Halftime!

Alright so I am in the midst of the last two weeks of craziness before summer so naturally I am procrastinating and posting about things that are arguably not that important.  Who cares though?  A little procrastination isn't a bad thing right?  So as I was saying, I have just over two weeks of real classes and followed by three days of study and three days of finals.  It's exciting and a little scary.

This summer marks halftime people!  The halfway point between being a full time student and the real world. It's nothing if not a little daunting and a bit sad.  I love school but I technically I only have three semesters left.  In August I will be jumping on a plane to Australia.  Yep that's right I will be in Australia for an entire semester doing all things Biology related (and hopefully seeing all kinds of unique animals).  I'm so pumped!  But I also know that this coming semester will only go by faster than all the previous ones.

I have been desperately trying to find the pause button for life but somehow it has been kept hidden and time continues to slip through my fingers.  I guess this is how life is right?  As I get older time will go faster and faster until it runs out....

Wow that just got really depressing WAY too quickly.  Next time I will try to make it a little more upbeat, or at the very least interesting.  In the mean time however, here is a slightly grainy picture of the crazy weather here in upstate New York.

It's Been A While

...and I was thinking about posting something about music or writing or what I'm reading.  Something fun but then the bombs went off in Boston and those things no longer seemed as relevant today.

While I was walking to dinner it kind of hit me that we live in a tumultuous world filled with killing and anger.  I shouldn't have been thinking this.  It was 60 degrees and sunnier than it had been in nearly a week.  I had every reason to be happy my friends and relatives were all safe and my room mate's were fine as well, but I still felt a strange feeling in my heart.

I felt a kind of angry pity.  Why did people do this to each other?  Every day humans kill other humans.  We can try to define a reason why.  They're crazy, they want attention, they're religious nuts but I think it is much more simple.  I think that people are unhappy.  They are unhappy with their relationships, social standing, the world and the only way they know how to feel better is to make others more miserable than themselves.

Unhappiness has become an epidemic fueled by failed economies, a widening class gap, and a overall lack of voice.  For many people the world is spinning out of control.  They can no longer take care of themselves let alone their families and many feel that their lives have been ripped out from underneath them by powers beyond their control.  All of this breeds unhappiness.  It creates people that are angry and frustrated with nothing to lose and even less to gain.

This is why our world rumbles with the blasts of bombs and smells of blood.  This is why we hear more cries than laughter and tears spill more frequently than rain from the heavens.  This is why there are people who have fallen so low that their existence is measured by the fear and pain they inflict on others.  The bombs in Boston today are just another reminder of where our world is headed if we don't cure the disease of unhappiness that has infected humanity.

Let's choose happiness so that someday, maybe, no one has to feel the pain or sadness that was felt today.

A New Look a New Year

Well its a new year and I if you haven't noticed I have given things a little bit of an update.  New colors mostly just to freshen the blog up.  I have also been busy planning out some new things for the New Year after my Holiday hiatus. (Ok I guess it has lasted more than just the holidays). I hope to have a lot more posts coming up.  I am also excited for a new semester coming up in about a week.  It will be nice to get back into the swing of school and working.

Other than that I have been doing something rather surprising.  Outlining.  I know right?  Most of the time I am a pantser.  I have a difficult time outlining a research paper let alone a story that could become a novel.  It's really strange for me.

First it started with character.  You know, one of those pesky characters that sit inside your brain antagonizing you until you eventually have to write their story.  So just to apease him, and myself, I gave him a bio and some history.  With his history came the development of the characters around him.  Then I plopped him into a world I have been thinking about for a while and VOILA!  Well maybe not quite like that.  There is still a ton of things that need to go into the story.  I mean he isn't even the main character.  But at least I have something more coherent than a few pages of rambling and a bunch of half digested stories.

I think that this break I have written more than I have in the past semester alone (excluding papers.  They don't count). I am really proud of what I have done and hope I can continue it throughout the semester.  It has been a fun break filled with a lot of writing.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Just wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  I hope all of you days are full of happiness and cheer during this season. 

Review: Warm Bodies

Goodreads

Have you guys heard about this movie or the book?  Well recently I heard about the movie while trolling the internet late at night and when I realized there was a book I had to read it.  A trip to the amazon site and a few days later I was flying through this page turner called Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion.

I haven't read that many zombie books despite their popularity.  The blood and gore doesn't really bug me I just haven't picked up the zombie genre.  Now I think this might change.  Warm Bodies throws a twist in the zombie books by allowing the zombie to narrate the story.  This adds a new perspective that I had really never thought of.  It turns out zombies don't just want brains they have them.

R is a great character and you immediately fall in love with him.  Even though he spends most of his time attacking and eating humans he is surprisingly human.  He is funny and insightful which is a characteristic I would not expect in a zombie.  In the end R's narrative/thoughts makes the novel. I mean when do we get to be in the mind of the monster?  That is right hardly ever.

The book is also a good mixture of young adult and adult material.  While the writing is pretty simple the questions the book raises are adult in nature.  There were certain lines that had me sighing because of their beauty.  The characters are also in that precarious age between childhood and adulthood making them relatable to both age groups.  It is nice to find a book that bridges this gap.

Now I must comment on the world.  So often I find myself reading books that take place far into the future, and I am unable to pick out the pieces of my world from the rubble.  This isn't always a bad thing, but I feel it makes it more realistic to build upon what is left from our world.  Marion's world is recognizable.  You can see where our world has decayed and been replaced.  Maybe it is my fascination with the history of dystopian societies but I love to see how my world has been changed.

The only thing I wish was explained more fully in this book was the reasoning behind the zombies.  I am a science person and I like to know the science behind the books.  I wish Marion had added some more details about how the zombies became, well, zombies.  Other than this the book was a fun read.  The gore was not overwelming, which might upset some people, but I think it makes the book more accepted by other audiences.  Overall, a great read and I strongly recommend it.

Oh and here is a look at the trailer!

Sometimes Writing Ins't Pretty

The other day I was talking with a group of my friends at dinner about poetry (yes we are all literary geeks).  Two of my friends are in a creative writing class where they are required to write and critique each other's works.  While we were talking about poetry my one friend brought up some of the comments related to her work.  One was especially interesting because it said that the poem started out warm but ended up being cold and unhappy.

Now, everyone is entitled to their opinion about writing and what someone might love I might hate.  However, to say that a piece of writing is too unhappy or cold makes me question what people want from writing.  Sure, poetry can be beautiful, with flowery details of the abstract but it can also be ugly or sad (or both).  Poems let us peek into the soul of the writer.  They allow us to see the hairline cracks in ourselves that make us human and this picture isn't always pretty.

I feel that writing is just like life, sometimes it is beautiful but many times it is ugly.  We have to wonder around in this world looking at everything (unless we are going to be completely ignorant) and finding the meaning in both.  Sometimes the more awful parts of our world teach us the best lessons.  In writing it is the same way.  In every story there is some form of trial or problem that must be resolved by the protagonist.  Many times the journey is difficult and the character overcomes horrible tests of character and/or physical ability.  In the end there is some great lesson to be learned but more importantly it show us that in order to see the beauty we must overcome the ugly.

Sometimes beauty is not all it is cracked up to be.  In my Gothic novel class we often discuss the trope of the sublime.  The best way I can describe the sublime is something that is painfully beautiful.  Personally this sounds incredibly uncomfortable and I cannot say that I have seen many things in my 19 years that are sublime.  I do think that the concept of the sublime definitely undercuts the standard view of beauty.  It demonstrates that sometimes beauty is not feel good, and happy.  It can have razor sharp edges that really should have "caution" signs all around.

In conclusion to this long winded post about beauty I just want to say that perhaps we need to look at the balance between the beautiful and the ugly in writing.  Only then can we really understand the world the author has created.  After all it is part of the human experience to see the beautiful and the ugly.

Arcadia Review (sort of)

So this post has been sitting, unpublished, in my post archives waiting to be finished off.  So what is a better time than when I have two essays to write!  Sometimes my priorities are not all the straight but oh well.  

Anyway, how many of you read plays?  Well if you do I was definitely not one of you.  Sure I have read Shakespeare and other plays for classes but I have never, once, read a play on my own.  For fun.  That was until last weekend.  I read Arcadia.

Before I get into the nitty gritty parts of this review-ish thing, I have some things to clear up.  I don't read plays outside of class, but my room mate this year is a theater geek.  She loves everything about theater and she has introduced me to so many other theater geeks.  A few weeks ago my they forced me to have the play Arcadia by Tom Stoddard.  Now I put off reading it for a while but this past weekend I sat down to read it and surprised myself by loving it.

The play takes place in a mansion during two time periods, the nineteenth and twentieth century.  It follows a group historians/scientists and the original owners of the house.  As the play unfolds it focuses on the intricacies of romance, mathematics, and sex within the universe.  Really it is quite profound but oh so lovely at the same time.

The reasons I love the play?  So many.  The characters are funny and the slowly meshing time periods is intriguing and unique.  I also love the setting.  It is set in an old mansion of which I have a slight obsession with.  At some point in my life I will see an actual castle and these kinds of stories remind me of how much I need to do that.  Can I also say that the play is funny.  You would not think that of something that deals with the meaning of life/reasoning or the universe but this play has a fair amount of humor in it.  It really balances out the sweetness of the ending.

Ah the ending got me.  It is the perfect, bittersweet moment.  I simply love how well it is all wrapped up in a nice tidy bow.  You will have to read it to know what I am talking about.