poeticallybored

Huh

2009-08-17T15:17:41Z

I forgot people use this.

At Sea

2008-11-17T00:33:45Z

There are nights when all my synapses fire
in the most beautiful of sequences,
like the twinkling of Christmas lights
spelling out secrets in Morse code
to gnarly and twisted, half-melted snowmen.
Everything is revealed to me,
messages everywhere,
as my mind borders on enlightenment
or nonsanity.

I've always been able to pay attention
to the details in the everythings,
my overactive mind making observations
where observations don't need to be made,
my mind drawing connections between thoughts
where there probably aren't any.
It accidentally adds emphasis
to everything I experience,
usually inspiring despair,
but tonight everything is beautiful.

Tonight everything is a new discovery
and I'm an explorer writing to you from my cabin
on a ship lost at sea,
signing my poems S.W.A.L.K
and throwing them overboard in bottles
in the hope that they make their way home to you.
But the waves seem too choppy.

I paid attention to all your details
and I've committed you to memory,
like a book that might be burnt and forgotten
so I can remember you on all these lonely nights,
wrapping myself in blankets and reciting you to myself,
eyes closed and shouting louder than the growling thunder,
recalling the golden mathematics of your body,
the life-giving warmth of your affection,
even the cuteness of your little snores.

Tonight everything is a new discovery,
and tonight everything is inspirationally beautiful,
but still you're missing from me, so who gives a shit.
I look at the ocean
and it dances feverously for the moon and the wind.
Somewhere my bottled letters go unread,
somewhere you sing a song to no one,
and right here this moment is not shared between us.
So I throw myself overboard
in the hope that I make my way home to you.
But the waves seem too choppy.

End

2008-11-07T02:31:37Z

Because love isn't all sunshine and lollipops, goddammit.
Taoism shows a white dot within the black yin
and a black dot within the white yang
to show that nothing is absolute.
Even in the sunlight there is the shade beneath the trees,
in the night sky there are the moon and the stars,
and in my heart there is both the capacity for love
and a subtle rage for those who would violate it.

Her voice is that of an angel
dancing a ballet over the battlefield,
raising the fallen with a song
and the touch of her sword.
And each night I lay there in her bed
listening to her sing,
I'm back from the death
that is my day-to-day life
and I'm ready to run steel
through the heart, neck, or head
of anyone who would dare to do her harm.
My morals are shades of gray but this is resolute:
wish her ill-will and I will fucking end you.

She made me a ring out of old guitar string
and it reminds me of my charge.
I'll always wear it because I swear
in the sleepy-eyed hours of the night
when I'm still awake writing bad poems for her
it glows with all the love and care
she's ever put into every song
she's ever played on it,
and it makes me warm.

And sometimes the sharpness of its ends
get caught on things around me
and each time I feel it tug at my finger
it both reminds me of her
and presents me with the brief thought
that maybe the all-too flammable and easily expendable
world around me is always in the way of my life
and her
and, as such, as I've always desired to do so,
I should end it as well.

She showed me she once wrote a poem
about calling for the end of the world
and I wanted to grab her and kiss her right then
either because this connection I feel for her
was now made stronger
by our shared apocalypse fetish,
or maybe out of understanding that
with both of us, together, wishing for it,
it could be our last chance
if the world were to end RIGHT NOW...
...
well, or at least soon enough.

Now she's wearing a frilly dress
and is skipping down Main Street
with the watering can from her garden
filled with gasoline
and I'm following after her
with a great fire in my chest
that she stoked from the blackened embers
of the heart that was there before she was
and I'm waiting for a spark to hit the gas-soaked pavement
in just the right way, or the wrong way,
and for the world to shudder and convulse in orgasm,
fading to black as it shuts its eyes and contentedly exhales.

Anarchy (dream)

2008-11-03T15:36:55Z

It felt like it was the future of the "Anarchy" poem I wrote.

New Gainesville was being attacked by a platoon of airboats from Micanopy. Kara and I had come back into town from fighting on the front-line.

We stopped in at Wayward Council where someone was delivering a presentation on enemy tactics. The room was packed with dozens of indie kids sitting on the floor attentively listening to some youngish man motioning at diagrams with a laser pointer.

We stepped back out onto University Ave and walked a couple storefronts east, hand in hand, until we saw Amber, Miles' wife, dressed in hospital scrubs. She asked us, "Here to see him?"

We headed inside to what seemed like an empty store. Amber led us behind the counter and pulled back the curtain shutting off the stockroom, which had been converted into a nursery/daycare center. Kara walked over and picked up one of the babies.

poeticallybored @ 2008-10-31T10:59:00

2008-10-31T15:01:01Z

I write best inspired out of either hope or despair,
and tonight my words are made strong by both.
Hope for all of the beautiful things
that are yet to be between you and I -
like the day I finally kick your ass at Halo
or the night we'll make love on the floor of that treehouse,
splinters in our asses and us in each other
and Michael watching through the window,
smoking one of those fake pipes that blows bubbles -
and yet still there's a sense of despair from the fear
that these days will be lost before they're ever found.

I used to joke that I didn't believe in karma
because it owed me a lifetime of good days
to compensate me for my agonies,
for my infinite little acts of kindness given yet rarely received,
and for my reluctance to set fire to everything I dislike.
But now that I've met you
I feel completely accepting
of the shitstorm of human experience
that's blown me wildly off course
and washed me ashore here and now
on the tropical island of your kisses.
I'm ready for that long line
of good days to grace our lives,
but I need you to be here for them as well.

All of the tender moments we've shared thus far
repeat in my mind like lines in a villanelle,
woven in and out of every other thought.
The sweetness of your voice echoes throughout my head,
"You look so beautiful it hurts me slightly,"
like a siren luring me to my doom.
I'd purposely throw myself upon the jagged shoreline
if it meant you'd sing to me until I bled out.

"Pilot to bombardier, come in bombardier, I love you, I love you."
I wrote that poem three times
before I found something that I was comfortable with.
And, similarly, as if Love is an art form in itself
that I've been toiling over all these years,
maybe I needed to have my heart broken thrice
before I met you
before I finally reached a finalized work of art
that makes me happy
and that I'm proud of
and that I can say is truly expressive
of a love found only deep within myself.

You see,
my heart's got four chambers
and this revolver's got six
and we're loaded with mushy feelings
and poetry that will erupt out the end of the barrel
like toy guns that fire flags that say BANG!
And, with a grappling hook in hand,
tonight I ride for the fortress of your heart
where cold and icy logic stands guard at the parapets
keeping me at bay with words that cut like knives
and,
and, goddammit, why won't you love me?

The opposite of Love isn't Hate.
The opposite of Love is Nothing,
like the nothing that filled the days before I met you,
or the nothing I shiver next to in the dark of the night
kept awake by the cold
or by worrying about you
or by the people in the apartment below me
fucking so loudly as if to rub it in my face.
If only you loved me, we could have our revenge.

I'm sorry that I don't know
what's keeping you from me.
I'm two pieces of paperwork away
from being a legally certified genius
but I just don't understand
and I feel so powerless because of it
Maybe you'd love me if
I hadn't inherited fatkid genetics,
or maybe if I had some totally sweet
hybrid dick/vag downstairs.
I don't know.

But whatever is missing,
I have so much love to give you,
enough to make up for whatever it may be.
My ribs have snapped and cracked
and have been bent at odd angles
trying their darnedest to hold in
a heart as big as mine
that is dieing for you to accept it.
Show it to me however you like -
throw your arms around me,
throw your legs around me,
or kiss me until we're too weak to move our lips
and we fall asleep in each others company. -
however you prefer, but I need your love.

Rabbit and Bear

2008-10-25T03:10:47Z

I couldn't sleep the other night, so I was doing some sudoku puzzles. I got bored of them and decided to try writing a villanelle. Formal poetry is half puzzle-solving and half-expression. This is what came out:

The rabbit hopped away at his advance.
No matter what he did, away she sprang.
She said, "Bears are too clumsy for romance."

The bear had fallen in love at first glance
and his heart sank with a clattering bang.
The rabbit hopped away at his advance.

He asked to kiss her as they do in France
but she's nervous near that mouth full of fang.
She said, "Bears are too clumsy for romance."

He wrote some poems to explain his stance
but she never stayed to hear what he sang.
The rabbit hopped away at his advance.

So to impress her he began to dance
but he tripped upon the rabbit. "Oh, dang!"
She said, "Bears are too clumsy for romance."

He leaned into her, this was his chance,
but she dashed the hopes to which the bear clang.
The rabbit hopped away at his advance.
She said, "Bears are too clumsy for romance."

Allegory of the Cave

2008-10-21T08:02:45Z

Like Plato's allegory of the cave, now that I've heard your song, I'm not sure I understand art anymore. The best of my poems is rendered incoherent, nothing more than a meager list of words, each word only as strong as itself, lacking the power of interconnectedness and an overall message.

I'll spend all of tonight blacking out the whole of the night sky, dropping stars on wishes that I were wittier, or more handsome, or that I could play the banjo - anything to further impress you. I once had the written word to charm you with my silly lines, but now that's lost.

And as I worry about the fate of my feeble words, so too do I worry about us, as we as well, right now, are only as strong as his or herself, each lacking the power of interconnectedness and an overall message. So when you see my hand clumsily stumble as it reaches out for yours, please hold on to it. Please hold on to me.

We can pass through the world, hand in hand, a poem we write ourselves as a testament that states to all who dare to gaze upon us, "Love is both real and possible, you fuckers, so get on with it." A poem as sentimental as Shakespeare, as profane as Bukowski, and as beautiful as your song.

Briefcase

2008-10-15T11:05:01Z

So I have this small metal briefcase my brother gave to me. I keep wanting to get myself in trouble with it. I can't help but think that it would be funny to handcuff it to my wrist and walk around downtown really suspiciously. I want to walk by a cop car, fake a panicked expression, and take off running. I'll let the cop tackle me to the ground.

"What's in the briefcase! Open the briefcase!"

"Nooooo."

"Open the briefcase!"

"Fine, okay, jeeeeez." And I open it up and it's full of burritos, or dildos, or pictures of kittens or something.

How funny would that be?

Anarchy

2008-10-10T10:08:28Z

Nothing in this stupid world is worth a damn thing except human experience and love, and I don't even care to involve myself in the former without the latter. I just want to sleep until I either die or wake in the warm embrace of someone who understands this.

I think of you and I want to experience the type of love with which we could save the world, or maybe just you and myself, because I think I have this sad feeling that perhaps the only thing that could save the world right now is fire.

Anarchy has two faces: the creator and the destroyer, like yin and yang - one to wipe the slate clean and one to graffiti a poem upon it, like the berserker vikings of old, hopped up on mushrooms and bear's blood, tearing down the old ways for the new worlds.

It's in their style I see you and I in a wagon barreling madly downhill into the breach, you shouting poetry through a gasmask, armed with kisses and hand grenades, and I steering us, calling out to you, "Pilot to bombardier, come in bombardier, I love you, I love you."

And when the memory of the old world fades to black, as it damn well should, with the whole of civilization crashing down all around us in bombshells and hellfire, I wouldn't be able to bring myself to give a damn as long as I were with you.

When it's all over we'll build modest houses from the bricks we put through people's windows, telling our children, row by row, "This one was for Starbucks, and this one the police."

And just as the berserkers were declared disbanded after their work was done, as there's no place for the destroyers in the time of the creator, we find ourselves new roles. I'm voted into office because of my war-time bravery and pro-burrito platform. You shout poetry from our vegetable garden, armed with a garden hoe, and yes, still kisses, and now I steer our village away from its past.

Instead of arrogance and greed, our government is based on child-like wonderment. Our new currency is hopes and dreams, a hundred hopes to the dream, or some such other system completely incomprehensible to us because of our current conditioning.

We save the environment because of its potential to become totally bitchin treehouses from which the neighborhood children, who will one day become us, can drop water balloons on each other, calling out through coffee can phonelines, "Pilot to bombadier, come in bombadier, circle yes if you like me."

This other world is possible, but I can't do it alone. I need you to be here with me. Just as napalm isn't quite napalm without such-and-such household ingredient, love isn't just me or just you, but us together, incendiary and seemingly ever-burning. For now, I sit on my wagon on the patio, thinking of you as I watch the stars, waiting for explosions on the horizon.

poeticallybored @ 2008-09-27T01:43:00

2008-09-27T05:46:55Z

Nothing in this stupid world is worth a damn thing except human experience and love, and I don't even care to involve myself in the former without the later. I just want to sleep until I either die or wake in the warm embrace of someone who understands this.

It's the thought that counts

2008-08-29T20:26:39Z

On the occasion of your birthday
I intend to gift wrap my penis
and throw a bow on it,
claiming that since erections are caused by blood flow
boners truly do come from the heart.

Nerd Love

2008-08-28T13:13:34Z

"Somewhere at the edge of the bell curve is the girl for me."

I'm too shy to know how to properly ask you out to dinner so instead I gave you my copy of New Avengers #26 - the one where Clint finds Wanda across the world and they spend one last romantic night together before he goes back to punching ninjas in their faces. I thought you would understand what I was trying to say, but I guess you didn't.

See, I've never been good at talking to PEOPLE about THINGS. While others were out developing their social skills over the years, I was preoccupied with role-playing games and writing bad poetry. I've had few friends, and even fewer girlfriends. I'm pretty sure the only reason I'm able to unclasp a bra is because I'm awesome at puzzle games.

Last night I dreamt that I was sitting at the edge of my bed, crying about how lonely I felt. But then you walked over to me, nude, and you told me you loved me, and you put your arms around me and you held me close, and your boobs were pressed against my face, and that was pretty cool, and at that moment I was convinced everything would forever be alright between you and I.

But today I woke, realizing the only thing I'll probably ever share my bed with is whichever book I pass out reading each night. If only you knew how I felt about you.

At some point in my life I realized I had to constantly work on surrounding myself with things that bring beauty into my life because, without it, I was afraid my overactive mind would bring itself back to the dark places its been before. But the artwork, the board games, the comics, the films, the whatever etcetera and so forth does not all add up to be as distractingly beautifying as you are.

I look at you and I see us walking hand in hand to the comic shop each Wednesday morning, talking about how much of a little girl Iron Man is compared to Batman, or giggling about how Wolverine could beat up Asia in a fight. I see us cuddled up in bed, each with our own book, taking turns reading profound lines and excerpts to each other. I see us laughing too hard to have sex because we think my Jesus and Sigmund Freud action figures are watching us. In five years I see a toddler teething on Sigmund Freud's no-longer mint condition head.

I strongly feel that you can dork out without being a huge dork yourself, so if you ever see me on campus on board game night don't be afraid to sit down and pick up a character sheet, or to roll dice that have more than six sides to them. We can hold hands under the table. I'll be a rogue and you can be a druid that casts a charm spell on me. This is how it'll begin.

6:10 AM

2008-06-10T10:12:01Z

For a second, I thought I saw Abraham Lincoln's face in the wood-grain pattern on my kitchen cabinets.

Good night.

E.T.

2008-05-27T09:17:02Z

Looking back on it, I now realize this movie is where my fear of the government originated.

The coolest 'thank you' cards EVER.

2008-04-16T07:56:32Z

A couple years ago, Capcom released a game on the PS2 called Okami (Japanese for "wolf"), an action/adventure video game in which you play as Amaratsu, the sun goddess. In the game, after a demon is set free and corrupts the land of Nippon, Amaratsu takes the form of a radiantly white wolf to undo the damage by battling monsters and restoring nature.

Okami, by far, is one of the most original and beautiful games I've ever seen. Graphically, though in 3D, the entire game is designed to look like old school Zen art. Not only is this for aesthetics, but for game play as well. One of the main features of the game is the Celestial Brush. As the sun god, you're able to pause the world, at which point the game takes the appearance of a drawing on a piece of parchment and you control a giant calligraphy brush that can edit the scene in some way - an artistic form of deus ex machina.

Anyway, harmony with nature was the big theme of the game. Every where you ran, you left a trail of flowers and tall grass in your wake. When you swam, lilly pads and flowers popped up behind you. Some of the Celestial Brush techniques allowed you to do things like restore dead and twisted trees, draw vines to swing on, or to create giant lilly pads to stand on as you crossed large bodies of water. As you defeated enemies, the black fog engulfing the land was replaced by meadows, trees, animals, and so on.

So, to finally get to what this post is actually about, recently Capcom decided to rerelease the game for the Nintendo Wii. Apparently if you pre-ordered the game through Capcom's website, you were sent a handcrafted thank you card with a one-of-a-kind Okami stamp. The cards themselves are made from recycled fibers and embedded with seeds. If you plant your thank you card, it will actually grow a sage plant! How amazing is that!

Anne (dream)

2008-04-13T20:17:19Z

I was talking to my friend Anne online. She sent me a link to a website she had created called The SF Diaries. I don't know what SF could stand for, or if I even did in the dream, but I remember typing to her, "How come you've never invited me to go along with you before?" So she did.

I remember walking down the street with her, she being led by a big shaggy dog on a leash. Judging by the small, cute houses lining the roads, I think we were on either NW 4th St or NW 3rd Ave in Gainesville. I don't remember what, but we were laughing about something. We eventually come to a house with a waist-high chain-link fence around the property. I open up the gate and hold it open for them. We head into the house and she takes the leash off the dog to let it run around. She leads me upstairs, then to a wooden stairwell that pulls down from the ceiling, and then into the attic itself. The attic had been remade into an extra bedroom, where she apparently lived. We laid down on he bed, talking for awhile, watching everything going on outside her window.

Eventually she tells me she has to go to class, but that I could come along if I'd like. The next thing I remember we were sitting in her class. The desks were aligned against the back and side walls of the room so that all of the desks formed a U-shape around the center of the room. We sat in one of the back corners of the room, her desk against one wall and mine against the other, making our desks kind of perpendicular to each other. The professor turned off the lights, turned on the television, and put some educational film into the VCR. I don't remember what it was about.

As soon as the film started, Anne slouched down in her seat and, seemingly very randomly, she began singing Stardust and Diamonds by Joanna Newsom. She had such an incredible voice that just melted my heart and left me completely enthralled by her. I moment later, I looked around the classroom expecting to find everyone else confused or angered, but I was the only person in the room paying any attention to her, as if nobody else could hear her, which in turn confused and angered me instead. How could they simply ignore and overlook something as beautiful as her singing that song?

Her phone rang at that point, and it was only then that people turned around and noticed any sound coming from our corner of the classroom. Her phone had the same ringtone as mine - Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. After hanging up her phone, she and I got up and left.

The Color Wheel

2008-04-10T11:24:09Z

When I was younger, my favorite colors to build decks around were green and white. However, since Michael and I got back into Magic just over a year ago, I've noticed that the two colors that I've taken a liking to the most are blue and red. I think there are two reasons for this: 1) Because of how my own personality has changed over the years, and 2) because the game's creators, Wizards of the Coast, do such a good job of working story and flavor into the cards that each color really has its own identity.

(Click for larger version)

In Magic, green represents life and nature, and white represents order and protection. When I was younger, and it was easier to think of these colors as being the "good guys" and as red (chaos and fury) and black (death and decay) as the "bad guys." I think this bias comes from the first Magic cards I ever bought: a 10th anniversary gift set called Magic: Anthologies, which contained two pre-constructed decks - a red/black deck led by Shivan Dragon, and a white/green deck led by Serra Angel. Back then, I didn't even know how to think of blue-aligned cards. I just knew that they were annoying, thanks to my friend Eric's obnoxious deck. Now, though, I understand that there are more to each of the colors than I realized back then.

White, for example, is a color I've shied away from using that often because I tend to see the holier-than-thou side to it (Wrath of God, Righteousness) that I was unaware of when I was younger and, of course, philosophically against now.

However, in red, though I understand much of it is still based in chaos, I can see a lot of cards heavily themed with motifs concerning emotion, playfulness, and passion (and some that embody all three - Chandra Nalaar). Yes, red has a lot of spells that are simply multiple ways to kill people with fire (Flame Wave, Magma Jet, or a fucking meteor), but sometimes murder is a crime of passion.

Blue is a color I never really played with before, but after doing a bit of research when I started playing again with Michael last year, it's quickly become my favorite of all the colors. In blue there's a definite thematic emphasis on intelligence and cleverness. Like any color, there's a dark side, as shown through subterfuge and abuse of knowledge, but I don't feel as off-put by these because they seem to follow the proverb that "knowledge is power."

I don't have much to say for green or black, as my opinions on them hasn't really changed over the years. I can't complain about green's dark side or black's death-themes since these are simple facts of life. I will say, though, that I think death is the "nicer" side of black's nature, where the concept of gaining at the expense of others embodies its true dark half.

In the end, because of personal bias, I tend to associate myself with the colors blue and red the most, even half-joking at one point about getting an Izzet-themed tattoo - either the artwork from Izzet Guildmage, Goblin Flectomancer, or of the Izzet logo itself. I like the idea of blue and red working together in a series of yin and yang dualities: logic vs. emotion, playfulness vs. intellect, exploratory scientific dissection in the name of knowledge and understanding vs. impulsiveness and intuition in the face of chaos and the unknown.

Propaganda

2008-04-09T09:16:01Z

I was recently reminded of an e-mail conversation I had with my grandmother a year ago. I don't think I've ever shown it to anyone.

My father and his mother love to forward me pro-Christian, pro-republican, pro-war e-mails. I've gotten into a lot of arguments with both of them over the things they send me. I've asked each of them so many times to stop forwarding such things to me, yet they continued to do so long. Until this time.

Last January, while my grandparents were back in the country and staying at my parents' house (they spend half the year a their house in the Philippines), my grandmother sent me an email containing a long list of references to Iraq in the Bible, which ended with the following:

And also, This is something to think about! Since America is typically represented by an eagle. Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages ...

The following verse is from the Koran, (the Islamic Bible)

Koran 9:11 - For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.
(Note the verse number!)

Hmmmmmmm?!

I BETTER NOT HEAR OF ANYONE BREAKING THIS ONE OR SEE DELETED This is a ribbon for soldiers fighting in Iraq. Pass it on to everyone and pray. Something good will happen to you tonight at 11:11 PM. This is not a jokeone will either call you or will talk to you online and say that they love you. Do not break this chain. Send this to 13 people in the next 15 minutes. Go.

That sounded absolutely, terribly fake. So I looked it up and replied,

Mommom,

You know I'm an atheist and against the war in Iraq, so why do you keep sending me these things?

I don't know about every single fact stated in the e-mail you forwarded to me, but I can tell you for certain that isn't what the 11th verse of the 9th sura reads. Look here: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/009.qmt.html

9:11 reads, "But (even so), if they repent, establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity,- they are your brethren in Faith: (thus) do We explain the Signs in detail, for those who understand."

This e-mail that you've forwarded to me is just another propaganda gimmick. What it says is not true, but they don't expect anyone to actually look up what is in fact true. It's a fake e-mail engineered to appeal to Christians to gain support for the war. They think that if they use the number 9:11, relating to the attack on the trade towers (which had nothing to do with Iraq), that it will make the war in Iraq appear like some religious prophecy come true, and that it is justified by your god. But all this is is deceit, and lies, and trickery.

I'm sending this to my mother and father as well, so when you get mad at me for stating my own opinion back at you they'll know I didn't do anything wrong.

Robert

PS. I would appreciate it if you e-mailed everyone you forwarded that to and told them the truth, that the Quran doesn't really say that at all.

My mother and brother thought this was hilarious. My father never said anything to me about it. My grandmother never replied to me or spoke of it when I saw her next, but both she and my father have yet to forward anything else to me.

The Tale of Iroh

2008-04-03T11:04:09Z

(Note: "Bending" is the ability to exert control over a particular element in way or another. Each of the four nations - Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire - are home to the schools for each of the four types of bending. It's rare that anyone becomes a master in any one school, and only the Avatar is able to truly master all four.)

In my last post I talked a lot about the cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. In it I mentioned that my favorite episode was Tales of Ba Sing Se from the second season.

Tales of Ba Sing Se was a half-hour long episode divided into four short stories, each one following a different character. The last of the four was called The Tale of Iroh, which followed around Prince Zuko's Uncle Iroh.

Iroh, by far, is my favorite character on the show. He's a very wise, intelligent, and tea-obsessed old man. Most people, biased by what they practice in their home country, discredit the other martial arts and bending forms taught in the other nations. Iroh, however, as worldly and as cultured as he is, spent time in each country learning their ways, admiring them even as far to have studied waterbending - the polar opposite of his native firebending - during his travels. He did this all while he was the highest ranking general in the Fire Nation's armies and one of the most revered firebenders in the world, earning himself the nickname The Dragon of the West. However, when his son died in the war, he lost his sense of perspective. Exiled from the Fire Nation as well, he met up with his nephew and they began to travel the world together.

By the time this episode takes place, Iroh and Zuko, pretending to be refugees from the war, have taken shelter in Ba Sing Se, the capital of the Earth Nation. This episode follows him around on one of his days out exploring the city.

I don't expect newcomers to the show to react the same way, having not seen all of the episodes and story and struggle that leads up to this scene, but I admit to having wept a little the first time I saw Iroh's story in this episode. He's absolutely my favorite character in the show, and that last scene is just so powerful. Even today, this clip still makes me pretty sad.

At the end of the episode, it says, "In honor of Mako." I didn't realize who Mako was at the time I watched this episode, but I recently learned that that's the name of the voice actor who played Iroh. I noticed the voice in the third season sounded off, but I thought maybe I was just imagining it because I just wasn't used to hearing him since his character hasn't had a lot of scenes yet and it's been awhile since I've seen any other episodes. Apparently he died shortly after finishing the first couple episodes of the third season, which makes me a little sadder now when I watch this clip. Worse yet, they replaced him with some white guy. Fuck.

Tip of the Hat

2008-04-03T10:31:01Z

1. Anima: The Shadow of Omega is a nice little card game based off of the soon-to-be-released-in-the-US role-playing game. It's a game whose style and amazing artwork would greatly suit any Final Fantasy fan - a blend of Eastern concepts, especially martial arts, and Western fantasy concepts like magic and knighthood. You control a party of four characters that meander about, overcome enemies (including other players' parties), and complete quests. The first player to have their party complete the end-game mission wins.

2. Mouse Guard is a comic book series that is a cross between the drama and action of fantasy stories such as Lord of the Rings and the cute, human-like mice of stories like Runaway Ralph or Stuart Little. Today I read the first six chapters that make up the Fall 1152 story arch, and I'm hooked.

3. Brian Michael Bendis' Secret Invasion storyline is the big Marvel Comics crossover event this summer. Apparently Bendis has been laying out the groundwork for this story for the past three or four years now, working small pieces of the big picture here and there into each of of the comic books that he writes for Marvel. This week it finally came to a head with the release of Secret Invasion #1 (of 8) in which the Skrulls, an alien race of shapeshifters who have infiltrated the super-hero community on Earth, have launched a full-scale invasion. It's not possible to describe why this comic was so great without divulging any spoilers, so take my word for it.

4. I just got the first two discs from the third season of Avatar: The Last Airbender in the mail from Netflix, which I must say are some of the best episodes yet (though definitely not as good as Tales of Ba Sing Se from the second season). For those of you who have either not heard of or not given this show a chance, you ought to try watching a couple episodes and see how you like it. From what I've seen, it's one of the best cartoons on television right now, second only to The Venture Brothers.

It really seems that there are just as many adults as there are children who watch this show. I started watching on Saturday mornings at Michael's house, who watched it with his son. Then I started getting the DVDs from Netflix, which got Sean and Katie hooked on the show. Katie even laughed at the show at first, but after sitting down and watching it, she started to get into it. She in turn got her boyfriend-ish-guy and his son into the show. I even remember her telling me about how she was visiting some friends down in Polk County once and it turned out that all four of them watch the show too.

I remember when I was younger, there were a lot of Saturday morning cartoons were full of action and adventure. Anymore, things are strictly rated, everything is toned down and underplayed. Avatar is the one exception. It has as dramatic of a story as they possibly could have put into a children's cartoon without blowing their target audience's mind apart. It has humor seamlessly mixed in with action - something most big-budget Hollywood movies aren't even capable of doing. Furthermore, in addition to how blatantly entertaining it is, It still has solid morals to teach.

Some of the messages are more obvious than others. For instance, the DVDs I got in the mail include an episode in which one of the characters gets in trouble for using their powers to out-scam cheating gamblers. But there are bigger messages too. From the very first episode I saw by chance on television, I loved how they portrayed the character Prince Zuko. Zuko, who was put into exile from the Fire Nation, the nation that began the world war, attempts to defeat and capture the avatar to regain his honor. Yet, the show does this without ever showing him as being "the bad guy," just a different person with a different perspective on things, showing that there is more to people than simply labeling them as "good" or "evil." There are other big examples of morality and philosophical issues that the show explores, but I'd just keep going on and on.

Case of the Mondays

2008-04-01T09:13:19Z

I didn't get the job at the comic shop. And I never work on Mondays, yet apparently I was scheduled to do so. Nothing like waking up after a couple hours of sleep to someone calling to tell you you're late for work. Double whammy.

At present

2008-03-30T08:00:04Z

I'm not a big fan of Winter Park life so far.

There are a lot of little things that I could name, but there are two main ones that come to mind. Firstly there's the issue of how terribly un-green it is here. I don't just mean how much of an eyeblight the cityscape and all the pavement is, but how I can't believe that a city of this size doesn't have a recycling program. Secondly, there's how I have to turn over a dozen or so rocks to catch even a small glimpse of local culture. In Gainesville I lived within walking distance of at least half a dozen different music venues. A girl I work with told me there's "soft of one" in the area. There's more to say, but moving on...

It seems like whenever I have a bad day, I tell myself that I can bare with it for now because my presence in this town is very temporary. I've been planning on escaping before I even moved here. At first that meant going to Austin. However, after living with my brother, I see myself going back to Gainesville as soon as I can afford to do so. Things are not working out between he and I to say the least. Part of why I agreed to do this was because it seemed like he had grown up quite a bit since he started going to college. I was wrong.

Sure, that's a bummer, but worse yet is that I have no one else to spend my time with. I have yet to meet anyone that I feel I could really become friends with. Maybe this one guy I work with, but he doesn't really seem very interested. I've tried looking for things to do around town, to try to meet new people and to try to convince myself that this town isn't a total wasteland, but it seems like everything remotely interesting to me always falls on the nights that I work. I've tried getting my work schedule switched around, but it's just not possible. It's like they needed someone for these very specific shifts and I happened to come along.

The one thing I have been to, twice now, is the board gaming night that a gaming shop around here hosts on Wednesdays. I started going to it expecting it to be similar of the group I was a part of when I lived in Gainesville. Our gaming group at UF was a good mix of people - men and women alike, both students and non-students, from all age groups, from all sorts of different social standings. The group in Winter Park is exclusively attended by males, ages 25 and up. That kind of atmosphere reminds me too much of things like this. I exaggerate, of course. There are some great people there.

So I have a whole lot of nothing going on in my life. I work, come home, and sleep. Rinse and repeat.

I have a job interview at a comic book and board game store in ten hours. At first I was excited about this, but now that I've had time to think about it, I'm surprised to find that I actually have mixed feelings.

On one hand, this has been my dream job for ages now, however little I may have realized it until more recent years. Shops like this are places that I've admired as far back as when my father first introduced me to X-Men comics when I was starting elementary school. Secondly, I imagine by working there, being in that kind of environment, I'm more likely to meet someone I can connect with, whether in terms of friendship or something more.

On the other hand, I'm scared that if I get this great job, that I won't be able to pull myself away from Winter Park when I can afford to move back to Gainesville.

Either way, wish me luck, I guess.