I didn't originally think too much about the new incoming president of Dartmouth College. I'm one of those alumni that just doesn't see much cause to dwell on the past, aside from giving a little bit each year to the school. But as I learn more about the new president Jim Yong Kim, I find myself absolutely inspired. I'm inspired by his service to humanity and inspired by his desire to assist in bringing forth a new generation to bring greater justice and equity to this poor and troubled world.

After listening to him speak, here and at other points, I can't help but be captivated by this humble servant. He makes me want to make more of myself as a Dartmouth Alumni and reminds me even more as to why I'm trying to do what I'm trying to do. Sometimes I wish that I was in the trenches healing the sick, liberating the captive and protecting the vulnerable, but I've come to realize that there is a way that storytellers like me can serve humanity as well. Like president Kim, we can serve to inspire others to pour out their lives in service of humanity.

It may not be the same story, but I hope that one day, I can be able to tell a kind of tale like the one that Kim tells in his speech myself...

I guess I've rested enough. It's time to pick up the pen again.

So, when I walked into my kitchen this afternoon, to get a glass of water, I discovered a couple ants in the sink. My heart immediately started palpitating. If they had scouts in our territory, that means that they could find one of our caches. I quickly dispatched the scouts with brute force and then checked the cabinet to make sure that a column hadn't made it's way in there. I took a breath of relief... no ants inside, our storehouse was safe.

Then I turned around and my horror begin. I realized that they weren't raiding our supply depot, but they were raiding our trash! The ants were small enough to make it through the tiny crack in our sealed standing trash bin and an enormous column was marching from behind the refridgerator to the trash bin and back. My guess is that they discovered the now pungent banana peels inside. To think, a comic foil for a human is so desired by these little creatures as a food source.

There were hundreds of ants and only one me. Despite my immense size advantage, the blunt power of my hands and feet were not guaranteed to having stopping power on this micro army. I would not play Goliath today. I knew I had to act quickly, while a large portion of their force was out. I needed to prevent them from gaining more supplies. I grabbed my first artillery to break their column: my vacuum cleaner. I picked this weapon first because I wanted to sweep up any supplies they had gathered and remove any other temptations from the carpet while I assaulted them.

I quickly sucked up several hundred ants in the first action, but the ants were dogged, they stuck to their line and for every hundred I killed, a hundred more would emerge from the bin and from behind the fridge. Then I remembered a little fact about ant operations: they use a chemical to designate their trail. I suddenly felt a great sadness in my heart. It was time for chemical warfare. With sadness and urgency mixed together, I rushed to the sink and pulled out my supplies, bleach and water. I quickly mixed a potent solution, one that, at first, burned my eyes. Once the solution was more tolerable I grabbed a towel, soaked it and started dropping large drops of bleach solution on the column.

It was horrible. I could imagine the ants curling up in horror and dying as the liquid chemical burning agent fell on them from above, scorching their bodies and destroying their pheromone trail. But I did what I had to do, it was either them or us. I quickly dispatched the weapon all the way to the trash bin, leaving a wake of chemically burned ant corpses. Then I reached the trash bin. Fortunately, these were things that I didn't need anymore, but were of desperate importance to building the ant base camp. And it was their first incursion--I needed to stop their supplies quickly.

With some regret, I started to squeeze the cloth within my hands, unleashed burning chemical doom upon the lid of the trash can, quickly scattering their army. I didn't let a single ant survive the surface of the can as the bleach solution swept across the surface of the bin. Squeezing harder, the liquid fury poured through the ant-sized cracks in the bin, leaving no way for the ants to know the direction to go and a large trail of corpses. The surface of the trash bin was won.

But, I knew deep within the bin, large core of their army remained. While they were cut off from communications and reinforcements with their base, I suspected several hundred more infantry would be present inside. With an even heavier heart, I begin preparations to do what I most feared. I started building a weapon of mass destruction. I knew that I had to be swift while the ants weren't coming out of the bin, so I took my bleach solution, currently in an old plastic bottle and picked the whole thing up. I stepped over to the trash bin and opened the lid. I was not prepared for what I'd see. There were hundreds upon hundred of ants swarming the interior. Far more than I expected. Confused and in panic from their great losses earlier, they were scrambling to find a direction from which to escape the bin, but there were surrounded on all fronts by the chemical weapon.

My heart fell as my hand grasped the bottle, shaking as it began to tip. I imagine the ants weren't expecting such a terrifying loss. I watched as the fiery smelling weapon hit their holdout. Drop after drop suddenly became a tsunami of acrid doom. The large scale chemical weapon quickly swept across the empty tea bags and takeout boxes. It channeled through all the soft contents of the can and I watched as the ants were washed away, burning and curling as they encountered the fatal solution. A second war quickly emerged as I let loose the weapon, the battle between the rotting banana's stench and the pure anger of bleach. I knew that once the bleach silenced the banana my weapon had penetrated the ants' last stronghold.

With only some of the contents of my bottle of toxic death unleashed, I suddenly found a horrifying quiet had settled upon the war ground of the trash bin. I peered in, with only the sharp smell of bleach coming from within. The hundreds of ants had been swept deeper into the garbage bag. Hundreds of ant corpses dotted the surface and the few stragglers that managed to survive the initial onslaught quickly encountered their own puddles of fate. It was a tragic scene, for they were only fighting for their nascent colony, a colony I could not permit to seize ground in my territory. My victory was a solemn and quiet affair. There were no cheers or parades. I still had work to do.

Security is of foremost importance after such a destructive battle. While a large portion of their core army had been shattered, the scattered remnants would be even more dangerous. No longer an obvious army, but lone agents spying and scouting for new weaknesses. I began the task of leaving no weakness for them to find, mopping the kitchen floor to eradicate any communication lines they might have opened and remove any bits of food that might draw their attention. Similarly, I vacuumed the living room and cleaned off all kitchen surfaces, taking the time to ensure that obvious food particles remained.

The war is not over. Their queen lives and strikes from her rebel base in the cracks behind our refrigerator. But my territory is mostly secure and the humanity dwelling here will strive to leave no desire for this queen to stay in the short term. In the long term, my intelligence team is preparing a counterstrike upon their base. I will poison their queen, if necessary, by making their infantry unwitting mutineers. But for now, I live with the eerie peace following a brutal end to war.

I started a new blog today. In particular, I started a new blogging paradigm that will eventually lead to me phasing out this blog altogether, but this will happen slowly.

The new paradigm goes something like this:

• Individual blogs for each major subject: Before, I'd put everything into one single blog, leading to a rather broad series of divergent posts. There was little to no thematic unity to the blog. So now, I'm making a blog for music, a blog for movies, a blog for games, etc.
• Overall unity between blogs: It's a work in progress of course, so the titles and URLs will likely change. I'm going to try to give some sort of overall thematic unity, both in appearance and in naming to all of my different blogs. I'm also changing it all to become more anonymous, reverting to my old gamer handle: refresh_daemon as the poster.
• Blogger: I shopped around the different systems and while they have their ups and downs, I decided to make Blogger my primary blogging platform. It helps that it's integrated with Google and it has a rather simple interface, but has a lot of options. It also doesn't drown me in too many community features like Xanga does. I like that it's all blog-centric.

I don't know if that means that I'm going to completely close up shop here at Xanga. Despite myself, I still find it interesting to read blogs here, in particular, the blogs of the people that I'm already subscribed to, despite the steep dropoff in active writers. I also still enjoy hitting one of the featured posts now and then for a read and possibly a comment. So I don't think that means that this site will go dark.

Still, it means that new content will slowly end up moving to my Blogger blogs.

The first blog is up. It will by my gaming blog.