Sunbird

Finally went and saw the third Divergent movie at my local discount theater. I was pleased by how often it made me laugh.

I had never thought about Cinderella that way either, and I thought that post was great and really thoughtful.

Doctor Funtimes

As someone who has played oboe and attempted to play violin, I believe that stringed instruments have a significantly steeper learning curve than, say, woodwinds. I really struggled with the utter precision of finger placement required to get a note in tune on the violin. On an oboe, it's easier to get your pitch closer in tune just by pressing all the right keys.

Storms, that book and movie freaked me out. *shudders* In other random news, I came across this picture of a fairy moth and was immediately reminded of the Thaylen people in the Stormlight Archive. Photo by Joe Bens in Ohio.

Granted. Unfortunately, you forgot to ask for a body durable enough to withstand the stress of doing so. Therefore, the first time you attempt to run at the speed of light, you get such an extreme case of chafing from the wind that you die. I wish for a large pot of chili.

The soundtrack to the Disney movie Mulan.

Bugaboo

When it's 11pm and I suddenly can't remember whether or not I've eaten dinner. o_O

I love Apples to Apples. I was also recently introduced to Telestrations, which is sort of a combination of Pictionary and Telephone. Basically each player gets a little notepad of mini-dry-erase boards. Each person writes a word or phrase on the first page and then flips to page two and attempts to draw the phrase they wrote. Then everybody passes their notepad to the next person in the circle, who looks at the drawing but not the explanation of what it is, and on the next page they write their interpretation of the picture. And you keep passing the notepads around, distorting the original idea, until you end up with the notebook that you wrote and drew in first. And the BEST part is the end of a round when everyone shares how their original idea mutated with each person's reinterpretation. Telestrations is now my favorite party game.

This post reminded me of another source of funny. So my mom just finished up her third year (of four) of pharmacy school and as an indirect result I have liked a Facebook page called "Excuse me! This is a PHARMACY not a fast food restaurant!" that posts true stories about pharmacists' and pharmacy employees' absurd experiences in retail pharmacy. This picture of a prescription--which, you'll notice, doesn't actually say what medication to give the patient--came with the explanation, "Got this RX, too funny not to share. The doctor's office didn't think it was so funny. He said we should have known it was B-12." And the comments are even funnier than the actual prescription. Some of my favorites: "Pharmacist's choice. Send whatever you have overstocked." "I'm sorry, but I quit the Psychic Friends Network when Madame Cleo went down." "We in pharmacy are psychotic not psychic." "IT still hasn't fixed my crystal ball. Sorry."

Granted! Your bane, however, is that you destroy everyone with the slightest evil tendencies and the human population is reduced to children too young to understand the concept of evil. I wish for a camera that I can wear comfortably and unobtrusively on my face (or install directly into my eye) so that I can video or take pictures of things I see whenever I want.

Since I liked Clay and Susan Griffith's Vampire Empire trilogy and am still waiting on the library for the spinoff/sequel, I decided to try one of their other books, The Shadow Revolution. About halfway through at this point and I am liking it a lot. (I've especially enjoyed seeing Kate being a badchull and putting lecherous men in their places.) Still working on The Inquisition; now more than 80% done.

When I take an ice cream bar out of the freezer and unwrap it only for it to fall off the stick because the freezer didn't do a very good job keeping it frozen. When I remember reading a plot twist in the Dresden Files but I'm not sure if I actually read it from an official source or just dreamed about doing so. o.0 Edited to add: when I go to the IMDB and immediately click the search box, but the page loads an ad at the top and moves the search bar down so that where I clicked is now where the ad is, and then opens a new tab with the ad when THAT'S NOT WHAT I CLICKED.

Gerontocracy: government by old people

Now I have this mental image of an anthropomorphized tornado chasing your car down the road going "OMNOMNOMNOM." XD

I made a list of what order I read them in like last week, but I forgot where I put it, so here I go sorting through my GoodReads again... Alcatraz 1-4 Mistborn original trilogy Alloy of Law The Way of Kings Words of Radiance Warbreaker Legion The Rithmatist Steelheart Mitosis Elantris Firefight The Emperor's Soul Legion: Skin Deep Perfect State Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell Shadows of Self Calamity Bands of Mourning Mistborn: Secret History Sixth of the Dusk Because I read Warbreaker after Words of Radiance, the significance of the epilogue was completely lost on me until I saw someone at a signing wearing a T-shirt of 8-bit Szeth with a sword and the caption "Would you like to destroy some evil today?" As for my favorite, I'd probably have to say Words of Radiance. Someone recently asked my opinion on "the best book of all time" and that was the one I chose.

God Beyond

Started reading The Inquisition, the sequel to Taran Matharu's The Novice. I'm about 2/3 through and have to say that the Gryphowl is my favorite demon EVER. Owl/cat hybrids are AWESOME. See spoiler if you don't believe me. (Most of the Internet knows these creatures as "meowls.") Still working on A Gathering of Shadows--90% done according to my Kindle's progress bar. Update: finished AGOS and ARGH CLIFFHANGER. Expected release date for book 3: 2017.

Most of the time I only go to the trouble to write an in-depth review if I really liked the book. Three times I have been approached by authors asking me to review their books (That experience always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling), with mixed results. Two of them I liked pretty well and gave mostly positive reviews (4 stars out of GoodReads's allowed 5), but the third was really awful and I was brutally honest but felt bad about it because the author was a nice guy. A few other times I have read books I was really disappointed with and just wrote a few lines about why I didn't like them because I didn't feel they deserved any more effort than that.

Riddles

I just figured out why your voice sounds familiar. You have a similar manner of speech to a guy I knew at my high school in Virginia. As for factual accuracy... I'm totally the wrong person to ask about this. I just got the basic run-down of the Korean War in my history classes, and your telling of it, as far as I could tell, was just uber-simplified and hammed up for humor. I'm with Quiver on this. Marvel is probably going to come out with the next issue (or a few issues in the future) and be like, "Gotcha! You didn't think we'd really do that, did you?" Kind of like when Alcatraz ends a chapter with the sentence "And then Grandpa Smedry exploded." Grandpa Smedry didn't really explode; Alcatraz just wanted you to turn the page so fast it rips.

My dearest wish is for Brandon to live forever so he can keep writing forever.