track, anyways.

We could walk to touch the gravel easy at a time like that, early morning but still no cars, and the only danger being something like a baseball or a soccer ball. The pebbles were all pushed up to the sides because of the boys out there, and they made little mountains of ball-game breaks. The dust on the roads had sneaker prints running around in them, some of their chalk-white fingers touching down. We walked on the road, too, since nobody really drove out there. None of us were that smart, or none of us were that trustworthy. Or maybe both.

We had real houses then, too; we didn't live in stacked-up boxes on the side of the road, the type with carpet that can tell you how the sex was for the last tenants. What we lived in was more the type of house where every footstep echoed across the floors, and the house breathed when people whispered. There was one of those view-the-sunset windows in the top story, one of those ones that you bought broken and never got around to fixing it because of the breeze that came through, and you set up lawn chairs in front of it to talk in little voices with people you loved. Except there was always something going on, like a kid learning about space and planets and always babbling, or that Mom was just making phone calls to her sister 24/7 and you hear some funny stuff.

Yeah, that was just where we were, right about then. Mom on the phone.

'We' were me and my brother, close as nothing. We were the type of people you'd expect to see on the Wanted list, with mug shots as quiet as we were day to day. We had actions loud as a riot, though, and they talked more than we did. He and I should have played charades every day since we had nothing else to do but sit on the porch powdered with dust. The porch had faded nearly as light as the dust, though, so half of the time no one could tell.

He and I sat side by side, day by day, almost touching on the narrow stairs. Our mother, tense and quick, would pace behind us with the phone glued to her ear like it kept her pulse regular. And you know, it was like she wanted us to hear what she was saying, almost. Things about her life to our life, namely, and Dad's life, and Aunt's life. Sweet little conversations to squeeze out her stress, but most of the time she still cried afterwards.

So, on the porch, we were getting snippets of conversation depending on where we are physically and mentally both. She talks about everything that she doesn't tell us, and I guess it's how the info commutes to the kids. She came up close to us, heels from work clunking on the wood, as if just in her circle.

And she goes and says, "He called to ask if I'd hired a private investigator against him."

And yeah, we knew pretty much everything about then.

At least, I did.

We'd piled ages upon ages of stuff in the basement for selling. A garage sale of lives, I guess. I hadn't been involved, really, other than a few notices while I sat down there to escape the heat, and the parents were taking everything out. After hearing that, I went down and saw the ocean of things we'd never sell marked for exchange. These were the type of useless items you always found shoved away for safe keeping, the stuff that you'd one day sell to be rich; what Mom never wants to give away because they remind her of this or that. Lives were what they were. Children, infants. We were selling us, selling wills, selling how we got up every day. The type of stuff that Mom would cry over when she counted out the fifty dollars for safety.

All that, and then some. It was like giving away all this stuff that kept us together. We'd sold the motorcycle for I don't know how much. We didn't talk about it anyways, since the bike was Dad's by nature and Mom, she didn't like to mention him in front of us even if he was there anyways. Our boat was on the market, and the gazebo- my mother's birthday present from just a few years ago- it was going, too.

And the house. This was all going towards our smaller-house fund since we couldn't afford anything we were used to now.

And our father was going, too. That's what kept us all close to the ground, bankruptcy-wise. Say goodbye to life.

Phones were still ringing more than often. We weren't popular people, much, but the calls kept coming for her. She wasn't allowed to talk half of the time. My dad, he was a coward, I think. He didn't tell anything to anyone, too much of the confidence he wore sealing everything in shrink-wrap. He was so much a man, so much thinking with something he shouldn't that he didn't need to handle it but he needed other people to handle it instead. He was captain of the ship, head of the household, and it wasn't even really a household anymore, considering.

Then again, no one was better than he was at this. Brother and I didn't let it out either, because we were scared or something. Both of us, we knew plenty of people who'd found themselves in this sort of doorway, and never really told them about anything. We were constantly getting concerned mail and calls from everybody we didn't talk to, though.

I had a friend who never found out. I was waiting to tell her we were leaving soon, and I was really waiting to find out. Most of this I never was told but I always heard, like the type of things you hear from overlapped yelling. Like where Dad was going to be: Pennsylvania. I wasn't sure what this meant at the time, but for now, I know it means airplanes are the only way we're ever going to see each other.

We were never sure if we were going to care about that, my brother and me. Except that Dad was the only way we got anything, and the only thing keeping us fed. One and a half hundred thousand a year paid off for that. Mom couldn't match, since she got twelve dollars an hour. Sweet as it was, we were going to have to miss him. Hugs and kisses galore.

And then he had to move.

Phone calls and forced love. Eventually, we didn't live by the street at all.



Code of the Ninja
Courtesy of The One and Only Jahoclave

5 ninjas - The ninja approves of this; failure to cohere with the ninja's decision is a grave mistake.
4 ninjas - The ninja enjoys this, but he finds flaws.
3 ninjas - The ninja would rather date your sister, but since you may not have one he will take this instead.
2 ninjas - The ninja warns you that he was only marginally impressed.
1 ninja - If proper confession is made, the ninja will forgive you for taking part in this.
xp - If you are looking for an invigorating experience I would suggest poking your eye out before this; the ninja does not approve.



Movie Review: Cars
Directed By John Lasseter and Joe Ranft
Review By Rushifa


Well, Pixar has done it again.

As Disney seems to lose its footing, I applaud their choice to team up with Pixar, a studio which certainly seems to understand and love what they do. Although Cars does not quite live up to Pixar's other masterpieces, it certainly makes the grade.

Plot-wise, Cars is not terribly original. Hot-shot city slicker meets "country bumpkins," learns the true meaning of life, and comes away the better for it. However, the unique use of cars instead of people adds a novel twist. The movie also deals with consumerism, enviromentalism, and a traditional old generation v. new generation. There is romance, action, suspense...everything you want out of a movie.

As with many CG movies, the effects are half the appeal. I was fortunate enough to see this movie with a game-design student, so I had all the little animation details pointed out to me. I think it helped my enjoyment of the movie. Even though I'm certainly not an expert, I found the graphics amazing, smooth, and stylistic but consistant.

My favorite part of the movie was the soundtrack. I thought all the songs were well chosen and well placed, and really helped the flow of the movie. Due, I think greatly, to the music, the movie had the gripping, encompassing feeling which I haven't felt in a kids movie in awhile.

Now, for those of you who've seen the previews and have been unimpressed, I would like to introduce a simple formula which my friend and I have come to depend on. Don't worry, this doesn't involve math. Quite simple, the best movies tend to have the worse ads, and via se versa. From the previews, I though Cars looked kind of stupid, but I realy enjoyed it and am glad I didn't trust my first impression.

3- ninja ninja ninja -characters
4- ninja ninja ninja ninja -storyline
5- ninja ninja ninja ninja ninja -style
4- ninja ninja ninja ninja -substance
4- ninja ninja ninja ninja -overall

Got a bone to pick with the reviewer? Want to suggest a work for review? Dying to hear about a new media or genre? Contact Rushifa with your questions and comments.



Book Review: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Written by Susanna Clarke
Review by Elizabeth Sparrow



If Jane Austen ever had decided to write fantasy, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is what she would've written.

That is the best way to sum up this monster of a novel. Every ounce of its eight-hundred pages drips with the social commentary, humour, and writing style that you would expect from a book written by Austen.

And this certainly isn't a bad thing.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a book that centers around two magicians and the people who are close to them. Mr. Norrell is the first magician you meet; a stuffy and stiff man who is the last person you would ever think of to be a magician. He is paranoid, egotistical, and a hoarder of books. Yet he is the first magician that England has produced in many years, coming out of a time when it seemed like no more magic was left in the country at all.

Jonathan Strange is Mr. Norrell's pupil. He is a little narcisstic and quirky, and ever so much more the magician than Norrell. He may be the more likeable of the two, but is certainly not without his faults.

These two men are charged with bringing magic back to England. On their way they have to deal with fairies, dishonest human beings, magical troubles, and a whole cast of human characters that are incredibly believable. Among the rest of the cast is Childermass, Norrell's very cynical and intelligent manservant who is probably the most striking character in the novel. You also meet Vinculus- a street sorcerer with an unsavoury reputation who may not really be as unmagical as he seems.

In the course of this novel people are brought back from the dead, abducted to fairy realms, and cloaked in never-ending night. Some inflict insanity upon themselves, visit kings, and perhaps catch a glimpse of the ever elusive Raven King, the mysterious black-haired man who is credited with originally bringing magic to England. There is betrayal, murder, love, war, and magic (of course).

But beware, ladies and gentlemen- Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is not all action and suspense. It has large sections which focus on the society of the time and particular characters, where not much seems to happen at all. If you're not one for major character development, this book may not be for you. This story does not move very rapidly until the last fifty pages or so, where suddenly everything falls together, with an ending that leaves us begging for a sequel.

All together, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is an excellent book, and I highly recommend running out to your local bookstore/library/whatnot right now to grab a copy.

5- ninja ninja ninja ninja ninja -Characters
4- ninja ninja ninja ninja -Storyline
5- ninja ninja ninja ninja ninja -Style
4- ninja ninja ninja ninja -Substance
5- ninja ninja ninja ninja ninja -Overall

If you want to argue and/or discuss the subject matter reviewed with the reviewer, feel free to PM her at any time. She might even reply, if she isn't being lazy.



-Scary_Fairy critiques:


Hmm. I'm not sure if your title is the best. Play around with it?


I think this metaphor is a bit on the bland side, and the wording really isn't helping that much. I like the idea of an insomniac, but let's pull out some more imagery to make it feel a bit more... I dunno. Interesting is a bit harsh, but -- Yeah, I'm rambling. Anywho, the last line feels pretty weak.


I think the first line here is the borderline cliche: acceptable, but not very. I think a comma after 'streets' would make this a bit easier to read. This also felt pretty straightforward. Its okay to state things in poetry, just don't do it too much.


Now, I think this absolute gold. This is a nice concept, but I still think your wording needs to be fixed up.


Hmm. I like the contradictory last sentence; you pulled it off. But, I'm still not liking the wording. You were adventerous with your line breaks, and I like that. Just, take it a little further. The one-word-liners can work wonders when used correctly.



That first comma should be a semicolon. Also, since you've been going with correct punctuation so far, go ahead and add quotes around the last line. Also, I like this wording, though 'empty' is a bit redundant.


Oh oh oh. Cliche right here. I think you could take this and take it to so much farther heights, but you just landed here. It's a bit of a downer.


Okays, I think that first bit of repetition of 'clearer' really didn't do that much. Also, I think a metaphor for 'the meaning of life' would be a lot better than just spilling it out like you did. Make that first period a semicolon.



Hmm. I like this ending. The brushing teeth concept was nice, and this was refreshing compared to the rest of the poem [no offense or anything].

Overall: Your wording was probably the part of this poem I didn't like the most. It felt flatter than a piece of paper {when its not turned into origami or crumpled up}, and really took away. You had a good concept, but try putting some more imagery and metaphors in there. Be daring with you punctuation and line breaks, too. Its fun to make people think about your line breaks, and gives a better reading and understanding.



Editor's Note: I have to say I'm very proud of the staff, new and old. They did a very fine job this go around, and if I could I'd give them all a bonus. We've got several ideas set into motion: a new Staff Spotlight, advertisements, the Critic's Corner, more detailed staff positions, etc. I love my job, even if I sometimes doubt my ability to do it well. Which brings me to another point; I could use some help editing and creating the draft, choosing which pieces get published. So if you were thinking of applying, keep that in mind. I'll be on the Internet more now, since my ever-stressful vacation is over, so feel free to PM me your application!

Last but never least, welcome to our newest staff members!
Zoeidina, Prose Critic
Scary_Fairy, Poetry Critic
Elizabeth_Sparrow, Reviewer/Prose Critic
Kyou Nitsune, Handy Man

I love my staff. heart