Poetry

I have a normal dislike for writing non-rhyming poetry, because you have to be all mushy-gushy thought and stuff. It's usually not funny and is mostly boring. Here's a limerick or two that I have written (cough cough stole cough).

There once was a pig named Riddle
He played a very feisty good fiddle
He broke all his strings
Lost all his things
Now he owns naught a nickel.

I'm out of ideas.

Entry 9

The Jeep's engine sputtered. "Dritt," growled Birgir. The truck rolled to a stop, jerking everyone forward as the wheels stopped spinning. "We're out of gas," Albin muttered. "How could we be out of gas!" exclaimed Jorgen. "We had three quarters of a full tank when we left the house, and we've only been going for two hours!" Even I understood this wasn't right, what with me being from thousands of years ago. There was a strange smell in the air, sharp and pungent, almost like... "Get out of the car!" I roared, grabbing Birgir and Albin and kicking the door open. I lept away from the car and landed in the cold snow. It got in my shirt and shoes, stuck in my hair and beard, and generally made itself a nuisance. Jorgen followed out of the car, breaking through the window to land on top of me. My breath left my lungs and I let out a huge fart. Albin lost it, cackling like a complete maniac. Birgir facepalmed and shook his head. Jorgen jumped back and began to laugh. Just then, the car erupted into flame and Albin screamed as he went down under a barrage of snow. The Big One was back, and furious. He blasted Jorgen full in the face with another shot of snow, and Jorgen fell back, snowing shooting up into the air as his body slammed into it. Albin stuck his head out of his pile and struggled to free the rest of his body, but the Big One blasted him again and he stopped moving. Birgir had freed his gun from the burning wreckage of the Jeep and began to fire it at the Big One, but it was fruitless. The Big One turned to me and smiled a wicked smile, filled with death and destruction, the coals widening as he let out a huge screech. I smiled back and flung my axe straight into its face, spinning with such force that it could have cut down three trees in one shot. It took him square in his carrot nose, slicing it in half and the continuing to the rest of his face. It hit him with so much force that his mouth coals came off. The snow began to slough of his face and he shuddered. The cold air seemed to slow everything as he fell to the ground and burst into giant drifts of snow. My axe remained embedded in the largest one, where his carrot nose stuck in two pieces. I pulled the axe out of the snow pile and raised it above my head. "I! AM! RAGAR! THE BERSERKER!" The sky thundered and lightning flashed, the Jeep exploded, and the Big One's snow piles sunk deeper into the ground. Jorgen and Albin burst out of their icy tombs, emulating my scream. "THE BERSERKER!" Birgir joined in, adding his voice to the cacophony of sound. "THE BERSERKER!" The sky itself seemed to echo the same words down, as Odin and the other Gods celebrated their victory over the Giants and Demons. I knew who I was, then and there, and why I existed. I was Ragar, born of Gods, and destined to bring victory of the enemies of Old Norway.

Entry 8

This is the part where I tell you that this never really happened and I was really totally wacked out on mead the whole time, wandering around Dorming naked and bellowing at people that the wights were coming. Well, if I did that, I would be lying. As the wights climbed through windows and doors, smashing the furniture to bits and getting snow everywhere, I had a brain explosion, which is a brain blast and fart at the same time. I ran to the fire, thinking that if I threw burning logs around I could melt them, but I forget that fire also hurts me. I thrust my hand into the flames and grabbed a piece, realized that my hand was burning and that my sleeve was on fire, and bellowed in pain. I whipped around (with the wood still in my hand) and took of a wight head. I let go of the log and sent it spinning across the room, where it made contact with the drapes and lit them on fire. "Well, dritt," I thought. (that's Norwegian for a naughty word, which it rhymes with). The guys were shooting at the wights, but the bullets simply went through them and did nothing. I drew my axe from its sheath across my back and yelled, "Gamla lombungr, sugandi toti tik madr!" (a curse in Old Norse). This was not as useless as the bullets, but you had to take the heads off to actually kill them. An overhead slam would just cut them in half, and both halves remained alive and annoying. Jorgen and Aksel took the hint and drew machetes. Birgir was already swinging his gun around knocking heads off, but Albin was cursing as he backed away from the flaming wall. He grabbed a burning chair leg and used it as a... well... burning chair leg. He swung it at the wights, melting them on each pass and causing them to hiss and jump back. Unfortunately for them, back was the inferno that used to be the wall of the cabin, and they fell into the pit of flame screaming and sizzling. The other wights began to back away from the hellpit, into the actual fire that was the fireplace. Caught between a rock and a hard place, they went sideways, but we were there. My axe flashed and Aksel's machete swung, Albin's stick flamed and Jorgen's knife gleamed. Birgir's gun didn't really do anything, he was just standing there swinging his gun around.The wights were forced into all four points of death, burning and then getting decapitated. Until the Big One came. This wight must've been as big as two Jorgen's and a Ragar. It knocked the fireplace over and put it out, doing the same for the wall inferno. Aksel was caught up in the shockwave and went flying. A wight came out of nowhere and grabbed him, pulled him screaming out the door, his gun shooting randomly into the crisp, freezing air. Birgir yelled and ran for the Jeep, pulling Albin's arm and grabbing a hatchet from beside the doorway. I swung my axe around once more and I tapped Jorgen on the shoulder. "Come on man! We gotta get outta here!" He nodded and sprinted for the door. I flicked my wrist and another wights head came tumbling to the ground. Aksel's screams stopped. We all piled into the Jeep and Albin stepped on it, kicking up snow and dirt as the Big One made it's deep, primal scream into the cold air.

Entry 7

Sorry I haven't written in a while. The temporal shifts are unpredictable, I can't control when these get posted. Anyways, about five minutes after we drove out of the parking lot, I looked out the window and there were fighter jets dropping napalm everywhere to kill the zombies. I was just hoping that they wouldn't napalm us, but even in that I was not in luck. The outside paint was all that burned off, but I was feeling the heat as the flames billowed over the car. The guys steered the car off of the road into the woods, and it started snowing. And when I say snowing, I mean snowing. These snowflakes were literally the size of snowmen. You could hear them whumping down everywhere, breaking tree branches and knocking entire trees down. I was surprised our windshield didn't break after three fell on it at the same time, but it held up. Eventually, they pulled up beside a log cabin. The snowmenflakes were still whumping around us, and the first guy to try and go in got hit. The three of us remaining (including me) were all needed to pull him out from under the snowman. He was okay, but his legs had fallen asleep and he fell over when he stood up. We carried him inside the cabin. It was pretty roomy inside, which is good because all four of us would be sharing it for the rest of eternity. While two of the guys set up cots and sleeping bags, me and the other one stepped outside and erected a sort of garage for the Hummer. It was just some wood stacked on more wood leaning on the house, but it would keep the car safe from the hell snowflakes. After he drove the car into the shelter, we both went back inside. We all finally were able to introduce ourselves. The one wearing the I'm a Brony shirt (whatever that means) was called Aksel; the one with the white shirt under the red flannel was Albin; Birgir was the one with the long sleeve Nirvana shirt and a blue beanie. The biggest of them all, Jorgen, wore a camouflage jacket over a camouflage shirt, with camouflage pants and some pretty big steel-toed boots. I wouldn't have been surprised if he wore camouflage underpants, but that wasn't important at the moment. Albin gave a shout and motioned for us to come over to the window. We all looked out and saw some of the snowmen flakes actually form themselves into snowmen shaped things. Then they started to walk. Not just move, but walk. One of them turned his coal eyes towards the house, his coal smile widening as he made a sickening screech, calling the others to also turn their heads. Their evil grins were all we could see in the storm of snow, but we didn't exactly care as Jorgen started throwing everyone their guns. We could hear them knocking on the door, their screeches getting louder as the banging did. The door gave, and the wights poured into our humble abode.

Entry 6

I was so engrossed in the newspaper I didn't notice the meteor until it smashed into the museum and threw me against the wall. 'Odin's beard,' I thought. 'I can't believe it's actually happening.' People were screaming and running everywhere, there were more meteors raining down outside, smashing cars. There was a bloody guy running down the hallway, making weird moaning noises. One of the museum security officers took his gun out and shot at him a couple times, but the shots went straight through his chest and he kept running. He was running towards me. I swung the axe up over my head where it made sickening contact with the guys head. Black, clotted blood flew everywhere and he fell to the ground. There were more of them outside and the security people were getting overrun at the entrance to the hallway. 'Thor's hammer,' I thought. 'The living dead, as well?' Contrary to popular belief, there were zombie shows back in my time, too. Every Saturday at 7pm we would go to the AMC theater and watch the next installment of The Dead Walking, a show about a group of survivors during the zombie apocalypse. The actors were great, but the amount of people willing to act as zombies dwindled because they were often hurt when there heads were "fake" smashed in. Anyway, I ran back the way I came. There were three more security guys at the gate to the next hallway, which was closed. A bunch of the zombies were pressed up against it. They were firing at them, but more and more kept coming. I ran down the other hallway, to hear the gate be ripped out of the wall and men's screams as they were overtaken. I grabbed a bow from another exhibit I found, and I found a quiver of arrows in the gift shop. I slung my axe over my back and kept running. Bursting out the front doors, a large group of the zombies to my left were crushed by an asteroid as big as an ox. I had to get out of there, but I didn't know where to go. I spied three pretty big dudes with guns in a Hummer driving out of the parking lot. Not knowing what else to do, I ran after them, yelling and waving my arms. They stopped and yelled back, "Who are you? Are you bit?" I replied in a yell, as well. "My name is Ragar Bjornsven! No, I am not bit!" They saw the axe on my back and decided I might make a good companion. They drove back into the parking lot and opened the door. One of the guys jumped out and said, "I just wanna inspect you real quick, just to make sure." He poked around my arms and legs, when a zombie came up behind him. His head was about 20 feet away two seconds later, after my axe lopped his head of. The guy thanked me, deemed me clear of bites, and jumped back into the Hummer. I followed him, and the Hummer drove out of the parking lot.

Entry 5

When I awoke, I was in a glass box. I couldn't move. The harshness of the lights hurt my eyes, and I wondered where I was. Looking outside of the box, I saw people. Tall people, short people, fat people, skinny people, Asian people, black people, white people, even orange people. Looking down at myself, I could see why I couldn't move. I was tied down. There was rope on my arms, rope on my legs, rope on my chest, rope on my neck, just lots and lots of rope. It was also freezing. I was wearing a tunic softer than I had ever felt, my pants were way too tight, and the vest I was wearing was of some material I had never heard of. A battleaxe was in my hand, but it was practically lighter than air. Plastic, I think you might call it. I was in a museum. Now, upon realizing this, I was mostly like wut. The people outside had glowing rocks with moving paintings on them. There was one guy who threw his in a hollowed out cylinder thing after moving some bird paintings around towards some pigs. Then, like a bat out of hell, a rock (an actual one) came hurtling through an open window and smashed the glass on the front of my display. 'This is my chance,' I thought. Using my Viking muscles, I ripped the ropes out of the board I was tied to and jumped out of the case. People screamed and pointed. I yelled, "Well that's not very nice, is it?" They just screamed louder and ran. I looked down the hall. The artificial lights burned my eyes again. 'Wow,' I thought. 'The alchymists went no holds barred on these things.' I looked down the hall, spying more of my Viking kin in glass boxes. I broke the glass on each of them, just to find that they were made of the same thing my fake axe was made of. (Again, plastic.) I said, "What kind of madness is this!" Two big dudes in blue uniforms ran up to me. On of them held a black stick. He poked it, and two wires shot out at me. They latched onto my neck. They actually tickled, but I had no time for such tomfoolery. "Enough!" I roared as I pulled the wires from my neck. The two guys sort of balked and then ran. Turning around, I saw another glass case. There was an axe in it. An honest to Odin, steel, double headed, battleaxe. I broke the glass and took it. "Now this is more like it!" I grabbed some armor from another case, and I found a helmet too. For some reason, it had horns. I put it on anyway. I took a shield from one of the plastic figurines I had found earlier, and took off down the hall. This place was so quaint. It was so smooth, there was no rough wood, no logs, not even a fire pit. Looking out the window, I saw wagons with no horses. I was like, what the hell is going on here! Where am I? I found a piece of paper on the ground, that had lots of words and pictures on it. It read (in Norwegian so I'm gonna translate here) 'The Oslo Inquirer.' The date was December 21, 2012. The biggest words on the page read: "Apocalypse 2012: Welcome to Ragnarok."

Entry 4

We found a large pit filled with iron. We sent it to the smiths back in Dorming, but the wagon in front lost a wheel when a woodpecker decided to make a nest in it, and the rest crashed into it.  Now there were fourteen wagons full of iron in the middle of woods being assaulted by wolves and some marauding lightbeards that remained on the island to make our existence miserable. We sent in an armed party to get the people out, but we were unable to recover the iron in one trip. It took us a month to get it all to Dorming, because of the big pileup in the road and the marauding wolves and people. We did have a bounty of iron though, which was good. We set to building longships, as many as we could, so we could begin a real conquest of the rest of Scandinavia. The lumberjacks worked day and night to supply us with wood, and they were paid good coin. Then, because some idiot decided that the lumberhouse would be a good place to build a nice, warm bonfire, we lost a quarter of the wood we had cut down. Also,some alchymist began to manufacture explosives, and ending up blowing up half of Paaviken. You might think it was okay because it was deserted, but it wasn't okay because there were lots of supplies we hadn't looted yet. Then the lightbeards came back with a vengeance. There must have been at least a hundred ships there, but we send out fifty rafts, all on fire, and destroyed a quarter of their fleet. The rest went back to Köpingsvik. Everything seemed very bland, for some reason. It felt like all the excitement had gone out of my life. Things were happening as they were before, but it just wasn't the same. I drank two full horns of mead that night because I felt like I needed it. When I went to sleep, I just lay there; my head was fuzzy, but I couldn't fall asleep. I heard the winds howling outside; I knew that winter was coming. The storms had already begun. The snowflakes drifted down through the air, through my open window, onto the floor. But that was strange. I could have sworn I had just closed that window. I didn't see the man until he was right in front of me, his white beard flowing down from his face. He spoke to me. "Oh, how great you think you must be. The first Darkbeard in a thousand generations to ever even have the thought of revolution." Somehow, I just knew. This man was my brother. My lightbeard brother, Agnar, who I had never thought to see again. His cruel eyes glinted in the firelight. But I never lit a fire. He was long gone by the time the flames took the bed. The smoke was billowing out the window; I could barely breathe, but I could not move. One of my servants, Jorry, rushed into the room with a barrel of water. He emptied it over the bed, which put the fire out for a precious few seconds. He grabbed me and tossed me out the window. He began to follow me out when the roof collapsed, pulling him back inside the house and crushing him. Still, I could not move. The whole town was on fire. The lightbeards were everywhere, harassing the civilians, slaying the warriors, burning the houses. I watched my brother kill Jorry's son, Cym, with my axe. My axe. My brain couldn't comprehend what was going on. I was so cold. So cold. Just the cold. Cold.

Entry 3

After we ate all the bacon from Visby, we realized that we forgot to take care of the pigs we already had, and they all died. So now, there was no bacon. I believe they called that the second Great Bacon Shortage of 934. And unlike the Visby one, this one was actually great. By which I mean horrible. For some reason, all the chumps from Paaviken are vegetarian, so we couldn't have taken bacon from them. While we were all cursing the deliciousness of bacon, the lightbeards from Visby sent a raiding party to get their bacon back. Why it took them 3 months to do so, we don't know, but obviously it was already gone. So, instead of taking the bacon we already ate, they tried to burn Dorming down. Again. While fighting them, one of them smashed my sword with a warhammer, but then hit himself in the leg when I dodged his next stroke. Then, someone with a machine crossbow or something shot 15 arrows into my new shield, four of which went into strengthening crossbeams. Out of nowhere, a throwing axe thudded into the cap, dislodging it and making my shield look lame. Of course, right after that, the guy with the crossbow started shooting fire bolts, which promptly caught my shield on fire. After all that destruction, I was left with a battleaxe and a seax. After fighting through a dozen lightbeards, I finally reached the crossbowman, who was winding up for another round of arrows. I picked up his bow and smashed it over my knee. He drew his longsword, but by then I had thrown him down the hill into the bog. I heard a splash and looked down to see an alligator across the swamp and our little bowman trying frantically to free his boots from the mud. I didn't stay to see what happened next. The lightbeards were retreating into the woods, but someone had smashed my sword, and they were gonna pay for that. We chased them all the way back to Visby, and we started smashing things.  Warriors from Paaviken showed up as reinforcements, but the Vikings of Breasemis were close on their tails as well. After realizing that they were horribly outnumbered, (they had been casting people down the Hill of Unloved Sons for centuries), they rounded up the civilians, got on their longships, and sailed away. My guess was that they went to Köpingsvik, but they left their towns full of supplies we could use to build our Darkbeard empire. Here's the third thing you should know about Vikings: Their goal is conquest.

A Rant on Technology

Ahem. I would just like to speak a few words to the people who waste their lives reading this time-killing, life wasting, brain dissolving crap. The role that technology plays in our lives has become so large that we actually rely on it. So, when it stops doing what you tell it to do, you are pretty much screwed. Companies like Microsoft and Apple seem to have a notion that making their operating systems CPU mongers and memory hogs will make the people happy. It does not. Most people don't have great processors, nor do they have large amounts of memory, so when you are trying to edit a video for school and Windows Movie Maker says it ran out of memory so you can't export your video, you're hosed. That's another thing. Compatibility. Technology giants seem to have qualms about "sharing" anything with other companies. Video editors always have to save in their own format, Apple doesn't play .mpg files, Windows Media Player doesn't do .mp4, and especially that stupid port on Apple products. They had to make themselves their own port so that people had to buy it; they couldn't just use it from something they already had. Android does a great job of avoiding that, because they use USB cables. The only thing about that is that the different types of USB is going too fast. USB .5 lasted for about 6 months before they stopped using it and started using miniUSB. Then, Samsung made some crazy ass port that I have only ever seen on a Samsung phone, and HTC has some port that looks like a bracket ( [ ) but can also fit a miniUSB. The worst compatibility issues are between programs that are made by the same company. For example, Windows Movie Maker 2.6 and Windows Live Movie Maker are in no way compatible. They have different file extensions, and the interface is different. There's one thing they CAN agree on though; they are both terrible for anything that is more than a home video of your kid dropping cake all over the floor. I think that everyone should get together and make everything compatible so we wouldn't have these toiling technology troubles.

Entry 2

Before the smiths from Dorming gave me my weapons, they got some mages to inscribe it with magic runes that would keep me safe from harm and whatnot. Every inscription was the same except for one word, and that was the type of weapon. For example, the inscription on my axe read: By the Power of Odin, the Berserker shall rain destruction with this axe and shall never be slain while wielding it. My swords inscription read: By the Power of Odin, the Berserker shall rain destruction with this sword and shall never be slain while wielding it. I'm pretty sure that that would piss the gods off more than make them help me, but whats done was done and the weapons themselves were pretty awesome. The week after my weapons were gifted to me during my Ṳberparty (Ṳberjarl party), the lightbeards raided us again. I thought we were winning, until afterwards when I turned around Dorming was on fire and the ships were floating away. We managed to row out and get one of them, which we used to chase after the second one, but they had set that one on fire and we couldn't salvage it. Now I was getting mad. My shield was in splinters, one of them had ripped my tunic all the way down the front (it was my favorite tunic) and they stole the smoked salmon I was going to have for dinner. That night, I took a party of my best warriors to Visby. We snuck into their smokehouse, which was filled, top to bottom, with hickory smoked, honey glazed, maple coated bacon. There was some ham and stuff too, but we were there for the bacon. Each one of us had large burlap sack, which we stuffed full of bacon. Bacon bacon bacon. We cleaned out the whole smokehouse and left them a few cabbages to remember us by. Then we left. After I treated the colonies to a feast of bacon and mead, we went back to Visby to see what was going on. We emerged from the forest to see the entire town in disarray. There were people with signs that said things like "Kill the Darkbeards!" and "Wheres the bacon?" Apparently some of them had some crazy notion that we had taken their bacon. Which we had. The guys who were supposed to have been guarding the smokehouse was being chased by an angry mob, with the classic torches and pitchforks. I believe they called that the Great Bacon Shortage of 934. Of course, the shortage only applied to Visby, and it wasn't really that great. We were feasting on that bacon for 3 months! Here's another thing you need to know about Vikings: THEY NEED THEIR MEAT!

A Post about Posts

Now, this is probably going to end being being a mixture of my life in the colonies of Dorming and Breasemis and some other random carp that I will talk about in a random manner of speaking. For your clarity, I will name everything that has anything to do with my earlier life as an "entry". Everything else will depend on what the post is on. Good. Now you wont be confused.

Vikings DON'T have horns. (Entry 1)

Hello, insignificant peon! My name is Ragar Bjornsven the Berserker, First of His Name, Ṳberjarl of Dorming and Breasemis, but you can just speak my name as Ragar. Sorry about my inability to simplify my English, I was raised on the idea of use as many words as possible to a) confuse your adversary b) not be able to be misunderstood by your adversary and c) none of the above.  Anyway, enough about me, lets talk about me! I was raised in a small Viking hut in a small Viking town called Visby, near Paaviken, in the year... oh bother, what year is it? Oh, whatever. I was always rejected from everyone because of my dark beard. It is widely known that Vikings and other inhabitants of Scandinavia have blond hair, but not me. No, I was the genetic mutation of the family. Now, after I was cast down the Hill of Unloved Sons, I went on to find that all the other darkbeards who have been cast down that hill had started a small colony! It was called Dorming. I quickly rose in that because of my epic fighting abilities and became Jarl of the Colony. Then, we heard about another colony that was created by the darkbeards of Paaviken, called Breasemis. We joined forces, but their Jarl drank underbrewed mead and died. So I assumed control of their colony as well, and like an Admiral is a General with two ships, I became Ṳberjarl, a Jarl with two towns, or ships, or whatever. As Ṳberjarl, I led constant raids on the lightbeard towns that cast us down like sails on an oarship, and we actually had enough food to get us through winter. Of course, the lightbeards didn't take that lightly (ha ha, get it?) and raided us back, but we left the rest of the old Jarl's underbrewed mead in the tavern and they took it. We didn't see them for a while. Now, the people from Breasemis made great food and mead, but they didn't have any skill in metalworking. My brothers from Dorming, however, made the best armor in all of Scandinavia! They had iron imported from Trondheim and by the beard of Odin, could they smelt it! The first sword I got was a longsword at 66 inches, which I strapped on my left hip. The next thing I got was a battleaxe, double headed and epically awesome. I also got a seax (utility knife) and an iron helm. Here is the one thing, if ever, you need to know about Vikings: THEY DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE HORNS!!!!!!!!!!!!