Quick update Wednesday, Nov 21 2007

I need to …

put up/send out pictures from our Halloween party — a Victorian themed Masquerade Ball — which was just plain awesome. Best estimate is that around a hundred people in fantastic costumes showed up for a good time (some reluctantly leaving around 4:30 in the morning)

put up pictures from Stephen & Stacey’s drinking container party as well as pictures & design sketches of my Deux Ex Machina drinking container that as many have assured me, should have won for most creative. Despite its awesomeness — such awesomeness it would make Chuck Norris nod in approval — it didn’t win for a number of reasons that can be best summed up as: people didn’t get what it did. I’ll explain when/if I ever get around to putting up the pics. That was also a great party and I’m already looking forward to next year.

process all the pictures from my last photo shoot with Carrie, a new acquaintance I’ve made, who has been willing to spend time modeling for me.

come up with more ideas for photo shoots

get packed for our annual Thanksgiving climbing trip

go through a few thousand images, and judge them for the everyman photo contest. two sections down 4 more to go.

On a completely different note, since my last real update I have …

celebrated mine and Laura’s one year anniversary (night of our Halloween party)

completed all possible 200 miles of the two-day MS150 bike tour and raised a little over a thousand dollars, thereby accomplishing both of my goals. next years goal: ride 300 miles in three days by riding the hundred miles from St. Charles to Columbia, then follow up with the 200 miles at the MS bike tour.

read the entire Harry Potter series and thought they were all great.

read Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. I enjoyed that one as well though I felt he fumbled it a bit at the very end. The first book, The Golden Compass, should hit the big screen sometime in December 2007.

read almost all books, all the ones I cared to read, by Neil Gaiman (American Gods a while back, then Good Omens, Stardust, Neverwhere, Anansi Boys)

seen the Stardust movie earlier this year as well. Didn’t live up to the book, of course, but was throughly enjoyable.

seen the live action Transformers movie and nearly peed on myself out of sheer joy.

been to a Renaissance Festival (in Kansas City) which was an awesome experience

entered two mountain bike races and won neither of them.

broken my wrist during a dirt-jump crash landing about eight weeks before the aforementioned MS bike tour. spent six weeks in a brace.

done the moonlight ramble.

traveled to Puerto Rico and made friends with some locals

discovered some cool new bands/artists like Beirut, the Decemberists, the Pipettes, Grizzly Bear, Amy Milan, Andew Bird, etc.

I’m sure there is a thing or two I forgot, but as it is 12:30am, I am out.

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Speaker for the Dead Friday, Sep 29 2006

This blog title should actually say: What I just read (after waiting 6 months to get the book)

It’s true. I went to my local library some time ago to get the sequel to my beloved Ender’s Game novel, only to find out I’m 12th in the queue. Somehow 12 people took well over 6 months to read a 270-some page novel. I got the book on Monday and was finished with it by Thursday and that’s with class from 9 am till 9:30 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays and work in between.

WTF, people? If you want to hang onto the book for weeks at a time then go buy a copy. Seriously, they should have literacy exams before you’re allowed to get books from the library. If you have to sound out the big words you’re card is gone like that. Zap! I’m all for pushing literacy in this country, because God knows it’s bad enough — I think we rank somewhere between Kazakhstan and Bangladesh, but I don’t have any sources to back that up so don’t quote me — but who ever has reading and/or comprehension issues should be reading whatever books fix reading and/or comprehension issues, not Ender’s Game sequels.

The way I see it, these cats read Ender’s Game, right, and they loved it. Genius children in a military school training in zero gravity and always trying to stay a step ahead of each other. Andrew Wiggin who calls himself Ender, of course, emerges as the guy who simply walks ahead of everyone without even trying. What’s not to love there, right?

If you don’t want any spoilers about Ender’s game, as obvious as they may be, continue by reading the next paragraph. Well after the formics are destroyed (oops, spoiler warning) Ender has a nervous breakdown because was makes him so great is his ability to empathize with other people and as it turns out other beings. Another one of Ender’s life philosophies — You must love your enemy to understand them, and beat them — surely plays a role in his breakdown after he discovers that he is responsible for wiping out an entire species.

Ender’s Game was quite action packed and from what I hear they are making it into a movie due out in 2008 sometime. Speaker for the Dead, however, is not nearly as action-packed and is a lot more … philosophical.

Speaker for the Dead is mainly about Ender’s redemption (to me anyway). Since the ending of the first book I could almost feel how guilt stricken Ender was, and a promise needed to be upheld. SFTD occurs many thousand years after the original novel, for Ender and his sister Valentine have been traveling from planet to planet at relativistic speeds (and not getting much older). Ender is a “Speaker for the Dead” which is now an official title as his first books The Hive Queen and the Hegemon — the first telling explains the conflict between humans and formics and the second tells the story of his brother Peter, Hegemon of the Earth — have spawned an entire religion and many speakers who travel and tell the life of the deceased in a very different manner. I’ll let you read the book to figure out what I mean. Ender’s name now used as a curse word, it has far surpassed the infamy of Hitler and Stalin and is almost synonymous with Xenocide which refers to genocide of an alien species. No one knows that Speaker Andrew Wiggin is actually the original speaker for the dead as well as Ender the Xenocide, since that would make him some 3000 years old.

I really don’t know where I was going with this other than to illustrate the burden that’s not just hanging above Ender each day, but is being constantly flung in his face.

So you can see there is a lot more depth to this story as well as the one involving the “piggies” which are another intelligent life form living on a far away planet. So my thought here is, all these cats liked the first book with its action packed chapters, but they struggled to finish the much more important second book because there really weren’t any explosions – only mysteries and questions and Ender’s quest for redemption.

Well next time you want to challenge yourself, please don’t do so at my expense. I suppose I could have just bought the book but that is not really the point now, is it ?

Anyway, the book was awesome and I went to get Xenocide (part III) and they don’t have it at all in the library system. I hope they can order it from somewhere.

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Ender’s Shadow Saturday, Mar 4 2006

What can I say? I got this book on Tuesday and was done by Wednesday night, despite school, homework and my job. The book is friggin’ awesome. I would like to go on and tell you more but I don’t want to ruin any little bit of it, so just go and get it yourself. Unlike the tile may suggest, Ender’s Shadow isn’t a sequel to Ender’s Game, the original book that started it all. Ender’s Shadow happens in the same time and place as Ender’s Game, except this time we see the events through Bean so it is more like a parallel story than a sequel. There are several sequels and they are broken down into two parts. The “Ender” saga, which are the books that came directly after Ender’s Game, and follow up on the events there are Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, and First Meetings (a collection of short stories). Since my budget for books has recently been annihilated by the Purchase of a very sweet and shiny new Canon 350D digital camera, I have been forced to get my books from the library, where (I actually laughed out loud when the librarian told me this) I am 14th on the waiting list for Speaker for the Dead.

As I said though, there are two parts to this series. The “Bean” saga follows up on the events that come after Ender’s Shadow and while they involve share some of the same characters from the other books, I assume they all follow their own course rather than focusing on the same events. That is all speculation though since I have not gotten my hands on it yet. The books in the Bean saga are, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets and Shadow of the Giant. I should be getting Shadow of the Hegemon pretty soon, since that book was available at another branch and, as always, I will keep you posted.

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Ender’s Game Friday, Jan 20 2006

I went and got this book a few days ago at the recommendation of a friend and before I knew it I was hooked. I seriously couldn’t put the book down. Today at work, I put down my lunch and used my entire lunch break to read instead … minus the interruptions.

I’d like to go off on a tangent here for a moment, if I may. Why do people never have any problem disturbing someone who is reading a book? I mean if you’re at a movie people don’t come up to you and start talking to you, but people constantly come up to me and try to strike up conversation while I’m reading — which of course forces me to look up from my book and be polite — as if reading a book was not a worthwhile activity. Please don’t do that.

As I was saying about the book, it’s absolutely amazing. It is a sci-fi book and it may not be your cup of tea but it brought out so many emotions in me. Perhaps it touched me because I was a mere 11 years old when I had to deal with a war . I really don’t know. I’ve never had the luxury of looking at life through the eyes of someone who hasn’t lived through a war so perhaps I just think everything relates to it some way.

I don’t want to give too much away but the book digs deep into human psyche, manipulation and control, but most of all it’s about what happens when there is a lack of communication.

If you like books, go get this one. You won’t be disappointed.

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