He reached a shallow enough creek and paused in his flight. If he followed it they wouldn't be able to find him, maybe they'd give up and leave him alone. "No..." he muttered under his breath in a light baritone. He knew they'd track him until they found him.

The moon had risen above the treetops, its silver glow highlighting his gaunt face with its sharp features. A face that seemed somehow lupine and feline at the same time. His eyes were amber and green specks in the night.

He could hear them now, crashing through the undergrowth. Hear their low growls as they threatened him. He made his descision, quickly wading into the creek. It may not stop thewm, but it would slow them down.

A question I must ask: If you know that you won't like something, why bother beginning it? I've run into that so many times, and I just can't see why people do that. I mean, okay, you don't like this. Good for you. But don't run crying and complaining to me when you don't like what happens. Or you decide to tell someone what you really think (I do this all the time) and they get mad at you for stating an opinion that is a comment on their opinion. Oh. My. God. I seriously hate it when people start ragging on me when I tell them I have an opinion that opposes theirs. It's not as if I were attacking their opinion.

Take for example, discussions (I hesitate to call them 'arguments') I have with a few of my friends about different computers. Personally, I love Macs. I have always had better experiences when I use Macs then when I use PCs. Whenever my friends bring up that topic of conversation everyone seems to like Pcs better than Macs. So I'm almost always the minority. Wait....I am the minority. They attack my views on this topic when I express them and I really hate it. Really, they can hate Macs if they want to, it's their loss.

But when they all begin to tell me why Macs are horrible, slow and stupid "...and you can't do anything on them anyway." I get really mad. I leave the room and begin thinking of ways to avoid that topic. they never work. So I fall back on pinning them with their conflicting arguments. thee are a lot of those.

Something I dislike (I don't hate them, but I don't like them much either) are people who try to bring relgion into every conversation you have with them. I am personally not religious. I don't mind talking about religion sometimes but when it gets to be all the time....ugh... I just...don't like it.

One wonders also: If you put something out for critique but hate it when people suggest things to improve on, why put it out there in the first place? I've met lots of people who can't take a good (positive) critique of their artwork or writing. And it's annoys the heck out of me. They get all whiney and complain about people "being to harsh" when a critique begins with "I really like ___ but here are a few things that you could improve..." or "This is wonderful ____, it looks.reads well. I think it would be a little more powerful if you added X." That is pretty mild critique. It makes no sense to me.

The word/concept I hate the most is maturity. I hate it. Because a lot of the people I hear saying "You need to be a little more mature TC." are people who get mad at me if I ask them why they aren't talking to me. *shakes head* Seriously. Show a little mercy. Then there are the people who tend to flag every pet peeve I have. Sometimes they do that on purpose (people I know) but other times they do it unintentionally (people I don't know).

/end rant part 2.

First off I'd like to say: Yay for ranting sprees!!!

Now that I've ogtten that out of my system I'd like to begin on a rant that will span a lot of things in only three days. I've got a three day weekend, so I might as well make the most of it. To begin I'd like to bring up the subject of flamers. You know, those people who think they can get away with being rude on the internet. I don't like them very much. They try to stick to the flimsiest arguments and get all haughty when you try to talk to them. To find out why they say "that sucks. I hate u. n00b." Without provocation.

Flamers I've run across in the past three years have almost alway either called their victems a "n00b" (alternatively spelled "noob" or "newb") a rather rude thing to call someone who is new at something (more commenly called a "newbie"). They tend to put down people who's self confidence tends to be low, and they seem to like to pick on people who definatly seem to be vulnerable to rude and provoking comments. Sometimes they run into people who have better arguments then they do who fight back or ask them why they "hate that drawing." Flamers simply add to their first rude comment by trying to dig even deeper into someone else's pride or self confidence.

A question then arises for the flamers to answer: Why are you picking on people you don't know, let alone wil probably never see in your life? Is it because of this you feel comfortable with picking on people? Or is it because you don't have enough self-confidence yourself that you have to go and put someone down for their achievements? I haven't been flamed y anyone in a long, long time. But I can tell from experiences that it hrts you, deep down, and it usually sticks with you.

Another topic I'd like to hit on are spammers and Yahoo's spamblocker. Their spamblocking program works...minimally. I put it on my e-mail address on there and I still get a bunch of spam from various places because their ubject line is misspelled. That makes absolutely no sense to me. Why would a spamblocking program not filter out e-mails that have misspelled words in the subject? Is it because in todays world it's normal for people to vastly misspell things in their e-mails? I mean, come on, "r u looking for a new hous mortgage loan?" should be filtered by a spam blocker shouldn't it?

Now for the weather... It's been either rainy or cloudy and gray for awhile now. It gets depressing after awhile to see so much gray, and so much rain is rather annoying as well. I could unserstand if it snowed or at least hailed, but rain in the middle of January is weird. Real weird. Especially since we're getting that sort of rain Seattle gets. Monotonous drizzling rain that turns into a decent shower once every two or more days. It's so drab. But no one can do anything about the weather, and I can live with rain. At least that means there isn't an inversion and it's warmer than 2ºF outside. Which is a good thing.

I was in class the other day an noticced how much cell phones are getting embedded into our minds. Modern day minds. It's really kind of sad. We were in groups, making lists of what the main character in a non-fiction book we had recently read for American Studies (Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer) could use to have lived through his "adventure" in the Alaskan bush. A whole bunch of them had put "cell phone" in the list. Now, this book is set in 1992 in the middle of nowhere. Cell phones then were the size of hand radios (Or so my father tells me). Plus, there are no reasons for cell towers to be out there.

So: a) Cell phones wouldn't have worked where the character was, and b) He wouldn't have carried a cell phone out there with him then. It was big and clunky. The modern society is so used to the idea that cell phones are now the size of your palm that younger people (like my generation) think that they can be used anywhere. While I'm on the topic of my generation I'm going to rant about something that happened in the summer of 2004.

I was an assistant teacher for my father's flyfishing summer class and we had a group of kids ranging from aobut 8-14. One of the kids went to my school. He was used to walking as was the eight year old. But when we walked about a half mile to a small seasonal pond stocked with farm fish, they complained the wole way. Finding reasons to stop every five minutes to tie their shoes or because their feet hurt r they had to eat something or they had to drink some water. It was maybe 60-71ºF outside and we were walking in the shade most of the way.

Now comes the best part. I was walking...at a normal pace. And I was still able to stay ahead of all of them except for the one kid who went to my school and the eight year old. Explain this to me. I was suprised when they complained that I was walking too fast! I mean, seriously, I was walking at a slow pace. If I'd have been with my class at school I would have been a lagger. And there were a lot more people in my school class. They moved in kind of a blob down the sidewalk. Lots of problems with that. And it was only a half mile to the pond. and a half mile back.

Seemed like most of what they did was complain, but thats just me. My father may have seen things differently. There were people in that class who loved learning how to flyfish and then there were people who didn't. They had complained that the way we had taken the first time was longer than going over a bridge that spanned the river we'd had to cross to get to the pond, and they didn't seem t care when my father expalined that it was actually shorter--and there was shade on that route. So when we went back we had to hear them complain about being in the sun and how long it was taking to get back.

Don't get me wrong though, it was wonderful experience. The only other thing I can think of that was out of place in that class was that when we went on the overnight camping trip with the kids and their parents one of the girls wore perfume. We were in the woods. Didn't make sense to me. But then again, I'm not into all that make-up and perfume goop being on my face, so I'm pretty sure I would've thought it was weird to wear perfume to flyfish.

I'm not sure what part two will be about yet. I have to think of something.

Looking through the latticework of puzzles, my mind straying from my being. Dull, uninteresting work. Hanging costumes on hangers in the dressing rooms of the local contemporary theater. These costumes are nothing much, modern-day clothes that need to be hung up before their dress rehearsals begin later on. everything blurs together until I come to the tweed suit. Its colors clash in my mind's eye and I wince, eyes watering I turn my head to look at a hanger that is caught on one of the overhead pipes. The dressing rooms are in the basement, cold and clammy, their walls covered in various mirrors. It's disconcerting to say the least. Making my skin crawl with the feeling that I'm being watched by invisible eyes is too much. I look around myself and quickly go back to my monotonous work.

Finishing up I'm relieved to be out of the dressing rooms, relaxing slightly as one of my mentors closes the doors. They're already locked. She hasn't got anything else for me to do, so she takes me to the stage, where my other mentor is finishing with the computer system. I wait for him to finish what he's doing so I can work on what he's going to give me. Looking around myself I see the familiar hanging lanterns, almost garish in their appearance in the woodenness of the stage. On the wall is a diagram showing an eye, drawn in pencil. I can hear the actors practicing a floor above me, their voices carrying through the ceiling/floorboards. I notice that the stage seems larger than usual, but decide that it's only the absence of props and actors. It's quite a small stage, only eleven feet across and eight feet foreword.

My second mentor is ready to show me the new task that will be set to me. We go back to the basement. Stopping at the bottom of the stairs he unlocks a white door, its silver doorknob the only indication that it is anything other than another section of the wall. Flipping on the light of the walk-in closet sized room beyond the door he gestures to the stacks of boxes and miscellaneous items scattered throughout the room. I'm introduced to "The prop room". My new job is to organize everything and create pathways so that people can find things they need in here without much trouble. He pulls a dark blue moped out of the room. Its explained that they're raffling it off to raise money for the theater. I look around the room with interest, already I can see a way to create paths through the pile and piles of stuff.

My second mentor points to a bucket filled with dirt covered bones. "... We even have bones in here." He says, explaining what I'm supposed to be doing in here, "but they aren't human ones mind you." I nod and he begins to leave, going back to the stage to fiddle with his computer system again. "There's no telling what you'll find in here." He says as he goes up the stairs. I find that this is quite true. Beginning with a table near the door I begin to sift through what is there to match like to like, to get things "Loosely organized". In the first ten minutes I've discovered that they have a fake machete in the corner, a ceramic plate with faux food glued to it, many bones, loaves of french bread made out of foam and what seems to be cheesecloth, a real-looking fake rat with its side sliced open and glued to fake lettuce leaves and a whole bunch of really creepy, half bald dolls.

I find miniscule plastic furniture, an old toaster, coffee filters, a red wig, an empty picture frame, a mirror frame missing the glass, silverware, a lime green squirt gun in the shape of an alien's laser gun. I work hard, every once in awhile going upstairs to check the time on the huge metal clock they have in their lobby. Eventually my mentor comes back to see how I'm doing. He's surpassed at how much I've gotten done with this today. there are now pathways to every shelf area in the room as well as some form of organization. there are still shreds of old Weeklys scattered all over the floor, but it's definitely getting more accomplished than I was cleaning dressing rooms! My hands are gray with dust, as I leave my internship. the first one of its kind which will, hopefully, all be as interesting and fun.

It happened again. The ache that races across my mind as I read the note. "h3110!!!1!1!! wat r U up 2? n e t4149 1nt3r35t1n9?" from a classmate, who shall remain nameless. Writing nowadays seems to have degenterated into some form of minor code. l337 and chatspeak reign supreme in the modern day world. Capitol letters in the middle of sentences. Words such as "the", "it", "they" capitalized in the middle of sentences along with a mish-mash mix of complex others. I wince as I read these, my editorial frame of mind cringing at the vast misuse of commas and disappearence of apostrophes. How then will these people fare in the real world, one not of cyber space, but of material writing? How will they take to the jobs which are out there when every short word they simply can put into three or four letters?

"2b r not 2b..." Hamelet's soliloquy hashed and slashed and torn to shreads with numbers and single letters replacing the once gracful flow of human speech. Chatspeak is not a language. Nor should it be used as one. I find it pitiful that I can even type it, let alone understand it. I hate using it, even for examples, but this is something I must get out of my system, an annual rant to all the chatspeakers who mutilate a language with numbers and capitols and misused punctuation. "100k @ m3!!1!11!!!!" They screech, misusing their shift key, not noticing. "n00bs!1!111!!!!!" They cry out at anyone who opposes their use of number in sentences. Anyone...else...use actual words instead of numbers, but the insane, annoying undermining chatspeak completly eradicates any form of serious conversation. I mean, how seriously can you take someone when they say "1m h4v149 4 b4d d4y wat r u up 2?" I can't even think of anything to say.

In the chatspeak system there is a lot of guesswork involved. A number can be more than one letter. 1 is equal to either 'l' or 'i'. 4 to 'a' and 'n'. 9 to 'g' and so on and so forth. I've found people my own age who write like this in blogs or online journals and I have to wonder why they do this. I mean...really... how many people will talk to you when you're twenty and write in chatspeak? Probably not too many. Although I'm sure there are some out there who do. Another thing that really gets to me is when someone is asking a question and they end their sentence in a period. "How was your day today." I hate it. That stops me dead in the middle of reading whatever it was I was reading and wait for the question mark. "How was your day today?" It makes so much more sense simply to put in that question mark.

Relying on a spellchecking program on a computer is as unreliable as telling an encyclopedia to write a novel for you. There are so many diferent words that are spelled in similar ways that it is quite inefficient to use one. Half of them get confused with words which are actually correct. I've peer reviewed more than one paper in years past (I think it's going on...six or seven years now that I've peer reviewed papers) and one of the most occuring things I've seen with those spellchecking programs is the difference between "there" and "their". A spellchecker will just as readily subsitute the wrong one in a sentence as the right one. It really grates against my nerves. I've grown up with a couple of natural editors, so I guess I inherited that gene or something. Although, I will admit, I make errors myself sometimes, just like everyone else.

But in this modern day and age, shouldn't we at least be able to write a sentence without reverting to "ONG 1m lyke, th3 c00135t!1111!!!!!!1!!oneone!!!eleven!!!"? Seriously.