Book Review: 1984

George Orwell's 1984 amazed me with the style of writing and Orwell's concept of a future dystopia.

1984 is told through a third person point of view, with a little twist. Most of the actions throughout the story are told in the normal third person view, or the one most people are used to. The twist comes when the reader sees and hears into the mind of the main character, Winston. In the world of 1984, fear is the main way that the government controls its members. This is known better when you see into Winston's mind and can feel his fear. Winston's fear cuts deeper when he is faced with death and his most feared figure in his life.

Even though the year 1984 has passed, George Orwell's concept of a future dystopia seems to grow ever more possible in our world. Orwell's dystopian government is ruled by fear, torture, false accusations, self-destruction, lies, oppression, poverty, deception, and a form of mass hypnosis. If someone were to compare what seems to be our government's direction that we're beginning to take, they could begin to pick out some similarities. The government of 1984 is one of blind devotion and the consequence for being too smart or mutinous is simply death.

I would recommend 1984 to anyone who like an "Alternate Future" kind of book. The story does get more and more depressing the more one thinks about the subject though. The government of 1984 may seem closer than someone may think.

Book Review: Julius Caesar

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar challenged me with its moderately complex text and kept my thoughts of irrational behavior in check with the results of the actions taken.

Julius Caesar was written in the year 1599 by William Shakespeare. Since this novel was written a little over 400 years ago, finding the text complex in our time is easily understood. However, attempting to just read through the novel without looking at the side notes can make someone misunderstand the plot or get lost in translation. The side notes (or foot notes, I'm not really sure which one is the correct term because the notes are on the page next to the play's text but that's just me rambling) help immensely in understanding what is happening in the play and give a little insight as to what people of the time referred to. Reading the side notes is a trade off between understanding the story and the time needed to read the novel though I prefer to understand what I'm reading.

The decision to kill Caesar is justified by Brutus to be for the good of the people and is made in haste. This irrational decision has both its short and long term results on the conspirators and all the people of Rome. At first, the conspirators celebrated the assassination of Caesar in seeing that his death was the end of the beginning of an empire. In the long run, the conspirators must face the consequences for their irrational behavior. These actions and consequences in the novel make me question my own thoughts when I think irrationally and help me to think more clearly. Even though the gravity of the situation in the novel and in my own mind are quite different, I still find the story to teach me of my own behavior and its consequences.

Julius Caesar is a very good novel, despite its age and somewhat alien references. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the times of Julius Caesar or his assassination. I would recommend this book only if one is willing to read the side notes though, because the dialogue makes much more sense with them.

What Makes a Leader a True Leader?

     You may know many leaders, from the ones known by everyone to the ones only you know of.  The question is, what makes a leader a true leader?  This subject is easily debatable so keep in mind that this is my opinion and yours may differ, and that's fine.  One of the first characteristics of a leader that comes into my mind is charisma.  Dictionary.com defines charisma as "a spiritual power or personal quality that gives and individual an influence or authority over large numbers of people".  Being a natural leader helps in many ways.  Another characteristic of a true leader, I think, is being willing to lead in your endeavors.  A leader sitting in the rear of the action isn't really a true leader if he doesn't stand up himself for what he wants is he?  A true leader must inspire the people he leads, if he doesn't, the people he leads are just blind followers.

           -This blog post is for a class I barely care for at the moment, so it isn't the best I can muster

Shared Book Review: The Lovely Bones

(This is a very rough draft, so there is much editing to be done)

(Also, there is mention of violence, murder, rape, and spoilers in this review, so you are forewarned)

(This book also contains adult situations, language, and other situations everyone might not enjoy reading about)

The book is called The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. The main character in this book is Susie Salmon who was murdered on December 6, 1973. She was 14 years old. She was coming home from school when a neighbor asked her if she wanted to see what he built in his cornfield. She thought it would be ok because she had seen her Dad talking to him before. He had built an underground bunker of sorts. When she goes down there, she doesn't feel easy but he was showing her. He rapes her and cuts her in pieces. He puts her in a cloth bag and takes her mutilated body back to his house. When she dies she feels her spirit rising up to Heaven, but on her way, she accidentally touched a girl that was near the school, who's name is Routh. She realizes that she is in Heaven, but then realizes that's the in-between. She meets people there that she doesn't actually know and remembers a gazebo a neighbor had built and wishes for a gazebo in her world. Everyday, she looks over the edge of the gazebo and watches her family below and tries to contact them. The family soon realizes that the girl is missing and another neighbor's dog finds her elbow which leads to finding very much blood in the corn field where she was murdered. Since there is no solid evidence, the police cannot do anything to help. Each member of the family takes the murder differently. The father tries to find the murderer and such... Susie watches over her family from her Heaven and also keeps an eye on her murderer and learns that she is not the only one that he's murdered. Susie's sister, Lindsey, talks about going into the suspected murderer's house and tries to find anything that will help with the murder of her sister. She kicks out the basement window and sees a sketch book of houses and beams and such. She sees the picture of the underground hideout in the cornstalk field. She doesn't hear him coming home, she tears out the piece of paper and manages to get out through the window. The neighbor remembers Lindsie's jacket number and calls the cops on her, but acts calm. Later, he packs up and leaves without a trace. About ten years later, her sister Lindsie comes home when her father has a stroke. Routh, an unpopular artist, touched Susie's spirit as she went to heaven and finds that she can see dead people and understand their death. She kept books of Susie's death. One day Routh gets a letter from her Dad that there is a sinkhole and they decide to check it out. Mr. Harvey, Susie's murderer, travels around undercover to stay under the radar. He gained a lust for killing from a young age and tries to curb his appetite but he soon gets too hungry to bear. As he follows a young girl, he is impaled by an icicle and dies. Susie is trying to cope with being in her heaven because she is stuck in the in-between due to her want for worldly things. Routh goes to the sinkhole and spots a beat up vehicle and recognizes that it's Mr. Harvey's. She faints immediately and when she wakes up, she is Susie (Routh is a kind of an in-between for Susie and the real world). She disliked the book because there was no closure for the book and many more questions were left unanswered than were answers. You would think that Susie was going to get some kind of closure by having her body discovered by her parents or such. All that happened was that Susie got to go back and spend time with Ray (the person who had a crush on her). The story ends as Lindsie gets married and the family working out their differences. All of Susie's simple desires were granted to her in her in-between Heaven. The story is basically about a family moving on after the death of a child or sister and that it is difficult in the way that each family member copes with the loss. Also, she doesn't care if it was on the number one national best seller and hopes that the movie is different from the book (basically she said the book ending sucked and it kinda ruined the other parts of the book).

Reason for the Season

Top ten reasons for the season:

1. Family-family is forever
2. Friends
3. Food-we couldn't live without it you know!
4. Health
5. Wealth-even though many people whine and complain about being poor, they're actually quite a bit more wealthy than they think
6. God
7. Jesus
8. Affection
9. Random Acts of Kindness-being either on the receiving end or giving end, it's something to be thankful for
10. A Home-even a new one is a roof over your head

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens

      Sean Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens truly enlightened me with it's numerous anecdotes and the habit that changed the way I look at solving problems, Habit 4 - Think Win-Win.

      Hearing other's stories, or anecdotes, helped me to better understand some of the situations I was facing.  Handling a new situation on your own can be very difficult, but learning from others or telling others about the problem can be the best to learn to handle the situation.  I probably felt better reading the anecdotes because I'm not much of a people person (well... most of the time anyway) and I feel that I wouldn't have to expose myself (which is really something I should work toward being able to do... maybe).  While reading some of the anecdotes, I felt as though I could really connect to a few of them.

       After reading Habit 4, I gained a little more insight into the other side of deal-making.  Before reading Habit 4, I truthfully looked more toward my benefit when making deals.  In retrospect, if I were the person on the receiving end of a bad deal I probably wouldn't feel too good about the situation.  The next time I make a deal with a person I will most certainly put myself into the other persons shoes to see how I would feel about the deal.

       Perhaps just from the examples told in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens I could say that the book is extraordinary.  However, I would not give justice to the book if I did not say that the seven habits make the book more than simply extraordinary.  I would definitely recommend this book to any and maybe all teens (even if you think you don't have any problems or actually don't).

Bruises Never Felt so Good

   So I probably should have written this blog a few weeks ago, but there seems to be less and less free time in my schedule for blogging (and by free time I mean time I'm not wasting on the Internet).  I posted about going to a paintball game with friends a few weeks earlier (if you didn't know that, just scroll down some) and had forgotten about telling how the game turned out.  In short, it was awesome!  Playing the game is just half the fun in most activities, it is the stories that you walk away with that really matter.  So here's my story...

     I wake up at 8 reminding myself that I'm supposed to be at Corey's church at 10:30 and take a shower getting pumped up (yes, in the shower... what? don't judge me!)for the game at hand.  I get dressed (blue jeans, underarmor, and a black hoodie over that) and check my bag for the fourth time to make sure I have everything.  It's time to go so I get my Dad to run me up to the church to find that there's no one in sight of the meeting place.  I phone Corey and he explains that we're meeting at 12.  I head home and call Sam, who originally told me the meeting time was 10:30, and tell him of the new time.  He offers me a ride back to the church and everything is back on course.  About 9 other people turn out for the game and we're soon underway.

     The next few hours are really a blur of paint, mud, running, and near misses.  There are a few points that stick out in my mind in particular though.  First being during one of the first capture the flag games when I distinctly heard a paintball whistle as it flew into my gut, run the curve of my body and bounce off. I also remember my visor fogging up about 3 minutes into every game. The precipitation was so bad that I would usually identify opposite players by their position on the field or the direction they were running.

     During a team deathmatch game, I was pinned down behind a low barrier from 2 points and I remember nearly getting my kneecap busted from a paintball that went through the edges of the barrier.  One of my favorite memories is being behind the same low barrier and popping my head over the barrier to find out where the people where that were pinning me down.  I saw the person fire at me and immediately ducked my head back into the bunker.  As my head was about half-way back into the barrier, a paintball exploded a matter of centimeters from my head and splattered all across my vision.  I called for a paint check and I was ok.

     During my last game (a speedball match) I ran deep into the left mid-field and nearly knocked over the inflatable obstacles I was trying to hide behind. As I checked my position, I found that I had come out ahead of my teammates by about 2 rows of obstacles.  During a previous game on the same field, I found myself feet away from an opposing player hiding behind the obstacle next to the obstacle that I described above.  I knew I would feel bad if I shot this person in the head at such close range so I tried to use the other side for firing.  But on the same note as the sentence before the previous, I saw that there were people who could flank me from the right.  As I sat and figured my position, a paintball whistled by and glanced off of my kneecap.  Needless to say, it hurt and I had a limp for the rest of the hour.  I knew that Evan Ramsey's dad, my archenemy during all of the games, was close to the right so I decided to check on him.  As I shifted to the right, he jumped from his cover and shot me just a couple inches above my heart.  I fell and rolled backwards from the impact calling for a paint check even though I knew I was gotten.  That was the only time during all of the games that I had been shot, it felt good.  Back home and I'm on the computer for a while, then off to bed.  The next day I'm sore all over.  When I try to sit, I can manage to get about half way before collapsing into the seat.  But I don't care, cuz the bruises have never felt so good before.

Here's a few tips from an amateur paintballer for anyone interested in playing.

1. ALWAYS find cover. (even if that cover is a shallow hole that doesn't even go past your ankles)
2. Never look over cover. (you can be shot from a 360 degree angle over cover but at a much smaller degree from beside cover)
3. Don't try to wipe paint off of your visor, it will only make it much worse.
4. Make sure that you have enough ammo and air before a game. (one of the worst ways to get out in a match is a lack of ammo or air that you forgot to replenish before a match)
5. Run, don't walk. (I literally watched as one of my teammates walked for cover and got gunned down)
6. Keep your barrel clean. (ammo can go crazy with a greased or dirty barrel)
7. Don't be afraid to slide into a mud pit for cover or otherwise get knee-deep into a mess. (trying to save your favorite pair of blue jeans from a little wet Earth is an easy way to get out)
8. Have fun and don't get angry if you get out, it happens to everybody
9. Tell me when you're going to play a game!  I'm always up for a good game of paintball

Book Review: The War of the Worlds

H.G. Well's The War of the Worlds slowed my down with it's slow pace, but amazed me with its unique and original idea.

Even though H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds was published in 1898 the speed of the story telling can become slow and encumbered. These times of slow progression could be blamed on the now unfamiliar language used and slang of the time. The unfamiliar language is not helped with a lack of footnotes, which helped me immensely when reading The Time Machine. However, there were times when the story progressed in great pace to what I am typically used to reading. Thinking of locations in relation to others and general directions can be very difficult if the reader does not live in the general area of London or does not know the towns and cities nearby. Luckily, most of the locations do not have a great impact when following the main ideas of the story. Towards the end of the book, H.G. Wells conveys the narrators feelings in an incredible and easy way. My chest swelled with the very same feelings of the narrator when his words were used and I had a very real feeling of recognition for all the small things of our world.

The most unique characteristic of The War of the Worlds is the plot behind the whole book. Very similar to The Time Machine, the ideas in The War of the Worlds are very unique in just the thought of how H.G. Wells could have imagined this up, especially during his time. Just the concept of how the martians looked and how they were described blew me away. Also, I can scarcely imagine how H.G. Wells could have thought up the process in which the martian war machines were built as the narrator of the story watches from a nearly destroyed building.

H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is probably one of the best sci-fi books I've read thus far in my life, even with the sometimes crawling pace of the story. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about unique alien technology, martians, or sci-fi in general.

Book Review: The Time Machine

      Try to think far into the future, as far as you can. H.G. Wells' The Time Machine teleports you straight into the future thousands of years from now, or according to the book it does. 

     I remember that I was once told that ,”The past is a strange, distant land.”  That might not be exactly what was said, but the general affect is still given.  H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, which can easily be picked out by the writing style that H.G. Wells uses.  I feel a slight air of dislike for the writing style that H.G. Wells writes in, but I remember that his style was the normal in his time.  Some of the vocabulary can become confusing because many are no longer used in the same way.  Even though the vocabulary may be strange, the words used seem to better get a point across about the mood than I think normal writing would.  An exert from The Time Machine reads, “The Eloi, like the Carlovingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility.  They still possessed the earth of sufferance...”  If it were not for the footnotes on each page to help me to translate and understand some of the words, there is no doubt that I would have read this passage differently than was intended.

       It must have taken a vast amount of imagination to think up the environments of The Time Machine.  The present day surroundings would not seem that odd to us even in this time.  When the Time Traveler moves through time though, the area opens wide to vibrant and sometimes scary future.  As the Time Traveler traveled, he thought to have seen many amazing advancements, “I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist.”  We are left to our own imagination to think of the advanced buildings.  As the Time Traveler stops moving through time, he finds himself first in a dim world occupied by a single sphinx statue.  This world opens to be what could almost be described as a strange paradise.  However, beneath this paradise is later recognized as a grim situation between fellow man.  The final known setting of The Time Machine is simply barren land.  The description given by H.G. Wells gives the feeling of depression or giving up and letting what will happen happen.

     The Time Machine, I believe, could easily be the definition of Science-Fiction because of its ability to draw imaginatively on scientific knowledge and speculation.  I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Sci-Fi or who delights in looking deep into a story to pull out different meanings.

As the paint flies

     On weekends during this month, I usually have marching competitions and such.  Now don't get me wrong, marching contests are awesome and all but I'm worn after each contest, and it tends to eat up my weekends pretty fast.  However, this weekend we don't have a competition OR a Friday night game to play at (YES! haha).  My friend ever since I can remember, Sam, told me today that there's going to be a church paintball game this Saturday for Corey's (another friend) church.  Sam, Corey, I, and a few other friends usually have Airsoft games during the weekends of the year.  I've played in the church paintball game last year, so it will be awesome to get back and play another game.  I can't wait till Saturday!  I'm definitely looking forward to nailing some people with a hail of paintballs, haha.

Book Review: Uglies

      Imagine a world of flying cars, hoverboards, and incredible beauty.  Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies barreted me with the emotions and moral choices contained within its folds.

     A story can only be as unique as its environment.  If this is true, then  Uglies would most definitely be one of the most unique stories I have ever read.  The setting ranges from a super high-tech town, to valleys of orchids, to a camp in a valley.  The setting of Uglies stars in the high-tech town of New Pretty Town, or rather, the outskirts, in a place called Uglyville.  Tally Youngblood, the main protagonist in the story, constantly dreams of when she will become a pretty and move to New Pretty Town.  New Pretty Town is where all of the new pretties live after they have had the operation.  The town is always crawling with activity ranging from parties to parades.  The town is also brimming over with extraordinary technological advances.  Unused items can recycle themselves and everything is automated.  During a point in the story, Tally drops a plastic mask after finding what she was looking for, but before she can pick up the mask and put the disguise back on, the cover had already recycled itself and absorbed into the carpet.  Later on, the setting changes to a camp ground in a valley.  Not much can be said of the camp ground, because too much information on the story may be told.  However, the valley is described as being extremely beautiful.  The area is also described as if a feeling of true freedom were felt when seen from high in the mountains.

     Uglies is packed with morals and moral choices throughout the book.  Simply put, any choice, large or small, can have a much greater impact than one might have initially thought.  Through much of the story, Tally conflicts with herself on whether or not she truly wants to become pretty and what she’s willing to sacrifice to get what she wants.  Tally also gradually realizes how many other people she will effect with her moral choice.

     Uglies is a very unique story in that this adventure can easily pull the reader in and hold them there.  I would definitely recommend Uglies to anyone who likes Sci-fi technology and an engaging read. (425 pages)

Universal Signs

   Have you ever noticed universally understood symbols or sayings?  I mean something like a thumbs up, or a peace sign.  This is random, I know, but I guess most or some people think about it at one point.

   Crossover words and cognates also remind me of this.  Crossover words are same words with the same meaning in two different languages.  Cognates are words that sound very similar to the same word in a different language.  That was just something I picked up in Spanish class.

   My original idea for this whole post was me actually thinking about when people connect a whole bunch of /'s, |'s, and "'s and other keystrokes to form a larger picture.  Almost as if it were a collage of punctuation marks.  But back to my main train of thought, why can't I find any readily made thumbs ups punctuation collages?  Perhaps no one has thought of it, or decided to put it on the Internet that was search able through Google?  You're guess is as good as mine at this point.  You've probably seen someone post a sign of punctuation's somewhere though, be that YouTube comments or forums.

It all starts with a thought

So I'm sitting here in class trying to type this and listen to Ms. Gillmore at the same time. Me catching bits of what's she's saying, "...wiping the memory completely..." "...tonight's homework..." which is reading. See, I can still pay attention. But I have to finish this so I can get to other subjects. I'm going to go think some. Is it possible to think about all the things you can think about? That's a hard question... I'll stop rambling and get back to work... it all starts with a thought.