Applications close Sunday 14th of May

From: Chase Ventura
To: Hagakure 419
Subject: Survivor Hagakure 419
Date: 30 April 2006 2:52:26 PM

Hail entertaining and elitist exclusionists!

Firstly, I would like to establish that I don't particularly want to join your crappy club. It somehow feels as though I have ever so many more important items on my personal agenda.

Although, I can't help but be intrigued by proclamation. Teigan, committing seppuku? Will wonders never cease? I do allow for the possibility that the voluntary cessation of his life on this planet via the cunning application of a frisbee is a sham. Call me cynical, but, my running theory is that this whole exercise is simply an effort to a) generate/maintain interest in the blog, and/or b) enable the alleged dead man walking to rid himself of annoying admin duties.

I have to pay the effectiveness of the ploy, as I'm quite curious to see if anyone, apart from freakazoids like Christina Titan, would be willing to jump through the requisite hoops in the hopes of obtaining club membership. Though, it can't be denied that the possibility of becoming custodian of Adam's entire existence might be found enticing by certain parties.

Just on another point, not that I'm pedantic or anything, how can it possibly be the case that there are no criteria? If you have no basis on which to make your selection, it stands to reason that a selection could not be made, until such a time as appropriate criteria could be found and put to use. (Get to work, you lazy criteria!) However, I've taken the statement to mean that the only relevant criterion, at this point in time, is how popular the "applicant" is in general with the current members (similar to any number of other social networks).

On one hand, I like the idea of selecting an individual based on merit if indeed, that is what you are doing. On the other, the idea of inviting blog patrons to submit an application to justify their "worthiness" for the purposes of posting on your blog, and to receive whatever form of (probably public) humiliation the elimination process will take, does inspire the following reaction; "Oh, the humanity..." The whole concept is a bit interesting, though. Reality blog. The term doesn't really fit, taking into consideration the nature of blogs, but, I applaud the creativity of The Emperor in assigning you this task. Or, rather, that of Top Ninja, Head Honcho, King Pisshead, or whomever else it is in Tokyo that you've all (apparently) sworn loyalty to. Anyway, needless to say, there's a lot you could do with the idea.

Enjoy your arbitrary human value assessment game!

Kind Regards,

Chase

P.S. I don't care if you post this email or not. Though, I'm operating under the following assumption: not.


From: Hagakure 419
To: Chase Ventura
Subject: Re: Survivor Hagakure 419
Date: 11 May 2006 7:26:51 PM

Dear Mr Ventura,

Thank you for your interest in Hagakure 419.

I can hereby confirm that your submission has been approved. Upon provision of your Blogger account details, you will be offered the opportunity to post to the weblog on Friday the 19th of May 2006. An exact time will be supplied closer to the day.

If you are unable or unwilling to post on the specified date at the specified time, you will be eliminated.

We are glad that you find our concept interesting. Your references to Tokyo, however, appear based on pernicious misinformation concerning the senior management of H419 which should be entirely disregarded.

To address your other points:

I can assure you the death of Magister Teigan von Drake is no 'sham'.

When Magister Bentendo stated that there were no criteria pertaining to our current process of elimination, he meant precisely that. Your observations concerning the wide interpretability of the phrase "there are no criteria" are acknowledged.

Mr Chris Titan has indeed been, to date, the sole applicant apart from yourself.

Regards,

Gyrjzlch Dostoyevski
Head of Development
Hagakure 419



[POSTED BY TEIGAN]