First Mission, A-GOGO!

After much preparing, it is finally fine for me to begin my first mission! Though, I suppose I should be honest that most of the preparations were taken care of by my host. She worked hard and deserves some well earned rest to recover from her cold. When she feels sick, I feel sick and there's nothing more than I hate in the world than feeling sick.

Mission Intro: The first mission was to help first the education situation over in Modesto. This was not an easy task for several reasons. One, I've never been to Modesto save for a handful of times so I don't really know much about the city. Two, I don't know anyone who went to school in Modesto. But, as is my nature, right when I was feeling down, I thought to myself, No, Mr. Freckles! Don't you dare give up on me! Where there is a will there is a way!

Learn: And what a rage filled way there is! I talked to a friend of my host's about her experiences going to human school near Modesto. According to her, all of the administrative are thieves, most of the teachers are idiots who don't care about teaching, a small percentage of the teachers are "cool", most of the students don't care about anything, the classes are large and impersonal and there just aren't enough supplies to go around! Wow, you human sure do have it tough.

Act: Well, the Human Education situation does seem bleak. No, bleak isn't quite the right word. I think the word I was going for is "AHARHHHHHAslakdlkasjdlksjdk", or some other word that means "extremely frustrating". But no matter how hard things are, a student who wants to learn will learn! Look at me, I didn't want to learn spells or incantations when in school, so instead I learned all about the ancient languages of the Xiizdtj'N of the Brazilian rain forests. No one pushed it down by throat and, really, no one was supporting me either. I think people, especially children, need to learn earlier in their lives that sometimes the only one standing by them will be themselves. It might seem a bit dark to tell a child, but its the truth and it will only make them tougher!

Imagine: First of all, I would like to say if I had infinite resources, the first thing I would buy would be a nicer place to live and a year's supply of beef stew. But, with the money left over, I would definitely help the children. Really, I would. Please don't look at me so judgmentally! Anyway, I still like my original idea of kids being self reliant. I wouldn't give them anything. Even with a million billion dollars, the most I would do for them would be to open up Mr. Freckles' Super Library! It will be a twenty story building and it will house every book in the world in it, either on paperback or on the computer. Anyone would be able to access this information for free, at their leisure. Gosh, I never knew I could be so nice! See how nice I am? Though the money it takes to build that Super Library could go towards buying quite a number of delicious beef bowls...

WATCH ME IN ACTION!!!

(Edit 09/19: From my Host: "As it turns out, something went wrong with the compression so the previous video had several scenes condensed incorrectly. This is the correct version with every scene intact. Sorry about that...")

So this is the video I was telling you about, the one my darling host has been busy on! It's a story of how I met some complaining children at the library while I was totally not reading comic books. They were complaining heavily and sorta distracting me from what I was doing. "They cut my art classes." "They cut by sports teams." Wah, wah, that sort of stuff. Eventually, I had enough of it, and went to them and offered to create the best school in the world for them, using my super powers! Grabbing some butcher paper and a magic marker, I proceeded to draw the perfect school how I saw it. I had hoped that it would teach the kids a lesson in not pining away for unrealistic goals, but instead, it was obvious that these children lacked both imagination and a healthy sense of sarcasm.

When they insulted my beautiful art, that was pretty much the last straw! Call me a no talent hack with a bad dye job! Call me an unemployed freeloader with a penchant for laziness! Call me anything you want, but never, EVER, insult my beautiful art! My preschool teacher told me that my art was a work of genius! To say anything else would mean you're calling that teach of mine a liar and that I just can't tolerate! No way! 

Anyway, so I miiiight have lost my temper a weee bit, but I told the children how I really felt and I told them honestly that the only one responsible for saving their dreams for the futures would be themselves. I half expected the children to shrug off my advice, so you can imagine my surprise when I find out weeks later that the same children I had spoken to in the library had taken it upon themselves to begin a "club founding" movement at their school. Whatever the schools were forced to cut, be it art or music or sports, there the students were, ready to work hard and maintain a club that would offer the exposure their niche interested demanded!

Sometimes it feels nice knowing you helped someone else do something they didn't think was possible.

( And for those of you curious as to why the preview scene shown earlier is not shown now: massive technical issues. Do you want to know the one thing you don't want to hear from the magical computer box when you are going towards your 3rd hour of animating something? "There is not enough PHYSICAL MEMORY to complete the simple task you have asked me to do. Please close as many windows as you want, but it won't be enough. It'll NEVER BE ENOUGH. I must eat the memory! EAT! FEAST! CONSUME!" Or something like that, though a bit more technical, I suppose. In any case, without the computing speed needed to render certain things, my host had to make sure the file remained small or else it would not be able to be opened up on her magic box. As a result, many of the smaller scenes had to be cut. Though they were small, they were important for the over all feel of the scene, but what could be done. -sigh-)

~Freckles