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LibraryThing: Cooking bookpile winners
Well, I didn't win the $100 AbeBooks prize, but my photo did rank in the "notable entries" list. Cool! Mine is titled "I'm an eclecticook." LibraryThing's Abby would apparently attend a dinner party based on this photo; I say hooray to Ben Franklin's "Fart Proudly" on every plate!
Just visit that top link if you have no idea what I'm blabbering about.
Britain's Royal Mail is releasing Harry Potter Stamps on July 17th. There will be one for each cover of the seven books (as published in Britain... they don't look like any American covers I've seen) and the crests for Hogwarts and each one of the houses (Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff). Here's a little more info.
Looks like France is getting in on Harry Potter stamps, too! That page states that Australia, the Isle of Man and Taiwan have already released Harry Potter stamps. Good for them.
I guess the US is too busy licking George Lucas' ass with its new Star Wars stamps to think about Harry Potter.
Okay, as far as geeking out intelligently over TV, Monimala made a lot of the points I wanted to make about the season finale of Heroes last night. Some of it was a little hokey (a la the last two episodes) and pushed my otherwise willing suspension of disbelief a little too far. But overall, I think it was a sound episode especially considering that viewers already knew a lot of the story line.
(I have more to say that is not TV-related... maybe not in this post, but soon)
The teaser for volume 2 with Hiro flashed back to 1th century Japan was awesome, and the season was rounded out very nicely by ending with an eclipse, which also happened in the first episode. Yeah, I'm hoping that and HD-DVD player and the HD DVD version of Heroes Volume 1 magically appear on my doorstep on August 28th. After watching the season in HD on our new tv, I don't think I could stand NOT having the HD version!
There aren't too many other shows or movies I've been interested in purchasing lately, but I keep up to date on TVshowsonDVD. Here's the Heroes DVD announcement, as well as one for My Little Pony and Friends. WTF? I think I knew that show was crap when I was addicted to it 20 years ago!
Two kids movies I would love to see on DVD are "The Fantastic Adventures of Unico" along with its sequel, "Unico in the Island of Magic." It's the first anime I remember, and I was hooked. But no American company currently has the distribution rights according to this WIkipedia article on Unico.
I bet Unico could kick the ASSES of those My Little Pony wussies, even if the Big Brother Ponies were around.
(Unico, The Wuzzles and Muppet Babies screenshots snagged from Wikipedia under a fair use license.)
In lieu of My LIttle Pony on DVD, I'd prefer to see "Muppet Babies" and maybe, since I don't remember it being total crap (though I'm sure there's a chance), just maybe I'd like to watch "The Wuzzles" on DVD. I still have a stuffed Moosel with the companion book in great condition. Thanks for not throwing those away, Mom!
Okay, I'm getting some good feedback for punBB, so I think I'm going to set that up and try it out for the new forum. Thanks to everyone who sent me emails regarding their opinions on that. I need to start getting ready for my trip to Norway on Thursday, so I'll probably be motivated to set up the forum before I go. Procrastination is a funny motivator.
On a Heroes side note, it was not as great of an episode as I expected last night. I felt like there was a lot that was being set up, and I hope that next week's episode (and the season finale the week after) will make up for what was lacking this time.
II still find it interesting that the first story arc had a strong narrative from Mohinder, but that went away and wasn't replaced by anyone else's. I liked the narrative story arc, but I suppose the story is too complicated for it to "belong" to any one character right now. Ah well, I'm hooked and they'd really have to mess up the story to disinterest me at this point.
I really want to to know what the hell is up with Mrs. Petrelli, though. Does she have powers? Does she have a connection with Linderman other than through her husband? Also, toward the end of the episode when she pushed Nathan toward Linderman's decision, was that really her? Or was it scary Mystique-lady?
Speaking of Mystique, I read recently that Tim Kring wasn't a comics fan and didn't know anything about X-Men. I say Yeah Right. How could you not know anything about X-Men in this time period? The first movie came out in what, 1999? It's impossible that you can't know anything about it! And as a writer, writing in this genre, he should have been responsible enough to at least do research into what might be similar to his plot and/or characters. Maybe he's too important and he has a staff of geeks to feed him his information.
Grumble, grumble. I'm sad about missing Free Comic Book Day on Saturday. I was hanging out with my parents, who came into town. It's my own damn fault for not making it primo priority! With my luck, though, I probably would have made it there just in time to get the free, all-that's-left, lame-ass Archie comic. Thbbbt.
Okay, so I'm getting closer to a decision about which forum software to use. scottymonkeypants has recommended punBB, a more basic and streamlined free forum (unlike the somewhat cumbersome phpBB that we had before). I might also be willing to cough up a little cash to purchase the license for vBulletin.
So now I'm asking for feedback! If you have any opinions about these or other forums, please leave comments here or email geekmaster@innergeek.us.
Thanks so much!
I'm not sure what it is about blogging my personal life that bothers me.
There are lots of things that I have to say that end up in a journal, either on my hard drive or handwritten (so old-fashioned!). Although I think I've been writing more overall since the beginning of this blog, it still disappoints me that I'm scared of revealing myself to strangers, online acquaintances and friends. I say revealing because I am not one of those types of people who has no secrets and tells everybody everything they ever wanted to know about me. I'm not a real introvert, either... I just try to keep a balance. But, as my general clutziness reveals, balance is hard.
I find myself leaning more toward nonfiction when I write. I still haven't written that First Novel that I'm supposed to throw away after I've written because chances are good it will be crap (though I'll be better for the experience - I heard this at some point in college and many of my fellow Creative Writing majors who completed their First Novels went on to agree with me).
I don't have the kind of passion that translates into fan fiction (like my friend Mala, who is High Queen of Fan Fiction in my opinion). I like sci-fi and fantasy, but I get bogged down in the details of stories or situations become too complicated for me to want to work through them.
When I tried (and didn't win NaNoWriMo again this year, the story I chose was definitely literary fiction. I snerk every time I say that I'm writing "literary fiction," because who am I to say that it will be literary?
Sorry for the emo I-want-to-be-an-author post. I went to Barnes & Noble last night for the first time in ages and the time just melted away as I made the rounds through all the different sections. I am leaving for Norway in one week to go to my little Norwegian sister's confirmation, which is a huge deal over there. I guess it could be compared to the 15-year-old Latina's Quinceanera, but probably a lot more low-key.
Why bring the Norway trip up all of a sudden? Because it's been ten years since I lived there as an exchange student. I graduated from high school in three years so I wouldn't have to worry about going back to my hometown high school afterward (great decision, but I kind of forgot how to study during my year there, which bit me in the ass in college when I tried to be a Bio major... maybe it helped me find the right study track after all).
It's been ten years, and I've been reflecting on that a lot. Where did I think I would be now? Have I done all the things I thought I would do by this point? It's not like me to set hard and fast goals, but I had lots of ideas and hopes and dreams and expectations of myself. It's most interesting to think about the surprising turns in my life (like the minor popularity of the Geek Test on the Internet, which was mostly a vehicle for Shiny! New! Email! back in 1996-1997) and the dreams that are still very much in place (to write and be published).
Last night I thought to myself, "It's about time I became a writer."
I said it out loud to Ben, who said "About freakin' time." How's that for a support? Or perhaps a kick in the ass? Or perhaps it's a sign that yes, this is what I need to do.
So I've typed this mini-manifesto up and I'm going to publish it in the modern way on my website. Then I'm going to go to work, where I am now the Marketing Editor for a medium-sized manufacturer of scrapbooking products, and I will write and edit my heart out for a steady paycheck. Someday, maybe, I will be able to write my heart out for myself (and maybe other people will be interested, too).
It's just about freakin' time that I try a little harder.
I bought my first Moleskin journal to take with me to Norway. I hope to spend lots of time writing in it. I just don't know what I'll do if, in another ten years, I still haven't written anything worthwhile. I think I've used up all of my excuses in the first ten years of adulthood. I don't want to disappoint the eight-year-old Yvette who first dreamt of being a writer and wrote the first words in her first journal almost twenty years ago:
