Assassin's Creed Revelations

This trailer, like all of the other Assassin's Creed trailers, is amazing. The video itself is strong graphically, but the action in it is also very good. The music also works with it rather well. The game is supposed to take place a couple of years after Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and you play as Ezio when he's 50-ish. Some would think that he'd be slower and less skilled, but this is not so. In fact, he is actually a lot stronger than in the previous game and he gets a few added on items. In the trailer you see him get defeated when his hidden blade breaks, but later when he is about to be hanged you see him start an escape. Also, the spot he was to be hanged at was the spot where you leaped off of and into a bale of hay in Assassin's Creed I. This therefore can show that he will escape from the battle (well, it shows that if you've played the previous games). When I first heard about this game, I couldn't wait for it to come out. But now that I've watched this trailer, I'm even more excited for this game.

Dancing Mad

This song is by far one of the best instrumental songs I've ever heard. It's from Final Fantasy 6, and is used as the theme for a character named Kefka. If you know who Kefka is, the song fits him. I've never played the game myself, but I was told about this by my brother. Anyways, the song is just purely amazing. It has a sort of eerie feeling at parts, and has some evil-carnival undertones hidden in it. While I'm not much of a fan of the guitar solo near the end, I do rather enjoy the part that starts at about 6:30. It sounds like the typical Final Fantasy battle music. I've been listening to this song almost every day for the past week or two and I plan to keep it up.

A Wizard of Earthsea

I enjoyed this book. I'm not normally a fan of fantasy, but this book managed to intrigue me. Sure, I figured out practically the entire plot within the first few chapters, but it was somehow compelling to me. It was a rather cliche book, with the whole dragons and wizard school and the likes, but it was also unique at the same time. I would have liked it more if at the beginning of the book it didn't say that he was the greatest sorcerer to ever live and that he tamed dragons, because that made it seem a lot less interesting to read. Despite this, I still read past the pages of it telling me how the book would progress.
I found the concept to be interesting, and also how Ged interlaced together spells in order to not only create a binding spell but also a mist spell. I knew that the invaders wouldn't get in even before he did this, because they would most likely kill him and then the book would end. However, there were more than one hundred pages to go.
When he read the spell that allowed him to bring back the sous of the dead, I knew he would use that spell despite the warnings he received from Ogion. It was just so amazingly obvious. The foreshadowing wasn't even slightly hidden. And I don't really understand why Jasper had to have a rivalry with Ged, because Jasper was 2 or 3 years older than Ged and knew much more than Ged did about almost everything.
When it reached the part where it first mentioned the name of the shadow, I thought nothing of it. I just figured that the shadow had no name. But when they started to mention that it might just have a name, I figured out that its name was Ged. It wasn't that hard to see that the shadow was Ged. It was especially easy to see that the shadow's name was Ged when people mentioned that they saw someone like Ged walking around, but the thing cast no shadow. It was also an easy thing to notice because the shadow knew his true name without ever really hearing it from somebody else.
I would read the next books in the series. I'd like to see how Ged could possibly get stronger than he already is, and if the shadow ever comes up again in any of the story plots. I bet it probably will, along with a re-appearance of Jasper. Vetch would also probably play a large role in the book, and maybe, just maybe, the giant dragon makes a re-appearance. That would be interesting. Would Ged die or not? (Of course he wouldn't. He knows the name of the dragon and also it would be a terrible ending to kill of your main character.)

Name All The Animals

1. How is the book reading going? What parts of the book have been easy or difficult for you as a reader? Why? (please reflect)
I finished the book at some point over the weekend, and I must say that I liked it overall. The ending was very good and seemed to draw it to a close perfectly. I found it difficult to read the book near the ending. I can't really explain why... It just sort of felt a bit heavy. It might have been the fact that her mother and father practically resented her for not believing in Christ, or maybe it was how she wanted to drive but just couldn't manage to go through with the test. I sort of started to feel the narrator's feelings, and I guess that's the effect of non-fiction. While I did see it as fiction most of the time because of how it was written, it felt different from a normal novel in the respect that it made me feel more for the character than I do in most novels.

2. Pick a character in the memoir that you find yourself liking. What is the role of this character? Why does the author include this character in the plot, setting, or story?
I found myself really liking Alison. In the memoir she plays the part of the protagonist, and it includes her because the book is about her. It would be rather boring to read a memoir without a main person in it. I liked her because she came off as a rather strong character. As opposed to crying when her older brother died, she started to tie herself to the Before-People that never knew Roy so that she wouldn't have to go through the pain of being pitied. She was very firm about her beliefs and her nature, and she wasn't ashamed to admit that she didn't believe in God or that she was a lesbian (well, she wasn't scared to admit that towards the end).

3. Pick a character to contrast with #2 above. Pick a character that you do not like and explain what is bothering you. How would you do it if you were the author?
A character I really disliked was Mother. She was so negative and she was practically insane. She refused to accept the fact that her daughter didn't believe in God or the fact that Alison wished she had died with Roy in the car accident. She was an opposing force to Alison the entire time and I couldn't stand her. When she started to bring the books on dealing with grief home from the library, I was wondering what she was doing. While she made it so that it seemed that she was trying to help her family get over the grief of their son dying, it just made it worse by digging up the painful memories. I doubt that I'd make the character so horrible if I was the writer, because I don't have the heart to write such a terrible antagonist... or the writing ability.

Name All The Animals 2

1. Examine how the author describes characters or people. How does she make them "real", "approachable", or use CHARACTERIZATION to allow the reader to sympathize or empathize with the character? Pick one character and examine him/her.


The writer takes characters and she slowly develops them, but in doing so she manages to make them very vivid in their personalities and descriptions. With Alison, she started off about how she was really close to her brother, and she continued to play off of that emotion so that we'd feel sympathy for her when her brother died. Then she made the character become a person who wanted to be around people who didn't always pity her and worry about her, which I find to be a very good way to develop a character. Characters that just feed off of other people's pity are not interesting at all. In fact, they're the type you'd like to kill if you could. But the author decided not to make Alison into someone like this and made her seem stronger by having her want to be around those who either hadn't known her brother (Terry) or those who knew, but didn't mention it (Mary Elizabeth). Also, the writer contrasts Alison with her father, who is seen as a sort of depressed character who can't get over his son's death. It's a nice contrast to make it so that the daughter seems to be a stronger character than the father is.

Name All The Animals

The book so far is relatively decent. I didn't like the beginning, where all it was was grief and sadness and talking about the death of the protagonist's brother, and that doesn't really interest me. I can't read about people crying and crying and crying some more, so that's why I really disliked the beginning chapters. However, I read a little bit ahead and got to around page 39, where I feel it has steadily picked up from the whole death thing. During the chapter with Paul, it was good to see a hint that there wouldn't be all this sad stuff. I predict that in the future of the novel there will be some sort of relationship going between Paul and Alison. If there is no relationship, I fear that the entire book will be flashbacks about Roy's death and Alison's father crying. But I don't want it to become all romantic. A little romance would be fine, but too much would be terrible. Hopefully the book gets better.

The Bell Jar and Sylvia Plath's Poems

The Bell Jar:
Well, I don't really know exactly what to make of this so far. While I've read about 50 pages of it, I really don't find it to be all that entrancing. It seems a little dry to me and I just can't seem to enjoy a book about someone who is working for a magazine. It might be the fact that I don't really like the protagonist and her idea of, "Oh, I have to work today so my boss is evil. I wanted to go and lie down in the grass in Central Park but to think i have responsibilities. Oh shoot." Also, I really hate how she wanted to abandon her friend and act like she had nothing to do with her after Doreen met Lenny. All in all, the character seems to be a terrible person who seems to be begging for people to pity her. I would not recommend this book, unless it gets better later on.

Poems:
The Colossus, Death & Co., Doomsday, Owl, Nightshift.

It was a labor to read these poems. They all deal with death and sadness and darkness and that sort of stuff, and I just can't read poems like this unless they're by Poe. Doomsday annoyed me because it repeated lines, and I really don't enjoy reading a poem that is just the same liens, over and over again. Death and Co. was just... bad. I really didn't like that one. While the last line worked, the rest of the poem just didn't really click for me. I think if she were to re-write this poem using the same last line but a completely different way to get to that last line, it would be so much better (and yes, I know she would have to be resurrected to re-write that). The Colossus seemed to ramble. It was just sort of a really aggravating poem. The last group of lines seemed to be rather pointless and cryptic. It was hard to decipher them, and I still don't know exactly what she was trying to say. Nightshift was actually rather enjoyable. It was about the concept of fear in a dark area, all by yourself. I feel that it managed to convey the feeling of fear rather well, and the idea that when you hear a noise you just assume that it's some monster or mass murderer. Owl had rather good imagery. It gave the picture of midnight rather clear, and it made me imagine a town such as London at night time.

Amazing Piano Cover

Well, I found this video about a week ago and I loved it. I normally love the original version, but this piano version really does it justice. This has not only managed to make me want to listen to this almost every single second of the day, but it has also motivated me to go home and spend a while attempting to play this song by ear on the cello. While I will most likely fail, at least I can try and have fun in doing so.

Unsettling America Review

"English Speaking-Persons Will Find Translations"
Well, I liked it. I like how it sort of compares America to the Nazis with the whole idea of, "Well, they had concentration camps. Normally we hate that, but when you compare that to the fact that we caused Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as well as raped the Indians, then..." It was interesting to see a poem like this, mostly because you don't really see it them all that often. People are usually very ignorant as well as arrogant and say that the people that we brought such atrocities upon had it coming, and it was our divine right given to us by God to commit these inhumane crimes. Usually as long as people aren't the ones having something happen to them, they don't really care about it. Like the teacher in the poem, who said how many lives were "saved" by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I put saved into quotes because when people say we saved lives by dropping the bombs, we actually caused the people in those cities to go through unbearable agony, and then they died. Many people died very painful deaths because of the bombs.

"Always Running"
I liked this poem as well. One reason I liked it is because of the part where he starts to question his emotions about who he wants to kill and if he should actually kill anyone. Recently I wrote a poem where the person questions himself like this, and I've got to say that it was rather entertaining to do. I much prefer reading and writing poems where the person questions things, and ones that deal with the inner mind. I can't really do imagery, and even though reading a poem with images is nice, I like having to think. Also, i like how he was managing to stay strong even during hard times. He's living in a house filled with cockroaches, his wife leaves him, and he has the constant threat of gangs, but he still manages to tough it out.

"Mnemonic"
Well, I liked parts of this poem. I can't say that it interested me much for the most part, but when it did the contrasting ideas of the earth being both flat and round, it managed to grab a hold of me. The contrasting ideas make it seem like this poem is worthwhile to read, even though I didn't enjoy most of it. It really didn't interest me much with reading about an immigrant's sweater that he wore to America. Call me crazy if you want, but reading a story where the bulk is about a sweater doesn't pique my interest.

Even More Betsey Brown Responses

1. Have you changed your opinion of the book? 
No. I finished it and didn't enjoy it.
2. Has what you predicted happened?
Not entirely. While Jane did break down and leave the family like I thought she would, everything else I predicted didn't happen.
3.  What has occurred in the plot or with the characters that surprised you? 
Somewhat. I was surprised that they started to behave well when they had Carrie helping around the house. On the other hand, I wasn't surprised when Jane came home and got rid of Carrie, or when the kids shifted back to the way they were before Carrie. Jane is just a bad mother that not only can't take care of her children, but she blames it on everyone else.
4. What scene stands out as being the most important scene so far?
Betsey running away was probably the most important scene. It set a couple things in motion, such as Jane leaving and the relationship between Greer and Jane being stressed. It also led to Carrie showing up, but she was gotten rid of by Jane very quickly.
5. What character at the moment seems to have changed the most?
Honestly, none of them. They are all the exact same in the end as when they began. They had changed while Carrie was there, but when she was gone they just stopped. Again, I bring up the point of Jane being unable to run the house. That hasn't changed about Jane. Betsey being a terrible character overall hasn't changed. Greer being his odd character who plays the drums hasn't changed. Sure, they may have started to actually do some work around the house, but I don't think their actual personalities have changed or their thought process.
6. How have events in the plot been complicated?
Jane came back. I saw their being some sort of redemption in the book while she was gone, and maybe the characters would grow out of the phase of, well, terribleness. Sadly, all good things come to an end, and Jane returned, thus ruining the book for me. If the plot had gone along where Jane didn't return, I might have enjoyed the book.
7. What page did you leave off?
I finished it.

Betsey Brown Responses

1. What scene or passage can you best identify with? 
The scene I can best identify with is the one where all the kids are running around while Bernice was there. There was so much yelling and trouble, and it seemed a lot like how my family is. There's always some sort of noise in our house.
2. What character would you most like to spend time with? Why?
I'd like to spend time with Greer. He seems like an interesting person, with his job as a doctor and his quizzes in the morning and his playing drums while leading the kids in a line for a quiz. He seems like an interesting father figure.
3. What scene or character in the book has bothered you? Why?
There are two characters that bother me a lot: Betsey and Vida. Vida is always complaining about something, and Betsey is just a terrible character overall. She caused Bernice to be fired because she told her mother about how Betsey climbed trees, and Betsey didn't like that. And then she went and played it off by acting all kind when she had caused all of the trouble, and her mother just assumed that since Betsey is such a "perfect" girl that she couldn't have done anything. In short, Betsey is manipulative and very annoying.
4. Comment about Shange's use of standard English grammar. Why do you think she purposefully plays with syntax, spelling, and sentence construction?
I really hate the grammar. I don't see why Shange could have conceivably thought that it was a good idea to use grammar that's as bad as the grammar in this book. It irks me to read this book because I keep trying to correct the grammar the best that I can in my head.
5. Predict the ending of the book. What major events will happen to Betsy? To Jane?
I'm guessing that Betsey will probably fall in love. She'll continue to be an absolutely horrible character, and I see no way that her character could be redeemed unless she was completely changed. Jane, on the other hand, will probably finally see Betsey for the manipulative person she is, and will probably go insane.
6. Which characters seem to contrast? Which seem to compare? What does this tell you about how an author uses characters?
The characters that contrast are Vida and Greer. Vida hates just about everything that Greer is, and she seems to make that very evident. The ones that compare are Jane and Regina. Both of them really want to take care of the children, and they are willing to do almost anything for them.

H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells is a rather interesting person. Why? Well, if you've ever read The Time Machine or The Invisible Man or even War Of the Worlds, you would know why. To me, his novels are some of the best science fiction that I've ever read. They have different ways of envisioning future times and things, such as how an invisible man would go about life. While I found The Invisible Man to be rather dull compared to his other works, The Time Machine is most likely his best (at least in my opinion). It was an interesting novel because it gave the opposite of what we perceive to be the world of the future. Instead of all of the large buildings with advanced technology and hover cars, he decided to make it so the world more of downgraded in intellect and advancements. Instead of the perfect utopia, he created a world where the peaceful people on the surface were terrified of those below. Interesting side fact: H.G. Wells was actually the one who created the phrase "time machine."

Other reasons why he's amazing are some quotes by him. His last words were "Go away, I feel fine." The suggestion he gave for his epitaph was "I told you so, you damned fools." How can you argue that he's not great if he's said things like that?

Betsey Brown

Well, let's begin by saying that so far it's rather... odd. The grammar annoys me a lot, and it annoys me with how much they don't say words correctly. I find it hard to read books like this, just because I get rather mad at the fact that the writer decided they wouldn't have characters pronounce correctly. It makes the book troublesome to read, and on some rare occasions it makes it so the reader doesn't know what someone is trying to say. I would somewhat understand it if the story was told from first person point of view, but it would still annoy me. But from third person point of view? So far I predict that I will not enjoy this book nearly as much as the others we've had to read for this class, and I'm doubting that I'll like it at all. Hopefully it's not as bad as  The Poisonwood Bible or A Farewell To Arms or a book by Bukowski.

The Good Thief

I found this book to be rather good. I'm currently trying to get my brother to read this book, along with several others. I constantly tell him that it's because its a book about a child who is missing a hand that is adopted by a group of grave robbers, and where can you go wrong with that?
I liked the characters in the book. My favorite character is Dolly, the giant murderer. When he was described it constantly reminded me of The Somnambulist, from The Somnambulist. Both Dolly and The Somnambulist were men of giant physique, and I enjoyed making comparisons between them. Also, I liked how Dolly supported Ren as much as he did. He only listened to Ren, and nobody else could tell him what to do.
Benjamin was also an interesting character. I always find it interesting when there is a character in a novel that has committed as many crimes as he has and somehow managed to get away with them. His wanted poster had such a long stream of crimes on it that it made him seem like some super villain from a comic book.
The book was very intriguing. There were many plot twists and I found it hard to predict some things, like McGinty being the one who had taken Ren's hand from him, and how Ren was actually his father. The book flowed well and I found it hard to stop reading, so I would often find myself reading a chapter or two extra, then noticing that the clock said it was later than I thought it was, so I would force myself to put down the book so that I could get a good amount of rest.
I liked the title of the book for one reason: the day before I found out from the interview that it was named after something from the bible, my mother had asked me how a thief is good. She is a super Christian, so I was surprised that she didn't understand it. I found it to be very humorous that she didn't know it and I did.

Haiku

first moon
a  flower lies
cut at the bud

first moon
the haunting shadow
grasps the streetlight

early summer
the windmill's' shadow
disturbs the birds

summer morning
the Black Witch
lands on the crops

tranquil night
on my finger
lands the Black Witch

Haiku Guy

Truthfully, Haiku Guy was pretty good. It was a lot like a book I read previously this year, Portrait Of An Artist, As An Old Man by Joseph Heller. In both books, the main character is striving to become great writers. Except in the case of Haiku Guy, the writer cannot write well at the beginning, but he generally starts to be able to write haiku. In the latter book, the writer can already write. He mainly tries to go and create one final, brilliant book before he dies. I relatively enjoyed the characters in Haiku Guy. It was interesting how Master Cup-Of-Tea was never straight-forward with his lessons, but instead he hid them within haiku. As for Kuro, he was probably my least favorite character. He was always talking about death and despair, and how nothing that anyone did actually mattered. He was such a gloomy person, and I don't exactly like reading about gloomy characters like that in books. I didn't really care much for the way that the writer of the book made it so Buck-Teeth was in the current era, though. It just seemed rather pointless, and I think that could have been removed. The part with the friends of the author going into Buck-Teeth's era should remain, though. Throughout the book his friend's played a rather major role in Buck-Teeth's development, and to remove them would be to remove an important aspect of the book. But the way he kept on talking of how they were people there from future eras, and how they were not of Buck-Teeth's time seemed to ruin it somewhat. It just seemed rather pointless to talk about how Buck-Teeth could never get the girl because she's from the 21st century.

Overall, I would recommend this to a friend. It was rather interesting of a concept, with the main character being a person who wants to write. While at a couple of moments it may have been dull, it redeemed itself with the next section or two before falling into another dull area, for however brief it did. It was a good read and it kept me interested, except for those previously mentioned moments of dullness.

RSA Animate

Yes, what I do when I can get on the computer is searching videos like this. I find them off of a website called wimp.com sometimes, and then i post them onto facebook or link someone to them. What are they? They're someone making speeches at least ten times more interesting and comprehensible. Sometimes people don't really pay attention to the speech, and they will sit for a long period of time and not understand what was just stated. But the people who make these videos make the speeches actually interesting to watch. They go to a white board and draw the images, then speed them up to go along with the speech. It must take an amazingly long time and it must be very challenging to do. I've watched several of these, and each of them have managed to hold my interest. They are, for me at least, one of the best things you can find via youtube. Most people probably don't share this view with me, because I am one of those people who spend my time reading books, some of which are political books. I also take joy in learning about things that have to do with politics or any interesting fact I can find about life. Therefore, I often find myself watching these videos. I hope you enjoy them as well.

Right Wing Donald Duck

My sister showed me this a long while ago, and I find it to be just amazing. I don't completely understand my urge to watch this, or even why I enjoy it so much. It probably has something to do with the fact that it makes fun of Glenn Beck. If you know who Glenn Beck is, it's just a great video. If you don't know who Glenn Beck is, then it's not as interesting as it could be. In short, let's just say that he's a really intense guy that makes people pay money for advice, and when he does he just tells them that they're being too lazy and they need a job. I'm posting this so that other people can see this, laugh at Glenn Beck, and then maybe, just maybe, become more interested in learning about politics and possibly even get more interested in learning about people like this. Also, so that I can state this: Glenn Beck is, in fact, a complete idiot.

History Of The Soviet Union

History Of The Soviet Union to the theme of Tetris. It's awesome.

A Rant

I've recently come to see that I am no longer entitled to hold my own opinion. I can't state that, no, I do not like the Harry Potter series without people trying to change my views, and having them also state how wrong I am. I cannot state that I dislike Linkin Park without people getting angry (even though most of the times that I say it to Jack and Evan I'm aiming to get them angry). I can't stand out in the open and talk of how I do not support the communists, democrats, republicans, or whatever someone's political preferences may be. I can't state that I enjoy ska more than Lady Gaga, Kanye West, or whatever the hell the current fad is. I say that because no matter what the fad is, it is probably bad, as I've seen according to the music that people have come to like. I don't understand it. Why am I one of the people not entitled to opinions? Why do people have the strive to make it seem that they are right and that the other person is always wrong? Why can't people just let others watch, read, and listen to what they want? This is one of the reason I'm misanthropic. We've come to a point where we want to force our beliefs on everybody else. We want everyone to be just like us. We can now be almost completely compared to earlier peoples, who forced you to convert to their religion or they would kill you. We are becoming like the people in the Salem witch trials, who burnt people because they feared their ideas were different. Soon we'll be like the "blond beast." It should be easy to see the reference to the person in that one, and it should also be easy enough to see where I'm going with this. Human nature sucks, because we have the want to control everything. There can't be anything that goes against our ideas, or anything that seems even slightly alien to us. We can't accept anything. What is the world coming to?

Ten Questions

1) What is your favorite book and why is it your favorite?
2) If there is any purpose to life other than living and dying, what is it?
3) What are your political views? Why?
4) If you were in court for something that you did do that held a penalty of seven years in prison and you knew you could get out of the penalty by lying, would you lie? Why or why not?
5) What is your favorite genre of music? What three bands are your favorites of that genre?
6) What major would you like to pursue in college and why?
7) What do you think would be an interesting way to die?
8) Do you believe the world is headed for ruin? Why or why not?
9) Does the world seem to have a sense of banality throughout history? Explain.
10) If put in a position of power, do you believe you would lose control and become corrupted? Why or why not?

Streetlight Manifesto Concert

So last night my sister brought me to a Streetlight Manifesto concert as an early birthday present. It was so amazingly awesome. Three bands played before Streetlight Manifesto were Lionize, Loss For Words, and Terrible Things. The second band caused a small mosh pit to happen, which I just so happened to be stuck in the middle of. As soon as Streetlight Manifesto got on, everyone rushed forward. I was plastered to one of my sister's friends for about a song and a half, barely able to breathe and sort of freaking out. I then started to get pushed around in random spots, generally moving away from the area I was at for the first three bands. At one point I fell, with two other people falling on top of me. Trust me, falling while in a mosh pit is not pleasant. I couldn't get up, and the two people needed to be picked up before someone eventually reached down and helped me up. When I finally got off the ground, I started to get moved backwards in the crowd. I got pushed to the outside of the mosh pit, to a spot where I could finally try to sing and enjoy the music without fearing that I'd die. When the concert ended I was extremely tired, but I found it fun. For taking me to the concert, my sister is the best sister ever.

In Ten Years

In ten years, technology is going to be very advanced. The computer isn't really all that new, and it has already gotten this advanced. Therefore, there will probably be advancements in certain areas that the general populace is interested in. Advancements can only happen when people are supporting them, so with the support needed a certain concept can grow and thrive. There will most likely be more brands of iPods, seeming as how Apple comes out with a new one almost every few months. All that will be required for new iPods are different looks and a few new features, and then everybody will want one. It's always nice to have something that someone else doesn't, because it makes you feel like you are above others. Nano-technology is probably far off from being perfect, though. I don't foresee that becoming very advanced within the next couple of years. There is research going into it and people are working on the idea, but it's still in a sort of primitive stage. It would be very challenging for them to manage to create something so small that it could be transported through your veins as easily as blood in only ten years. Of course, the cell phone industry won't be left behind in the technological revolution. They always need to release new ones, just like the iPod. Except with cell phones there are more companies than just one releasing them and they are in a constant race to beat the other competitors. We already have touch-screen phones, so I don't exactly know where the companies can go from where they already are. Possibly a little chip in the mind, just like in Feed, except it would take very long to actually improve it so that it wouldn't kill the person that had it placed in. And in terms of music, I don't have much of an idea where we're going.   We've changed our musical taste so much over the past one-hundred years. It went from using guitars and drums and basses all the way to using purely electronic music. If I were to have children, they would probably look down on musical taste of ska, because it would be so odd to them. There will also probably be new forms of warfare. There used to be those fancy lines used to shoot the enemy, which then gradually went to guerilla warfare. With the development of new weapons there will be new ways to get rid of the other side. Psychological warfare would probably be more creative, and if the enemy didn't give in to psychological warfare we could just go in and wipe them out. That is, if they didn't have the same weapons we had. But with the creation of new weapons, there would be more threats from other nations, and thus there would probably be World War III. Probably not in the next ten years, but most likely much beyond then. Also, I'm looking forward to the literature. With every new couple of years comes many good books, but there are also the rather bad ones that need to be weeded out. There will always be overrated ones such as Twilight, and hidden deep below the bad ones are bound to be good ones, such as Everything Is Illuminated and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Movies will change too. Earlier movies were a lot more calm, with less violence and action. But as time went on we got more focused on creating movies with as much action as could be fit into a two-hour span, sometimes neglecting the plot line just to get in some good visuals and some good action. We're just like that with video games in that manner. Earlier games, such as Tetris and Snake (probably the best two classic games to ever be created),  were much more mellow than the ones we have out now. Now we focus mostly on creating shooting games, or games where you can go out and slay monsters. I used to buy games mostly for the single-player, seeming as how multi-player wasn't exactly so great back then, and I would play the game for weeks, re-playing it on a harder difficulty each time. Now I buy games not only for the single-player, which I now only play through once, but I mainly get them for the multi-player. I somehow enjoy pretending that I'm a soldier, running around in a fake battlefield and shooting other people pretending to be soldiers. Somehow the seed of violent gaming has gone and been sown deep down into my mind, making it so when i start up a shooter game I get so concentrated on it that hours can pass very quickly, with my mind trying to figure out as many strategies as possible with my mind trying to figure out physics so that I can get that one guy around the corner, who when he goes down will just come back as some other person with the same name and same stuff by some miracle. I often find myself wondering how I can enjoy running around and fake killing people for hours on end, some times in the exact same way as several other people. Now the video games will be more violent in ten years with people loving the blood and gore, which I personally cannot stand. There are going to be more realistic war games, where people will be killing others but not actually feeling the fear of actual death or the stress that war can put you through. And the world has already gotten to such a point that many people don't have any respect for authority or the strive to learn something or the want to become specialized in some sort of trade so that their life won't suck in the future. All they do is talk and get really annoying in classes, not paying the attention needed to the actual class and what they could be learning. Then they go and blame the teacher for not teaching them what needed, when the students themselves weren't actually paying attention. In ten years, that'll probably be a worse problem than it is currently.

So all in all, there might be a few good advancements and a few bad advancements. But from my point of view I see that we are gradually heading on a downward slope to an unescapable pit commonly referred to as demise. I pray we can save ourselves.

Catch-22

Catch-22 was an amazing book. It is by far my favorite book that I have ever read. It took me a while to read it, because I kept having to stop because I had things I needed to do, but after a few weeks I finally got the chance to read it.
It was just an absolutely brilliant book. It was humorous, and had characters that were amazing. I liked the whole concept of Milo Mindbender and his company. Everyone had a share. But no one could collect, because what was best for the company was best for the members.
The way the plot moved along was perfect, and the dialogue was interesting as well. I didn't completely see the ending coming, but I thought that the ending would come in a relatively different manner.
Overall, it was a really good book. It was a mix of war novel and comedy, which I haven't really seen before. It was a new experience for me to read a novel like that, and I loved it. A lot.

When Joseph Heller was asked why he hasn't written anything better than Catch-22, he always wanted to reply, "Who has?" Truthfully, who has?

Picture Prompt

Everything was gone. People and buildings that used to be are now no more. Those that are still here... well, they can't exactly be called "human" anymore.

It all started about a year ago. Everyone was talking about how it was a miracle that the government found out a cure to the common cold. But there were those of us that were wary of this new god-sent cure, and for good reason.
             The few of us that refused it, the ones that were soon called heretics, believed that it was too good to be true. We already had the cure for many types of disease, but trying to cure just a minor cold that could be overcome in a few days was just outrageous. We weren't God, so we didn't have a reason to try and be perfect. We were afraid if we tried too hard we would ruin ourselves. Sadly, we were right.
               Around a month and two weeks after the new "miracle-cure" was released to the public, almost everyone had taken it. Those who hadn't were too far away from society to have access to is, and the others were the heretics.
               It turns out that the cure was actually a virus. At first the virus was hidden inside of the cure, and it was only slightly visible to scientists, so they overlooked it. But that turned out to be a grave mistake.
               About ninety-eight percentage of the population was now sick. They were slowly dying, from something much worse than the common cold. It took about another month for those that were sick to finally drop dead. At least, that was what we believed for the next three months.
               We had created a small civilization, where we had running water and crops. We were happy and content with ourselves. Out of all of the prier population, we were the smartest for not taking the cure. We thought we'd live on like that forever. But everything changes eventually.
               One day they sent me out to scavenge anything that needed to be scavenged. I was supposed to look for anything we could use, whether it was scrap metal, extra gas, or possibly some tools. I was given the van I used every time, with my name painted along the sides in big, red letters, reading: PAUL MORRISON.

Hello

Well then. Hi. This is Niflheim, a blog I created for the sole purpose of writing. What does Niflheim mean? Well, in Norse mythology it is the world of ice.

So I plan to write on this when needed or when I feel the sudden urge to, and hopefully at least half of the things I write will turn out to be at least decent. Sadly, I am prone to feel the concept of writer's block coming over me and if I write anything during these moments, it will turn out bad. Banality may exist in my stories, but it should be ignored. Also, this blog will possibly become some sort of archive for ska music.

Now, about me. I'm more of a recluse, and my social life is not very great. I'm relatively socially awkward. Mostly I read, swim, write, and listen to ska. It might seem pretty dull, but it isn't really all that bad. That is if the books are good. That makes it so if anyone needs a good book to read and they can't think of anyone else to ask, they can head over to me.

Well, that's pretty much all. Here's the blog and all, and I'll put up some music a little later.