Sept. 5th, Ugh - Poetry

First off, I don't mean to offend anybody with this post.
That said, I hate poetry. Hate it, hate it, hate it.
I DO enjoy Dr. Seuss and funny poems like the kind by Lewis Carroll and the like, but basically everything else is torture for me.
When I say that I hate poetry, I don't mean that I hate poems, necessarily, but I hate that they can be SOOO pretentious. I had a poetry unit in some of my lit classes in college, and some of my assignments were supposed to be done as a poem.
I did like the poetry units in school because they were really easy to do: the homework wasn't 200 pages of [insert literary tome here], the homework was 3 - 5 pages of poems that were usually not more than 30 lines long.
One of my assignments was to write about some life experience as a poem (this is in college, remember). I had no idea what I was doing, so I literally typed up my experience like a regular paragraph, then hit the Enter key every few words to make it look like a poem. Here's an example:

I go to work almost every day,
And normally, I enjoy it.
But as soon as a customer gets an attitude
With me or is rude to one of my co-workers,
I get super pissed. I'm pretty good
At holding my tongue,
But one of these times,
I
Just
Might
Snap.

Isn't it great?! With the Enter key, anyone can be a poet!
I just have a hard time feeling moved or touched from poetry - I think that prose can be far more effective and touching than what lots of poetry aims for.
I like poems that rhyme, which is apparently the lowest kind of low when it comes to poetry. I googled "best poetry" and found a site that had the ten best poems, and only one, by Sylvia Plath, had any sort of rhyme at all. Why is rhyming so terrible? Why is having a beat that is recognizable such a shame? I guess I like stuff that could sound like music, or be set to music, where the end of the line has a pause.

So, all of this leads me to a poem that I love, only because it is so viciously hated by basically everyone. It has literally been voted as the worst poem in the English language. I present to you an excerpt from "A Trajedy" by Theophile Marzials:

Death! 
Plop. 
The barges down in the river flop. 
Flop, plop, 
Above, beneath. 
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop… 
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop… 
And my head shrieks - “Stop”
And my heart shrieks - “Die.”…

I once read this aloud to a friend and we were both laughing so hard I could hardly finish my oration. All the flopping and plopping makes me think of a slimy black nearly-dead creature crawling towards me in hunched heaves and stuff. It's beautiful.

If you internet people are aghast at my snobbery/low-brow-ness when it comes to poetry, feel free to comment below if you think there's a poem I might like. I'll try my best not to hate it, but I'm not making any promises. Bring it on!

Sept 4th, What I'm Reading

I've loved reading my whole life. I was an English Lit major, and if that didn't totally burn me out for good, I think I'm set. I'm not that fast of a reader, and my interests are a bit all over, but I still usually have a couple books that I'm trying to get through at a time. Here's my current reading list:

"Sabriel" by Garth Nix
I'm only into chapter 3 at this point, and so far it's pretty interesting. There is a lot of terminology that is unique to this book, so getting things straight is sometimes a chore. It has pretty good reviews on GoodReads and Amazon, so I finally decided to see for myself. It has to do with a girl named Sabriel who has learned from her father certain kinds of magic - specifically to keep the dead, well, dead. She can go into "Death" where there are several different gates along a river, all of which is quite interesting to read. It makes me think of the alternate plane that wearers of the One Ring from LotR go when they have the ring on. I don't even know where this story is headed, but I can't help but think of how I would translate the scenes into film. There's also a map that helps enormously:

Fictional maps are so cool!

So far, Sabriel is only at the Perimiter Wall, heading into the Old Kingdom.
I'm liking the story so far, but it is a little confusing. Also, I can't be sure of the time period. There are colleges, cabs, phones...So it seems modern enough, but it doesn't have the "urban fantasy" vibe at all.
We'll see where this book goes...

"Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo
I say that this is still on my reading list, but in reality it's also sitting back on the bookshelf. I really like what I've read so far, and I haven't abandoned it, it's more like on hiatus... I'm reading the unabridged version, and I'm underlining the parts I like with a red pencil, and there are literally marks on every page so far. There's a lot of profound insights into human emotion and character and thought. I WILL finish this book someday!

"The Return of the King" by JRR Tolkien
I am actually listening to this one on audio. I've never read it before, but I've seen the movie so many times. I'm actually glad I saw the movies first - while the writing is nice and I actually LOVE the history sections, I feel like there's not much tension while reading or listening to the books in the Lord of the Rings. Great and Epic battles are in a single chapter and, to me, not that epic feeling. I'm glad that the films made the battles and wars huge and exciting, it really helps me to enjoy the books more. I especially love how vivid the descriptions of places are. Minas Tirith from the movie looks just like it's described in the book, and it's wonderful! I'm about a quarter of the way through this title.


I've also finished a few things lately, and here they are:

"The Shunned House" by HP Lovecraft
This is/was the very first thing I ever read by Lovecraft, an early 20th century horror author. I bought the complete works a few months back, but I wanted something to read on my kindle that was free, and The Shunned House was at the top of the list.
Anyway, I took my sweet time reading this short story (it's like 50 pages in print) and I really liked it. The atmosphere is so rich and the writing is beautiful. I guess I've read too much modern horror ('modern' being the Fear Street's from the 90's...bad example), but Lovecraft's style makes me think of the great classics, not horror at all.
The very end of the story was a little bit of a let down, but the ride was great. I could just picture everything he described, from the street outside the house, to the fungus growing by the hearth....I'll definitely check out more of his works.

"Will Grayson, Will Grayson" by John Green and David Levithan
This book was described to me by a friend back in college, and last week I finally got around to reading it. I was not able to sleep one night, so I began reading it on my kindle. I read half of it in just one sitting, which is impressive for me. It's about two high school guys in different towns who don't know each other at all, but they share the same name. The two meet by coincidence and the rest of the school year is heavily affected by their meet-up. At least, that's what reviews say. I didn't think it was that amazing of a book. The first 6 chapters or so are quite easy and get pretty interesting, but after the two guys meet, a different friend named Tiny becomes the focus of the book, as told by the two Wills.
There was some interesting characters and tons of really horrible language and teenage romance, and by the end of the book I just thought "meh." I felt like it had a very similar vibe as "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," which will be a dream come true for some people, but I wasn't too amazed by the end of either book.

"Shadyside Snark" by AM and LK Stine (Code names for sure)
Okay, so this one is not much of a book, but rather an entire blog.
I discovered this blog about a year ago when I got some old Fear Street books and wanted to read a review of them. What I found was this awesome blog that made me laugh and snort and giggle with every post.
The authors of the blog are sisters who went through and blogged a recap of EVERY R.L. Stine book up to about a year ago. They love/hate his books and their reviews and recaps were SO hilarious.
Shadyside is the town in which all the Fear Street books take place, and reading the hundreds of recaps made me question my tastes from when I was in middle school: the plots are so contrived and the characters are shallow and abusive relationships are every girl's dream, etc...
Anyway, I spent an hour or so one day copy/pasting every post and its comments into a Word doc and later I sent it to my kindle. It was a joy to read, even more than reading the books they recapped.
Reading all the recaps and the tropes that happen in all the books and about the shallow but endearingly dumb characters inspires me somewhat - I want to write a musical based on the Fear Street books. It would be a total comedy with elements from many of the different books and would be a hoot for a very specific group of people :)

Well, that's my "reading and recently read" book list. If you've read any of those titles, I'd love to hear what you think of them.
See you tomorrow!

Sept. 3rd, Tron: Uprising

I'll admit up front that I LOVE sci-fi movies. I'll see a movie solely because it's in the genre.
That said, sci-fi on TV usually isn't my thing, usually because it [often] looks cheap.
Now that you know those things, you can imagine my giddiness when Tron: Legacy came to theaters. I saw that movie I think 3 times, and even in 3D, which I'm not that crazy for.
Blah, blah, blah, I'm getting sappy.
Anyway, I bought the DVD/Blu-Ray when it released, and on it there was a pretty cool promo for a new show that was "coming  soon" called "Tron: Uprising," and even though it would be a TV show, it looked so cool. Here's the teaser that was released a LONG time before the show actually aired:

The animation was even slicker in the actual show (with some facial improvements), but when I first saw that teaser trailer I was so excited for the show. Eye candy is a big selling point for me!

Fast forward a year, and the show is finally being released. I was in Korea at the time, so I watched the show on the internet and was completely wowed and won over by it. It really is stunning. I watched it whenever I could find the new episode until about the 7th or 8th, but then there was a mid-season hiatus and I didn't watch it for another year.

The show only went for 19 episodes, which was cool that they were able to plan the pacing and arcs and such, but also sad that there would only be that many episodes.
Tron: Uprising apparently didn't do as well as they'd hoped (but Disney DID put it on super late on a school night on their paid channel DisneyXD, so I can only point at them) and the show wasn't (or hasn't yet been) picked up for more episodes. Sad, I know!
Amazon instant video and Netflix both have the entire show listed, so I finally caught up and finished all the episodes recently, and holy cow, that show was amazing! The animation and action was flawless, the music was perfect....I'm so sad there will be no more Tron: Uprising. There are petitions and stuff around the internet to bring it back, but I don't think a petition has ever brought a "kids show" back.

So, if you love a good show that has good conflict and themes of friendship and serious sacrifice, give Tron: Uprising a chance - you might just fall in love with it!

Here's an official music video featuring scenes from the last couple of episodes, all set to a pretty cool tune. Maybe this will win you over:

And finally (they should be paying me for all this promotion), the entire first episode is available on YouTube for free from Disney. Since there are already two videos here, I'll just provide the link and you can watch it there. I *really* hope you like it!
Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjbwVzJR8w4

Sept. 2nd, Labor Day!

Okay, so I planned ahead with the post for yesterday since I knew I'd be out of town/away from internet on Sunday, so I used the schedule thing on Blogger to post my post for me, but I found out today that it didn't work! I still count it as on-time, because I was done with it a full day ahead of schedule. Moving along....

Today is Labor Day, here in the USA, and since I work for the city, I get the day off! Because of this, I spent the weekend at my happy little cabin on the mountain where I was blissfully lazy and enjoyed myself immensely. My parents were already there, and the beautiful rain storms kept us mostly indoors, so we watched movies (including a ton of MacGyver episodes - a cabin staple) and I played Nintendo and read and caught up on some TV shows I had saved on my iPod. What a perfect weekend!

Anyone who's ever read anything on this blog knows that I'm a life-long Nintendo fan, especially the Zelda franchise. Even though I really love Zelda 64, I never could get into the sequel, Majora's Mask. I think there are 2 distinct reasons. The first reason is that the "prologue" takes a player, like, at least an hour to figure out (all the while paranoid they're gonna run out of time and everyone in the game will literally die) and must be played in one sitting because - reason number two - saving in the game is a bee-otch. I'd started Majora's Mask probably three times on the 64 and after the prologue and figuring out the time travel and wanting to save but not quit yet etc. etc... I was burned out before I ever even got to the first level (or temple/dungeon).
ANYWAY, at my cabin, I decided to play the emulated version of Majora's Mask on my computer, and I actually really enjoyed it! I got all the way through the first level and killed the boss, and invested a few real-world hours into the game. Then. It. Crashed. I tried to save with the program's save states, but no luck. I had to close the program and open it back up to see the damage. The damage was this: nothing was saved. Literally, it was as if the last few hours hadn't happened. I remained calm since my parents would have made fun of me for caring about a video game that much, but I felt like this:

This is a way freaky mask seller in the game when he's upset.

So, instead of ever trying the emulator to play the game again, I dug out the old N64 and the shiny gold cartridge and the best controller we have left (it's grimy and has a masking/duct tape combo holding the cord together, and the joystick is limp and sad) and brought it to my apartment to finally play the way it was meant to be played. Wish me luck! The moon is gonna kill everyone in 3 days if I don't succeed.

Coming up soon, TV show reviews and opinions, what I'm reading, and how I feel about poetry. See you tomorrow!

Sept. 1st, My Roomie's Birthday!

Ok, So here I go, kicking off another month-of-blogging thing. I've started making a list of the stuff I'll write about, and so far I have only one thing besides today.
Today is Sunday the first, and since I was a wee lad, I knew that if the first of the month fell on a Sunday, then I could look forward to a Friday the 13th. I was a strange child.

Play this video as you read the rest of this post. It will set *quite* the mood.

Well, today is my roommate's birthday, and even though he was one of the very first people I met when my family moved to our current town 11 years ago, I struggled to think of an appropriate gift.
I'm one who tries really hard to be thoughtful and fun when it comes to gift-giving (hopefully the recipients agree), but I finally came up with something. A little background:
10 year ago, in a small suburb of a small city, I was sort of new to town and my friend circle was also small. My family had a Nintendo GameCube and few games. The games that we had were largely due to the games we'd played and liked at our friend's houses. Anyway, my one friend, who is now my roommate, introduced me to a little gem called "Animal Crossing." It was a fun game with happy creatures and no real end goal. Sounds childish and boring? IT WASN'T. My brothers and I spent way too many hours over the course of several years playing that game and paying off debts to a greedy raccoon and furnishing our little houses and digging up fossils and shaking trees and running away from bees. Lots of fun.
Forward to the present, I decided a couple weeks ago that I'd make my friend a little gift-bag of Animal Crossing stuff in happy memory of the world he introduced me too. Lame? Useless? Potentially awkward? Yes, yes, and yes. But also: NOSTALGIA! I'll put up a picture of my little creation (and hopefully someone in the internet world will see it and post it to spritestitch.com and lead me to gamer-crafting glory)...

I hand-made it all! I used felt for the Fossil, Pitfall Seed, Bell (coin), and the Leaf. I crocheted the Bells Bag. Everything fits inside the bag too! I also made a letter (that I forgot to get a picture of) that looks like this:

Except it's made of paper and actually letter-sized.

I hope the gift if well-received, but regardless, I had fun making it. I wonder if I put too much effort into this kind of stuff....

Okay, Here I shall conclude the first post of 30. If you have an idea for a future post, comment below! I read every one!

Not Very Exciting News

To keep myself busy and to keep this blog from slowly dying of neglect, I've decided to once again do a "blog everyday of the month" thing, starting this Sunday the 1st. Until then, I'll try to make a [mental] list of things to blog about, but also, dear reader, take this chance to comment on possible topics for me to wow you with. My knowledge is vast and my imagination is psycho and I can make up very interesting facts if necessary. The posts may be dull, they may be repetitious, blah blah blah, but I'm doing this for funsies and for myself, I guess, and you can be a passenger along the way.
Also, my 100th post will be coming up shortly, so that should be epic, I'm sure.
Here's a video I found on YouTube. I'm not saying I love it or hate it, I'm just saying I found it on YouTube. Enjoy it if you want.

See you Sunday.

Nothing in Particular - and a Piano Piece!

Ugh, I need to write a decent post... I've had a really great (if expensive) summer, along with a few unhappy surprises, but where do I begin? I'll have to just write a few posts about the different things that happened.

So anyway, the here and now...
Summer's basically over since school has started. I'm not even in school anymore and I still feel that way.
The past week we've had plentiful rain and temperatures in the 60s even (!), so it felt like autumn had come early. I LOVE autumn so much, I was really enjoying the weather. I wore a long sleeved knit shirt, and it was so comfy.

I wrote a little ditty a few months ago, and yesterday I finally put it to pictures and posted it on YouTube. It's super short, but here you go! What do you think?

I don't know who reads my little blog, or how many, but feel free to leave comments regarding stuff I can blog about -it will help me to keep up with writing! 'Til next time.....