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!!!!!!!!!!!!