Merlin Drinking Game

               You know that feeling you get when you have the BEST idea for a new product or game or story or something, except you have no idea what to do with it, so it goes to waste, rotting inside your head until you forget about it? Nerdfighters call that brain crack. Really it's an idea of zefrank's, but I will be taking Hank Green's approach and dumping my brain crack out into the world today (instead of actually carrying out those ideas...because I'm lazy.)

               First off, my family- and I mean my entire family, like aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents- are usually pretty invested in the Academy Awards every year. We all watch the show, we have our own contest to see who can watch every movie up for Best Film first, and, most importantly, we all compete in an Oscar nominee pool.
               We're usually pretty good with the guessing, too, since we try and see everything up for nomination. But every year, everyone hits a stumble.
               What's that stumble?
               THE FREAKING SHORTS.
               The animated shorts, the foreign shorts, all of those ten minute movies that are so cool that they win an Oscar. I think it's great that independent short films can get that highly recognized. Only problem?
               Does anyone actually watch them?
               If you're in my family, then no, you don't. In fact, I've prided myself this year on the fact that I have seen at least one of the shorts up for nomination, and that's only because Marcel the Shell is freaking adorable.
               My brain crack idea? Put together all of the nominees on one DVD package, and then sell it before the award show airs. I would buy that in an instant.

               Secondly, I don't know if anyone reading this likes the show Merlin, on BBC America, (heck, I don't think that anyone is reading this,) but I do. And lately one of the main female characters has decided that she's evil. Because of this, after she does something particularly evil, she's developed a habit of flashing an evil smile at the camera, to show how evilly EVIL she has become. Only thing is, she flashes one of these, oh, I don't know, every five seconds or so?

                 

               So my next brain crack idea isn't something inventive or anything, but I propose a Merlin drinking game, that would go a little something like this:
               Take one sip for every time Arthur doesn't notice Merlin saving his ass.
               Take another every time Merlin gets his retribution, i.e., making Arthur fall on his ass.
               And finish your drink every time Morgana flashes an evil grin five seconds after giving a main character a pitiful, woe-is-me-look.
               I would play this myself, if I had friends who watched Merlin, and if said friends and I were above the drinking age.

               And finally, a brain crack idea that is really just a complaint, not an idea. I was only reminded of this by trying to write this post. My complaint: TAB.
               The key, not the drink.

               I'm a little bit of a grammar and formatting Nazi, so it drives me crazy that I can't hit the tab button in the blogger editing window. What I usually end up doing is copying the space of one tab from MS Word and then hitting Ctrl + v every time I need it. Which sucks.

               Actually, I just forgot and his TAB right then, and I almost published my post. 

               I mean, I know it's not a big thing, and that some people hit tab and enter to publish, but I'd really rather just have the indent. So if any of the blogger fairies read this, could you get to work on that? Pretty please? With correct punctuation and spelling on top?

The 2011 One Hundred Book Challenge!

Pretty simple- I'm taking the challenge to read 100 books this year. But I'm starting late- I think I've only finished one or two these past couple of weeks. I'm going to start listing them on this blog, with a few reviews to go along with them, and hopefully I will reach one hundred by December 31st! Re-reads, partial reads, and picture books do not count! (Though I don't plan on reading any Dr. Seuss this year...)

1. Sold, by Patricia McCormick
2. Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-Year-Old G.I., by Ryan Smithson
3. Fallout, by Ellen Hopkins

Matched by Allie Condie

        Cassia has lived all of her life under the watchful guardianship of the Society. She sees no faults.

         

                   
          They tell her what to read.

          Because culture was too cluttered before.            
          There was too much.

          It’s for the best.    

          What to wear.

          It’s practical. No jealousy, no vanity-

          It’s for the best.

          Who to love.

         

          That most importantly. The Match gives us our perfect partner. Our perfect life.

          It’s for the best.

          But Cassia’s views of her stable and structured world alter, after the night of her Match Banquet, after her Match is revealed –perfectly- to be her best friend, after she believes her life has been set in motion, after she sees someone else’s face on her Match’s microcard: a second Match. An outsider. Someone remarkably and cautiously different from those who surround him.

          And she can’t help but be drawn to him.

          The second Match, the secret Match, the wrong Match, pulls the wool from her eyes. She starts to see the injustices of her world, where her actions are predicted by the Society before she thinks of them, and she starts to yearn for freedoms that she’s never wanted before.

          She wants to rebel.

          But there is no rebellion in the Society. Not ever.

          Matched was a Christmas present, and I finished it on the 27^th. I am desperately awaiting the sequel.

          Everyone who I’ve talked to about it says it reminds them of The Hunger Games. Which is true- the rival love interests, the dystopian setting, the overall themes, they’re very similar (although there’s a lot less violent, gory death in this one.)

          But what it really reminds me of the most is Lois Lowry’s The Giver- a classic, if you ask me. The absolute acceptance of the Society’s laws, under the promise of a longer, perfect life, is almost as eerie as the way the characters do exactly what is predicted of them, to the point where Cassia’s data predicts she will pick the green dress to wear to her Banquet, and she does. The people of her world innocently believe in the Society- at least within the confines of the cities – in the same way Joshua’s people blindly follow the Sameness in The Giver.

          Although they seem aware of the lack of choice, too. It’s just that the act of choosing what you want seems so little next to the safety, the perfection, that the Society has to offer. Not to mention the ever present threat of Reclassification…

          I loved this book. And since I’ve been in a bit of a book funk these past few months, roaming listlessly from novel to novel with no winners, I’m so happy to be able to say that.

Project for Awesome

This is going to be a quick post- I need to get back to COMMENTING! - but today is the Project for Awesome event. If you don't know what that is, go here and here, and then GO and RATE and COMMENT. For CHARITY. Hoo hah!

P4A!
DFTBA!

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.....

               That title is a sigh of relief, by the way, not a scream of oh-my-god,-there's-an-axe-murderer-in-my-house.
               And why oh why am I sighing? Why am I so relaxed and content and happy and such things and so forth?
               Because....I finished NaNoWriMo.
               What?
               I finished NaNoWriMo!
               What!?!?
               I FINISHED NANOWRIMO!
               Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......
               You see, I just keep doing that.
               I finally got to 50,000 at around ten o'clock last night. And immediately felt like taking a thirty day nap. But I didn't! I printed out my certificate, and being the dork I am, it is now hanging above my bed, and when I woke up this morning I couldn't help but grin at my little "WINNER!" paper. Victory is mine! Ha ha!
               So happy December 1st, to all the Wrimos out there who aren't reading this! Congratulations, a thousand times congratulations- not for finishing, but for trying at all!


               So who's ready for next year!?


               Oh.
               Wait. No. I'm still working on that nap...
               Maybe I'll start editing tomorrow. Maybe.

The Food of the Future

               So lately I've been really interested in the expiration dates of food.
               See, in the book I've been writing for NaNoWriMo- 45,737 words! - I gave my characters a storeroom of military rations and canned food, still full five years after a zombie apocalypse. And because I'm a crazy person, I only want food in there that will have stayed "fresh" in five years' time. So if you look up what I've been googling, along with other strange queries for the sake of my story, you'd mostly find "How long does canned corn last?" and "Expiration date for spam."
               But today, I got a Little Debbie cupcake out of the back of my pantry. And out of my newly formed habit, I checked the expiration date on the wrapper.
               It said:
               DEC 05 00
               I got very excited, and felt an urge to go around and show the nearest person, because in my mind, there were only four possible explanations for this:
               Number One: There was a misprint. 
               But how boring would that be? Eliminated.
               Number Two: That cupcake had been in my cupboard for almost a decade. 
               As tasting proved this to be false, this was eliminated.
               Number Three: That cupcake was from the future, where its expiration date really was the fifth of December, year 3000. 
               But further exploration of my pantry, and several failed attempts at sending various snack cakes 900 years into the future, proved, sadly, that my cupboard is indeed not a functioning time machine. One could argue that it only sends things back in time, to precisely this year, but that would just be getting silly. Eliminated.


               So all that was left was my final theory.


               Number Four: December 5th, 3000, was the cupcake's real expiration date. 
               That cupcake would still be fresh and tasty in 900 years. As my scientific testing had proven all other possibilities false, then this shall be taken as the truth. I had the world's longest lasting cupcake in my hands!


               Unfortunately, I was hungry, and the magical cupcake was eaten, so this will never be truly proven correct.
               But neither will it be proven false! Ha ha!


               So what came of this? Well, I will forever be telling my grandchildren of the time their grandma found the world's most amazing snack cake.
               And it served as a worthy procrastination tool to delay the writing of my NaNoWriMo story, where, obviously, all of my main characters will now be eating Little Debbie's. Because I want my book to stay true to the facts.


               I really need to get back to writing.

Madapple by Christina Meldrum

               Aslaug Hellig is a mystery. Is she the Messiah- the Chosen Child, Daughter of God? Is she a witch? A product of incest? A murderer? A bad seed- a seed from which only mad things grow?
               Or is she simply a girl faced with a unique situation?
               Reading Madapple tore me up. Sometimes a good book has to do that- some have to make you fall in love, some scare you within an inch of your life- and some portray such an overwhelming story in such a way that it is at once unbelievably horrifying and remarkably beautiful. While introducing so many theories as to Aslaug's origin, covering the scientific, the religious, the supernatural, and the modern law's perspective- the author manages to leave questions unanswered in just the right way. This book keeps you guessing even after it's ended, even after the truth is revealed.
               Bad things seem to follow Aslaug wherever she goes. Raised in virtual isolation by her mother, a Danish immigrant women, who some have called brilliant, and some have called insane, Aslaug holds an unusual grasp on reality and an insight into the world. She possesses her mother's love for science, nature, and myth, and can boast to a great deal of intelligence, but her social skills are limited to what her mother has taught her. After her mother's death early on in the book, Aslaug seeks out the family she has never known, secrets her mother kept hidden from her, and finds instead more questions and family scandal where she looks. Every other chapter is a piece of the transcript from Aslaug's trial- taking place four years from the time we meet her in the beginning. We learn that in four years, Aslaug's situation will change so drastically that she is being accused of murdering characters that we are simultaneously meeting for the first time. Sprinkled throughout this book are lessons in botany, paganism, English literature- and anything else that our odd heroine seems to think about- dispersed in a way that reminded me of Scott Westerfield's Peeps, with its long anecdotes on intriguing viruses and plagues and animals.
               Every time you think she has found peace, the carefully built up world of Madapple begins to chip away- revealing a harsh and frightening ugliness underneath. The transcripts prove most of what Aslaug's first-person account to be wrong so thoroughly that you begin to question her self-assured innocence. There is both a mingling sense of sweetness and leftover horror even now, as I sit here, having finished this book. Madapple is an exceptionally well-written novel, and though I while reading in public I was constantly having to explain why the girl on the cover was about to eat a butterfly, I think this will be one that I treasure.