50 Shades

So I just finished reading 50 Shades of Grey. I must say it's not as bad as I thought it would be. In fact I kinda liked it. There's a lot more depth to it than I thought there would be, seeing as it's a Twilight offshoot and Twilight has no depth. There is indeed some freaky stuff in it, but only a few things that I didn't like. And a lot of it's all in the character's head. For example, he's taking her gliding, which actually I thought they were going to go hang gliding but turns out it's when you get taken up in a small plane and glide your way back down. Well anyway, she's never done it before and he's helping her get set up. Well if it were me I'd have no idea when I'd be ready or the plane would be ready and I would want someone telling me when it was ok to get in. But when he tells her she's good to go she's all "god he's such a control freak, so bossy". I'm like "What? That's not bossy." Now, I haven't read the other two books, so maybe the freak-stuff gets more in depth later, but we'll see. There were some unrealities in there (really, he's nearing 30, I doubt he can go 3 times within the same hour, also she has unrealistic reactions sometimes, especially at first) but, come on, what do you expect from the nature of the book? It's fantasy. If he needed her guidance or she was left unsatisfied, that's just not a great fantasy. I get that, and I can deal with it even if it is irritating sometimes.

Before you make fun, like I used to, go ahead and give it a read. Don't expect much. Go into it with the lowest expectations you've got. Maybe that's how I enjoyed it, lol. I went into it expecting it to be awful. In fact I was only reading it out of curiosity and so I could make fun of it. But, no. I have little to make fun of and I believe I've already mentioned what I would make fun of if I felt like going in depth, which I don't.

Oh, one thing that really, really irritated me was that she calls her computer "the mean machine". omg that is one of the most annoying things I've ever heard anyone call a computer.

Well, here I go, off to read the second book!

Disney's Star Wars

Unfortunately they say that these new movies will be originals based on no books, which, yes, is a good thing in a way because they won't have a book they can mess up. However, this is bad because there is about 17 years worth of books here and I don't think anyone would be too happy about them writing all of that out of canon.

Found this picture on google, it was titled as being Mark Elwood's.

The books and movies have, admittedly, crossed one another in the past. Anyone remember the Jedi Prince series? hahaha, and Splinter of the Mind's Eye? Isn't that still considered canon as a dream Luke had or something? I heard newer copies have him waking up at the end? (please confirm if anyone has such a copy as none of mine say it, though all I have is an original 1979 edition and one from, like, 2000 or something) You see, you just need to look at it as we're in the very far future. Remember, it was a long time ago. And archaeologists are uncovering more and more information. Imagine information we know now about our own Earth's history, and think back to, say, the early 1900s, a hundred years ago. What are the differences between history as we knew it then and as we know it now? And so the history of that galaxy far, far away is still being discovered. Certain things we used to think of as one way are close but not quite. For example, Boba Fett is in fact not Jaster Mereel, though he wears Jaster's armor and Jastor was basically his adoptive grandpa. See? We were close, but not quite.

Click to make larger so you can read the text.

Any movie set in NJO time would have spoilers. What if it's set after Vector Prime? Star by Star? There are events in those books that I would hate to have spoiled for me due to the movies. Course I suppose people said the same thing when the prequels came out, which is what started the whole "should my kids see OT and then PT or PT and then OT?" debate. Which, btw, having had my own baby now I have to make a decision. I have no clue what I'm going to do, I really don't.

Another concern are actors who don't take things seriously. I can see them running around like it's a big joke or Halloween going "I'm a Jedis look at my lifesaver!" and making Wookiee (oops, should I spell that "Wookie"?) calls and Vader breathing. Yeah, we get it. This isn't a game. It's serious. This isn't your 6-year-old's birthday party. It's for real. If you're going to do this do it with all your heart or get out. This is not a comedy. Also, very known actors should stay away. I'm talking to you Angalina Jolie and Nicholas Cage! I swear if either of them sign up I'm not seeing it.

What if they pick Shia LaBeouf as Jacen for an Indiana Jones tie-in. omg I think I'd rather stab my own eyes out than see that. (for the unknowing, Jacen is Han's oldest son)

Zac Efron, however, has my full permission to be Jacen. In fact, might I say that it was this thought that calmed me the most after the big news. Would they actually do it? Who knows. A girl can dream though, right?

Another thing is funding. How will the costumes look? Will they be as carefully made as the rest of the movies costumes were? Or will they basically be cheap cotton, bedsheets basically, sewn into robes? Will the lightsabers obviously reveal sink pipe origins or will they look well made? I guess what I mean is, will this have the look of a fan film? Or will it look realistic? Will it look like anyone cares? Will it be rushed to give us more more more? Will they put as much effort into it as the other 6? Remember the first Land Before Time? It was awesome, wasn't it? Now there's, what, 12 of them? People stopped caring after the first few. And, remember, Disney is famous for its sequels. The first is a hit so they cram in another and it's not even 1/4 as good a the first. Very, very rarely do they manage to get out a sequel that's actually good! Will it be corny and stupid? Remember the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers? They'd totally kick the Samurai Warrior's butt (or at least Tommy could... single handedly...). And there's been how many generations of rangers now? I can't keep up. After Mighty Morphin there's only been one other generation that was actually good. (Galaxy! Cause they had the Magna Defender... teehee) I know people want more more more. And that's how we wound up with the Clone Wars cartoons which are horrendously bad. I can't believe they're still letting Filoni have his sick, sick way with Star Wars. Why? Cause we're greedy people who can't leave well enough alone!

...but one of the biggest worries I have is this. In the Empire of Dreams documentary George Lucas is saying that when he originally made ANH he was almost done when he realized it needed a soundtrack. Which is when he met John Williams. He says that if he had not chose John Williams he doesn't think the movie would have been as much of a success as if he'd used music from the day. But John Williams is 80. They want to make 3 more movies and then another movie every so often? He won't live forever, people, and Star Wars is not Star Wars without John Williams, so I dearly hope they've considered that.

hate thinking up titles

Since Tommy is on medicaid still or Healthy Kids I guess his insurance card reads, and he'll be on it for a year, at the end of which they probably renew it with maybe Chip or something? I don't know. We'll see when we get there. We figured we'd go ahead and find him an actual doctor. Besides his belly button was making me nervous. So we got him a regular doctor who's not specifically a pediatrician but can deal with children. Dr. Schmidt I believe his name was. Very nice man, did really well with Tommy. He was patient, asked questions, gave answers, gave Tommy an exam, and got the nurses to give him his 2 month shots. Poor boy. I held him on my lap and he just screamed and screamed. I didn't have baby tylenol so one of the nurses gave him a dose. I picked some up later and gave him two more doses over the rest of the day (his shots were around noon). His temperature did rise a little but not drastically. I tried feeding him when we got home and he puked. Tried a little later and he spat that up too. But after that he slept and slept. I switched him to soy formula then, figuring we might as well get all his trauma out of the way at once. This was Friday. Well, yesterday morning he slept for 5 hours!

During those 5 hours I watched Brave, which I know isn't a 5 hour movie, I'm just saying that during that I did that. So it was pretty good. I've seen a few of the trailers and they had barely anything to do with what actually happens in the movie. I'm not disappointed though. Personally, I think the story could have gone one of 3 different ways and this just happened to be the one they picked. If you don't want spoilers skip the rest of this paragraph and continue reading at the next one. So, the 3 different ways I thought it could go were: Mother becomes human again, which is what they picked. Mother remains bear and dies. Merida redeems Mor'du and turns him into a human again and they fall in love. I'd like to have seen that last one. But then the movie would have been a lot longer and not as soft and fluffy.

So, Tommy's grown quite a bit. He's 12lbs 12oz and 23" tall. It's amazing to think how big he's gotten! He's outgrown a lot of his newborn size and has almost entirely switched over to 0-3. In fact the overalls he's wearing today are 6-9 months but they're the same size as another pair of overalls I have that say they're 0-3. So I dunno.

Last night he woke me up once. Once!! We went to bed around 10, with a last feeding then, he woke me up around 2:30, and then we got out of bed just before 8:00 with another feeding. Awesome! I do hope he keeps that up. I don't know if that was the shots or the formula. Today he's been cranky but he's a bit constipated so that's understandable. So far though I think I like the formula. We'll see in another day or two after he's finished adjusting to it, but tentatively, I think it was a great switch for him. It's enfamil prosobee. We used to have him on gerber goodstart gentle.

It is so weird to think right now that it's the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I'm used to being panicked and rushed and stressed beyond belief. And this year... here I am. Just chilling. Taking care of my baby, reading, crocheting, puttering around the house cleaning. If you'd asked me in years past my stress level on a 1-10 scale I'd have said 20. Now? eehhh, we'll go with 3.

Also, saw the new Spiderman. I never saw the old ones and I've never read the comics. I knew some basics about the story but that's it. So coming from basically a newbie standpoint I'll say I really liked it. I'll see the sequel when it comes out.

Gamesmaster Challenge starts tomorrow at Neopets! It'll be my first big event with the baby. There was a Halloween event, Masks of Dread, but it took seconds to do that and you could stop inbetween things. Gamesmaster Challenge is a week long gaming event where I'll be having to play games that don't pause and, unless it's an easy one, I can't just drop everything and lose my score if Tommy needs me. So I'll have to try and do it while he's sleeping. I'm so glad it's not Daily Dare yet. Daily Dare is a month long event. Gamesmaster Challenge is like a mini Daily Dare. And then next event will be the advent calendar next month.

*ahem* >_>

So my book reading is going nicely. I'm still struggling through Robots of Dawn. It finally started to pick up around page 80. I dunno, I just don't find it interesting to discuss various generally accepted meanings behind a word for 3 whole pages. Anyway, I know how it's going to work out, I just have no idea how it's going to take so long for the story to resolve seeing as I'm only 152/419 pages in. Possible spoilers ahead! Remember in KOTOR 1 when you're on Dantooine and you run into that woman who says her droid is missing and you find the droid and he tells you that the woman's husband died and he's the replacement? You have the choice of destroying him saying it's not healthy for her to be with a droid and she needs a human or you can make him go back to her. Yeah, I say this robot who was "killed" self destructed cause he didn't know how to follow the 3 robot rules. Should he bring her happiness by being there for her or is being there for her hurting her in the long-run? Boom, head explode. Mystery solved. Dunno, maybe it's just cause I played KOTOR 1 but I don't see why I figured it out and he didn't. Course I don't know, maybe there's more to it and I'm wrong. There has to be something that happens in the next 267 pages. And I just got done with the part that I figured it out from too.

 ...and in other news, I, ah... got curious and kinda started reading 50 Shades of Grey. ._. Don't judge me, I was curious! *whisper* ....I'm enjoying it... Ok, now you can judge me! But never fear! I'm not totally lost! I have not made it to the bdsm parts, and as I'm not into that I might stop reading then. But I had to give it a chance, right? So many women buying them up? I had to see what the fuss was about. But so far I like it in a "lame crappy fanfic" kinda way. And, yes, I know it started as a Twilight fanfic. It shows. I think, so far, this is one of those books you have to go into it expecting it to suck. I did and while it is better than I thought it would be (so far) it's still totally on a fanfiction level. Kinda like how Twilight is written as though it were a fanfic of itself, 50 Shades (so far) seems to be written in the same style of fanfictionery. I can't really explain what the difference is between a fanfic author and a real author but there is a definite difference. Or maybe the difference is in my mind, because I went into this knowing it was a fanfic. Dunno, though, cause Twilight struck me as being fanfictionous and it isn't. hm. So far I'm about to start chapter 9. Further review to follow after the freakshow starts! btw, fast read. I've been working on Robots of Dawn for like 2 weeks, but I just started this book last night. I do get the feeling my "this is better than I thought" remark will bite me in the next chapter or two cause it looks like the weirdness is about to start.

book reviews

I am a little behind on my books. I finally finished the Grimms Fairy Tales. No need to review that, except to say that I'm actually glad I'm done with it. It went so slow cause it was what I read while I fed the baby at night. Now that I'm done with that Victor's making me read a physics for beginners type of book at night. (well, he's not really making me, but he pushed me to)

So I read The Girl She Used to Be, by David Cristofano. There's mild spoilers in here. It's about a woman who saw someone get murdered when she was a kid and her parents saw it too, and they went into witness protection and gave testimony, which did nothing cause the guy is still free. The book starts with her bemoaning her horrible life and how she's had so many names, all of them her own fault. Cause, you see, she can't keep her stupid mouth shut. The beginning also shows us that her current job is that of a teacher, and she's grading papers. Instead of grading them on the actual work done she is grading them on their personalities! The beginning also shows us her calling her witness protection person with a lie that she was threatened and needed to be moved... because she was bored! She whines about how her life is horrible and how the government made her life miserable and what an awful program she's in. But you know, if she just followed the rules she'd have been fine. She could have stayed with one name and lived the rest of her life happy and in one place at one job and etc. Well during the move this time she thinks about how awful things are (again), that she's always put in rundown motels with paper-thin walls and she thinks about how "generous" they are in irritatedly buying her a snack cake at a gas station. How they gave her cheap hair dye and generic soap and "clearly didn't know a woman's needs" (I believe she was talking about wanting mascara or complaining about not being given a floral scent or something). Then the son of the guy she saw murdering someone comes along and sneaks right past security and tells her he's coming back the next day for her. She doesn't tell on him and in fact goes with him the next day. He whisks her away in an expensive car, gives her an expensive name brand sweater, takes her to eat a gourmet meal at a fancy restaurant. Already seeing how crime is glorified here? Well, she's found by her protectors and given another chance and instead goes to great effort to track down the guy, and get him to pick her up. He then takes her to a fancy hotel and gives her a whole day at a spa and they go out to eat at a restaurant but cause they can't decide what to order they order "a sample of everything". This whole time she asks him over and over if he's killed people, how badly has he hurt people, and being fidgety about his links to crime. She finds out he'd done a horrible mutilation to someone and was freaked out by it. But you know what happens? A guy attempts to mug them in an alley and while he's making fun of the guy and breaking his ankle and stuff she gets all into it and is excited and cheering him on and then she tells him to do the same mutilation to this guy. Now, while mugging is bad I don't think she should have jumped to that right away after having spent the last day being edgy about his links to crime and being fidgety about whether or not he's hurt people. It just seems extreme. (he doesn't listen to her) All this while she thinks she's falling in love with him, but in reality I think she's falling in lust and is simply after him cause of the excitement. She's even asking him to marry her the next day. The plan is to take her to his family's house and hope they take her in. btw, this whole time he has openly admitted to stalking her. He's followed her name to name, place to place, watching her, and finally the rest of his family was getting restless for him to kill her and that's why he finally "rescued" her. And she likes this, makes her "love" him more cause he knows her. I won't give away the ending but it's the reason I got rid of this book. Yes I just listed a lot of bad, but that's on close inspection. I read the book in about 3 days and enjoyed it very much. I think if the ending had been different I could have overlooked the silly, weird, and eye-brow raising. But I think the ending made me look into it deeper for things to not like. And, if given the chance, I can find bad in just about anything and go on and on about it. Apparently there's a sequel written from the guy's point of view. I would be interested in reading that to see if it makes the first book any better. Maybe I'll see if the library has it. I haven't gotten rid of it entirely just yet, it's still on the shelf waiting to be taken away, so if the sequel goes past the end of the first book and makes everything better I'd keep the first book too and probably re-review it with happier things to say about it.



On a lighter note I also decided to read Sanctuary, by Faye Kellerman. I thought I wouldn't like it, it being another mystery novel I picked up at random. But I enjoyed it. It's apparently part of a series of this detective and his wife. I don't know how the rest of the series is, but this one prominently featured Jews. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just that I don't know the terminology, or the deeper aspects of the religion. I know the basics, but that's it. So I believe a fraction of the book probably passed right over my head. Anyway, this book was about a diamond dealer and his family disappearing and then another disappears and are they related? It's better than I make it sound, I think I've been too negative with everything I review. It's just so much easier to talk about what's bad than what's good. The detective winds up in Israel looking for the families (wow, to just be able to hop on a plane and go to another country... this book is set in the early 90s I think), and he takes his wife with him cause she speaks Hebrew or whatever it was. I won't give away how things go, but I really liked this book. And though the Jew stuff was a bit much for me at times I think I would still give other books in this series a try, especially if it's toned down in the other books. The only bad thing I will say is that it took me a few chapters to really get into it. But after that I couldn't put it down.

Currently I'm struggling through Robots of Dawn, by Isaac Asimov. Dunno how known this book is but so far I am, as I said, struggling. I'm not giving up on it but I do hope it gets better.