Okay, somehow Xanga has taken away the ability for snazzy titles, which is one of my bad habits, making extraneous, long titles, and then adding parentheses ( ... ) to beat the dead horse some more. Whatever.

As for last week's, um, 'entry' I'll just let it speak for itself. Werd.

Well, I said I was going to do my super hero group, so here it goes. I sadly have to forsake my pictures of Megaman in lieu, but fear not because Smart_Bad is going to do a better job of it than I ever could. I gave us all super-sexy super-cheesy hero names in place of anything remotely serious. Given time restraints, it'll be one or two members at a time. Keep them waiting right? Anyway ...

FINISHING MOVE~!

Chris "The Syren" Yap- The unlikely offspring of a radioactive bald eagle and a tree-loving environmentalist, The Syren has the uncanny ability to make eyes bleed and children turn inside out with his falsetto wails, as well as causing severe earthquakes and tsunamis and turning the elderly into edible dust with his baritone croons. He is a dualist by nature, struggling with his bird/man spirit that dwells in him, conflicted over driving in his car or pooping on it. Thus is the struggle of The Syren.

Leading a ragtag bunch of misfits has not come without it's price. After being stripped of his lustrous feathery wings and razor beak after his epic fight with Photo Capricorn, the Syren leads FINISHING MOVE~! with the sole intent of ending the Capricorn's reign of evil from his citadel, Kuykendall Isle.

SUPER FINISHING MOVE: "The Lawbreaker," in which the Syren conjures all the traitors from Dante's last circle of Hell (Well, Judas, Brutus, and possibly a few more peeps), and rallies them into screaming, "You Don't Know What It's Like," creating a sonic boom capable of shattering even the steeliest of rectums. Damn.

Forget Continuity

So okay, maybe I said I was going to write a blod about my grandma, maybe I said I was going to write a blog about my crazy boss, but I realize that trying to plan these blogs is like trying to, I don't know, trying to plan ... I don't know what. It's something bad, I know.

So, anyway.

School is out, finally, and I am stuck in this weird post-partum depression about what to do with myself. I guess this is what women feel like when they have a baby, but without the gross looking placenta or the matured fetus sucking at my teet. Being a guy rocks.

But yeah, at times there is this anxiety that I have nothing to do, no papers, no stories due, so what's the point, yeah? Oh well, I hate to turn this blog into something like a diary. Screw that.

I realize now that I should form a better super-hero team. Madame Lactavia isn't quite cutting it in the 'dangerous' department, and no matter how poisonous her teet may be, she only has two, so I guess I'm going to have form one of my own. And, given the fact that my creativity is running a little low right after the semester, I've decided to do two groups, FINISHING MOVE~! and it's Canadian version, MURDERERS' ROW~!

And yes, everyone who pretty much reads this blog is a member of this group, I've just decideded to make the characters in Megaman Battle Network! Hey, it was either that, or pro-wrestlers, and Eddy Guerrero's already on the roster.

See you in a few.

The Last Bit of Vanity

    Okay, I'm not comfortable talking about myself too well. Ask anyone who knows me, but for continuity sake, I think I might as well post my goal list for the summer and next academic year. After that, you can expect a blog on either one of two things, 1) How Lorna Hershinow is insane, 2) How I almost killed my grandma. She's not, like, a millionare, or something. Seriously. I'm quite leaning towards option numero dos, but the first will undoubtably get published too.

As long the the internet trendiness of xanga doesn't wear out too soon (and given the way these things go, xanga has about a good ten minutes left...) it will be good to compare and contrast the goal list come May 2005. Keep in mind this is not a very realistic goal list, and I will be quite happy to complete half, or even a quarter of this. Ahem.

1) Win the HONOLULU Magazine short story contest. I came fairly close last year, I figure anything else would be a set back, right?

2) Win the Bamboo Ridge Short Story Contest. I suppose this is one of the last 'big' story contests in Hawaii I have left to enter, so why not?

3) Win the Saiki and Stryker before I graduate. That is, if they let me have a shot at entering again. Just one last pie in the face to all the writers, since it's the end of the semester, and I have yet to recieve my World Title Belt.

4) Submit to journals and such. Standard stuff, and I really don't know where to hawk my wares except for a few journals, but it looks good on the old resume.

5) Win other things that come my way. Just to end all that silly crap up top.

6) Kick Nora Keller's literary @$$. She's teaching courses here come Fall and I signed up for the graduate fiction workshop. She has no idea what's coming to her. I have this small vendetta against visiting professors that teach fiction workshops (I mean, how far off are they from graduate students, and what teaching experience do they have? ... I'm just venting from a horrible poetry workshop from weird @$$ John Pule, a visiting writer in 2002, so you can blame him.)

Anyway. For the longest while I made up this David Spade joke that she has to hear" You know, Mrs. Keller, I really liked Fox Girl ... ... ...when it was called Comfort Woman." Boo-yah. Word life.

7) WRITE WRITE WRITE. That's my main goal, I have, like, five short stories on the horizon that seem to be potentially good, so that's my plan.

Next Week: Murder in the Nursing Home or Trashbag Lady Boss!

Semester in Review~!

So, like I said before here is the semester in review. Now, I don't know who's actually reading this, other than people I know who are reading this, so this may come off as totally irrelevant. But if this is irrelevant, why read my blog? There is some perfectly fine, perfectly accessible porngraphy on the web. It's not like this is anything new.

Anyway, I must say this semester kicks the crap out of last semester where my one and only highlight was making fifty dollars in a five hour shift at Papa Johns. Seriously. And, now when I look back on it, that's really, really sad, though I do crave their pizza every now and then, but when I order it and eat the pizza I have this mixed emotion of depression and rage. I call it ... I don't know what to call it. It sucks, that's all I know.

But this semester was better. Choke better. I guess I'll start off with my new places of employment:

1) Fiction editor at Hawaii Review.

2) Graduate assistant for the Hawaii Writing Project working with Prof. Lorna Hershinow (whom I like to think of as delightfully insane, and anyone who knows her will agree with me. More on this later)

3) Copy-editor at Ka Leo (tinobobino, I owe you big. BIG)

4) Temporary columnnist at Ka Leo (spannning two months!)

5) Front desk receptionist at the Elks Lodge (Thanks Jill for the easiest job on the island)

So yeah, that's new places of employment as opposed to just delivering pizza. Some of these jobs shut down during the summer, so I'll have to look for some new jobs. I'll keep you posted on that.

Now the bad parts. Crap. There are a few. Ahem.

1) Lost the fricking Editor in Chief job to Clint Frakes at Hawaii Review. (This really sucks, cause' now I will probably lose the fiction editor job since Ed. in Cheif can clean sweep the staff if he wants to. And I know he wants to. Damn.)

2) Lost the Lorin Tarr Gill Contest (I thought this was easy money. But nooooo. I lost twenty-dollars, and I didn't even get a crappy subscription from their crappy club. No, I'm not bitter.)

3) Lost the MANOA journal fellowship (This was a sweet deal I missed out on, $9000 for working their a year, maybe 15 hours a week. Easy money, yes? I thought I was a shoe in. But then they handed me a grammar test. Crap. Anyway, the people MANOA are totally nice, but totally boring. Everyone talks soooo sloooow. It's like living in coffee commerical. One conversation I overheard whil failing their crappy grammar test went like this: *In your most slow, boring voice EVER* "Yeah, I like the color of the paper for the next issue. Yeah. It brings out the print so nicely." But for $9000, I was willing to go through that and smile. Yes, that is a lovely color! Whatever.)

So that's the crap, and considering that for a while I was desperately seeking any employment, that was the crappiest crap. Now on to the good stuff:

1) Got a runner-up placing @ HONOLULU Magazine short story contest. This was nice. Lee Tonouchi won first. Whatever. Me, Lisa Kanae and five other old people were the runners up. Cedric Yamanaka was an "Honorable Mention" as was last year's winner, Michael....let's call him Michael Lobsterhands. I got a giant gift-basket full of Starbucks stuff, fifty dollars (as opposed to 1st place $1000, WTF!?), and most importantly I got to warm my butt on Darrell Lum's neck. I think it should be an annual tradition.

2) Got a journalism award at the Ka Leo banquet. This was unexpected. I have written only, what, four columns, and some have written thirty, and I still placed. That goes to show how boring some columnists are, not how good I am. Because I'm not. They just suck, some of them. No money, but the door prizes were loaded with WWE wrestling DVD's. It was a smart mark's dream. I walked away with a few sweet one, but gave this comic artist on my table the Mick Foley DVD, easily the sweetest DVD of them all. 

2) Re-won the Saiki Contest at UH. This was nice too, though a little tainted. Due to low interest rates on the trust fund, the prize went from $1,000 to $500. That's fine. I'm not going to complain. I give this a Woot.

3) Got the Abernethy Scholarship. This was totally sweet. Though the money went down from $5000 to $4000, I'm not complaining at all. And with this award, I have accomplished the goal I set out to do in 2002: Win every creative writing prize at UHM. And it's nice to have done it in a tidy three years. You know, in my more whimsical moments, I liked to imagine that the would hand me some sort of world title belt, not unlike the one Triple H or Eddy Guerrero has, after all of this. You know, something I can wear and, when I feel like it, smack it against the face of some other English major or graduate student and then we can fight using whatever hardcore weapons we can avail ourselves to. Personally, I like to use the computer monitor/mace of doom. Of course, the janitor/referee will have to come out of their closet and ring a bell and administer the three count. Then we would dust ourselves off and walk to class. I think that would be nice.

So, that was the Semester in Review. I'm trying to think of a goal list for next year, but am waay too lazy to do it now. Sorry it was so long. Over the summer this site will get a snazzy new makeover. Aight?