And remember when we hinted around about having the content be user driven, and have YOU, the members, help us update the main page?
Well, this is it!

We call it User Updates. Creative, huh? Basically, every day or so, random users will recieve an e-mail giving them a unique password and a URL. There, they can write up, post, or submit whatever they like, and once it is submitted, our editorial staff will give it the once over, and we will post it on our mainpage.

Eventually the process will happen automatically x number of times a day where a random Asylum member is sent an invite to update the front page, but right now who receives the invites is up to the admins. We are trying to be random about it, and spamming the forum with "I WANT TO UPDATE DAMMIT" won't help your case whatsoever, but ONE single email to an admin letting us know you're interested will.

All you need to know now is that some of you will be receiving e-mails regarding the User Updates, meaning it is "your turn". These should be a bit more, not formal, but "better", than your average post. You should try and put some effort into it. And fear not if you submit it and it is not immediately posted, we have a well-oiled machine they go through.

For my first column, I really wanted to hit the ground running. I really wanted something that would "zing". Something that would be so good, so entertaining, so thought-provoking, that all future attempts by me to fill this space here would be put to shame right from the very beginning.

But the muse is a fickle mistress, gentle reader, and I am left with only one thing, one solitary tale, that keeps bouncing around and about inside my cranium, just begging to be let free.

My favorite drug story.

This all takes place on the last day of my third semester, the day before Christmas break, while I was attending a private school in Iowa. I had just finished up finals that last day, and needed a ride home to Kansas. So I called up a buddy of mine in Topeka that morning, told him if he picked me up I would show him a good time, told him to bring a drug dealer friend of mine, and basically begged my little heart out for a ride. So finally, and very reluctantly, this friend of mine named Carl agreed. When he got off work at 6ish that day, he would bring Kat with him, and they would be in Des Moines to pick me up around Midnight.

Well, I couldn't wait THAT long to start the party. I had about a dozen microdots of acid, an eight ball of cocaine, some weed, and a helluva lot of booze. And while I didn't particularly want to be all whacked out on drugs when my friends arrived, some things just can't be helped.

So I started drinking around 4ish that day.

A bit of background, at the time in college, I belonged to a fraternity. This was not your regular fraternity of Abercrombie and Fich-ites, however. Closer to Animal House then any other example I can think of. A greater hive of scum and villainy could not be found in the entire galaxy. So I spent most of that day over there, at least when I wasn't at whatever bar I stumbled into.

At one point, just before 6, I remember calling Kat, drunk and high as a person can be while still maintaining a degree of consciousness that sometimes allowed standing. The conversation went something like this.

Kat: Hello?
Me: BRING MORE ACID!
Kat: What? Brad, is that you?
Me: BRING MORE ACID!
Kat: Stop yelling.
Me: Okay. Furble grundum furble furble guh.
Kat: What?
Me: You are coming HERE WITH CARL TONIGHT, RIGHT!?
Kat: Yes. And I said quit yelling.
Me: Bring lots of acid when you come.
Kat: Okay.
Me: AND ANYTHING ELSE….
Kat: Brad!
Me: Anything else you can think of.
Kat: Okay. Bye.

Around 9ish, a bunch of my more, errr, none-straightedge friends of mine decided to go back to my dorm room for some acid. This was about 6 of us. My dorm room was approximately 6' x 6' x 6', BTW. But we all managed to squeeze in, and so, despite the considerable handicap of all being absolutely drunk and stoned, somehow managed to get the cap off the microdot vial (how many drugs addicts does it take to….), and dropped the acid.

I really don't remember much of the following night itself, although you can be sure it was an epic display of hedonism which few could fathom, much less match. The cocaine was keeping me more or less awake, while the other drugs were keeping me more or less loopy.

Finally, at around 11ish, I was still in my room with my friends tripping balls, when I got a call from Carl and Kat. They were in the convenience down the block.

So, I wandered over there on foot, despite the considerable handicap of figuring that the snow was as solid as cement, and that it was about 12 degrees and I was sweating like a pig at a roast.

But, I managed to find the place (a single Kum and Go ((yes, that was the name of the store) on an empty street.)). And I saw Kat, obviously in a similar shape as myself, pawing around the candy aisle of the mart and Carl sitting in the car, with a pissed off expression on his face, trying to stay warm.

Well, I won't go into too much detail of the night itself. We did everything we could get our hands on and more, and ended up with Carl passing out from cocaine come-down, me and Kat dropping acid at about 5 AM, and then promptly passing out half-naked on a couch 15 minutes later.

Kat and I were awakened at about 6:30 AM at gunpoint. Carl had brought an air rifle with him and was poking us with the nozzle to get us awake. He had bloodshot eyes, looked a bit unstable, was shaking slightly, and was very stubborn about the fact that we had to get back to Topeka RIGHT NOW.

So, the three of us piled into Carl's car. Kat, who was in somewhat of a daze, wearing her nightgown and a heavy winter coat, slumped into the backseat in a fetal position around the air rifle, Carl driving, and me in the passenger side playing with a pair of binoculars I had acquired the night before from God-knows-where. Acid and an expensive pair of binoculars whilst tooling across barren Iowa highways at 95 miles an hour is great, great fun. I was hanging out of the window, looking at everything through the wrong end, and screaming at Carl to go faster so we can catch up to the road.

Some more background.

Carl was about 27 when this all took place. He was a grizzled old addict, set in his ways, and not at all happy about having to pick up a raving lunatic in Iowa and transport him to Kansas during the wee hours of a friggin cold December morn. I was 19 at the time. Kat was at an undetermined age, probably about 16 or 17.

Carl was dead tired from the cocaine and whiskey the night before, but he, like so many loonies, has a little button that goes off inside his head once drug consumption reaches critical max. The button flips, and the message "GO HOME GO HOME GO HOME" begins cycling through the psyche at an alarmingly loud and obnoxious rate. This is my theory on why so many people drive drunk even when they know they should not. It's all about that button, man.

He hasn't shaven in about two weeks for whatever reason, eyes bloodshot, and is snorting cocaine off the dashboard whenever no other cars are in site, produced via some sort of beaker he keeps with him at all times for just such occasions. He is in a foul mood, to say the least.

Cut to me.

I am frantically rousing Kat awake with one hand, while my other hand steadfastly holds the binoculars to my face at all times (it's IMPORTANT, dammit!). Kat awakens, fresh as a daisy, and produces more acid from her coat pocket within seconds of regaining consciousness.

It is about 8 AM at this point. We both drop about 4 hits each, that compounded with all the stuff we drank, smoked, snorted, and dropped only hours before in Des Moines. I also have my trusty bottle of Jim Beam with me, which we pull off of when we feel like it.

An hour of calm, then the acid starts to take hold, along with the whiskey. This is VERY good acid, mind you. We were reduced to raving lunatics. And Kat is like Silent Bob in Mallrats. Her coat was a bottomless pit of depravity.

"Boy, I wish I had some coke," I murmur.
"Keep your goddamned hands off my stuff," Carl shouts, "I need it to drive!"
"Here Brad, I have some!" says Kat as she produces a folded up ounce from God knows where.

You had to love this girl.

This is NOT Carl's idea of a good time. He is tired, strung out, and is in a car with enough drugs to make Hunter S. Thompson envious, not to mention a half naked underage girl and a car that may or may not be stolen.

So at some point, when he just can't take it anymore, he pulls over in some small town in Missouri, and tells us to get the fuck out of the car for an hour while he catches some zzzzs.

He passes out before we have a chance to argue.

Now, something about Missouri is that it is nothing BUT small podunk towns, with populations in the hundreds. Small farming communities, backwater sorts of places, which boast a stoplight and a bar and that's about it. This was such a town. We were parked at a gas station that had yet to open, and nothing but a dirt road and small shops and farms as far as the eye can see. That and it is about –25 degrees at this point, and the wind chill wasn't helping any.

But, he had the air rifle, he was the only one with even a modicum of capacity to drive, so we had no place to argue. Besides, he was already asleep.

So, off we go. Kat in her nightgown and wintercoat, myself in my cords, t-shirt and windbreaker.

We walk up this road, turning blue with teeth chattering, and watching as the stores begin to open and farmers on tractors pass us by to start their day's labor, giving us very strange looks as they passed.

Something about the Midwest that very few people realize is how cold it really gets. When I moved from Kansas to Maine, people would scoff when I would relate to them the freezing winds of the Great Plains. We had an exchange student around that time from Sweden. My mother told him to bring winter clothes, and he laughed that suggestion off. When winter hit, he nearly froze to death, and ended up buying more long underwear than he had ever owned. He noted before he left, "It NEVER gets this cold in Sweden. It is cold for longer, and it snows more, but I have never seen winds this cold in my entire life."

So here we were, about 3 miles down the road, freezing to death. Kat is starting to get signs of frostbite on her calves, and I am blue and my teeth are chattering.

Well, this was a situation which called for more whiskey, and certainly more acid.

We ended up dropping inside somebody's barn while petting a cow.

We named the cow "Dopey".

That is the extent of my recollection about this part of the trip.

We got back to the car, and Carl was awake, snorting coke of the dash once more, but in much better spirits.

So off we go once more.

When we near the Missouri border, Carl mumbles something about needing to pick up some eggplants. Fair enough, we think to ourselves. That sounds pretty harmless.

It was not.

Carl is a very strange man, with very strange tastes, and the ONLY eggplants in the STATE that are worth eating can apparently only be found in a certain international marketplace in downtown Kansas City.

He takes us there.

He parks in the middle of a scene out of Indiana Jones. People of indiscernible nationality are throwing fish and chickens, live ones both, at one another. People are shouting at each other in various languages. And an ethnicity resembling Morlocks seem to be running the majority of stands. This is Little China, Little Italy, Little Zimbabwe, Little RiverWorld, Little everything, all combined onto one downtown city block, though it resembles more closely an alley. And we hit it at the peak time of the week.

Carl immediately departs from the car, parked on the sidewalk next to a chicken stand (again, live chickens) and disappears into the crowd, on his mad quest of the elusive eggplants, while Kat and I sit in the car dumbfounded, befuddled at the scene that awaits us once we step out of the car.

But of course, we didn't let that stop us.

I suppose the scene that we stepped into would be best conveyed visually then through text. Stands on both side of a narrow street, droves of people of various nationalities and chattering and shouting in unknown languages everywhere, fares that ranged from vegetables I couldn't place as being indigenous to Earth to live goats shackled up in rickety wooden cages. And the Morlocks. Sweet Christ, the Morlocks!

In any case, it was quite a trip.

Kat and I got separated more than once, which was a terrifying experience, as she was the one carrying the drugs and I was in desperate need of some horse tranquilizers at this point.

We found each other in what was apparently the live animal section of the market.

We decide we need to buy a rabbit.

When we returned to the car, Carl was already there with the various things he had acquired, and we show up carrying a wooden cage with a 12-pound rabbit inside. He doesn't even blink.

We get in the car and head for Topeka once more.

Now this time I was in the back seat and Kat was munching on Kim Chee in the passenger seat. We had bought the rabbit with some crazed notion that we would save it from a boiling pot and make it into a cuddly little bunny pet thing. However, those Morlocks must have treated this rabbit in quite the dastardly and masochistic manner (the strange Arabic sign branded into it's rump should have clued me into this), and he was absolutely terrified.

So we drop more acid and I open the cage to pet the widdle bunny.

The widdle bunny suddenly comes alive in a crazed frenzy, first biting me, opening an inch long gap on the back of my hand, and then going into spasms of rage with enough force behind them to utterly break apart the wooden cage.

I start screaming like a little girl.

Carl starts swerving all over the two-lane highway, doing about 105 mph.

Kat goes into fits of laughter.

"Brad, what the FUCK are you doing!?!?!" Carl shouts at me over his shoulder as he regains control of the car and goes for more cocaine.

"Don't worry, I'll get this under control!" I shout back.

Mind you, there is the largest and meanest rabbit I have ever seen, loose on the floor in the backseat of the car, in a frenzied rampage. This is no ordinary rabbit, mind you. This is a Morlock rabbit!

So, I grab the air rifle and begin loading it furiously.

Now, again, I have to defer to the story visually. Try to picture the half naked underage girl in the passenger seat turning blue from laughing so hard, the grizzled coke addict driver screaming at me, and me, all hopped up, crouching on the seat, firing an air rifle at the floor of the car trying to kill that fucking wascally wabbit.

A rifle is very hard to aim in close quarters.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!!!???!?!" screams Carl.
"Don't worry, I think I have it cornered this time!"
BANG!!!!!!
"No, I got him now!"
BANG!!!!!!!
sounds of rabbit screeching
"I wounded him! I wounded him! Yeah, who's the man!"
BANG!!!!!
"DAMMIT! This fucker is FAST!"
BANG!!!!
BANG!!!
BANG!!!!

At which point Carl brings the car to a screeching halt in the middle of the deserted Kansas highway, gets out of the car, opens the back door, and watches as the screeching bloodied bunny FLIES out of the car in a flurry of fur and blood, disappearing in the tall grass on the side of the road. He looks at the blood, the bullet holes, and the fur all over the car floor, and me holding the air rifle with a sheepish look on my face, muttering something about damn dirty Morlock rabbits.

It was at this point where Carl took the gun from me and began to hit me in the face with the butt of it repeatedly until I was sedated to his satisfaction.

I don't remember much of the trip after that. Not that I remembered a helluva lot before, mind you. This trip normally takes 6 hours or so. It took us about 24, if that tells you anything.

But we got home okay. I remember it was the day that the House voted to impeach president Clinton, and I slouched down on my couch in my Topeka home, with a head still full of acid and an icepack on my face, SURE that I could read Al Gore's mind while the House Democrats and Clinton were making their lengthy announcement.

After that, Carl refused to come pick me up anymore. From anywhere. Period.

Kat, on the other hand, subsequently came and visited me about a half dozen times, claiming she had the best time of her life.

No word yet on the Morlock rabbit.

That is all.

I am a soldier… Find me unsavory!

Grasped.

Punching my way out of your restrictive intestine… Choking. Coughing. Spitting half digested shit around in a futile effort to disparage swimming pool sized monkeys from cannibalizing my soul.

!Vive Escape!

Blessed sanction represents nostalgia retroactive to my decisions. Any choice cultivates itself inside a womb of indifference because I fear being too close to a past I regret, regress, rape, and will inevitably return to.

Respiratory mistakes.

Breath in.

Out…

In.

Out…

Wear special stockings past midnight in order to glean spectral telemetry… No pressure though…

Fuck PSI.

What the hell was that? Nice opening, nutsack. Did we get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning? Or, perhaps in your case I should ask, did you wake up beside 3 cross-dressing dock-workers who all have the trademark Crusty Cage Cum stuck to their chins again? I've told you before man, the drugs and alcohol are fine, just not together. You know shit like this happens when you decide to party. P/C is a damn great idea, you're just pissed because the P comes first is all.

If you've finished being all menstrual on me, I should ask at which point did I come across as being 'bleeding heart, love thy neighbour'? I'm fully prepared to accept that I'm completely sheet- metal-rules; it's the price I pay for having a T3 line and about 7 computers to fiddle with. Anyway, so what if I have a penchant for plasticity theory? I've noticed that you've been very tight-lipped about what you do when you're not shaving or getting tea-bagged. Care to illuminate?

You can take that 'bleeding heart' stuff and shove it right up there. What's all that about? As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty much every man for himself down here. I'm born into this world with it's problems, but I'm not here to take responsibility for them. I care, sure, but I only have a finite amount and can't care about *everything*. Did I suddenly acquire a reputation for being all fluffy and cuddly? If so, I've really gotta work on those negative compassion points. How many girls does a guy have to reduce to tears before he gets a hardass reputation anyway?

Get back to me on this when you're done with those cross-dressers and have taken your hormone replacement therepy medication. Oh yes, and if you think anyone is actually *reading* this shit, your head is bigger than mine pal.

See? What'd I tell you guys? His first contribution turns into a 4 paragraph manifestation of near-psychotic jealousy triggered by his repressed homoerotic feelings for me. Hold on to your hats, kids.

Anyway. This here is P/C. I guess it's intended to be a regular column, inspired by Pangloss' and my tendency to take over threads and drive post counts up with our (frequently inane) exchanges of insults, points, counterpoints, etc. Get it? Point/Counterpoint? Pangloss/Cage? P/C! Pretty clever, eh? Don't worry, neither Pangloss nor myself came up with the name. Big ups to whoever did, though.

To answer your question, Pangloss, if one manages to filter out all of your posts dedicated to my sack, what's left is pretty much a big, cuddly, fluffy hug-fest. They're all about these apparently universal truths about how happiness and comfort and joy and healthcare are all some sort of basic human rights. You're always going on about how the haves owe something to the have-nots, blah, blah, blah. Sorry man, but following a girl around, pleading for dates until you've reduced her to tears does not a hardass make.

Perhaps I should insult them further by telling them that water is wet and beer will get them drunk? I think we've all got the P/C thing (and I believe kudos is owed to the MstrG - his idea).

Okay. How about this - let's keep all references from me about your nutsack and from you about these 'repressed, homoerotic tendancies' you insist I have for you under wraps for now, okay? Otherwise this could get tedious.

Whatever impression I've given you about my view on philanthropy, perhaps I'll just restate it for clarity. While I believe that we, as individuals, should not feel responsible for every bleeding-heart case out there,

I do believe that we, as a society, have a responsibility to 'the greater good' - or what ever you want to call it. The haves do not _owe_ anything to the have-nots, but I feel at some level there should be some sense of enforced fairness.

Can we say 'communism'? That's not what I'm on about, so don't go getting all Marxist on me. All I mean is that it strikes me as being generally unfair that Joe Bloggs is born into the lap of luxury while John Doe fights for every meal somewhere else. If this is all 'fluffy hug-fest' then you may kiss my cuddly ass. What's your take on it? (keep an eye on him folks, he's probably going to get all authoritive and start quoting Machiavelli and using game theory to show that being a miserable fuck pays dividends)

Oh, come on. You took the name Pangloss. He's the poster boy for blind optimism. Doesn't get much cuddlier than blind optimism.

Anyway, you asked for it...here's my take:

1) There is no greater good.

2) I'm all for personal acts of charity, but don't feel that anyone necessarily SHOULD engage in such. And Jebus help anyone who tells me that I should do so, be they a government, a religion, or an Angry Irishman.

3) When examined on a case-by-case basis, life isn't fair. The fact that horrible, painful, unfair things can happen to everybody is the what makes it fair, when examined on a Big Picture basis.

4) Might, as they say, makes right. This is Unfair. However, as an extension of #3, above: if I don't think the person who is currently flexing his might is right, then I can use my might to destroy him, and all will be right.

Well, I guess I'll leave it at that, for now. I guess since I was up first, you get the last word, Pangloss. Try to make it something more memorable than your standard "Of course I'm sure I can handle another Guinness!"

You're just pissy because PaintCHiPs thought Pangloss was a really good nick and Cage was a so-so one. For the uninitiated, Docteur Pangloss is a character in Voltaire's Eighteenth Century novel, 'Candide'. A man of most assuredly weak personal philosophy, but better than naming yourself after a man who was once a fine actor ... err ... Fuck. I digress. I think Nick Cage is a fine actor and can't fault him. Perhaps I could say 'Con Air', but we'll move on.

1) Of course there is a greater good. What are we here, all self-serving automatons running the course? The only way we survive is cooperation. That is the greater good.

2) Adopting a laisse-faire attitude to the rest of society is weak. It's like the people who never do a day's honest work in their lives, take state benfit and then justify it by saying 'you're not my responsibility.'

3) That gross generalisation deserves to be taken out of this column and shot. Twice. The typical problems Mr. Cushy Middle-America (darn it, where did I leave my car keys?) are not comparable to the problems of Mr. Crackpot Middle-Eastern Dictatorship (darn it, where will I live now that Clinton has blown up my house, killed my wife, caused my kids to be conscripted and got blood on my best shirt - all because he thought it might get him another term?)

4) See #3)

I get to have the last word here? Why, how very magnanimous of you. Let me think for a moment. Oh, wait, where did I put that pint of Guinness ...?

Five O'clock is an ungodly hour to awaken, but JEB and I had a busy day planned and this a perfect time to sneak out of the Rest Home as the staff would be busy serving dinner.

As usual, we had made very concise escape plans, which required split second timing to effect. JEB would hopefully remember them as I was rather preoccupied with trying to figure out why my pants were on inside out and backwards and was concentrating on remembering whether it was a result of a successful rendezvous with the barmaid last night or some horribly unwholesome incident that would require a bout of heavy drinking to erase from my memory.

Our plans were almost for naught due to an inadvertent outburst on my part. I had stealthily crept down to JEB's room and after picking his lock, gone in and let out a horrified scream when I saw Elephant Boy lying on the floor, snoring away.

The previous day came flooding back into my mind as I stood there staring at his lumpy visage.

Most of the day had been fairly typical; we had been able to get out of the Home fairly early due to JEB's invitation to, once again, explain himself to the judge. The charges had been dropped due to the prosecution's inability to produce their witness in a timely fashion (I figured the distributor cap that our lawyer, Clettis J. Pettibone Jr, Esquire, had in his briefcase may have had something to do with that).

Anyway, we decided to celebrate JEB's victory and wound up at Art's Basshole after discovering that there was apparently some residual animosity from the previous night's foray at the first three bars we stopped at and we felt the need to find a more hospitable clime until things cooled off a bit around town.

The Basshole has always been a safe haven because Art never remembers anything that happened more than 3 hours ago due to his propensity for the Demon Rum.

So after toasting just about every aspect of the courtroom drama that we could think of and a few dozen more that we made up, we decided that we should drive down to the river and snag up a fish or two for old Art's supper in as much as we didn't have the money to pay for all the booze we drank much less the beer we just swiped to fish with.

We borrowed a big cooler full of ice from Art, telling him it was to keep the fish fresh and when he ran back inside to see if there was any beer missing from the bar, we roared off to the river.

Not wanting to stop in case Art was in hot pursuit, JEB was pulling out the beers we had procured from Art and stored under the seat and was sticking them in the cooler through the sliding window in the back of the cab when we hit a bump and the chest slid out off his reach. Undaunted, JEB stuffed the remaining beers in his shirt and opened the door to the truck at 60 mph, climbing out and swinging over into the bed of the truck in a fashion that would have made a Hollywood stuntman look like an amateur considering the state of drunkenness he was in.

We had a ways to go to get to a spot where Art wouldn't find us and I hollered out the back window of the pickup for JEB to hand me a beer to cut the dust, as those back roads can make a man mighty thirsty.

JEB had planted himself on the icechest in the back of the truck with his own beer and the old curmudgeon refused to get up so we commenced to hollerin' at each other while barreling down the road. Now I had turned around in order to make sure he was payin' attention to me so I have to admit I wasn't quite as aware of where the truck was goin' as I should have been, so by the time that he did get around to handing me a beer, we had taken a course that didn't include a road.

Discontinuing our forward progress seemed to be a prudent course of action at that time as we were heading for some trees that didn't seem to have enough space to drive the truck between so I hit the brakes which in JEB's truck didn't always mean you were going to stop anytime soon.

Well, it seems the trees stood within the necessary space that the truck needed to stop in so I picked a likely one out and used it to culminate our cessation of motion. Now, just prior to the tree and the front of the truck becoming as one, so to speak, ole JEB was climbing over the tailgate, fixin' to bail out and leave me to my own devices. Unfortunately his timing was off and he was flung forward and slammed into the back of the cab upside down with his big ass firmly stuck in the open sliding window.

Now I must admit that from my point of view that his position was a little more than humorous and I was unable to assist him in freeing himself as I was, well, justa laughin' my ass off.

Now the strangest thing happened just as I was fixin' to help him. When I turned around, my foot came off the clutch and the truck made just the teeniest bump against that tree and this great big hornets nest just plopped right down into the back of that truck!

Boy, was I surprised. Now JEB, despite his awkward position, was able to figure out what that nest was right off and commenced to screamin' anda flailin' like all get out, particularly since those hornets were starting to swarm out of the nest and didn't seem very happy about the situation.

Now, I knew my old buddy was in dire straits so as soon as I got the window rolled up I finished off the beer so as to free up both hands and lept into action, determined to save my dear old pal from a fate worse than and possibly including death.

Bringing to play my extensive knowledge of wildlife, I figured that even JEB's truck could either outrun or outlast those hornets, plus I didn't see the sense in me getting out of the truck as hornets tend to get the best of one in hand to hand combat. So I backed the truck up and took off with ole JEB justa a hollerin' like a banshee, still stuck in that window.

Now I gotta tell ya, those hornets gave us a run for our money and kept JEB slappin' anda screeching for a good 5 miles, even after he had managed to fling the nest out, but they finally tired out and we lost them.

When we finally got back to town, I figured the smartest thing to do was to just leave the truck parked just down from the fire station and go find a bar to call 911 and have them pry him loose. I woulda done it myself but the ungrateful bastard had gone into way too much detail as to what he was gonna do to me when he got loose and I figured he needed a little time away from me to collect his thoughts and remember who had just saved his life.

Anyways, the lumpyness doesn't look as bad as it did. He wasn't that excitin' to look at before all this anyway.

-The new default for forum signatures is to INCLUDE it. So, don't be an asshole and clog up the forum with a 3,000 word long signature. -if you DO decide to be an asshole about your sig, your fun will be cut short anyhow. Allowable Sig length will soon be reduced.-If you don't want your signature to be included everytime, you need to go into your profile and either DELETE it or uncheck the box everytime you post. -The Suggestions Forum is still there. Use it. And don't say we never gave you a voice in this. If you don't post it, you can't get pissed if nothing happens.

Alrighty then. Lecture over. Class dismissed. Apple polishers will receive their earned brownosing points.~karen

I am a plain man, and unlearned in the ways of many things. I have not read the works of "great" men. I am not a scholar. It is my fervent belief that standing upon the shoulders of others, for a fleeting glimpse at wisdom, is an empty endeavor. For, as it has been conjectured, the destination matters very little. It is the journey that defines the life; and this fleeting, precious life is all that we may really ever lay claim to.

This past week found me back in the arms of a woman that has hurt me more than once in the past. In the instances of our contact, I loved her with as bright, beautiful, and fierce a passion as I have ever felt. Those moments, those tender, precious moments. To witness the raw and innocent beauty within her both shames me and fills me with an elation that I find myself hard-pressed to properly express.

I am shamed against the light of her, for much of my past is crafted of shadow and darker things best left unmolested. Against this, I quail. Her innocence and honesty serve to exaggerate the terrible contrast between us.

Terrible. It is terrible, I suppose. It is also the medium against which the clarity of her charm shines most brightly. Had I walked a different path in my day, I cannot say that I would still find her to be the rare and radiant jewel that I perceive her to be. A jewel, yes. She has become as the diamond, and I as the swatch of midnight velvet beneath her.

The world is a place of myriad contrasts.

She has gone away now. I knew that she would do so from the very beginning. She has, again, left behind a gnawing ache in the dwelling place of my heart. I do not deny the ache, nor do I seek to suppress it. It is as much a part of the cycle as the love and happiness is. Through it, I am reminded of the elevating grace of better times. It is, after all, only through these contrasts that we come to define the days of our lives.

So, I find myself in the grayest realm. Caught between the primitive urge to hate the one who has inflicted so grievous a wound upon me, and the all-consuming desire to relive the divine memory of having tasted an angel's kiss. Both feelings are a part of me. Both are alive within me at this moment. In fact, they thrum and vibrate inside of me like a powerful engine, driving me further down the pathways of my life and on toward the rest of my self-effacing journey.

To abandon one aspect would be to obliterate the validity of the other.

With this knowledge buried firmly in my heart, I quest my path. I quest the answers to the vexing questions that I have stumbled upon whilst traveling this road. I quest solace from the heat, the wind, the cold, and the rain. I am hungry, and everywhere that my eyes may come to briefly rest, another question is formed. Such is the nature of life, and those involved in the living of it. We are all searching, endlessly, for a place to rest, and ultimately it is the only thing that we are surely guaranteed. This is the final culmination of all our roads and journeys.

In the end, all roads are silent, every path leads home.

Still, I will search my love as long as I have breath to spend. In my days, I have danced for many, and I have danced for none. Through it all, I have fooled myself into believing that I've learned a thing or two. It is true that the journey is really all we have. But, it can be a long and lonely road. There are few things sadder than having walked that last mile for nothing and no one.

Love.

Redguard@blackvault.com

A gaming forum.

For computer, video, board, virtual reality, dice, or any other games you can think of.

So, go post about your Whorehouse Union in there to your heart's content.

O'DOYLE RULEZ!

And so do we.

That is all.

If it is not back by the time Forum Trivia is supposed to happen, I will have to hurt somebody.

You see...

I kick ass FOR THE LORD!!!!!!

That is all.

This thread covers a subject near and dear to us: the vaunted Asylum point system! We need your input on improvements and such .... this one is about an upcoming event on the forum, a special edition of Trivia, hosted by ol' Paint himself. Check it out!