Ever wanted to free Prometheus, kick the crap out of Theseus and lay waste to Perseus? Then go play the new game for PS2, God of War II.

As if the first one wasn't good enough, what with being able to crush Ares and take his throne in Olympus (If I remember correctly, it was the 3rd one on the right from Zeus). This time the Gods are against Kratos and do everything they can to stop him. You play Kratos, a disturbed Spartan with the ashes of his dead family pasting his skin. Armed with Athena's blades, you cut and hack your way through hordes of mythological creatures. You slice through the Colossus of Rhodes from the inside. You pop the eyeballs out of Cyclops' eyes, and get a little reward for doing so. Aside from doing nasty things to the Titans, you do share something in common with them. You both want revenge on Zeus, so Gaia is there to help you out.

Great game. For more info go to God of War II.

As I headed down the street, I tried to remember what the man looked like. From what I can recall, he was about 6 feet tall, weighed probably 200 pounds, and his jacket was as smooth as silk. There were several reasons for this. One was probably the fact that his jacket was made of silk.

I remember the first time that I saw him. I was at home, watching a delightful episode of my favortie show "The Golden Girls" when I heard my door.

"Knock, knock, knock, rang my unusual doorbell. Right away, I knew what that meant. I had to answer it.

As I got up, I noticed that my back hurt, and my back had not hurt for a while, other then the surgery I had earlier that day.

I opened the door very slowly. It was a man. He was about 2 feet tall, 150 pounds. "Can I help you?" I said, but I felt like I was talking down to him.

"Yes." He said with glee. "I have a friend who needs to stay here. You will know who he is.:

"Uhh, I'm sorry?" I said, without glee. I looked up for a second, then looked back down. When I looked down, I noticed he was digging a hole.

"You will know who he is. That is all that I can tell you."

By the time he finished that sentence, he had dug a hole about 2 feet deep, just big enough for him to jump into.

"Can you tell me anymore?" I asked, with a mediocre amount of glee.

"No." he said, jumping into the hole. I think he was trying to make some kind of magical exit, such as dissapearing into the hole. However, he just kind of jumped in there, screaming what he thought was "magical sounds."

"Kicky Bicky!" He said, the amount of glee on this one was measured at about five. "Kicky, Sticky, Bicky."

When nothing happened, he just kind of looked at me in a frustruated way. He had a look on his face that said, "OK I am kind of nuts. I thought I could just jump into a hole and dissapear, but who am I trying to kid?" You know that look?

He climpbed out of the hole. "This is Bullshit." He said. We are talking no glee here. He then walked away.

The next day I heard a knock on the door. "Knock Knock," it rang.

I opened it. It was a man who looked exactly the same as the first man, except this man was six feet tall, and had a moustache. He was wearing a coat that covered his entire body, and all you could see was his head sticking out of the coat. Very quickly I realized that it was the first man, and his coat was covering the stilts that he was standing on. This idea was not confirmed until his moustache fell off.

"You again?" I said.

He suddenly looked scared and disappointed that I figured out who he was. But he just started talking.

"What do you mean? 'You again?' You havent seen me before."

"Yes I have" I said. "I remember you." As I said this, I blinked. When I opened my eyes from that blink, I realized that he was digging again in my yard. After about five seconds of digging, he had completed a hole that I think was supposed to be 6 feet deep, but it ended up being 2 feet, which I think he dug out of habit.

"Of course you remember me, you are me." He said, really dramatically, he then jumped into the hole, trying to look magical again.

The problem this time was that the hole was only 2 feet deep. He jumped into it with the stilts on, so he looked really stupid here.

"Look." I said, "Are you going to leave me alone, or what."

"Or what!" he replied, and tried to crawl out.

As he got out, he fell over, mainly because of the stilts. He got up, took the stilts off, and grabbed Raymond off of the lawn.

"RAYMOND!" I screamed, hearing no reply.

The next morning I was reading the local paper, which contained a story of a midget that went door to door harrassing people. Right away I thought about how sorry I was felt for the people that the midget was harrassing. I thought about this as I went to the refridgerator to get some orange juice. That was when it dawned on me. I don't really enjoy orange juice that much. It doesn't give me the pep that I need to get me goin' in the mornin'.

Suddenly my phone rang. It was a white phone with numbers that were light green, and lit up when you picked up the phone. (I wrote this part because I know that during the part of the class when everybody tells me what I should change, or how to improve the story, at least one person will say, "You need to describe the area more." Now you can't say it.) I answered the phone. It was the midget. He told me that I needed to meet him at Jones Park with some money if I wanted to see Raymond alive. "I dont care if you keep or hurt Raymond." I said. Raymond is my pet pile of leaves. And hung up.

I never saw him, or Raymond again. Sometimes I leave a pile of leaves out, hoping he will come by and take them......But he never does.

If you refer back to my previous journal entry in my reading journal, you will notice that I bought a book once owned by a boxing great clept Jimmy Maclarnin. I regret to inform everyone that Jimmy Maclarnin passed away yesterday.

Apparently he suffered a while from an ailing disease.

The 19th century showed an important evolution of American literature. While the 18th century was a declaration of American independence from foreign governments, the 19th proved that Americans could declare independence from foreign standards of literature. Throughout this time, we see an exponental increase in not only different literary devices being used, but the emergence of several genres appearing as well. It was quite an exciting time in English literature with the novel gaining popularity in the United States. It was also an interesting time to look back at how men and women took advantage of this new opportunity not only to express themselves, but earn a living while doing it.
The three most proliffic profiles of this phenomena in America were Hawthorne, Melville and Poe. All three writers possessed an unsurmountable amount of energy to write, and wrote with such enthusiasm that it is ironic to behold the final works. In an era of the picturesque, these three men wrote about blackness. While writers like Cooper were romantically reminiescient of the landscape of America, Hawthorne, Melville and Poe explored and reported on the dirty underbelly of American culture. They wrote about what they saw and interpreted that with a very bleak point of view. They embraced the Reawakening with vigor and rewrote the biblical parables, setting them in America with a brand new twist on them.
All three Authors had their own unique style in retelling these tales, and all three had their own unique twists to put on them. Although all three were preoccupied with similar biblical allegories, they each used different methods of storytelling. According to Harry Levin, Hawthorne told the parables, Poe the tales, and Melville told fictional narratives (The Power of Blackness, 18). Hawthorne told about an earlier time of American history, the dark side of his own America. Poe was ambiguous in his settings, and went as far away from reality as he could. Melville was the common ground, or the neutral between these two extremes.
Using the realism presented in Hawthorn’s fiction, but using Poe’s twist of an unreal aspect of human nature, Melville was able to find a neutral ground between the two extremes. By using realistic settings as Hawthorne did and setting them back against the unreal aspects of human nature as Poe did, Melville was able to create the absurd abstract of American life, all the while keeping his narrator consistently neutral. Melville was able to take a simple story line and setting, such as a quarrel in a lawyer’s office, and turn it into a more intrinsic moral, all the while keeping an objective perspective through the naiively innocent eyes of a detached narrator. The purpose of this paper is to examine the method Melville presented neutrality, using “Bartleby the Scrivener” as the prime story of critical study.
To take “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street” at the extrinsic level, it is a story of a non-confrontational lawyer unable to fire a defiant employee.

Today I bought Folktales of Ireland edited and translated by Sean O'Sullivan from a favorite haunt of mine, The Sheldon Library where I find many used and rare hardcover books. But I also find good books for cheap just to read, and I always enjoy that.

Anyway, when I went in today, I spent some time in the mythology section and after careful deliberation, I decided on the aforementioned book, which was only five dollars.

Now, the reason I chose this book was because it has in it quite a few good tales and folklores of Ireland, which I have been extremely interested in lately. So I take my book to the register to pay for it and the guy behind the counter looks at it and says,

"You know, that book was brought in by a guy from Ireland named Jimmy Maclarnin."

The interesting thing about Jimmy Maclarlan is that not only was he interested in his heritage as well (He left Ireland at an early age) but he was the Boxing welterweight champion of the world for 1933-34. What he did was once he lost the title, he tried to get it back, but lost, then went against the two top contenders, won, and retired.

He retired when he was on a winning streak?

Anyway, Jimmy (who has to be almost 100 by now) lives in Richland in a nursing home.

So not only did I get a good book of heroes of Ireland, but I also got a great tale of another hero of Ireland to go with it. That is something I couldn't get if I bought the book from the internet.

For more on Jimmy, feel free to read The Jimmy Maclarnin Story.

Although it stands to reason that a samurai should be mindful of the Way of the Samurai, it would seem that we are all negligent. Consequently, if someone were to ask, "What is the true meaning of the Way of the Samurai?" the person who would be able to answer promptly is rare. This is because it has not been established in one's mind beforehand. From this, one's unmindfulness of the Way can be known. Negligence is an extreme thing.

The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one's aim is to die a dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one's aim. We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaming one's aim is a dog's death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai. If by setting one's heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he pains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.

More Hagakure could be found at http://www.hut.fi/~renko/hag1.html

Upon receiving a new order of books last week, I was pleased with the results. I usually order many of my children's books from the Scholastic catalog and I usually save quite a bit of money through there. Last spring I ordered about $100.00 worth of books and had quite a start on my collection (which will come in handy once I start teaching). SO this last order I took it easy and ordered only about $50.00 worth of books and was quite pleased with the results.

I got two Newberrys,(Nomber the Stars by Lois Lowrey, Bud, Not Buddy by author to be filled in later, and Newberry honor Crispin: Thr cross of Lead by Avi) a few picture books on kindergarten for my kindergartner, a spy kit and detective kit for my 4th grader, and a bunch of history books. The Usborne series of historical books for children has to be commended.

I got the Usborne Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, The Usborne World History of the Medieval World, The Usborne Internet linked Encyclopedia of Ancient Rome, and the Usborne World History of the Ancient World. I never realized my own kids(Vic included) would enjoy these books so much. My kindergartner has already achieved a good concept on the chronological order of ancient civilizations through this book. Before where his idea was Cavemen, ROmans, then us...It has now been expanded to Cavemen, Sumerians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Knights and then us. Still pretty basic, but it is a start.

Another note of good new is that I found Conrad's Heart of Darkness for only a buck. I think it would be a good advertisement for 10-10-220 when they ask, "But what can I get for a buck?" well, you can get Heart of Darkness.

Just as proof that these journals do get results, I have had a response regarding my previous journal entry for a request for The Dialects of Ancient Gaul. Camilla Lucretius has directed me to Bookfinder where I managed to find the book for only $34.99 US dollars. Quite a big difference than $110.00. Thanks Camilla.

There is a book I really want to get, but it seems to be a bit out of my price range. The book in question is entitled The dialects of Ancient Gaul by J. Whatmough. The price on Amazon is $110.00 US, and there aren't any used ones available. SO if someone wants to pitch in with a bunch of friends to get old Vortie a nice gift because I am such a friendly Scribe, then I would be more than happy to recieve it.

It has been about a week since I finished the novel, ut I like to take a few days to think about it. Many times, my first impression of a novel is different after I am given time to think critically about the work, such as the case was with Mrs. Dalloway.

While I was a little confused while reading that one, it took me a while after reading Mrs. Dalloway to really enjoy. Such was not the case with The Remains of the Day though. I pretty much enjoyed this book as soon as I started reading it until the end.

It was a very complex novel, as I had soon come to find. While it spanned an era between the two World Wars, the reader was only to get a limited view to the world and British politics between that time. The reason for this was due in part to the limited and unreliable view of Stevens as a narrator. His whole world was basically to serve his lord, and serve him as professionally as he possible could.

It was this professionalism that made the novel such a sad book, because Stevens was never able to express his views on politics, because it was not ethical for a servant to disagree with his employer. He could not express his feeling towards Miss Kenton because he was never off duty, and had to uphold the professional facade. And he could not even express his mourning over the death of his own father, because of course, there were 'events that could impact global history' that needed to be taken care of.

I wanted to go rent the movie for this on, who I believe Ruth Prawer Jhabvalitz wrote the screenplay for, but Blockbuster said they don't carry anything that old? By god, it was only released in 1998.

Neither of the other two video stores I went to had it either, so I was very dissapointed.