Status Update

Re: Your Brains Flash Essay

2012-02-14T16:33:00.000-08:00

A week ago one of my English teachers gave an assignment - and I'm cutting that sentence of here to explain that, yes, I have to English ~~teachers~~ I mean professors (man, so many things to remember in college). One of these professors I've had before, so I'll call him Professor One, but this is my first semester with this other professor, so I'll call him Professor Two.

Last week Professor Two assigned everyone to bring in the lyrics to a song we really liked. We're working on a poetry unit, and the idea was to look at the lyrics without the music, and critique it as a poem.

We were to bring in those lyrics at our next class on Thursday, and I spent the rest of Tuesday trying to think of an appropriate song, then most of Wednesday trying to convince myself not to use Johnathan Coulton's 'Re: Your Brains.'

If you haven't heard this song before, click here to listen to it on Youtube. Johnathan Coulton is a relatively well known comedic musician on the internet, and this song is probably his most famous.

I finally did bring in the lyrics to this song on Thursday, and we were asked to write a short 'flash essay' on the lyrics. I think Professor Two thought our songs would have a more serious tone, so I had a bit of difficulty writing about this one, especially since it's a simple narrative with no complex imagery to explain. A friend of mine asked that I let her read what I wrote, so I'm posting it here; remember, it's not that great, as I wrote it in only a few minutes, and for the most part it's unfinished.

Johnathan Coulton's song "Re: Your Brains" is a straightforward narrative about a zombie attack, told through the eyes of a zombi-fied office worker, politely asking a friend to come out of hiding so the zombie horde can get his brain. The song is meant to be satirical, suggesting that Bob, the narrator, is not the stereotypical mindless zombie.

The first few lines of the song really set the tone. It starts "Heya Tom, it's Bob, from the office down the hall/Good to see you buddy, how's it been?" At this point, a first time listener would expect something entirely different from the real message of the song. The character Bob is also making himself out to be a gentleman from the beginning, an illusion quickly crushed by the next lines, "Things have been OK for me except that I'm a zombie now/Really wish you'd let us in."

The song continues to try to paint Bob as the caring gentleman, especially in the chorus, which says "We're not unreasonable, I mean, no one's going to eat your eyes/All we want to do is eat your brains/We're at an impasse here, maybe we could compromise." The song achieves a wonderful hilarity by being straight-forward and sincere, ignoring the dark implications of the setting.

That's all I wrote in class, and unfortunately Professor Two didn't read the essays -though there's a chance he will later in the semester. If he does, I'll polish up my writing and try to obtain the same satirical tone Coulton wrote with (and, of course, share it with you all here).

Treadmill Reviews: The Last Enemy

2012-02-09T18:08:00.000-08:00

Masterpiece, previously Masterpiece Theater, is, as far as I can tell, a PBS owned Anthology series which re-airs really awesome British dramas, among other things. I'm still not completely sure how this works, but the idea of a television anthology seems awesome enough for me to trust their judgement.

In my ongoing efforts to convince myself to use our treadmill more often, I turned to BBC/Masterpiece Contemporary's 2008 near-future drama The Last Enemy, a mystery thriller about a mathematician returning after four years to a Britain which is becoming hauntingly similar to Orwell's 1984.

OK I'm not going to lie - I chose this miniseries solely because Benedict Cumberbatch plays the lead role. This should come as no surprise; I mentioned in my Sherlock review that I wanted to see him in some different roles, to make sure he's as good an actor as I thought he was.

I'm happy to report that Cumberbatch did not disappoint. Here he plays Stephen Ezard, the genius mathematician who escapes to China before the start of the series in an attempt to isolate himself from the world. Stephen is introverted, socially awkward, and sensitive, with a very mild form of OCD, only returning to England to attend the funeral of his brother Micheal.

It's a difficult role but Cumberbatch fills it brilliantly; this is especially notable for someone like me who's primary experience with the actor comes from Sherlock, a character who's sorta similar to Stephen with a vastly different personality. That Cumberbatch was able to play both so believably earns high respect from me.

This show has a very political message, exploring the ethical problems with super-surveillance via Total Information Awareness (TIA), a database that gives authorities access to every citizen's personal data, monitors everyone's movements, and effectively wipes out anonymity. Generally I don't like political fiction, but I didn't mind this one too much; instead of being the focus of the series, the political message is more a background to the main plot.

The actual plot revolves around a vaccine administered by Stephen's brother Micheal, who was working as a doctor in the Middle East when his jeep hit a landmine. The vaccine, or at least a specific batch of it, seems to be spreading a deadly virus, and Stephen teams up with romantic interest Yasim Anwar, who also happens to be his brother's widow, to discover who is trying to cover it up and why.

The romantic subplot seems to be a major part of the story, but I'll have to admit that I was a little confused by it at first. The characters know each other for all of half a day before they're making out and sleeping together, and I know that I wasn't the only one who found that unbelievable (while unrealistic, I was happy to note that there wasn't anything explicit, something you're not always guaranteed in foreign television).

The next day Stephen is offered a job to publicly promote TIA, which he only accepts after returning to his flat and discovering that Yasim has disappeared, along with the body of the infected immigrant she had been treating the day before. Their romance is necessary to bring Stephen into the plot, and this is where the writers make up for the strange start; while Yasim might have been OK with a one-night stand, Stephen is sensitive and feels he needs to find her, going so far as to cyperstalk her with the TIA system just to make sure she's OK.

Despite being labeled as a thriller, The Last Enemy is paced pretty slowly, with little to no real 'action' scenes; I would label it more of a psychological mystery than anything else. The slow pacing seems to have turned a lot of people off, but I personally find it refreshing not to have another stereotypical guns-blazing car-chasing action piece. The characters were intriguing enough to carry the story until the plot became more apparent.

This show was heavily advertised as a thriller, however, so I can understand why a lot of people were put off, expecting something entirely different. The Region 1 DVD release even goes so far as to use, as cover art, a specific scene where the characters are running from a bomb explosion; the scene actually occurs, in the penultimate episode, but it's pretty minor compared to your average action flick and gives viewers to wrong impression of the show as a whole (and for those unfamiliar, DVDs are region-encoded to only be playable in specific areas of the world; Region 1 is the US and Canada, and Region 2 is most of Europe/Middle East).

If there's something in the series itself I feel the need to criticize it's how confusing the story can be at times. This show has quite a large cast and I found myself at times forgetting who certain side characters were and what their relationship to each other was. One particular character, played by Robert Carlyle, remained a complete mystery for the majority of the show, and even when he explained who he was to Stephen I still wasn't sure what exactly his goal was.

Viewers nowadays might recognize Carlyle from his role on Once Upon a Time.

I like complicated plotlines, but when they're this hard to follow I have to chalk it up to less-than-stellar writing or directing. I do have to give them credit for managing to develop these characters with only five episodes to work with; maybe if there'd been more time, they could have improved upon the plot as well.

If I can point out one minor thing I really enjoyed about this series, it would be the opening and closing credit sequences. I've already mentioned how much I like creative opening sequences, and The Last Enemy is no exception; each episode begins with a computerized voice saying "Start TIA," and behind the music and action shots it seems to me that the sequence is designed to look like the TIA program booting up on a computer. The episodes also end with a "Shutting off" voice-over, and while I'm sure some people thought it was gimmicky I found it really cool

(Spoilers for those who have already seen it or aren't planning to: it took me a few minutes to realize that the last episode didn't include the 'shutting off' voice, a minor detail which really drove home the message of the show).

Like any sane lover of fiction, I spent quite a bit of time trying to decide what the title of the series was referring to. 'The Last Enemy' seemed to be the beginning of a quote, but I didn't know what the quote was (I was imagining something along the lines of 'The last enemy is yourself', which seemed appropriate). I only discovered afterward that there is a popular passage in the bible that reads "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."

It's possible the series creator had this in mind when choosing the title, but in one of the last scenes of the show they finally do a title drop, and it seems to imply a slightly different meaning. Part of me kinda wishes they'd done this in the first episode, because if they had the title would have been empowering; I don't dislike the last episode title drop, however, because it is wonderfully tragic and really accentuates the message.

Overall, I'll have to admit this wasn't a perfect show, but it was in my opinion a very good one, and I'm glad I was able to watch it. The plot and characters were intriguing and the message is definitely relevant to today, regardless of your opinion on super-surveillance. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone tired of mindless entertainment, looking for something intriguing that makes the viewer think (luckily, this series is available on both Netflix and Hulu).

New Classes (again)

2012-02-06T14:49:00.000-08:00

Spring semester has finally started up again here in the desert, so here comes my obligatory 'new semester' overview. We've had quite a long break between Fall and Spring semesters (in the past I believe there was a short Winter quarter in there, but with budget cuts that's now gone), and I know I'm not the only one who's pretty relieved classes are up again. Break is nice, but when I'm not looking for work I'm sitting around the house with nothing to do.

My schedule this semester is pretty full; I'm trying to make up for having a pretty meager selection last Spring. Not only am I at the college for a longer period of time this semester, but I'm also having to familiarize myself with parts of the campus I've never been around before.

Tuesday and Thursday mornings I have an American English class, the 'sequel' to the American English course I took last semester (with the same teacher and everything). I already know pretty much what to expect from this class, so I'm not too worried.

Then I have a five-hour break until my next class, early in the afternoon. This is also an English class, but a basic composition something-or-other requirement for my AA. I've never had this particular professor before, but he's pretty nice and interesting, and with it being a basic composition course I can't imagine it will be very difficult at all (I'm just hoping I don't forget what homework goes with what class).

The problem is what to do with this five hour break. I could drive home, but then I have to drive back to school for my English class, then back home to pick mom up from work, and then back to school yet again on Tuesdays for my third class of the day: fencing.

I was totally terrified of this fencing class before starting. I'd never been to the school gym before to I wasn't totally sure what it'd look like, and I didn't know if our coach was going to expect us to know something to start with, or if we were going to have to use the school showers afterward. I really wanted to take fencing, but I didn't want to look like an idiot.

As you might expect, everything was fine. Our coach apparently runs a fencing league or something in the desert, so she had some of her non-college students come in and demonstrate for us, and we working on stances and moving and such. It was fun, and I was glad I wasn't expected to actually fence anyone that first day.

My Wednesday schedule is more complicated. Each of my classes that day are extra long, to make up for the fact that they're only once a week, and I'm on campus from nine in the morning to seven in the evening.

Luckily the classes themselves seem to be fun. I start with a History of Film Music class in the campus theater, and it looks like we'll be watching movies and talking about film scores a lot. My professor seems really friendly, and though it's a three-hour class I don't think it'll wear on me much.

After a half-hour break I have a Plant Science lab class. I'm still not 100% sure what we're going to be doing, we each get a garden plot to work with which sounds promising. This class is on a corner of the campus I've never really been to before, so it was fun last Wednesday to head over there and explore; it's the Agriculture department, so it's a bit secluded and very peaceful. New favorite spot on campus? Maybe.

We got out early last week but usually we'll have a ten minute break before our Plant Science lecture starts, in another wing but with the same professor. The lecture is what I'm really not looking forward to sitting through this semester; it's at the end of the day so I'm already tired, and even though I had an easy day last week I already found myself nodding off.

Mondays I have off from classes, and Friday I only have a morning Yoga class, which I hope doesn't wear me out too much.

While I'm excited for this semester's classes, I'm a bit anxious as to what this means for my blogging schedule. I wont be able to update at all on Wednesdays, and I've been trying to decide how I want to handle this. I've decided to limit my blog posts this semester, posting every Monday and Friday as usual but skipping Wednesdays. I'll try to update occasionally on Saturdays.

A Desire to Make Things Better

2012-01-30T15:20:00.000-08:00

Early last week a girl I happened to be following on Tumblr posted a query to her followers asking if anyone would be willing to edit an essay she had written. I, as you might know, have quite a bit of experience with writing and editing (or at least more than the average internet user), and I instantly thought that I could do so easily. Instead of informing her, however, I kept quiet; she seemed to be a relatively popular user, and of her many followers I was a random nobody.

She reblogged the query again an hour later, at which point I realized that, despite my expectations, nobody had responded. Since I really wasn't doing anything that afternoon, I nervously sent her a message, which she responded to a few minutes later, and before long I had her essay in my email box ready to be looked over.

This was the first time I edited anything for anybody since my last month of Journalism in high school, and though she was only looking for grammatical errors I still felt pretty excited to be entrusted with somebody else's work.

This experience reminded me that, contrary to the opinions of many would-be writers, I love to edit. It seems to me that everyone I know that loves to write hates to edit, so I have this minor fear that by admitting to being on the other team everyone's going to look down their nose at me, but it doesn't matter because I'm going to confess to it anyway.

Look at me pull random semi-related images from the internet LIKE A BOSS.

Don't get me wrong; I love not editing, too. That's one thing that NaNoWriMo taught me. Before my first NaNoWriMo year, all my writing had been shorts bursts of fiction, maybe a few paragraphs of a story before I started going back and fixing grammar mistakes, until I caught some good idea for the next few paragraphs, and so on. NaNoWriMo was the first time I sat down for an extended period of time and just wrote, and while at times is was scary or worrisome, there were plenty of moments that it felt exhilarating, like mentally flying.

Editing is completely different, and yet it feels exhilarating to me in it's own way. I could make up some nonsense about the mental release I get fixing mistakes, but in all honesty I'm not sure why the act of editing feels so positive to me.

I specifically remember writing a short story a couple years ago (titled 'Service'), almost two thousand words in length and completed in a night, and then spending the next several months pouring over that short manuscript, trimming paragraphs and fixing dialogue and clarifying descriptions. I knew exactly what I was looking for in the story, and every time I re-read it I knew that I wasn't quite there yet.

The last time I edited 'Service' was a several months ago, when I realized I needed to change something about the setting, and even now I know that if I looked back over it I'm sure I could find something else that needs changing. I think what some people dislike about the editing process is the fact that you never really know when you're done, because you could almost always change some little thing about whatever you've written.

That's something I love, however, and I guess the only way I can explain it is by stretching a metaphor about playing the piano. I picked up piano playing sometime early last year just for the fun of it (and because the piano we own really needs the use), and recently I've been teaching myself how to play a certain song by the Anglo-French singer/songwriter J.J. Burnel. The song is pretty complicated for a low-level pianist like myself, and though I've been playing it over and over, I haven't once played it 100% perfectly; every time I play it, however, I can feel myself getting just a bit better at it, just a bit more familiar with the notes, and it's exciting.

That's kind of what editing feels like. I'm not sure if I can ever get my writing to be 100% perfect, but when I re-read and make little changes I feel like I'm getting there, just a bit better.

I would have been a copy-editor for my high school newspaper if I hadn't tested out early. Those few months before I left, when there was still a chance that I'd have to suffer through senior year, I realized how much I enjoyed the idea of being a copy-editor, of sitting down to a stack of everyone else's rough drafts and handing them back the next day, 'murdered' in red ink (my mentor always made that analogy when he can to return a particularly poorly written piece).

Ideally I'd be editing my own work, but it was after that experience in high school that I realized I wouldn't mind being a copy-editor for a publishing company instead of some 'famous and successful' novelist. My dad always said that a good job is something you enjoy doing, so it doesn't feel like work, and I am extremely grateful to the girl who needed someone to look over her essay last week for giving me the chance to remember how much I honestly do enjoy all aspects of writing.

Life on Mars and Other Things

2012-01-27T16:51:00.000-08:00

Last year I managed to do pretty well with my regular treadmill sessions. I think I clocked almost an hour a day six days a week for the entire last six months, which may not sound like much but was definitely more than I had been managing before. After my brother's wedding in October, however, my treadmill sessions started to become few and far between.

Around New Years, someone I was following on Tumblr mentioned wanting to get back to exercising regularly, and I decided it was high time for me to return to regular exercise as well. I'd built up a small list of things on Netflix that I could watch while on the treadmill, so I couple of weeks ago I picked a TV show at random and started walking.

The show I ended up deciding on was the American version of Life on Mars, about a cop named Sam Tyler who's hit by a car and wakes up in the year 1973. The show is based off a British drama of the same name, and I decided on the American remake for various reasons. One, Netflix didn't have the UK original available on Instant; Two, mixed reviews online lead me to believe that both versions have their own pros and cons; Three, John Simm, the actor who played the protagonist in the British original, also played one of the most wonderfully horrific villains in Doctor Who, and is thus forever tainted in my eyes.

(This last point is meant to be humorous, by the way; I'm positive John Simm is a wonderful actor, and I think if Netflix did have the original version on Instant I probably would have watched it instead, just to have the chance to see Simm in a different role.)

The title for the show comes from a David Bowie song, which would have been re-released as a single in 1973, the year Sam wakes up in. I don't know much about David Bowie, or music in general for that matter, but this song seems to fit pretty well with the premise of the show; it's very clearly a police procedural, but it's also a bit of a psychological drama or mystery, with Sam spending the majority of his time trying to figure out why he is where he is - in a coma? time travel? - and how to get back.

I can definitely say this isn't a show my dad would like, because my dad isn't overly fond of genre-mixing, and this is quite the genre mixup. Sam spends most of the time trying to act like nothing is wrong in front of his coworkers, who think he's a transfer, but he is constantly seeing reminders of his past and hints of something bigger working against him.

Is it just me or do some of these guys look copy-pasted from some colorized 60s film?

When the show wasn't being vaguely sci-fi, it was very much an early 1970s period piece. The writers and directors must have had fun portraying 1973 New York in all it's glory; the sets and costuming were perfect, and it was fun seeing Sam trying to adjust to the vastly different policing style and social mindset.

All in all it was a pretty good show, but it had the misfortune of being not extremely engaging. I could watch while walking on the treadmill, but I constantly felt like I should be doing something else, too. I ended up watching most of this series on the couch, staples papers for my mom or doing some other menial chore.

While the original UK version had two seasons, the US remake only got one. I figured this would mean the plot was more condensed and would along move faster, but it turns out the writers didn't intend this to be the case, so the ending was a bit rushed. We do finally find out what is really happening to Sam in the last episode, and I was surprised; I'm sure some viewers felt it was a cop out (no pun intended), but I enjoyed it, especially because of how unexpected it was.

That being said, it's a plot I think might work better as a book (the US version, that is; apparently the original had a more vague, 'open' ending). If this had been written as a book, it certainly would have been one I'd have liked to see in my collection.

Now that I've finished that, I'm working on the backload of shows saved on my Netflix queues, and I recently added a bunch of British television/movies, enough to keep me going for a while. I'll review any I finish if they're good enough (this is also kind of a joke. It's British TV; obviously it's good).

Class is starting up next week, and I'm taking fencing on Tuesday evenings and Yoga on Friday mornings, so I wont be limited to our treadmill for my exercise anymore. Nonetheless, I'm kind of excited to work through my Netflix backlog!

The Fault in our Stars

2012-01-25T13:16:00.000-08:00

About a year and a half ago or more, my brother told me about an online video blog series he was following called Vlogbrothers; two brothers, John and Hank Green, would 'vlog' back and forth as a way to keep in touch. Their vlogs had quite a large following over time, and mostly included them either talking about nerdy things, discussing current events, or just overall trying to make the world a better place.

The community of fans call themselves 'Nerdfighters', and a full post about that is for another time.

I didn't start avidly watching the Vlogbrothers' videos until this summer, however, at which time John Green, the older of the two brothers and an award wining novelist of YA fiction, would continuously mention his upcoming book in his videos. Late last summer, he announced that he would be signing every pre-ordered copy of the book, titled The Fault in our Stars, and John proceeded to take on the enormous challenge of signing his name over and over, 150,000 times.

I started this blog with the intention of writing a review on The Fault in our Stars, but I'm not really sure what there is I can say about it. The book finally came out on the 10th, though I didn't start reading it until a week later (After I finished re-reading The Count of Monte Cristo). I finished it in about a day or two; John Green's writing is so straightforward and easy to read that many people could finish the book in one sitting (as long as they sat for a couple of hours; it's a 300-page book).

Not only is Green's writing style very comfortable, but his characters are likable and well-developed. Hazel Grace Lancaster, the protagonist and narrator of he story, is a 16-year-old girl with lung cancer, forced to wheel around an oxygen tank wherever she goes. She doesn't gloss over her cancer story, nor does she make it seem worse than it is. She has her own life, her own likes and dislikes, and instead of taking over her story her cancer is more like an amendment to it.

Augustus Waters, the boy she falls in love with, seems at first almost too good to be true. Not only is he smart and charming and instantly likable, he shows us over time his own weaknesses; he says in the first chapter that he fears oblivion, but it's only later that we realize how much.

If you want to know more about the book, I'd suggest reading the reviews by NPR or The New York Times; that, or read the book for yourself. It's a straightforward, 'real' tale of life with cancer, unmarred by perfect characters changing the world, but also not completely without hope. The book is written with Green's trademark hilarity but, as other reviewers have warned, the "laugh to cry ratio is pretty much 1:1."

Happy Chinese New Year!

2012-01-23T14:01:00.000-08:00

This is the year of the Dragon (Jan 23, 2012 – Feb 9, 2013), according to the 12-year Chinese Astrology cycle! Factoring the 60-year elemental cycle, that makes this the Yang Water Dragon.

I hope you understand that today's blog is a total cop out. I was going to do today's week Tues/Thurs until I realized I needed to wish you Happy Chinese New Year today; essentially, regular posts coming on their regular days this week, excluding today.

Romances to Suggest

2012-01-21T22:31:00.000-08:00

This is just a minor list of novels sitting on my self that have a romantic leaning (whether it's the main plot or not) that I would like to suggest. Some of these may be getting full reviews later. These are in order of how they appear on my shelf (by author's last name):

-Sense and Sensibility
A Jane Austen that I think everyone's heard about. It's a bit less famous than Pride and Prejudice, which is also on my shelf but isn't being listed because I think everyone knows about it. Though Austen's style may be a bit unfamiliar to some, it's a really good story if you can get into it, and I might just like it more than the other famous Austen, though mostly out of spite (they're both really good novels).

-The Wolf Hunt
A historical fantasy/romance by Gillian Bradshaw, highly recommended by me. This is an adaptation of the earliest known werewolf story, Bisclavret, which is a French epic poem about a man with the ability to transform into a wolf, who is betrayed by his wife, trapped in wolf form, and taken up by his liege king as a sort of pet until he is able to get his revenge. It's an awesome story, and the adaptation adds a bit of romance with a female protagonist; very historically accurate, from what I can tell, and, as I mentioned before, highly recommended.

-Enchantment
Probably one of the lesser known Orson Scott Card novels, which Card himself said was one of his favorites. A Russian-born American travels back to his homeland and gets trapped in an ancient Russian fairytale, a Slavic version of Sleeping Beauty in which he and the princess must fight the evil witch Baba Yaga while Ivan, the protagonist, struggles to figure out how to return to his own time. Very much an OSCard novel, with smart characters and an intriguing plot, but an unexpected romance all the same.

-Paper Towns
A big break from the previous titles on this list, Paper Towns in a modern day YA novel by John Green. The protagonist Quentin (known as 'Q') is called out for a night of adventure by Margo Roth Spiegelman, a girl who has always been an fascinating enigma, only to discover the next day that she had disappeared. He spends the whole rest of the novel trying to balance searching for her and keeping up with his own High School life, and the conclusion makes this definitely one of my favorite YA novels.

-The Fault in our Stars
The newly released John Green novel, about a girl dying of lung cancer, the boy she meets, and the adventures they go on. This one is getting a full review next week, but I'm adding it here because it's definitely a good read; be prepared to laugh and to cry, though.

-The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux, this one is being added to the list just because I don't think many people have read it. It took me a bit to get into, but it's very goof and definitely a recommend for everyone who loves the play/movie(s).

-Much Ado about Nothing
By far my favorite Shakespeare; Shakespearean in writing but hilarious and wonderful. Beatrice is a smart woman who has refused to marry; Benedick is a sarcastic bachelor who loves his 'freedoms'; both are tricked into falling in love after a series of conspiracies between their friends. Catherine Tate and David Tennant recently acted the lead roles in a stage version, which I would have given anything to see (still hoping for a Region 1 DVD release; fingers crossed!)

-The Importance of Being Earnest
Recommending this particular Oscar Wilde play because it'll probably be the easiest to get a hold of (Colin Firth and Rupert Everett did a version recently that was wonderful). Jack fakes the name Earnest when going into town to pursue the affections of his love Gwendolyn; his friend Algernon, after hearing this, goes to the country and pretends to be Jack's fake brother Earnest, to pursue the affection of Jack's young ward Cecily. Other wonderful Wilde plays include Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband).

Thoughts on Love and Selfishness

2012-01-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

This isn't at all what I meant to talk about today, but I read something recently that got me to thinking, and it would be sacrilege not to publish my every thought (that was sarcasm, btw). This is going to be short, and probably a bit aesthetically unappealing as I'm not going to bother finding a bunch of random, semi-related images to sprinkle around.

I just got finished reading a romance novel, and at one point the male romantic lead mentioned to the female romantic lead that, for at least one second, he thought he would be willing to let her die in order to spare her the pain of seeing him die. When MRL (I'm initializing) said this, my respect for him grew enormously.

I'm mostly talking about the Great Romantic Love today, the heroic love from romances and not real life. There seems to be a thought going around that this kind of love is completely selfless, where both romantic leads are willing to do anything in order to make their significant other happy, even risking their lives so that the other might survive. I gave it some thought a long time ago (and by 'a long time' I mean I think I was in Middle School), and I decided that I largely disagreed with this thought.

This came up again in High School, when we read Ayn Rand's Anthem for IB English in our Sophomore year. Ayn Rand, in case you don't know, created the philosophy of Objectivism, which essentially states that man's highest goal in life should be to obtain his own happiness. This idea, of course, chaffed with a lot of the students, though I found myself agreeing with it in at least some respects. Anthem itself was a sort of allegory used to explain Rand's philosophy.

A major part of the story is the fact that Equality, the name given to the main character by society, falls in love with a girl named Liberty, who he's not supposed to even know. A few students brought this up, wondering how he could be falling in love with someone if he's supposed to be thinking only about his own happiness, and our teacher tried to explain that the act of loving is mostly selfish, saying something to the effect of "he loves her because making her happy is something that makes him happy."

I completely understood that; when thinking about love and selfishness, my mind is almost always drawn to think about the obligatory 'dying in order to save your lover's life' scene in most heroic romances. The hero of the scene, helplessly in love with the main love interest of the fiction, would rather die than be forced to live in a world without him/her.

Which is nice until you consider that, by dying, the hero is forcing their significant other to do the very thing they (the hero) could not possibly stand to do. That's OK if the significant other didn't feel exactly the same way about our hero, but that's rarely the case in Great Heroic Romances. So, what; you can't bare to live with the misery of your significant other's death, but you don't mind is s/he had to live with that misery?

Sure, it sounds a bit narcissistic to assume your lover will be as broken up about your death as you would be about theirs, but essentially you're coming off as selfish either way.

This is something I've been thinking about; I just finished re-reading The Count of Monte Cristo earlier this week, which has a somewhat similar Great Romance subplot, and the life-for-a-life thing isn't rare in heroic fiction with romantic subplots. That's why, reading this other book, I really grew to respect the MRL, not just for all the awesome things he did in the story, but for being, at that moment, extremely selfless, wishing to spare the FRL more suffering (which kind of ended up being a major theme within the story).

BBC's Sherlock

2012-01-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

I didn't always listen to their advice, but over time I've discovered that my family members have a wonderful taste in fiction. I spent years refusing to read Animal Farm purely because my dad suggested it, only to realize what a great book it was after all, and since then I've been trying to listen to all of their suggestions.

I'm not sure whether to attribute this to my eldest brother or his awesome wife, but some time back they informed me that I needed to watch Sherlock, an interesting sounding series being produced across the pond for BBC. It took me a while to finally watch it, but I'm glad I did; BBC's Sherlock is easily one of the best dramas being produced today.

Sherlock, as the title should suggest, is yet another adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous serial detective stories; it differs from other adaptations, however, in that it's a modernized version, with 21st century incarnates of all the original characters using modern tools to solve crimes based on Conan Doyle's stories.

I would say that I usually don't like modernized versions of classic stories, but I'd be lying; I love modernizations. Some can be pretty terrible, because so much work has to go into keeping the originality of the piece, but when they're done well they can be extremely good.

Sherlock is extremely good.

The first episode, A Study in Pink, is based on the first half of Conan Doyle's first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, and it introduces us to our main duo, Sherlock Holmes played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Dr. John Watson played by Martin Freeman, during their first meeting. As I'm a Yank with limited knowledge of foreign actors (Heck, I'd even describe my knowledge of American actors as 'limited'), neither of these names meant anything to me when I started the series, though I could assume they were reasonably well known actors.

Six 90 minute episodes later, and I can confidently say that both of these actors deserve their growing fame. Cumberbatch is completely believable as the brilliant and aloof detective, able to solve any mystery with some quick deducing, and Freeman balances him out perfectly as Watson, arguably the more difficult of the two roles. Having seen this series, I now feel I owe it to the actors to watch anything else they've done.

Each hour-and-a-half long episode is either based on a famous Conan Doyle story or around elements from multiple stories. There are many allusions to he original text throughout the series, from dialogue to minor plot elements, each given a 21st century spin, and in my opinion everything works together surprisingly well. Nothing is ever out of place or forced. However, I have the unique position of someone who understands many Sherlock Holmes references, but hasn't actually read any Conan Doyle, so perhaps my opinion may not matter much to any 'true fans'.

Probably my favorite thing about the series is their use of on-screen text. Sherlock's character, as you might imagine, is very smart and processes things pretty quickly, so to show us how his mind is working they utilize typography (similar to Stranger than Fiction, tho' in most cases Sherlock's isn't animated). They also have on-screen text whenever a character received a text message on their phone, which I think is much easier on the audience than having the camera read the message over the character's shoulder.

There's also much about the music and camera work. I'm sure a handful of people might complain that Sherlock feels a bit 'artsy' because of the awesome camera work, but I think those people just want to find something to complain about. Add the wonderful scene set-up to the fact that Sherlock was shot with a single-camera (meaning that every scene with multiple angles has to be shot angle by angle) and you can see why I want to congratulate the entire production crew.

Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson, and DI Lestrade, respectively.

Each 'season' is three episodes long; the first focused on introducing us to the characters, including Sherlock's brother, Mycroft; the landlady at 221B Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson; Sherlock's only 'ally' at Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Lestrade; and Molly Hooper, a forensic pathologist 'friend' who Sherlock exploits to get into the hospital's morgue. We're also introduced to the main villain Moriarty, who finally confronts Sherlock and John directly in the third episode after manipulating their cases in the first two.

The second season, which just finished airing in the UK and is scheduled to air on PBS in May, focuses on more emotional development of the characters, and after such an astounding first season I was surprised that the writers found a way to go above and beyond. I wont give any spoilers, but the final episode was so emotionally tense, and I'm now dying for more after that unexpectedly dramatic cliff-hanger.

Unfortunately it looks like Season 3, which has been confirmed, may not be coming out until late 2013. This is the problem with my getting interested in quality fiction: just as soon as I become interested, there becomes a long wait before we get any more.

Sherlock is definitely worth the wait, however; a show this intelligent isn't always something easy to find.

A Movie about a Horse

2012-01-16T14:10:00.000-08:00

We went to go see War Horse last Saturday night, because my mom wanted to see something and it was the only thing that looked interesting to her. My father and I were more hesitant, because the title itself seemed unimpressive, but it had Speilberg's name on it and we don't go out to see movies enough for it not to be a treat whenever we do. Committed blogger that I am, I vowed to write my review on it before we even got to the theater.

The movie, based on a book by Micheal Morpurgo, is about the life of a young horse, named 'Joey' by his first owner, before and during The Great War (WWI). The story is episodic, as the horse passes through different hands, on both sides of the battlefront. It's very similar to other 'through the eyes of the animal' type stories, such as Call of the Wild or Black Beauty, and even seems to contain a direct visual reference to the later, as Joey befriends a beautiful black horse while in the English cavalry, and they spend most of the rest of the movie together.

I didn't really know much about the movie before going in, other than that it was, as the title so boldly indicated, about a war horse. The title itself seems to be the first fault of the story; it seemed too lofty and overly dramatic. It turns out the title pretty closely matches the tone of the movie as well.

Before seeing the movie, there were also a couple actors I knew to look for, and I ended up spending the first half hour scanning ever face. This turned out to be pointless, as both of the actors I knew were rather prominent characters, but I did end up noticing a lot of actors who I thought I recognized as well.

The reason why I spent the first thirty minutes of the movie scanning faces, however, was because there was little else to do. Not to seem patronizing, but story is actually very simple, and though the exposition given during this segment of the movie, while Joey is still with his first owner, is important, it's also something that I figured out in a couple minutes. Boy meets horse; boy and horse have special bond; horse is wonderful.

That last bit is actually one of two major messages of the movie, the other message being something about hope and optimism. Don't get me wrong; hope and optimism are great, and it's definitely nice seeing more optimistic movies in the theaters, especially ones that aren't specifically geared towards kids.

The 'hope and optimism' messages really seemed to be drowned out by the 'this horse is wonderful' message, however. Everything powerful and great throughout the story is done by the horse; the horse doesn't seem to me to inspire others to be great, he just amazes others by his own greatness.

That can be forgiven, however, when you remember that this movie is based off a children's book, with ten-year-old readers in mind. I also imagine this story might be well loved among the horse lovers, and everyone who enjoys anti-war sentiment. Not that I don't fall in either of those categories; I like horses as much as I like other animals, but while I agree that war is horrible, I'm not such a fan of pseudo-political pieces that try to convince us all of something most of us already agree with.

I'm also not a fan of personified animals, at least not when they're portrayed by real life animal 'actors'. Cartoons or books about talking animals is one thing; filming a real live animal and attempting to show it having human emotions seems really corny. I think the fact that Joey never talked made it even worse, because if he did talk (or even narrate, like Spirit, probably my favorite eyes-of-the-animal movie), it would have been obvious that they meant the horse to be unrealistic.

I was also a bit confused about the movie's rating. Yes, it was a war movie, but the war scenes were relatively mild; any character death, horse or human, was either portrayed off-screen, obscured, or shown as a nameless soldier falling mid-run, with no blood or gore at all. While this isn't really a children's movie per se, it is a movie I wouldn't mind my children watching, and it's definitely a movie children would be able to get something out of (I'm speaking here about older children, 8-12).

Despite everything negative I might say about his movie, it wasn't wholly bad. The uplifting message was nice, and it was definitely an entertaining story, albeit one lacking in real depth. I'd be willing to see this again, and I'd recommend seeing it at least once (though, note, if you're a crier, be prepared to cry). While it's a disappointing Spielberg movie, it's an OK movie overal.

Sherlock Reactions: The Reichenbach Fall

2012-01-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

My reaction to the third episode of Sherlock, split into two sections for both before and after seeing the episode. Remember, this reaction will be spoilerific, so if you haven't seen the episode yet I'd suggest reading my Sherlock 2-Season Review instead. You can also read my reactions for A Scandal in Belgravia and The Hounds of Baskerville.

BEFORE

After looking up gifs on Tumblr for the previous episode, The Hounds of Baskerville, I found a lot of people who were exceptionally anxious the third episode, The Reichenbach Fall. As I've probably mentioned before, I'm not really familiar with the original stories, so while I could tell that this was more than just the average 'season finale' anxiety, I wasn't sure what the cause was.

It didn't take too much research to find out that Reichenbach Falls is the location where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pushed Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty over a cliff to their death. Sherlock fans, then, are reasonably anxious that this episode might spell the end for both the character and the series. This anxiety is well founded for multiple reasons:
1 - British televisions series, I've noticed, have a tendency to end early, despite high ratings. This would never fly in America, where we milk the plot out of every show until ratings finally drop and the show is canceled. This means that British shows tend to have higher quality, but seemingly no guaranteed new seasons.
2 - Steven Moffat, who co-created the modernized Sherlock, seems to be known for his more daring plot moves. He wrote all the darker, 'gritter' episodes of Davies' Doctor Who, and it never seems beyond him to kill off a major character, no matter what color their shirt is.

I don't actually think Moffat will kill off his series here, however, mainly because Conan Doyle himself was unable to put his famous detective down. Fan outcry at the time (1893) forced Conan Doyle to bring Sherlock Holmes back, using Watson's limited storytelling perspective as a loop-hole. While I wouldn't put it past Moffat to actually do the deed and kill Sherlock off, it seems highly more likely that he'll just do what the original character did, and fake his death. This doesn't mean that Moffat wont try to convince us otherwise, however.

AFTER

So I'm a bit emotionally drained at the moment.

I'm writing this directly after seeing the episode, and on the one hand that means this episode is still really fresh in my mind, and on the other hand that means I'm a bit emotionally drained, and will probably remain so for quite a while. That's the price for investing in quality fiction.

First I want to mention that I was kind of expecting Irene Adler to at least make an appearance, and was surprised that she didn't. I guess this makes sense, as she originally only appeared in the one Conan Doyle story, A Scandal in Bohemia, but I'm just going to assume Moffat and Gatiss will be making more use out of her in the next season.

One person did come back, contrary to expectation: Anderson. He showed up in A Study in Pink and despite being a character everyone loved to hate, he hadn't made an appearance since then. I would say it was a joy to see him again, but I'd be lying; as per his character requirements, he showed up and I already wanted him to go away. Hopefully we'll get even more of him next season.

We know we're getting a third season because Steven Moffat himself tweeted about it after the episode aired. Moffat also trolled his twitter followers quite a bit before the episode came out, saying things like "Two tributes to the past, in tonight's Sherlock. True devotees will spot them. THROUGH THEIR TEARS!!!" and "Not long now! Remember it's just a TV show. Only the emotional damage is real," after posting a picture of two kittens "to help you through the night."

I can now confidently say that Moffat has great PR.

Some of my favorite moments, or moments that I just want to point out:

-Sherlock getting the hat as a gift from Lestrade and the other detectives. I just think it's great to see Sherlock disliking his own hat, especially since the audience and everyone else loves it so much.

-Introducing the Diogenes Club. Luckily someone on Tumblr managed to inform me on the subject before this episode aired, so I was able to have a bit of background knowledge before seeing the club formally introduced to the series. I love the quirky nature of this place, even if it plays such a small role in the narrative. The Diogenes Club also made a brief appearance in The Hounds of Baskerville, when Mycroft texts Sherlock to find out what's going on, even though we know he would rather call.

-Katherine Parkinson playing the investigative reporter ~~stalking~~ trying to question Sherlock. I just started watching The IT Crowd this last month so I recognized her voice right away. There was nothing totally exceptional about her character here, I was just excited to see her.

-Favorite quote: "Listen, I'm not actually that angry." I've been choosing a favorite quote from every episode so far, but this time it was a bit harder. I finally decided on this because of how funny it was as comic relief during a scene that I was still crying over.

At this point there's nothing left to talk about except for how emotional this episode was. I went in knowing that Sherlock would live (not just for the reasons above, but because I happened to see Moffat's tweet confirming the third season), yet I still ended up crying during the scene with John and Sherlock's final conversation.

Of course I was crying, though; so was Sherlock. That just about broke my heart, already tender after having to watch John at the beginning of the episode unable to speak through his emotion. Though I knew he wasn't really going to die, the fact that Sherlock was willing to, well, if not exactly die for his friends then at least risk his life pretending to die, was heart-wrenching, especially as he spends those last moments trying to convince John that it was all a lie.

I consoled myself during those moments by reminding myself that we still didn't know what Molly was doing. Molly in this episode was amazing; there aren't even words. I may have demoted her last week to 'Major Reoccurring Character' and I'm standing by that, but she is definitely one of my favorite characters, and it was wonderful seeing her in this episode speaking candidly, knowing exactly what it was Sherlock needed at those moments.

We can reasonably assume Sherlock needed Molly to help fake his death, but I was sad that we never got to see what exactly it was she ended up doing. However, I was primarily distressed that the episode would end with John never learning that Sherlock was indeed alive; this means that John will have to spend the entire season break thinking Sherlock is really dead (though the time in-universe will probably be much less).

This year's cliff-hanger was much worse than last season's cliff-hanger, if only by a small thread. I'm probably going to see these episodes again several times over before season 3 starts, and the show writers are going to have a tough time topping themselves.

I'm also wondering what they're going to do now that creepy Moriarty has offed himself. Most Sherlock Holmes adaptations portray Moriarty as the primary antagonist, though he only directly appeared in the one Conan Doyle story, so I think it'll be a bit strange having another enemy show up and try to appear more difficult to beat. I have a hard time believing they'll manage to be creepier (and there is the smallest chance that 'Jim from IT' will end up not being the real Moriarty).

Sherlock Reactions: The Hounds of Baskerville

2012-01-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

This is actually the first reaction I wrote, as it didn't occur to me to do so until just after watching this episode. You can also read my reactions on Scandal in Belgravia and The Reichenbach Fall. Remember, this post will be spoilerific, so if you haven't seen the episode I'd suggest reading my Sherlock Two-Season Review instead.

The second episode of this season continues on this season's trend of bringing out more emotion in our title character, something I'm sure everyone is loving. It also seems to be repeating the formula from the first season a bit, with the second episode taking a bit of a break from the main story of the first and third episodes.

I haven't seen anyone else online mention it, but immediately upon finishing this episode I noted that this was the first episode in which Molly Hooper didn't make an appearance. So far, she's been occupying that strange space between 'main character' and 'major reoccurring character', and now that she's finally missed an episode she can be pushed into the second category. That space is now solely occupied by Mrs. Hudson, who's definitely not on our main team but hasn't missed an episode yet, and DI Lestrade, who's one of the most important non-duo characters despite being completely absent from Season 1 Episode 2.

"Are you my mummy?"

This episode seemed to be trying for a more fearful atmosphere, which I'm sure would have worked on me if I hadn't been reading a horrible Creepypasta just the day before. There were a few scenes I found a bit frightful, the most frightening of which being when Sherlock broke down after finally seeing the Hound. There's something inherently terrifying about seeing a strong-minded character lose their cool.

Some of my favorite moments from this episode include, but are not limited to:

-John checking in at the bed and breakfast, when the innkeeper assumes he and Sherlock are together. John starts to say "No, we're not-" but stops himself when he realizes that the man isn't going to believe him anyway. You can tell John is getting tired of having to explain himself, and is resigning himself to not caring what other people think.

I love this scene especially because it made me realize how much I love Martin Freeman as an actor. There's a large pool of actors I consider 'good' and a somewhat smaller pool of actors I consider 'very good', but there are only a handful of actors who, I've noticed, have this amazing ability to let the audience know exactly what their character is thinking without having to say anything. Freeman pulls this off wonderfully not just in this scene but throughout the show and realizing this only makes me that much more excited for An Unexpected Journey next December.

-Sherlock climbing on top of the Dartmoor mound. It was visually impressive (as this series has a tendency to be), but also completely pointless, which strangely only made me like the shot more. Not only does he have a slightly better view up there, there's also the added bonus of feeling like you're the king of the world, which seems very Sherlock-esque to me.

-Favorite Quote: "Can we not do this?" "What?" "You being all mysterious, with your cheekbones, and turning your collar up so you look cool."

-Sherlock's attempts to apologize to John after yelling at him. Unless I'm mistaken, the only other apology we've seen from Sherlock was the one directed towards Molly in Scandal in Belgravia, and it's obvious he isn't very familiar or comfortable with asking for forgiveness. The scene is so awkward for Sherlock that it's almost cute, especially when he makes John the cup of coffee (which we only discover later was an attempt to drug him for an experiment), and John's reaction seems spot on.

-Learning Detective Inspector Lestrade's first name, Greg. In fact, everything about ~~Lestrade~~ Greg in this episode was great, except for maybe the fact that I couldn't help thinking he looked way too much like George Clooney. Why has no one else on the internet mentioned this yet?

DI Lestrade totally looks like George Clooney.

Something else I want to mention is the scene with Sherlock's Mind Palace. The start of the scene was humorous, with Sherlock kicking Dr. Stapleton out of her lab and John awkwardly trying to explain why, but the actual Mind Palace sequence itself was a bit... awkward. I love the on-screen text giving us a peek into Sherlock's mental process, but this sequence seemed a bit overdone.

Overall, however, another great episode.The writing for the first season was amazing and it doesn't seem to be lessening in quality at all this year. I'm a bit sad that we're only getting three episodes per season, but three episodes of Sherlock seems to be worth any other show's 24-episode run, and more.

I'm still following John's online blog, which I've discovered seems to be updating whenever a new episode airs. This means it probably wont update during the long breaks, which makes me sad, but oh well; it's interesting enough to read now, and if definitely adding a little something extra to the season run. You can go here to watch the [somewhat creepy] video Moriarty posted after hacking onto John's blog after the events of The Hounds of Baskerville, which is definitely making me more excited and anxious for The Reichenbach Fall to air.

Sherlock Reactions: A Scandal in Belgravia

2012-01-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

My reaction to the first episode of the new season of Sherlock (BBC) - you can also read my reactions to The Hounds of Baskerville and The Reichenbach Fall. This will be spoilerific, so if you haven't seen the episode yet I'd suggest reading my Sherlock 2-Season Review instead.

Totally off topic, but that smiley face on the wall reminds me of an orange portal.

I feel like there's so much to say about this episode that, instead of writing a well-piece-together, flowing reaction post, the only way to give you my thoughts would be to focus on specific scenes. I hope you forgive this somewhat haphazard blog entry.

-The first thing I want to note is this: They got Sherlock into the hat! I confess to being one of maybe a handful of Sherlock fans who hasn't actually read anything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - and ack! I can feel the fans hating me already! Though I haven't read any of them, I do know quite a bit about the original Sherlock Holmes stories, and the 'Sherlock Holmes hat' seems to be an especially iconic bit (along with the oft misquoted "Elementary...!"). I didn't actually think they'd incorporate the hat in this modernized version, primarily because it didn't really seem to fit with Benedict Cumberbatch's 'look'. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to see how they managed to pull it in as a disguise, and then popularize it for the rest of the episode.

-Favorite quote: "I always hear 'punch me in the face' when you're speaking, but usually it's subtext."

-About a week before Scandal in Belgravia aired, I sat down with a few friends to watch the previous season (in an attempt to introduce one of our friends to the series). At the cliffhanger ending, we raved about wanting to know what happened next and wishing the second season would open directly on the same scene, and I mentioned that I doubted it would.

I was pleasantly surprised to see, however, that we were able to pick up this season on exactly the same scene we left off on. Jim Moriarty, I confess, creeps the heck out of me, and for some reason him taking that phone call and bouncing off in the middle of that tense scene is not helping his case.

-Like probably many others, I'm really enjoying how they're exploring the emotion in this new season. First there's Sherlock's obvious jealousy of the popularity of John's blog (which you can actually read here!) While he loves to distance himself from others, it feels like he's losing his ability to do so after hanging around John for so long.

There's also, possibly my favorite, the scene with Molly at the Christmas party. It's one of the few times we get to see Sherlock being an idiot, making a complete fool of himself, and I felt so embarrassed for him when he realized what he'd done. Molly finally speaking up for herself was wonderful, but Sherlock apologizing to her felt like one of the most human things we've seen him do thus far.

As much as I love that scene, however, it pales compared to the emotion shown in a later scene, after Mrs. Hudson is held hostage. Sherlock, I'll remind you, returns to the flat after learning that Irene Adler is still alive, to see that their landlady had been attacked by the Americans who are after Irene. The first thing he does went confronted by the foreigners is to make sure that Mrs. Hudson is alright, and seeing that she's been hurt, Sherlock immediately connects her wounds to the leader of the group.

This scene, in my opinion, is powerful because of the concern Sherlock shows for Mrs. Hudson, to whom both he and John usually tend to be a bit rude. Sherlock, first and foremost, gets Mrs. Hudson out of harm's way, and refuses to let her leave his sight until John returns to the flat, at which point he directs them both to leave the room. After calling Lestrade, Sherlock then proceeds to toss the man out the window.

The man is already tied to a chair, and incapable of doing them any further harm. The only gain Sherlock gets by tossing the man out of the window is revenge for the harm he caused their landlady. His concern for Mrs. Hudson's safety can be written off as concern for the camera phone he's hiding on her, but tossing a man out of a window seems an awful long way to go for someone who we're supposed to believe has no emotions.

-In a similar vein to my previous point, is was nice to see how John and Sherlock's relationship had grown since the previous episode. A Study in Pink took place in January, so they've been living together for almost a year now, and you can definitely see how they've gotten used to each others' personalities. It was funny to see them in Buckingham Palace giggling like schoolgirls after Sherlock makes a quip at his brother Mycroft.

-I noticed a lot of people online writing that they had mixed feelings about Irene Adler's character, and I'll have to agree that I had mixed feelings about her too, but reading a lot of the reviews I'm compelled to disagree with what they have to say. A major argument people have been giving is that the show's usage of her is very sexist, an argument which almost always irks me. A major reason people have for saying this is the fact that, despite being a smart, strong-willed character, she is forced to plead Sherlock for help at the end of the episode,.

This seems, to me, a very shallow argument. Virtually everyone in the entire main cast, with a few rare surprising exceptions, has had to plead Sherlock for help at one point or another (the exceptions being Molly and Sgt Sally; both, I note, female), and Sherlock himself has had to ask for help in turn. Irene Adler is different and important because she manages to outsmart and defeat Sherlock, albeit temporarily; being at least in part an antagonist, however, it goes against a fiction-writer's instinct to let her completely defeat him. No one, not even the arch-villain Moriarty, has been able to do that yet.

Picture taken from this interesting article about Conan Doyle's original Irene,
who is more similar to her modern incarnation than some might think.

There have also been, apparently, a number of complaints on the 'nudity' scene, by which I assume they're referring to the scene in which Sherlock and Irene first meet. I'm also assuming that the scene I saw was the same scene everyone else saw, and in case any of the producers are actually reading my blog I'll come out now and say that I absolutely loved that scene. Sherlock and Irene both put a lot of effort into preparing for their first direct confrontation, but Irene manages to one-up him wonderfully, totally throwing him off balance and defying all expectations by appearing absolutely naked. As long as the audience doesn't see anything, I don't see how it's any different from Mycroft pulling off Sherlock's bedsheet in an earlier scene.

My favorite part of that scene has to be the one-screen question marks that appear as Sherlock tries to figure out something, anything about her. I love how he looks over at John in comparison, instantly seeing everything there is to know, then looks back at Irene and has no idea what her story is.

-If there's anything controversial I could find in this episode, it would have to be the scene after Sherlock confirms what he thinks is Irene's dead body. For the first time in we don't know how long, he accepts a cigarette from his brother, and, I'm going to say it, the shot with Benedict Cumberbatch smoking looked pretty cool. I don't smoke, don't intend to smoke, and have never really been tempted to start; personally, I feel like myself and probably a large portion of the audience could watch that scene and focus on the emotion of the shot.

And there is a lot of emotion behind the shot; Sherlock thinks 'that woman' is dead, and it's upset him enough to break his non-smoking rule, which says quite a bit about his character. There is probably at least a small portion of the audience, however, people who have been tempted to smoke or people who are trying to break a smoking habit, for whom I felt pretty awkward. Sorry guys; you're going to have to suffer tremendous cravings just so we can get another awesome shot of Cumberbatch being cool.

I'm also a huge fan of how brotherly Sherlock and Mycroft seemed to get in this episode.

-Like many others, I was also not very impressed by the last scene, not because it depicted Irene once again needing Sherlock to come in and save her, but because it seemed unnecessarily blunt. Though Mycroft informs us that she is dead, there were enough hints that Irene might still be alive that I think the directors could have foregone the awkward flashback in favor of a more subtle scene.

These last two points are somewhat minor in the larger context, however, and if those are the only problems I have with this episode then I call it a success. I was extremely excited for this episode, and it did not disappoint, even managing to bring in some unexpected awesomeness. Sherlock was recently added to my list of favorite TV shows, and it doesn't look like it'll be leaving anytime soon.

Phil the Flying Shark

2012-01-13T13:35:00.000-08:00

I'm not a huge bragger; I don't find joy in bragging about things that I have or so on. In fact, despite being a generally happy person, I feel a bit awkward whenever I talk about things that make me happy.

I'm going to break that habit for a moment, however, to explain how incredibly stoked I am about my new pet flying shark.

Sorry for the low quality - cell phone cameras, y'know.

Sometime last November my aunt called us to chat with my mom, as they do occasionally, and in that conversation she mentioned something called 'Air Swimmers'. I don't know exactly what my aunt said, but my mom mentioned the name and turned pointedly towards me, asking if I'd ever heard of them. As is usually the case on a week-day evening, I had a computer in my lap, so after telling mom that, no, I didn't know what an Air Swimmer was, I decided to google the phrase.

The first result was the Air Swimmer website. You can easily tell what they are just by seeing the pictures that pop up, but I was in a good mood, and thus a bit overdramatically shocked by what I was seeing. In a state of denial, I clicked to watch the product video.

If you didn't watch the video here are the highlights: THE FISH FLY.

Imagine me sitting there, watching this video with my hands over my mouth because of how amazed I was, while my mom tried to simultaneously hold a conversation with her sister and figure out what was wrong with me. When the video finished my mom, still on the phone, turned to ask me what they were, and all I could say to her was "THEY FLY, MOM. THEY'RE FLYING FISH."

Mom watched the video as well and seemed pretty amused, and when her conversation was finished she asked me, probably joking, if we should get one for Christmas (we were hosting the big family Christmas this winter, so we've been on the lookout for things to entertain everybody with). The obvious answer was "YES."

I was actually a bit shocked when mom seemed to be serious about the proposal. I guess she and my aunt had been talking about getting one for Christmas or something, because the next question she asked me was which one we should get.

This also seemed obvious to me: the shark. The flying clownfish looked nice and all, but who would want a flying clownfish when they could have a flying shark? The shark not only reminded me of Doctor Who's A Christmas Carol (appropriate, if we were going to be buying this for Christmas), but also of a friend of mine who has an affinity for sharks, and who would get a kick out of seeing it when she came home from school for Christmas break.

Unfortunately I never got to show off the shark to her. While we got the shark air swimmer timely enough, we realized we would need some quality grade helium to fly it with, and we never managed to get it filled in time for our Christmas weekend.

We did, as I mentioned in an earlier post, managed to get it filled in time for New Years Eve, though! My mom was organizing a big New Years Eve party at our church, and thought everyone would get a kick out of seeing our flying shark. She had it filled and assembled early in the day and handed it off to my dad to test out. At one point during the party, my mom asked the DJ to play the theme from Jaws while my dad flew the shark in from an open door, circled it around the room for a few minutes, and flew him back out again.

It was sometime soon after that when I realized the shark's name was Phil. Bored with the party, I ducked out towards the end to test the shark out for myself. After flying him around for a bit, it was easy to start feeling affectionate towards him (at least for me; I feel affection for a lot of inanimate objects). Somewhere between trying to figure out the controls and trying to stuff him, still filled with helium, into the passenger seat of my dad's truck, I started calling him Phil without even realizing it.

The controls for Phil are surprisingly intuitive. One thumb of the radio controller is a joystick labeled 'left' and 'right'; moving this joystick moves the tail, which will either turn in or, if used in quick succession, propel him forward. The other thumb is a joystick labeled 'rise' and 'dive'; moving this shifts a small weight on Phil's belly either forward or backward. While he's hovering the weight movement doesn't do much, but shifting the weight backward while he's moving causes his nose to poke upwards, the rest of the shark to follow.

When we got home from the New Year's Eve party, we placed Phil, tethered to the antennae of the controller, over the dining table in the kitchen. This proving to be in everyone's way, we moved him to the dining table in our front room, where he hovered for about a week.

We couldn't release the helium from Phil without risking a puncture in the material, so he's been slowly deflating since then, lowering until he was almost sitting on top of the table. We moved him around a bit more, to the hallway by our desktop computer, to a smaller table in our living room sitting area, and finally to my bedroom, where he now rests mostly on the floor.

I was surprised by how much Megabyte didn't seem to mind him.

I've been calling Phil my pet flying shark, and he really does feel like one, even if he is more boring than my cat (Megabyte at least cuddles and wakes me up in the middle of the night). I'm a bit sad to see him losing air, knowing one day he'll start wrinkling up and finally lie flat on the floor, to be put back in his box. I console myself with the knowledge that, come the next major party, I'll definitely be able to see my pet shark fly again.

DeMille's Lost City

2012-01-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

As someone who uses the internet frequently, I'm always picking up on random pieces of information, which works out as great fodder for irl conversations or wayward blog posts. Some of these facts or stories that I pick up are amazing, humorous, or bizarre. Sometimes it's all of the above.

In 1983, an amateur filmmaker, following a cryptic clue left in an old book, found an ancient city, complete with sphinxes and a 20-ton statue of the Pharaoh, buried beneath the sand dunes of not Egypt, but Southern California. I'm not making any of this up. The man who made the discovery was Peter Brosnan, the book was the autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, and the ancient city was the complete set to his silent classic, The Ten Commandments.

Many are familiar with the 1956 classic The Ten Commandments, but Cecil B. DeMille, who directed that movie, also directed an earlier version in 1923. He was given something upwards of $500,000 by Paramount Pictures to recreate ancient Egypt as he saw fit for his grand religious epic, back in a day when an average film only cost $100,000 to make.

$500,000 wasn't enough for DeMille, who shipped tons of wood, plaster, and other building materials to the Nipoma Dunes in California (~2 hours out of Los Angelos). He hired an 'army' of construction workers to recreate the entire city within a month, as authentic as possible, including four 35-foot-tall statues of the Pharaoh Ramses, 21 sphinxes, and city gates over a 100 feet tall, with 5,000 animals kept in a corral nearby. The money DeMille was given, as we might expect, ran out partway through filming, and seeing how extravagant his spending had been up until then, all the funders backed out, refusing to pay for anything more.

The 1920s classic was saved by a favor called on one of DeMille's personal friends, who happened to be a co-founder of the Bank of America. A.P. Giannini invested another $500,000 into the production, giving DeMille a production cost somewhere between $1.2-1.4 million (which, as I mentioned earlier, was back in a day when the average production cost was a little over $100,000).

The movie was filmed, and grossed over $4 million, but that's not the end of the story.

I don't know if it was because the cost of shipping the set back to Hollywood was too high, or if DeMille didn't want to give other film producers access to the enormously expensive set, or, more likely, a mix of both. In any case, DeMille decided not to have the set shipped back, and instead hired bulldozers to bury to work underneath the sand dunes, apparently without telling the property owners or anyone in Hollywood about it.

DeMille did make a reference to his buried set in his Autobiography, which Peter Brosnan managed to pick up. Tracing the clues left, Brosnan found the set in 1983, and miraculously it was still mostly intact.

Brosnan has been trying since then to raise enough money to have the entire set uncovered and preserved for Hollywood Heritage. Unfortunately, no one in Hollywood actually seems too interested in the project, and despite a $10,000 grant from Bank of America honoring their history with DeMille's set, The Friends of the Lost City have been unable to raise enough money to save the set.

The good news is that, as the set is buried beneath dry sand dunes and not organism-rich dirt, the rate of decomposition is greatly slowed. The bad news is that no one seems to care much for preserving the great piece of film history. We can only hope that, thousands of years from now, scientists will rediscover the Egyptian city and be terribly confused.

A 6-foot wide horse's head from the city walls (the bulge to the left is the horse's eye,
and the man's right hand is in the horse's mouth.

(You can see more on the city by visiting the Friends of the Lost City website.)

Notes to Friends: Part 2

2012-01-07T17:24:00.001-08:00

Part 1 can be found here.

Dear Treadmill,
I know we've had a sort of on-again-off-again kind of relationship, and I hope I'm not confusing you. To be blunt, you're really boring. I'll keep hanging out with you because I know I'm supposed to, but, despite how rude it may seem, I'm going to be texting Laptop the entire time.
Sorry,
Kenna

Dear Piano,
I hope you don't think I'm ashamed of you; I'm not ashamed of you. In fact, I make sure everyone knows about our deep love for each other! I'm just a bit embarrassed to be showing that love when others are around. Don't worry; I'll fit in extra practice time whenever I can, and when I'm confident enough we'll show everyone how beautiful you are!
With much love,
Kenna

Dear Pool,
In case you ever wondered why we stopped hanging out, it's because going to see you takes more effort on my part than I'm willing to spare. I hope that doesn't come off as rude, but seriously - I have to get all dressed up just to see you? Also, you're a bit high-maintenance. Sorry, but I don't think this friendship is going anywhere.
Sincerely,
Kenna

New Year's Traditions

2012-01-05T17:23:00.000-08:00

I may be a week late, but Happy New Year everyone! 2012 is a year that I know many people have been looking forward to.

Personally, I'm not very big on New Year's Resolutions; everybody jokes about how we all forget them within a couple of weeks, and it's true. I agree that goal-setting is a worthy activity, but waiting until that specific day to start them seems a bit arbitrary.

As a family, we've also never been pretty big on the whole 'New Year's Eve' thing either. I hardly ever remember staying up to cheer on the New Year, or watching the ball drop in New York. A friend introduced me to the idea of eating black-eyed peas for good luck, but I don't think my family has ever done anything of significance for luck in the new year. Generally, I'd stay up late (as a normal teenager on break) and listen to our neighbors making noise before finally nodding off an hour later.

I do have one tradition, however, that I started for myself a few years ago. In Japan they call it Hatsuhinode - watching the first sunrise of the year. I'm not sure exactly where I picked it up, but I decided to start watching the first sunrise as a way to personally celebrate the calendar rollover.

To make it more interesting, I forbade myself from falling asleep the night before the New Years Sunrise; I would see the sun set and rise in one complete wakefulness cycle. I believe this has been the third or fourth year I've been doing this, and so far I've managed to make it the entire night every year.

For those first few years, however, I couldn't drive myself anywhere, so I had to get my dad (who wakes up early anyways) to drive me out to a good spot. I'm surrounded by mountains where I live, and there are no really tall buildings, so it isn't impossible to find a clear, unobstructed view of the Eastern horizon. Dad agreed to take me out, so we'd look up what time the sun was expected to rise and drive to a good spot ten minutes early, then sit in the car talking while we waited.

This year was a bit different in multiple respects. For one, this was the first year that I could drive myself out to watch the sunrise, letting dad sleep in if he so chose. Also, this year my mom was asked to host a New Year's Eve party at our church, which meant I would have to be helping out. I also have a ton of friends away at college this year, with only a short window to see them when they are home, and I could not pass up spending most of the Saturday before New Year's at a friend's house; these last two points add up to me not being able to sleep in late, as I normally would like.

That evening we had the New Years party, and I spent the better part of it sitting on my own, or guarding the various booths, or reading the Unabridged Monte Cristo, or chasing a rat (a story for another time). We didn't get home until about 11:00 or 11:30, and it seemed like only a little while after that when our neighbors started cheering and we realized it must finally be 2012.

We bought a flying shark for the party. His name is Phil.

My parents went to bed, after mom watched an episode of her British Costume Drama, Lark Rise to Candleford, and I spent most of the evening/morning either reading, eating, playing Plants versus Zombies, or watching The IT Crowd.

The sun was 'scheduled' to rise at around 6:40-6:50, and I actually lost track of time before looking down and realizing it was time for me to leave, if I wanted to make it to a good spot before the first rays of the sun came out. I hurried to get dressed only to discover I had no idea where the car keys were.

Since I've been driving, mom has been having a hard time getting used to the idea of giving up the keys to me. I completely understand, but I was running late that morning and felt bad digging into her purse while she was trying to sleep. It turned out that she had mislaid her keys somewhere, and as I didn't have time to find them, I ended up taking my dad's.

I also didn't have my camera so these are all pictures I found online.

I was also supposed to wake dad up in case he wanted to come along as well (he sleeps in on Sundays, otherwise he would have already been up), but as I was running late there wasn't time for that either. I managed to head out the door, any ounce of tiredness gone during my early-morning panic, with just enough time to spare.

A friend of mine had suggested a certain place to drive out to, where there was a clear view above our freeway. It was a bit weird, driving out that early in the morning after having not slept at all the night before, but it's also a really nice feeling. I parked the car by a field a little ways out of town, listening to the music on my radio jump drive.

I don't normally get to see the sun rise, so maybe it's always like this, but the first sunrise of the new year is beautiful. Apparently you're not supposed to look directly into the sun, but I couldn't help it; at that particular angle, the sun has a pure golden look, something you rarely ever get to see. We don't really get clouds where I live, and clouds are what I think make sunsets so pretty, but that sunrise, unobstructed by clouds, was so much more beautiful.

I drove home and collapsed into my bed before having to wake up a couple hours later for church. Definitely worth it.

December Update

2011-12-06T11:43:00.001-08:00

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I should be back to regular updates this week! I already missed Monday, however, so we'll see how far that goes.

Regarding NaNoWriMo - I won! Again. This was my fourth year in a row winning, and my final word-count was somewhere around 100,211. In case you're wondering, that's about 139 single-spaced pages on my word processor, which might translate to about 350-400 pages in a paperback. It's very, very rough, with copious misspellings, grammatical errors, and plot points that I only remembered to add in halfway through, and are thus out of context.

I sort of feel like this has been my hardest NaNoWriMo yet, though I'm sure I've felt that every year. Still jobless, I doubled my word goal from 50k to 100k, and managed to work away at it pretty easily for the first week or so. During the second and third weeks, I remembered that a particular video game that I had been waiting for would be coming out before the end of the month, and in order to give me some days off to play it, I averaged about a thousand words extra every day.

By November 21st, the day I finally got my game (you can read my review-of-sorts about it here), I was almost two days ahead of schedule. This was when the month started to get more difficult for me. I took those days off, writing only a few words, and had to force myself to get back to writing every day.

It's a lot like how, having not written a blog post in a long time, I have to force myself to get back to writing these. When you've been doing it for a while, it comes naturally, but after taking a break it's hard to get back into the swing of things.

Now that NaNoWriMo is over with, I should be writing online more regularly. Yes, I am still working on beating this video game, but I know most of you wont find that a very adequate excuse.

I'm kind of exciting that it's now December, the last month of the year. December is my favorite month, because it holds both my birthday and Christmas, and it's the start of the cold season in the desert. I wore a jacket to class on Tuesday for the first time since probably February. I'm a fan of the cold, if you haven't noticed, though I'm sure moving to Antarctica will still be a major shock (When I finally get there).

The McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Just a bit colder than our desert, I think.

A major goal this month is to get back to blogging regularly, a task I think will be easier if I can find my Blog Idea Book (It's probably on the floor in my room somewhere). I've got some interesting things in store for you, including more fiction reviews, embarrassing stories from my past, and a look at corrupt British politicians!

My Tumblog is now running smoothly, though it did provide a major distraction to my NaNo writing. I'm considering making a Facebook page to link with this blog, but as long as most of my readers still know me personally, that seems a bit redundant.

Looking into the next year, there are some exciting things ahead. I posted this on Tumblr already, but looking at the movies coming out in the next twelve months, I can already see eight that I'm excited for - and six of those eight happen to fall in the month of December.

First we have The Hunger Games, coming out March 23. I was a fan of the books, though apparently not as big a fan as most, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they're doing with the movie. Then on May 4th The Avengers is coming out; I may have said it before, but I'm not really that into comic book heroes. That being said, I'm super excited for The Avengers, to see how Marvel ties all their comic book hero movies together. I can't imagine it turning out bad, either, since Joss Whedon is directing and contributing to the screenplay.

December, in no particular order, sees the release of Sherlock Holmes: Game of ~~Thrones~~ Shadows (I keep accidentally saying that, and I hope I'm not the only one. I'm even more excited for this now that I've discovered Stephen Fry is playing the role of Mycroft, a character I admittedly didn't even know existed until just over a month ago), the movie adaptation of Life of Pi and a version of Great Gatsby starring Leonardo Dicaprio as the title character.

We'll also get to see the first half of the movie adaptation of The Hobbit, titled The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Lately Hollywood has been splitting up movies into two (a la the final Harry Potter book), and while I'm not really a fan of that, I think it makes since in The Hobbit's case. There's a lot going on in that book, and two movies is probably the only way to fit it all in comfortably.

World War Z is also coming out that month, and while I’m excited, I’m also more than a little apprehensive. This could be awesome, or it could be terrible, but it wont be like the book, because it’s practically impossible to do that (unless they tried to make it a Mockumentary). I already wrote a review on this amazing book, and no matter what they do with the movie, I'm planning on going to see it.

Also, it turns out they’re making a new Les Miserables movie, with Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean and Anne Hathaway as Fantine (no word on Cosette yet). I have only see Liam Neeson's version of Les Miserables, but it's a great story, and even though I just heard about it, it's already high on my list of must-see-2012. This one will actually be a musical, so to prepare I'm probably going to want to find an older musical version on Netflix.

All this seems like good fodder for reviews next year, and I'm excited. I have more plans for the next twelve months, but first let's get through December 2011, shall we?

And Christmas!

Week One with Skyward Sword

2011-11-27T13:04:00.001-08:00

I don't think I'm going to be blogging this entire game, but I definitely wanted to give you all my week one reactions, especially since, a) I've been waiting and saving over two years for this game, and b) I know quite a few people who haven't been able to play it yet, and have been asking me what I think. This'll be long, and I apologize in advance - but there are many pretty pictures to look at!

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword came out last Sunday, and I got it last Monday because I don't shop on Sundays. On Monday mornings I have an American Literature class, but this game was all I could think of the whole time. Gamestop, the store from which I preordered the game, doesn't open until 10, so when I got home at 9:30 the only thing to do was wait.

I've never preordered a game before, so I wasn't 100% sure what I was supposed to do. The store said they would call me when it was ready to be picked up, but by 11:00 I decided to just head over and see if I could get it. I've also never been inside a video game store, so that in and of itself was an experience; the guys were nice, and there weren't very many people there that early in the morning.

The guy helping me out took a minute to figure out where their Skyward Sword bundles were, which worried me, but I finally got it and paid and drove home as fast as the speed limit would allow. I couldn't resist the urge to touch the game on the seat next to me and pull it out of the bag when I hit a red light, admiring the shiny gold cover.

I paid 20 extra dollars in order to get the Zelda 25th Anniversary Golden Wiimote bundled with the game. I refuse to play this game now with our normal black wiimote.

When I got home, I felt obliged to take a series of Unboxing photos and post them on Facebook. Since my camera has been acting up lately, and my mom took hers to class, I had to take these photos with my phone. The quality's not great, but I was kind of anxious to just get started on the game, so I didn't care.

I took the jacket off the Golden Wiimote, because I never had a need for them.

After syncing up the new Golden Wiimote and starting the game, I was treated to the opening sequence, which goes over the creation myth of Skyloft and explains who the Goddess is to the viewer (you can watch that intro sequence here). Skyloft is the hometown of Link, the protagonist of every game in the series, and his childhood friend Zelda, who is, I was surprised to find out, not a princess in this game.

The game starts, as most games do, with a tutorial sequence, letting the player get used to the controls. We are being summoned by Zelda, who is supposed to play the role of the Goddess in some sort of Skyloftian ceremony, and she wants us to practice our flying some more before we have to join the pre-ceremony race.

Zelda's Loftwing bird rudely wakes up Link.

I'll get into the flying later; for now, I want to explore the Knight's Academy, which seems to be a sort of school all the Skyloft children go to in hopes of becoming knights. What these knights do, I'm not sure, because even now, a week later, the islands in the sky seem to be the most peaceful place ever. For the first few minutes, I run around, talking and trying to learn the names of the different people in the Knights Academy.

View of Skyloft with the Statue of the Goddess in the background.

I spent probably the first half hour or more of the game just exploring Skyloft. Luckily the bazaar and most of the houses were cut off, so I couldn't waste too much time doing this, but this also helped me get used to the controls. Link kind of jogs around in this game, which is fast enough, I guess, but if I want him to run I have to hold down the A button, which uses up Stamina. Stamina isn't new to gaming, but it's new to Zelda, and I kind of like it; it's realistic, because in previous games we've had Link rolling all the way across Hyrule Field without even getting dizzy. The Stamina meter adds a layer of complexity that needs to be accounted for when strategizing, something I find fun, personally.

I also want to note the artwork used in this game. I've been fawning over screenshots for the past two or three months, but finally being able to explore this giant watercolor painting for myself felt wonderful. I especially loved how things in the distance would look, splotchy and vague as a real painting would, and then how they'd become clearer and more well defined as I got closer. This art style is a mix of Twilight Princess' realism and Wind Waker's bright cell shading, and I don't think they could have done a better job.

I eventually make it over to where Zelda is waiting and move on with the plot, but we're still in Tutorial mode, I soon realize. At this point, it turns out that my Loftwing bird is missing (we find this out in probably the most horrible way imaginable, but I'll leave you to see that for yourself). Having read up on the game before hand, I'm already suspicious of Groose, another Knight Academy student who seems to have the hots for Zelda and, therefore, hates me (er, Link) with a passion.

Deku Baba are one particular enemy
you have to attack just right

My inkling is correct, and I have to go pick up the first sword of the game before I can free my Loftwing. Picking up the sword activates a sword tutorial, and this is where the game's controls become really important. As advertised, the WiiMotion Plus utilizes 1:1 swordplay, which is a fancy way of saying that when I swing my sword, Link matches my movements exactly. The controls take a while to get used to, because I'm familiar with Twilight Princess' 'flick your wrist to swing your sword' style.

Because the WiiMotion Plus is so precise, it takes a bit of readjusting, not just for me but for my wiimote as well. See, as I'm playing through the game, I'm adjusting how I'm sitting, and the WM+ (I'm abbreviating) attempts to adjust with me - which is cool, except that it doesn't always do it right, and sometimes I end up with my wiimote pointing directly towards the screen, but the cursor drifting somewhere off to the side. This is easy to fix; literally, I hit one button, and the wiimote readjust so that wherever I'm pointing now becomes the center of my controls. Essentially, this means I can be sitting sideways, waving my sword hand off to the side somewhere, and the WM+ will pick it up as if I was facing forward.

This takes a bit of getting used to, but it translates into some of the best controls ever. I love Nintendo, but I hate having to point my wiimote at the screen all precise and everything. With Skyward Sword, I will literally never have to. If only the Wii Netflix app had the same function.

I finally get my bird back, and we jump into a flying tutorial. I have a bit of beef with this; for one, none of the Loftwings seem to have names. It's always "Link's Loftwing" or "Zelda's Loftwing" or so on. I believe this could be fixed. Also, this flying tutorial is way too short. Flying the Loftwing is a bit confusing until you know what you're going, and I feel like this tutorial only gives you a taste of what you're supposed to be doing. This can also get messed up if your WM+ is incorrectly adjusted but, again, this literally only takes one button press to fix.

There's a bit more plot and then the Loftwing race starts, and you're thrown out into the sky with your bird, racing against Groose and a couple other Knights Academy students to be the first to catch the Golden ~~Snitch~~ Bird. I was stressing out at this point, because I had little experience with controlling my bird. I'm assuming that there's no way for you to lose this race, because I did pretty terribly and I still won.

I wont go over everything that happens next, except to say that, basically, Zelda gets snatched out of the sky by some evil thing and we are visited by a strange blue girl in the middle of the night. The blue girl leads you to the Statue of the Goddess, at the base of which lies the Skyward Sword, which you must use to free Zelda. The blue girl is Fi, an almost machine-like entity bounded to the sword who reminds me of Midna and GLaDOS, if GLaDOS was actually nice and not trying to kill you.

THOSE EYES.

Zelda's father, who we met earlier, is the Knight's Academy Headmaster, named Gaebora (appropriate enough, because he looks like a freaky human version of Ocarina of Time's Kaepora Gaebora). He seems to know more about what's going on than we do, and urges us to go fulfill our destiny or something.

After all this, the tutorial stage is over. We have free reign to explore Skyloft, and as any good Zelda player, I do that for the next half hour instead of actually going out to find Zelda, snagging my first Empty Bottle and trying to figure out the names of a few more of the island's residence. This is hard, because nobody has their names displayed when they speak. I believe this is one of the few things turn-based RPGs have on Zelda.

The bulb on his back turns into a puff of tall grass when he wants to hide.

On that first Monday I visited the first major area of the game, Faron Woods, met my first new Zelda race (The Kikwi's, a distant relative of the Korok/Kokiri, and possibly Deku Scrubs), and got through the entire temple, stopping just before the Boss door because I didn't want mom or dad to be around as I fought the boss.

The boss the the game's first dungeon was, as I suspected, Demon Lord Ghirahim, who is simultaneously freaky and awesome. We had only seen a glimpse of him up until this point, and even now, a week later, I still know very little about him or his back story. Ghirahim styles himself the Lord of all the demons on Surface (which is what the Skyloftians call the land below), and fights us only because he was too slow to catch up to Zelda, and now he's bored. This battle is actually pretty difficult; Ghirahim has a habit of catching my sword point and disappearing is a puff of diamonds. He's easy enough for me to beat, eventually, and disappears after giving me access to a new heart container.

Some people have been complaining that Skyward Sword starts you off with six hearts instead of three, but in my opinion it's completely necessary. It seems like every enemy does a full heart of damage per attack, and while there are plenty of hearts around to refill your meter, it's still easy to get depleted really fast. I pick up my heart container reward for this first battle, having never had a desire to do a three-heart run and with no desire to even attempt a six-heart run in this game.

We didn't find Zelda here, however; it seems she's met up with someone who's helping her escape the demons and move along to fulfill her own destiny (we're supposed to be doing something big, but no one is telling me what that is yet. I'm sure a couple people are annoyed by this, but I find this more intriguing; instead of spending the entire game constantly working towards the same goal, I need to work to solve some immediate problems first and move on to figuring out what's really going on from there).

Bird Statues dot the land, and these give us the ability to save or return to the sky practically whenever we want to. Though most of the plot is happening below the clouds, Skyloft never feels too far away. Once I get used to traveling by bird, flying around the sky because super easy, traveling from one corner of the map to another in about a minute (all without having to change the wind direction!) At this point, I need to return to Skyloft before I can move on to the next area of the game. Instead of progressing, I, well trained Zelda player that I am, look around for Sidequests, but there didn't seem to be any at this point.

What there does seem to be a lot of in this game is falling. In order to get onto my Loftwing, Link has to run off the edge of Skyloft, falling out into the open sky for a few seconds before the bird catches him. There's also no way to land; if I need to get off my Loftwing and on to one of the various floating islands, I have to jump of at just the right moment and control Link's fall, pulling out a parachute just in time. This also gets easier with time, but I still feel like I'm going to die whenever I plunge off the edge of an island.

The second area is Eldin Volcano, where I meet the second new race of the game, the Mogma. Seriously, Skyward Sword seems to be introducing an unequal share of new races to interact with, and so far I haven't met any Zora and only a single Goron (I'm starting to think he's going to end up being the only Goron in the game). The Mogma are mole-like creatures who love to dig for treasure and talk in a funny, overly-familiar way which I love.

I got stuck at Eldin Volcano, for the first time, spending probably an hour wondering around before finally looking for a clue up at Skyloft and feeling stupid that I forgot I could roll bombs on the ground as well as tossing them in the air.

You also get these nice cheat lines while rolling or throwing.

That isn't to say Skyward Sword is easy; my major beef with Twilight Princess was that it was way too easy, I passed through all the dungeons no big deal, and only had minor trouble with some of the boss fights. Skyward Sword implements a lot of more situational puzzles, making it enjoyably challenging the whole way through.

Girahim finally showed up again in the boss room to the second dungeon, but annoyed at us for making him too late to catch up with Zelda again, he decided not to fight Link and instead sets a crazy large fire-rock-spider thing on us. This fight is pretty difficult; I know what I'm supposed to be doing pretty much the whole time, but it's not easy to do it, because the boss moves faster than I expect. It takes me a while to finally get into the grove of the fight and take him down (at which point I remind myself that it's only going to get harder from here).

This was all last week, before Thanksgiving for the most part. I haven't had much time to play this weekend, but I've gotten up to just before the boss room of the dungeon at Lanayru Desert. The Desert also proved a bit difficult for me, and I felt stupid for not realizing what I was supposed to do next. There's no new race here, except for a a bunch of robots built for the once extensive mine.

I spent the week before this game's release writing extra words every day for NaNoWriMo, in order to have time off to play, and I have been having trouble getting back into the writing groove ever since I started this game. My final verdict? Skyward Sword is awesome. The controls are a bit complicated to explain, but they're ridiculously smooth and easy to use; the artwork is gorgeous, and yet more proof that you don't need Bethesda's perfect realism to make beautiful scenery; flying around on my Loftwing is exhilerating, now that I've gotten used to controlling it, and only in part because of the epic music that plays while I do so.

My in-game map, more or less, at the moment.

I've got most of my in-game map filled in, and yet I'm positive I'm not even halfway through yet; at some point I know I'm supposed to be getting a harp, and I don't even have half of my game equipment items. I'm already a week in, but now that NaNoWriMo is almost over, I'm sure it wont take me that much longer to finally beat the game.

I painted my first watercolor in years in honor of this game and it's special graphics style, and I've changed my profile picture on every social media site I use to match. You can see a thumbnail of the painting to the side - this is supposed to be me, holding the Golden Wiimote, which I'm imagining to be Fi's Sword. I'm quite pleased with how it came out, and I wont be changing it until I'm finished with the game.

So far, Skyward Sword has the makings to be one of the best Zelda titles yet. Instead of trying to come up with some fancy, well-worded ending for this blog, I'm just going to start playing again.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

2011-11-16T01:51:00.000-08:00

According to my Tumblog, which I updated sometime right after starting the book, I spent a little over a month trying to read Bram Stoker's Dracula.

In the book's defense, I have also been working on NaNoWriMo, so I've had my mind on other things, but as I also had most of the month of October to try to read this extremely well known novel, I don't think this escuse really counts. As it turns out, Dracula really is just one of those stories it takes me an unnecessarily long time to wade through.

Normally when writing a review, I start with a brief summary of the story at hand; I would skip that this time, citing Dracula as such a well known story that you shouldn't need a summary, but take a moment to think about it: What do you really know about the story of Dracula? Unless you've read the book or are in some way better informed than I was, I'm going to assume it's very little. I started this book with a basic understanding of the key elements, and got a few pages in before realizing that I actually had no idea what the story was.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is about a man named Johnathan Harker - but it's also about his fiance, Mina, and her best friend Lucy, and a bunch of guys who are in love with Lucy, and some old Dutch doctor, all of whom are being terrorized by a vampire named Count Dracula.

Side note - Oldman's Dracula is apparently
the only Dracula who even attempted
to fit the description in the novel.

The story actually opens up with Johnathan, however, who is visiting the Count's estate in Transylvania to help him purchase a house in England. This section of the novel is written totally from the journal entries of Johnathan, who knows nothing about who the Count really is, though it's obvious from the writing that the reader is supposed to have figured it out early on. Within the first 30 pages, Johnathan kind of realizes what's going on (though he doesn't make the leap to 'vampire') and finds that there's no way for him to escape.

About ten pages later, we're introduced to vampire chicks, women who Dracula apparently turned into vampires as well and who almost kill Johnathan. This part stunned me at first; how long have there been vampire chicks in Dracula, and why does no one ever reference them when speaking about the story?

(Having read the book, I now know the answer; it's because they don't do anything. As far as I can tell, they appear at the beginning to give the slower readers a chance to catch up, and are only referenced again as part of the clean up.)

Johnathan finally stops writing, so we assume he either is killed or escapes, and the prose jumps to his fiance, Mina. The rest of the novel is written entirely through letters, telegraphs, and journal entries from any of the various characters, first giving us tedious exposition on themselves before something mysterious starts to happen to Lucy, Mina's best friend, 60 pages later.

The story continues on, slowly and tediously, from there.

Despite the screenshots, there's virtually none of this in the actual book.

I'm not a big fan of the 'epistolary novel' way of telling the story. When done correctly, journal entries or letters can be an interesting and useful way of getting information to the readers, but in Stoker's Dracula it just felt like a gimmick. This means many unrealistically over-detailed entries, where Mina recalls to perfection every word spoken in a pivotal conversation, as well as giving us a two paragraph description of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. At least twice, someone, after writing a well thought out and detailed description of the day's events culminating in a narrow escape, ends their entry describing how they are currently sitting in hiding.

Not that there was enough action in Dracula to give the reader much reason to be anxious. I understand that Dracula was written over a hundred years ago, and that people back then didn't value high suspense as much as we do now, but Edgar Allan Poe's writings came even before Bram Stoker's, and I find Poe to be very skilled at providing anxiety.

Another rather accurate portrayal.

Another thing that surprised me about finally reading Dracula was meeting Dr. Van Helsing for the first time. Not having done any research, all I knew of him was that he was a kick-butt vampire hunter, a la that ridiculous Hugh Jackman movie. Even granting that the movie, which I did not see, was probably extremely over the top, I figured Van Helsing must at least be a strong and powerful vampire hunter.

In reality, Van Helsing isn't even a vampire hunter; despite his awesome name, Van Helsing is just a normal, aging Dutch doctor, albeit one with a very open mind.

I say open mind, because it's Helsing who finally figures out what's going on, even after all the obvious and frankly explicit clues given ('Lucy is deathly pale, as if her blood is being drained, and there are two small holes in her neck - maybe she just needs more sleep?'). Well into the novel, and too late to save poor Lucy's life, Dr. Van Helsing realizes that they are in fact being terrorized by a vampire, and leads the men into taking action against the monster.

The novel doesn't start to pick up until around page 270, well into the second half, when Johnathan returns to his now-wife Mina, after a night of vampire hunting with the other men, and writes in his journal "Mina looks paler than usual." Of course he assumes that the tasks of the recent days have been "too great a strain for a woman to bear," and I slammed my forehead into my palm.

At this point, Mr. Stoker must have decided he needed to start wrapping his story up, for there's no more dilly-dallying around, and after Dr. Van Helsing realizes what is happening with Mina, it takes them only about 100 pages to corner Count Dracula, chase him all the way back to Transylvania, and finally kill him.

(I'm not going to bother writing a spoiler alert - you all saw this coming, right?)

I did not enjoy Dracula - I think this is probably clear to you by now. By no means do I regret finally reading the story, but I feel like I could have gotten just as much out of a five-page summary as I did by actually reading the book. The plot was tedious, the characters slow to the uptake, and all of the 'vampirism rules' confusing to follow (though apparently vampires can't enter a house without being invited in first, which is comforting to know). In my opinion, if you're looking for a good period horror story to read, you should try Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, which achieves more suspense and fear as a black comedy than Dracula does as a straight-up, monotonous, 'horror'.

NaNoWriMo Music

2011-11-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

One thing I like to do while I write is listen to good mood-setting music. This means something different depending on what I'm writing, but it helps me get into the feel of what I'm writing, and if others are home at the time, it helps block out whatever noise they're making.

My first year of NaNoWriMo, I listened almost exclusively to a Japanese band called Plastic Tree. Listening to English lyrics, I'd found, really distracted me (if I knew the song, I wanted to sing along, and if I didn't, I wanted to find out what the song was about, and either way lyrics always ended up in my writing), and since I was really into Japanese modern culture at the time, I found the Plastic Tree songs very helpful.

My novel in '08 was a period piece called Princess Kate about a king's daughter who was slowly discovering that she had a multiple personality disorder (the actual name for the condition is Dissociative Identity Disorder - DID - and that's where I got the URL for my blogs). Plastic Tree's music matched the tone of my novel because most of their recent stuff was softer, with a melancholic sound with some occasional heavier rock influences.

I'm not a huge music buff - I believe I've mentioned that in previous blogs. I don't usual devote time to doing nothing but listening to music; if I'm listening to music, then I have to also be occupying myself in some other non-auditory fashion. Finding Plastic Tree was a huge help for my first NaNo novel, and may have contributed to my ability to meet the word count goal by the end of the month.

Unfortunately, my story the following year was quite a bit different. Instead of being a period piece, my '09 NaNo novel was a modern courtroom drama titled The Burden of Proof, about a young man on a jury trying to decide if the murder suspect on trial was guilty or not, despite the fact that all the members of the jury were being blackmailed by someone with unknown intentions. I based it on a Japanese miniseries called Majo Saiban (The Witch Trial) which I had seen earlier that year.

This is the paragraph where I tell you that, despite the difficulty it may be to find them, foreign stories can be amazing. I would not have tried to adapt this Japanese miniseries into an American novel if it hadn't been one of the best thrillers I've ever seen. The plot was grabbing, the characters were real, the mystery and action was intense, and the plot twists were completely surprising - and this is coming from someone who guesses the endings to most movies halfway through.

Because Plastic Tree's music wouldn't help as much that year, I was a bit at a loss as to what to do.

That year, I just so happened to have met and befriended a kid at my school who was close friends with some other kids in my 'group'. I noticed that he listened to music on his MP3 player almost constantly, and remembering that he was a movie buff, I knew that a lot of the music he listened to was soundtracks and film scores - perfect for getting in the writing mood without distracting me with lyrics.

We still didn't know each other very well, but I asked this friend if he could give me a list of songs or scores that would match the mood of my courtroom drama. He provided me the next day with a list of names, titles, and specific albums to listen to while I write. Along with the OST for the original miniseries, that list became my playlist for that year's novel.

We became really close friends by the end of the year, and though I left high school because my classes were boring and tested into the community college, we've stayed close. Last year, I went to him with a request for music to listen to while I wrote my futuristic sci-fi thriller Tidal Light, and he returned four CDs worth of music for me to listen to at the school library (I also spent some time that year listening to the OST to the 2000 video game Perfect Dark, an action/sci-fi)

Tidal Light being my Sci-fi term for the Aurora.

This year my novel is titled In Memory, and it's a period fantasy about a girl whose memory is erased, who tries to discover who she is and why someone would want her to forget it. It's a fantasy, but a light one, meaning that there are no dragons or major fantastical elements, only minor and occasional uses of magic. I asked friends on Facebook as well as members of the NaNoWriMo forums what music they might have that would help me set the mood.

I got back some pretty good responses. On the NaNo forums, someone suggested I listen to the music Jesper Kyd wrote for the popular video game series Assassin's Creed; I've never had the chance to play this game, but I've heard it's pretty good and that the story is excellent, and now I can agree that Jesper Kyd's compositions are pretty wonderful, mixing the sounds from the time period of my story with a bit of modern instruments (perfect for my story, which has a subtle sci-fi element as well).

Someone else suggested Inon Zur, who composed the music for the video game Dragon Age, and Jeremy Soule, who is amazing. I already knew that Jeremy Soule was amazing, because he produced all the orchestral sounds for the later Elder Scrolls series, and ES: Oblivion has some of my favorite music in the world (right now, my favorite track is 'Sunrise of Flutes', though 'Glory of Cyrodiil' is pretty amazing as well).

Jeremy Soule's artsy artist photograph - notice the laptop and the keyboard?

A friend of mine on Facebook then introduced me to Two Steps From Hell. TSFH is a production music company in Los Angeles that produces epic stock music for use in movie trailers, and they do such a good job that many people will buy their demonstration albums just to listen to on their own. For a good example of what I mean, you can listen to their song 'Tristan' or 'My Freedom', two of my favorites.

Yesterday, however, I went out to get the mail in the evening and found a small package, addressed to my pen name (which in itself was exciting). This was something I'd been expecting - this year's CDs from my good friend from high school, hand picked from his extensive library of practically all the music in the world to fit with my light fantasy novel.

I've only listened to the first CD as of yet, but so far I think it's wonderful. The first CD is specifically low key, atmospheric scores and sounds. Most of TSFH's tracks are grand and epic, and there are only a few atmospheric tracks from my other composers, so having some lighter mood-setting pieces to listen to during the 80-90% of my novel that isn't fast paced is perfect.

I've been keeping up with my word count this month, more or less, though it means cutting back on my blog posts. For anybody disappointed, I apologize! As soon as December rolls around, my excuse will change from 'I'm writing a future best-selling novel' to 'I'm playing an amazing video game' and you'll be able to complain about how disappointed you are with my life.

Is anyone else working on NaNoWriMo this year? If so, or even if not, what do you listen to while you write?

NaNoWriMo '11

2011-10-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween, dear readers! I hope everyone's having a great time dressing up, trick-or-treating, going to parties, or whatever it is you do to celebrate!

Halloween marks the last day of October, as you well know, and the last day before the writing craze NaNoWriMo begins. I don't mean to detract from Halloween here, but NaNoWriMo is a bit higher up on my list of priorities - and by 'a bit' I mean that I've been planning my novel for months, while I don't even have a Halloween costume this year (in case I need to go out, however, I can just grab my Hufflepuff scarf and say I'm studying charms and herbology).

HUFFLEPUFF.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and in the 10+ years that it has been going on, it's grown into a well-known international write-a-novel-in-a-month project, with at least 200.000 members participating every year, and growing (and in case you're wondering, InNoWriMo sounds weird, so yes, we're keeping NaNoWriMo).

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50.000 word novel in 30 days, starting from 0:00 November 12st to 23:59 November 30th, the idea being that 50k words is the average length of a beginner novel (nowadays, I believe it's actually increased to 60k-75k). Participants can sign up on the NaNoWriMo website, which gets them access to weekly pep talks, a cool bar graph to check their progress, web badges, a funny web comic, a printable certificate if you 'win', and uber-helpful forums.

I'm a big fan of the NaNoToons.

This will be my fourth year participating in NaNoWriMo, and I've been lucky enough to win every year so far. The first year was a bit of an eye-opener. I planned out my novel, figured out who my characters were and what they'd be doing, and got partway through the month before realizing that there's a lot more room inside a novel that I thought. I hadn't planned out what my characters would be doing when they weren't solving the main plot, so there was a lot of wandering around, not making sense, and so on.

I was a bit more prepared my second year; I planned my novel down to the last detail. I knew all of my characters, exactly what they'd be doing and when, how long it would take in between events, and what would be going on in the downtime. It really helped that I was basing my story on a foreign miniseries I'd seen, too. I decided to go for 75k that year, but only ended up getting around 53k (which means I never actually finished that story).

Last year, I decided to go after a 100k goal. I did this because I had no job, and was only taking four classes at my local community college; compared to NaNoing during high school, I felt like I had so much free time, and I owed it to myself to write more. I managed to meet my 100k goal without nearly as much planning as the year before, though I meandered around for about 80k words and completely forgot to include a couple subplots.

See, the thing about the NaNoWriMo novel is that it's a bit less than a rough draft; it's a rough draft for your rough draft. While some people may have time to edit as they go, most NoNoers just shoot out words, hoping they'll be readable when they go back to edit. If you misspell something, there's really no time to go back and fix it. If this sentence is awkward or grammatically incorrect, or if it's totally impossible for the hypothetical reader to understand what you're saying, too bad; keep going.

[Sometime this month, I'll upload an excerpt from my novel, so you can see what I mean. It'll be fun.]

Some people criticize NaNoWriMo for that 'lack of quality' aspect, but honestly, how many people have written a full, complete novel on their first try? My guess is none. Or maybe one person, but his name is James Joyce and that novel is Finnegans Wake, and thousands call it 'quality writing' because their English Teachers forced them to (I'm not a fan of Finnegans Wake, or Ulysses, or anyone who would write that and call it a novel).

Most novelists edit out or change most of what they write in their novel's first draft (I wont bother giving you an arbitrary statistic, since I'll have made it up anyways). If there's no first draft, however, there's nothing to edit. Getting that first draft out on the blank paper is the hardest part, but once you've done that, you can finally mold your story into what you really want it to be.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to get people to write. I've heard people say they want to write a book, and never do it, and NaNoWriMo was created to give those people that opportunity, because left to their own devices, most people would give up on their novel, or never start it in the first place.

In fact, even with NaNoWriMo, most people never finish their novels. With 200.000 members online, only about 40.000 people passed the 50k mark last year. Even with the awesome support group that NaNoWriMo provides, many people lose heart and give up partway through.

The fact that I've 'won' NaNoWriMo the last three years makes me one of the lucky few who have persevered through it. This year, with still too much free time on my hands, I'm aiming towards a 100k goal again. With enough hard work and just a little luck, this will be my fourth NaNo win in a row.

By now, I've come to a bit of a routine when it comes to NaNoWriMo. For starters, I'll be heading to bed extra early this evening - sometime around 6:00 or 7:00. My alarm will be set for 11:30, so that by midnight I'll be good and ready to start my noveling adventure.

By 3:00 in the morning, I should be done with tomorrow's word goal, at which time I can either keep going or turn in for the night, to get a bit more sleep before classes tomorrow. Tuesdays tend to be busy for me, and with this schedule I wont have to worry too much.

My novel-in-progress is saved on whichever laptop I'm using, as well as a thumb-size 4GB jump drive, which I'll carry around with me all month (I'm thinking of wearing it on a chain around my neck, because it's small enough. People'll think I'm making a cyberpunk fashion statement, but really I'm just keeping my novel close). With the jump drive, I can easily write on the library computers or at any other computer I happen to find myself with this month.

I'll be giving specific updates on my progress over on my Tumblr account, and I'll add a chart or graph or something to the left for you to follow along with my daily word count here as well. I'll try my hardest to keep up with trice-a-week blog posts, but if I miss a few days, you'll know why.

Wish me luck! NaNoWriMo is a crazy writing challenge, and there's a chance I may die in the process. If you haven't participated in NaNoWriMo yet, and are thinking about it, I highly suggest it! It's not for the faint of heart, but it's so much fun and so worth it!

Sarcasm Hand

2011-10-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

The problem with sarcasm is that it isn't always easy to detect.

In speech, sarcasm is relatively easy. There's a certain inflection used when being sarcastic, stressing words to point out how obviously untrue, and thus sarcastic, a statement is. This becomes less clear when being sarcastic with a person you don't know very well, but most people tend to shy away from sarcasm with anyone besides friends.

Sarcasm becomes more of a problem in writing, because there isn't any good way to point it out. For example, I could write the statement "I love that movie," visually stressing the word 'love' with italics, but there's no clear way of knowing if I stressed that word because I seriously do love that movie, or if I stressed that word because there was obviously no way on earth I could love that movie.

A popular web blogger I follow tried to combat this problem a few years ago, while writing his "Blogging Twilight" series. Dan Bergstein, a humorist and regular contributor to the Sparknotes blogs, was given the task to read through and comment on the entire Twilight series. He started off completely neutral, knowing only that it was an extremely popular and well-sold series that many people have grown to hate.

As a well-read person who's good and writing, however, it didn't take long for the task of reading these books to become nauseating.

One of Dan's amazing illustrations.

(If you're one of my few readers who still admires those books for more than managing to make one woman really rich, I apologize, and ask that you please ignore any future Twilight-related comments I make.)

To combat his frustration, Dan Bergstein had to resort to humor, which meant quite a bit of sarcasm. As I mentioned before, sarcasm is a bit difficult to write, so to solve that, Dan invented the 'Sarcasm Hand'. Whenever Dan made a sarcastic statement (like "Edward isn't a creepy stalker at all. He's the greatest guy in the world"), he would follow it by writing something to the effect of *Hand Raised* or *Raises hand*, which eventually evolved into *Sarcasm Hand*.

'Sarcasm Hand' became a running joke on the Blogging Twilight posts, and Dan started using the phrase on his other posts as well. I have been tempted to add 'Sarcasm Hand' to a few of my blogs, but there's always been a problem with this: unless you've actually read the Blogging Twilight posts and/or follow Dan Bergstein's writings, the phrase 'Sarcasm Hand' wouldn't make sense.

Dan's 'Sarcasm Hand' isn't the only way to visually identify sarcasm in text, however. A French poet at the end of the 19th century proposed what he called the pointe d'ironie (Irony Mark), a small, backwards facing question mark, to be placed at the end of an ironic or sarcastic statement. The mark is used quite a bit in France, but it never really caught on in English, mostly because pointing out irony still seems a bit unnecessary to some.

And it's true; pointing out your sarcasm is a bit unnecessary, especially if you're a skilled writer. Plus, there are many times when a writer may not care if their readers understand that they're being sarcastic.

But there are many times that a writer does care for their readers to fully understand them; like Dan, and his 'Sarcasm Hand'. For those writers, and myself, I offer the alternative '/sarc' or '/sarcasm'.

I don't know if slash commands originated on older computers, but they're used nowadays in video games, especially MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. They're ways of easily giving the computer or your character a special command, like '/help' or '/equip' or so on.

The internet being what it is, however, slash commands have been used on many different web forums, even the ones not associated with games, as a humorous way to amend one's own text. The most popular of these is the '/sarcasm' command (often shortened to '/sarc'), used to clarify the sarcasm of my previous statement (IE, "I just love that move. /sarcasm").

It's still a bit awkward, though less so than the backwards-interrogative Irony Mark, and much less exclusive than adding *Sarcasm Hand* to your paragraphs.

There's still the issue of whether a sarcasm indicator is even necessary, and there's no clear answer to this question. It's good to know, however, that if someone does want to indicate their sarcasm, there are multiple ways to do so, and if a sarcasm mark proves useful, then I have no doubt that in thr long run it'll see greater incorporation.

Shadow of the Colossus

2011-10-26T18:25:00.000-07:00

If you've been paying attention to anything I've been writing, then you may remember that I like stories. All kinds of stories - deep and meaningful, or light and fun; fantasy, sci-fi, or realistic; stories from books, graphic novels, TV shows, movies, and yes, even video games.

Because sometimes, in my opinion, video games can have the best stories. Sure, there are your silly arcade games and pointless shooters or beat 'em ups, but for every handful of those, there's at least one game with a truly captivating story. One of the greatest gems of literary fiction that I've ever seen happens to be the video game Shadow of the Colossus.

Shadow of the Colossus is a minimalist action-adventure produced by Team Ico, a group of developers working for Sony, released in 2005. The story is told entirely from the perspective of a young, unnamed boy, who rides into a strange land carefully carrying the body of a dead girl on his horse. He brings the girl to an abandoned temple, where he makes a pact with the residing entity; if the boy can defeat the sixteen colossal beasts that inhabit the realm, the entity will bring the girl's soul back to her body.

I don't use the term 'colossal' lightly, and they didn't name the game "Shadow of the Colossus" just because it sounds cool. Of the sixteen colossi, only three are small enough to even compare to the unnamed protagonist, similar in size to an elephant. The rest of the colossi, on the other hand, truly are colossal, and defy any attempt to find a better word to describe them.

That moment when the player meets the first colossus is both breathtaking and terrifying. Pictures can't do it justice. As the player, you expected this thing to be huge, but you couldn't have expected it to be this huge. Compared to it, the boy protagonist looks like an ant, with a tiny sword as the only object to defeat the beast; unfortunately, as the player soon realizes, the boy doesn't actually know how to use it very well.

On top of that, the player is completely alone. At no point during the game will the player encounter another human outside of the temple, and the only being to speak to is the faceless entity. The girl's dead body lies on a pyre in the temple at the central point of the landscape, a constant reminder of why you're doing what you're doing.

For being so minimalist, the game is surprisingly vast. The entire explorable realm is huge, spanning deserts, mountains, rivers and lakes, and a dedicated player could spend hours exploring the whole thing. There are small animals all over the place, like birds and lizards, and traveling over the empty but beautifully rendered landscape gives the player plenty of time to grow attached to their sole companion, the horse Agro.

Agro wins my admiration on many levels. In a lonely game like this, having any companion would be comforting, even if they were just a completely useless pet. Agro, however, isn't useless; it would take hours navigating the world between colossi without her, and she's absolutely essential during a few of the fights. She doesn't hesitate to get close to the beasts, running between the legs of the enormous quadrupeds and up to the drooping wings of one of the flying colossi to let the player jump on it's back. After every battle, the player is transported back to the central temple to speak with the faceless entity, and, alone, Agro loyally returns back to where she know you're supposed to be.

This isn't because the programers designed her to be simple and easy to control; physically controlling Agro is actually difficult. She's given her own AI programming, and will only follow your directions awkwardly, jerking from one side to the other. If you let her run without trying to control her, however, she'll navigate obstacles and follow colossi on her own, allowing the player to focus on the battle at hand. Agro saves the unnamed boy's life on more than one occasion, and during the course of the game, the player learns to trust and depend on her just as much as she trusts and depends on the boy. As much as I love her, Epona from the Legend of Zelda series has nothing on Agro.

The only thing I regret when it comes to Shadow of the Colossus is the fact that I've never been able to play it for myself, as it came out solely for the PlayStation 2, a game system we never owned, and I didn't even know this game existed until last year.

While I haven't been able to play this game firsthand, I was able to see it by watching Let's Play Shadow of the Colossus, a video series on Youtube by user Lyrax. I've gotten through a few video games this way, but Lyrax's portrayal of Shadow of the Colossus was phenomenal. He doesn't talk through the cinematic scenes at all, leaving the viewer to soak it all in as if they were playing, and explains all the mechanics and small things that someone playing the game would have noticed.

Without intending to, I watched Lyrax's entire Shadow of the Colossus playlist in one sitting, because there wasn't any way I couldn't. The wonderful art and the amazing music drew me in, and the subtle plot captivated me. The story to Shadow of the Colossus is powerful and the ending emotional, and it's minimalist simplicity only intensifies that power and emotion.

This last September, Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, the other game designed by the same team, were digitally remastered and re-released together in HD for the PlayStation 3. This set is now pretty high up on my list of things to buy when I have the money, even if I still wont be able to play it right away (as I don't have a PS3 either).

If you're a gamer and you haven't played this yet, I highly recommend it; Shadow of the Colossus is probably the best example of art in video game form, and it has set a standard for quality gameplay and storytelling that will influence the medium for years to come. If you can't purchase and play the game for yourself, I also highly recommend Lyrax's 'Let's Play' series, which takes this deep, personal game and lets you experience it in a moving, cinematic way. Shadow of the Colossus is more powerful than the majority of the stories being churned out by producers today, and there are very few, in my opinion, that will ever manage to top it.

Friday Comics: Philosophy

2011-10-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

I intend on drawing 'Friday Comics' most weeks, and I promise this isn't a cop-out just to keep from having to write full blog posts (though it will be when November rolls around). I probably would have written a full post today, if this hadn't happened while I was drawing last week's comic.

If this had happened, it would have been pay back for drawing a comic during his lecture.

Trip to Oregon: Part III

2011-10-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

There was no blog post on Monday, because I spent the morning coming home from a week-long stay in Portland, Oregon. We flew up there last Thursday to attend the Saturday wedding of one of my older brothers, and, as you might image, it was wonderful and fun and amazing!

(I strive to maintain quite a bit of anonymity in this blog; I write under a pseudonym, I never name members of my family, and the artsy photo to the left with my face half covered in the only picture you'll probably ever see of me. Because I have four older brothers that I'll want to talk about in this blog, however, I'm going to give them all titles: from oldest to youngest, they are Brother S, Brother D, Brother X, and Brother N - and then me, Kenna).

Brother D was the one getting married this weekend, to a wonderful woman he introduced us to last Thanksgiving. They announced that they were engaged sometime last spring, and we've been preparing ever since (well, mom has been preparing since my brother met her parents at Christmas, but moms are just like that). His in-laws live in the Portland area, so they decided to hold the wedding up there, with an open house down here in Southern California and another in Utah where they both live.

My family flew up Thursday out of the Long Beach airport, which isn't really an airport (it's more like a small terminal building with portables tacked up and a bunch of airplanes parked out back, with a half-baked TSA station in between). Brother X, who lives near us, rode up with us, and we met Brother N, who almost made us miss our flight, at the portables. Our parents paid for all of us to fly up to the Portland airport (which is a real airport), where we met Brother D and checked in at our hotel.

We had most of Friday to ourselves, so while our parents went out, my brothers and I hung around the hotel, trying to entertain ourselves. Offhandedly, I mentioned that we could always go geocacheing, and within minutes Brother D had downloaded a geocache app onto his smartphone and located three different caches within a half mile of our hotel. With nothing better to do, we went out and attempted to locate the hidden cache, aided by Brother D's friend and old roommate.

Geocaching isn't something we actually do in my family, so the first hidden cache, marked 'easy', took us over a half hour to find. We finally realized that the cache clue, "LPC," was a common geocaching term for "Lamp Post Cache," and discovered the little container hidden under the parking lot lamp post. After adding our names, we went after the second one, another LPC, which took us about five-ten minutes to find. The third cache we found that Friday was hidden on a nearby hiking trail, and was much more difficult to uncover (there was supposed to be another on that same trail, which we never found).

The third cache, in a bit of hollowed out log. Brother X found it, like a boss.

I really wanted to go to Powell's bookstore again, a must for any book-lover visiting Portland, but mom had some trouble navigating the streets and we ran out of time before we had to head back to get ready for that night's dinner.

Brother S and his wife drove up the whole way, and made it sometime that afternoon, with plenty of time to join us for dinner. I tried to sit next to them, hiding among my own family members so I wouldn't have to socialize, but instead I was invited to sit with the bride's sisters and her other bridesmaids. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a bit of a recluse, and that given the option I'd tend to stay away from new people, but I decided then that it was really important to try to get to know the bride's family, so I accepted and moved over with them. I'm glad I did; they're different from my family in that they're much more outgoing, but they're super nice and very fun to talk with.

I woke up early Saturday morning to go over to the bride's family's house and have my hair and makeup done before the wedding. My hair is about shoulder length and between curly and wavy, and I hardly ever do anything to it besides tying the sides back. A family friend worked on my hair, applying hair-control stuff and giving me thick curls, something I would never have thought of to do. It looked pretty great afterwards, if I do say so myself, and I left them in for the remainder of the weekend.

The actual wedding was held on Saturday morning, at the Portland LDS temple. The day, as most days seem to be around Portland, was overcast and chilly, and while that may have been nothing special for the natives, to a desert rat like me it was wonderful. The sun broke through for a while while we were taking pictures, and Brother X, who's an amateur filmmaker with a video blog, got a lot of great footage.

The reception was late that afternoon, so in the interim, Brother S took me and Brother N out to get food for the coming day. I showed up to the fancy reception in my tennis shoes, expecting to walk over to Powell's nearby afterward, much to the chagrin of my mom (and probably the bride's mom, too - sorry), though I did get one woman from the bride's party tell me I was her "favorite person here."

Besides my footwear, the reception was beautiful, the food delicious, and the bride and groom almost magical.

I finally did get to go to Powell's afterwards, but since Brother S was buying for me I decided not to get much (though he bought me the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo as an early birthday present). We got back to the hotel a little late Saturday night, and I fell asleep quickly, exhausted from the long day.

Sunday was an easy day; we went to church with the bride's family, and they invited us over for a delicious dinner. We played a scrabble-like game called Pick and tried out their XBox Kinect before going back to the hotel to get to bed early. Our Monday flight back to Long Beach left at around 7:00, so we had to wake up by 5:30 just to be there in time.

All in all, I believe, a successful trip, and a wonderful time.

Brother D is the second in our family to get married, after Brother S, who was married about seven years ago. When they were young, Mom always kinda figured that Brother D would be the first to get married in our family, but I guess he took longer to find his perfect girl than Brother S did. I grew up with four older brothers and no sisters, so my brothers getting married has given me the chance to have sisters for the first time. I would consider myself pretty close to Brother S's wife, who has a lot of similar interests as me and is very fun to hang out with and talk to, and I'm looking forward to getting to know Brother's D's new wife as well.

Friday Comic

2011-10-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

I always used to wonder how they decided where to place the borders between countries and states. Now I know.

Treadmill Reviews: Gankutsuou, The Count of Monte Cristo

2011-10-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

I've been trying my hardest to keep up with my daily treadmill exercise, but it's been getting difficult to find new things to watch while I walk. I had a haphazard list of shows and anime I wanted to go through, and after much deliberation, a couple weeks ago I finally decided on Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo.

Gankutsuou is a futuristic sci-fi/fantasy retelling of Alexandre Dumas' famous novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. I'm pretty familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo, and I would even name it one of my favorite stories, which is why I chose this title out of my list to watch.

My first experience with the Monte Cristo story was watching the 2002 movie starring Jim Caviezel years back. I fell in love with the straightforward plot, about a young Frenchman named Edmond Dantes in the early 1800s who's friends falsely accuse him of treason for their own gain. Edmond is sent to prison, but manages to escape with the help of another inmate, and uses his newly acquired riches to integrate into high Parisian society and carry out revenge on those who profited from his betrayal.

It wasn't until I read the book years later that I realized how simplified the movie is, in comparison. On its own, the movie is still pretty amazing, but there really isn't enough time in a two-hour movie to fit in everything that came in the original story (In fact, there's hardly enough room in the book to fit the entire story; when I went to buy Monte Cristo, I couldn't find a non-abridged version, and the copy I finally did pick up is almost 600 pages long and cuts out two subplots). Because of this, the movie took some liberties and made a major change to the ending so that everything would make sense, along with cutting out entire characters.

For the most part, the characters cut out of the movie version are the children of the men who betrayed Edmond, and their friends. It was my impression that part of the lesson learned in the book comes when Edmond, in the guise of the Count, realizes how his vengeance is affecting those who had nothing to do with the initial betrayal. While we do see Albert (pronounced like 'al-bear'), the son of Edmond's former best friend, quite a bit in the movie, he plays a much bigger role in the book.

In Gankutsuou, the anime adaption I've been watching the past two weeks, Albert is actually the main protagonist. The story starts with Albert, the Viscount de Morcef, and his best friend Franz d'Epinay visiting the space colony Luna for Mardi Gras. There, they meet the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, who fascinates Albert and saves his life, though Franz has a hard time trusting him.

Albert and Franz at Mardi Gras

It's impossible to talk for long about Gankutsuou without mentioning the art style. All the digital animation is layered with Photoshop textures, almost like cell shading but with full patterns instead of solid colors. The affect is really interesting, and while most would argue that it's an unnecessary visual complication, I think that it really adds to the atmosphere of the story. There's a mix of futuristic elements with the 19th century Parisian lifestyle, as well as a mix of hand-drawn, digital, and 3D animation, which combine to give the whole show a surreal or magical realist air.

That's on top of the story itself. Going in, I knew this would be based on The Count of Monte Cristo, but I wasn't sure how many plot elements would be carried over, and how much would be removed, added, or changed. I was happy to see that this is actually very similar to Dumas' original book, or at least more similar than the Caviezel movie (which isn't hard to do; I stress again how little subplot you can fit into a two-hour movie).

The Count of Monte Cristo, a fusion of
both Edmond Dantes and Gankutsuou

Of course there are some changes. Gankutsuou, the title, translates to 'King of the Caves', and at first seems to refer to another part of the Count's true identity. We start the show knowing nothing about the Count's past as Edmond, unless the audience happens to know the story to Monte Cristo, in which case we still don't know what's really going on. The story's consistent enough to the original to introduce new fans to Dumas, but different enough to have a new flavor for everyone who already knows Monte Cristo.

I also can't help but talk about the music. There are two theme songs for Gankutsuou, an opening and a closing, which remain consistent throughout the show's 24-episode run. The closing theme is a fast-paced piece played over a jumble of quick images and vague silhouettes, with lyrics that seem to fit in perfectly with the vengeance story. The opening theme, however, is a slow piano/violin piece with lyrics that almost seemed to imply forgiveness, like everything would be alright. I loved both themes, which were written and sung by Anglo-French singer/songwriter JJ Burnel, but I could help but feel like they purposely contradicted each other, and were written to make me lower my emotional guard (which, quite honestly, was an ingenious plan).

I also really like listening to the full versions of shortened TV theme songs, and I had to force myself not to look these two up online, because I knew that if I fell in love with the full songs, I'd be annoyed whenever I had to listen to the shortened versions again. I'm glad I didn't look these songs up. At the end of the last episode of Gankutsuou, after the whole ordeal is over, the full version of the opening theme plays, and I was pleasantly surprised to realize that the full song was totally different from what I expected. Though it's pretty simple, it's now one of my favorite pieces, and the only reason I'm not teaching it to myself on the piano yet is because I have something else I'm forcing myself to learn first.

I highly enjoyed watching Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo these past two weeks, and I've added the title to my DVD wish list. You can watch the entire series for free online via Funimation, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes anime, science fiction, or revenge stories, though this recommendation comes with a warning; while there isn't anything really violent or explicit, there is one scene at the end of the seventh episode that should really be skipped over. Other than that, I found this show amazing, and I'm glad I had the chance to watch it.

If you don't have time for an anime, I would still recommend The Count of Monte Cristo as a must see story. The Jim Caviezel movie is available for DVD rental via Netflix, and probably from any other movie rental service, and is a wonderful, quick version of the Monte Cristo story. The Dumas novel can be found at practically any bookstore, though you may have to work to find an unabridged version, and while it may be thick, it's well worth the read.

Zelda's 25th

2011-10-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

Look at that - I'm talking about video games again. Oh well.

I mentioned this in my E3 Coverage post, but this year marks Zelda's 25th Anniversary, 25 years since the first Zelda game was released in Japan by Nintendo. This is pretty exciting for me, as The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite fiction series of all time.

In about a month (November 20th, to be exact), the newest Zelda title comes out, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. This'll be the first Zelda title I buy for myself, and it looks to be one of Nintendo's best, so I'm super excited. Since this year happens to also be Zelda's 25th Anniversary, they're releasing a special bundle of the game which includes a golden, Zelda-themed Wiimote. It costs $20 more to get the game with the wiimote (and $20 is the price of a normal Wiimote), but I totally saved up for it all.

As you can see in the picture, it also comes with an extra CD. The CD will include music played during the special Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony series. The first actual orchestral performance is going to be next week, at the Pantages in Los Angelos, and if I hadn't been saving up for the actual game, I would have been saving up to go to that (though I doubt I would have had the money in time).

Miyamoto having fun with
the orchestra at E3

The Anniversary Symphony is kind of a big deal, however. Can you imagine a place like the Pantages packed to the brim with geeks and nerds of all ages, from all over the country, dressed in their best to sit and listen to a full two-and-a-half hour symphony? Unless you've played a good number of video games, you may not be aware that the music in video games can be some of the best music around, and something like this is a dream come true to most video game aficionados.

The first concert is next Friday in L.A., and I can't be there. Luckily, however, I'll be pre-ordering the game this week, and picking up the 25th Anniversary Symphony CD which, while not as wonderful as the real thing, will be better than trying to find an illegal, high-quality recording on Youtube. The orchestra is also going to play in London this month, and they'll be doing a world-wide tour through 2012.

To prepare for the new game this November, I've spent the last year or two going through all the old games, familiarizing myself with any that I missed before. I kinda wanted to write a short review of my opinions on each, but I don't think I can keep from making them too long, and I'm not sure anyone would really care. If you've never played a Zelda game before, however, I would highly suggest picking up or downloading The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past for your Wii Console or DS. After that, Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker both come highly recommended by me, though they'd be more expensive (I also really love Majora's Mask, but you have to be pretty serious to get through it).

Now that Skyward Sword is only a month away, I really can't contain myself. I check for the latest news on the ZeldaDungeon fansite almost every day, and I've been practicing controlling the Wiimote with my left hand ever since it was announced that the game would have a left-handed option (I'm not left-handed, but the game's main character is and has always been. Twilight Princess was the first game in which he was right-handed, so that right-handed Wii users could control him better. If I use my left hand to control the wiimote, he gets to be left handed again!)

November is also NaNoWriMo, so even though I'll be pre-ordering Skyward Sword and picking it up right away, I probably wont have a chance to get into it until December. I don't mind, however, so long as no one posts spoilers on Facebook. I'll also try to keep up with my blog posts, but you've seen how well that's been going lately. If a miss a few days in December, or even a week, you'll know what it means.

Adventures in Cat-Training

2011-10-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

We recently bought my cat a scratching post. She's been getting older, and goes outside less often, so she had taken to scratching at our furniture. Our old couch was fraying at all the corners where she'd attack it, so when we got this new one a few months back, we used a special kind of double-sided tape to keep her away; the fabric on my piano bench was also coming apart, though now it's been reupholstered.

I've also noticed my cat's claws getting caught in things. Cats, unlike dogs, can retract their claws (well, except for cheetahs), but when my cat stretches out in front of the doormat, she flexes her claws into the fabric to hold herself steady, and finds herself pulling the carpet up with her as she tries to move. Something had to be done.

So we bought her a scratching post. I believe it's the first scratching post we've gotten for her (not including that one that was styled as a door hanger, which she instead knocked down and slept on). It's hollow inside, so she can climb in and sleep (not that she ever would - we're keeping all her toys in there instead), and it's covered with a thick gray carpet, with a soft spot on top that she actually does perch on occasionally, much to our surprise.

It took me a while to convince her to use it, however. At first, when she attacked it, I thought she was attacking the couch, and snapped at her, like I've been trained to do. We finally moved it away from the couch, and I tried to teach her that it was OK to scratch, despite my previous chastisement, but Megabyte didn't seem interested anymore.

And yes, my cat's name is Megabyte.

This computer only has one Megabyte of space!

Someone decided it was time for us to buy some Catnip. Different people have different opinions on catnip, but it's pretty handy for getting cats interested in things. It took us a few weeks to remember to pick it up (the grocery store stocks catnip by the flowers, instead of in the pet aisle, for some reason), but when we did, I sprinkled some all over the scratching post. Her opinion of the thing didn't seem to change.

I checked to make sure Megabyte could even smell the catnip by holding the entire bag open for her. She acted interested, so I assumed there just wasn't enough nip on the post, and I added more. Over the course of that week, the most attention she paid to the post was to rub her head on it, mildly affected by the drug.

Last Thursday, we had a few people over at our house, and we spent the bulk of the days before cleaning the house. Because I thought the small bag of catnip might be considered 'unsightly', I tucked it into the upper level of the hollow scratching post, thinking Megabyte would be hidden in the back rooms (like me) while people were there.

Later that evening, when the house was finally quiet again, I came out to the family room to see half of the catnip from the bag scattered on the floor in front of the scratching post, with the bag lying open nearby. It was obvious by the way the plant remains were scattered that someone (IE, my cat) had been rolling around in it.

Since then, Megabyte's had more interest in that scratching post. Occasionally, I'll see her claw her way up, then poke her head into the window to the second level, as if checking to see if I'd left the bag in there again.

It may not have worked exactly as we intended, but she's sharpening her claws properly and not attacking the furniture, so all's well that ends well, right?

Treadmill Reviews: Steven Moffat's Doctor Who

2011-10-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, today's post is going to be another one of those that only a few of you will care about (At least I'm not talking about video games again). I'm sorry for that, and I'm getting back to regular posting again this week, after a couple weeks of rocky updating.

On Saturday, the final episode of the 6th season of the revived Doctor Who series aired, and since that's such a mouthful I'll refer to the revived series as just plain "Doctor Who" and the original series as "Old Doctor Who" from now on. I didn't actually watch the episode until yesterday, but since this has been the first season I watched entirely as it aired, and since I watched most episodes while walking on the treadmill, I want to do a review.

There are many things I could discuss, such as the differences between David Tennant's and Matt Smith's portrayals of The Doctor; I wont, however, because I have some pretty set feelings on that matter that I'm sure no one will care about. Instead, I want to talk about the differences between Russel T. Davies' and Steven Moffat's approaches to the Doctor Who narrative.

"Blink," the one episode of Doctor Who to see
if one episode is all you ever see.

Russel T. Davies came on as Executive Producer and chief writer when BBC finally decided to relaunch Doctor Who, with writers such as Steven Moffat working under him. During the first four years of the show's run, Steven Moffat was the only other writer besides Davies to contribute full episode scripts of his own for every season, quickly becoming a fan favorite for his "clever, darker" episodes and arcs (Which were "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances," "The Girl in the Fireplace," "Blink," and "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead." All received Hugo nominations, and only the last arc failed to snag the award itself).

It made perfect sense to everyone, then, that the role of Executive Producer should go to Steven Moffat when Davies stepped down in 2008.

Moffat's first season, the show's fifth, aired in 2010, and had a distinctly different flavor to it. For one, the actors had all changed, along with the logo, the theme music, the Time Vortex as seen in the title sequence, and the inside of The Doctor's TARDIS. There was something else about that first episode, however, that just seemed different. Moffat's whole season had an air of surrealism to it, as if the "Doctor Who Universe" had completely severed from our own. When I finished that season, I realized that not a single episode had taken place in London, the primary location for most of Russel T. Davies' arcs.

As much as I enjoyed Moffat's writing, there was one thing he continued to do that bugged me; every single episode during the fifth season would dramatically bring the audience's attention to some mysterious thing that was going on behind the scenes (yes, for those of you following along, I'm talking about the 'cracks in the universe').

I love the season over-arc idea. Russel T. Davis always had something bigger going on behind the scenes each season, and it wasn't until the end of the season that we could fit all the pieces together and realize what it was. In truth, it's kind of hard not to do that in television, even if your show tends to be more episodic. What bugged me was not that Moffat had a deeper story going on, but that he seemed to have a driving need to impress us with that deeper story, right from the get-go.

I feel like Moffat is a wonderful writer who can tell a single story with force and power, but when given charge over a series of story arcs, his attempts to string them together are lacking. The fifth season of Doctor Who didn't end satisfactorily, instead leaving the viewers hanging with no promise that he even knew where he intended to go.

WANT.

With that in mind, I feel like season six did much better. Moffat and his writers still left metaphoric flashing arrows all over the place, and many of the episodes dealt solely with the over-arc instead of an episodic mini-arc, but I felt more satisfied with the pacing and the way the over-arc was dealt with. There were enough mini-arcs along the way to make the progression feel more natural, and the over-arc itself seemed to be dealt with in an episodic manner (though I may only be getting that impression because they split the season in half).

Season six of Doctor Who also made a genius move by including an episode written almost entirely by Neil Gaiman. Without spoiling anything (for the few of you still reading this who haven't seen the episode yet), Neil Gaiman's episode cuts to the chase by bringing back and giving more depth to the one character every Doctor Who fan has been wanting to see more of. I already knew Neil Gaiman was an amazing writer and storyteller, but to see him so easily deliver to the audience exactly what we wanted increased my respect for him greatly.

The season finale left a bit wanting, but I feel like Moffat's direction has certainly been improving. I had mixed feelings about him spending 90% of the episode trying to convince us that The Doctor was going to die. Hint: he doesn't. Of course he doesn't. We know this because, as people who watch TV, we know how this works (Besides, Matt Smith's contract doesn't run out until 2013, I believe). On the one hand, I was a bit annoyed that Moffat seemed to believe he would surprise us with the revelation that The Doctor was still alive, but I also got the impression that he respected us enough as an intelligent audience to know that he was lying to us.

Obviously, I'll be looking forward to the next season of Doctor Who (which looks like it wont be starting until next fall). Moffat's storytelling seems to be getting better, though I would hope he would cool it on the dramatic flashing arrows ('Oh no, is there a crack on the TARDIS? Le Gasp!' OK, dude, we get it), and there's some interesting character development that I'm interested in seeing how they play out. Even if Moffat's work doesn't impress me as much as Davies' did, Doctor Who is a show based on the idea of constant change, and I can learn to live with that for the sake of overall good fiction.

Did I write an entire post about Doctor Who without posting a single picture of The Doctor?
Not anymore.

Tumblr and TV Intros

2011-09-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

A couple short things today.

First, I signed up with Tumblr (here's a link to my page there), after much insistence from friends of mine who use the site. Actually, I did this back in July, before I left on my summer vacation. I intended to write an introductory post back then, but I totally forgot about it until just recently.

In all honesty, I still don't really 'get' Tumblr. It's a micro-blogging service, which means it's like a mix of Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger all rolled in one. Most people, it appears, just post funny pictures or gifs that they want to share with friends, which is cute but not enough to make me join up. There are a lot of people who do post short written pieces, however, so it seems like that's what I'll be doing.

My tumblog will complement this blog instead of being a re-post of everything I write here. For the most part, it will be things I have to say that are too short for a full blog post but too long for a Facebook status update. I'm also planning on focusing on my writing; when I'm working on something, I'll write about it there, and when NaNoWriMo comes around, I'll keep you updated on my progress via Tumblr instead of Blogger.

Y'know what this blog needs?
More random pictures.

I also enabled comments on my tumblog, a feat which was unnecessarily complicated. It works through a third-party system called Disqus, but you don't have to sign up or anything, which is wonderful.

I hate to have to spread around my internet activity; wouldn't it be great to have just one website to check to see everything I'm up to? But that's how people did it before social networking (IE, you could only see what I was up to when we happened to meet up in person), and that's probably how we're going to be doing it for a long time to come.

Feels free to follow my tumblog or not as you like. Tumblr comes with a handy RSS feed system, so I don't have to spend an hour trying to figure out how to set one up, and you don't have to sign up with Tumblr to get notified of any new posts I make. My Tumblr posts wont be as orderly as my Blogger posts, and I can't tell you when new posts might show up (I already have three up, and I only started yesterday).

The second thing I wanted to talk about it my love for alternative TV opening sequences (this is one of those short topics that qualifies as 'too long for Tumblr but too short for a full blog post'. Has anyone made a website for those yet?)

I guess this picture is kinda relevant.

Every TV show has an opening or title sequence, which usually includes cool music, character shots, some credits, and the show's title (Unless it's like Castle, which is just the title over a couple measures of music). I would go on about the title sequence 'setting the mood for the show', but most title sequences come on just before the first commercial break. Basically, they're there for the fun of it.

What I absolutely love, however, is alternative title sequences. These are very similar to the normal title sequences, but with some sort of difference, in response to a change in the show.

I first noticed sequence differences in Bones, one show that I've been following for a long time. Every new season, they changed out some of the "character shots" with newer ones. It wasn't enough to be really noticeable unless you were paying close attention, but it kept that opening bit fresh (I'd link you to a video of the opening sequence, but I can't find it anywhere on Youtube).

I noticed it again while watching the show Fringe. This is the first season intro to Fringe; notice all the science fiction-y words and images. The images stay the same throughout the series, but during the next season, all the words changed. That was fun in and of itself, until we got to one 'backstory' episode which took place entirely in 1985, and we got this. The 1985 version intro is probably my favorite. All 1980s graphics! All the weird things they would have considered sci-fi back then!

Fringe logo, a la 1985

They did a couple other special openings for Fringe, the most common being the 'red' opening, which they used for every episode that took place in the alternate universe. The season 3 finale episode, which took place sometime in the future, used a grayed out opening, and season 4, which just started last Friday, is using an amber opening (though to explain why would kind of give away spoilers).

Right now, however, I think Psych has the most memorable alternate intros (here's the original opening, with the extended lyrics). The character shots change up every season, as might be expected (most shows do this, I've come to realize), but every now and then they have a special themed episode. The first, I believe, was the 'Spanish soap opera' opening, which gave us translated lyrics, and later the opening for the Bollywood episode, which redid both the music and written credits. Other highlights include the acapella theme, the Christmas opening, and the theme styled after Twin Peaks.

I'm not sure why I find this so appealing, but I know other shows have done it. Feel free to leave me some more examples in the comments.

Treadmill Reviews: Fullmetal Alchemist

2011-09-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

Walking on a treadmill, if you've never done it before, is actually quite boring. We happen to have one in my house, and it's become one of the few ways I can get exercise reliably, but the only way I can stand to use it is if I sit a laptop on the top tray and watch TV shows. And of course, when I watch something interesting, I want to tell you guys about it.

The show that I've been watching these last few weeks is the newest anime adaptation of a very popular Japanese manga, Fullmetal Alchemist. I read the books years back when I was in high school, and I didn't mind going through the story again in anime format because I already knew that the entire thing was and would be incredible.

It's important to mention that there are actually two anime adaptations. The first was made while the manga chapters were still being released weekly, and as anime adaptations tend to do, it caught up to the manga pretty quickly. Instead of taking a break, the anime producers decided to branch off of the manga, creating an entirely new (and kinda weird) story with the same characters/setting. As the manga got closer to the ending, they announced that another anime series would be produced, this one following the manga chapters closely and telling the original story.

Fullmetal Alchemist is an action/adventure science fantasy set in the fictitious nation of Amestris, reminiscent of Europe during the Industrial Revolution. It follows the journey of young brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric as they search for the Philosopher's Stone, a powerful alchemical ingredient which they intend to use to regenerate the parts of their bodies lost during a failed attempt to bring their late mother back to life.

Edward, in red, whose missing leg and arm is replaced with an armored prosthetic,
and Alphonse, whose soul was bond to a suit of armor after his body vanished.

At least, that's what the story's about at first. That's what I find to be so great about this particular story; the further we get into it, the more we learn and the bigger the picture becomes. I'm a huge fan of this approach to storytelling, and Fullmetal Alchemist takes it a step further by placing this incredible, evolving plotline inside what one would think was your average, mainstream action/fantasy.

In my opinion, the ending to Fullmetal Alchemist is explosive. Not in the 'everything explodes in your face' kind of way; I mean that the ending is a keg of gunpowder, and everything leading up to it is a spark on a fuse getting closer and closer, and though you may think you know what's going on, you never really know how fantastic the resulting explosion will be until you see it. I really don't know of any other way to describe it, and I I can only think of a few other stories that compare.

This is actually a scene from the beginning, as Ed and Al try to bring their mother back,
kick-starting their journey and eventually their inclusion to the larger story at hand.

That all being said, there are two things that mildly irked me as I watched the show these last couple of weeks. The first, seen in both the anime and the manga is the fact that everyone seems to have the ability to draw a perfect circle easily (circles being fundamental to the performance of Alchemy). Maybe all the alchemists had to train for years to be able to do this, but they never mentioned this in the story, and it seems more likely that it would have just been too much of a hassle to have the characters drawn lopsided ovals.

The second thing, specific to the anime, is the fact that the opening and closing theme music always made me feel sad, even though they changed the actual music every ten episodes or so. I don't mind sad music every now and then, but I rarely go looking for it. Fullmetal Alchemist isn't really a 'sad' show at all, but there are a few downcast moments within the story for the theme music to remind me of, and I generally just skipped over those opening and closing sequences.

I take it as a good sign, however, that there are only two things about this show that bug me. There's quite a huge cast of characters to remember, from the Elric brothers to the members of the national military and even a handful of foreigners, and everyone seems to have his or her own goal or motivation, but never did the plot jumble together or get confusing, and everything always seemed to come together to create a full story.

On a humorous note, it was while reading Fullmetal Alchemist for the first time that I decided to start pronouncing 'Colonel' the way I do (As 'col-o-nel' instead of 'kernel'). Among our main cast, the primary character in the military is Colonel Roy Mustang, and after reading the name over and over in the books, I realized it was easier to just stop forcing myself to ignore the spelling when I pronounced it. Now, the pronunciation 'kernel' just sounds funny in my mouth, and makes me think of a high-ranking piece of corn (I'm sure that joke's been made before).

Colonel Mustang kicking butt during the last battle, with Lieutenant
Hawkeye's help (I've actually decided that she's my favorite character).

Colonel Mustang's character is actually really interesting, however. I realized while watching the anime adaptation that, had the story not been named after the older Elric brother (Edward, called the 'Fullmetal Alchemist' by the state military), and had it taken a broader point of view instead of focusing on the brothers, Colonel Mustang would have come out as the main 'hero' character. I've always thought about how interesting it would be to tell a story from the side character's point of view, and I was shocked when I realized that's exactly what Fullmetal Alchemist had done (more or less; you could make the argument that the Elric brothers really are the 'heroes' in the end, but I'm still voting for Mustang).

After reading Fullmetal Alchemist for the first time, I fell in love with the story, and everything in it that made it great. Watching the adaptation and experiencing the story again gave me that much deeper an appreciation for all of the elements that had to combine together to create such a powerful piece. Fullmetal Alchemist is one of those stories that makes me sad to realize that many people wont ever see it, either because they're prejudice against the manga/anime mediums or because they'll just never have the chance or time to pick it up, and I want to do my part to make people realize what they're missing out on. It was pure genius, designing and marketing Fullmetal Alchemist as a piece of mainstream fiction, ensuring that the widest audience possible was exposed, but this brilliant story would never have hit so many people's hearts the way it did if that had been the only genius behind it.

I think we fit everyone in....

Social Media Changes

2011-09-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

Those of you who use Facebook regularly are probably aware of the new User Interface changes just released. Facebook has gone through a series of almost constant changes since its inception, and it seems like once the users finally get used to the last change, another one rolls around.

My language on Facebook is currently set to "English (Leet Speak)," so I actually have no clue what the new Facebook changes look like. If you've seen the changes and hate them, like most people seem to, I may sound like I'm bragging. I am. Of course I am.

In technology years, I've been on Facebook long enough, but in reality I consider myself one of the 'newer' Facebook users. I logged on for the first time only about two years ago, after my mom and brothers already had accounts. Before then I used Myspace, along a few other social gaming type websites (places like Neopets and Gaia Online), and didn't really see the need for another social media website to keep up with some of the same people.

Once Myspace started getting super cluttered, I decided I needed a change. Facebook was so simple, clean and easy compared to Myspace, that I quickly dropped the old internet-favorite for the new favorite. Since then, Myspace has turned into something of a joke; very few people still use it, and those that do are teased like there's no tomorrow.

Which always made me wonder if Facebook would eventually become the old dog, slow and cluttered, and what fresh new website would come to replace it.

Google launched their social media answer last June, creatively titled Google+. The website was still in Beta form, but they gave their beta testers the ability to 'invite' friends to the site, effectively creating an entire userbase before the site had officially opened.

I got more than one invite to join Google+, and I denied them, because I didn't see the point. Isn't Google+ just a Google owned Facebook (they even look the same, according to the Wikipedia pictures)? If all of my friends are using one social media site, what's the point of joining another?

Facebook, however, has just released a User Interface change, which is bugging everyone in my Facebook News Feed. At about the same time, Google announced that their social media site would now be open to join without an invite for anyone 18 or older. As my brother pointed out today, that was excellent timing.

I'm still not joining Google+ just yet. I've never been an 'early adopter', and I still don't see the point of trying to keep up with two social media outlets at once. As a capitalist, I know the benefits of having two competing services, so I'm glad somebody set up a competing social network, but I don't really understand why it's Google. I've mentioned this in the past, but Google already does everything else, from video hosting (via Youtube) to blogging (via Blogger) to a vast array of specialized search systems (Google Maps, Google Books), along with things like Google Translate, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. Do they have so much free time and server space they need a social media branch as well?

If anything, I think XKCD hit it right on the head with this comic:

Avast! These be Strange Waters!

2011-09-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Aye, and they'd have to be, too; today's tide bring in one of the best holidays ever: International Talk like a Pirate Day! That's right, landlubbers, ye heard it here. It's the one day a year dedicated to the fierce, rogue, sea-loving pirates, when everyone around the world can affect an accent and dress up for school or work (assuming, of course, you've explained yourself to your captain).

I'm pretty bad at Piratey lingo, so I wont even pretend to try to keep it up for long.

We've been following Pirate Day for several years now, and by 'we', of course, I mean my mom and I. My dad and my brothers don't really get into things like this as much as she and I do. My mom teaches a 1st grade class, which is perfect; she dresses up like a pirate and comes in the morning covered in "Arrggs!" and getting the kids excited.

My celebration is a bit more toned down, and 21st century. Last year, when Pirate Day fell on a Sunday, I wore boots to church instead of sandals, and a flower clip in my hair that has a skull in the center (I'm sure I was dressed piratey otherwise as well, but that was a whole year ago; I can't remember that), and this year, I wore the same boots and clip to class. I also change my Facebook picture to something pirate, and adjust the language to English (Pirate).

International Talk like a Pirate Day was started in 1995 by two guys throwing basketballs on their driveway (I envision). You can read the entire account here, on the official Pirate day website, but basically these two guys (and another close friend) decided to start a holiday, and celebrated it amongst themselves for seven years, until in 2002 they contacted national columnist Dave Barry, convincing him to mention the holiday in his column.

The holiday has been growing every year since then, as more and more people discover the wonders of getting together to celebrate and have fun over something and silly and ridiculous as talking like a pirate.

Every time this holiday rolls around, I think about one of my favorite fictional pirates. No, it's probably not who you're thinking of (Unless you happen to be closely related to me, in which case you've probably figured it out). The one I'm thinking about now is named Guybrush Threepwood.

Guybrush Threepwood is the main character in a video game series, the first of which is called The Secret of Monkey Island. The game is modeled to be your average adventure, point-and-click style game, but it's riddled with humor from the very start, and though it's now over twenty years old, it's still one of my favorite games ever.

In the first Monkey Island game, you control Guybrush Threepwood, a young lad who inexplicably shows up on Melee Island with hopes of becoming a pirate. He's sent to the Pirate Captains, who give him a number of trials to complete to prove his worth, and ends up meeting the Ghost Pirate LeChuck, who kidnaps the island's governor and takes her to the mysterious Monkey Island.

Unfortunately, though they managed to make quite a few sequels, the Monkey Island games never really caught on, and relatively few people bothered to buy the fully remastered Special Edition in 2009 (I have my wonderful youngest-older-brother to thank for buying me the special edition, however! I've played the old version several times over, and they couldn't have made the updated version any better!)

This is why I was so excited to hear a Monkey Island reference the first time I heard the official Talk like a Pirate Day song. This shouldn't surprise me - there are a ton of piratey references in this song - but as someone who's never seen anyone outside of her own family mention Monkey Island, it was really fun anyways.

The song was created by Tom Smith, not that I know who that is, for Talk like a Pirate Day in 2003. It's pretty wonderful, so I highly suggest checking it out. The official Pirate Day website also features a song based on a pretty well known piratey joke, which you can watch here.

I love celebrating obscure holidays, though I don't do it as often as I'd like, and Pirate Day is probably the most fun. It hasn't been much, but I hope I've helped turn you on to the spirit of Talk like a Pirate Day! Are you celebrating at all today, and if so, how? I'm always interested to know what other pirates around the world are doing. If it's too late to celebrate this year, make sure to mark your calendar for 2012 (Also, be prepared for December 5th, International Day of the Ninja. It'll sneak up on you!)

Intense

2011-09-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

Of course, you understand, I keep hearing 'In Tents'.

I know it's a stupid joke, but I'm not exaggerating; every time someone uses the word 'intense', I think of tents (such as 'that movie was in tents!' or 'this book is in tents!' or 'that was an in tents car ride'). When I'm in mixed company, I refrain from actually saying anything, but I always think it in my head.

I was hanging out with friends today, which is why today's post is short and late. My friends are leaving for far off colleges in a week or so, so we're trying to fit in as much "chillax" time as possibly before we can't anymore. How did people handle this before in internet? Well, I guess they wrote letters, right?

Computer Troubles

2011-09-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

I like to write blogs reviewing things I've seen and talking about stuff going on in the world that I think you guys would be interested in, but every so often I have to talk about things going on with myself, so you'll understand where I'm coming from (actually, I've been doing this a lot recently). Today I wanted to take some time out from your regularly schedule broadcast and talk about my computer troubles.

Lately, computers and I have been having a strained relationship.

My awesome parents bought me a netbook a year and a half ago. A netbook, in case you don't know, is really just a small notebook, which in turn is just the popular, 'modern' term for a small laptop. My netbook was large enough to use comfortably, but small enough to be cooed at and referred to as a 'baby laptop' by all my classmates, who found it just as cute as I did. I worked on it a lot, and even named it 'Alex' (Which isn't saying much - I name almost all of my electronic devices).

Some time after this last Christmas, however, it stopped working properly. Nothing was wrong in the software; instead, the bit of hardware that the power cord plugged into, inside the netbook, came loose. It got harder to connect the cord to charge the netbook, and eventually the hardware fell so far inside the netbook that it was impossible to charge, an soon the battery ran out of juice.

A laptop power jack, which was
what had fallen out of place

I consider myself to be pretty good with electronics, however, so I busted out my dad's mini-screwdrivers and opened my little computer up. I found the little hardware piece that had fallen out of place, duct taped it back where it needed to be, and closed the computer back up again. Though I could now plug it in, something I did made it impossible for me to turn it on.

My little netbook has been sitting on my dresser since then, waiting for something to be done with it. I've looked it over, and can't figure out what I accidentally did to disable it, and what I'd need to do to fix it. Luckily I don't have any important files on there, but I really miss having my own little netbook.

When all that happened, I officially re-adopted my dad's old laptop. He was given a new laptop a while back, but since this old one still worked, I began to use it daily.

My family is pretty tech-savvy, and I'm very familiar with computers and machines, so when something's wrong with them, it rarely phases me (well, outside of the immediate "Arg!-Why-can't-you-behave-and-do-what-I-want-you-to!?" knee-jerk reaction"). When dad's old laptop got plagued with malware, I knew just what to do to clean them out, and when it had a more severe virus attack, I was able to reboot the laptop perfectly and get it running like normal.

When I got back from my family vacation, however, I was faced with a couple unexpected problems.

First of all, both the family desktop and my dad's old laptop (which I'd been using) suddenly lost connection with our wireless router (IE, we couldn't get online). No one is sure yet why this happened, as the two other laptops in the house were still able to connect normally. I tried all sorts of tricks to try to fix the connection, but finally resorted to using my dad's new laptop whenever I wanted to access the internet (which is often) before I finally managed to get at least the old laptop online.

The other problem was with the old laptop's power cord. After being folded up in luggage for two weeks, the plastic had broken, and there was a bit of exposed wire. It wasn't enough to really worry me, and I was able to get onto the computer easily and charge it, but after a while the crack started to grow.

On Sunday, I plugged the power cord into the outlet, and while shifting it to plug into the laptop, I saw a spark. You don't have to be a mechanic to know that's dangerous. I quickly unplugged the cord and moved it off the carpet, but with no way to plug it in now, I couldn't turn the laptop on (the battery is old and worn, and only holds a 30mins charge, which I'd happened to have run out already).

I managed to find a replacement power cord online for less that $20, and my awesome parents ordered it, but it wasn't expected to come for another week and a half, during which time I'd be using my dad's laptop (which I still feel kinda awkward about doing, since apparently every computer I've touched so far is falling apart).

As I was writing this blog, however, the doorbell rang, and there was a package on our porch. I'm still getting over the awe of how ridiculously fast this power cord got here, a week earlier than expected. It fits perfectly, and I have no more worries for this old laptop (for the moment, at least)!

I'm pretty proud of myself for managing to keep this old thing trucking long after most people would consider it obsolete (I just checked - apparently this thing was manufactured in 2002!) I may not know how to program, and I may not keep up with my blog as well as I should, but least there are some things I can do!

The Singing Painting

2011-09-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

Sometime last year, while looking through Bed Bath and Beyond for something or other, my mom saw a print of a painting that she instantly fell in love with. The print was pretty expensive, so she didn't buy it, but later that week she showed me the painting, and I gave her my blessing (such that it is) to buy it.

The painting my mom saw is called The Singing Butler, and it was one of the first pieces done by contemporary Scottish painter Jack Vettriano. He was around thirty when he painting this particular piece, and apparently he had very little experience painting.

What makes the painting so memorable, however, isn't the backstory, but the images. It's very minimalistic, but with little understanding of who the characters are, the viewer can still see exactly what's going on.

I've never had much love for paintings or other similar visual artwork. Certain pieces appeal to me, sure, but I've never understood why a weird Picasso or boring Pollock would ever sell for more money than something worthwhile, like this or this. Anyone can put paint onto a canvas; it takes real skill to create something that not only looks good, but means something as well.

That's why The Singing Butler appealed to me. It's not my new favorite painting ever, but it does what I think all paintings should to; it tells a story, and for that it earns my respect.

Mom wanted to buy the print she found at Bed Bath and Beyond, but it was too expensive for impulse, and when she finally made up her mind and went back, it was gone. It was on her mind for a while after that, and a few months ago, while making our once-a-fortnight visit to Barnes and Noble, she noticed a large 1,000 piece puzzle version of it for ten bucks.

She bought it, of course, and we broke the puzzle open that night, setting out a large white board to work on and dividing all the pieces into bowls. We don't do a lot of jigsaw puzzles in our house, and when we do, they're never glued together to hang up, but there was an unspoken understanding that this ten dollar jigsaw puzzle would look just as good on our walls as an expensive print.

We worked on the puzzle this summer while watching TV, because that's how we roll in this house. I divided out all the edge pieces, and while mom put them together I separated the different colored pieces (the reds, the pure blacks, the sandy beach and the gray cloud) into different glass bowls.

I can't say exactly how long it took us to work on that puzzle. We'd sit down together when something was on, and occasionally I'd work on it as I waited to leave for class a so forth. Little by little we got pieces placed in, until eventually the puzzle looked like this:

This presented two problems. First, it meant that all the leftover pieces (the cloud pieces) looked more or less the same. Even though there weren't as many pieces remaining, it would probably take just as long to finish the puzzle as it did to get to this point.

The other problem, however, was when mom sat back, looked at what we had so far, and said something to the effect of "I like it. We should frame it just like this."

I insisted that we at least finish the puzzle before mom framed it, incomplete. The point of the puzzle is to finish it, I thought, and it made no sense to pay ten bucks and frame it incomplete, just because it looks 'artsy'. I thought that, with the time it took to finish it, and seeing it finally complete, mom might change her mind and frame the completed puzzle.

It did in fact take us a long time to complete. Each remaining piece had to be measured by the slight tint differences in the clouds and the shape of the existing pieces, and when we got a single piece fitted in, we had to go through the process all over again.

I finally put the last two pieces in, leaving the completed puzzle on the table for mom to find later. She was still talking about removing the cloud pieces to hang the incomplete 'artsy' painting, but we left on our vacation soon afterward and nothing was done with the puzzle for a while.

I'm telling you guys all about this because, finally, mom did something with the puzzle. To be precise, she removed a few of the pieces, and glued what was left to a large board. She didn't remove as many as I was afraid she would, and it does look a bit artsy, so I guess it's all good. The puzzle hasn't been framed yet (that's expensive), but it looks like it will be soon, and the whole ordeal will be over.

Wisdom Teeth Extraction

2011-09-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

I got my wisdom teeth removed today. They're gone. I'm not 100% sure what they were doing there in the first place, since it seems like everyone just wants to get them out eventually. I'm sure a five minute Google search would lend me an answer, but I find I don't actually care enough to go look it up. Ah, 21st century.

I got to the dental surgery place a bit early, after driving myself and my dad there in his truck - which is a stick-shift, by the way. Remember how I said I never wanted to have to drive manual transmissions? It's because I hate them, and I think I'm going to either die or kill someone else when I'm in them. A few minutes ago, I looked up "pros and cons of learning to drive stick-shift," and you want to know what the best 'pro' reason was? "A lot more fun to drive."

It's totally not.

They're apparently more fuel efficient as well, but I think that's only on average, because our car is pretty fuel efficient, too.

Anyway, we waited at that dental surgery place for a while as they finished up with the patient before me. When they were ready for me, I followed into the back room and sat down on that funny movable chair dentists use, and the assistants gave me a warm blanket. Once I was lying down and super comfortable, they proceeded to give me a tourniquet and put monitor things on my chest and stomach, as well an an air tube in my nose (like they do in the movies). It took a while for a vein to appear on my tourniquet'd arm, but when it finally did I got poked a couple times and given an IV, which I hope to never have to go through again.

Whenever I'm not at home (such as when I'm at a friend's house, or summer camp) it takes me a while to fall asleep. When the doctor lady gave me the IV drip, she said it would put me to sleep during the surgery, and I didn't quite believe her. After only a few moments, however, my head started to feel funny, and then I blacked out.

I think. I didn't really dream or anything, and I can kind of remember them poking around in my face. I think I actually started to wake up as they were talking the last tooth out, and I'm not sure why. It kind of hurt, though my mouth was numbed, and I kept my eyes closed just in case I freaked them out. A little later, as they were finishing up and talking to me again, I realized it actually was difficult to open my eyes, and trying to lift my neck was hard, too.

Some more talking was done, the IV and body monitors removed, and after a couple minutes to let my head clear, I was given ice packs. They had me stand up, which I found surprisingly difficult, and then sit in a wheel chair, where I was wheeled to my dad's waiting truck.

Home. Ice Packs. Dad left to get my prescribed painkillers and antibiotic. I texted a few friends to let them know I was alive. My head still felt a touch fuzzy, and I couldn't close my mouth because I had gauze on my back gums. I went to the bathroom and noticed a line of drool on my chin, thick because of the numbing medicine. While wiping it away, I found a lot of blood trapped between my lip and my teeth, and had to change the gauze.

Dad came back, left for work, and I proceeded to pull the computer out, update Facebook, and look for something interesting to watch online. This was around 11:00, 11:30. I remembered that I was supposed to take the antibiotic right away, but found it almost impossible to swallow even a normal glass of water, as I couldn't feel my tongue. I practiced at it for a while, and finally got the pill down (by this time it was 12:40 - I know because I made a note of it on the refrigerator).

I wanted to eat, but all I was able to figure out was the single-serving Ben and Jerry Double Fudge ice cream. As first, I got the spoon covered in blood, but I managed to get the rest of the ice cream onto the roof on my mouth, bypassing the numbed section of my tongue and letting it melt in the back, where I could still taste. Problem solving FTW.

Watched stuff on the computer. New Simon's Cat video - always cute. Nothing by Hank Green yet. Figured out how to drink apple juice, and got a whole glass down.

Around 2:30, I realized that I got talk. This is what I wrote in this blogger window as a reminder:

"2:30 - I can talk! I can feel my cheekbones and make noises with my mouth that thound almoth like wheel wurds!"

I sounded out that last part to make sure I spelled everything exactly like it sounded, but I left out the parts where I laughed hysterically at myself. My cat came out from the curtain she sleeps behind and gave me a quizzical look.

My mom and I had gone to the store the other day to find foods and soups and stuff for me to eat. I still have to limit myself to liquids (I can have "pasta-consistency" later tonight!") so I had some 'Cream of Chicken', which didn't taste as bad as I was afraid. Now, as soon at the dish washer is finished running, I'm planning on slurping some beef broth, or if I want my veggies, 'Cream of Celery'.

The plan is to be healed by school on Tuesday. Do you hear that, body of mine? We have this all planned out and everything; you better follow the plan!

Edit: 5:30. Mom came home with Chinese Food for dinner, because I insisted that noodles and rice wouldn't require any chewing (which I still can't do). I am swallowing this food whole like a boss. The strange skill-set I've developed over the years has become pretty helpful for my post-wisdom teeth life. I think I'll be able to make it as an adult.

Wake Up Juice

2011-08-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

Getting ready for the school year to start became official last Sunday, when I turned on my phone's morning alarm tone. The particular tone I use has gone through some changes in the past year, and since I'm doing my 'back to school' special, I wanted to highlight a few of them.

When I started school last year, I didn't have a phone, so I woke up using my favorite little Bob alarm clock. I got it years ago from Brookstone, after seeing a friend use it at summer camp, and I always thought it was super cute. Unfortunately, it emits a sharp, repetitious beep in its attempt to wake me up, and listening to that day after day, year after year, was grating my nerves.

My mom sprung to buy me a phone a couple weeks into last Fall semester so we could get in touch with each other. It came with a few preset alarm tones, but I decided not to use any. Instead, still in my excitement after seeing Christopher Nolan's Inception last summer, I decided to download Edith Piaf's Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (if you don't know the song, or want a refresher, click on the link to listen).

If you haven't seen Inception yet, here's a brief description: It's about dreams. The characters in the movie go into each others' dreams, and when it's time for them to come out, the person who's still awake plays this Edith Piaf song to those asleep. It's a very famous song, by an extremely famous French singer, and it really adds to the symbolism of the movie, but sans-symbolism it's essentially the 'time to wake up' song, and I thought it would be perfect to wake up to this every day.

I played Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (which translates to 'No, I regret nothing') every school day for almost that entire semester. At first, I would wake up as soon as the trombones started to blare, and I was up before she actually started singing. It took a while to get used to using the phone as an alarm clock, but I got the hang of it before long, and I loved waking up to band music.

Edith Piaf, played by Marion Cotillard in "La Vie en Rose."

The later it got into the semester, however, the longer the song would play before I actually awoke. A few times I didn't get up until she finished the opening chorus, and once I even slept through it (though my phone might have been on silent that time). The more I listened to the song, the more those trombones just sounded rough on my ears, and eventually, I decided that I needed a change (I cannot confirm whether this was before or after the semester ended, however).

When I got the phone, I had decided that all of the ringtones and alarms (except for my morning Edith Piaf), would come from The Legend of Zelda. It made sense to me to make sure my new morning alarm tone also came from the Zelda series, but which song? After a short deliberation, the answer became obvious: The Ballad of the Windfish, from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (the next paragraph contains spoilers from the game, but unless you're an old-school video game fan who, for some reason, hasn't played the game, I don't think you should care).

The Windfish sleeps inside
the egg.

Link's Awakening is a pretty interesting title from the Zelda series, because it takes place on this island that doesn't seem real, and until you beat it, you're not 100% sure as to what's going on (also, there are a ton of Mario references). As it turns out, the Windfish (some sort of deity or something) is in a cursed dream, which you're trapped inside. You have to gather instruments and play a song to wake up the Windfish and return to reality, while simultaneously destroying the dream and all the people who lived in it (which made the ending kind of sad, really) (This is the version of the song I downloaded).

Since Ballad of the Windfish is another 'time to wake up' kind of song, I thought it a perfect replacement. It's beautiful, especially in context, and I loved that both of the songs I'd used up until now had a sort of double meaning. If you've listened to the song link that I posted, however, you might have noticed something else; the original song is played with old-school, 8-bit computer audio. It played well on my phone, but those hard notes, every morning, day after day? After a while, that sound became too much for my newly-awoken ears.

Finding a new song after this was a bit difficult. I wanted to stick with music from The Legend of Zelda, but I had to be careful it wasn't something that would become loud and obnoxious first thing in the morning. It took a while of careful consideration, but I finally found a song I liked: the song that plays when morning breaks over Hyrule Field in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

If you've never played the game before, it's impossible to explain the feelings that this song gives (And no one, it seems, has uploaded a video onto Youtube of this scene from the game). At the time when this game came out, it had the largest explorable 3-D plane yet: Hyrule Field. I don't have the exact numbers, but it took about 5 minutes to cross, and triple that to go around the entire edge. The developers even programmed in night and day phases, adding to the enlarged feeling.

This is actually sunset, but you get the idea.

Dawn breaking over Hyrule Field, with the light gradually increasing and the in-game monsters disappearing, is like waking up early enough to see the sun rise over the ocean, or breathing in the fresh, cool air at the beginning of a perfect weekend off, or seeing your beautiful baby girl for the very first time. The music that plays is like the moment when everything is perfect and nothing can go wrong, translated into sound. What plays afterword, which would normally sound like your basic 'go-get-em' overworld music, now sound exactly like carpe diem.

As soon as I heard it again, for the first time in a while, I knew I wanted the Hyrule Field Morning theme as my new alarm tone. This song doesn't just say 'it's time to get up', it whispers it softly, and adds 'today will be a great day!'

I used this alarm for the last few weeks of Spring semester, and all during my Summer semester classes. It's still my morning alarm now, and it hasn't yet gotten annoying, repetitive, or scary (as wake-up alarms can get). It's nice to have something great to wake up to.

What about you - what are you guys waking up to these days?

First Day

2011-08-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, I came onto my local community college campus to start my first day of classes. It was a truly terrifying experience.

For starters, I had to take the bus to campus. The college campus is a 20-30 minute drive from my house, and since I didn't have my license at the time, one of my parents would have to drop me off on their way to work (which, by the way, is in the opposite direction). Instead of taking me all the way out to campus an hour early just to get to work on time, they dropped me off at a local bus stop. My first experience riding a bus was that first day of school, and I had no idea what to do. I managed to deposit the money and find a seat without too much hassle, though I ended up sitting in the same spot for almost the entire semester.

On top of that was the fact that I was, as far as I knew, the youngest kid on campus. I tested out of high school a year early because my classes were boring (and, subsequently, I wasn't the getting the best grades), and on the college campus I felt like I was really just a little grade-school kid trying to pass myself off as a mature, responsible adult. I imagined that I'd be found out, and that the other students (all much older than me) would ostracize me, make fun of me, and my time there would be miserable.

The bus dropped me and a bunch of other students off across the street from the college, and I followed the crowd over the lawn of the theater next to the campus. I still had a half hour to spare, and I spent it wandering the campus, trying to familiarize myself with its layout. All of my classes were on the same side, and in the same general area, so it wasn't that hard to get used to.

I had four classes that first semester, all of them on Tuesday and Thursday. That first day, I walked between classes, frequently checking my schedule to make sure I had the right building and the right room. I had ten minutes between classes, and I was early to all of them.

I never really got to know any of the kids in my classes. This is probably because I'm an extremely quiet, shy person around people I'm not already familiar with. In my Economics class, we had to work in groups, so I became acquainted with my groups members, but I never added much to conversations, always fearful that they'd discover my true identity.

There are no pictures to match
today's blog, so I'm posting random
college-related stuff.

Today was my first day of classes, a year later, and my campus dynamic is totally different. I'm still quiet around people I don't know (leading me to not speak up much in class), but I'm completely comfortable navigating the campus (though I'll admit that I've never once stepped into the cafeteria). I know have my license, and negotiating car usage is much less stressful that finding a seat on the bus and hoping no one talks to me (or that if they do, they find me a pleasant conversation partner; I'm not against talking to strangers, but I'm terrified that I'll come off as an idiot or pretentious).

A strange thing, though: I find I enjoy having morning classes. In high school my day started at 6:00, as I had an early morning class I attend before school. Getting up at 5:30, five days a week for four years, really grated my nerves, and I promised myself that I'd have afternoon classes when I got to college and could make my own schedule.

Instead, last year, my Tuesday and Thursday classes started around 8:00, and I've carried that tradition on through the next semesters. On paper, it made more sense for transportation, but it also kinda feels nice. I'm getting two more hours of sleep than I did when I was in high school, and I'm starting my day doing something productive and thought-provoking. After class, I get to come home and work on accomplishing something (like getting a job).

Starting college, I've decided, is a terrifying thing. The government is no longer forcing you to go to school - you're going of your own free will. You have to decide which classes to take, and when to show up, and so forth. All through grade school people are telling you what to do, consulting you for your opinion, but ultimately making the decision for you. When you enter college, you're suddenly forced to make those decisions for yourself.

Stock Photo FTW

That's not even taking into account that most college freshmen are leaving their parents for the first time, losing old friends and doing their own laundry and grocery shopping. I'm blessed to have a community college nearby that I don't feel lame attending, and parents who haven't decided to kick me out yet.

College is terrifying, but real life is terrifying, and this is just a part of it.

I want to congratulate my old high school friends (and even the kids who I kind of knew but never really talked to) for moving up a rung on the Illusion of Reality ladder. You've been here all along, but now you can finally prove it to everyone else, and that's awesome.

I, Robot (Issac Asimov)

2011-08-26T16:13:00.000-07:00

The 1st Edition cover.

Except for a few short stories in my Middle/High school English classes, I'd never read anything written by Issac Asimov, considered to be the master of science fiction. With that in mind, I finally picked up a copy of I, Robot earlier this summer, and I've finally now finished reading it (Unfortunately, the only version of the book at Barnes and Noble had Will Smith on the cover. I like Will Smith as an actor, but I dislike owning the 'movie cover' versions of books).

When the 2004 Will Smith 'I, Robot' movie came out, I saw reviews for it online that said it was "nothing like the book." At the time, I thought that meant it was dissimilar to the book in the same way that all the Harry Potter movies were dissimilar to the books, and years later I figured the I, Robot movie was probably just like the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time movie (which gave a totally different set of characters in a different setting the same items and ultimate goal from the original game).

Having finally read the book, I can say knowingly that the movie is truly nothing like the book.

I, Robot, the book, is actually an anthology. It's made up of nine different short stories, all telling a piece of the chronological history of robotics in Asimov's fictional future, and tied together by Dr. Susan Calvin, a robopsychologist who's telling these stories to a reporter

Though nothing I'm seeing online backs me up, it seems to me that the Will Smith movie I, Robot is more closely based on the other books in Asimov's Robot series. Those books are sci-fi mysteries, starring a police detective from Earth who distrusts robots, and who's forced to work alongside one when he's sent to another colonized planet to solve a crime.

A few of the stories from I, Robot have been made in the sci-fi TV episodes and so on, but it doesn't really make sense to make the entire anthology into a movie (though someone did try once, with the blessing and help of Issac Asimov himself. It was never made, because the screenwriter refused to make the changes suggested by the producers).

On the one hand, I can see why the creators of the 2003 I, Robot movie wouldn't have chosen to try to recreate the anthology on film, but on the other hand, why did they chose to use the name I, Robot in the first place? Except for the themes and motifs that are pulled straight from his writing, the movie has little to do with Asimov's original.

This reminds me of the 1983 arcade game, also titled 'I, Robot', which I briefly mentioned in a previous blog post. The arcade game, one of the first to utilize 3D polygon graphics, seemed to have nothing to do with the Asimov anthology either (except that you played as a little polygon robot).

Now that I've finished reading the anthology, I can truthfully say that I really enjoyed it. Asimov's writing style is easy to read (something which always surprises me about writers from over forty years ago, for some reason), and the stories are very interesting. They chronicle advancements in robotics over time, as humans try to come to terms with the changes they bring to their lifestyles. Without giving any spoilers, most of the stories highlight a problem that seems to arise in the machines; after trying to solve the problem, the engineers realize that the robots were only ever doing what they were programed to do, using unexpected methods.

I think I'm beginning to understand what people mean when they call Asimov the master of Science Fiction; if I, Robot is any indication, he's a great writer with believable stories even when they're set in the distant future. I'm definitely adding his other Robot series books to my 'to read' list (though, I still have ten other books on my 'to read' shelf; why is it that, no matter how many books I read, that section on the shelf doesn't get smaller?)

The Amazing, Versatile Semi-Colon!

2011-08-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, when my mom was boasting about how smart all her children were, I turned to her and proudly said, "My favorite punctuation mark is the semi-colon."

My mom looked back at me and said, "Never, ever, say that in public."

Sorry, mom; I'm obviously still in my rebellious phase.

I'm going to be honest here, and it'll probably come off as a bit rude; the only people who hate semi-colons are the people who don't know how to use them. If you know how to use them, and you still don't like them, it's probably because you're not a very fluid writer.

I used to not like semi-colons, either; I never used them, I didn't know why I would need to use them, and I didn't understand why I had to capitalize the semi-colon to get the regular colon, even though the regular colons were obviously much more useful. Back then, I also used to use a ton of em-dashes.

An "em dash" is the technical name for a dash in the middle of a sentence. Used correctly, it's supposed to separate thoughts, so you can add something in quickly and move on with what you were saying, similar to a parenthesis (and we use em dashes all the time in speech, such as: "So then Jimmy - the kid who started the fight, remember - then he said....")

Except, I wasn't using them correctly. I used em dashes when I wanted to start a new statement that related to my previous statement. Here are a few examples from my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel, Princess Kate:

"They weren't my favorite ones – my favorite stuffed animal was a bean-bag tiger..."
"I never really liked the woman – I felt as if she was trying to..."
"'Of course not – that wouldn't be appropriate.'"
"'Let's go into the western wing – that's where the secrets are most likely kept.'"

These are just from the first few pages; there are plenty more. At the time, using dashes seemed like the obvious choice to me, but as I look back, I realize that every single one of these could - and should - be a semi-colon.

Later that school year, my English teacher taught us how to properly use semi-colons. It was a rigorous, week-long workout, forcing us to be comfortable with something we as a class had previously avoided. By the end of it, I made a realization: semi-colons did exactly what I was incorrectly forcing the em dash to do. I was trying to get a certain effect, but because I was ignorant as to how semi-colons worked, I didn't know how to get that effect properly.

The semi-colon, I discovered that year, is an amazing punctuation mark, and since then I've been stunned by the number of people who still don't know how to use it. It seems simple to me, and oh-so useful.

This is all a bit difficult to explain to someone who doesn't read a lot. As a kid, I used to read all the time, which is why writing comes so easy to me. I don't have to stop and think about the syntax or flow of the sentence; I can tell when something sounds bad, and what I need to do to make it sound better.

Most people, even if they like to read, can't do that (I can attest to this, because I was asked to edit many badly written stories in my English classes, written by students who liked to read but obviously weren't as experienced with the pen). I don't want to sound like an egotistical jerk, because I'm also really bad at explaining things like grammar and punctuation rules.

Instead of trying to teach you how to use the semi-colon properly, I'll point you in the direction of a humorous, well-written, explanatory visual, written and drawn by Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal. His chart is easy to follow, and should help anyone unfamiliar with the semi-colon learn its correct usages.

If you don't want to read the link just yet, or if you're already back and want a refresher, here's my explanation; a semi-colon is halfway between a period and a comma (that's why it's made up of the two). Semi-colons are used in all those places were a comma just isn't good enough, but a period is a bit too much.

If you want an example, go back up and re-read my whole blog; I've used 7 semi-colons so far (you can find them by going to your 'find' function - ctrl + f on windows - and typing in a semi-colon). Try re-reading those sentences, but replacing the semi-colon with either a comma or a period. See how the comma doesn't make sense? See how the period makes both sentences too short and choppy, especially right next to each other?

If you're wondering, yes, I did try specifically to use more semi-colons that normal. If I was avoiding the semi-colon, I could replace all those instances with some other punctuation or punctuation/conjunction combo. I didn't do that, because semi-colons flow better, in my mind. They're a kind on nonverbal 'because' or 'therefore'. They link two related statements together in a way that isn't awkward or wrong, and doesn't require either statement to change; it's like the semi-colon is saying "hey, I know you two want to be together, and I'm here to make it happen."

The semi-colon is my favorite punctuation mark, and I'm not afraid to say it. It has so many different functions, not the least of which is to make everything you say sound nicer and make more sense. It's almost as if the grammarians of the past made a list of all the punctuation marks they liked to use, and after they wrote down ten, they said "and for everything else, we'll use a semi-colon." I'll admit that I really abused it in today's post; don't worry, I'll tone it down in the future. However, I have used the semi-colon at least twice per post in the past, and I'll probably continue to use it just as often as I feel it needs to be used in future posts.

(Final semi-colon count: 9)

The Ghost Ship Mary Celeste

2011-08-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

While wasting my time on the internet a while back, I stumbled upon a very strange story; that of the Ghost Ship Mary Celeste. I don't know too much about maritime lore, but this story is apparently very famous, because it's both very bizarre and seems to have no real explanation. Modern day researchers have been able to come up with an answer to what happened to the Mary Celeste, but even their most plausible explanations don't make this story any more normal.

From the time she was built in 1861, the ship seems to have been cursed. Originally, she was named the Amazon, and her first captain died of pneumonia at the beginning of her maiden voyage. Her next captain struck a fishing boat while at sea, and had to return to the shipyard for repairs, where a sudden fire broke out on deck.

The famous story of the Mary Celeste doesn't start until November, 1872, when she was under the command of Captain Briggs. Briggs was docked in New York, waiting for a shipment on 1700 barrels of raw alcohol, which he was commissioned to carry across the ocean to Italy. Captain Briggs met up with a friend of his, Captain Morehouse, and they discovered that they'd both be sailing into the Mediterranean, though when it was time for Briggs to leave, Morehouse's cargo still hadn't arrived, and he ended up setting sail seven days later.

Captain Briggs

About a month into Morehouse's voyage, the helmsman of his ship spotted another ship off in the distance, some 600 miles west of Portugal. The other ship, recognized by Morehouse as the Mary Celeste, was yawing, and her sails were loose and slightly torn. After circling her for some time and seeing nobody on deck, Morehouse decided to board her to investigate.

The chief mate, who boarded the Mary Celeste, reported that no one was on board. There was more water below deck than there should have been, and though the Mary Celeste was not sinking, everything was wet. Several pieces of navigational equipment were missing, two of the ship hatches were wide open, the lifeboat was missing, and a rope was found tied to the ship and trailing behind it in the water (it's believed to be the rope used to tie the main sail, as that rope was missing).

The Mary Celeste wasn't the only ship ever to be found abandoned in the sea. What makes this story unique, however, is the fact that no personal possessions were missing, and there was still a six-month supply of food. There was no sign of a struggle, and the 1700 barrels of alcohol were also untouched, making the piracy raid theory (otherwise the most obvious explanation) highly unlikely.

Morehouse sees the Mary Celeste - though there were no stormy seas at the time.

Captain Morehouse and his first mate sailed the two ships to an overseas British territory at the mouth of the Mediterranean, known as Gibraltar, where an official inquiry was done. At the time, they wrote it off as either a pirate raid or a mutiny (neither of which are very plausible), and focused on insurance problems. During the inquiry, they found nine of the barrels of alcohol empty, though they hadn't been tampered with, and a British surveyor found what he thought was dried blood, though an American consult proved that it was, in fact, rust.

No one at the time was able to prove what had really happened aboard the Mary Celeste, and even now all we have are some highly probable speculations. For the longest time, people thought a Seaquake had freaked out Captain Briggs, causing him to abandon ship, but that seems less likely, since Captain Briggs was known for being an experienced sailor who was familiar with strong weather and wouldn't abandon his ship unless he feared for his life.

What everyone now believes really happened is even stranger than a pirate raid or a seaquake - it was a phantom explosion.

Not exactly.

The nine barrels found empty in the cargo hold were actually made from a different type of wood, known for being extra porous. It wasn't liquid alcohol that was poured out, then, but the alcohol fumes that leeched through the wood and built up in the watertight hull.

After all that vapor filled up, it would be a simple matter for something to spark and light it (I'm thinking the metal straps on the barrels rubbing together). The resulting explosion would have been so powerful, it would have blown open the cargo hatch, damaged much of the interior of the ship (including the water pumps), and blown open the two hatches on the deck - without burning or singeing anything.

A scientist at the University College of London recreated the phantom explosion that would have occurred on the Mary Celeste. Dr. Sella, the chemist who recreated the blast, says he created what's called a pressure wave explosion, a wave of flame that passed over without burning anything, and leaving relatively cool air behind.

Dr. Sella's recreation, which used paper instead of wooden barrels.

As I said before, Captain Briggs was an experienced sailor who wouldn't abandon his ship unless his life was in danger. This pressure wave explosion, passing right over him and leaving him miraculously alive, would have been enough for anyone to throw their hands up and say "Forget this!" The entire crew probably piled into the lifeboat together, totally ignoring their food supply and everything else on board in a frenzied attempt to get away from the cursed ship which, basically, had just tried to kill them.

On a side note, the Mary Celeste continued to haunt its owners even after it was found, abandoned, in the Atlantic. The father of then owner James Winchester sailed the Mary Celeste back to Boston, where he drowned in a freak accident. The ship changed hands 17 times in the next 13 years, and the last guy to own her finally decided to deliberately sink her in an act of insurance fraud. His plan didn't work, as the Mary Celeste ran into a reef off the coast of Haiti and sat there, upright and in the sun. He tried to burn her, but the vessel remained intact. The insurance company investigated and figured out what he was doing, but the man died under unknown circumstances before his trial, and the ship sat there for years before eventually sinking into the bay (later to be found by Clive Cussler).

Though we can't know for certain what exactly happened aboard the Mary Celeste, the facts all seem to point to a very strange case on high seas, and I can't say I blame Captain Briggs for never wanting to step foot on the ship again, even as he and his crew floated out on the ocean with no supplies, dying, with the Mary Celeste still in sight.

Everything Bad is Good for You

2011-08-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

A while back, I wrote a review on a book titled Reality is Broken (by Jane McGonigal). If you didn't read it or don't remember, the book is about video games, and how they can positively impact the people who play them. Jane McGonigal's goal in writing the book was to help dispel the negative image associated with video games and to try to get people to incorporate the positive aspects of gaming into their everyday lives.

While writing that review, I discovered a similar book, called Everything Bad is Good for You (by Steven Johnson), and the idea intrigued me so much, I decided to buy it and read it as well. Johnson's book, which was written a few years ago, is about Pop Culture in general, and how it's actually making people smarter.

Johnson splits his book up into two sections, and the first section is further split up into different categories of media: video games, television, movies, the internet and digital technology. In each of these subsections, he details how the medium has gotten more and more complicated in recent years, giving anecdotal evidence of the how the changes are causing us to use our minds more as we ingest our entertainment, contrary to the 'rotting brain' image that is so popular among people who like to think they know what they're talking about.

I really loved that this book started with a quote by Marshall McLuhan (a man I'll want to look more into in the coming weeks):

The student of media soon comes to expect the new media of any period whatever to be classed as pseudo by those who acquired the patterns of earlier media, whatever they may happen to be.

This quote verbalizes something that I've been thinking for a long while. Basically, people are prejudice towards anything new, different, or unfamiliar. I believe the idea is that, while we were busy evolving, this trait helped us to survive; the homo sapiens who rejected or killed other people or animals that looked different were more likely to survive than those who wanted to be friendly to the invading strangers.

This trait has continued to be prevalent in people. I'm sure when the printing press was invented, hundreds of rich intellectuals bemoaned that the new machine would kill some of the 'soul' of the handwritten manuscripts. When telephones started to get popular, I'm sure there were thousands of local newspaper editorials on how people were losing the ability to interact socially face-to-face. When kids started getting into the Swing, I know that their parents shook their collective heads and tried their hardest to forbid their children from going to 'wild dance parties'.

"How disgraceful! Just you wait until your father gets home, young lady!"

So it makes perfect sense that people still have a negative view about video games, television, and so on. What Steven Johnson is attempting to do with this book is get us to overcome our natural prejudices. He makes it perfectly clear that he doesn't think video games or TV should replace other important habits, like reading or experiencing the world for yourself, but he doesn't want people to be so afraid for the future generations.

A lot of what he had to say in this book was stuff I've already been thinking to myself. His section on video games was primarily about the decision-making strategies kids are learning while playing them, along with goal setting and other things kids have to practice for in real life. Having quite a bit of experience with video games, I already knew about all this; however, I loved the way he explained it in the book. I felt like he was able to express the feelings of gamers in a way that even a non-gamer would understand.

His section on the internet was also pretty obvious to me. He focused on the idea that, with so much new technology coming out so fast, people nowadays have been trained to probe and figure out new systems quickly. That skill, though learned from a computer, isn't limited to technological systems; someone highly skilled in that area could enter a new college system with ease, or learn the system at their workplace with less training than someone who wasn't used to figuring out new technology.

What really stunned me, however, was his subsection on television. We never used to watch much television in my house (in fact, we went almost ten years without cable, surviving solely of our own bunny-ears), so I agreed with most people that television is a mind-numbingly passive activity, especially compared to playing video games (a highly active mental tasks).

It turns out that there is a lot of thinking going on, just to follow what's happening on screen. On any given episode of any given drama, there are so many different characters that the viewer has to constantly by aware of. What happens in the episode affects every character differently, but the viewer wont pick up on that if they're unable to remember who all of the characters are. This is especially noticeable in shows like 24, where there are over 30 characters to consider and over ten subplots to follow. If you forget some of these, certain scenes wont make sense, and the show will be hard to follow - and yet 24 has had some of the highest ratings on television.

I was also surprised when he pointed out the decrease in something he calls 'flashing arrows'. These are devices in shows or movies designed to help the audience follow what's going on - the music playing when the bad guy arrives on scene, or the geologist having to explain how the layers of the earth work to the obligatory non-geologist characters, just so the audience can follow along. It's a trick story-tellers have used since before film was invented, and one that modern television shows are phasing out.

I personally love stories where I don't quite know what's going on. There's no passivity in that; as the audience, I'm actively working on deciphering what I'm reading or seeing as I'm seeing it. According to Johnson, this lack in 'flashing arrows' has become more and more common on TV in the past decades. He talks extensively about The West Wing (Which I've never seen), and then gives us a page of dialogue from one scene in ER. For the entire scene, the doctors rush around, treating a young emergency patient while calming the parents down. A typical audience member, unless they were in medical school, would have no idea what the doctors were talking about; instead, they understand that they have to figure it out, using the very few clues given (the calming words said to the parents). This technique wouldn't fly twenty years ago.

I've noticed this while watching Bones, a forensic show that I've followed for a few years now. Normally, the main character will discover some important clue on the bones she's examining, and after telling her FBI partner what it is she sees, he'll ask her to dumb it down for him (effectively making it so we can understand what's going on). I remember one particular episode a few years back, however, where after she explains what's going on using anthropological jargon, I immediately thought to myself 'oh, I know what that means'. Without doing any research on my own, I unintentionally picked up

The second part of Johnson's book goes over everything he told us, making it more applicable. He explains something called the Flynn Effect, discovered by James R. Flynn, who found that, on average, IQ scores have been increasing for a long time. The official IQ test is constantly adjusted, to make sure 100 is still the average score, but that means that people who took the test twenty years ago will score lower on the test.

Another study shows that test scores are rising even more dramatically than Flynn thought.

Johnson doesn't cite this as proof of his theory, that our popular culture is making it smarter, but he sees that the two trends (rising IQ scores and the rising complexity in our media) go hand in hand. Pop culture nowadays is much more mentally challenging because that's what consumers want. If people didn't love the mental challenge, shows like 24 or ER wouldn't have such high ratings, and games like Portal and Civilization would be such bestsellers.

I found it hard to argue with any of the thoughts presented in this book, but even if someone were to try to prove him wrong, they'd be missing the point. Johnson wants to help people get over their prejudice of new and different things by pointing out all the positive aspects to things that are immediately looked down upon by people unfamiliar with them.

Altogether, the book was very interesting to read. I've been a longtime advocate for the idea that 'these days aren't any worse than previous days', so I was very open to everything he suggested, but I would really recommend it to anyone who thinks they might not agree with him. While most of his evidence in anecdotal, he does pull from neuroscience and other technical fields to show his reader exactly what he thinks is going on. Even if you find you don't believe him for some reason, it's hard to ignore the real changes going on around us today

No Excuses

2011-08-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

This is my, 'I could have written an interesting blog today if I'd isolated myself in the back room and limited my internet access, but instead I hung out with a friend this morning and coordinated to give another friend a wig I'm still not sure why I own' fill-in blog post.

I will be posting today's blog post tomorrow instead. It'll be good - I'm reviewing a pretty subversive book - but it'll take quite a while to write, and I'm already several hours behind. Luckily, with the two week break I took, I've got a good list of topics to write about in the coming weeks.

Just a forward; I'll be having my wisdom teeth taken out in a couple of weeks. It'll be a Tuesday, so I'll try to pre-write that Wednesday's post, and hopefully I'll be healed and lucid enough to write that Friday. After that, school will be starting for me, so there's a chance I may miss a day or to. I'll try to keep you all informed. Thanks for reading!

Cowboys and Aliens

2011-08-17T20:23:00.000-07:00

The Friday before we left on our vacation (the 29th, I believe), my mom and I went to the theaters to see one of the few titles coming out this summer that looked interesting: Cowboys and Aliens.

When I saw the trailer for this movie sometime last year, I thought it looked hokey, and wanted to see it, just to have fun with the ridiculousness of it. The title was an obvious play off of "Cowboys and Indians" - as someone who likes words, I can appreciate the fact that 'Indians' and 'Aliens' sound similar and have the same number of syllables - and the movie premise sounded like something made up on the spot for a silly, would-be blockbuster, like Megashark versus Giant Octopus.

'Which, according to this chart, means it should be great!'

The more I looked into the movie, however, the more I realized that they actually intended this to be a serious, well-thought-out, and meaningful story, not just a campy thriller. As shown on the graph above, this, I thought, would move Cowboys and Aliens from the so-bad-it's-good bump to the slump to the left.

However, with all the boring or stupid movies coming out this summer, Cowboys and Aliens looked at least sort of promising, so we made our way to the theater with the tickets we pre-paid for (if we buy non-specific movie tickets through her school, my mom gets a percentage for her classroom, so we bought a few last spring, figuring we'd be seeing movies this summer anyways).

Daniel Craig plays the main character of Cowboys and Aliens, a solemn man who wakes up in the middle of the Wild West desert with a strange metal device attached to his arm, unable to remember even his own name. He soon makes it to a nearby town called Absolution, where he befriends a preacher and learns that a rich rancher named Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) owns most of the town and is feared by most of the people who live there.

Daniel Craig's character also soon learns that he is a outlaw named Jake Lonergan, wanted for stealing quite a bit of gold from Dolarhyde. Unfortunately for Dolarhyde, the town is attacked by a strange, otherworldly force (read: the titular aliens) before they can send Jake to the county prison. Jake is able to bring down one of the alien ships with the weapon hidden in his iron bracelet, which seems to be made from alien technology, but not before the aliens kidnap a number of the town residents, including Dolarhyde's undisciplined son and the town Sheriff.

Accompanied by Jake, who is essentially a stranger, and a mysterious woman who came into town a few days before him (Olivia Wilde), Dolarhyde and the remaining townspeople set off to track down the aliens and rescue their friends and families.

The movie attempts to blend the Western genre with the Sci-Fi/Aliens genre, but it does so with a degree of awkwardness. The Western scenes do felt very 'Western', and the Sci-Fi scenes felt very 'Sci-Fi', and while they went side-by side without too much trouble, they didn't cross into each other believably. There were moments where it felt like the director inserted in Western movie tropes just to make the movie seem more 'Western', and the dialogue at the beginning of the movie was, honestly, not that great.

While this movie didn't really nail the Western look, it definitely had the Western theme. Jake is a quiet recluse (with a name like Lonergan, no less), running from his past, who winds in Absolution. Everything he goes through in the course of the movie is almost metaphoric of him fighting his inner-demons (and one of the things I really liked about the movie was that, despite the title, the word 'alien' was never used. The 1800's characters wouldn't know what aliens were, so instead, they refer to the beings as 'demons').

Which is one of the things that the Western genre has in common with the Sci-Fi/Alien genre. Over the course of the movie, the different groups of people have to move past their personal differences and come together to fight a greater foe. Underneath all the flashy special effects, the extended gun battle sequences and character exposition disguised as witty banter, both Cowboy movies and Alien movies are about people in a harsh, almost impossible situation, trying to do the right thing.

And look cool at the same time.

The theme never really feels thrust in your face (unless you noticed the name Dolarhyde, and realized the symbolism of the other names), so the film succeeds in being, for the most part, a fun action popcorn movie. I can't help but imagine Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig having an awesome time just shooting this.

Which leads me to my next negative point; it really seemed to me that the three main actors in this movie - Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, and Olivia Wilde - were each just playing themselves. Harrison Ford's character at least had the benefit of being a bad guy for a while, but we all knew that wasn't going to last, because he's Harrison Ford. His character, Woodrow Dolarhyde, was essential a rich, old, tired, 19th century Han 'Indiana Jones' Solo.

I've only ever seen Olivia in the latest Tron movie, and the few episodes of House that I saw, but she's also very similar to both of those characters (though she finally does get some more development, which I wont spoil for you, to set her apart). When it comes to Daniel Craig, however, who I've seen in Casino Royale (and The Golden Compass, now that I look at his IMDb page), I thought his character Jake seemed exactly like the Wild West version of his James Bond; quiet, introverted, solemn, and more than a little moody. Certainly someone needs to play Loner~~guy~~gan, but does it always have to be Craig?

As for the movie itself, I liked it. It wasn't the best movie this year, or even this summer, but, honestly, who expected it to be? It tricked us a bit by trying to go for a more serious effect, but when it comes down to it, Cowboys and Aliens was really just a fun, adventurous action movie, a sort of inter-genre fanfic that we all secretly wanted Hollywood to make. It's worth seeing, I think, and I'd definitely like to rent it at least once when it comes out.

(On a side note, it wasn't until after seeing the movie that I realized it was based off of a graphic novel, which I'm now really interested in reading as well.)

The Shot Heard 'Round the World

2011-08-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

I'm almost certain that every one of you has heard of the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World', as long as you've taken an American History class. Not the shot that kickstarted The Great War, but the shot that marked the beginning of the American Revolution.

I wont give you all the dates of all the significant events before the American Revolution, but the actual fighting for the war didn't start until April, 1775 (a full year before the Declaration of Independence was finalized). Before then, the Colonists on the American continent were just protesting the fact that they were being treated as second-class English citizens. As hostility grew between the Colonists and the British officers sent to calm them down, both sides started preparing for war.

Statue in Concord

In April, British troops started marching through to a place called Concord, where the rebellious colonists had a large stash of gunpowder, ammunition, and other stuff needed to win a war against a large empire. The British march was in itself interesting, but things didn't get heated until the soldiers got to the community called Lexington.

In Lexington, a company of armed rebels waited for the advancing British soldiers. They were given orders not to fire or act hostile in any way; in fact, there were really just supposed to stand there and look smart while the British stormed into town, to give the impression that the rebels were a more formidable foe than they really were. The British, however, were probably a bit confused, and decided to surround the rebel company and disarm them (totally ignoring their first job, which was to search the town for supplies).

A British officer ordered the rebels to lay down their weapons and disperse, and the captain of the colonist rebels also ordered his men to go home, but because there was so much confusion and shouting, few people did much of anything. Somewhere, a shot was fired out. No one is quite sure who fired the shot, or if anyone was hurt, but the British panicked and started firing at the rebels, who waited for a moment to start shooting back.

Another British officer arrived moments later, figured out what was going on, and managed to get everyone to stop, but not before a few of the rebels had been killed. The British fired some 'victory shots' into the air, forgot that they were supposed to be searching for supplies, and rode away to Concord, leaving a probably very confused mass of Lexington citizens behind.

Rebuilt Old North Bridge

This mystery shot fired in Lexington is believed by most people to be the 'shot heard 'round the world', but it's actually not. The 'shot heard 'round the world' wasn't fired until the British troops got to Concord, where they remembered what they were supposed to be doing and started pillaging the town - politely. The British soldiers knocked on doors and confiscated any firearms they found, paying for food and drink and even forming a bucket line when one of the gun-burning fires they started accidentally set fire to a local meetinghouse.

A rebel company, which had been waiting on a hill just out of town, saw the smoke from the fire and decided to advance. They came all the way up to the town bridge, called the Old North Bridge, joining up with a few more rebel companies. The British officers saw what was happening and lined their men up to meet them, even though at this point they had less men than the rebels and the rebels had the tactical advantage.

Neither side was ordered to shoot, but a shot rang out from the British line, followed by a couple more hesitant shots from soldiers who were probably tired and confused, and then an entire volley of shots from soldiers thinking they had missed the order to fire. Finally, the rebel companies were ordered to fire back, and what was left of the the British troops fled back towards the town, frightened by the surprisingly powerful rebel army, where the British reinforcements were starting to arrive.

What follows is what would have a tense standoff, with both sides glaring at each other from across the river, if it hadn't been for a man named Elias Brown, the town crazy. Elias came up to the bridge carrying a large barrel of cider and started selling to the soldiers, who I'm sure tried their hardest to maintain the seriousness of the moment.

The rebels by this point had retreated a bit, behind a stone wall, and the British soldiers decided to go back to searching the town, where they had lunch and then left.

The 'short heard 'round the world' actually refers to that first shot fired at the Old North Bridge in Concord by the rebels, but there's a monument for that special shot in Lexington as well. Why the confusion?

By this point, I assume you're already wondering 'Where does the phrase "the shot heard 'round the world" come from?' After some intense research (read: two minutes on Wikipedia), it turns out that the phrase originated from a poem written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1836, called the Concord Hymn. It was written for the dedication of the monument in Concord, and sung to the tune of "Old 100th" (which I recognized as also being the tune to "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow"). The first Stanza of Emerson's poem goes like this:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

Ever since Emerson wrote the poem, the phrase has been used to describe the beginning of the American Revolution, and later the start of the Great War, and a couple major moments in sports that I'm sure a few people still care about.

You may not have guessed it from the way I presented the facts, but the battle in Lexington was much more interesting to talk about than the battle in Concord, despite the fact that what happened in Lexington wasn't really a battle (historians or people who know anything about war will tell you it was really just a minor brush). So, in later years, when people talked about the first battle of the American Revolution, they talked about 'The Battles of Lexington and Concord', even though there was really just one battle on Concord, and a few shots fired in a skirmish in Lexington a few hours earlier.

No matter what people say, though, the only bits of history that remain in public memory are the bits that weren't boring. That's the reason why false statistics and misquotations are believed for so long - because they're interesting. A mystery shot firing out among two groups of tense soldiers is much more interesting than shots exchanged across a river, which is probably how most battles were fought back then. And for some reason, the phrase 'shot heard 'round the world' stuck in people's memories, while the rest of the poem, which put that phrase into context, was forgotten.

Knowing exactly which shot was the 'shot...' probably isn't going to save your life (though if it does, you've encountered some strange kidnappers or stumbled upon a time machine), and the chance that you'll be asked that question of Jeopardy or some other money-winning game show is slim, but it will make you sound super intelligent if you ever happen to visit Lexington or Concord. Arguing with tour guides is a supreme American pastime.

Vacation Time: Results Show

2011-08-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

Monday, August the first, my parents and I set out for our official summer-vacation-get-away thing. The goal, I believe, was to visit my brother in Utah, see a few people in Idaho, and get to know said-brother's future in-laws in Oregon while we scouted out places to eat in Portland for the upcoming wedding. My own personal goals, meanwhile, were to work through some of my 'to-read' backlog, figure out our new car radio, and drive at least one leg of the trip without mom yelling at me (she's a very nervous passenger).

The drive to Utah took about ten hours, and I drove the first three. The road goes straight through the Mojave Desert, which is relatively pleasant to look at but pretty boring to drive through. Add that to the fact that I didn't know where I was going, and I was kinda stressed (I'm not used to using the overdrive button, so there were a few people riding my tail, and mom was finicky throughout), and by the end of my shift my back was sore and I was ready to stop.

Like this, but with no clouds. Ever.

We had dinner Monday night with my brother and his fiance (who, by the way, I adore), which was actually a bit difficult to organize; we got there a bit late, and it seemed like everything closed around 9:00. We stayed there in Provo for two nights (Monday night and Tuesday night), dropping off a box of stuff to my brother and visiting a spot called Thanksgiving Point.

Thanksgiving Point was an interesting stop. It's mostly a family-geared place, with gardens and a petting zoo (which we visited), and much more. They also had an art room, where the Art Institute had a glass blowing shop set up, allowing customers to help shape glass flowers, which mom reluctantly didn't wait in line for. We went into their Museum of Ancient Life, which is apparently one of the world's largest ancient life museums. They had some huge dinosaur skeletons...

If he was closer, he wouldn't reach to the dino's knee.

...Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons...

Which, honestly, didn't look that impressive, compared to the previous bones.

...Ancient Giant Sea Turtles...

Which were scary huge.

...Ancient Giant Bear-Monster skeletons...


For comparison: my fist could fit in it's eye socket.

...ancient people-skeletons trying to kill ancient mammoth-skeletons...

You can't see it here, but the mammoth is crushing one of the people
under it's foot, so they're totally justified.

...and fishies!

Wait, what?

Also exciting what their Notion of Motion exhibit. I didn't get any good pictures, but it was essentially a giant room filled with gadgets and gizmos for people to play with, demonstrating different aspects of physics. There was a circular tank filled with sand that vibrated constantly, showing liquefaction (a subject of great concern to a desert city built on the sand by a fault line); there was a metal pendulum above a movable bed of magnets, causing the bar to swing wildly; and my favorite was probably the round, plastic tub in the center of the room, which invited kids to push down of the top, sending a puff of cloud up through the circular hole. The kids had fun making the cloud appear, but when a well coordinated group formed and pushed on the top from all sides with equal pressure, a cloud ring formed.

It didn't do cloud-ships, however. I am disappoint.

All in all, a pretty cool museum, and worth the visit.

On Wednesday, we drove through Salt Lake on our way to Rexburg, Idaho. Before getting into Idaho, however, there were a few places Mom wanted to visit, one of which was the 'Up' house. A group of builders in the Salt Lake area do a 'parade of homes' thing every year (which I don't totally get), and this year they decided to recreate the house from the movie 'Up'.

Dad and I stayed in the car while Mom went inside and got the pictures. It's a pretty cute house, and you can read more about it on the Parade of Homes website. They really tried their hardest to make it look exactly like the house in the movie, though they added a few modern touches to make it livable, as well (apparently, they're going to sell it when the event's done).

Russell's backpack, still sitting on the front porch.

Carl and Ellie's chairs, custom made.

The Paradise Falls mural, with the character's portraits on the mantle.

Elle's painting in the baby's room.

In Rexburg, we visited with my cousin, who's going to school there with her husband. With them living so far away now, we don't often get a chance to see her, so I liked being able to spend time with her, even if it was only for a couple hours.

On Thursday, we visited a woman that used to babysit for my mom, before I was born. I didn't know her at all, but she was very nice and very fun, and took us out to see Twin Falls on the Snake River. I've seen a few river gorges before (notably the Colombia River Gorge, on our trip to Oregon three years ago), and this one was pretty spectacular.

The golf course in the middle of the gorge.

The bridge we crossed over the Snake River.

The actual 'falls' part. Very misty.

We spent that night in Boise, Idaho, and the next night somewhere between there and Portland. We actually got into Portland on Saturday, and met with my brother's future in-laws (who we'd had dinner with before, so it wasn't totally awkward). They offered to let us stay at their house, which was extremely nice, especially after sleeping in hotels for almost a week.

We went to church with them on Sunday, and in the afternoon I got to practice my piano. I'm still teaching myself certain video game music, and I've even got a list to remind myself of which songs I know how to play and which songs I'm still practicing. I always love trying out different pianos, because they're all voiced and tuned slightly different.

Poster in one of the rooms, which reads "Thanks for letting me have a fish in my room.
And thanks for making something up when you had to flush it down the toilet!"

Anyway, on Monday we started heading down the coast. We visited the Tillamook cheese factory, which might have been interesting if we hadn't already been there before, and got Tillamook icecream (I ordered German Chocolate Cake flavor, only realizing later that it had coconut and pecans. Blegh).

On Tuesday, we made it to Sacremento, where mom wanted to visit the Capitol building. I'd been to Sacremento before, but I don't think I've ever visited our state capitol building, so I was willing to go. It was kind of boring. The building itself was very beautiful, but since there are actual real people trying to get their work done, you can't go in many rooms, and there isn't much to do. Maybe if they stopped letting tours come in, we'd have our budget balanced faster.

Lamps in the hallways. If they weren't old, someone would be
complaining about how state money is being spent.

The Great Seal of the State of California, in the style of a stained glass window.

Winged seahorses. I believe they symbolize 'wicked awesome'.

In the back of the building, there was a hallway with these large shadow-boxes, each one representing the counties in California. Ours was pretty great, and I was surprised to see that there was a lot of representation for the desert, from the Date Palms to the golf courses to a tiny Apatosaurus.

I have to admit, however, that I rarely see the Cabazon dinosaurs,
because whenever we drive by, I'm looking at that creepy farmhouse on the other side of the road.

The pineapples on the staircases, which symbolize 'sense of humor'.

You can't see it clearly, but the statue on the right is of a naked man on a horse fighting a bear.
I believe it's titled 'Hardcore'.

We spent two days in Sacremento, because recently while doing family history research, a brother of mine was contacted by a second cousin (or something) who was also doing genealogy in the area. We met up with him and another aunt of mine and had brunch, which I finished quickly while the adults discussed their similar grandparents or something like that. He was actually pretty cool, which is both surprising and kind of makes sense.

On Thursday we drove down to another aunt's house and spent the night there. I'm not a big dog person, but my cousin's dog is super friendly and I ended up spoiling her with my attention. I also slept.

By Friday morning, I had finished four books: Everything Bad is Good For You (which I intend to review for you), Dragon Age: The Calling, Paper Towns, and The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. If you read my Twin Peaks post, you might remember me saying that I really wanted to find and read that last one, which is a fictitious biography of the main character. I managed to find it at Powell's bookstore, in Portland.

I've been to Powell's once before; it's an amazing bookstore. It's huge. There are something like six rooms, each as large as a shop, all connected by a series of stairs and doorways, and color coded to help you find what you want (for example, the Rose room has novels for kids and teenagers, as well as parenting books and books about gaming, while the Gold room has genre books, such as sci-fi, thriller, horror, romance, etc.) At first, the layout's a bit confusing, but after wondering around for five minutes I had it memorized and was weaving around expertly to find what I was looking for.

I couldn't remember any books that I wanted to buy that Saturday, so I wandered around a bit, picking up Neil Gaiman's Stardust from a bestseller's rack before deciding to pick up a couple John Green books (he's a vlogger I follow, and I've read one of his books before - he's pretty good). I got Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson before remembering about the Twin Peaks book.

If there's one bookstore in the western United States, I thought, that'd still carry a copy of this twenty-year-old book, it'd be Powell's, and I was right; after scouring the media-tie-in shelves of the sci-fi section, consulting a computer catalog, and twice climbing the two staircases up to the Pearl room (rare books, art, drama, and TV/Movies), I finally found it, nestled in between The Twilight Zone and Ugly Betty.

I was excited to find it, and by Friday morning, as I was saying, I'd read it, as well as one of the other books I got at Powell's and two of the books I'd brought from home.That translates into quite a successful trip, I say.

We finally got home Friday night. While we were away, we'd had a majority of the carpet in the house removed and replaced with tile, which makes the hallway now much more echo-y than before. My cat was also very happy to see us. While it's true that some cats can survive completely on their own, not caring if their human owners are there, my cat is very attached to us (me especially). Left alone for even a single day, she'll wander around the house, meowing loudly and dragging her small stuffed animal toys around.

When we came home, after leaving her alone for a week and a half, she couldn't stop purring, and even now continues to follow me around the house, begging to be picked up or pet or fed (yeah).

This is an old picture, but she looks the same.

I like getting out of the house, but I much prefer coming back home. I like having my own room, and knowing where everything is, and not feeling like I'm intruding. I like having my cat sleep at my feet every night, and being able to get up and do something else if I'm bored with what's going on. I like being at my own house, even more than being at friends' houses or shopping or anything else; I'm kind of a recluse like that. I also felt like, besides reading and seeing people, I really got nothing done during this trip, and despite what my mother may think, I like getting things done.

I'll be back to blogging regularly this week, since I've had two weeks to add to my blog-idea notebook. I've got a couple reviews for you, and a few more things in the coming weeks that I hope you'll find interesting. I hope you all had a nice two weeks while I was gone, and I hope you're having fun this summer as well!

Vacation Time

2011-07-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

This is a short update to you guys know that I'll be out of town for the next two weeks with sporadic internet access and probably minimal time to write. I'm hoping to be able to post at least one blog each week, and there are a couple of things I want to talk about (including a review on Cowboys and Aliens and a book I've been reading), but I can't make any promises. I'd suggest subscribing to my RSS feed or, if you have a Google or Blogger account, 'following' my blog to see when I update with new posts.

I hope you are all having a wonderful summer, and I'll be back to regular thrice-a-week updates when I get back!