Poem: Haiku

I'm writing Haiku
Haiku will get me good grade
Haiku is real great

Free write: How to Prepare a Usable Online Team in Pokemon

The first step in creating your team is choosing an uber (an overpowered pokemon) to base your team's typing off of. Most ubers are dragon type. You can find a list of ubers at serebii.net. Once you have your uber, you assemble a team of six legal pokemon, this should include one fire type, one water type, and one dark ghost or psychic type. Try to avoid using two pokemon of the same type, it can create a major disadvantage against some opponents. Coordinating a perfectly typed team will take some experimentation. Your game's battle institute is a great place to try out different pokemon.

Once you have your pokemon decided, it is time to choose their move pool. A pokemon can have up to four moves. They should have one to two attack moves of it's own type, one to two attack moves of another type, and one strategy move. An attack move of a pokemon's own type is called a STAB move. It does 1.5X more damage than moves of other types. They should have an attack move of another type to avoid a situation where all of the pokemon's attacks are "not very effective". The strategy move is optional but recommended, a pokemon can be based purely off of its attacks, but it is very useful to have a stat boosting move for tight situations. There are two kinds of attacks: physical attacks and special attacks. A pokemon has a statistic for each of these. It is advised to have only  kind of attack, based off of the pokemon's statistics. There are three different ways to teach a pokemon a move: level up, egg, and machine. Teaching a pokemon a move through "level up" is very basic, simply train your pokemon to the level that it learns the desired move. Teaching a move through machine is also fairly simple; in your bag, you'll find a pocket labeled "HMs and TMs". This stands for "Hidden Moves and Technical Machines". Simply activate the machine and if your pokemon can learn it then select the desired pokemon. Egg moves are slightly more difficult to teach. To teach an egg move, you must find a male pokemon with the desired move that matches the egg group of the pokemon you want to hatch, breed it with the female version of the pokemon you want to hatch and the baby will know the egg move (I will cover breeding mechanics later).

Once you have selected all of your pokemon and their move pools it is time to move on to nature breeding. Each pokemon has one out of twenty-five natures. Each nature either leaves statistics where they are or raises one statistic by ten percent while lowering another by ten percent. The ten percent may not seem like much, but it makes quite a difference in battle. Decide which nature is best for your pokemon and begin breeding. The easiest way to breed is to put the pokemon that you want to hatch into daycare with a Ditto. Get on your bike and after about two-hundred-fifty steps, you can pick up an egg from the day-care man. Put a pokemon with the ability Flame Body in your party to make the egg hatch faster. Ride your bike around with the egg until it hatches. When it hatches, there is a four percent chance that the baby will have the nature you want. If it does not, repeat the entire process until you hatch a baby of the correct nature.

Once you've hatched the pokemon with the right nature, it's time to start EV training. Each pokemon has six different stats: HP, attack, defense, special attack, special defense, and speed. EV stands for Effort Value. Each pokemon can have a maximum of five-hundred-ten EV's and a maximum of two-hundred-fifty-five EV's on a single stat. The best way to go is to find the pokemon's best two stats and put two-hundred-fifty-two on each of them. Four EV's bring a stat up by one. I know what you're thinking "Allen! two-hundred-fifty-five isn't divisible by four!" and you are correct about that. That is why you cap it at two-hundred-fifty-two. Otherwise, three of those EV's go to waste. To get EV's on a certain stat you have to battle certain pokemon. For example, when you beat a frillish, you get one special defense EV, or when you beat a basculin, you get two speed EV's. There are short-cuts to collecting EV's. Such as, power items and drugs. Power items are to be held by the pokemon while in battle. After each battle that the pokemon that is holding the power item, is granted four EV's of a certain stat. Drugs can be fed to a pokemon to increase a certain stat. Each drug increases a stat's EV's by ten. However, one pokemon can take a maximum of ten drugs and drugs are very expensive.

Once you've gotten to this point, you've completed well over two week's worth of work and the hard part is over. All that's left to do is give each pokemon a held item. The best items are one-time-use-only. However, When used online, these items are recycled after each battle. Items can do anything from cure a pokemon of a status ailment to increase a pokemon's resistance to certain types of attacks to restore a pokemon's HP. When battling online, two pokemon in your team are not allowed to hold the same item. Items should be coordinated as diligently as moves.

Battling online is much different from in-game battles. Online, you are allowed to use three of your six pokemon. Before selecting your three, you are shown your opponents six pokemon. Only held items are allowed to be used online. online battles are significantly more difficult than in-game battles. In fact, a good online battler is said to win one of every four matches. Good luck and nobody probably bothered reading this.

Poem: I Want to be a Tree

I'm supposed to know what I want to be

I do

I want to be a tree

I also want to be a pilot but I'd much rather be a tree

A pilot can go anywhere: left, right, up, or down

But a tree is a tree and cannot move

A tree stays in the same place for its entire life and still finds reasons to grow

A pilot has to move on

A pilot has to leave home

I'm happy at home

If I become a tree I can stay at home forever

I can make friends with birds

But birds come and birds go

A bird can go anywhere: left, right, up, or down

So I'll become a pilot

I'll become a great and happy pilot

But I want to be a tree

Short Story: The Butcher

The mother had a husband. The husband left the family. The mother became depressed. The son grew up as he took care of the mother. The son got old and moved out. The son became the soldier. The mother became more depressed. The soldier loved the mother. The soldier comforted the mother. The mother met the baron. The baron loved the mother. The mother loved the baron. The baron made the mother happy. The soldier knew that the baron could only hurt the mother. The soldier became the barber. The barber shaved the baron. The barber shaved a bit too deep. The baron met the reaper. The mother became depressed. The  barber comforted the mother.

Short Story: Warped Beauty

Written in lipstick on the wall were the words FREAK! and hideous. Jimmy saw this when he peaked his head into a room labeled Serine in his search for the restroom. The room was obviously a dressing room, but not a very decadent one. Its contents were a collapsible closet a ratty chair and a warped fun-house mirror with a short bench in front of it.
"Hey!" a large voice boomed from a few feet away. "You can't be back here." a wall of a man said angrily as he approached Jimmy.
"Oh, my mistake sir. I'll just leave then. Oh yeah, and can you tell me where the restroom is?"
"It's by the entrance."
"Thank you very much, and sorry again." Jimmy left and went to the restroom.
When he returned to his seat, he carried a large bucket of peanuts. People sat in front of him and behind him but he had no company on either side of him. The lights went down.
"Ladies and gentleman..." a deep voice projected. "Are you ready... for the most spectacular show... that you have ever seen?"
"Yeah!"Jimmy yelled, smiling and stuffing peanuts in his mouth, completely oblivious to the fact that the rest of the audience was dead quiet.
"Then put your hands together for our first act! Olympic silver medalist Paolo and his partner Serena!" Then swung in the most beautiful, most graceful thing that Jimmy had ever seen. As she flew through the air, Jimmy stood up and was so engaged that he was completely oblivious to the fact that he had spilled his entire bucket of peanuts on the man in front of him.
"Hey pal, can ya sit down?" the man behind him yelled, irritated.
Jimmy was still completely ignorant to his surroundings. "I'm gonna marry that woman." He said loudly.
"That's it!" The man in front of Jimmy stood up and punched him in the face. He fell to the ground smiling.
The large security guard from backstage walked up and quietly but violently grabbed Jimmy and the other man. He carried them each in one hand. It wasn't until they were all the way outside until Jimmy realized what had just happened.
The guard threw him on the ground without saying a word.
"Wait!" Jimmy yelled. "I gotta get back in! I gotta meet Serena!"
The security guard stood motionless at the entrance, his shoulders so broad that they reached either side of the doorway.
"Asshole." The other man said to Jimmy as he walked away.
Jimmy sat down on the ground in front of the guard, thinking. He sat there until the show was over and the audience was leaving. Then he got an idea. Jimmy stood up and used the cover of the crowd to sneak around back. In the back of the building, he found an unlabeled metal door. He tried opening it but it was locked. Jimmy sat down on the ground in front of the door, thinking. After a few minutes, he noticed the dumpster a few feet away and got another idea. Jimmy sat on the ground next to the door, where, when it opened, nobody would see him.
Soon, night came, nobody had used the door yet. Jimmy sat there until morning. He did not move and he did not sleep; he was too excited. Eventually, the door swung open.  Jimmy heard somebody drag a cinder block out to hold it open. A man walked out carrying a large trash bag in either hand, which blocked his view of Jimmy as he walked past. Jimmy used the opportunity to sneak around the door into the building. He quickly sneaked through two rooms into a locker room. Frantically, he opened one of the lockers to find a janitor's uniform. He closed the locker room door and changed into the uniform. In another locker, he found a baseball cap, he put it on and kept it low so that the bill covered his face. He walked out into the hall and found Serena's room.
He stood outside the door and took off his hat. He spent a minute trying to control his goofy smile. He knocked on the door and waited with his hands behind his back.
"Just a second!" a sweet-sounding voice echoed from behind the door.
When the door opened, Jimmy saw the most hideous sight imaginable; a frown on the face of the woman that he loves.
"What's gotcha so down, darlin'?"
"I'm sorry, who are you?"
"Well, my name's Jimmy Lee. I came to your show yesterday and I've really been itchin' to meetcha."
"Well that's sweet, I guess but why are you dressed like a janitor?"
"Oh, that's so I could sneak in to see you."
"Then why did you tell me you're not a janitor?"
"Dang it, I guess I didn't think about that."
"Hehe, you're funny, Jimmy." she laughed.
"There we go, I'm happy to see a smile on that pretty face of yours."
Her smile went away, "Shut up, I'm ugly and you know it."
"Are you kidding me? You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"I get it now, you're just here to make fun of me."
"What?! Of course I'm not!"
"I've spent my whole life in this building and in all those years, not one person has ever called me pretty, why would they start now?"
Jimmy paused, "Can I come in?"
"Fine." She said reluctantly.
Jimmy walked in to find everything exactly the way he had found it the day before. "You've lived here your whole life?"
"Yeah", she replied.
"Have you ever even left this building?"
"No."
"Well of course nobody ever calls you pretty! Nobody ever gets to talk to you!"
"Huh, well I guess you're right about that, but just look at my huge head! Im surprised my neck can even hold it up."
"There's nothing wrong with your... Hey, wait a minute. Have you ever looked in another mirror other than that fun-house mirror?"
"What's a fun-house mirror?"
"Oh my gosh! It's a warped mirror, this one must make your head look big." Jimmy pulled a tin box of mints out of his pocket. "Here, look at your reflection on here."
Serena took the tin and looked into it. she squinted and her frown slowly turned back into a smile. "Is that really me?"
"Yeah!"
"I'm beautiful!"
"Finally! You see it."
"My whole life, I thought that kept me here as a freak for people to laugh at, I felt trapped. But now, I can leave, and I can be anything."
"Can you be my wife?" Jimmy asked quickly with his usual thoughtlessness.
"Why not?" She said.

Free write: Love in Black and White

I'm not loved. Well, I guess that some people love me but they don't really love me. They only love me for what's in me and what I'm about. Which I guess I should be thankful for. Nobody really cares what I look like and I guess that's a good thing.
I just wish that everybody wasn't so critical of me. They act like they can just stare at me for long enough then completely understand who I am and what I'm really about. I know quite a bit about romance and relationships and I think that if I could get a man to truly understand me then it wouldn't be so hard to find the kind of love that I was made for and can't escape from. My first problem is that I've never even been touched by a man. I'll sit alone for weeks at a time and when somebody finally checks me out it's always a woman. The worst part is that every single time it's some sad, lonely woman. I think they do it just to taunt me and show me that I'll always be lonely like them. And every time I'm with a woman, it's always the exact same thing: first comes romance, then love, and one instance of love-making, but always just one, then she's done with me. She takes me back to the library and puts me back in my lonely space on the shelf. It's a sad life, being a romance novel.

Short Story: The Front Room

Reluctantly, I sat in the back room, as I was told. The man who stood at the front of the restaurant was not a good man. He had been in one of my freshman college classes, but I doubt that he knew of or appreciated my existence.

 It had been an hour and I still had not been waited upon. The men in the front room had already eaten and paid, before the staff had so much as blinked at me.

Another man, of my own status, walked in and courageously sat in the front room without paying any mind to the host. I followed his example. I stood up and sat at the table with him. The staff now seemed to be paying some attention to me, even more than the other men in the front room.

The host had been at our table within the minute. “Yer lucky I even let you in here,” he said with his thick north Georgian accent,” Now yer takin’ advantage of my generosity.”

“shut up, you stupid hick”, the man at my table said,” you’ve got no idea…”, I grabbed his shoulder.

“Generosity?” I said. “Explain how you were being generous.”

He was speechless for a minute, “Y’all don’t have any business with these good, honest people, you’ll git Just as good service when we git time.”

The man at the table with me stood up, “What makes you so much better than us?”

“Ain’t it obvious?” the host said.

I sat up in my chair, “I dream of the day that men like you and men like us can look past these discernible differences and live together without conflict.”

The man opened his big mouth and laughed in my face, carelessly spewing spit. I became furious and decided to leave the establishment before I gave a worse name to our people. The man at the table with me followed. He was no longer the man that had first sat at that table.