Harakiri

Oh boy, I've been around since 2007 and if you look at some of my older stuff, it makes me want to throw up. But ultimately, it was a start and helped build me to where I am anymore. I'm actually pretty glad I posted that crap because a few people supported my continued writing and made me actually want to write for fun. I don't write as much as I did back in those days, but I was moving out of the sixth grade and into the seventh grade when I posted my first stories on here. I wrote Snake and Noob, which was what I focused on for about six months, when I was in the seventh grade. Now I'm a sophomore and I look back and laugh at that stuff. You don't need to apologize, the great thing about this forum is the fact that you can be a really bad writer, but people will still support you and help you.

I've been reading Earth by John Stewart for the past day. I'm going to move into reading The Lost Symbol and giving Eragon a try.

An Egyptologist or a history teacher.

I know a forty year old who used to play and has a level 131 character.

I agree with Nadril....Half Life 1 was great. I'm just taking a stab in the dark, but are FPS games your favorite?

Beat the campaign a half hour ago and was blown away. The revelations at the end, as well as that whole scene before the final level were so well done. I am going to jump into multiplayer and zombies shortly, but I have to say that campaign-wise, this was my favorite COD. Some graphical problems and such plagued it, but it was still so much fun and had such an amazing story that I can forgive it. Makes up for that over-rated piece of crap MW2. I don't know how they can top a story like this one!

I'm going to be much less active. I'm using The Escapist forums and commenting on that site much more and I think it's about time I find a new place to frequent. I'll drop by every once in a while, but I really have no reason to be here anymore since I quit Runescape.

My review of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Review Yahtzee's review that came out a day after mine: Yahtzee We pretty much said the same exact things. Which is kinda scary because I typically disagree with him on games I've played.

I beat it just a few moments ago. The ending, to say the least, is underwhelming, but stick around after the credits because the cutscene was actually pretty cool.

I respectfully disagree with you. Mechanically it's similar but that's about it. The chained sword-like weapon is the same. The same platforming elements, even down to the angel wings you earn towards the end of the game. The same puzzle kind of things. The same quick-time events, though bogged down a bit. The same picking up items and using five of those items to increase health and magic. The whole ghost of Gabriel's wife thing reminded me heavily of God of War. They are very similar. Punching blocks around with hilarious grunting. The crank animations look exactly the same. When you enter the section of the vampires castle that holds the queen you cross a chain to get there, just like God of War. Riding various enemies. God of War did not, though, have colossal boss monsters you have to climb and attack the weak, glowy points of. But I believe Shadow of the Colossus did. It's just too similar for me. Not that the game isn't fun, I haven't completely finished it yet and I've played it for twelve hours or so. It's long and it does a much better job of being a God of War clone than Dante's Inferno, but it is just so similar...

Playing Castlevania Lords of Shadow. I'll give you a full opinion when I get through it, but so far I am not too impressed. It rips off God Of War in almost every respect, then has a couple giant monster boss fights exactly like those in Shadow of the Colossus. It's playable and is all right so far, but it's just taking from games that did everything a lot better.

I attempted to read through the first one, but what you say is right, I didn't like it. It wasn't bad, it just bored me. I much prefer The Dresden Files. I want to reread them all so bad at the moment because I went to Chicago about a week ago and annoyed the hell out of my dad by pointing out every place where Dresden has fought someone, or stuff like that. We went to the Field Museum and I pointed out the end of Dead Beat. We were at Union Station and I pointed out the fight between Dresden and the big billy goat gruff in Small Favor. As you can tell, I'm a big fan :grin: Hah, nice. I want to try reading The Dresden Files someday, but as I mentioned earlier, I usually prefer MY fantasy in a fantasy world.... to each their own :) And that sounds like it must've been a fun weekend for you =D You should try them. It's hard to describe the genre as just fantasy though because it has a lot of horror elements in it too. I just think the pace is great, I need lots of action and in between needs to be exciting. And Dresden is written in first person and I can safely say that Dresden is good company. It's the only book series that made me cry. You grow very attached to Dresden, he becomes a real person very soon into the series and it feels like you are walking beside him. It was an all right weekend. I hate big cities and crowds. So Chicago is on my "never going back" list. I much prefer smaller cities or towns. Chicago is too crowded, has a lot of creepy people all over. Not my kind of place.

I'm reading Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich at the moment, though very slowly. It's very good so far.

I attempted to read through the first one, but what you say is right, I didn't like it. It wasn't bad, it just bored me. I much prefer The Dresden Files. I want to reread them all so bad at the moment because I went to Chicago about a week ago and annoyed the hell out of my dad by pointing out every place where Dresden has fought someone, or stuff like that. We went to the Field Museum and I pointed out the end of Dead Beat. We were at Union Station and I pointed out the fight between Dresden and the big billy goat gruff in Small Favor. As you can tell, I'm a big fan :grin:

I have read them and used to own all of them. I very much enjoyed them, very good. And a prequel is coming out called The Ring Of Solomon: http://www.amazon.com/Bartimaeus-Ring-Solomon-Jonathan-Stroud/dp/1423123727/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287696261&sr=8-1 Very good series. Since everybody appears to enjoy childrens novels, I guess I'll be an odd one out. OVERALL Dresden Files-I obsess over these books. They are everything I love wrapped into a complete series. And it's a very good series, after twelve books it has not gotten old, there has not been a bad book. I love these. SCI-FI Dune: Dune is amazing. I won't say the whole series does, because I think the Brian Herbert books pretty much raped his father's work. Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune were excellent novels that transcended anything I had ever read. It was harder, more complex than anything I had read. And then I read God Emperor of Dune and it was the previous three times 100. It wasn't bad particularly, but anyone who has read it knows what I'm talking about. You can't stop reading it, despite the fact every time you read one page you get a massive migraine. Heretics and Chapterhouse are excellent as well. God Emperor is the only tarnish in Frank Herbert's series, though that's debatable. FANTASY The Malazan Book Of The FallenI might have said the Drizzt books before I read The Malazan Book of The Fallen. I hate fantasy. Let me rephrase that, I hate epic fantasy. I hate LoTR, Thomas Covenant, Shanara. It's mostly my hate for having all the various races like giants and dwarfs with their cultures and everything that need to be meticulously detailed, which bores me; and also my complete hate of the storyline of some random guy becoming the greatest fighter/man ever who defeats the undefeatable evil. Thankfully, Malazan is a book focusing on a bunch of army guys in a special part of the military and follows their adventures. People die, people fight, everyone is well thought out. I never got bored with it, it is just very good and a very realistic world. HORROR The Shining: Stephen King books are all good in their own respects, and I know there are more horror authors than King, but I personally think Dean Koontz is wussy stuff. The Shining is genuinely scary for a variety of reasons. The movie does the book justice, but taking the book for itself, you are still genuinely afraid. The ending sticks with you, despite the fact it is the basic ending for every King novel. You ask what happened to the main character, did he do what he did because he was crazy, or because he was actually possessed by a ghost? THRILLER/SPIES The Faithful Spy: John Wells is my personal favorite spy at the moment in literature. This start of the series has us following him as a spy in the Taliban. He's been a spy for the past eight years, and he finally leaves when he's found out. He comes back to a wife who has a new boy toy, and finding that nobody really cares about him. He becomes a bit washed up, but new terror plots within America make him go after a terrorist with the bombs to destroy America's major cities. He destroys part of Los Angeles, and the book culminates in his final attack on New York. Subsequent books are all right, but the endings are complete let downs, the book just kind of ends with no huge fight at the end or something. The first has a great, drawn out ending. But the others just kind of taper off quickly. A good series though. COMEDY Beat The Reaper: This book follows a doctor with a dark past that is coming back to haunt him. He battles the mob and an old frienemy. One of my favorite parts is when he puts a syringe of fecal matter into one of the bad guys blood streams. The ending is hilarious, though it is not something I can really explain on this forum. Just go read this book and find out what I'm talking about. There are some of my picks.

Thanks for pointing those problems out for me! I had quite a few verb tense problems when I did my first edit of the story and fixed the ones I noticed. I personally did not think the action scenes turned out too great, but if you think so that's good :D This had to be school appropriate of course so I wasn't quite as violent or use any colorful language. My book version of this is a lot grittier, a lot darker. Thanks for the criticism and praise :D I personally think this is the best thing I've written yet. I built this more as an homage to film noir. A cop with a suit, smokes a lot, and lots of neon.

I never could read through the whole LoTR trilogy. I read through the first book somehow, but I can't stand fantasy like it. I don't know the exact title of that genre of fantasy but books like Thomas Covenant and Shanarra I just can't read because I get so bored. They are sloggy and ultra-descriptive. Plus, I like fantasy with lots of human characters. The Malazan Book of The Fallen are the only fantasy books I have really, really, really enjoyed. Decided to continue reading the Dune series, starting with God Emperor. Never read it. Never hope to read it again. I somehow got through it in three days but it was so boring, so mind numbingly hard a read...I seriously had a headache the three days I read it because it was so...philosophical, nonsensical, political. It's bad enough most of the book is philosophy, but add a story that makes absolutely no sense and it just becomes the most brain exploding book I've ever read. On Heretics of Dune now and it is not hard at all. It's as if someone else wrote God Emperor. None of the previous books in the series were that hard to read. Sure, they had some tougher sections, but God Emperor was just pure and simple pain.

You're wondering who I am Machine or mannequin With parts made in Japan I am the modern man -Styx: Mr. Roboto I awoke to a bright, almost blinding light. I tried to cover my eyes, but my arms were restrained by some sort of cold, metal clamps. I tried to move, but I found no way to do so. My head was propped up with a pillow, so I could at least see that the light came from a surgeon's lamp. It was not pointing at my face, it was pointing at my chest, which had been cut open, an incision like an “I” made over my heart. The flaps of skin from each side were pulled back and my innards were revealed. I could see my ribcage, but could also see my beating heart. I tried to cry out, but my jaw muscles were numb. I could see in my peripheral vision that there was some sort of IV needle in my right wrist. Whatever fluid it was mixing into my blood stream was a poison that made my muscles numb. It must have also numbed the pain of the surgery. The four men standing around the bed I lay on had apparently not noticed I was awake. Maybe they were not worried about me waking up. Maybe they thought the muscle poison would make my eyelids unmovable. But that was apparently a false assumption. I tried to take in my surroundings. I was in some sort of dirty, brick basement. I could tell it was a basement because a window that's top border was against the ceiling allowed me to see people walking by. It was probably tinted so anybody could see outside, but no one could see inside. My cop instincts tell me that these guys are not professional. They are not precise in their movements with the scalpel. While that should scare me, and it did, it also gave me hope. If I survived whatever was happening, I would be able to easily track them down, because sloppy people tended to make mistakes. I spent an entire hour watching the foursome steal my heart, quickly replacing it with an artificial one, a cheap one apparently. Some people may find me acting nonchalant about my heart being taken out. Well, it's hard to express emotion and rage when poisoned. If I could express emotion I would probably be screaming. How did I get into this situation? That's a good question, because I don't know. One minute I'm in the holo-bar, a stiff drink in one hand, a wad of cash in the other, and the next I am getting my heart stolen by organ thieves. I had fallen asleep at some point between the stitching and laser surgery that was done to seal the incisions on my chest. I awoke to a rank smell of rotting garbage and excrement, the smell that is most associated with a Chicago back alley on a hot summer day. I do not wake happy. If anything, I woke up in a rage. I looked around, trying to find a way to follow the thieves. Nothing anywhere. I found my clothes, which the thieves were nice enough to pile up next to my body. I threw them on, assuming that common decency dictated this. I then searched around the jacket of my suit and found my pack of smokes and my lighter. I lit one up and started heading toward the street, thinking. Many thoughts came to me. One included my rage at having a cybernetic organ inside of my body. I am closer to a Darwin's Army member than the Cybernetic Alliance, not that I choose sides in a religious and scientific war that has taken many lives and is predicted to turn this country to civil war. I am closer to the Darwin's though, in the fact that I believe that becoming robotic is not the next step in the human evolutionary cycle. I don't want any cybernetic body parts or organs. I do have some regulation cybernetic implants in my brain which help my thinking and reflexes, which, as a cop, is a good thing. But I am otherwise a human, not a cyborg, and want to stay that way. As I smoked, heading toward the police station, most people would not assume I had just had my heart stolen. But I didn't much care at that moment about the heart, as much as the fact it was stolen. The four men were white, looked like anyone else, probably nobodies. But I knew I needed an X-ray, my artificial heart had to be manufactured by some company. I got to the station and explained my situation. The chief went with me to the staff doctor who X-rayed me. The woman had cyborg eyes, pale white irises staring back at me eerily as she gave me the news. I needed to get my heart back, and fast because the artificial heart was only meant to last two days and then stop, my death would be thought a heart attack and the organ thieves would get away. “Human organs are in high demand. The Japanese mass produce cybernetic organs and enhancements. You can't get human body parts, the ones replaced by cybernetic versions are thrown away so the companies make money. So when a human needs a human organ, and not a cybernetic version, it costs a small fortune and takes forever to find. Giving you a cheap heart and keeping the real one, you get maybe a profit of 800,000 dollars.” “Holy...” I refrained myself from using profanity in front of the boss. “The heart you have is a Kizuki, basically, the dollar store brand. I'm going to head to the database and check out who they sell these things to.” The chief was about to walk away. “Sir, this is a regular occurrence, I take it?” “I can't rightly say. But heart attack related deaths have become a major problem in Chicago. And I bet I know why.” The chief went to check out Kizuki on the database while I was examined by the doctor, disgusted at the giant scars that now crossed my chest. The laser the thieves had used to patch me up must have been very weak, because they still needed to use stitches on some sections. I stood in the hall, butterfly knife in hand, pacing back and forth. I flicked the knife around like I had learned from my days as a street rat, back when the only thing on my mind was joining the American Yakuza. This was when Japan had become the major player in world economics, became so rich due to their cybernetics and genetics industries, which took off. Every country paid billions for the things Japan invented, and they slowly spread across the world. America, whether you think so or not, is run by Japan. Every television station plays anime and Japanese shows. Most people knew Japanese better than English. The signs in the Neon district of Chicago were mostly in Japanese characters. Over the course of forty years, the Japanese became the most powerful people on Earth. The biggest minority in America at the moment: Caucasians. I was taken out of my revery by the chief. He explained that only one group in Chicago buy mass amounts of Kizuki Artificial Hearts, and that group resided in the Neon district. I took a squad car and headed for the apartment the hearts were sent to. It was a floor above an adult entertainment establishment, a neon sign displaying the silhouette of a naked female, Japanese characters beside it, the name of the place. I got out of the car and made my way up the metal staircase to the apartment door. I pulled my pistol from it's shoulder holster and checked it real quick. All thirty bullets were in the clip. The slide worked fine. I knocked on the door, the weapon at my side, tapping against my thigh. A young man opened and peeked out a little, one eye staring at me, sweat building up on his brow. I showed him my police badge and he breaks out even more, turns a bit red. I ask him to let me inside. He opens the door hesitantly. I assume he is giving his friends time to clear everything out. I kick the door. Hard. The door flies open, sending the kid to the ground. He grunts and goes for something at his butt. I shoot him in the arm before he can grab the pistol he had tucked in the back of his pants. He cries out and cradles the arm as I jump over him and run into the next room, a dirty kitchen. I jumped backward out of the kitchen and back into the front room. Bullets smacked against the spot on the linoleum floor where I had just been standing. I peeked around the corner and saw a man with dark buzzed hair, searching for me as he slowly walked into the kitchen. I jump out of cover and shoot him in the chest, rolling over the counter and to the opposite side as bullets ricochet where I had occupied for the shot. The next room contains one man, who carries a knife. He waves it menacingly in front of his face. I shoot the wall two inches from his head. His bladder fails him and he falls to the ground, scuttling for the back door. I grab him by the neck and shove him against the wall. The knife falls from his hand. I look at the opposite end of the room and see three open boxes and a part of a cybernetic heart peeking out. I question the man. “Where is you boss? Where is my heart?” I leave him on the floor, scared to death, shuddering, as I access the implant in my brain that allows me to speak to the police. I am answered by the chief. I tell him the situation. He tells me he is sending police to arrest the men in the apartment, while I head for the location where the scared man told me his boss is trading my heart. Holo-bars are a very basic concept. It's a bar, drinks and everything. But it contains holographic projectors throughout. You can watch the news on a hologram, and play holographic games. It's a huge deal because you can meet with people through holograms for a fee. It's better than phones or talking through cerebral implants for the sheer reason you can see each other. I tended to spend a lot of time in these establishments for reasons concerning my wife's line of work. If I never mentioned I have a wife, I'm sorry. It's not really important at this moment in time because she's killing Yakuza in Tokyo. And not Little Tokyo, or New Tokyo, or Tokyo 2. I mean the highly guarded, nigh impossible to get into Tokyo. Why am I not with her? She doesn't want me there. It would ruin my reputation as a cop to be off killing Yakuza randomly. It's already bad enough that people know I'm married to a murderer, an assassin, and someone wanted by quite a few major governments, one of which being the Japanese. Anyway, the holo-bar is known as Al's. It's a very urban name for a place in the Neon district. Typically, places like holo-bars were owned by the wealthy, the entrepreneurs, the up and coming big shots of the Yakuza. This one was operated by a white guy with a lot of money he more than likely obtained illegally. I walked into the holo-bar and sat down at the bar, throwing a couple bucks at the bartender, Al I presumed. He handed me a glass of sake. I was paying attention to the activity in the bar behind me. I noticed no one out of the ordinary. A bunch of punks and thugs sat in the dark recesses of the bar, women sitting on their laps and smiling as more and more money was thrown on the table. Some of it was yen I noticed. Very few people threw around yen for the basic reason it was worth a fortune. The American dollar is worth next to nothing anymore. But it's the only thing in circulation, you can only obtain yen from the Yakuza or smuggling operations. A yen was the equivalent of five hundred dollars. Yes, you read that right. Four people walked into the bar and I recognize them all as the ones who performed my surgery. They carry a briefcase and head toward me, past the various holo games; the briefcase is set on the bar next to me. I turn away and they don't pay attention to me as they order. The bartender makes up some expensive drink and discusses about Darwin's Army and their idiotic ideologies. Everyone has a good laugh. I sit back and try to stay as hidden as I can possibly be from an enemy two feet away. Then said enemy grabs my shoulder and wants to know what a man in a suit is doing alone in a bar, at the bar, instead of in the back with the punks and the women. I have to turn. And they see my face. All but one recognize who I am and I smile, pulling the pistol from my jacket. It explodes into the man who had tried to have small talk with me. The bullet goes through his heart, straight out of his back. He slumps to the side, eyes glazed over. I fall backward as the three remaining men started wildly spraying at me with Uzi's. Yes, even in 2071 there are Uzi's, and AK-47's. Efficient weapons will always be efficient, despite the passing of time. If it can kill, and do it well, then it is fair game. As displayed by my Heckler and Koch as it blew the top half of one of my enemies skulls off, a pinkish mist exploding in all directions. I slide behind one of the pyramidal holo-projectors as more shots are let loose. The occupants of the holo-bar have either run away screaming, or in the case of the punks, found this an opportune moment to sport weapons of their own and choose a side. Being the unlucky man I am, they chose to side with my enemies. Now it was six on one. Nope, wait. The bartender has a shotgun and is pumping it, aiming it at where I hide. Seven on one, two with Uzi's, one with a shotgun, four with pistols. I didn't exactly wonder if I had the authority to shoot the bartender, or the punks. I just kind of blind fired over the holo-projector and apparently hit one of the punks. I looked over my cover for a moment and noticed they were doing a pincer movement on me, the two organ thieves coming from my left, the three remaining punks coming from my right. And I had nowhere to go. I looked up. Directly across the bar from me was a window, leading to the street. I hoped the two groups weren't idiotic enough to shoot at me while I ran between them. They'd be shooting each other, and me. We'd all be Swiss cheese. It was either that or take the sure-fire option and get gunned down behind the holo-projector. So, being the suicidal idiot I am, I jumped over my cover and ran for the window. No triggers were pulled until I shot the window and jumped through, tucking and rolling on the pavement amidst cries from people walking by or running by, due to the violence. I started shooting into the bar. I took down three people inside, leaving me with only three more; a punk, an organ thief, and the bartender who now joined them. “I swear to God we'll have all that idiot's organs after this!” A realization hit me. The bar owner had something to do with the transaction. The thieves weren't there to trade with someone in a populated and rather shady place. They were there to trade with the owner of said shady place. Then another realization hit me as I ran from my opponents' insane bursts of fire out of the window. They were killing people in the street, as if they were target practice. I checked my clip. One bullet was left. I shoved it back into the weapon's body and worked the slide. This bullet had to count. I ran back into the bar as shots blew into the walls and ricocheted off the floor. And then the punk's magazine ran dry. I slid behind the bar. I grabbed a bottle of alcohol and turned it over in my hand. I had one shot, literally. I'd seen it done in movies of course; but if it didn't work out in real life, then I was dead. I grabbed a few more bottles of alcohol and raised my head just over the bar enough to get a trajectory. I started throwing bottles at them, one of the bottles smashing into the punk's face. Regardless of the pain inflicted by the bottles, I needed the bad guys all gone. I got up from behind the bar and shot at the alcohol that had pooled all around them. Then the inferno burst from the ground like hell itself had come to take them. More than likely, that was the truth. They screamed as they burned, waving around, trying to roll but the pain was too much to bare. I hopped over the bar and grabbed the briefcase. I open it and find a heart, vacuum sealed in plastic and surrounded by ice. I smile to myself and close the case. I then leave the bar, waving my badge around as civilians try to stop me and ask what was going on. I am taken to a reputable hospital for the replacement surgery. I am put to sleep, and the doctors do the switch. And when I awake, the mechanical heart sits on a tray, and my chest has had laser treatment, even more ugly scars crossing it. I smile up at the surgical lamp. Then notice many faces surrounding me. The press, God's worst contribution to the Earth. The next day, in my small apartment home, I see myself on the news. I deal with it, the story they spew is garbage anyway. Nobody will question my motives and actions. I go out for a walk in the Neon district; during the day, a boring area of the city with signs and brick buildings. But as night falls, the signs light up, the people become much more rambunctious, and a cop is needed. I'm Zach Archer. I'm the cop you call. ============================== I wrote this for a short story project in my Sophomore enriched English class. I basically wrote this in the course of one Friday night a couple weeks ago. I had a page limit, and it shows since I move really, really fast. Otherwise I hope you enjoy this. I'm actually writing a full novel, not based on the events in this, but based on the same character and environ.

Reading The Pyramid of Doom by Andy McDermott. Eh... I've got The Hunger Games next, and then Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw, which I can't wait to read.

I like Kingdom Hearts 2 a lot more, though I don't consider either amazing. Then again, I am more of an American RPG guy so my opinion is kind of biased. Tales of Symphonia is the only JRPG I've ever finished.

Don't you want me- The Human League Awesome 80's weekends are awesome.

I am starting to believe my house is haunted. My Mom's things on the cupboard fell over two times, despite the fact they were securely fastened atop it. One night I was in my room, the door completely shut as it had been for the past couple hours, and it opened. Nobody around. My mom says she hears someone behind her, thinks it is me, then sees no one there. She also says one time I was in her room and she started answering a question I asked, but not staring at me but a dark figure beside me. When she blinked it was gone though. I don't care if the house is haunted. I like that he/she just appears out of nowhere to freak out my mom, though the door thing was pretty weird. I have been to so many haunted places and still have not had an encounter with a ghost. From Savannah to St. Augustine, two of the most haunted places in the U.S, still nothing. Hopefully someday I'll get something. I mean, I have pictures of orbs, but orbs are B.S, either bugs or dust in the air.

I used to genuinely enjoy Ghost Hunters. When they caught those shadows at the St. Augustine lighthouse, I almost needed new pants. It was seriously, as a believer in ghosts, the penultimate evidence. And the fact that I've been to that lighthouse fifty times makes me crap myself even more. Then we get Ghost Hunters International. Not a huge fan. The locales are awesome, the show itself is not too exciting. Then Academy which is just more cash-in. My problem is that the show is supposed to be professional, but they seem to be getting less and less professional. For instance, why the hell are the camera people always aiming at our hosts faces? Why aren't we paying attention to surroundings so when they see a strange shadow, maybe we could see it? That's the major problem anymore is that they catch nothing. They have that flashlight trick which was cool the first couple times, but after one hundred times, I don't care. it's become a boring, tedious show that just doesn't cut it anymore. I want to see ghosts, not Jason and Grant's faces. Because most of the time I just call bull on seeing figures. It's just become so much more based on it's popularity and not on genuine investigating. They make more episodes, they fake the fact they see stuff, people keep watching. Or they could be seeing stuff. I don't know. It's just the fact that they are not really paying much attention to the ghosts and locale, more on themselves. Overall, I quit the show. I flip it on occasionally, but the series has become such a cash cow that it has lost it's flare. Destination Truth has never been good in my opinion. I hated it when it started. I liked Sci-Fi Investigates though, which only aired one season quite a while back. I thought that was enjoyable. Ghost Adventures takes ghost hunting and makes it [developmentally delayed]ed. There was one where the guy got possessed and went into the greatest piece of bad acting ever in which he rolls around, stands up, is screaming the whole time, yelling obscenities. They get so freaked out when they see something, they run away instead of investigating. It's not a ghost hunting show, it's a "let's find a ghost, poop our pants, and run away as fast as we can because the thing we are after appeared". How the show has continued for as long as it has is beyond me. I think they are all terrible actors doing a terrible job of being ghost hunters. They apparently have some sort of technology that can turn electro-magnetic fields into words or something so that they can listen to ghosts. I mean, it's so far fetched, so badly done, and so overdramatic. They might as well be doing Shakespeare. One of the first ghost shows I watched was Most Haunted on Travel, which I don't believe they play anymore. It wasn't particularly good, but I'm just mentioning it because it was a step above Ghost Adventures, a step below GH. I just gave up on the ghost shows. I prefer reading the stories and going to the haunted places myself.

Coldplay-Viva La Vida

I was on the front page of the local paper today because a Schinook cargo helicopter landed at our school and our Marine JROTC got to ride in it. There's a wonderful picture of me with my schoolmates riding the thing. It was epic. They did a ton of cool tricks. It was a pretty amazing experience.