Tyrion

Hey Gwai, Tanuchan. I'm only back in Official Weenie -I don't have that title for nothing- fashion though. I'll try to pop in and look around a bit more often than was the case in recent years, but I predict that I will fade back out of sight eventually.

Okay... so I'm coming back from months (Years? Who knows...) of inactivity and reviving a slumbering thread, but there's a reason for it. I swear! In an effort to do something other than read my assigned books, I decided to visit the Pen to see how things were going, and being more of a Cabaret Room type of guy, I figured I'd stick to this place in my endeavour to catch up on what was happening. I scrolled down the page looking for names I knew, and upon seeing Katzaniel's, figured this thread was worth reading, not because she used to wear the "Eater of Non-members" badge that had me scared, or because she was the object of the best (and only!) love letter I've ever written, but because I remembered telling her long ago that I would write something for one of her projects, and failed to do so. So congratulations Katz for obtaining such an opportunity, and sorry for neglecting to finish my story for your project. I doubt I will ever try to participate in one of those again, but should the situation arise, please remember that I suck at meeting deadlines.

Hah, I love "Elevator Blues." I love the humor in it. That and I love stairs. Sometimes I run up the 9 floors of the building during the class breaks. Seeing all those stories makes me feel like I need to stop thinking about writing and actually producing something. Quick note to the others who posted feedback. Titles are underlined when they head the text, but short stories, poems and articles are referred to by using quotation marks.

Well of course you trust me! It says so right there in the text! And thanks, I wasn't too confident about it at first. It's almost halfway between a long joke and an essay. I was aiming for the latter, but I couldn't pass up all the humor that came to mind. I'm slowly warming up to the mix as I read it over and over though.

I don't really know how to describe this, but once you've read it you'll get it. "Pointless Rambling" I can't pick a career that focuses on a single thing. One day, I want to experience a new environment, to work on matters that take me to inexistent places and times, the next I want to explore the world I know in greater detail. Those needs are highly irregular, and no real job can satisfy them. Thankfully, being a writer is no real job. I write for no one in particular. I write according to what I feel, and no one can tell me how I'm going to feel next. I can't control that myself, so you couldn't even say that I'm my own boss. The health benefits suck, too. Why did I have to be a writer? The thought of it all proves very unsettling. How am I supposed to live with this? If I do manage to get an income from writing, who's to say that I can keep doing it afterwards? It's a known fact that I can't stick to a work schedule. Unless a sudden inspiration tells me that writing is what I want to be doing, I'm most likely to just think about writing. For one very simple reason, writing dominates all other forms of activity or thought. No matter what your own odd little brain thinks can become a sentence. No matter what you're doing after lunch can end up as a tale. In most cases though, that thought and that tale will bore the vast majority of readers. The most probable exception would be yourself, and you'd need to be the egocentric type. I belong to that group, by the way – trust me. If there's anyone you can trust it's certainly me. Nobody could ever become as trustworthy as I am, even if they made it their life's goal. Now that you trust me, and that we've established that I'm egocentric, it'll interest you to know that my own actions and thoughts fail to interest me. Not quite all of them, but certainly a huge chunk. So what does that say about my writing? Nothing. Why should it? I don't write about everything I believe in. I don't even believe in everything I write – I hope that doesn't affect your trust too much. My job as a writer is not to tell you what I think; it's to put you in a situation I imagine, so that you can tell me what you think. That's why you should always refer to the text as the subject when you're analyzing a piece. If you speak for the text, you can never be wrong. If you venture a guess that this text tries to establish a link between imagination and realization, nobody can prove you wrong. If you say that the author writes this because he feels the need to justify his life's choice, then you are wrong, and I can prove it just by saying so – seeing as you trust me, and that I'm the author. The explanation is simple really: once complete, the work has a life of its own, and not even the writer can tell you that you view it erroneously, much less define his own creation. It's very easy to call a writer crazy after reading his work. When text comes out of one's head, it'll only ever be a semi-coherent assembling of ideas. When you read it, you follow the ideas as best you can. The truth behind the ideas, however, will remain unattainable. Sure, you can think you get the content, but more always lurks behind an unseen metaphor. You need to be crazy to assume the responsibility for everything you're sending out there, and you need to be crazy to claim to be teaching people you will never know about a concept you will never fully grasp. Yet with all of that, I find myself in an amazing position. With everything I write, I add to the potential that you will read it, find a reason for its existence that I never conceived of, and credit me with it. That could explain why some authors never discuss their publications; that way we can never be sure if they were aware of the ideas they may suggest, and we must assume that they were. I'm above using cheap tricks like that one, though, so I'll tell you the deal right away. I purposely – and with full awareness, I can't stress this enough – put in any brilliant thought you might extract from these last few paragraphs. Trust me.

I don't like hyped up holidays in general, so it's no surprise that I don't like Valentine's day. I'm the kind of person who doesn't notice it's December 25th, but I almost always know when it's November 11th (don't ask me why). The reason I don't like Valentine's day is that it tries to make "love" seems warm, happy and fuzzy. Real love is about something much greater than that. It's about pain and humility. The warm, happy, fuzzy stuff is the hook that makes you endure the other stuff. There's no pain like the one that love brings you. It's the most productive feeling there is. Love without conflict is only half the experience. Love works in extremes. You can live all your life perfectly contented without ever experiencing any of it. You get into it for the 'happy' things, but the rest is what makes you grow. If you never have any pain or conflicts, then love is just a boring, mundane feeling to you. No great story was ever written about a perfect relationship. Pain helps you define yourself. How you handle it shows your character. How you face it shows your courage. No matter who you are, it will teach you humility. Valentine's day should be about pain.

I doubt it, really. And I actually like the 4-party formula. I don't like majority governments. It makes things easier for parties, and that shouldn't happen, especially since representatives are very strongly discouraged from voting against their parties. Majority parties would allow too many things to happen. You'd have good and awful years in the country depending on who's in power and what your point of view is. Imagine a conservative majority government. They'd surely make gay marriage illegal again. Since I think every other party opposes them on that issue, the moment they lose the majority gay marriage will be legal again. What's the point of making decisions if they're just going to be reversed again all the time? With minority governments, changes are harder to make, but those changes will stay.

And with a voting rate of 55%, you have a good chance that the person you took it from won't be missing their card. "They didn't send me one, but I wasn't gonna vote anyway." It's like they're asking for vote tampering, it wouldn't cost anything to ask for a piece of ID when handing in the card. Here they have two people behind a desk, one to cross out your name, the other to hand you your ballot, I'm sure one of them has time to verify your name. That's how they do it in municipal elections over here.

Yes, I went a couple of hours ago, right before my first post in this thread. It's a shame my dad can't vote, his boss has issues so he couldn't come from Boston this weekend. The voting system is ridiculous though, all I'd have to do is dress differently, shave my goatee and I could vote in his place, since I have his voting card and they don't ask for ID. I would never do that, but they could take 2 seconds to verify ID before letting you vote. They had a thing on TV a couple years ago where they sent a woman to vote 6 times in one election just to show how dumb it was.

*opens the can slightly* People have a tendency to misinterpret the Bloc Quebecois as a seperatist party, but that isn't true. It's a federal party, it *can't* be seperatist. Since it can't be a majority party (it managed to be the official opposition once, because of split votes in the rest of Canada), its purpose is not to run the country the way Quebec wants it run, but to simply defend issues that are important to us (as a French-speaking society). Of course sometimes our interests coincide with that of other nation-wide parties, but not always. As Gilles Duceppe said in an interview, they are not aiming to go against a party in particular, they view each idea for what it is, sometimes that means agreeing with Liberals, other times with Conservatives etc. I agree that it's pretty weird for you guys to get debates with Gille Duceppe when you couldn't even vote for his party. Proportional representation would change that though, not that I would expect many non-Quebecers to vote for them. But yeah, B.Q. shouldn't be seen as a seperatist group, they're more of an alternative to seperation.

Proportional representation would certainly help your Green Party, Canid. I'm actually all for it, and most people I know are... They should really make that happen in the near future. Have you heard the voting rate argument? In countries with proportional representation (the example of Australia was mentionned), the voting rate is close to 95%, as opposed to our system, which has one around 55%. I go vote even though my vote changes nothing, I would love for it to make a difference. I'd never be one to vote for Liberals, but what's with people turning to the Conservatives out of spite? As far as I'm concerned, they're even worse. Sure, it'll show the Liberals that they can't be careless anymore, but Conservatives... I guess I can live with them having a minority government, because they'd be opposed by everyone else on issues like gay marriage, but a majority government would certainly set us back. And how about these lyrics, they're much better than the English ones (comes with my own translation). Ô Canada! Terre de nos aïeux, (O Canada, land of our ancestors,) Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux! (Your (fore)head is crowned by glorious florets.) Car ton bras sait porter l'épée, (Because your arm can carry the sword,) Il sait porter la croix; (He can carry the cross;) Ton histoire est une épopée (Your history is an epic poem) Des plus brillants exploits. (Of the most brilliant feats.) Et ta valeur de foi trempée (And your valor of forged faith) Protégera nos foyers et nos droits; (Will protect our homes and our rights.) Protégera nos foyers et nos droits. Okay... so a few parts of this one need revising also... but it's already much better in regards to poetic devices, wouldn't you say? I'll still try to rewrite the English one...

Zany Zairian zoos zap zircons.

Everyone knows I want to be a writer. When I complain about being bored, my mom tells me to work on my book.

Television totally tells true tales!

Koalas kill Kuwaiti kids kindly. (I don't know what the Kuwaiti kids did to deserve this, however.)

Really? I don't tend to use 'complicated' vocabulary at all unless it's necessary for a joke or I'm writing a paper. When I speak I don't go for complicated vocabulary, so I don't either when I write on IRC. And about Punctuation... yeah, I skip a lot of commas... that makes my sentences complicated to get sometimes.

We don't know... maybe the fate of the universe rests on how many times "lol" (that I have never ever used) is written/said in a day. Personnally I like to write on IRC the way I would speak, so heh and hehe for small laughs and hah and haha for loud laughs, since you have to open your mouth more for the "ah" sound than for they "ey" sound.

Actually I'm pretty sure "prolly" came into existence because that's how 'probably' sounds when you don't articulate. I'm a pretty lazy speaker a lot of the time and I tend to say words really fast, skipping a syllable or two, and when I say "probably" it sounds a lot like "prolly."

I can live with being a hybrid... but it seems to me like there is a whole 10-year window for hybrids. So why not call the hybrids a generation of their own? Now all we need is a cool name... and maybe a cool generation motto.

I've been reading about Generation X and Y... Technically I'm a Y-er, but I don't feel like I can associate with what I've read about them. I didn't grow up with computers... it seems they consider the important part to be the "formative years" which they consider to be the teenage years for some reason. Yes, I did get my Nintendo when I was 5. And I did have a computer at the time, but only because my dad is a programmer. I didn't use the internet before I was 13. So when I think back on "when I was young," it doesn't involve computers. We need a Generation for people like me who grew up in the early nineties and watched technology grow up with us. Because I can't say I watched it all happen, but it definitely wasn't there when I got here. And I totally agree with Katz on the technology thing. I'm never getting rid of my Nintendo! I'll still buy game cartridges I don't have when I see them in garage sales! As long as I live I won't let my mom throw away her records and record player to make room. And you guys call it a kangaroo in English too? I thought that was a French thing.

This thing lacks holographic projections... But I like the minimalist thingy.

In my History of the United States class, we had to cancel the midterm because of a professors' strike. To make up for it the teacher sent us a 5-page assignment by e-mail due on the same day as the final, with less than 2 weeks' notice. That didn't go well with one student, who replied to the teacher and the whole class saying how that was unacceptable and making demands. I couldn't help but laugh at the irony and I wrote the following, which I've translated to English for your convenience. Of course I sent this to the professor and the whole class, making sure to state it was intended to be a joke first. "Unanimous declaration of the United Students In the deplorable eventuality of dissention between a group of students and the professor who forms them, fundamentally equal beings all linked by a powerful thirst for knowledge, the side who feels their rights are being infringed upon must clearly express the reasons for their discontent. It is obvious that the educational mandate of a faculty and, by extension, of a professor is only justifiable through the trust the students have in its capacity to adequately evaluate their efforts and the performance derived from them. If the student, basis itself of this wonderful community that is the university, loses the impression that his time is used in a fair and enriching manner, the system finds itself obsolete. Hence it is a right and a duty to rectify the situation by removing from its position the power the element preventing the continuation of a pleasant learning experience. To demonstrate the necessity of such a maneuver, the infractions leading to this verdict will be listed here. The efforts invested on many occasions in the study for a midterm exam, while taken into consideration, were never compensated. The unilateral establishment of measures to make up for lost classes is an act of tyranny and goes against the principles promoted by the rules concerning the syllabus. The delay given for the redaction of a substancial essay is vastly insufficient in the current situation. The time necessary for preparation for a final exam, without mentionning the due dates in other classes that we must also pay attention to, makes such a request unacceptable. We, the United Students, declare by this document that those united individuals are from now on independent, that they no longer have to answer to the requests of the faculty, and that any affiliation between these two institutions is void. As free beings, we reserve the right to dictate our own evaluation measures, to arrange for the correction of our assignments ourselves and to give our consent to an affiliation to a different establishment, should the situation arise." The translation isn't perfect, but it's close enough. Here's the original for those of you who can read French, it would seem silly to make a second post in the Manor of Tongues for it. "Déclaration unanime des Étudiants-Unis Dans l’éventualité déplorable d’un désaccord entre un groupe d’étudiants et le professeur qui les forme, êtres fondamentalement égaux tous liés par une puissante soif de connaissance, le parti qui sent ses droits lésés se doit d’énoncer clairement les raisons de son mécontentement. Il va de soi que le mandat d’éducation d’une faculté et, par extension, d’un professeur n’est justifiable que par la confiance des étudiants en la capacité de cette institution de pouvoir évaluer adéquatement leurs efforts et la performance qui en découle. Si l’étudiant, base même de ce merveilleux milieu universitaire, perd l’impression que son temps est utilisé de façon juste et enrichissante, le système s’en retrouve périmé. Il s’agit donc d’un droit et d’un devoir de rectifier la situation en retirant de sa position de pouvoir l’élément qui nuit à la continuation d’une expérience d’apprentissage plaisante. Pour démontrer la nécessité d’une telle manœuvre, les infractions menant au verdict rédigé seront ici même énoncées. Les efforts investis à maintes reprises dans l’étude d’un examen de mi-session, bien que pris en considération, ne furent jamais compensés. L’établissement unilatéral des mesures de rattrapage est un acte de tyrannie et va à l’encontre des principes mis en vigueur par les règles concernant le plan de cours. Le délai accordé pour la rédaction d’un essai substantiel est largement insuffisant dans la conjoncture actuelle. Le temps nécessaire à la préparation de l’examen final, sans mentionner les échéanciers des autres cours auxquels nous devons également faire face, rend une telle exigence inacceptable. Nous, les Étudiants-Unis, déclarons donc par la présente que ces individus unis sont désormais indépendants, qu’ils n’ont plus à répondre aux exigences de la faculté et que toute affiliation entre ces deux institutions est révolue. En tant qu’êtres libres, nous nous réservons alors le droit de dicter nos propres mesures d’évaluation, de nous arranger nous-mêmes pour la correction de nos travaux et de consentir nous-mêmes à une affiliation avec un autre établissement, si la situation se présentait."

It says I can't vote in this poll, and it doesn't let me view the results, so I'll just post it... My favorite would be number 6 then most likely 4. I figure the background fills and text fills are a bit heavy on the eyes, so I vote for something simpler in stature. I'd vote for number 7 as a second choice, but pens seem so unoriginal compared to number 6, I see no reason to vote for one when the other is available. I wish it would at least let me cancel my non-vote to see the results.

Peredhil, You always have a good word to say about somebody, even if you've only known them 5 minutes. You don't wait to have a reason to express your feelings towards someone, but when you do have one, instead of telling yourself it's already done, you go through the list alphabetically ( and here I was half expecting you to have run out of compliments when you'd gotten to the T's, what was I thinking? ). The beauty of your words is that they're not excessive, and whoever you are talking to will know you're not just making things up. I'm pretty sure you could convince an appendix that its role within the human body is as important as any organ's. Your friendship is so touching that even this double weenie will take the time to write a post for you. Tyrion. I hadn't actually noticed how long ago these were written when I wrote mine, but hey... it still applies and it's not too late, is it?

Well at first you can see the little guys are sort of building a house out of the cube, complete with a rooftop garden and river... What you will never see coming, however, is the ending... I just found out there are actually two ways to get the Max ending, so that's 1 in ((10!) / 2 ) chances to get it right randomly on the first try... that's not too bad.