The Last Stand of the Western Desperado

They’re coming for me, I know they are. I have to get out of here. I have to.

His hand shifts nervously under his poncho as he watches one of the bartenders eye the other, reaching under the bar for something. Odds were more than even it was a gun, probably a sawed off 12 gauge. Might ’cause some property damage, maybe even take out some of the innocents just wantin’ a beer at the cantina, but they don’t much worry about things like that this side of the border. As long as you’re paid up with the right people you can do as damn well as you please, including amputating a guy from the waist up. It’s that look on his face that really gives it away though. Banditos, mexicans, everyone born south of the boarder gets that look when they’re about to kill. A dangerous ferocity in them that gives them this kind of tunnel vision and something resembling invincibility. But something like, ain’t close enough.

The Westerner draws his twin rugers and moves to his right all at once firing a couple rounds off before the shotgun can even get to waist level. The two bartenders fly back against the wall as the The Westerner slides across one of the tables and lands hard on the dusty wood floors.

Landed too hard. Dislocated something, shoulder’s on fire. Gotta fight past it. There’s more of ’em in the back, and some of the customers might look to take matters in their own hands.

He’s not far off the score as two of the customers take to throwing their beer pitchers, while a third much younger and brasher than the rest draws a pistol of his own. Two to the chest without hesitation; The child may have been too young to know this, but you never point a gun at someone unless you plan to kill them. More employees from the back counter, reaching for the sawed off, but stumbling over each other trying to grab it.

Your mistake.

He doesn’t risk it, he unloads what remains of his ammunition into them watching them fly back, one into the kitchen, and one against the wall in the corner behind the bar. But he’s not out of the frying pan, he can hear them outside and he knows he’s in the fire. Mexican army is organizing outside, screaming something in mexican he can’t understand. He’d been worried they’d find him, he did his best to blend in, but a gunfight in an otherwise peaceful cantina was bound to attract attention. No ammo to speak of he takes up the sawed off shotgun and chuckles to himself as he sees a second holstered in a docker’s clutch. He’ll make his stand.

It ends here. Now. Either they’re going down or I am.

---

CRAZED MAN CAUSES DISTURBANCE AT CRANBROOK TACO TIME CANTINA

Customers at the Taco Time Cantina had themselves a brief scare with an armed gunman – thankfully he chose mostly harmless air-soft guns as the weapons of choice. It’s uncertain what prompted the assailant, one Greg McConnell, to go into this violent outburst. Several eyewitnesses say he seemed disoriented, unsure or unaware of his surroundings. Constable Falkner was the one who made the arrest, and exited the building covered in sour cream and salsa, rumored to have been shot from the large guns used to dispense the condiments on tacos. While no serious injuries were sustained, Cranbrook Crown Prosecutor Bill Henderson says “We know he’s commited a crime, obviously, we’re just not sure what we’re charging Mr. McConnell with yet.” Longtime friend and room-mate of the 25 year old says “This doesn’t surprise me at all.” saying “He’s always been off his [mind] it was only a matter of time before he grabbed a condiment and did some serious damage.”

Tod Demchuk – Cranbrook Daily Townsman

Another Writing Thing.

“The once and legendary Captain Nemo,” the man standing at the foot of the docking ramp says smugly, “my my how the mighty have fallen.”
“General Victor Bragg, this is Justin Ball also known as Bear.”
“Bear?”
“EDF is no more, so neither is Captain Nemo.” Bear answers coolly.
“Well that’s well and good then, because this is my station, and EDF has no jurisdiction here. You’ll remove your weapons and check them in with the port authority.”
Derek and the rest begin to unstrap their weapons, but Justin merely crosses his arms over his chest. “No.”
“I beg your pardon?” The two security guards that had presumably escorted Victor to the docking bay twitch noticeably. “You should know better than anyone how this works ‘Bear’. You disbanded us remember? Left us to fend for ourselves out here and create our own little worlds. Well in my world there are no weapons of any kind, and since I don’t owe you a good god damn thing you will leave your guns here, or I will have you shot where you stand.”
Bear doesn’t move, he doesn’t even flinch when the two guards raise their weapons slowly, aprehensively, to level on his head. “You served on the Madripor, during the Wright Brother’s incident.”
“… Yes, what of it?”
“It was me who saved your life all those years ago, but putting my own on the line. You owe me and my guns your life, your cooperation, and your respect.”
“You arrogant son of a-”
Bear walks forward until he’s less than an inch from Victor and speaks in a low voice, “You know who I am, you know what I can do. We came for information and we’re going to get it, so now you get to choose weather or not we get that information by tearing you and your little space station apart.” Both men stare at each other coldly. Victor had planned on not being the one to stand down, but even he can hear the nerves of his men rattle.
“Fine, let them have their guns.” Bear turns and looks at the others with a nod. “but I promise you Justin, Bear, Captain Nemo whatever you call yourself… Word one that isn’t prime and in line on my station and I blow you and yours to kingdom come.”
“Agreed.” He decides he had to give him that. He’d already trampled on the man’s ego more than he really wanted, any more and he might not be at all inclined to help them out, even if he’s one of the people who betrayed him. “We need information.”
“Good for you.” Victor rolls his eyes as he’s walking away.
“And the sooner we get it, the sooner we can get out of your hair.”
Victor stops and looks Bear and his crew over for a moment as if weighing a decision, “Fine, I have other business to attend to. Be in my office in one hour.” With that he walks away, his security guards right behind him.
Bear turns to Jay, “Get ‘er fueled and buy whatever you need for repairs.”
“You worried?” Steve asks quietly keeping and eye on Victor and his guards as they walk away.
“Not sure, but I get the feeling we’ll be leaving in a hurry.”
“You don’t think Victor’s the one who sold us out do you?” Derek asks with a doubting glance.
“I don’t know, but he’s obviously got some problems with me and with EDF so I’m not ruling it out. Jay you have the con, hail us if anything goes wrong, grab Jamie in engineering if you leave the boat. Steve you’re with Derek, Madison you’re with me, nobody walks around alone, understood?” They all nod in reply, “Good, see you guys in an hour.”

I Write at Weird Times on Occasion…

“Oh my God, that’s it!” Justin is hurled out of his dream and into the office he had fallen asleep in. His crew looks at him after catching their breath, startled by the sudden outburst.
“What is it?” Derek asks sounding on edge, probably also in need of a few hours of shut eye.
“The reason the Kaldel want Madison so badly… Of course!”
“What? How?” Steve asks incredulously, “You just figured this out while you were napping?”
Justin bolts up out of his chair and runs out of his office, through the cargo bay, and onto the bridge, “What were we doing three years ago?”
“Three years ago?… The Vergan Temple incident?” Derek asks.
“The Vergan were dying, some virus or another implanted itself in to their technology and it was killing them slowly, they needed some way to purge the virus.” Steve clarifies.
“Yeah… yeah, I think… I think I remember,” Madison chimes, also following Justin, Derek, Steve, and Jay onto the bridge. A few images, black and white and blurry like before flash in her mind… a giant temple built from strange metal… lights everywhere. “I was there, right?”
“You were, practically everyone was.” Justin continues as he sits at the ship’s helm cycling up the Telthan’s systems, “The Vergan were the architects of most of the technology that ran EDF in it’s hay-day, and still the backbone for most of the computer systems that run our ships at present.”
“So… What? The Kaldel are pissed that she helped save them? Doesn’t make any sense, why not go after all of us? Besides, what do they care about the Vergan?” Steve is also cycling up the systems as he takes a seat in front of the secondary flight panel.
“They don’t care about the Vergan.”
“What do they care about then?” Derek asks impatiently.
Justin sighs after completing the launch prep, “The USS Adriatic was given to me after I saved the Vergan home planet from getting blown to kingdom come…”
“Oh no…” Madison mutters quietly putting her hand over her mouth.
“…but part in parcel with that ship was it’s unanticipated AI, call sign Adriana.” Justin swivels his chair to look at everyone, “They didn’t want to kill Madison because she might be important to me… They wanted her dead because she was the only one in the comms room when Adriana helped purge the system three years ago while she was still hiding in the depths of space.”
Derek slumps down into the Captain’s chair his hand over his eyes, “She was looking at the star map when Adriana made contact.”
“Madison would have seen where we were receiving the transmission from. She’s the only one who knows where the Adriatic is, and they want Madison out of the way so we can’t find her.”

---

This one came to me a few days ago and I’ve finally fleshed out this section. EDF stands for Earth Defense Forces. It was this sci-fi adventure thing I cooked up with I was in grade 10 or so. My life was relatively boring so I used to imagine I went on these missions for this clandestine organization that helped protect the earth from countless armies all over the universe. Lots of fun.

Anyways, bed time now.

17,781 Words Later

See, you might be under the impression that I’ve been lazy. That because I haven’t updated my blog in over a month (and a real update a month or so before that) that I have fallen behind in making sure to be putting my words to paper (or keyboard as it were… with some monitor thrown in there as well) but you would be wrong.

Instead I’ve been writing a novel.

That’s right. A fucking novel.

I’ve probably mentioned this before but in case I haven’t my sister, who is actually my ex-girlfriend’s sister, convinced me just before Christmas to actually get off my ass and publish something, especially since I had the manuscripts for two full novels in my house. Well the manuscripts were shit to say the least, but the ideas… now those… those were golden. I had actually managed to form quite the compelling story. Unfortunately I managed to bury it under mounds of horse shit. And by horse shit I mean really atrocious writing. Broken sentences, sentence fragments, using “the” when I meant “they” or “Him” (you’ve probably seen that a few times on here… but let me tell you how annoying it is for me to be re-reading this potential gem only to find “the road after they with haste unseen”).

It’s been going well. I have to say reading some pretty helpful writing tips from my all time favourite author Stephen King has been a big help. Now if I can manage to stop dipping into the world of the Gunslinger I’d be all set.

I really didn’t intend to. I had no idea that what I was writing all those years ago could be explained with “Gunslinger” and “Ka” (though my translation of the word Ka is slightly different…. for him it’s fate, for me it’s God’s whisper) it just kind of happened. Maybe it’s something I’ll work out, I might be able to come up with my own… thing, but for the time being I have made sure to credit him at the outset of my novel.

Hell even if I don’t manage to work it into my own thing, he at least deserves a fond thank you.

Outside of writing my novel thing are going fairly well. I’ve been having to make a lot of big decisions lately, and I’ve had some pretty heavy stuff dropped in my lap. It’s hard to think of where to pick up, and in all honesty I’m pretty bagged, so I’ll leave it at this and with  any luck I’ll get around to updating some time this yea- week.

/Beware The Bear
Quote:
Greg, after I got a standing ovation for my rendition of ‘Dancing Queen’ originally performed by ABBA officially upstaging him at the bar “You can be my wingman any time.”
Me: “Bullshit, you can be mine.”

Ultra Gay, with Bleach!

The title of this post comes from the party I had hear the other weekend. Sarah asked for an ‘h’ on the end of her name, so to annoy me so did other people. So when Jon asked I changed his name to “Ultra Gay”. It’s like tide, only there is more sperm involved and you’re left smelling like a summer breeze. And some bowel problems.

Among other things.

I realize it’s been a while and I don’t have an excuse. Kept saying “I should write something” and then never got around to doing it. My computer dying hasn’t helped that situation out much either I suppose.

That having been said I have two pretty exciting pieces of news. 1) I have purchased a new computer (the first in 6 years) and it was supposed to arrive today. Dell Customer service guys can suck my schlong. 2) I have started my own business.

You know what would suck? If some random stalker got my phone number from that……. there, now it’s blacked out. And no, my business card does not really say “OSTBear” on it. I’m a goof, not retarded.

I got tired of my previous employer ripping people off left right and center, got tired of computer stores treating customers like idiots, got tired of hearing people charged $50 just to be told the printer is broken. God has been puting this on my heart for a while. And I told him if he wanted me to, he just had to let me know. And he knows how angry I get when someone takes advantage of someone else… so I started on the path.

It’s scary, and awesome all rolled into one big ball.

A Green Ball. hehehe.

What, they can’t all be Ultra Gay :P.

There is one unfortunate hitch that I’ve run into, and that is my land lady is not paying her taxes. She pitched a fit about me starting my own business saying I couldn’t apply for the license because then the government might figure out she has people living here. Major problem.

Of course it doesn’t help we’re constantly butting heads over her Marijuana problem. Thankfully, all of her getting stoned has left her retarded and she’s not smart enough to realize she can just kick me out. Well… she can’t really. If she does without cause I’m pretty sure the RCMP would appreciate photos of her habbit, and the government would appreciate documentation of the people taking up residence here.

For those of you who don’t know me well enough, I’ll tell you something about me. NEVER go to war with me. EVER. I fight tooth and nail and even if I lose you won’t feel at all like you’ve won.

But hopefully I can get something soon. I NEED to get something soon. I need to get an add in the paper and start up my business, get the (green)ball rolling asap.

Anyways, I have to write something in Vana’Diel Tales as well so I’m going to head’er.

/Beware the Bear.

PS: For anyone who’s a Nickleback fan, check out their new CD. AWESOME SAUCE.

On a Semi Unrelated Note, but not Really Because this is my Blog…

I wrote something…

“The Sacrifice” – By OSTBear

          He can feel her warmth as he gently presses his hand against her, an illogical fear that she might break under his touch. He runs his hand over the smooth and almost soft surface, amazed at her vibrance even in this dark, damp, and humid place. He realizes as he moves his hand along her side that this appendage is leading him on, urging him to continue to her entrance. His body yearns for the feel of her underneath him and in his nose and beneath his eyes. The knuckles on his hand turn white as they grip her, preparing to enter her embrace once more.
          “If you step foot on that ship,” a voice, strong and ancient, echoes from his left, “you’ll never want to leave.” A man, much like the first but with more time folded into his skin, smiles stepping forward ever so slowly into the faint light of the lamp hanging from above. “And what would Alicia think?”
          He grins a mournful grin and releases the railing, taking a step back. “I miss it Dad. I miss it so much I can hear her calling me some times.” His voice begins to tremble and his body begins to quiver as he releases the railing of the gangway. It’s been like this for a while now; the medicine men call it ‘redeeming’ when the body aches so much for something that it shakes. But this redeeming is normally reserved for the weed, not for this.
          “She calls to me too,” the older man bows his head, and leaning heavily on his cane, “good times, bad, it doesn’t matter. Adrianna sings her song and I long to feel her warmth and the wind in my hair.”
          “Men like us were never meant to live on solid ground.” He sighs moving toward his father offering his arm. His father takes it without protest, something he used to give plenty of. Always independent and the source of strength for others; after the fall that obliterated his knee he found it difficult to adjust to relying on his friends rather than having them rely on him.
          “Perhaps not, but we were always meant to be men who serve the people. They have asked us to remain with our feet firmly planted on the ground.”
          “Then they ask too much of us Father.” The statement, full of irony, personifies their woe. To ask a man forged by adventure and danger and the four corners of the world to give that up is the same as asking an average man to take it on. Every day they feel the burden, and every day it kills them a little more. “I long to teach my son of our family and what it means to be born into it. It is all I have ever thought about since he came into this world, all that I ever wanted for him, and now the people insist I must deny myself of this? Deny my son of his heritage?”
          “I remember,” his father, ever conscious of his son’s emotional pitch, tries to calm him. “I remember when you first started to build the Tyconderosa. You were always dreaming, even when you were barely old enough to stay on your feet you were dreaming. It didn’t change after you built her either; faster, higher, more maneuverable your ship didn’t go a month without some kind of modification. People view us as masters of the gun, the sword, and the sky but they almost never remember that we created and maintained our sky chariots. You were the best engineer our family had ever seen, but in some ways I think that did you a disservice.”
          “How so?”
          “I can remember when you redesigned the engines on Adrianna. Wasn’t more than five minutes after they were installed in the ship that you were on to the next thing to be improved.” His father laughs to himself.
          “I don’t understand father.”
          “You could never sit still for long enough to enjoy anything you had done. It was always off to the next thing, never any time taken for the present, for the world around you. Always the future. Always what could be never what has been or what is.” He looks admonished as his father attempts to pass on this wisdom, which brings a smile to his father’s face.
          “I’m… I’m sorry-”
          “My son.” His father stops and turns his son towards him holding him by the upper arms. “I am ever so proud of you. Being mindful of the future is not the worst thing a man could do. Your family will forever be served by it. But it is important son that you take the time to enjoy what you have in front of you once in a while.” He embraces his son then, and the boy feels his father’s love.
          “James? Edward? Are you down here?” Drucilla Nemo calls down after her husband and son.
          “We’ll be up in a moment.” Edward calls back with a smile.
          “Well hurry, supper’s getting cold!” James smiles at the sound of his mother’s voice, thick with love much like his father’s.
          “Come then Captain Nemo, we wouldn’t want supper to get cold.” James smiles offering his arm to his father.
 He takes his son’s arm and smiles warmly, “No Captain Nemo, we most certainly would not.”

On Life and Consequences

… It has been a really long time since I have posted, and as best as I can figure there’s a lot of stuff you’ve missed.

Firstly, and this is in no particular order, Chipmunk and I are no longer dating. There are lots of reasons why, but most of them are personal and I’m really not wanting to get into them here; My life is an open book to you, but when it involves other people… well…. It’s not very fair to them is it?

I suppose actually that’s a bit hypocritical isn’t it? I’ve complained about other people on here… meh. It’s my Blog, and I don’t feel like going over it here. That’s the magic of being a writer, no one can make you write what you don’t want to.

Unless you’re Stephanie Meyer…[Insert retarded romance bit here]

I will say that the relationship ended about as amicably as it possibly could have, and I was the one who broke it off. I don’t regret the decission, I maintain it was the right thing to do, but I do regret that that’s what it had to come to. For all my ability as a futurist, I didn’t see this part coming.

My Brother got married. It was incredible. Him and Caos are so happy and I can’t express how happy I am for them. The wedding had it’s glitches, but the sheer magnitude of love everyone expressed throughout the cerimony and reception shadowed all of it (You’re right Bro, I really do have the best laugh). I got fairly close with Caos’ family as well while I was up for the wedding, turns out her younger brother’s a big photography nut, and her other brother shares my sense of humor along with the cousins (All Aboard the Fail Boat!).

Gaming has kind of fallen off. With a couple of us entering into a full time school schedule, one person leaving for school elsewhere, and another guy that nobody fucking likes… well we’re kind of tied for time. It was good though. I’ve made some really great friends and managed to get two jobs because of the people I’ve met. I pray that God keeps them in my path and that I might mean as much to them as they do to me.

Through random happenstance I discovered that I have become a leader, and that my Brother supports this and has no quams with moving asside for me to do my thing. At his Bachelor party / yearly camp out our next door neighbor campsite had some problems with a sevearly angry/drunk person. I wasn’t heroic or anything, no jumping into a fight, but I did jump in to handle the situation. I’ve never felt God’s presence in me like I felt it then. Got to lead me my Beyonders, and damn was that exciting.

I’m writing again, a full novel now. Of course I still haven’t written what comes before the novel… which… is bad. Well maybe not bad but it’s not good either. Ideas move through my head so quickly that if I don’t find time to get them written down my brain immediately jumps to the next thing… It happens.

I’ve also decided that I am in fact going to take a vacation this year. Two of them in fact. The first to see my Sisters in Calgary and Lethbridge so I can have some time with them (since they both came down here and tried to make time for me). The second will be to see my Brother and his wife on the coast. He needs him a visiting.

And lastly, I discovered I have a saved post regarding time travel. Gotta remember to finish that and post it. Looks pretty fun.

Well that’s it for me, I’ll see yah when I see yah

/Beware the Bear

On Being a Writer

I should preface this by telling you I am not a writer, rather I do write. I think in order to be classed as a writer, at the very least I should have something published (by someone other than me).

But I do write. I write short stories, novels, poems, campaigns for all sorts of role playing games, and I’m pretty sure I wrote a story for a video game once (one of those generic make your own RPG things). I don’t know why I constantly feel the need to write something, I just know I can’t be idle for a more than a few seconds without my imagination creating an adventure of massive proportions. Some times its as simple as hearing a random conversation and building it into a spy story while I walk down the street; sometimes I see something and I decide that this particular item may be a key to the galaxy’s safety; and other times I read something and my own adventure takes shape.

In the course of this happening I don’t just create adventures and characters, I create worlds. The Legend of Captain Nemo, Heroes, Heroes: Comic, Flamethrower, The Legend of Bearson, A Gunslingers Tale, The Iron Knight, House 341, The Avenger, The Avengers (not the comic book), SWAT, A Detective’s Story, Dark Veracities, Earth Defense Forces, Spies…. Admittedly some of the worlds I’ve created have…. borrowedaspects, and some blatantly take place in someone else’s world… the stories are all original.

So I figured, why not write a story where all of these universes converge… Yes this sounds like a great idea. I can barely manage to write something coherently half the time let alone complete something.

So… yeah. That’s my writing project. I might put up a page about the stuff I’m writing or have written… we’ll see.

I’m Alive

Did anybody see Pearl Harbour? Say what you want about Ben Afleck, but that was an amazing movie and I think he was a fantastic Dare Devil. On a further note, I love that part where Ben Afleck writes to his woman and it opens with “This is the first I could get out word… I’m alive.”

Anyways. I’ve been busy as you might have guessed. Exams and final projects and work and a few hours for sleep here and there. That having been said I also kind of forgot I had a blog really, just being busy doing stuff. So as an update…

I’ve joined WCHL hockey (http://www.wchlhockey.com) as the General Manager of the Florida Panthers. I’m hoping to have a webpage up and running for my team, and when I get around to it I’ll let you know.

My Girlfriend and I had our 1 year anniversary on March 26th. It was getting rocky for a while there, admittedly, but we’ve made it, and now that exams are over we’re working on strengthening what have. And now she is reminding me that I need to give one of her teddy bears a story. And I’m also told I’m not allowed to write it here.

I’ve thrown myself into another writing project (like I don’t already have enough of them on the go) and I might have some stuff to say about that soon.

For now though, I’ll leave you with this and then go on my way. Have a good one!

ERROR: It’s Not My Fault

I don’t know what’s up with the spacing on that last post, I honestly don’t. I was editing it and then when I saved it the spacing was gone.

I’ve tried to put it back twice now, but it’s not workin’ out.

I’ll figure it out another day.