I'm a fence sitter when it comes to reality television, for me, it's all about the intentions behind the shows. Big Brother is the worst excuse of entertainment I've ever seen, really, it's quite pathetic. Australian Idol is a bit better, but it's all just a massive popularity contest driven by popularity, so that it can be even more popular. And more popularity means more money. Greedy bastards. I prefer to watch show like Survivor and The Amazing Race. For starters, the contestants aren't voted off by the public, which means that they actually have to use their brains to get ahead in the game. Those shows have a competitive edge that I've come to like.

And now I've found myself watching Australia's Got Talent. It's along a similar format to Australian Idol, but it's not dragged out forever, and the voting isn't the only thing keeping the show running. I like it for the variety and entertainment that comes from the series. As the end of the series approaches, the thing I'm most interested to see is who will take the $250 000 prize. As for who I'd like to win, I'm not terribly concerned, provided that I know that the money will benefit the act and help them break through into the entertainment business, for example, Shift-1. Original, entertaining, the prize would certainly benefit their act so much.

My main issue is with the 5 year old singer/dancer, Mietta, who got through simply because she's cute, and because she's talented for a 5 year old. Compared to the other competitors, she's the worst, there's a couple of others that are kids, but they are actually entertaining by normal standards, and actually have a chance agains the older acts.
Smokin' Joe Robinson

Notice that Dani (sp?) Minogue commented that he's still got a bit of developing to do, yet he's a hell of a lot more talented that a 5 year old who can't sing in tune. My grandmother could sing better than Mietta. People of old age can still entertain.
Spoons Perry

But the judges don't seem to be able to say the word no to a 5 year old, Red Simons is the only one using his common sense, the other 2 have no backbone.
Time

After time

After time

She's a 5 year old, for crying out loud, she'd probably buy a pony with her prize money. I'm at a loss of how she made it to the semi-finals, and from there, I'm at a loss of how she was voted by the Australian public to get into the grand final. Compared to the other performers, she can't sing, she can't dance, and she certainly can't entertain. Compared to the others, she has no talent. For a 5 year old, yes, but compared to everyone else, by god, nooooo....

As the title suggests, I now have 50 audio fans, I now have rainbow shoelaces, and a 2nd placing in the writing competition.

More details-

50 Fans:
After the release of my latest song, Utopia, I've ticked over to the half century mark. While this is nothig compared to the likes of MaestroRage or ParagonX9, or even Rig, SBB or DarKsidE555, having 50 people appreciate me as a musician makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Thank you for listening to my music and supporting me, and I hope I can continue to compose and create, it's what I love.

Rainbow Shoelaces:
Today I bought a pair of rainbow shoelaces, which makes me awesome. They cost $2. And that money goes to fundraising for organ donors. Because being righteous and generous makes people awesome.

2nd Place in Writing Competition
I came 2nd with this story. Read more about how the competition panned out here.

OMG yay!

Impatiens

He sat in his chair on the balcony of his beach house,
Overlooking the breathtaking view of Babylon Bay.
There was a certain eagerness about him,
But he was a very patient man, unfazed by delay.

He was waiting for a special friend to arrive,
But that friend wasn't late, the friend was always on time.
And he sat in his patience, nothing stirring,
And the early morning wind rustled through leaves,
Playfully hinting of a rhyme.

A tall vase stood upon a battered stool,
With an ominous glow of twilight encompassing that vase,
And brought about a silhouette upon the flower inside,
An Impatiens, a solitary item that had captured his gaze.

The sun began to rise over the horizon,
His friend had arrived at long last,
His subject, the Impatiens one was ready,
A beacon of life and colour, awakens the past.

His paint brushes waited with baited breath,
They had not felt the texture of canvas for months,
His patience had prepared him for the reunion of hand and brush,
For he had touched paint on blank page not once.

The light weight tool in his hand felt natural,
Like an extension of his arm, moving with precision,
The lightest intentions of the hand, as signals from the mind,
Sent a cascade of colour upon the page,
The sharpest spectral incision.

The sun was not an impatient,
But it would wait for no man, it rose without haste,
The painter was slow and meticulous,
And his canvas couldn't be lathered in paste.

So he valiantly, delicately, played across the page,
Determined to end before the roof shadowed his light,
It was now, that his patience began to wear thin,
Hurry the painting, before first signs of night.

He laid down his brush, he had made good time,
But he lacked the quality he had set to achieve,
Time plays tricks on even the most reserved human beings,
We are all a little Impatiens sometimes.

A Poem By WritersBlock

Musicians can write songs that can loop, so why can't authors write stories that loop.

The Time Machine:
"Oh my God, it works!"
The machine was humming, it was just about ready. I adjusted a few things, tightened a few screws, made sure everything was fastened in place. There were oiled rags, and rubbish lying everywhere, it was a right mess. So I gathered up all the rubbish and packed it into an old empty cardboard box. I used packing tape to close it up. It was bulging considerably, so I went outside to put the rubbish in the bin.

But then I saw our neighbour's cat, Mr. Tibbles hiding up a tree in my front yard. So I used my superhuman brawndo muscles to shake the tree, and the cat fell down. I took the cat into the basement and placed it in the time machine. I sent it to 2 million years in the future. Yeah, take that, Finklestein! Then, my wife came down into the basement and handed me a letter. It read "Dear wife of God. I am assuming you are the wife of God, because if you are reading this, it means I have invented a working time machine, and sent the letter though time, and therefore I am God."

"Who wrote this?" my wife asked me.
"I don't know" I replied. "Now please leave, I have just killed Mr. Tibbles, and I am thinking about using the time machine on myself".
"Ok" she said, and without further ado, went outside to wave at a passing bus.
I put the letter into the time machine and set it for 1 minute into the past. If it did work, then my wife would recieve the letter, already written, and she would hand it to me to send to the past. How did that letter exist?

I decided not to answer that question as I deemed it rhetorical, so I sneezed three times and did the chicken dance, such was my obsessive compulsive disorder that plays a major part in this story (yes, I broke the fourth wall, get over it. It's not hard. The wall is considerably smaller now that I knocked it down. It's not too hard to get over it. You're welcome.) So I then went into the time machine and set it for five minutes in the past.

Return to the begining of the story and read again.
It LOOPS!

Ok, with the writing contest over (my submission is in my previous news post), my creative juices are overflowing, and instead of pushing that into one of my already existing projects (now numbering in the zillions), I've decided to finally attempt to write that full novel I've always wanted to write, but never actually felt inspired to.

My ideas are still in very rough stages, but I think I'll write it as a partner to the classical piano solo album I also said I'd write. So it'll be going by the title "The Wishing Well". It's not going to be the macabre horror, "lock this guy up in an assylum" type story that I usually love writing, but instead, it's going to be more drama serious.
I watched a movie the other day, called "The Darjeeling Limited", which is about 3 brothers who go on a train ride in India to get closer to eachother as brothers, like they used to be. To me, this movie had something that I haven't seen in a lot of movies, real characters. Sure the action blockbusters are awesome, but if you strip them down to just the characters, they're the over the top, brimming with cheesiness of horror films and thrillers, and with a lot of comedies too, no subtleties. This movie had characters that could have been real. I loved it. My parents only watched the first 15 minutes, then stopped watching because it took too long for the movie to get going. Their loss, I guess... =P
I felt the same sort of vibe, relation to the characters, whle watching "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Office". So I'm going to try and capture that real character type thing in my novel. I'll probably post it in my blog chapter by chapter, and see how it goes.

Suggestions are welcome, and comments on my short story on my previous blog is also appreciated.
Cheers!

The Butcher of Krankhafte

1: The Krankhafte Plague
The history of humankind is fraught with mayhem and disaster, death and destruction, and it's all self-inflicted. We're so arrogant that we can't stop fighting amongst ourselves to see that we aren't our own worst enemies, there's so much more out there that we should be protecting ourselves against. There are many more enemies that we should dominate over, should we stand and fight together. There are so many more enemies of mankind that slip past us unnoticed, biding their time, waiting for the opportune moment to slither in for the kill.

I first noticed these unnamed enemies towards the end of World War II, during the winter of 1941. It was another bitter cold day, in my small, poorly insulated apartment in Berlin. The curtains were drawn shut, as I was sickened by the view portrayed through the window. The city was a mass of chaos and confusion, police brutality caused an uproar of hysteria, people were afraid to leave their homes during the day. People hurried to and from work, not staying in the streets longer than they needed to be. Planes flew overhead at all hours of the day and night. Some planes dropped bombs. I lay awake at night praying to God that these next planes were German planes, that the bombs they carried were German bombs. The sky was tainted with all the colors of war, the scene displayed outside my window was one of fear and anxiety. The scene outside my window was one of man-made hell.

I was like everyone else, I didn't dare leave the house except for work, and even then, I'd try to bring work home and get as much work as I could done in the security of my apartment. I was a professor of the sciences at the Berlin University, so I was obliged to present myself to my class periodically throughout the week. I marked the papers and wrote the lectures and tests from my apartment, and I also had my research papers that I had been working on. I went by the name of Friderik Eisenbachs, but that changed after I discovered the truth behind a terrible plague.

One particular day, whilst I was at the university, giving a lecture to my class on the practicality of religion, the master professor of the institute knocked on the door, and informed me that he had waiting on the telephone, a man whom wished to speak to me, and solely directly to me, concerning a matter of grave importance. At the time, I didn't know how important that phone call was (I doubt even he knew, himself, for that matter), so I rushed to the professor's office and held the receiver to my ear, and heard the voice of my family doctor. My mother and father were deathly ill, with a sickness like nothing he'd ever seen before.

He had called to arrange for me to bring some books to him from the university library, in a desperate attempt to find a cure for my parents. He had also organized a bus fare for me to travel into my home village of Krankhafte, leaving that afternoon, so I could aid him in his research for this seemingly incurable disease. I explained the situation to the master professor, whom gave me his consent to take leave. I wasted no time getting my act together, it felt like only moments had passed and then I was boarding the bus, to leave my bruised and broken city behind.

2- The Tortured Mind
To my embarrassment, I had fallen asleep on the bus. My face compressed against glass, I opened my eyes and looked around to find that the bus had come to a halt, and all the other passengers had departed. My mind took its time to return to full consciousness, and it was quite some time before I noticed that the bus driver had gone. So I gathered myself and stepped off the bus. My luggage was stacked unceremoniously on the path, and I began gathering the cases and bags of luggage, when I noticed that the bus driver was leaning casually against the wall, cigarette in hand. I didn't think he had noticed me, but then he spoke out.
"Strange things happenin' round here..." He said. "Don't know what possessed you to journey out here."
"What are you talking about?" I asked. "I was raised here. This is my home."
"Times have changed, boy. Times have changed. No person in their right mind comes into Krankhafte 'nemore."
"But, what about the other people on the bus?"
"You were the only person on that bus..."
"What? I saw... Does this have anything to do with the war?"
"It's got something to do with a war, yes." and with that, he threw his cigarette butt on the ground and walked away.

I made my way through the cobbled streets towards the house in which my parents lived, the house in which I was raised, the words of the bus driver echoing in my mind. What did he mean, what's going on?. I walked through the village, and I made my way towards the old dirt road, overgrown with cannibalistic weeds. I walked down the road that I knew so well, yet I felt that the warmth of my carefree childhood was gone. I anticipated the joyful nostalgia of my youth, but I could sense that something was definitely not right, and that my presence was undesired in this place. I came to the end of the road and I piled my luggage on the ground, to unlatch the front gate to my old home. The porch light came on, and a man emerged from the house.
"Friderik, it's been so long!" It was our family doctor, Isaac Waultz. "Come, come. The guest room bed is prepared. You need rest after your journey. No, don't worry about your luggage, I'll bring it in. Go on, get inside!"
I walked over the threshold, and found my way into the guest room, where I fell into an interrupted sleep, perverted with nightmares of wars, and ghost towns, and people that don't exist...

The next morning, I had an insufferable migraine, burning into my skull, every pulse of blood to my brain was like the hardest of hammers. I walked into the room the doctor had adopted as his study. I pulled a seat up to his desk, and piled my books in front of him.
"Friderik", he said, " we need to talk. Your mother and father are very ill, they're sick with a plague. This plague... is like nothing I've ever seen before, It spreads like wildfire! It's taken hold of almost everyone in this village. So many people have already died, so many more are closing in on death, your parents are amongst those. I believe it to be an act of chemical warfare, on Britain's behalf, but that's irrelevant to the cure of this damn plague."

I thought this was quite far fetched. For an attack such as this to go unnoticed would be nothing short of impossible. The more time I spent pondering over the facts, the more I began to feel that the plague had arisen from within the village. I sat in the doctor's study, contemplating how to react to his ludicrous theory, when I heard a loud crash come from overhead. Moments later, I, and Dr. Waultz, saw through the study window, a body falling onto the front driveway. My mother was dead.

I sat, stunned, as the doctor hurried outside to confirm that the unthinkable was indeed true. He came back inside, to check up on my father, and to call the funeral home to take my mother's body away. I just sat, mortified by the event that had unfolded before my very eyes. My father had gone into shock, and the doctor feared that he too would break down soon. How soon, he wouldn't say. A matter of days, weeks, hours? The doctor started reading through the books I had brought him, determined to find a faint sign of a cure, but he was clutching at straws. The books were so full of unimportant, neglected knowledge, they were worthless. Every now and then, the doctor would stop and jot down a few things on his notepad, before opening up more books, taking a few more notes. He'd usually end up ripping the notes out and discarding them. A few times, he took the notes, and pulled out his medicines, and tested his cures on my father. Out of the half dozen times he tried, he gained nothing. In fact, a couple of the medicines seemed to agonize my father even more than the "normal" tortured delusions, and make his condition all the worse. I just sat in my chair in the doctor's office, and watched him, as the hours ticked by, until he closed the last book.

He held in his hand one piece of note paper, littered with his scrawled handwriting. He was about to take something out of his medicine bag, when there came a knock at the front door. He pulled two small bottles from his bag, and hastily poured one into the other.
He handed it to me and said "give this to your father, I'll answer the door."
I got to my feet, and walked into the downstairs bedroom, where my father sat on the end of his bed staring into nothingness. The doctor had moved him downstairs to prevent an incident like that of my mother's death from happening again. I knelt beside my father, and showed him the bottle. He winced, and turned away, quite childishly. I held the back of his neck for support, and pushed the bottle up to his lips. The amber liquid spilled into his mouth, and slid down his throat. I could faintly hear the doctor talking to a man at the front door. It must have been the people from the funeral home, here to collect my mother.
I could just make out their words. "She's just in the front yard" the doctor said, pointing in the general direction.
"No, that can't be right." The other man spoke, "there's no-one there at all."
I felt my throat swell up, I couldn't believe it. I later discovered that the man was speaking the truth. My mother's body had gone, without a trace.

I didn't know how to feel, how to react. I walked towards the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea, to settle myself down, but when I came out of the study into the hall, I saw my father rip open the back door, and dash outside and over the fence. My father had run away. I yelled out in frustration, and ran full slog out the back door in chase of my fevered father. He was running through the grass fields behind the houses leading into town. He looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes infused with insanity. He turned down an alley between two small cottages. I was almost caught up to him, but as I rounded the corner into the dark alley, he was nowhere to be seen...

I continued down the alley, unsure of where my father was, when I heard a blood curdling scream reverberate throughout the dark walls of the alley. I turned every which way, to pinpoint the origin of the horrific cry, when I glimpsed my father, dashing across the street, madness emblazoned in his eyes, and tattooed onto his soul. There was a woman, lay injured on the cobbled road, fear locked in her body, as she watched my father flee towards the town center. I ran after him, post haste, intent on suppressing the beast within him. I caught up to him outside the pub, and wrapped my arms around him, to keep him from fleeing again. He writhed viciously in my grip, and managed to get an arm free. His fist collided with my nose, and I felt a white hot pain blister on my skin. I let go, and held my hands to my bloody face. My father pushed away, and stumbled into an inebriated bystander. It only took the drunk one swift bullet-like punch to the jaw, to knock my father out cold.

The man said nothing, but instead vomited onto the wall of the pub, before staggering into the night to leave my father unconscious. I pulled my arm around him and dragged him to his feet, ignoring the blood running down my face out of my nose. My head was spinning, I felt myself drifting in and out of focus. I held onto my father, despite tremendous back strain. I held onto my father, and dragged him through the streets. A voice inside my head was guiding me along the deserted streets, telling me where to turn, where to cross, until I came to a rest outside a very run-down looking shop. The sign was heavily worn, and spattered with blood and grime, but I could make out the lettering: "The Krankhafte Butcher". My stomach was filled with dread, many a tale of torture and murder have been told of the butcher of Krankhafte. Regardless, I was in no situation to go elsewhere, and there was some unnamed fate that had driven me here, so I took a deep breath, and knocked heavily upon the massive door.

3- The Impending Fate
The door opened, and I was faced with a giant of a man. Fists the size of boulders, and as tough as them too, this cleaver-wielding man was the pinnacle of the evolution of man. He must have seen the body in my arms as an offering, as he greedily snatched my father out of my arms with little effort, and sunk back into the dank building that was his meat shop, indicating me to follow. Stunned into silence, I followed, anxious to discover the fate of my father.

As a child, I had heard stories of this meat shop, blood running down the walls, corpses lying on tables with their insides removed, and their hollow shells stitched back together with clumsy needlework. In reality, the only blood in the room was that which my father and I had brought in, and there were no corpses, no tables... nothing. Walls, ceiling, floor. Maybe his killing floor is hidden away, my mind was starting to feel regret for leading me here. Nothing made sense. We came to the end of the room, and followed some stairs down to the basement. It was almost pitch black, and I carefully navigated my way down step after step. There came a point where I expected to find the flat, cool surface of the basement floor, but the stairs kept going down and down. The stone steps were venting cool air into the narrow stairway, evaporating the sweat beads as they rolled down my cheek. My muscles tensed up and my concentration towards descending the stairs doubled. I had the feeling that if I lost my footing, I would plummet through the darkness to my eternal death...

We kept going down and down, we were deep under the village by this time, and I noticed that the sound of my footsteps suddenly became more dense and less echoed. My next step sent an unexpected shiver through my body, as my foot fell ankle deep in ice cold water. The figure ahead of me kept going down, so I clenched my teeth and kept right on behind him, even though a few more steps would have completely submerged me in water. However, we had at last come to the bottom of the stairs. I saw the silhouette of a giant in front of me grab a torch from its bracket on the wall and light it. The shocking reds and oranges of the flickering torchlight stunned my eyes and I was temporarily blinded.

As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw a wide underground graveyard, flooded to waist height, the tombs and gravestones lay below the eerie green surface. The butcher walked around the perimeter, lighting the torches along the walls, bringing this aberration of mankind into reality. Creatures of the like I'd never seen before, hell-spawn from another planet. I waded towards the center of the room, where an ancient stone sculpture of an angel stood with all the grace of God, and all the tragedy of hell, its chipped and stained figure opened its arms in acceptance. It was the only tomb that was raised above the water. My father was lain peacefully on the lid of this marble deathbed, the butcher stood at my father's feet, his head bowed in silent prayer. In that instance I knew two things; that the butcher was not as barbaric and merciless as I had imagined, and my father was definitely dead.

I was about to give my life up to the butcher, for the sheer hopelessness of my situation, but at that point of realization, a score of human-shaped alien creatures rose from the water on the far side of the room. They were dark, bruised creatures, with scales and rotten flesh. They bore slits on their chests, in which they appeared to be breathing, but the black slime that seeped from their gills was too horrific to contemplate. I staggered backwards, to get away from them, and back up the stairs. I was afraid to turn my back on these creatures for fear of what terrors they could potentially unleash upon me, but I couldn't know where I was going, and the risk of tripping over a tomb would surely bring me to an end as well. So I turned my head, to find the doorway, the bottom of the steps. Corner to corner, I stared long and hard along the walls, but the opening in which I came through no longer existed. I was frantically wading through the water, eyes intent on believing that there was actually an opening in the wall. So focused on that wall so far away, I tripped on a small carved stone idol, and fell beneath the water.

Eel like creatures wrapped themselves around my limbs, chest and throat. I was choking. I tried to breathe in, but I only consumed the putrid water. It flooded my lungs, burning my body away from the inside. I was seizing up, my mind had gone into spasms, and the electrode synapses of my brain were being torn apart. The toxic water spread throughout my body, turning me into a hollow shell. My eyes were eaten out from behind, and the water streamed into me through my eye sockets at an alarming rate. I was dead, and the eels were swimming around my hollowed body, a mother actually swam down my throat and laid its eggs inside me. This was the end of Friderik Eisenbachs.

4- The Immortal Horror
I opened my eyes, surprised to find that I still had a consciousness. Was I in heaven? The pain was gone, My vision was restored, and as far as I could tell, there were no adolescent eel creatures swimming in my stomach, so I naturally assumed that I was embracing the afterlife, whatever it may be. How very wrong I was. Lying on my horizontal, I peered up at a stone ceiling, ancient and overgrown with moss and algae. I tried to make out the figure etched into the stone. It appeared to be a king of some sort, for it had a magnificent crown upon a fiercely determined face. Huge muscular arms, one holding a long, sharpened trident. His legs looked sleek and strong, but it was only when I saw his chest did I realize where I was, for it bore the same gill-like slits as the vile creatures that had caused my death. But this man-beast also sported a giant eye-like organ that sat just above where I'd expect his stomach to be. I was in the same room underneath the village that I died in. I was lain upon the very tomb where my father had died.

I made to sit upright, but the water-demon monsters held me down with their vice-like grips. I was about to scream, but one of them forced his putrid hands over my mouth, so the sound reverberated through my skull. I tried to struggle, but I knew there was no escape. After a few moments, I knew resistance was useless, and I stopped struggling, and they loosened their hold on me. The butcher appeared at my side, and indicated to the monsters to release their hold on me completely. I lay there, chest heaving, mind spinning, and the butcher spoke to me, in a fatherly way.
"Shh... it's OK, you can relax. We're not going to hurt you."
"W-w-what's going on?" I said.
"Don't worry, don't think too much... Everything will be fine. Oh, and I think your father will be pleased to see you've come round."

My... father... I saw him die. The butcher started to explain things to me. He was hesitant at first, but when he got started, he talked of such aberrant blasphemies that gave me the worst of mind aches should his words even contain a minute trace of truth. He showed me the secret doorways concealed in the walls of the dungeon. There were more than a dozen passages leading from this massive chamber into all kinds of unfathomable rooms and dungeons, and the butcher even spoke of an underground city, unbeknown to the likes of the authorities above. My first passage down one of these demonic hallways, the butcher took me to see my father. He led me down a long, descending passage, where we walked in almost complete darkness for near on an hour before he came to a halt. Beckoning me forward, he opened a large marble door ushering me into a vast expanse of utmost terror.

Walls stood up, 20 times the height of man, with elaborate marble carvings surrounding the massive room, pews lined up facing an altar, which was positioned between the feet of a 100ft statue of the demonic man-beast that I saw when I first awoke. I felt sick. I was standing in a church of the most blasphemous of the demon cults. It took me a moment to take all this devastation in, before I realized that the butcher and I weren't the only living beings in the room. A man knelt before the altar, embracing this false God as his own. He sat in silence and prayer before rising to his feet and turning to face me.
"Oh, the Lord be praised, my son has returned!" this man looked at me as if he knew me, but he was not my father. His skin was bruised and scaled, he had slits on his chest, in which he seemed to be breathing. His teeth were black, and his green viscous saliva slid down his mouth and onto his chin. His eyes, however... I could recognize those eyes anywhere. They were indeed my fathers eyes. These monsters had turned him into one of them, and I knew, at that moment, that they had done the same crime of nature to me too...

5- The Rapture of the Masses
As I stood, staring into my father's eyes, I felt a mixture of emotions. He had defied science, and reincarnated from the dead. The more we talked the more I understood that deep under the bruised and scaled skin, there was still a large part of my father's mind that was distinctively his. To take in the ultimate phenomena which stood before my eyes, and which I too stood as proof thereof, would be nothing short of extraordinary. I could feel that I too was mostly the same person that I used to be, yet my father explained to me this strange and new anatomy to me. The gills on our chests not only breathed in oxygen, but food, too. This underground labyrinth was old as the earth itself, and the dark, damp, stone walls were hosts to fungal growth. They released infinitesimally small spores into the air, and we, the living dead, breathed in these spores, which stimulated our cell growth, to some level. There was a whole alien Eco-system evolving underground, in which the people above us knew absolutely nothing at all.

As the days passed, I learned more about this new existence. The eel that had laid eggs inside me played an essential role in my existence. The baby eels were born to feed off of my body, so that they could give the nerves in my body the ability to move at my own will. It was a host/symbiote relationship, and this matter of living could be sustained eternally. As the days passed, I felt my initial fears ebb away, and I started to relax, and enjoy being with my perfectly healthy father again. It was a while before I actually noticed that this surreal and wonderful life was not nearly as beautiful and innocent as I believed, it was my perception that was so shockingly jaded. It was in the reincarnation of my mother that brought all the fear, dread and realisation back. I was sledgehammered back into the real world with a blow I would never recover from.

I sat in the corner of a small room, along with the butcher and two others. A dim, flickering light bulb was suspended in the middle of the ceiling, directly over a stone table. The butcher had told me that I would witness the splendour and miracle of their life-giving science, but as I saw my own mother dragged into the room, limp and dirty, I felt utmost revulsion. I sat in the corner, and I couldn't help but watch as these three men hollowed out my mother's body all except the brain, before placing all sorts of devilish parasites into her body. I watched as these parasites wove strands of ligaments into muscles, as they rebuilt her skeletal system, as they stitched in the artificially grown lung organs, and carved the gills into my mother's chest, and finally, they lowered the eel into her stomach cavity to lay its eggs, to bring the interdependent relationship into motion.

I was shocked at the operation, but a part of me was desperate to see her alive, and to talk to her again. My mother took her reincarnation terribly, her brain refused to believe the truth, and she denied her symbiote the ability to live, and she died. The butcher told me that this sometimes happens, when the brain doesn't conform to the acceptance of the parasite. He told me that of those that manage to pull through the reincarnation process, none have reverted. Some question the authenticity, but that's another process everyone has had to go through. My mind was being manipulated by the very creatures that sustained my life. I was a corpse, with my thought patterns slowly being moulded like clay into a mind that lacks the ability to question the authenticity of its own actions.

I was depressed that my mother couldn't be revived, but I was also envious that she was blessed enough to die, untouched by the sin of these monsters. I lost my will to think and act, I sat without motion for days on end, but the truth kept coming, hard and fast, like an eternal hail storm with the ferocity of God, upon unleashing his almighty wrath. I started going to the reincarnation operations more frequently, until I began assisting in the procedures, helping to tear these God made creations, and embed into them the deepest sins of Satan, himself.

One day, after a particularly long operation, the butcher pulled me aside, and said; "Son, I think it's time you know. Haven't you wondered, haven't you asked yourself where all these bodies come from?"
I shook my head.
"There's a group of men going out to collect some more bodies soon. I want you to go with them."
I nodded my head, and walked off to join this body collecting group. There was a small group, about five or six men, talking and laughing. They were all dressed meticulously, so that only the smallest amount of skin possible was shown. They handed me some clothes and asked me to do the same, as we were going above ground. The clothing was very restricting on my gills, but I knew that I wouldn't dare be seen above ground with my horrible uncensored anatomy for all to see.

The fresh open air was a marvellous thrill. I tried to consume as much of the night sky, to drink it all in, but the others pushed me along. They had urgent business to complete, and I was in no position to question that. I followed these men, as they marched into certain houses, unafraid. They could smell the dead and the living, and they could differentiate between, and I knew this, because I sensed it too. I helped them gather bodies and ready them for the journey back underground. Towards the end of the night, the collectors expressed disappointment in the amount of dead they had gathered. So we split up, to save time. I followed a well built, and aggressive man. We walked through the streets for a while, until he stopped outside a little cottage on the outskirts.
I tapped his shoulder and said "I don't think there are any dead bodies in there".
To which he replied, "I know".

I watched him sneak into that house, and kill the people within. I was a little disturbed, but for the most part, I was fascinated. I followed him, as he emptied out four more houses in this same brutal fashion. I was curious to know why he would go to such measures to kill these innocent beings, but he avoided a direct answer. So we left to take our collection back underground, to bring them back to life, to help them build up this demonic empire, and the others noticed these people disappearing, but had no contemplation of the massacres, of the secret underground army of undead, growing larger and larger. They had no idea that their world was far more dangerous than they think. Their worst enemies were not who they thought they were. The worst part is that they don't even know.

6- The Eternal Penance
My mind was shaped like those around me. I conformed to sin and demon worship like all the other monsters around me. I saw my town of Krankhafte for what it had become; a portal between innocence and immortal sin. I discovered that my parents didn't die of a plague, they were murdered. The plague was bred from a parasite cultivated within these stone walls. This mass genocide was a way of dealing a massive blow upon mankind, and upon God himself. I was a part of the very thing I despised. I was sickened by what I had become, and what lay ahead of me.

My father was less sceptical. Of course he was, his mind had been moulded exactly as it should have been. I wanted to kill these perfect blasphemies, and myself. Their acts were selfish and merciless. They claimed to be liberating the human race, but they were turning us into monsters. Our mentality was one of blood lust and sin. How could a God justify such crimes? I told myself every day that I still had control over my own mind, but every day, I knew it was one more lie, one more sin bruising the history book of mankind.

I came to a realisation that I, and every other damned reincarnate, were being punished, and dealing God's punishment on mankind. I came to realise that God is a giant kid with a magnifying glass, burning a hole right through my skin and into my soul. I knew there was no going back. I knew that I had the rest of eternity to contemplate the downfall of mankind. I continued to participate in the rituals of killing and reincarnating, and I continued to work the dirty deeds of the devil. I knew that I would be repenting my sins for all eternity, and I knew that I would never again be blessed with the forgiveness of God.

I've decided to compile a list of free stuff I've found quite useful in shaping my computer into what it is today. If we talk in terms of specifications, my computer falls horribly short. My hard drive is less than 60GB, and it doesn't run at the speed of light. It has a $30 sound card. It also has a neat graphics card, but other than that, it's just your average joe computer. But it gets the job done. I plan to upgrade/get a new computer in the future, and when I do, I've got a bunch of files and links handy to cluster up my new computer with more free uncrippled programs and files.

Some of these are going to be really damn obvious, but they're there nonetheless. I'd like to think of my computer as containing quite the package of free and easy downloadable content.

Mozilla Firefox: Internet browser. I prefer it over internet explorer.

Thunderbird: This one's by the same group that own firefox. Personally, I don't use thunderbird. From what I gather, it's pretty much an alternate to Microsoft Outlook, for all your email.

iTunes: Music. If you haven't heard of iTunes, then you've been living under a rock for the past few years. I prefer it over windows media player as my media player of choice.

Open Office.org: This was a great find for me. It's a free java based alternative of Microsoft Office. It comes in a bundle of 6 programs-
Writer: The equivalent of Microsoft Word. Pretty much the main reason I was looking for, and came across Open Office.
Calc: Equivelant of Microsoft Excel. Haven't really looked into this one.
Impress: Equivelant to powerpoint. Has the ability to export as .swf
Base: Equivelant to Microsoft Access, whatever that is. Haven't really looked into this one either.
Draw: Had a little look at this. Looks pretty crap, to be honest, although I didn't really look into it too much...
Math: I probably would have found this handy last year... I think it could definitely come in handy for math students.
Yeah, I don't know a great deal about Open Office.org, but I only really use Writer, and it gets the job done, so if you want any more information, just check the official site out a bit more, or maybe read up about it here.

For me, those are the big general application programs, everything mostly stems off from there...

Getting more technical, there are a bunch of great free music creating programs that are most definitely worth the time and effort of learning how to use them.

Finale Notepad: A simple, effective, fully functional notation program. You do need to have your basic music theory known pretty well, but after that, it's pretty straight forward. It does have limitations such as a maximum of 8 staves per project, but that's only a small downfall for an otherwise great free program. It can also export MIDI, which can make things real easy, if you want to import it into a program such as reaper, so you can swap the MIDI with more realistic VSTi's/Samples.

Reaper: Technically not free, but you can use it under an indefinite evaluation period without purchasing it, however, it is nice to the people that made it to pay for it, should you choose to use it extensively. I didn't like it at first, because it does take some knowing to get used to, but once you've got it, it's pretty easy to use. It's not much of a match to its more expensive counterparts, but it's great if you're strapped for cash, but still want to make some music.

Audacity: If you want to record live music, Audacity can get the job done. It's pretty simple, and it works a charm.

VST/i's: Free VST/i's aren't hard to come by, although a lot of it is trial and error, and finding really good quality VST/i's can be tricky. For everyVST/i you could ever want , there's KVR Audio. You might also want to check out Tweakbench. There are some really decent free VSTi's there, especially for chiptunes, so it's well worth a look.

Samples: Blackhole12 was like an angel from heaven, for bringing 780MB of zipped (unzipped well over 1GB) piano and orchestral samples to newgrounds. See for yourself. If you make classical, this might be very handy. I've found the piano, in particular to be very good.

Sound fonts: Some great classical soundfonts here, I think they're awesome.

All these samples and soundfonts and VSTs can work wonders, when used in combination with reaper (and maybe finale notepad, too).
Yeah, so there's no excuses for making poor quality music because you can't afford the thousands of dollars for that huge orchestral library you secretly lust for.

So, that's covered making music. I think there's just the little stuff left to discuss about on my computer.

Music: Free, from the portal! Seriously, some of this stuff right here on newgrounds is damn awesome. You just need to look at the likes of MaestroRage and DavidOrr. But it's all about personal tastes. There's some great classical stuff, and some high quality electronica, as well as small amounts of genuinely exceptional musicians in the other genres, but if it's recorded stuff, rock, etc... you might not have much luck. The portal!

Podcasts: One feature I like about iTunes, within the store, there's a huge library of podcasts, all free. You can find some good music podcasts, or whatever you want, really. I like to poke around for a little something something there once in a while...

Wallpapers: I love my NG Wallpapers, but the variety is pretty small. You can find some pretty amazing stuff by doing a simple search for wallpapers on DeviantArt.

Literature: Did someone say free literature? Wikisource is a large online library of literature that's in the public domain. It's best to have an idea of who/what you're looking for. Obviously, you're not going to find entire books that have been released in the last couple of decades unless the author hasn't copyritghed them, or something like that, so, you're most likely to find old and/or short works in here. Works such as Frankenstein.
My recommendation would be to check out the collection of short stories by Macabre/Horror literary genius, H.P Lovecraft.

Movies/Games: Yeah, this is newgrounds, I think you'll be able to find good free movies and games without too much difficulty. Just in case, here's a link.
Also, for non-flash based games, I came across this wikipedia page today: List of freeware games. I'm leaving that up to you to check out, to decide what's good and what's not.

So, that's pretty much it, the sites, programs, links that fill my computer with awesome freebies. If you've got anything you'd like to add, feel free to comment. I hope this list has helped you out in some form or another.

Cheers.

My latest piece, Prologue, is a 2 minute piano solo written partially for the MAC8 May contest, and partly for my piano solo album I'm working on, called "The Wishing Well".
My first video upload to youtube, as well as my first youtube video embedded into my blog.
Link to song: Prologue
Video:

Eh, I thought, what the hell. Newgrounds, here's my CD collection:

Edit2:The collection grows! 4 albums for $50. Some classics that I've head about but never listened to. So this collection should be just a little bit more awesome.

Edit: Added a couple of new CDs. Also, made note of Australian bands (A), because I love supporting home-grown talent. That, and one of the CDs I bought was Pendulum's latest album, and I first heard them a couple of days ago while listening to triple j, and I found that they originated from Perth. I've been listening to triple j for about 3 straight days in a row at work. XD
There's not too much there, but I blame that on the music industry in Australia, it's not as big as it is in North America and Europe, but it's awesome shit.

.:MODERN:.
AFI- The Art of Drowning
AFI- Sing the Sorrow
AFI- AFI
AFI- DecemberUnderground
Alkaline Trio-Maybe I'll Catch Fire
Alkaline Trio- Crimson
Alkaline Trio- Remains
Angels and Airwaves- We Don't Need to Whisper
Angels and Airwaves- I-Empire
Anti-Flag- For Blood and Empire
Anti-Flag- Terror State
Augie March- Sunset Studies (A)
Augie March- Moo You Bloody Choir (A)
Birds of Tokyo- Day One (A)
Blink-182- Cheshire Cat
Blink-182- Dude Ranch
Blink-182- Enema of the State
Blink-182- Take off your Pants and Jacket
Blink-182- Feeling This (single)
Blink-182- Blink-182
Blink-182- Greatest Hits (compilation)
Bodyjar- Bodyjar (A)
Boxcar Racer- Boxcar Racer
Coldplay- Parachutes
Coldplay- A Rush of Blood to the Head
Coldplay- X&Y
Daft Punk- Discovery
Daft Punk- One More Time (single)
Daft Punk- Human After All
Daft Punk- Alive 2007
Disturbed- Believe
Dream Theatre- Greatest Hit (...and 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs)
Eskimo Joe- A Song is a City (A)
Eskimo Joe- Black Fingernails, Red Wine (A)
Fourth Floor Collapse- Books with Broken Spines (A)
The Fray- How to Save a Life
Good Charlotte- Good Charlotte
Good Charlotte- Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (single)
Good Charlotte- The Young and the Hopeless
Good Charlotte- The Chronicles of Life and Death
Incubus- Morning View
Incubus- Light Grenades
Jet- Get Born (A)
The Killers- Hot Fuss
The Living End- It's For Your Own Good (A)
The Living End- Hellbound (A)
The Living End- The Living End (A)
The Living End- Roll On (A)
The Living End- Modern ARTillery (A)
The Living End- From Here On In/Under the Covers (compilation) (A)
The Living End- What's On Your Radio (single) (A)
The Living End- State of Emergency (A)
The Living End- White Noise (A)
Matchbox 20- More than You Think You Are
Matchbox 20- Disease (single)
Metallica- Ride the Lightning
Metallica- master of Puppets
Metallica- ...And Justice for All
Metallica- Metallica
Metallica- Load
Metallica- ReLoad
Metallica- St. Anger
Metallica- S&M (live)
Metallica- Garage, Inc.
Muse- Showbiz
Muse- Origin of Symmetry
Muse- Absolution
Muse- Black Holes and Revelations
Nirvana- Nevermind
The Offspring- Smash
The Offspring- Ixnay on the Hombre
The Offspring- Americana
The Offspring- Conspiracy of One
The Offspring- Splinter
Pearl Jam- Rear View Mirror (compilation)
Pendulum- Hold Your Colour (A)
Pendulum- In Silico (A)
Placebo- Without You I'm Nothing
Placebo- Sleeping With Ghosts
Powderfinger- Fingerprints (compilation) (A)
Queens of the Stone Age- Lullabies to Paralyze
Queens of the Stone Age- Songs for the Deaf
Radiohead- OK Computer
Rise Against- The Sufferer and the Witness
Robbie Williams- Escapology
Sum 41- In Too Deep (single)
Sum 41- Does This Look Infected?
Sum 41- Chuck
Wheatus- Teenage Ditrbag (single)
Wolfmother- Wolfmother (A)
Years Around the Sun- Introstay
3 Doors Down- The Better Life
3 Doors Down- 17 Days
3 Doors Down- Self Titled
+44- When Your Heart Stops Beating

.:CLASSICAL:.
Piano- J.S.Bach- The Well Tempered Clavier Book II
Piano- Scott Joplin- Piano Rags 2
Piano- Various- The Best Ever Piano Music Collection (3 CD set)
Guitar- Gareth Koch- A Guitar Anthology (4 CD set: Carmina Burana, Espana!, She Moved Through the Fair, and The Fragrance of Paradise)
Guitar- Franco Platino- Guitar Recital
Guitar- Various- Cavatina
General- Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Piano Concerto in F
General- Richard Strauss: Orchestral Works (Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel and Also Sprach Zarathustra)
General- John Williams- Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone OST
General- Vivaldi- The Four Seasons
General- Various- Complete Classics (6 CD set: Uplifting, Vocal, Golden, Favourite, Relaxing, and Spiritual)

That's just about it. There's a lot of variety, some CDs are better than others, but I don't think my music tastes are too bad. =P