Thursday, February 28, 2013

Reviewing, Please Wait

 


     Ello. I haven't done book reviews on here before but I do work at a library. So it seems reasonable and suitable and uncharacteristically in character. I like saying things like that just so I can use the word "Oxymoron" which I like to say very much. Though come to think of it, it kind of sounds like an oxygen breathing stupid person. Or stupid oxygen? Because all stupid people breathe oxygen, and smart people do too.
Upon further investigation I discovered that "oxymoron" literally means "sharp-dull" and is derived from Greek. A similar Greek derived term, "sophomore" literally means "wise-fool". I'm not sure how to take that. Is that offensive? Complementary? Someone tell me how I should feel because I'm going to be overrun in confusion presently.

Well that sure stayed on topic.

Okay so I recently read the book Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi. Companion to Ship Breaker by the same unpronounceable author.

I'm a failure to summarize books. So I'll leave it to the professionals and I'll give you the summary off the book itself.

"In a dark future America where violence, terror and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man, a bioengineered war beast named Tool, who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses. One is taken prisoner by merciless soldier boys, and the other is faced with an impossible decision: Risk everything to save a friend, or flee to a place where freedom might finally be possible."

I thought this was a pretty darn good book. For older teens. The violence was pretty intense at times and the cussing was pretty heavy too. I didn't feel like it was really gratuitous though. It made sense in context, but surely it could have been toned down a bit. Especially since Ship Breaker was so much milder, it was unexpected.

Drowned Cities is definitely not a light read. The story was depressing and pretty much stayed that way. However, I was impressed with how it surprised me with the plot twists a couple of times. Partially because I misread the summary before I read it the book, haha. Other things surprised me too though.

This book raises a lot of moral questions. With bio-engineered creatures that have some human DNA, sometimes seem entirely human, and with humans who are callous and act more like animals than humans after years of war, you have to wonder what defines being "human". Where is the line between humanity and animal? Interesting.

Some of the characters were surprisingly deep and the world, I thought was very detailed and well built. I found it very believable and I really was sucked into the story.

However, I personally preferred Bacigalupi's first YA book, Ship Breaker. It was still dark and realistic without making me feel like all humanity is doomed and it had less profanity. So yes, read that book. It was amazing.

Duh duh duh. Look, I actually stayed kind of focused for like four paragraphs in a row. I think that's a record for me.

Goodbye :)

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

This Is No Banana

    

Oh, what a to do to die today at a minute or two to two,
A thing distinctly hard to say and harder still to do,
We'll beat a tattoo at twenty to two,
With a ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-too,
And the dragon will come when he hears the drum,
At a minute or two to two today,
At a minute or two to two.

That's always been my favorite tongue twister. I love how in so few lines it builds such great suspense, I love the rhythm and the way it just feel so awesome to say, and it has a dragon which makes anything better, obviously.
Now I'm picturing an ice cream cone with a dragon on top. So maybe they make everything better -except- ice cream. Yahhh. There always has to be an exception. I think that's in the constitution somewhere. Or maybe Einstein's rules of physics, or the laws of thermodynamics. It's somewhere in something important. 
Like this blog. It's on this blog. That's an extremely prestigious place.

So I was skipping around town today looking for a yellow umbrella, I heard that we're supposed to get freezing rain within the next couple days and thought it'd be totally sweet if I could go out in the freezing rain with my umbrella, and the rain would freeze on the umbrella and I'd have an ice-brella! However, I could not find a yellow umbrella of the appropriate strength.

Then someone asked me if the mum eating toes were cute and I completely forgot what I was thinking. Oh well. So now I must leave you.
Goodbye. Oh, and by the way. Lollipops.

.

Today someone was telling me about how caffeine has a calming affect on ADHD people. 
Too much caffeine puts me to sleep. Hah. Hahaha. Ha. Squirrel.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Darker, darker. Darker?


     They're always talking about it, aren't they? How our society is descending into darkness. How it's just getting worse, how we live in horrible times. Poor us, living in these times. Haha. Haha. Ha. Ha.
     I guess yah, we do live in hard times, but I feel like everyone has. It's just a messed up world and maybe we just need to get over that and deal with it. Sure, let's try to make the world a better place, that's great, but we're really just doing damage control, the world is never going to be good, no matter how much you and I work to make it good.
     I remember learning something in chemistry about how disorder only increases, never decreases as a whole. I feel like the bad in the world is like that.
     However, before you write me off as some depressed pessimist. I do believe there is still good in this world (hallelujah!).
     I just wish people would stop complaining about the bad stuff so much and take time to appreciate the good while we still have it. Everyone has their own problems but not everyone has, say.. the amazing mom you have, or adorable puppy, the beautiful wildflowers that grow in your yard, or that crazy musical talent you're blessed with.
     Deal with the bad things that happen, you don't need to ignore them, but don't let them take over your life. Please. For my sake and your own.
     Admit it, we all hate whiny facebook statuses. ;P
 
     On another note. ARTISTIC UPDATE, OH MY GOODNESS. I recently submitted a couple pieces to the governor's art exhibition or whatever they call that. I don't expect to win or anything, I just picked out a couple pieces I'd already done and submitted them very last minute. Next year I WILL remember to actually make something for that show. Maybe.
     I've been working on the robotics website a lot, it's coming along well, check it out here.
     I've also been doing a lot of photography. The photo at the top is one of mine. Black food coloring dropped into a glass of water. Fun stuff. I also did a photo for the theme "natural beauty". It's a picture of a friend of mine with her hair sculpted (by me) into a tree shape. That was fun and required a ton of hairspray. :P I'd post it on here but I'm not sure if she would feel comfortable with a portrait of her being available to the public on here, haha. Or well, you'll just have to use your imagination ;P
     I think I mentioned trying out for my school's forum show, unfortunately we didn't make it in. We had some guitar malfunctions, so I don't think it was our fault we didn't get in ;P I'm thinking of buying some recording equipment and recording it, not sure yet, that stuff is pricy and I'm clueless soooo... yah. But if I do, I'll upload the recording to youtube or something so you can hear it.
     The viking jewelry craft I did at the library went really well, had nine people show up and they all did very well and seemed satisfied with their creations before when they left, so that was good :)



     I originally didn't include this in this post, but am adding it for a couple reasons. A: it's one of my favorite songs. B: it kind of goes with the post. C: I really like adding songs to posts. ;P
     This song makes me think of the sense of entitlement we all tend to have. "They said we'd live forvever" seems like a cry of "You promised!" to me. And maybe we don't all expect to (literally on earth) live forever. But we feel entitled to things. A lot of things. When really we deserve a big fat nada. Worse than that, we deserve punishment for being sick sinful creatures.
     We've sure got off easy, huh? Just a little simple faith and we really do get to live forever. And here we are complaining about the hard times we live in. Hmph. Shoot that sense of entitlement in the heart and let it die.  Give up everything and serve other people, serve them because it's what God wants and He sure deserves whatever He wants out of you.

Be glad when your sun comes up tomorrow and make the most of what you're given. Because building those airplanes isn't going to save you.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Since Bold Sophia Has Crossed the Sea



"Fear is a sign of humanity. Only fools are not afraid."

That's a quote from somewhere, and, so atypical of me, obviously, I don't remember where its from. But I thought it was cool.
Heh. It's true too. I mean, what kind of person falls off a cliff by accident? Not the one that's too scared to get within ten feet of the edge. It's the brave fellow who wants to show off how cool and daring he is to his friends or to himself, or maybe he's just foolish. Or she. Not necessarily just guys who are stupid. Well actually... HAHAHAHAHA.. Ignore me. Well. But don't really ignore me. Just ignore anything stupid I say. Pay attention to all my good aspects, of which I have many, like my humbleness.

But yah, maybe fear isn't always such a bad thing. It's always looked on as a negative thing, but even though it's not fun to feel afraid, it sometimes prevents things happening that are worse than that feeling of fear.

Lord Bateman wouldn't have been captured and put in prison and he wouldn't have nearly died if he had some fear and stayed home. But he was brave and went sailing around for the heck of it. If it weren't for a disobedient daughter, he'd have been a goner. What a beautiful rhyme I made this time.

On the flip-side.  Living in fear is a sucky life too. Especially when we've got all those promises from God that He'll take care of us. And besides, what happens to our earthly bodies doesn't matter, we'll be whole in heaven, man can't take away the most important part of us.

OH THE DEEP PHILOSOPHICALNESS. Is that a word? My spellcheck says no, but my spellcheck also says spellcheck isn't a word. Do you deny your own self, spellcheck??!!

Anyways, if Sophia was too afraid, she'd never have crossed the sea and gotten to marry her Lord Bateman, and there wouldn't have been such a pretty song written about them.
Of course, come to think of it, she might have sailed away across the sea because of fear of her father who was probably pretty darn mad at her.
Now, some general updates. I HAVE NEGLECTED YOU, MY DEAR BELOVED PROBABLY NO ONE, BUT HOPEFULLY NOT NO ONE, BUT A WONDERFUL PERSON WHO READS MY BLOG!!!

I use caps lock too much. Actually I just hold down shift and don't literally use caps lock. I believe in complete honestly, if you haven't noticed. But I use capital letters very much, which is ironic because it tics me off when other people use capitol letters too much.

I meant to spell tic that way. Because I like the onomatopoeic word relating to clocks far better than blood-sucking Ixodes scapularis. Random fact, I have a huge fear of ticks. If I think I might have one on my head, I am likely to pull all my hair out and scratch my scalp off. That is really disgusting. MOVING ON.

Okay, I was supposed to be giving you some general updates. Okay. So yes, I haven't posted much lately. I'm prepping for forum show at my school, in which I'll hopefully be performing a song by Dou Wei, called Shangdi Baoyou, or God Bless. I'll put the music video in this post somewhere.

I've also been busy doing stuff with the Red Plague robotics team. Hopefully redesigning their website. I'd link it but it isn't very impressive YET. But it will be. I'm working on it. Kind of. And I've been working on their open house prep and such as well.

I'm taking a photography class right now so I haven't done much of my typical art. But I'm finally learning to use photoshop. Which is good and bad because now I really want it and it's so expensive.

At the library, I've scheduled a craft club day. Made some samples and bought the materials. We're doing this really awesome viking knit jewellery thing with norse rune charms to go with the mythology theme we have right now. I'll get a pic on here... maybe... yes... alrighty. So I think they're cool, and not really bragging about myself here, because viking knit is an ancient technique (check this blog out for some of the history of it) which I never would have thought of myself. It looks pretty high end, but it's easy and cheap to make. Which is ridiculous. And awesome.

So yah. Thinking I might add some extra pages on my blog here to put some photography, maybe a poetry page, might even start posting some of my book I'm writing . . . anyone interested in seeing any of that stuff? Lemme know. If you'd like to have some of YOUR stuff on here... maybe I could do a gallery of stuff by readers.. that might be pretty sweet :) Anyways, just brainstorming right now. 

Thanks for reading, Imma heading to bed. Night!