The End, and a Story

So it looks like Blogust has come to an end. This was much more successful of an attempt for me. I said that I would try to post a portion of my project for Communication on today's blog, so here's what I have written so far for my assignment.

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I can remember the good old days before life got complicated, not to say I didn't live a good life. Back in the early 2000s I started college at Antelope Valley College in Lancaster. I couldn't think of what to do with my life so I just lazily took some classes until I fell deeply in love with Physics. I transfered to Cal State Northridge to get my Bachelor's degree and then I went on to UC San Diego for my doctorates in Theoretical Astrophysics.
I spent a good year on my dissertation alone. I'm sure if you looked hard enough you could find a published form of my paper, "Music and Blackholes" somewhere or another. In 2018, at the age of 29 I finally earned the title of doctor, graduating with top honors.
After graduating I applied at many universities across California in hopes to find a job with adequite funding for research. I was fortunate enough to get a job at my alma mater UCSD in the theoretic physics department. Though it was a little strange going from student to coworker with some of my professors adapting to the environment came fairly quickly.
Ten years, I spent ten years working at my dream job before I had to set that aside for my other dream, one I thought impossible, to hunt zombies. It turns out that a particular theory for improving travel in space, something we worked on with the biology department, had gone tragically awry. We tried to put astronauts into a heightened level of self-sustanance when they were taken over by their primal desires.
The zombie outbreak was uncontainable, or so it seemed. The infection spread through 90% of the science department within the first hour despite all of our precautions. Within a week San Diego was lost to the infected, only a hand-full of us survived long enough to plan an escape. As time went on the government set up quarantines and scheduled bombings/military cleansings of the areas. The tragedy was almost unbearable, the only thing that kept me going was the only other surviving member of my team, Doctor Margo Sezville. I lost my arm during our retreat from San Diego to save her, from that day we were completely in love.

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Basically from here the zombies are completely eradicated, save for a few that pop up occasionally, but thanks to precautions are dealt with safely.

It's been great and I hope you guys enjoyed my blog posts this last month. Until next time.

Notoriously,
Mandog

Eclectic Blog To End It All

So I've been running through as many ideas as I could think of for my final BEDApril blog, I can't seem to think of one that would be sufficient. I thought, "Talk about cooking, you enjoy that." or, "More about the tandem stories.", "BEDApril as a whole experience?", "Still no, what about ANYTHING ELSE?". Well I couldn't figure any one of those would be enough seeing as this is the last BEDApril 2010 blog I'm going to post, so I'll try to touch on all bases that I get to.

First subject was cooking, I've wanted to talk about it for a while now. I love food, the taste, the smell, the look, food is pleasing to the senses. I love it when people cook me food, or I go out and get something made by some mystery chef hiding in a kitchen that I've never seen. Seeing as I'm the youngest of five and I have an older brother that went to a culinary arts school I didn't grow up cooking very often. When Nate, said brother, moved out cooking fell on my mom or my dad almost always, so when my mom worked it was either a stew or out to eat. Don't get me wrong, my dad cooks a good stew, but I love diversity, I like having something different all the time, so it's easy to see that I would grow tired of my dad's stews. I decided that I would take on a few meals here and there. I started cooking basic stuff (I haven't gotten that much more complex with my cooking) and I started loving it. I don't know why, if it's that my food just tastes better, or if it's that things taste better when I know I've put an effort into it, but my god it was delicious. I just love making something and eating it. So yeah.... that's my section on cooking.

Next was the tandem stories. Now I don't really have all that much to talk about with the tandem stories, though I may want to continue my story out some other time. The other thing I wanted to talk about with tandem stories a little was my thought process for them. My story I was sitting there trying to come up with a good opening to my story, because I try to make the beginning and the end as good as I can. I figured out the whole "Life isn't fair, but you don't have to be alive to be screwed over." line and went from there. Marlon's story was as follows, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO! GAH! I'll come back to it in ten minutes." Ten minutes later, "I STILL DON'T GET IT! I'll do it when I come home." I come home, "Ok, this will do." For Danielle's it felt a little natural for me, no major struggle there. Dave's took a bit for me to figure out where I was going but once I settled on the loss of friendship I wrote it out fairly simply. As for my final paragraph I just needed to find a way for my main character to end up screwed over and progress it five years, so I did. Last thing about tandem stories, MARLON FINISH YOURS!

BEDApril as a whole was enjoyable, I have a few blogs of significant size, I only missed one day, I did the tandem stories. I call BEDApril 2010 a success and I look forward to BEDAugust 2010 (BEDAutumn anyone?).

That's about all I have to write about, I feel that suffices. I most likely won't be seeing you tomorrow, unless I have the compulsion to blog out of habit that I have formed. Take care Bloggosphere and I look forward to our next meeting.

Successfully (well, mostly),
The Mandog

His Name is Derrick Safferfrack

"Life isn't always fair" my parents would tell me, well you don't even have to be living anymore to be screwed over; my name is Derrick Safferfrack, and I've been dead for five years now. I guess to learn about the situation I'm in I should probably tell you how I got where I am now. Back when I had my own body I was led an underwhelming life. I worked from nine to five, and my "hobby" was to sit on the computer every night wishing there was more to life. Twenty-seven years of doing the least possible and hoping for more and in one day I was wishing I could have all of that back.

It was Autumn. And Thursday. I hated Thursdays. And honestly I hated Autumn. It was the calm before winter and the cool after the summer months. It was so... bland. It reminded me of myself. And I hated it for that. So on this particular Thursday, there was an accident. No I wasn't involved, but it would still change my life. Chilesia. That was her name and she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Or at least at Aunt Jemima High. I taught there, as she was a TA working on her teaching degree. She has the most lovely ebony skin and perfect hair. I loved her the day I met her. So the accident. One day while I worked at my computer (I spent most of my time playing Galaxy of Space Quest, even at work) I heard an explosion outside. It was Chilesia.... oh god.... Little did I know, that following this tragedy in less than 24 hours would be my own death....

Death itself was quick and uneventful by large; it was the afterward that I was unprepared for. You imagine heaven and hell, but it's something so grand by comparison there is no way to describe it. I was in what appeared to be a large and infinite warehouse, it was completely empty aside from the other dozen or so people near enough to see. The others were walking all in the same direction, almost as if they had somewhere they needed to go. I tried to walk over to the nearest. A woman--Chilesia! she would be here somewhere--but as I attempted to draw closer I was stopped. My mind flooded with the command and my body tensed. That's when I first met one of the Custodians. It appeared from the unending ceiling and it was a hovering robotic creation at seemed to be humanoid only it ended at the waist. It was holding a tablet or pad of sorts.

"You have been processed. Disturbance of the others cannot be tolerated. Return to your directive."

"No. Dammit! I have not been 'processed.' What's going on here?"

The bot slowed and swung back around to look at me. It looked from me to his pad and then back to me, before pecking at the pad's surface.

"I am un-qualified to assess this. I am afraid that you do not exist."


There's something about that phrase, "you do not exist". You'd think, if someone didn't exist no one would waste their time telling them they don't exist; there would be no one to tell. Yet here it floated saying the exact phrase and here I stood baffled.

"I'm sorry, something doesn't add up here. I think you said I don't exist but tha--"

"You do not exist."

"How is that possible?"

"When man was given upgrade number 5974a, it included a soul that provided benefits such as enhanced toolmaking, verbal interface, and heightened critical analysis, among others; it was 75% more efficient. The new soul was more resource intensive than we would have liked and unfortunately we have not yet developed the hardware to keep up. As a result the functional period of the body was shortened, it became weaker, less durable and began to grow significantly less hair, while the soul was able to last billions of years longer."

"What does this have to do with me not existing?"

"Well, after this was discovered, a system was made to sort, monitor and regulate soul installation. This process, however is not 100% efficient, some souls, like you tend to accidentally slip into circulation without any serial numbers or records and for all intents and purposes don't exist. It happens approximately 4 or 5 times a millennium. You can tell by the size of the building this used to happen with much more frequency," That must have been the robot's idea of a joke "These souls can only be located after their bodies stop working and this facility has been constructed to sort, dismantle, recycle, and recirculate you all as properly documented souls."

It was scary at first, the though of my soul being taken apart and having those parts be used to make other souls with legitimate serial numbers, and how I would never be me again, but then I considered my life, how it had been and maybe being recycled was the best way to go.

Then it got scary again so I decided to escape.

I could have stayed, I could've been something greater than myself, but no I wanted to be Derrick Safferfrack of Vista Sierra, Nevada. I wanted to be back at my old job, playing Galaxy of Space Quest, wishing I had the courage to ask my TA out on a date. I wanted a minimal life where I wished for something unique and exciting. Well it looks like I got that excitement I was wishing so long for. Custodians were everywhere, I didn't remember seeing this many when I started walking in here. They were different than the first one I encountered, these seemed almost twice the size, and a few of them even had legs. I ran for my, well... afterlife. There had to be twenty custodians, eight of which were the more advanced "Hunter Models" as I called them. I thought briefly of fighting them off, but who was I kidding, the most combat knowledge I had was from three years of playing an MMO and a handful of action movies. Somehow I escaped the warehouse, be it luck, godly influence or whatever I was free. I was... stuck in the void of limbo. I figured there had to be something else, something that didn't want to dismantle my soul. I walked until the ground ended, and there I found I had no need to walk. I floated, drifting around looking for something. I eventually grew comfortable with the idea of being 'recirculated' as a recycled soul. I started flying my way back to where the warehouse should be, but there was nothing. I ran from my one chance for a new life, hell, maybe even my old life back. I ran out of fear, and now I have nothing. I am stuck in this void, most likely forever, I guess this way, I really don't exist anymore. My name is Derrick Safferfrack, and I've been dead for five years, I think.


Well that wraps up my story, IHis Name is Derrick Safferfrack I look forward to seeing the rest of the endings from this tandem story event. This was a lot of fun, and I've been wanting to do this for a while. Thank you Marlon, David, and Danielle. Look there for the other stories.