The Life of a caged pet
by Zach on Nov.06, 2010, under writing
I wanted to write this a while back, and I finally found a reason to write it, and it made the point I wanted it to make, despite not turning out as well as I could have liked. It basically describes the life of a pet that spends the majority of its life in a cage, and has basically gotten used to it like a pattern. It makes me feel bad about complaining when I take one of our dogs Ginger outside. Well here it is, probably the most meaningful thing I’ve ever written.
The day begins as I open my eyes, its dark outside of the metal cage door in front of me. There isn’t much space to move around as I get up to move. Looking at the front of the cage I can see the dried food from the leftovers of the other day’s dinner. Suddenly the darkness disappears as a door is opened away from the cage. I move to the front of the cage excitedly. I cry out my cheers of joy, only to hear scary sounding screams back. I stop for a moment, waiting to be let out for a little bit. After a few minutes the cage door is opened and I run out. As I run out, I’m lifted off my feet into the arms of one of the big people. A collar is slipped over my head as I’m carried to the doorway. The day is still new, as the sun is starting to shine lightly over the yard. The person lets me down on the ground as I move almost freely for the first time of the day. I sniff around the ground deciding where to relieve myself from spot to spot. After a minute or so the person tugs on the leash to signify that I need to hurry. I ignore it though pushing against the pull to continue. While attempting to avoid the spiky things on the ground that hurt until they’re pulled out. The person tugs again, but I continue to pull against it. Stalling as much time as possible before I’m put back inside that cage. After several moments of tugging, I finally find a spot to go. Once I’ve finished he walks to the steps and I follow. He lifts me back up as my time outside is over. He carries me back to the place with my cage and lets me down a little ways from it, next to a bowl. The person pours water in it for me, as I drink it fast, enjoying the last moments before I’m placed back in the cage. Once I’ve finished he brings me back to my cage and takes out the bowl of dried out food. For a few minutes I get to enjoy the light of the room outside. Then as some of the people come back in, I cry out a wish to play. Only for a response that sounds harsh and mean before the darkness returns when the door is back in the front of my cage. For a time this stays the same as I lie down and wait to come out again. Then several moments after the return of the darkness, the door is moved again by a another person, allowing me to see the place again. Then he walks off as I can hear some of them leaving. After enjoying the light for a few moments, I hear more of them leaving. I got to have light for a longer amount of time, but it also meant that I was completely alone. After what seemed like forever, I hear someone come in. I wasn’t alone anymore, I cry out my joy, which ends with the door left in front of the cage again. I was back in the darkness, so I might as well have been alone. The day passed me by as I was stuck in my cage, waiting for another trip outside of the cage. Several hours have passed, before I hear the one person there leave, and I’m left alone still. Then after another eternity of waiting I hear them come back, I jump up when I hear this to get ready to go out soon. After a few more minutes of waiting, the door is moved out of my face as I see a different person open my cage and lift me up to put the collar back on. He carries me out, and lets me down onto the ground outside and I run around the ground looking for a new spot tonight. I spend several minutes moving around looking for a spot, until I grow bored of moving around the limits of the green ground. I finally go and let the person pick me up and bring me back in for my second drink of the day. I stay there drinking for several moments as the person puts the leash up and comes back and lifts me up towards my cage. This time I get a long while again to see the light of the room and everyone moving around. The door is constantly moved back and away from the cage. Then after a while, I’m taken back out of my cage to go back outside, this was the third time of the day, so it means that I’m going to stay out for a while. Once I’m brought in, he lets me down onto the ground in the room, and I run around playing with all my toys. Several times during the night, one of the people comes down and plays for a few moments before getting back up on the soft spot up higher than the floor. Then I go back to my box, and wait for my final trip outside. It doesn’t take much longer, and I go out into the dark night, spending my last moments of the day sniffing around for a spot. The person who took me out drags on the collar every so often to try and speed it up. Once I’ve gone, I’m brought in for my final drink before I’m put back in my cage as I lay down to sleep.
Review of Wicked City: The Scarlet Clan
by Zach on Nov.04, 2010, under reviews, writing
It’s been a while since I posted a review of anything, and I got a new book to read a couple of days ago that is part of the Wicked City series by Hideyuki Kikuchi. I go the third book in the series, which luckily didn’t limit me from being able to enjoy it.
Summary from the back: “The child of the demoness Makie and the mortal Taki, Black Guard agents who preserve the peace between the human and demon kind, is about to be born. Many hope that the child will bring together the demon and human worlds in a new era of lasting peace. The Shu family-an infamous demon mob who thrive on chaos and destruction-will stop at nothing to prevent the child’s birth. With magic snake handlers and fire-spitting demons at their beck and call, the shus throw everything they have at Take and the Black Guard, determined to destroy Makie and her baby and prevent a centuries-old prediction from coming true. “
Well I have quite a few words that could describe how I felt about reading this, for the majority of the book, it was well paced. Though a few of the fights between the guard and the shus seemed to be rushed to many of the times. Though I can almost see why Kikuchi is described as the Japanese Steven King by some of his fans, though I’ve never finished anything by King just yet. The very end was extremely gruesome for describing something. This is coming from someone that loves the use of the undead in most instances, but this is probably the only thing I’d see in a nightmare with zombies in it. It was truly the most horrifying thing that I’ve read. Though I’m mostly new to the horror genre, and mostly stick to the undead around this.
The characters were all pretty well developed, I feel like the Sharpe Brothers could have been developed more though. The most notable thing I can take back from reading the book when I think of them is that they lived for the fight. Though the two play a vital part in the end of the story as well, so it balances a bit I think. I also wish that there was a bit more with Makie, most of the scenes were with Taki, and the most descriptive scene with here wasn’t exactly necessary, despite explaining some things about her.
The story itself played out pretty well, while being predictable at times, it also surprised me quite a few times. The only problem I found with the story is that it revealed some things a bit too early, when he could have saved that bit for later when it was a bit more important.
Overall I think it deserves a 3.75 out of 5, it was close to a four, but the ending may keep me from reading it again for a while, or at least until I get another one of the books if he writes another, which may or may not happen with the way the story ended.
Rue De La Pompe, a review
by Zach on Jul.15, 2010, under reviews, writing
My uncle wrote this book a while back, and he sent me a copy of it for my birthday. So to say thanks, I’m going to review it here on the site.
“Celebrating his thirtieth birthday alone in Paris, American businessman Michael Whyte realizes that it’s entirely possible to live an unglamorous life in the most glamorous city in the world. But an unexpected gift of formal wear followed by a party invitation from his eccentric neighbors lands him in a curious search for the first French Franc-a coin said to be incredibly valuable and wickedly dangerous.
Guided by a deaf-mute and mentored by an epistemologist, Michael careens across the city in his quest for the coin. From the chateau de Vincennes and the Musee d’Orsay to the sewers of Paris and the base of the Eiffel Tower, he braves the city for an answer to the perplexing question of the Franc’s true nature.
Assisting, thwarting, or simply confusing him along the way is a bizarre collection of lunatic personalities, including a Castilian hit man, a Zen Buddhist Swiss jeweler, a flatulent statue of Benjamin Franklin, a foul-mouthed Rhinoceros, the concierge from Hell, and an enigmatic beauty named Chione.” -The summery of the book.
I’d like to start off by saying that this book was an interesting read, while at some parts I couldn’t put the book down, at other parts I didn’t want to read any further. For the first half of the book, that’s how it was for me, till I passed that point. (Ironically around the time I read the part with the foul mouthed rhinoceros xD) The second half was just a great written story, but I understand that without the first half, most of this wouldn’t have worked.
The ending looked a bit rushed, but I understand why he wrote it that way. In the book a certain young fortune teller made predictions that led to it.
While the book was hard to read, there was some good entertainment from reading the different voices/personalities in the mind of the main character Michael. Known as Mikey, the kid in him, dumbass, smartass, jackass, and Mr. Whyte, the adult in him. Thy were kind of like viewers of Michaels life to me while I was reading and often led to some funny moments within the book.
In the end, I’m going to give it a 3.5, while the majority of the book was good, but I probably won’t reread it to often.
The Evil Dead 2 a review
by Zach on Jul.01, 2010, under reviews, writing
Well I was going to post this yesterday, but I decided to spread the reviews apart by at least a day. It will be a bit longer till I can watch the third one, so that review will come some time in the future.
I’ll start off by saying that I didn’t like this one as much as the first one. It was a good movie, but I liked the first one just little bit more. This one was more of a parody of horror movies, so it didn’t really have much of a chance of being better than the first one in my opinion. It was funny though, and probably one of my new favorite comedy horror movies, beating out half the Scary Movies.
There wasn’t really that much ‘horror’ scenes, a large portion of the movie was over dramatizing the the scene like in other horror movies. Only this way, they made it plainly obvious, which got old after a while. Though while the movie didn’t have much horror, it left the gore in. Though it led to my favorite part of the movie, when the demon possesses Ash’s(Bruce Campbell) hand. Leading Ash to cut off his own hand, and he ends up fighting the hand, but fails to get rid of it. In fact the hand beat the crud out of him for a minute or so. Though if that hadn’t happened, he might not have been able to defeat the possessed old woman that was bothering them the whole movie.
While I liked the comedy, and at times the few horror scenes in the movie, the story to this one just wasn’t as good. Unlike the first one, this one put more focus on the book of the Dead, but they still managed to keep it from being brought up for the majority of the movie. Though the ending fit it wall in well, and I did like the ending, it wasn’t really led to all that well. The demon didn’t show up where he did, instead a different demon showed up in the past(I’m assuming), where he killed a demon and became a hero to the people who were about to kill him for falling from the sky.
In the end, I give this move a 3.5, while it was a good movie, it would have done better if this was the original story in the first one, but it wasn’t. I’d still watching every so often though, it was really funny.
my new short story
by Zach on Jun.30, 2010, under writing
Well, on Gaia, there’s a character contest, where you create a character and write a story to make the people who read it fall in love with it. Well, here’s my entry for it, its an intro for a pirate character I’ve wanted to write about, but until now I couldn’t think of a beginning for him. I think I might write a more involved story with him, maybe interacting with the other characters, but for now this is good enough.
Captain Shi
This story begins in a small village off the coast of Japan. It was during the Bakumatsu, while chaos still reigned supreme. There was no order in Japan, but in this small village there was a kid that wanted to get away from Japan. His name was Kazuo Hachiro, but he hated his name, even though his family thought it was a nice name. As he grew older, his name tended to make him angry when people said it, but he allowed his family to call him that. Anyone else who dared call him by his name had a tendency to disappear. He had long black hair and dark brown eyes, which made many of the villagers fear him more as he grew older. Eventually the rest of the villagers who knew him nicknamed him Shi, due to the mysterious disappearances of the others.
Then one day, a pirate ship came to the village, and the pirates went pillaging through the village. For the majority of the day, the pirates killed and took what they pleased. Until they realized that they were losing more men than they were killing. They found the source to be Kazuo, his long black hair stained with the blood of the dead pirates around him. He held in his hand a katana, which caused the pirates to laugh at him and they tried to kill him and take it. They soon learned their mistake; the sword was the blade that his father used to fight when he was younger. Shi killed the pirates that came quickly with such mastery; that most started to think that he was a demon. Soon the majority of the lower ranked pirates of the ship were gone and the captain stepped off the ship to see who or what caused the trouble. He walked through the village and found Shi holding the katana surrounded in the blood of the pirates he’d slain.
The captain laughed, and the villagers thought that he was mad, until he spoke, with a request for Shi. “Ah, so I see that you are skilled with the blade, would mind joining me? This village has nothing for you, look; they stare at you with as much fear as they do me.” Shi sighed and shook his head, he didn’t talk to people he didn’t respect. The villagers stepped back a bit as he did that. The captain sighed, “Then how do you plan on countering this with just a blade?” The captain held up a flintlock pistol and pointed it straight at Shi’s head. Shi glared at him, sending off battle Chi that made even the Captain move back in fear, despite the fact that he held the gun.
Shi shocked the villagers when he spoke to the captain, “Guns are for cowards that don’t think that they can win on their own. If you can defeat me in a fair fight, I will join your crew, but if I win, I become the captain.” The captain laughed at this, and put his gun back, and took out his cutlass.
“Are you sure about this boy, if you lose, then trust me when I say that I’ll make you miserable on my ship.”
Shi smiled and nodded, “Only a fool states a challenge when he doesn’t intend to keep his word.” With that the captain ordered one of his men to start the match, and the crowd held their breath in anticipation. If Shi won, they didn’t know what would happen, but if the captain won they would be terrorized and killed. Shi sheaved his sword and bent his right knee with his left leg behind him held straight above the ground. His hand hovered over the hilt of the blade as the crowd gasped. He was in the stance for battojutsu, one of the techniques used by assassins. The captain didn’t know this and merely raised the cutlass in front of him. The crew member lowered his hand to start the match, and the first strike went by in the blink of an eye. The cutlass was broken, and the captain on the ground. The captain was lucky that he had his cutlass between him and the blade, or he would have been finished.
Shi smiles and kicks the captain, “So, I guess this means that I win.” The captain bowed on the ground, and the crowd cheered, until Shi did something none of them expected; he decapitated the captain. The crowd was silent after this, and Shi looked over the crowd and looked at a young boy sitting that was crying. Shi sheaved his katana once more, but this time he handed the katana to the boy. “Little brother, look after fathers sword, I’ve lost my honor by offering to become a pirate. I have no honor, don’t become like me.” The boy wiped his tears, and nodded slowly. Shi smiled and picked up a cutlass from the mass of dead bodies at his feet. He walked up onto the ship and bowed to the village, “You may have feared me, but you treated me well. This is my payment for your kindness.” With that, Shi ordered the men to set sail, and he was never seen near the village again.
The Evil Dead a review
by Zach on Jun.30, 2010, under reviews
For the first time I’m going to review a movie that has a big fan base, by reviewing the Evil Dead, part of the limited edition gift set that I received on my birthday.
I must start out this review by saying that I don’t really buy that this was a zombie movie, the other two might be, but not this one. It even states that they are ‘possessed’ by the tape recording they played to start it all. That and I’ve never been a huge fan of any zombie that actually feels pain, its just weird to me.
Despite the fact that I don’t agree with it being a ‘zombie’ movie, it was still pretty good. It’s one of the few horror movies I’ve watched where I didn’t get bored because the characters were fooling around and talking for the first third of the movie. This one set up how the characters were for me, while Ash(played by Bruce Campbell) was one of the characters that wasn’t afraid of the tape, he knew to turn it off around the girls. Which if they hadn’t listened to, would have kept them perfectly safe. So he was probably the only one there that had any sense to start with.
The other guy,was probably the worst character, but more realistically action-wise, was Scott. Not only did he play the tape when the girls turned it off, he turned it on in time for the reading from the Book of the Dead on the tape. He was also the only one that was foolish enough to try and run away on his own, which leads to him returning near death.
Which leads to the first major ‘horror’ scene in the movie when Cheryl is lured out into the forest. I’d describe what happened out there, but I’d rather not. One thing that got me about this movie, out of all of the horror movies from the 80′s(that I’ve seen), this is probably the goriest one of them all. Probably the most sick to, but that somehow didn’t ruin it for me. It was just how it was done that made it understandable, except for the scene with the forest 0.0 .
Another reason that this isn’t a zombie movie, one of the characters was possessed after being stabbed with a pencil, not a bite, or a scratch from one of the now possessed, Cheryl. Then surprising when the main character, Ash, had his leg clawed up by his now possessed girlfriend. Yet he was never possessed, until possibly the end.
Then one problem I had with the main character, when you turn on a chainsaw to chop up a zombie, why would you turn it off and bury them instead. It would have been much smarter if he had chopped the body, then buried it. (Sorry for those of you think that is sick thinking) If he had, he wouldn’t have had his skin scratched off by the possessed.
So in the end, I’m going to give this a 4.5, its not a ‘great’ movie, but its good, and worth re-watching a couple of times every now and then.
Edit: I wrote this at a time when I heard that The Evil Dead series was a zombie movie series, which it isn’t, but I hear that the third one has zombies in it, so I’m looking forward to that.
NA NA NA NA NA NA FAT KID! :P
by dudemister91 on Jun.19, 2010, under Uncategorized, Vlogs, Zane
Me dancin to crappy music
by dudemister91 on Jun.19, 2010, under Vlogs, Zane
