Totally Dorky Complete

It's no secret that I am a complete dork total. I like comic book movies and science fiction novels. If you were to ask me about any of the new superhero movies that are coming out in the near future, I could most likely tell you who is directing it, what films that director has made in the past, and who is staring in it. I know a lot of stuff about video games too. I read most of the game reviews that show up on Gamespot.com and IGN.com. I should really find something else to spend my time researching.

I could read up on astro-physics, computer networking, or the anatomy of Shake n' Bake. Does it do me any good to know this stuff about movies? I don't think so, it just makes me look like a complete dork total.

Most of my friends spend hours each week playing World of Warcraft. Then, they feel the need to let me know about all the boring stuff they did in the game. I don't care what level your paladin is. What the hell is a paladin anyway?

A couple of days ago, I was dorking out on the phone with my fiancee. Some how I got on the topic of my favorite video game, NCAA Football 07. I talked about all the stuff you could do in dynasty mode. How when your players graduate you can export them to your hard drive, (memory card if you don't own a XBOX) then draft them in that years copy of MADDEN. I just went on and on. That's when she pointed out to me that I was a dork. It's true, I am the type of guy who stays up till midnight the day before the release of MADDEN just to be one of the first to own a copy. I am a complete dork total. Who am I to make fun of World of Warcraft freaks?

You might find yourself wondering why I use the phrase "complete dork total". Well, that would be a reference to a thirty minute movie that only 7 people have seen (all of which were introduced to the movie by me) called The Blair Thumb.


What you haven't heard of it? I am not surprised.

As you could guess, it is a spoof of the film The Blair Witch. The Blair Thumb was created by a guy named Steve Oedekerk. Oedekerk is, in my opinion, the funniest comedy writer in Hollywood. Only a handful of people share my opinion.

Back to the reference. The three main characters are in a tent in the woods. When out of nowhere they are attacked by a shark. Thats right a shark in the woods. After the incident, Stressy (the girl in the group), tries to explain to Vic and Jish (such an odd name) that it was not a shark. To which Vic replies "It was totally sharky... complete". That is great comedy writing if I have ever heard it.

I mean, I am not even quoting the movie correctly. Totally Dorky Complete? You have to admit that is really lame. I can't hide from it, I am totally dorky complete.

Hitting the Pre-Season Slump

It happens every year in early August. Pre-Season Football!

As August was approaching, I found myself having, what I would call, a case of football withdrawal. When the season ends in February I get all sad and when the summer rolls around I get the shakes. "What am I going to watch on Sundays?" Lucky for me I met my fiancee this past football season. I was enjoying my time with her so much I forgot about not having football to watch.

But now it is August, and I have started looking into the Bucs rosters. I also started my fantasy football league. Well, needless to say, now I am looking forward to football season. It is just around the corner and I think we (the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) are going to have a great season. Not to mention the fact my fiancee likes football too. I love watching games with her, it just makes football season that much better!

I was really excited yesterday to watch a pre-season game between the Indianapolis Colts and the St. Louis Rams. Around this time of year I will take any football I can get. Except that every year I get reminded that pre-season football is boring.

Indianapolis kicked the ball first. Since pre-season games are meaningless, the Colts decide to kick an onside kick right off the bat (the Colts recovered the football). Peyton Manning only got one series, in which he drove down the field like he was playing against a high school team. But, after that it was a yawning good time. The Colts signed Shaun King this off season and I wanted to see him play, but it was halftime at 10 o'clock. That's my bed time! I don't gots time to watch a football game that nobody cares to win!

I got an idea! Why don't they give the winning team a free ice cream party after a pre-season game? Then they can force the losing team to eat WHATABURGER. I bet the teams would play hard then. I mean eating at WHATABURGER would keep your football team from playing at full strength for weeks.

There are still some teams I would really like to watch this pre-season. I don't know how much of Reggie Bush we are going to see this season. I would love to watch him play in an exhibition game. The same goes for Matt (that quarterback from USC who's name I can't spell) and Vince Young. Of course, a chance to watch the Bucs would be great as well.

Blogging about Blogging

I haven't been blogging very long, only just a few months. In the months that I have been blogging I've made some observations.

I write my blog through blogger.com. This site offers a much better blog composing system than myspace.com. It is pretty easy for me to get my blog to do what I want it to do. I just have a few little problems.

First, blogger.com will crash on occasion without notice. That is a problem for me. What if I am writing my life story and all of the sudden I can't save or publish my blog? That's when I have to copy and paste it into a word document. Ok, so it is not that big of a deal, easily worked around.

Secondly, not really a problem, more of a funny observation. I am addicted to spell check. I do it all the time. The spell checker on blogger.com is great, it catches all kinds of stuff I don't know how to spell correctly. But, there is one word it keeps telling me that I am spelling wrong. Frankly, blogger.com has no business telling me that the word "blog" is not a word.

"What 'blogging' isn't a word. Well fine blogger.com, that must make blogger not a word. You stupid web site. I hate you. No wait blogger.com, come back I didn't mean it."

Imaginary Audience

If you have read my blog at all you know that I write like I am talking to a large audience. It is not that I have a large group of people read my blog regularly, I just pretend that a lot of people like to read my blog. I imagine them being so disappointed on the days I don't update it. I mean they are so faithful, they write me imaginary e-mails saying "Hey, where is my daily dose of sarcasm and amazing humor."

Then I have to write them back saying "I'm sorry, I find it hard to sit down and write something new everyday, but check back tomorrow."

That's when I get e-mails from people saying "Who are you? I don't read your dumpy blog please stop send me messages like I do."

Yes, I enjoy having so many adoring imaginary readers.

Kid's Movies

I have been known to enjoy a good kid's movie.

This may come as a shock to most people, but I was once a kid myself. And as a kid I watched a lot of cartoons. When I was under the age of 10 I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Silver Hawks, Thundercats, Transformers, and all other kinds of great cartoons. I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, I even liked the one with Vanilla Ice.

I also enjoyed a great deal of the Disney movies, Sleeping Beauty, Lady and the Tramp, and my favorite Jungle Book.

Well, as it turns out, there is a slew of classic cartoons being remade into movies. The main 2 being Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers. And yes, I have every intention on seeing both of them.

The Ninja Turtles movie is going to be created in CGI. From what I have read online the creators are going back to the roots of the show, back to what made it great in the first place. I am really looking forward to what they are going to do with it.

On the other side, the Transformers movie looks like the makers are taking more of a gritty realistic approach. I would guess the Transformers themselves will be computer animated, but it seems like there will be live action actors. Most likely the real footage, mixed with CGI.

I don't know much more about these two movies right now, but I am believing that said films will bring a stop to the steaming piles of crap that have been coming out of the computer animated kid department as of late.

The last great kid's movie, I believe, was The Incredibles.

Not since then has there been a children's movie worth seeing.

The one saving grace for this summer may just be Monster House. I have read a few reviews, one by Orson Scott Card, all of them say Monster House is the best kid's movie to come along in recent memory. I am excited to see it.

But if you, the pretend faithful reader I have made up in my mind, are wanting to see a great kid's movie that both you and your kids will enjoy. Might I suggest Nanny McPhee? Me and my fiancee have seen it multiple times, and I enjoyed it every time. The kids are well casted, the screenplay is flawless, and the acting is top notch. And since it is not in theatres, you will most likely be watching it on DVD. In that case I would suggest you watch it twice, once as the film was shown in theatres, and once with the director and kids commentary. You won't be sorry.

Terry Bisson

In June of this year I started reading a lot more short fiction. The reason for this was the start of Orson Scott Card's online short fiction magazine, Intergalactic Medicine Show. It featured great stories from some established authors like David Farland and Card himself. IGMS also had a number of stories from upstart authors as well.

After finishing both issues of Card's magazine, I went in search of other sources of short fiction. I picked up the June 2006 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Most of the stories were barely mediocre, a few gems here or there, but for the most part I was unimpressed with what I was reading.

My next purchase was the July 2006 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. Asimov's proved to be a better magazine. Two stories stood out. One by an author named Tim Pratt called Impossible Dreams which I talked about in a previous blog, and Nanos Comes to Clifford Falls by Nancy Kress.

After making a trip to the library, I checked out a copy of Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century, edited by Orson Scott Card. I didn't read most of the stories because a lot of them were in Future On Fire and Future on Ice, two short story anthologies also edited by Card. Oh by the way, if you didn't know, Orson Scott Card is my favorite author.

The story I did read from Masterpieces was Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson. A great story the won the Hugo and Nebula awards for Mr. Bisson. Later, I was looking through a short fiction anthology I bought used about 9 months before and read a Bisson story called Hole in a Hole.

Having enjoyed both of the stories I read from Terry Bisson, I got on Amazon.com, and bought 3 of Bisson's short fiction collections.

Currently, I am two thirds of the way through In The Upper Room and Other Likely Stories. I enjoyed nearly every story in the collection.

On a return trip to the library, I checked out The Pickup Artist by Bisson. Terry creates a future where the classic pieces of art (being film, fiction, paintings, and music) are being destroyed to make way for new artists to create art.

The protaganist becomes attached to a Hank Williams record and tries to find a way to listen to it. While he is doing so he gets caught up in some goverment stuff that I don't care to waist my time writing about. Anyway, Him and this teacher drive cross country running in to about 5 different clones named "Bob", get them selves shot at a bunch of times, and then go driving again.

Yeah, is it as boring as I am trying to make it sound? Good!

So, I made the desision to just read his excellent short fiction... uh... after... I read just one more of his novels called Talking Man.

Besides having some of the worst cover art I have ever seen, Talking Man also has just as thrilling of a story as The Pickup Artist.

So, this guy named Williams goes to a junk yard to get his windshield fixed on his Ford Mustang. Then Talking Man comes out and puts mud on Williams' windshield and the window is magically fixed. Then Talking Man's daughter Chrystal gets shot at, and Williams and her go driving for a long time.

Yep, in Terry Bisson novels there is a lot of driving.

I'm not going to say that I won't read another Terry Bisson novel, chances are I will. I am very loyal to the authors I like. Terry Bisson is a great writer, I just haven't read a good novel from him yet.

Alvin Maker

Over that past few months I have been reading the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card. The fantasy series spans 7 books, one of which has yet to be released.

Seventh Son
Red Prophet
Prentice Alvin
Alvin Journeyman
Heartfire
The Crystal City
Master Alvin (not yet released)

I didn't read these straight through. I read a few books and short stories in between some of the volumes of the Alvin Maker series. Mainly because I didn't enjoy being stuck in the same world for that long, and me and my fiancee went to the library, and I checked out 4 other books. Plus, I have been reading those silly sci-fi magazines.

The Tales of Alvin Maker series is set in an America where the revolutionary war didn't happen. As you might have guessed, being a fantasy series, magic works in this America. A lot of the magic is wrapped up in gifts that people are born with called "knacks". Mostly "knacks" are really just people being unnaturally skilled at something. Some are great at building things, others have incredible memory, and Alvin Maker can do just about anything.

Alvin is a "Maker", a man who is gifted at making things. His main opposition is in the form of the "Unmaker", who is not really a man, but more of an entity. The Unmaker is the destroyer of all things. When Alvin makes something he sets the Unmaker back in his work for ultimate destruction.

Sounds good, right?

Ok, maybe I don't make it sound that good, but as with most of Cards books, the characters are really well developed. It is hard not to enjoy the world that has been created, and even harder not to relate with all the well drawn characters. Card leaves very few characters unexplored, and it seem as if all of them play some major role in the over all story.

When I was reading the series I found that after Red Prophet, the best of the series, the story slows way down. When Alvin is young he learns some basic things about himself and his knack, and is involved in a war between the Reds and the Whites. After the war he moves to the town of his birth to be come a prentice blacksmith.

From Prentice Alvin to Heartfire, Alvin spends most of his time searching for where to build the Crystal City (a city he saw in a prophecy that he must build), learning how to be a maker, or getting arrested.

If it were not for Card's excellent writing style and his top notch character development, I would have stopped reading it a while ago. Even though I am a little relieved to be done with the series, I am still looking forward to the final installment.

Mistakes

Just a quick note. In my Stealth! Who Needs Stealth? blog, I said that you played as Sam Fisher and a clone of Sam Fisher. Well that was a mistake. You actually play as two other spies that have no names. I don't feel like going back and correcting that blog just I will just tell you here.

It's Time for Fedge to Complain

"For serious this time" said Fedge.

I am getting all kinds of worn down. I need a break. I'm not talking about a break in the sense of taking time off or away. No, what I need is something to get me set on the right track. Every time I force something, or try to make something happen I get stuck. I simply just can't get the ball rolling.

You are probably wondering what the crap I am talking about.

My Job/Career.

Ever sense I was a kid, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew I wanted a wife and kids, and to make good money. But as to how I was going to make that money, I did not know.

Most of my dreams were of me in some sort of entertainment. It might be acting or writing, but something that was along the lines of story telling. I have story ideas, but I just haven't written any of them. I think I am passable as an actor, but I feel I have a lot more ability in voice acting.

I have been doing voices and playing with puppets and toys for a long while. It started on my computer with my sister making little shows with puppets on our PC video camera. I take that back, it started before that.

I remember being in high school playing around with a video recorder making short films. Most of the time it was just fun. But, some of the time I think a lot of the stuff we did was really funny.

This past Sunday I did a skit with a puppet and a friend of mine. It wasn't just for kids church this week. We did it in front of the whole congregation. I have been told that a lot of people there said it was really good. Not only that but I also was in a skit with 3 other guys. My buddy Mark stole that show. Mostly because he dressed up like a girl and wore lipstick.

After church that Sunday I felt really good. I couldn't wait to do it again.

I love doing this stuff, if I could do it professionally I will have found what I wanted to do when I grow up, and that is act like a kid.

Are these just hopeless dreams that everyone has, or is there something to this.

I don't want to be a huge Hollywood actor, I just want to love what I do. Or, at least have a job that gives me time to explore my dreams as possible means of income.

To sum it up, I just want to enjoy my work. I don't want to hate Mondays. If I just dislike them I think I can live with that.