What was I thinking about just now?: Ode to Nickolas Pickolas

My first wife published a review of my personality on her blog. Enjoy:

Ode to Nickolas Pickolas: "Well, today my Old Man got even older. That's right friends, Nickolas Pickolas has reached the ripe old age of six and twenty. In honor of..."

*Jenna is my first, current, and only wife.

Book Review: "The Passage," by Justin Cronin

“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.” First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment...

Aaaaand that was enough for me! What a great book! You can read the whole back cover (don't worry, it doesn't reveal much) here. I listened to it for free on my iPhone from audible.com.

If you sign up with audible.com they give you a one month free membership and two free audio books - this was my first. The entire book took around 40 hours to listen to - I was enthralled the entire time!

Review:
The Passage is a sci-fi thriller taking place around the year 2016. That's about all I'm going to say - I'm happy that I knew so little before I started listening to it! Justin Cronin tells the story so wonderfully and helps you fall in love with the characters and actually care about whether they live or die (some live, some die, some do... other things).

It's a classic tale of good versus evil where the good are REALLY good and the bad are REALLY bad - innocent little girls against mindless monsters, you know the drill. He uses themes throughout the book to build a sense of fear, especially darkness. I actually found myself yelling (in my mind), "Don't go in the building! It's dark in there!"

The book was complete with love and adventure and lots of guns and explosions! I recommend it to anyone with some time on their hands this summer.

Response to Daily Universe Opinion: "Unrighteous Hordes"

In a letter last week to the editor of the Daily Universe (BYU's Student Newspaper) a student wrote the following:

Letter: Unrighteous Hordes

Wed 03/17/2010

Sadly, I was unable to attend this Tuesday’s devotional (for very personal reasons). I am a regular attendee of Tuesday devotionals and forums and was horrified to discover I am part of a startlingly small minority of students that actually attend, even though a healthy majority patently should. When I had to miss last Tuesday’s devotional, I happened to be passing through the library where I observed literally hordes of students busily placing academic duties above religious ones. What’s worse, I observed many students simply napping, playing games or checking Facebook. To place school over spirituality is bad enough, but to bypass a weekly walk down the straight and narrow for an idle stroll though Babylon is an abhorrent waste of the tithing dollars used to subsidize the tuition of transgressors. A call to action is in order.

To devotional goers: Be aware! As a proportion of the studentbody, there are less of us than you probably assume. Encourage those around you to stand a little taller. We are our brother’s keepers.

To devotional sluffers: Be advised! Tuesday morning complacency is a recipe for disaster.

To the administration: Be aggressive! Stand up to this deplorable development by proactively taking measures to stem its source. Close the library for the devotional hour, or at least power down all the computers.

We can be better, BYU. And we would already know that if we were all in the Marriott Center every Tuesday.

Brett Myers
Orland, Calif.

I loved it! So much so that I sent in a response. Here it is, I will post a link to the published letter if and when it gets published.

Letter: Mind Your Own Business

In response to “Unrighteous Hordes”: It is fitting that you should throw the first stone, seeing as you are a “regular attendee of Tuesday devotionals.” Pray tell, what were the “very personal” reasons you referenced in your letter? If I am to be your keeper, as you propose, then I will decide if your absenteeism was warranted or not.

Nevertheless, as one of the healthy majority of subsidized transgressors, I’m grateful for saints like yourself who descend from the realms of perfection to pass through the library of sin and affliction.

It’s people like you, who faithfully warn of the woes of devotional delinquency, that keep people like me on the straight and narrow. May we always revere those who make our business theirs for the sake of righteousness.

Ahem. Excuse me. I couldn’t quite tell if your letter was sarcastic. Is mine a little more clear?

From the words of an early Mormon creed, “Mind your own business.”

Nicholas Herrick

Linville, Virginia

Ender in Exile

Last night I finished reading Ender in Exile, a new book by Orson Scott Card in the Ender's Game series. Ender in Exile takes place between the end of Ender's Game and the beginning of Speaker for the Dead and draws heavily on the content of the shadow series of books.

I quite enjoyed the read, mostly because it was good to get back in Ender's head and watch him run mental circles around bad people! There's something very gratifying about seeing a good character who's much smarter than everyone else going to town on bad guys.

The book fills in a lot of holes, and not just temporal ones. It explains how Ender lives so long through the rest of the series (because normal relativistic travel couldn't account for the time), why Valentine joins him for the rest of his life, and why he never returns to Earth.

My favorite parts, of course, were the descriptions of the ships and how they work. Definitely a sci-fi nerd! But of course all the mental circles were fun too - seeing Ender tricking people. etc.

Overall, if you are a fan of Ender's Game then I imagine you'll enjoy Ender in Exile, even if you didn't enjoy Speaker for the Dead.

Movie Review: Avatar

This is the first movie I've ever seen in which my only remarks immediately following were, "Holy Crap!"

It was that good.

In my eyes there are 3 kinds of movies:

1. Movies that suck.
2. Movies that rock.
3. Movies that I haven't decided on.

The method of decision is simple: If the day after seeing the movie I think about it in the shower, than it rocked. If I forget that I ever saw it, then it sucked. The 3rd category isn't ever too populated. There are exceptions, though - sometimes I reach a conclusion instantly. Avatar was an exception.

Avatar combines incredible, illustrious eye candy with a great sci-fi premise, a fantastically detailed and beautiful universe, excellent biology, physics, and anthropology, and, of course, bad guys getting what they deserve. True, it's quite predictable - but predictable in a gloriously gratifying way!

The mythological epicness of Avatar is akin to those of Tolkien or Lucas, while the stunning visuals can only be compared to the effects of the original Wizard of Oz on people watching it for the first time. The actions of the characters are heroic, the situation dire and utterly dichotic, and the colors - wow the colors - were magical and wonderful and beautiful and terrifying all at the same time!

Perhaps the highest accolade I can give the movie is that I actually gasped several times while watching it! A few of my gasps were in response to the incredible scenery but the best of all was in response to an incredible plot development. To avoid spoilers here, I'll just state that this plot development (I should have seen it coming) was utterly perfect. The magic was in the symbolism it carried with the fictitious natives. Their reaction was beautifully displayed, a true masterpiece of anthropological fantasy.

If you haven't seen Avatar, then do it! See it in 3-D if you can - it's worth the extra cost. And best of all, try to see it knowing as little as possible beforehand - it's best that way.
(Notice the lack of spoilers? You're welcome.)

Review: District-9

My standard rule after seeing a movie for the first time is to wait until the next day to pass judgement on it. But lately I've been making more and more exceptions to this.

I say lately, but as I sat in the theater today (technically yesterday...) I realized that I hadn't been to a movie theater since Christmas! So I suppose my exceptions aren't too infrequent:

District 9

By: Who cares who else was involved, it was by Peter Jackson.

The Short:

Sci-fi flick about aliens that end up as refugees on earth. Surprise surprise, we don't treat them that well.

Add a whole lot of action, interesting raids on the alien slums, a boat load of gore, and more f-bombs than you could possibly count (although if someone counts them I'll be impressed) and you get a great movie that could be excellent were it not for the excessive language and unnecessary gore.

The Long:

That last bit there is the kicker - why couldn't this movie have been PG-13? Not much of the gore was actually necessary - heads blowing up, arms being ripped from bodies and consumed, etc etc.

The movie could have had just as many wicked cool guns and just as many deaths without blood constantly being splattered all over the universe.

And then there's the f-bombs, holy cow! You really can't believe how many times they drop the freak fest. Now, I'll give you that a lot of the time the favorite f-word was spoken in a British accent, so was really quite funny! But why so much?! It really was overboard there Jackson - way overboard.

The premise of the story is incredible - simply stupendous. It'll have me thinking for days. Even better, there's going to be a sequel to tie everything up and hopefully see the aliens get some sweet revenge.

Conclusion:

If you want to see a movie with an engaging story-line, interesting parallels to racism, and possibly the most thought-provoking opening premise of any recent movie, I recommend District 9. Of course, this comes with the HUGE caveat that you have to endure endless f-bombs and blood constantly splattering all over the place. Very silly sacrifice if you ask me...

New Favorite Show: America's Got Talent

Yesterday I discovered a great show, America's Got Talent.

Why do I like this show so much? Because one moment I'm giggling myself silly, the next wanting to crawl into a hole, and the next feeling all warm and fuzzy. It's great TV! And great entertainment.

Here are three clips showing the three emotions of the show in case you've never seen it:

Giggling like crazy:


Oh my:


Warm and Fuzzy:

Virtuality: An Unexpectedly Awesome Show

Holy crap!

Lately I've been watching some John Stewart and a few movies on hulu.com and today saw an advertisement for a movie I had never heard of called Virtuality. It looked interesting and since I didn't have anything to do tonight [ : ( ] I watched it. Having never heard of it, I wasn't expecting anything at all.

Virtuality is a space-type movie about 12 people in the not-too-distant future on a mission to another star system. The mission is supposed to take 10 years. So basically stick 12 people in a metal can for 10 years and see what happens. Oh, and mix in some neat sci-fi techno scenes for kicks.

The movie sure was aggressive in laying ground for character development, relationship development, and a lot of great psychological drama. I was completely hooked after the first few minutes!

45 minutes or so into the 1.5 hour feature I started wondering how they planned on wrapping all of the plot up in the next 45 minutes. To me, it seemed things were moving awfully slow in order to end things nicely...

To my amazement the movie ended on a complete and utter cliff-hanger. Seriously, there could not possibly be a worse cliff-hanger in all of movie history.

What the crap??!

This is easily the worst ending ever, of anything, forever.

In my anger I googled the movie and pulled up the wikipedia entry:

Virtuality is the title of a series pilot written by Ronald D. Moore and produced by the FOX Network.^[1] Moore co-wrote the script with Michael Taylor. The two-hour pilot episode, directed by Peter Berg, aired as a movie, June 26, 2009

In an instant this became the most excellently awesome TV series ever. You really must watch the pilot (which I thought was a stand-alone movie.)

I sure hope this goes viral so that fox won't cancel it after one season like they did to firefly. (A sin the world may never forgive them for.... except now it's different.)

Watch the Virtuality pilot episode for a short time at hulu.com.
(No, I'm not getting paid to advertise for them. I wish!)

An Unexpected Advertisement 2

As I was reading through some articles on the interwebs today, I ran across the following advertisement intriguingly placed on a computer how-to website.


"Self," I thought, "that font looks familiar." So I clicked on it.


No way! The LDS Church (of which I am a proud member.... but not that kind of pride, sheesh) was advertising on this computer website! I couldn't help myself, so I clicked to watch the movie, "Finding Happiness" that they were advertising.

It is a lovely little movie. I was thinking the whole time I was watching it how I might receive it if I was just a random guy reading a computer article and clicked on the nice Asian lady's face out of curiosity. I really think that it approaches those with little or no belief in God a very aptly, very logically but honest manner. Here's an example:

"Something in our heart tells us there is more to life, that real happiness and peace could be ours regardless of our circumstances, if only we knew where and how to find it."

So, I share this for a few reasons:

1. I was highly amused that the Church was advertising on a computer website, and this blog is for all the various things that amuse me.
2. I liked the movie quite a lot and this blog is for things that I like.
3. I'm always trying to help people better understand and not fear or suspect the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I hope you'll enjoy the movie as much as I did:

Finding Happiness