Three little reviews:`

As part of a school project I had to write some little reviews of some teen books (which, face it, are the bulk of my reading age group). I thought I would share them here, in keeping with that desire to mix in elements from my last blog with this one. (Though I have still not interspersed those posts). Click-through pictures for an Amazon link.

The First Rule of Torching: Cleanse with fire.

Z by Michael Thomas Ford is a fast paced action packed story of life after the zombie wars.

Josh is an average teenager, fifteen years old and loves video games. His favorite game is the virtual reality game of the zombie war, where he can play a Torcher and annihilate zombies.But w

hen another player of the game contacts him and asks if he would like to play for real, he is putting more than his mother's disapproval on the line. People are disappearing and his friends are acting strange. And then there is

the mysterious drug “Z" that he is growing more and more defendant on…

Mitty hates homework...

Especially his biology paper. So when he finds three old medical textbooks in his mother's decorating things, with an envelope of scabs in one, he thinks he is saved. Until he starts reading up on the disease. As things start speeding up and spiraling out of control, Mitty believes he has small pox, and that he is putting his home at risk. But before he knows it, he is more at risk than he could have ever imagined.

A fast and consuming book, Code Orange by Caroline Cooney will have you on the edge of your seat. Interspersed with real facts about small pox and viruses in general, it is also very informative.

Welcome to the Apocalypse…

If you enjoyed the Hunger Games you will love the story of Deuce. In the tunnels under New York tribes of people live, fight and die by rules set out by the oldest among them. Deuce has just recieved her name and has become a Huntress. Given the strange outsider Fade as a partner, Deuce's once easy to understand existence is widened and broken all together. On the run from her Tribe Deuce has to face the notions she once considered paramount to survival.

A steady and engrossing adventure novel, Enclave by Ann Aguire is the first book in the Razorland series.

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Anyway. If any of those sound interesting, feel free to go pick them up, or ask me about them. I quite enjoyed them all, but if they aren't to your taste no hard feelings.

And of course you are welcome to leave me a comment with the kind of book you like and I can try and recommend you one.

What don't we know?

It is a question going around the Facebooks' of my friends: Tell me something I don't know about you.

And when you stop to think, how well do you know the people you have on Facebook. (Entertain me for a moment, if you do not have Facebook. Think of a phone's contact list, or people you talk to everyday, or Myspace, Twitter, Tumblr et. al.)

If you're anything like me, not as well as one might want.
I break just under a hundred and half Facebook friends.
I have, at some point or another, met all of them. (With few exceptions. I have not met my sister's boyfriend. I have not met my brothers current wife. About five people I have not met, however I am related to them in some fashion.)

School friends... or acquaintances. Work buddies and/or friendlies. Family. People I meet in various other ways.
Not everyone I've ever met, by any means. I've taken people off my Facebook (Because I don't know them that well), there are people I never accept, or never ask.

But how well do I know any specific one of them?

On average I can probably tell you their name when given a picture, and possibly vice versa.
Birthday? No.
Favourite colour/food/airline? No.

Why I know them and/or have them on Facebook? Most of the time.

I don't know what they are taking in school, I don't know if they have pets or siblings, I don't know if their parents are together or even alive or in the picture.

And I can say the same for them. Chances are they know shit-all about me too. (Unless they are much better Face-stalkers than I...).

What scares me about this isn't that I don't know. It is that I don't care.
For maybe... 15% of those people I know the answers to some/most/all of those questions.
For maybe another... 7% I'd like to know.
(20ish and 10ish people respectively)

That is about thirty people that I want to interact with, that I care about past random curiosity or politeness.

This post has taken a real jog from where I thought it was going.

It comes down to the oft reiterated idea that before Facederp and "social networking", people supposedly knew and cared about more people, because it was necessary.
If I wanted to know the gossip, I had to know you. Or at least someone who knows you.
One didn't get that close to someone without a friendship or a restraining order.

Now I say, hey, that person is some random person I have not talked to except that once, but they are in my class. I'll add them to my -media of choice-. And Now I hear/see everything. Without any effort.
And without the effort the caring goes down.

Anyway, these are old ideas. I want to broach the point of this silly post. (If one can call it a point)

What I was going to say before the rant was how there are these people asking "Tell me something I might not know".
And all I can think is "There's nothing there."
Everything there is to me is out there for you to see. Every nuance, every awkward glance, the things I squwee at, the things I do that scare you.
I have no secrets, or, at least, none that would be worth sharing.

What do you want to know? I am the openest of books.

"If you say something often enough, it dilutes it. Turns the poison into wine, the burns into bug bites. If you say something over and over, eventually it will be gone."
If you tell enough people that you are in pain, or were in pain, or that this'n'that happened here'n'there, they take a tiny bit of it onto their shoulders, a pebble from the boulder you are carrying.

And soon telling people becomes a drug, becomes the one thing you find yourself doing.

And the one thing you hate yourself for.

So no, I have no secrets. I gave mine all away. There is nothing you might not know about me, only things you have never needed to ask.
Because I am an addict to sharing, and you are my dealer.

I am the 1%

To clarify, I have been reading random tidbits about the Occupy movement. I do not know all the facts, and to be honest this is only due to lack of interest.
(though if you were to look at the time between the last post and this one might surmise I haven't been interested in much lately. This would be accurate.)

I do however see plenty of signs and notes in the various channels I peruse.

Most go something like "I have this and this and this problem and debt, I am the 99%".
Others go "This and this and this are fortunate in my life, I am the 1%, I support the 99%"

So I thought I would write one. The ending may be spoiled, but I think it may surprise you anyway:

I am in my second year of college.
When I graduate I will be $20,000+ in debt.

My parents are not able to support me as they are as deep or deeper in debt on one side, just above water on the other.

My stepfather regularily disregards several of his medications for diabetes, congenitive heart failure, extreme pain, and other issues because we can't afford them.
I quit my anti-depressants because we cannot afford them.
I worked all summer and saved for years to help pay for my school.

Most of that money has been used to keep my family afloat.

I am unsure of my eventual employment.

I am the 1%

And there are many things behind those statements that could improve or worsen them, make them seem earth shattering or day-making.
At least once a day I wonder if I am going to make it, or if these troubles will consume me.

But then I remember that small fact.
I Am The 1%.
Globally North America is in a much better position than a large portion of the populace.
Canada especially.

In this country, in this economy, with these factors? Yeah, I am the 99%.
But what is the saying? Think Globally, Act Locally?

I am the 1%. I am the 99%.

I support the 99%

Yeah, another life update.

If you're wondering, yes, I do get sick of talking about myself to the internets.

However I need to get back into the habit of trolling (or maybe "strolling") all my favourite sites again so I can post some content.

Anyway, until then, things have happened around here. Most notably, I'm back in my Residence, ready to start school again.
Which is neat, I guess.
But I don't really know how to react.

As you might remember, I haven't been on medication for my depression since about February. This next month is going to be the real test of the validity of my decision making skills in that regard.
There are days and hours where I feel the best I've ever felt. Full of hope, joy and intention. And in those times (and to be honest, they are rather frequent) It feels like the best idea I've made, I feel free and happy.
Then of course are the most plentiful times, where there is just the 'heh, heh, yeah...' normalcy. And that is good too! That time is what I used to count as feeling GOOD.
But then there are moments like now. I wouldn't say I am depressed, exactly. But I am down from the "level" place. It's usually precipitated by something. A big move, meeting someone who surprises me, a bad memory, or (as in this case) a dream. And these things get me thinking about things that don't exactly qualify as happy.
And I suppose that this is normal; ups and downs, right? And that doesn't bother me that much.
What bothers me is how hard it is to pull out of a down time.
I never get down enough to be really upset, I just get this general malaise about me that is hard to shake.

And it all comes down to regret or fear.
Like meeting a friend from last year (Lets call her R. Because if for some crazy she reads this, she'll know who she is anyway.) that I treated wrongly. Not really on purpose, and not horrifically, but still. Wrong. I regret acting that way to her. And I'm afraid that I will again. Afraid that she is worried that I will.
The fact that she has specifically forgiven me for those actions, and never found them that discomfiting to begin with doesn't stop either feeling.
Having a dream about my teacher; a great dream! a connected, feel good dream!, but having that dream reminds me of actions I took, and actions taken... not against me, but it sure feels that way some times... anyway, those memories again spark regret and fear. Regret that everything got kinda f'd up then/there, and fear that it will happen again here/now. And regret that I can't fix it here/now. Can't even try.

But the biggest thing right now is sadness. Remembering her is like remembering someone who was very close to you who is dead now.
And she's not dead.

So all of those regrets, all of the things you wish you had said/done/felt/meant, you haven't done those. But you don't even have the cruelty of death to blame for your inability to correct it.

Mix this random dream with moving to a new/old place to be with a new/old person, and meeting Good Ol' R for the first time in months (and spending those months believing she rightly hated me)... then spending a night playing card with her. Trying to make awkward conversation.

All those things together and it's not surprising that I feel a bit wiggy.
But typing this has made me feel better. So I guess that's something.

Now to go see if I can battle Rogers to give me back all of my internet.

Toodles.

MineCraft and Parenting

So today is Wednesday, and there are only three more days until I move back into Residence.
That being true, it seems logical that I would be hopping onto my keyboard to stomp out an excitement filled post about how much school will rock, and how I wish summer weren't over yet, like my keyboard were some kind of hand-pump train car from a cartoon. And while I reserve the right to do so later, right now this post is going to be about MineCraft.

Yup, I finally bought it (or, more truthfully, my Paypal finally caught up with my desires).

And what I wanted to do for a minute here was try and explain why I, and people like me, enjoy MineCraft to the point of squealing.

Being a sandbox game, there is no win condition. Which sounds really stupid to chronic SHUMPers, because without a win condition, how do you know you are done? How can you get satisfaction?

Some people make their own win conditions, like building a 1:1 scale model of the Titanic. Others, like me, are content without a win condition; we are more interested in exploring, trying new things, and building randomly. We don't want a win condition, because that cuts the play-time.
There is no rush to try and finish because there is no finish.

And yeah, you can play, say, Super Mario over and over, even after you have won. Find a few new secrets and such. But the game doesn't change. You get better at it over time, yeah, but the game is the same, the goal is the same.

MineCraft lets you change the goal as often as you can fire neurons. Every world offers different challenges (to a degree). Mods bring this to a greater point of truth.

And I feel the need to make an analogy here. It's a lot like parenting.
Now hear me out.

There is no win condition in parenting. Yeah, yeah, you could say "getting the kid alive to adulthood" or "raising someone who is not a complete dick, or a murderer, or listens to Rebecca Black" or any myriad of things. But the truth is, those aren't win conditions,

The parents whose child died at seven from a car crash or leukemia didn't lose, weren't bad parents. The kid just dies.
And that's because there is no guarantee.
The worst parents in the world; letting their kid smoke, drink, drive ATVs, encourages mullets -- these people can still have a kid who against the odds becomes the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. Likely? Not really. But it could happen.

And the reverse is true. The best parents (whatever that definition is); encouraging reading, school, say no to drugs etc. -- those people can, and do, still raise druggies, drop outs, total dick-wads, and worst of all homosexuals.
Nah, I kid, but the point still stands.

And I guess what I'm saying with all this is that I'd hate the pressure of being a parent because if the kid fucks up, you get blamed for doing 'something' wrong, no matter what you do.

And this does relate to Minecraft, I'm just easily distracted.

Why then, knowing the odds, do people have kids?

Why, knowing their kid is reasonably likely to be a complete asshole, do people continue to procreate?

For the same reasons people play MineCraft.
It's genetically hardwired? Gambling is fun? Who cares if there are more jerks in the world, it's funny?

Okay, no.

It is because people are interested in how things develop over time.

Same reason for plants, pets, stock folders.
I won't say it is a primary reason, but it is in there.

This all made sense as I was typing it, but now it seems a little hard to follow, so I appologise.

Anyway. Sandbox games are interesting to a subset of people who want the ability to control things. You get to see how things grow and mature, but you can control how they grow and mature.
So really I guess I'm saying we players of sandbox games are just control freaks in disguise.

-shrug-

Some favourites to share:

Around when I mentioned The First $20 Million a while back, I thought I'd take some time to think about some favourites I have in the filmographic world. I finally got around to finishing that.
Maybe we have similar taste. Or maybe you just need something to watch and figure my suggestions are as good as any. In any case, here's a list, in no particular order:

Matilda

Based on a Roald Dhal young adult novel, this is the story of Matilda, a telekinetic 6 1/2 year old whose life kinda sucks. How it sucks and what makes it better is, of course, your choice to pursue.

The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest

A young man quits his job as he finds it unfulfilling and goes to school at MIT hoping to make the world better or some such thing. The "coach" of the robotics team doesn't like him, so saddles him with the trashcan project of the PC $99. The young man and a trio of other.... less than desirable guys tries to make this happen, and save it in turn.

What Dreams May Come

A Robin Williams film. The man loses his children, and then dies. As he tries to navigate heaven he learns some unpleasant things about his wife's fate, and tries to rescue her. This film is visually stunning, and makes you want to believe in an afterlife.

Memento

A questionable choice, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is one of the only films I've seen that pulled off the backwards narration thing. A piecemeal film to say the least.

The main guy has amnesia that resets as soon as he is distracted from a thought. He is trying to figure things out and find the murderer of his late wife.

My Neighbor Totoro

An animated movie from Japan, written by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, pretty much every anime movie that became popular over here). A father moves with his two girls to the country side, I think to spare them some of the grief of their mother being ill (cancer?) and probably for cost. The girls meet some forest spirits (Totoro) and have fun with them while exploring the area around their house and school.

Silence of the Lambs

Anthony Hopkins is in this, which immediately makes it watchable for me.

Serial killers, FBI agents, psycho thriller. Yup, my kind of movie.

Surveillance

FBI agents, serial killers, psycho thriller. Did I mention this is my kind of movie? Some FBI agents were called in to help with a brutal murder that happened in the country side. No one is telling the truth, and the murderers are pretty twisted. (But in the way I can relate to, if that doesn't scare you) It also helps that I guessed the killers in the first ten minutes, which made it surprisingly more enjoyable.

Avatar

You've probably seen this, or at least heard of it a half-dozen times.

An alien world is being mined to the degeneration of the locals, big fight, romance blahblahblah.

I wnet into this movie thinking the story would suck, but it would be visually amazing, and maybe I'd hear a bit of professional conlanging.

I was pleasantly surprised, not disappointed and thoroughly disappointed respectively.

An okay story, very good visuals, but not enough dealing with the conworld/lang.

Minority Report

Future-y sci-fi-y. The police figured out a way to catch criminals before they commit a crime (which seems great for emotional attacks like the first one shown. Can you imagine living with that sort of guilt?) Tom Cruise then has to prove his future-innocence.

Lucky Number Slevin

Very neat with lots of twists and retribution. Good if you like figuring out who did what when.

Set in sorta present (kinda past) maybe '99-2000? With some set in the '70s. Some dude is trying to live his life, borrowing his friend's apartment, when he gets caught in a gang war. Then things just get loopy.

Shutter Island

Another one with lots of twists. Some police officer is on a creepy island that houses an asylum for the criminally insane, back in the '50s. He slowly works out more and more odd things about the hospital, conspiracies and plots. His life might be in danger.

The SAW series

It is gory, yeah. But it is less of a horror movie than some. Some guy is trying to mete out justice in the most violent ways possible. But the why and the who keep changing. So lots of twists there too. Eight movies that got compressed into seven (including SAW 3D). Everything is very well planned out, obviously from the beginning. the last few seem a bit rushed.

Rango

Bit different tone here =P

Animated.

This lizard (chameleon, Johnny Depp) finds himself suddenly in the middle of desertville, nowhere. As he finds a place to stay, he also finds trouble and plots and hilarity. It is a kid's movie after all.

Surprisingly enjoyable.

Sucker Punch

The most recent thing I've seen in theaters. About a girl pressed into an asylum by her abusive father, who presses for a lobotomy to keep her quiet.

Lots of good music, though the movie itself is a bit ridiculous. Has a very good ending though.

A more life-y update

As of the airing of this post (Which should be a Sunday, if I've set the advance thing right, and don't think of anything else to post between now and then) there will be three weeks until I head back to school.

As of the writing of this post, I am set to move in on the 4th of September.

Since I don't expect much of the life-changing nature to happen between now (last Sunday) and next (this) Sunday, I figure I'll make a post of what has happened since I left school in April. It's not much.

After exams my mum picked me up from residence. Long drive home, yeah. Once here I spent a few day relaxing, waiting for Queen's to tell me when they wanted me to start working. They didn't, so a week or so in I emailed, got some shifts, and the trudge of this summer began.

I had decided to come off my anti depressants in February, and was fully off them by the time I got home. Combine this with a bit of new-found confidence and self-esteem and a step-father who is... eh, less than all there, and we had problems.

We don't really get along well a lot of the time, through miscommunication and his abhorrence of being wrong. About anything. Ever.

Anyway, a few blow-ups later and things are kinda worked out on that front now. Sort of. As long as I don't say much.

Oh, and it didn't/doesn't help that every time I have an emotion other than cheerful I am told I am depressed and should go back on my meds. But whatevs, right?

I applied for OSAP later than I would have liked because, despite my nagging, my mum didn't remember/had no time to get the tax returns filled out. Yay.

That led to getting my fee deferral forms in at the last moment (Quite literally), raising panic and illness from stress in me.

Not to mention a $1000 fee from residences I overlooked.

But that's all worked out now too.

I saw my dad one weekend, and even got to see Lee and meet her new(not really, just haven't met him since she met him in January) boyfriend. Seems like a nice guy, I guess. Kinda hard to approve of someone in such oddball circumstances.

Upon coming home I was told I would be moving my room out of the basement as it would be becoming a spa for my mum to work out of.

My aunt was going to rent our family room once we made it into an apartment.

Then she was going to rent the basement, but we needed to put a bathroom in.

Then she decided to go move into a seniors apartment complex.

So we started the construction of the spa/clinic/massage therapy rooms in our family room.

There is now no one in the basement, as I moved upstairs in preparation for this kerfuffle.

Yay.

Work was/is boring and hot. I wake up every morning debating the worth of that extra $48 gross.

I missed a lot of work through illness, construction, transport issues and plain "idunwanna"s.

But I've still managed to make close to my goal for this summer.

Last weekend was the Verona Cattail Festival. It was also when a friend came down to Kingston. Brought one of her kids and her new(not really, just never met before) boyfriend (I see a trend here) from Australia. Nice guy for sure. Putting up with kids that aren't yours is a draining thing to do, and he seems to handle it well.

Now I'm practically counting the hours (not yet, though I am counting the days) until I can get back to my home port and be a bit freer to do things of interest.

I have been playing Minecraft (don't tell anyone, I'm still saving the money, so I'm being bad and illegal. Very soon though I will have the total and then I can stop the icky feeling in my gut) and reading. I should have a book review of one of the books up soonish.

Oh oh oh, and, a classmate contacted me about making some hats for her. She does baby (and probably other) photography and wanted cute newborn hats. So I have a bit of money coming my way from that, as well as a possible in to a market. If people ask her, they can buy sort-of through her. This could work out well. -nodnod-

I think that is all the excitement so far, but I have a week to add to this post (through the magic of delay~), and you'll never know the difference!