Kagemusha

[Uesugi]

I spoke to my older cousin everyday when I returned from school. It felt good having someone to talk to without bull s h i t t i n g even though I was doing just that. I suppose I needed someone to project my emotions onto, even though I don't have any idea what that means. I just needed someone to talk to. Or maybe a hug.

You see there was a punk at school who thought it would be appropriate to take out his feelings of inferiority onto me. It happens all the f u c king time to me and I haven't the faintest idea why. You tell me how I am supposed to view the human race in a positive light when all I ever get is the a s s end of loser piece of s h i t s who aren't even worth the f u c king spit used to stick the piece of gum that sticks to your uniform after sitting a test you have purposely failed just to p i s s off your f u c k i n g tyrant of a dad. The punk tried to make a b i t c h out of me so I spread rumors about him and earned myself a few allies. The rumors were not completely untrue, they were half truths. It was exciting and it was easy.

My cousin, who was much older than me would just listen. I'm sure he knew it was mostly c r a p but I didn't care. It felt good. You see my cousin was the father figure I never had. I used to tell him everything. He and I got along easy and I thought there was much to admire in him. It was good in the beginning but towards the end it all started to go to hell. I'd come back from school and he'd bark orders at me, the f u c k i n g s h i t that my mother has always said to me but couldn't make stick. Why aren't you in school anymore? You have to think about your future... He was the first person to call me the devil and I still don't have any idea why. I thought it was funny. It was so sudden how it had turned into this ugly toxic relationship. Who the f u c k was he anyway to tell me what to do? Why did he care so much? He was working as an assistant to my dad in the shop, and now regretting that decision he probably felt that he knew all there is to life at twenty f u c k i n g seven.

I came home one day and he wasn't there anymore. The guys in immigration had taken him, he was going back to Korea. Who the f u c k tipped them off? You see he lived in a small room behind the shop, no one even knew he was there. His English wasn't very good and he hated the language so he never spoke to anybody. He didn't know anyone except for the other Koreans he had met at church and half of them were probably here illegally anyway.

I learned later on that he had made some money problems for my dad and that is the quick and easy way to his bad side. That and taking his time and energy. He was living in Sydney or Melbourne and he was to have no further contact with our family.

But what annoys me about it is that he probably thinks it was me who tipped them off. Unless he has an absolute idea who it was, he must think it was me. That's sad. All I have of him are the memories of playing basketball with him in the back until dark, the K-pop music videos he would borrow from the video rental store and a small black frame with a sticker photo I threw away yesterday.

[hillwalker]

I enjoyed reading this... as far as it went. But I think the story has many more miles to run as there's powerful material here and you write extremely well. A very promising first post.

H

[Panglossian]

It was enjoyable. I'm not sure why but it was. Maybe it was the language.:skep:

[Uesugi]

I got my first guitar when I was about nine. We were still living in the apartment and I can remember trying to tune the thing while watching the Mighty Ducks. I'd line up the tuning pegs and then wonder why it didn't sound good. The guitar is unlike a piano. With a piano you press a key and you get a perfect crisp note, with a guitar you have to tune it, intonate it, the sound is different depending on who is playing it.

My uncle gave it to me. I don't know him at all and that one guitar was all I ever got from him. I honestly would not care if he passed away tomorrow or next week.

The guitar he gave me was a sunburst Samick that had a beautiful boomy mellow tone. I ended up selling it for a Washburn, it has to be one of the worst decisions I've ever made. I ended up selling that as well.

I started playing guitar when I was sixteen years old. I had a minidisk player which is a primitive mp3 and media player that never really caught on. It was expensive and it was slow but it was and still is cooler than anything around today. I had downloaded off kazaa, which was the internet file sharing network of the time a really embarrassingly old song called Hotel California. I loved the three minute solo at the end. My whole reason for playing guitar was to play that one solo. I discovered a thing called tabs, which is a way scribing music for guitar.

I don't think it would be fair to say I got good really fast. But I developed an instant affinity for it. Maybe I had been a guitarist in a previous life? I just like how it sounds. It's an imperfect instrument, it sounds bad in a good way. It's like smoking, it kills you pleasurably.

[Uesugi]

I can still remember my first years at highschool. I was a willing participant of the education system. I wanted to be a part of something and as corny as it sounds, highschool was it. I had left behind the mess that was primary school and I believed I had made a clean break.

But I was lying to myself, as much as I tried to forget my past I needed it to tackle the present. I grew bored of highschool. I got hateful of the incompetant teachers who knew nothing except of what could be read out of a textbook.

It was my fault for being naive. Everybody else knew highschool was bull s h i t. Everyone except for me. I'm being too hard on myself, if I believed it was because I was brought up that way. I grew up in a household where education was the premium and nothing, absolutely nothing came before it. I was constantly living in preparation for my future and that is no way to live. It's simple really, my parents simply pushed their insecurities onto me. It's not uncommon I think. Devoted and yet totally incompetant.

It helps I think when you realise that my parents did not have according to them, parents of their own. A neglected upbringing and now they think devotion is all that is needed to be good parents. But I don't want to write too much about that as I am not a parent myself and I doubt very much if I will make a good one.

I still dream about high school. I see myself passing through the sliding glass doors with the mustachoid and stalinesque Mr Olsen, "where do you think you're going?" Utter terror followed by sheer jubilation as I reached the world outside. "Your parents are being called," used to mean so much to me.

Bumming in Chatswood, the feeling is incredible. Nothing can touch you, nothing can bring you down. Ordering breakfast and wondering, "what do I do now? I'll think about it when I get there." I remember the day I left school, waiting at a trainstation and calling Gab who had left only a several days before me. I was trembling when I called him. I was so glad when I heard his voice and he sounded typically happy. Was he ever upset? He told me that he was on his way and I postponed my plans for home and a possible confrontation with my parents.

http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/23500/Picasso-Guitarist-23982.jpg

[thebagman]

How did the kensai in japan pay for themselves? Kensai is japanese for swordsaint and it is a unique term that describes somebody who has after years of training reached such a level that they are one with their sword. Maybe they protected villages or rescued hostages?

How did the kensai pay for themselves when they were just starting out? Maybe they did small jobs here and there working in restaurants as waiters or serving customers with sake? In almost every story the kensai in question has no money and no home. They are dressed in rags and have no personal possessions other than that one sword and their skill with it. A famous story about a kensai called Musashi describes him being in dire need of a bath.

Did Musashi go mad because he spent too much time by himself? He spent a fair amount of time in the wilderness trying to evade various groups of people who were trying to kill him. It must have been then he stopped caring about his personal hygiene.

[thebagman]

As an evil dictator I would go on purges. There are some things this world can do without like Christianity and Muslim people. Communists, socialists and socialites can all go and so can girls with fat bottoms who try to fit into jeans designed for girls with much smaller bottoms.

But I am not an evil dictator. I can only dictate the happenings in my room and by extension some parts of my house which is why I have decided to go on the Great Purging of Hard-drives.

The Great Purging of Hard-drives is a response to my growing concerns about the angry hobbit people who have decided follow me around everywhere while muttering incoherently and shaking their heads. They shall be in due time met with extreme violence.

This Purge has nothing to do with Purging of Clothes that no longer look good on me or the overwriting of hard drives with gibberish because some psycho uploaded pornographic material of an illegal nature onto it.

[thebagman]

What do the hobbit people want with me? Why do the hobbit people choose to follow me everywhere when it is so clear to me that they dislike me so much? It's no matter really because I've almost had enough. The hobbit people led by the girl with the fat bottom (which must never be mentioned unless you want to suffer from shrieks of her fury and wrath) also known as the girl who jumbles up sentences and cannot write coherently have almost pressed me to me to my breaking point and I will therefore have to start murdering people. I shall call this purge the great purging of the hobbits.

Hobbit people are short, stupid and have hairy feet and I deem them therefore unnecessary.

More people who must die are Sauron, otherwise known as the girl with no soul or the soulless one and the one who walks hills and lacks any sense of humor. Both shall meet their end in a grisly and brutal manner not yet decided.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/The_Mouth_of_Sauron.jpg