Life of Squatch

Book Review : A Wrinkle in Time

2009-06-09T12:07:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: a wrinkle in time,book,review

This is definitely one of those classics that needs to be read by everyone, a book that should be (and usually is, in most proficient schools) required to be read by the age of 15. It’s fantastic, there isn’t much else to say. But back to my previous comment about reading it by the age of 15, that is where I have one of my only complaints, and I’ll get that out of the way quickly…

I guess I just had my expectations wrong from the beginning, and in a way I was let down. It’s not the books fault, it’s mine. I have this terrible pet peeve, I hate knowing any details about a book/movie/comic/game before I’ve actually experienced it myself. Sometimes I actually avoid trailers to movies online so that I don’t know any real details about it. I’m not talking about the regular trailers you see in theaters, I mean the prolific amount of detail trailers you find on YouTube, rottentomatoes, and other sites. It seems that Transformers has about 150+ different trailers about each individual aspect of the movie, and I swear sometimes that if you ran all the trailers in a row you would already be watching the movie. I hate that. I want to see it for myself, in all it’s glory, without already knowing that so-and-so dies, or that this character shows up, or what new item/weapon/vehicle is going to be the next thing to rave about. It spoils it.

Boy do I like to ramble…

My point being, I’ve heard too much about the book before actually experiencing it. Everyone that I’ve talked to about it in passing conversation has given me their opinion on it, and everyone so far has claimed it as a triumphant masterpiece. I even had one person tell me it was very similar to one of my favorite books of all time, The Giver. So I went diving into this book with all the wrong anticipations. My sole complaint is that it wasn’t what I expected, a flaw that doesn’t lie within the book or author itself, but within the eye of this pathetic reader.

Other than that, the book was definitely as good as most people say it was. If I would have written this analysis before reading the last 20 pages though, I would have only said it was a decent piece of literature. The book is very plain, very simple. It’s written for a younger audience, a thing I’ve expressed before with a slight bit of agitation. Not annoyance because it IS meant for young adults, but because I’ve had so many books lately in that same classification. That’s what I should expect though when reading through Newberry books, an award given to children’s books. Anyway, I digress. My only problem was my view of the book going in.

Now, the strengths of the book are everywhere, from solid writing technique to believable characters to emotional attachment. The story is based on a science platform that’s just real enough to wrap your mind around, and has just enough fantasy in it to open your imagination to the impossible. I usually enjoy stories that explain how their processes work in absolute detail, to see if they are fabricating their components to move the story along, or if they are applying a high degree of facts and knowledge to explore a new approach to their philosophy. This time around though I did thoroughly enjoy sitting back and just accepting the wild notions. The author has such a creative way of writing that you don’t worry about the details, you don’t stress if what’s happening could potentially work in our reality. Rather, you wonder about the characters, you worry about their outcome, and you cheer and cry at their successes and downfalls.

Before I mentioned that the last 20 pages or so reformed my opinion of the book. This isn’t to say that the rest of it was terrible, it was just such a huge mountain to climb to reach the climax. You had to invest yourself fully into the characters, and that took most of the book to do. When I finally put the book down, I couldn’t stand that there wasn’t more, that I couldn’t follow my newfound friends into the captivating lives that they had created for themselves.

Without pause I would recommend this book to anyone out there with an ounce of adoration for literature, and even to those who merely like to read for the fun of it. It’s light and buoyant as well as deep and meaningful. A Wrinkle in Time is definitely a book to add to your collection, if it’s not already there (which it should be).

If I had to give a rating to the book… 8/10.

On a side note, I found out that there are 3 other books in the loose series. They don’t really tie into each other, but they contain some of the same characters and follow a similar theme, and I’m really excited to pick up where I left off.

RANDOM.

2009-05-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

I dislike kelly green. It looks like a bad baby turd.
As much as I love my work, I wish I could move around more. Sitting in a chair all day is murder on my back.
Star Trek was phenomenal. Being such a die hard Trekkie just makes it all the better for me.
We got new post-its with our logo and picture on it. Nice.
The post it's came with an ugly terribly shaped pen. Not nice.
My phone sucks. I can't wait to get a new one, I'm hoping for a really well-designed smartphone.
My girlfriend is ultra-cute, and so is my kami dog.
I wish I could bike around more often, I feel bad leaving such a huge carbon footprint all the time.
Does anyone ever wish a sack of cash would drop from the sky, and possibly maim your arch-enemy? Seems like a dream come true for me.
I never knew that the 225 was 180 degrees from 45.
I need to get better at pool.
The finale of Lost was pretty incredible the other night, I'm not going to lie about that. Fantastic.
Boy do I wish I could go home now.

Books!

2009-04-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

So, I love books.
That's pretty much it. I couldn't imagine a life without endless seeds of knowledge passed on to countless minds through written word. It's an incredible feeling when you look at the overall picture and realize that this story you've been reading, this tale that's captured your heart and mind, was woven into these pages by the complex mind of another human being. Nothing extraordinary, nothing supernatural, just a person sitting down and pouring his thoughts into some paper.
Now, I've read a decent amount of literature. I haven't read as much as I would like to, not even close, and I feel like there are so many classics out there that I've been missing, but I would like to jot down some of my favorites. Maybe a small reason as to why I enjoy them so much too.
Actually scratch that. I have this ridiculous goal that I set my mind to awhile ago. I want to read through some of my favorite series again, now that they've all released new books in the series. The Wheel of Time has released 2 more books, and I feel that the only way to fully capture their brilliance would be to start from book 1 and go all the way through again. The Dune series has fiinished releasing all the prequels, and I've only read half of them. I think it would be interesting to start off by reading all the prequels, then the master series, then finish with the final 3 books that are being released right now. There are a couple other series that I want to finish similarly, but those two are my primary concern.
I guess this list is mainly going to be my little thoughts on books that I'm reading right now that I have finished.

BOOK LIST:
The Giver: (Newberry List)
One of my favorite books of all time. I love the idea of a Utopian society, and all the little quirks it would entail. I especially love analyzing the flaws in it, and seeing how a perfect society full of imperfect beings will always fail. You can't inject a virus into a sterilized room and expect everything to stay clean. A funny observation; I've been heavily reading into every "green" method and instrument our governments are developing right now, and they all look like they could be implemented to create a scenario exactly like this book. Disturbing.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh: (Newberry List)
Another great childhood book that I revisited because it was on our Newberry List. If I haven't mentioned it yet, Melanie and I are going through the entire list if we can. All these books have made it onto the list because they were masterpieces, and so far I haven't seen anything to disprove that. Anyway, I love this book mostly because of the layers it has. The first and foremost layer is the basic story; this is a story of a mouse that needs help and finds it in a very unlikely source. But there is so much more to it than that, so many more layers to dive into. I believe the author was trying to humanize the rats as much as possible, painting a vivid picture of society and it's pitfalls, our natural want to throw off our technological shackles, and our stubborn denial that it needs to happen. There's so much more to it... maybe I'll go into it more later in a fully separate post.

The Midwife's Apprentice: (Newberry List)
This book was incredibly short, you could read it in a day if you tried. But what was contained in that short amount of space was a story that melted your heart. The desparation of this poor street urchin and her will to survive, her struggle to be accepted, and her deep sense of caring make you want to reach into the book and hug her. The narrative is written in a very plain speech, but it easily conveys how horrible and greedy people with status can be, and how sometimes the most noble of characters can be the loweliest of them all.

I have a couple more, but I think my hands are about to fall off. I'll post them later.

2009-04-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't done this in awhile, I've been so busy lately. I feel like I lost my balance. It's so very odd how much I come to depend on a good outlet to release my thoughts and ambitions. Luckily it's a good dependence that requires very little maintenance.
Ugh. My writing style is horrible right now. I have so many other journals that display a much more sophisticated writing technique that when I begin to write down my thoughts in such a mundane style it starts to aggravate me.
I blame it on books.
My girlfriend and I are reading through the entire selection of Newberry Award books right now, and while they might be incredibly emotionally moving and incredibly thought provoking, I do have to point out that these are books aimed at a younger audience. While you might find a passage so powerful that it could easily make you cry or throw the novel in anger, you won't find many words that you have to go sifting through the dictionary to understand.
Now I don't want to come off sounding like I despise these books, it's actually quite the opposite. Since I started reading these books I've fallen in love with most of them, and would easily recommend nearly every single one to any of my friends and family.
I'm just so used to books that challenge my deep understanding of diction, or force me to carry a thesarus and dictionary at all times to make sure I can keep up with their complex adjectives. I miss that.
What a stupid rant. Someone punch me.

Jay's Reviews : MK vs. DC

2009-03-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

I love video games. That'sEdit pretty much all I'll say, because that's all that I can say. Nothing can mend my broken day like sitting down and enjoying a fictional world tailored just for me. Sometimes these games are incredible, sometimes they aren't. I've spent too many hours of my life sitting down with people and discussing them, picking apart the details of each and every single cutscene and character. Games have come a LONG way from their ancient predecessors, the old-school side-scrollers of the past, where the only real objective was trying to beat the top score, usually that elusive mr. AAA.
Games now have actual directors, production crews, and sound technitians. Some games have a higher budget than movies do nowadays, and actually bring in more money and have a larger audience than some of the major blockbusters you may see this summer in theaters. Take Halo for example, or Grand Theft Auto. These games set record sales that daunted even the largest movies of that year. Nearly every person you talk to has either played or has seen one of these games played.
Games aren't small fetishes for nerds to drool over anymore, they are dominating goliaths of art and style that demand and recieve incredible amounts of attention from every age group.
That being said, not every game is a work of art. On the contrary, many games out there are terrible imitations of their higher class bretheren, trying to leach off of their success and power.
Ah...I'll stop preaching. Basically I was just setting a premise for what I want to do now. I now have Gamefly, which is an online service akin to Netflix, sending me new games whenever I send them the old ones back. Since I'm going to be playing and judging many games, I wanted to talk about what I thought about the game, rather than rehashing it out constantly with all my friends. Not that anyone really cares what I truthfully think of the game, but I like analyzing them myself either way.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
I never thought I'd see the day when these two labels would unite. Some of the greatest superheros ever assembled battling it out against the more notorious fighting game to ever grace a console. It's a match made in heaven, in theory, but does it come out the same way on disc?
The Story Mode isn't something new to MK, and obviously nothing new to a universe of comic book characters who are solely based on story. It's a good story, and probably the only way they could accomplish it with such incredibly different universes. Basically, the two worlds that these respective character groups come from are merging, and it's up to you to choose a side and fight for seperating the two worlds. There is no character depth whatsoever, with the scenes basically just consisting of the characters taking for 5 seconds and then fighting. Their reasons for fighting is constantly laughable, but what else can you expect from a fighting game? You can't really expect there to be an incredible amount of depth when the entire purpose of the game is to fight against every single other person in the game, including those on your side. To close up the massive plot hole of why everyone is fighting against even their own members, the game implimented an odd sickness called "rage" that randomly affects your characters. You might be Sonya Blade talking to her best buddy Jax, when all of a sudden he gets "The Rage" and wants to rip your puny little head from your neck.
FIGHT!
So yeah, playing through Story Mode is pretty hilarious, just because of the absolute absurdity of it. I still give it a pass though, just because there aren't many ways to improve upon such an unlikely clash of titans.
The graphics are unfortunately pretty horific. I've seen good games on the 360, games that make you question whether the scenes were made with CGI or live action sequences. This is definitely not one of those games. Mortal Kombat has ventured toward the surreal cartoony type of animation for their characters in the last 3 installments. They look real enough, but they always have that certain quality that makes you know they're not real, makes you think that your definitely controlling a game instead of imersing you in a vivid reality. It's always been a nice reprieve from the very realistic fighters like Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive. But still, they could have done better. You can easily see the pixilation in the cutscenes, and they costumes and skin is just a layer draped over a wireframe, and it's VERY noticible. They didn't even take the time to separate the players skin from the suits, and if you look at it for a couple seconds you can see how it just blends from one to the other. The talking is horrendous. The mouths are very jagged and edgy, and they don't sync up at all with the dialog. Unfortunately the graphics are a sad blemish on what could have been a easily decent looking game.
The voices. Oh, the voices. I don't even want to remember how bad the dialog was, and how terrible the voices were for the characters. Liu Kang is a pansy, Jax is way overplayed as the token tough black man, and the girls all sound like they should be doing Wendy's commercials. Common phrases sound just like this; "I don't like the way you look, so I'm going to make you stop!"
Enough said.
The best part about this game is the part that has nothing to do with the rest of what I've been talking about. The fighting. It's classsic MK action, and that is a beautiful thing. If you've ever played a good MK game before, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's very simple, not complicated in the least like Soul Calibur, and doesn't require you to push buttons at exactly the right moment like DoA. You can easily sit there and button mash and have the same great experience as the guy next to you playing with every move he's memorized and practiced. The fighting looks real, it feels real, and boy do I wish it WAS real! Playing that game makes you want to go out and yell "Get over here!" to every passerby that you see.
I'm already designing my Scorpion costume...
The novelty of the game is by far the best point, besides the actual fighting itself. Being able to play as Batman and whoop on Jax's ass is something that no person should ever miss. Everyone should be able to electrocute the Joker with Raiden's sky bolts.
I love the game. Besides the laughable story mode and the gut wrenching graphics and voices, it's a game that I could play daily and never tire from.
IGN Score : 7.5/10
Jay's Score : 7/10

2009-03-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

What is it with the common English language that so many people fail to understand? Once you know it, it really isn't that hard to use properly, yet I find that SO many people have problems with even the simplest grammar.
I have a coworker who constantly drives me up a wall. He's a great guy, and has one of the biggest and most caring hearts of anyone that I know, but his IQ is usually beaten by the common sea turtle.
Carhart wearing, gun-toting, rabbit skinning, roadkill eating, deer hunting, kinda guy. Now remove all the G's from those descriptions and you're getting a bit closer to my personal hell. Not only is it bad enough to hear how to skin a rabbit 10 different ways, or how he bets that bird or that dog over there is probably "good eatin'," but his sentence structure and overall grammar is terrible.
PRONOUNS. UGH. That is by far my greatest annoyance, and the seed of my animosity to this coworker. Them, There, and this.
"I saw them there canvas the other day," "You gunna eat them fries in that there soup?"
DAMMIT! I can't even think properly when I have to consistently reprocess what he's saying and convert his subpar congealed mass of inadequacy into some form of intelligence.
Rant.
I seem to do that a lot... I'll be upset by something and suddenly explode, like a tinder thrown to a dry bale of hay. I guess I'm so predictible in my mannerisms that my best friend, Jake, has his own little phrase for it.
"Jay's getting ridiculous!"
Yeah, thanks man. I KNOW I'M RIDICULOUS. I never let things out in the ways I should. My brain only has 2 options when conflict comes about, a fight or flight method, as all mammals of basic instict have. My fight is confronting the person directly, which would usually lead to a conflict that need never happen. The flight would be venting to someone else, letting out the steam slowly, and eventually calming down about the whole situation.
For example, I have 2 roommates, both of whom are incredibly tough to live with at times. I constantly vent to one roommate about the other, letting out my frustrations and easing my tensions. Does this mean that I don't care about that roommate, or that I highly dislike them? NO! I have an incredible amount of respect and adoration for both of them, and I consider them to be great friends of mine. One of them I'd even consider being one of my closest friends, yet I complain about him just as much. It's not because I have any pent-up hatred for them, I just would rather complain to someone and let out my anger rather than release it upon them. In this way I can easily walk up to them and chat the night away without any frustration, because I've already emptied that vessel along the way via someone else's ear.
Rant.
I do this very often...it's probably a good thing I started blogging a lot more.

2009-03-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

I am SO excited. My ultimate workout program, P90X, just came in the mail, and I've been studying it avidly. It comes with multiple books on how the program is run, why it works, and how it should be used properly for best effect. My favorite books so far is the nutrition book that it comes with, a valuable piece of literature that I am constantly re-reading in search for more interesting facts.
I've never been excited about changing my diet, but this book has really inspired me. It's not about cutting down on foods, or starving yourself from certain types of foods (low-carb, no sugar), but rather it just tells you how to eat smarter. Rather than using fatty oils for cooking, try some red wine or extra virgin instead to cut out 300 calories. Instead of eating a baked potato with this, try that instead. Very helpful, and it breaks down every food and snack into groups designed for your body to consume them at the best times and best ways.
Jake and Sara have been using it for awhile now, and they've been really happy with it. I can't wait to try it out myself!
I'm going to wait a couple weeks to start though. I have NO money whatsoever right now, due to my bills all piling up on the wrong days. So my plan is to wait till I have my full paycheck to play with in 2 weeks, then go buy some of the essentials that I need. So far I'm going to build some of the equipment, but things like the heart rate monitor and fat caliper (or whatever it's called) I can't really reproduce, so I'm going to go out on a binge and buy everything I need, including restocking my fridge with healthy stuff and really good supliments, so that when I start, I can start the right way.

YAY!

2009-03-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

I love dogs. There is no other phrase that could possibly encompass the adoration I have for these animals. Loyal, moody, loving, energetic... to me they really are little people in furry bodies.
I have a puppy right now, a beautiful ball of yellow fur. Well maybe I shouldn't really call her a puppy...she's about 1½ years old now. I guess that almost makes her an adult. She has her buddies, her other dog companions, one of them actually lives with her, albeit temporarily. What I want though is another puppy, one that she can grow up with, no matter her locale. I've been highly motivated to get a Siberian Husky, and after all my research I've come to the conclusion that this is truly what I want.

How can you not love a face like that? They look like miniature bears!

So yes, I really want one, and I will get one soon. When I say soon I mean within the next year or so...I'm hoping it'll be my little Christmas present to myself. ;-)