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    <title>AKPCEP.com</title>
    <link>http://www.akpcep.com</link>
    <description>Discussion forums, writing, poetry, prose and art.</description>
	<language>en</language>
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  		<title>AKPCEP.com</title> 
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  		<description>Discussion forums, writing, poetry, prose and art.</description> 
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  <copyright>Copyright © Alexander King and the individual posters</copyright>
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       <title>Scars by shaggy</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=951</link>
       <description><![CDATA[ As he hid behind the debris, he took the moment to let all the emotions wash over him.  They had been hidden for so long that they came stubbornly; what is hidden is not revealed easily.  The death, the destruction, the betrayal... he rose it to his throat, and in a choked, silent, violent sob, it came out and he began to purge everything that he had kept inside.

He could not be heard.  And so as everything came out, it was hidden still.  He had no voice, no means of expression, only mental images that came unannounced.  There were horrible ones, indeed-- visions of flesh torn, screaming children... but most horrifying of all were the visions of happiness.  Horror came and went, and he was happy to leave it behind.  But along with the ho ... ]]></description>
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       <title>Reflections of a qualified teacher by Villager</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=948</link>
       <description><![CDATA[  The past six weeks have been a first for me: six weeks of proper full-time work, with proper pay. The first time I have earned more than minimum wage, too. I have taken a job in Lincolnshire teaching English at an old secondary modern school. I've found success easier to come by than I had imagined, but it does come at a high cost to my time and energies. It is perhaps instructive that I am only truly discovering this at the age of 23, but I abhor the price that work demands from me. 

 It has been interesting. I have been lumbered with almost exclusively with Special Needs groups which makes every lesson something of a drama, but really I feel sorry for the children: teacher training in this country does not equip teachers to teach anyt ... ]]></description>
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       <title>Childish Charlie by shaggy</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=947</link>
       <description><![CDATA[ "I can't do this again, Charles," said Jasmin, a member of New York's finest for the last three years of her life, two of which were almost constant contact with the infamous Childish Charlie.

At first, Charlie was a bit of a joke.  Often seen on Jasmin's route wandering with a wooden stick he called Excalibur.  He got into a few scrapes, mostly without any injury.  But, after awhile, as all things do, it started to escalate into a problem.  Charles started showing up on the streets with nothing but pajamas and a bowler's hat, and his infamous Excalibur.  And he would do more than sprout esoteric lines-- Jasmin considered herself well-read, but she couldn't recognize what sounded at least to be literary quotations.

Charlie began to "f ... ]]></description>
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       <title>The Big Apple by shaggy</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=946</link>
       <description><![CDATA[ Sirens going off at all hours of the night... some random dude trying to pick into the lock into my building with a card... and directions that include only four words: "up", "down", "left", "right", if not just simply pointing in one of these directions.

Yes, that's right... I'm now a New Yorker.  Which is cool in its own right.  The city is bustling, there's always something to do, and its a lot safer than you'd think for a city that has its own CSI.  A footlong sandwich costs three dollars and seventy-five cents, which in this Canuck's view is amazing.  The people here are really nice, contrary to some people's description-- they act rude, but its really not as bad as people make it out to be, and the rudeness has a charm of its own,  ... ]]></description>
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       <title>Wikipedia is Dangerous and Beautiful by The_Roach</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=945</link>
       <description><![CDATA[ This piece was originally posted last week in a rare update to my blog, <a href=http://www.endorphyne.net>The Face of Adversity</a>, but since nobody reads that, it might as well reside here where someone might actually see it.

It's very early in the morning. I've had a fair bit to drink and smoked enough cigarettes to make my lungs ache from deep breath. I'm thinking about legend and myth, faces and heels, history, legacy, butterfly wings and ripples on ponds. Curiously enough, it has me remembering my grandfather, dead now eleven years.


I don't remember what inspired me to perform a Wikipedia search for Vince McMahon tonight. I know that I had been playing Fallout. I'd then wound up on MySpace as a result of an article I'm working ... ]]></description>
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       <title>Smug by Duncan-O</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=944</link>
       <description><![CDATA[ It's a Friday night, and I'm out howling at the moon.  My phone rings, and the name on the screen brings my revelry to a jarring halt.  What could she want?

Shantel wants a favor.  She needs her cat's litterbox changed.  And as my inebriated mind struggles with this irritating and ludicrous request, she pushes on ahead:  "It's the toxoplasmosis...the doctor says it's very dangerous for my baby."

All I can manage to say is "I didn't know you were pregnant."

We had gotten to Fort Bragg at the same time, three years ago, two new faces adjusting to the sea of regulation and camouflage.  We were split up into different units, but she was a girl I went out of my way to keep close to me.

I think back to one morning when my knock on her ... ]]></description>
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       <title>Who am I? by shaggy</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=943</link>
       <description><![CDATA[ Well, this will come as no surprise, but I recently settled on the undeniable fact that I have some sort of wicked mood disorder.  I'm not terribly sure the extent, and my prescription coverage at work only kicks in about a month from now, so I'm hesitant to get diagnosed until that happens (what's the point of knowing what's wrong with me when I can't do much about it?) but I often wonder... when I get into my moods (I call them having an "emotional poop"... makes it easier to get out of them using a word like "poop" to describe being utterly depressed) what is happening to me?  I am, in a nutshell, not myself.  I don't mean that I am who I am subconsciously-- at least I would hope not.  I argue with everyone around me, think everyone is b ... ]]></description>
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       <title>"My father's fingers" by Andy</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=942</link>
       <description><![CDATA[ My father's fingers

thumb the pages of a paperback
thriller. Their scarred, coarse tips
are wet with spots of spit.
His rough knuckles crack

as he sinks
further into the plush, brown sofa. A sigh escapes
through his chapped, parted lips.
Right now, he does not think

about feeding sturdy sheets of plywood, two-by-fours,
sixes, and eights, into the hungry maw
of a table saw&#151;
the daily duties of a carpenter&#151;

but rather, about the round
tub of macadamia nut ice cream
in the freezer, and the Mariners game
unfolding on the television in the background. ... ]]></description>
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       <title>Happiness by shaggy</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=941</link>
       <description><![CDATA[ The difference between a smile and a frown is the difference of choice.  However, that being said, the goal of the storyteller is to convince someone to smile or frown, to laugh or cry.  But the goal is in itself doomed to failure because of the fact that people choose: they can walk into a movie in which the filmmakers have faught hard to make a film to make everyone in the audience smile, but never so much as chuckle.  I could walk into a movie intending to make me weep for a lost innocence and find myself laughing unintentionally at something within the frame (say, a hamster on a wheel as a man gives a monologue about how his life is destroyed). 

So what is the point?  Basically put, emotion is a strange beast.  At once it is our choi ... ]]></description>
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       <title>Tick, Tock by Villager</title>
       <link>http://www.akpcep.com/?pid=comment&amp;id=940</link>
       <description><![CDATA[ I'm developing something of an aversion to clocks. They're deeply unsettling, with their incessant ticking and ceaseless tocking. Grim harbingers of mortality, milestones on the road to death flashing by, each one gone forever before the next has begun. I have achieved nothing. I have not sparkled, I have not shone, I have not excelled. I have barely begun contemplating where to begin. The clock is not sympathetic; it marches on, not stopping or slowing for pause or reflection.

It's not so much that I fear death. More that I fear living in perpetual mediocrity, pointlessness and apathy. What do I want? If I knew I might apply myself, then have at least a fighting chance. Perhaps I ought to develop my spirit, whatever that means. Certainl ... ]]></description>
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