Focusing On The Wrong Details

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood." - H. L. Mencken


Another fantastic video about (or rather not about) religion:





And here's the link for those who can't see embeds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfKolpFOZLk&feature=player_embedded


One thing being discussed in the comments of said video is that sometimes people ask about others' beliefs because they are genuinely curious. Often times that curiosity fits into one of the three reasons he outlined in the video, though. I think one of the few times someone can be curious just for the sake of curiosity regarding this would be if you already know someone pretty well, and want to see what kind of theology is involved with the worldview you already know they have.


It also reinforces my point in the Groups Are Memes post that while Hank says he's not an authority on these matters, a portion of his viewership thinks of him that way.


The core message of this video, at least how I'm interpreting it, is that it doesn't matter what you believe so much as how it affects you and your life. It really shouldn't matter what boxes people fall into, because each box is so big that it doesn't really tell you anything about them, and just encourages the use of stereotypes.




And then I find this article and am completely baffled. I honestly don't believe some of that stuff. And it makes me want to never ever move away from this city, because at least here people are tolerant enough that I wasn't even aware of this widespread hatred. And I don't even identify as atheist anymore. (Note: However, I do find the "Millions are good without God" billboards offensive...despite being one of said millions. Go figure.)


(ALSO: POTTERMORE PICTURES. )

Epic Quest: The Musical

"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you can never be certain whether they are authentic." - Abraham Lincoln


I am currently in the midst of a quest to expand my music library (it's going rather well, but if any of you want to leave a couple of your favorite bands/favorite songs by said bands in the comments, go right ahead.)


The problem hasn't really been that I only like YouTube-based music. It's been that the only music I've been exposed to up until recently has been YouTube-based and the pop on the radio, and that up until recently I hadn't bothered seeking out anything else.


I've found some stuff that I really like, but today I realized a big difference between YouTube music and "normal" music. In my interview with Alan Lastufka, I asked him what marketing techniques he/DFTBA Records used, and he said he didn't have to do any marketing outside of a weekly newsletter and Twitter because the musicians did all of that themselves through vlogs. 


And let me tell you, vlogging is an incredibly-effective marketing technique. Your viewers feel like they know you--like you're their friend--and so they don't mind giving you some of their money every now and then. You share part of your life with them in addition to just your music, but you end up with a much tighter fan-base.


"Normal" music doesn't have that same connection. That doesn't make YouTube music any better/worse, and I'm not saying that said musicians are vlogging solely for the manipulative effect on their viewers (they all started posting music just for fun, and started making money later on).


The "normal" musicians are just voices in my earbuds, rather than people living in my computer screen (who I sometimes get to meet in real life). And that's weird. (It's also weird that I find it so weird.)


(Yes. Rejoice, for I am emerging from my musical cocoon.)


Hmm...Someone should really write Epic Quest: The Musical. And no, Spamalot does not count. It's making fun of Arthurian themes. Now that I think about it...I want the Tough Guide To Fantasyland in musical form. Is that terribly geeky of me? (Yes. Yes it is. Very, very much so.)

Fandom-Based Music

"The way to know life is to love many things." - Vincent Van Gough


This post has been a long time coming, and now I finally have enough context for it to get my thoughts in order.


 I'm surrounded on all sides by various people and groups who are talking and asking about exactly why we like the things we like, or why a given thing is of good quality. I'm very sure it's obvious that I've been thinking about that a lot lately-- what with all of these book reviews and this post. Now, it's far too large of a topic to cover in one post, much less one  book, or even a dozen books, so I'm going to zero in on the phenomenon of fandom-based music.


I'm often given a hard time about the contents of my iPod-- how it's supposedly all wizard rock, or at the very least "nerdy" music. Over the weekend, I put together a playlist of all the songs I won't skip over when it comes up on Shuffle mode. There were about 100 of them. Only 17 were wizard rock, 50-60 (including those 17) could be considered nerdy (10 of which are all covers/duplicates/ different versions of each other), and another 20-ish are non-nerdy songs by nerdy artists. All in all, about 75% of my current bank of music is fandom-based. Why?


It's certainly not that most "normal" music is bad. It's just that fandom-music has a couple super-powers that the other stuff doesn't. There are three factors involved: Memories, Multitudes, and Music. (Yes, I came up with a cheesy alliteration just for you to groan at.)


Memories
"Normal" music has sentimental/nostalgic value as well, of course. The right words can transport you back to last week, last month, last year, or last decade. You can relive a few moments of your life. But you don't get to be a part of a fandom in a few moments. 
Take Harry Potter: there's the hours spent reading the books. There's the months spent anticipating the next one. There's the speculation about the upcoming sequel and seeing it on the big screen and the ever-so-familiar "I freaking want to go to Hogwarts." There's the sheer passion for the series, and fondness with which you remember the experience of reading them all for the first time. That's powerful stuff. The quality of the music doesn't matter as much as the mindset into which it puts you.


Multitudes
This ties in closely with the Memories. There's a community surrounding fandom-based music that you just can't find anywhere else. Not only do you have the connection with the material on which the fandom is based, but you share that connection in an intimate way.
Most people can relate to a love song, but that's a very individual memory. The entire world held their collective breath for the release of Deathly Hallows-- and we held our breath together. We all shared the enormous emotional experience of the series as a whole both in the in-book world and in the real one.
Half the fun of a wizard rock concert is the feeling of being a bunch of geeks geeking out together over a shared love through song and dance, and the same goes for any other group.


Music
And here's the thing that fandom-based music has in common with "normal" music: the...well...the music. Either you like the sound and you like the lyrics/themes, or you don't. And despite what I've said above, the music itself does make a difference. 
Three years ago, I owned a grand total of 3 CDs: two by Tonks and the Aurors, and Jingle Spells 2. I listened to them all the time on repeat, because of the first two factors. After I expanded my collection, I stopped listening to those altogether. Pretty In Pink (and Green) by The Parselmouths, for instance, has the nostalgia factor, and it has the community factor, but I also legitimately like the music- separately from all of that.


So there's why only a quarter of my music is "normal" - it's got to be pretty darn good (or I at least have to connect with it a lot, regardless of objective quality) for it to stand a fighting chance against all of that predisposition.

Interview: Alan Lastufka

Today's post is something new and exciting that I've never done before: an interview with an actual living human being. Or perhaps he actually had a robot write his answers, but that seems unlikely, so we shall disregard that.
This Human Being's name is Alan Lastufka, co-founder and acting president of DFTBA Records. Thank you so much, Alan, both for helping me out with my Economics project and letting me post the interview on here, and for generally being very helpful and cool in all of our interactions upon this thing known as The Internet. 
I realize that since many of you are familiar with the company, some of the questions might be a little "duh" to you, but it was for my homework, and my teacher isn't quite as aware of the YouTube scene, and I included them for the sake of comprehensiveness.
Let it be noted that I was actually listening to DFTBA Records music while compiling the interview into a Powerpoint.
We shall pretend that I said hello to him, and he said hello back, because I really just emailed him some questions, and he emailed me back the answers. Anyways, onward. Interview to be seen after the jump.

Appearances

(After reading aloud a Valentine's Day card) "Don't you wish PJ was doing this episode now, girls? You all would have just melted." - Hank Green


We're told that appearances don't matter. It's what's on the inside that counts. Don't judge books by their covers, even if we all know that the literal translation of that usually works rather well if you read the back/inside front. 
But then if we don't take good care of our appearances, those same people tell us that we need to take more pride in how we look, and that people are going to judge us for it. Houses should be clean when people come over, because you want to make a good impression.


Is anyone else receiving mixed messages?


Clearly appearances do matter, even though they shouldn't. 


Physical attraction, of course, is the big one. It affects everyone in some way, except for asexual/aromantic people, I suppose. (KickThePj is a good example of this. I wish I had graphs of his viewer numbers before and after he was on Truth or Fail for the first time.)


Then there's stereotypes, which are worse. If you see someone you find attractive, you will think some variation on "He/She is attractive," and that will be true for you. 
However, when you see someone who fits into a stereotype, there's a huge number of other things that come flooding through your mind, most of which have nothing to do with the facts you know about him or her.


Then there's just plain judging. If you notice someone looking particularly unkempt, you'll wonder. You'll guess. You'll make up stories for the person. You'll invent a character with their face, and treat the person as that character. This one, I think, is the most unavoidable. 
You can find someone attractive, but that doesn't mean you have to act on that attraction.
You can recognize yourself invoking stereotypes, and remind yourself not to use them.
But judging is right on the line between fact and fiction. There's what may or may not be good evidence, but any or all of the proof could be inadvertent, or misperceived. 


So what do we do?


If it's the inside that counts, but the outside that's seen, why not try to make the outside as reflective of the inside as possible? Note: as possible. 


I guess I'm trying to say that I'm in favor of self-expression. I live in my room. Why shouldn't my room look lived-in?

The Feminism Post

"Mystery makes the heart go bonkers." - Craig Benzine, aka Wheezy Waiter (This quote, while seemingly only humorous, is actually supported by several studies.)

In my last post, I linked to something Aly wrote about feminism, but stated that I didn't have anything to add. Kenny expressed disappointment that the post was about something else, and I replied saying that I should have said I didn't have anything to add at the present time.

Well, now I do.

I was behind on watching YouTube videos, so this afternoon I've been catching up on them. Most of these videos were TED talks.

Now, the majority of the videos I watch have a viewership that is on the whole intelligent, conscientious, and positive. When it comes to TED videos, however, I am literally scared to comment because I know the Giant Squids of Anger will descend and attempt to pick me to pieces, and I just don't feel like dealing with that. It is those sorts of comments I will be dealing with in this post.

The video I was watching before I stopped to write this was "Jacqueline Novogratz: Inspiring a life of immersion," which is about immersing yourself in a cause (such as global poverty) and working great positive change. 

Here are the top voted comments:

"Every woman that talks at TED keeps talking about "Women this, women that".  Inequality was truly real 20-30 years ago. It's been diminishing and it will be gone within the next 10 years as the generations change."

"men and women are not equal. we never will be. that's how nature works. "

And those are actually very tame, considering they're at the top. Just check the comments of any other TED video with a female speaker.

Here are some from the "most recent" list: 

"I'm so cool, bla bla women bla bla women bla bla"

"Notre Dame, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, Taj Mahal

Law, Equality, Freedom

Napoleon, Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne

Men have done more than woman did, as napoleon puts it:

Women are nothing but machines for producing children."

So women should shut up and stop complaining because we're equal to men now, but we're also inherently inferior. That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

Also, the last line of the final quote translates pretty well to "women are objects for me to have sex with." Yes, feminism is definitely out-dated in 21st Century America, much less in the rest of the world.


Aly's post dealt mainly with eliminating stereotypes surrounding women. This is more about social vs. political equality.


On paper, American (because I'm unfamiliar with other countries--sorry foreign people. Please leave a comment and tell me about your country) women are pretty much equal to men. We have full legal and economic rights. Everything's good. 


But social equality is an entirely different story. One needs only read the comments of a TEDWoman video to see that there is plenty of prejudice against both any woman and any woman who chooses to point out these inequalities. As I said: I don't leave comments on those videos anymore.


The women changed the political rules, but it's falls more (read: "not entirely, but more than political rules") to men like these to change the social issues. It's their attitudes that are the problem, and if they shoot down any woman who tries to reason with them, it's rather difficult for us to make any progress.


"You play like a girl," is still a common insult, isn't it? I recommend that you watch this video, although I think I've already posted it on here.


The majority of men, of course, would never write the kinds of comments I've shared with you. This post isn't about how men are evil. This post is about how there's still room for growth.


Also: of course they're going to talk about women at a conference specifically for women.

TED Complaints

“Hank, at the end of this year I started to think that a lot of life is about doing things that don’t suck with people who don’t suck.” - John Green


"Biography is different from Geography. Geography is about maps, while biography deals with chaps." - Edmund Clerihew Bentley (that's the first quote from my new Quote Book- the first section is all about biography.)


As you know, I've been watching a lot of TED videos recently. I have enjoyed all of them.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsSd2nmoKNA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1KJAXM3xYA


It makes me sad when videos such as the two above-- almost always videos with female speakers-- get lots of comments to the tune of "@#$% this $%&#. All of the TED Woman talks suck except for like, one."


I'm assuming that when it first started out, TED was mostly about science, and had a lot of male speakers. Since then, they have expanded. There are talks on literature and spirituality. There are talks about social interaction and understanding each other (like the two I've linked to above). Why is it so bad that the lectures are encompassing MORE content? They aren't badly written, and the content is sound, researched stuff. Yet they are hated all the same, because they belong to different categories.


I mean, so what if she uses terms such as The Warrior and The Mystic? She's compartmentalizing different portions of herself so as to be better-understood. If you have a problem with her New Age-y language, translate it into something else. Warrior and Mystic are archetypes that the human image-oriented mind can understand.


The guy viewers complain that there's TEDWoman, but making TEDMan would be sexist. Fair point, but perhaps they created the TEDWoman conference because some women didn't feel welcome at the regular event due to people like this.


I'm sorry. It just makes me really mad. 


Science isn't the only thing that matters. Even if you're not religious yourself, spirituality matters to others, and others affect you, which means that spirituality ought to matter to you as well. Living in harmony with each other matters, even if it sounds fruity.


Also, I really think that "each other" should be made into one word, but all of my spell checkers flip out when I try to write "eachother."
Those two words in that order are used as their own separate word, and they should be spelled as such. 


Also Also: Hi to all of the readers from the Netherlands and Ukraine! Google Stat has informed me that views from your area are growing. I assume that means you're not spam-bots.


IMPORTANT ALSO: Sometimes I post lyrics I've written on here, but I finally actually got around to making a video of one of my songs (yes, it's a wizard rock song). The video/audio quality isn't terribly good (as my camera sucks at video-- the iSight is debatably better), but here's the link to that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMJ0z-v1W9I

"Growing Up Digitally"

“Every year, many many stupid people graduate from college. And if they can do it, so can you.” — John Green


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1


The thing I hate most about that article is that it brings up many good points that are applicable to many people, so that I can't really rant about it and feel justified. It may not apply to me (for the most part), but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its merits.


More after the jump... Note: Very long post. Beware. I will most certainly not be offended if you don't feel like reading all of it. Just read the article I linked to and form your own opinions.

Lunar Eclipse

Hm... I was going to put a funny quote here, but seeing as how my english teacher intends to "totally stalk my blog," as I believe she put it (and I'm doing nothing to disuade her- in fact I'm going to send her the link later tonight), perhaps I don't want that particular quote being the first thing she sees...
Don't worry, though. It'll come in a week or so. It's just not something I want as a first impression. :)


As I'm sure most if not all of you know, there was an eclipse last night, made super-extra-special by the fact that today's also the winter solstice.
I got up at about 2 a.m. to watch.
Clothing that was worn: 

• Shirt
• Dad's giant awesome fuzzy sweatshirt
• Coat
• Gloves
• Dual pairs of socks
• Slippers
• Hat-like thing
• Harry Potter scarf tied around nose and mouth

Dad never went to bed, so when he woke me up, he'd already placed an old queen-sized mattress on the driveway with the cushions from our old couch at one end to serve as pillows, and we brought out a few blankets as well. So me, him, and my sisters lay there in our bundles like sardine hobos, as we put it then. I didn't feel cold, but I was shaking like mad, so I guess I must have been.
Later, Dad and I got up and stood in the backyard away from the streetlight. That was after totality started, so the moon looked really cool and red and so close that we might have been able to pluck it out of the air.
I figured with an English project to present first thing in the morning (which I feel went well, but we'll see once I get the rubric back), I should probably get some more sleep, so I went inside...and ended up watching YouTube videos until a bit after 4. Oops. They were good ones, though. Such as The Uncultured Project's Project for Awesome video, which was the most awesome one I've seen out of the entire project.
Fortunately, someone gave me a piece of Dark Chocolate Infused With Expresso at lunch (and I love coffee-flavored chocolate), plus I had a cup of Sunkist at dinner, so I'm not feeling tired. Ha.


Dad ended up staying outside and awake wearing his Doctor Who scarf wrapped around his face along with more clothes than I knew he could fit on his body at once until 5-ish, at which point he came in and went to bed before getting up again at 6 to take me to school. He's on vacation from now until the end of the year, so he could sleep all morning (which he didn't).


My cousin (who is in college except also on break) and his friends drove out to a nearby lake to watch the eclipse. Apparently it was pretty cool, except it got cloudy so they went to someone's house and hung out until morning.


In conclusion: totally worth it. I can't wait for the total solar one in South Carolina in 2017. We're going to make hotel reservations well in advance.


Also, Emily (rougewriter Emily) and Daniel, I had a dream you guys came over to my house to celebrate the solstice with me...except you didn't bother waking me up. You just got out candles in the middle of my floor and I happened to get up and notice and you said "Hey! Want to join us?" 

Epic YouTube Announcement

And now it is time for the announcement I told you I'd have by the end of last week. In my defense, this is within a week of my saying that.


I am starting a new YouTube channel. Here is where I descrive what and why:





Juliet, Naked was recommended to me by rock4ever95. So thanks to him.


I don't really know much about "reviewing" books. Just how to talk about them. So we'll see how this goes.

Globalization and the Internet: The Video

"Be the change you want to see in the world." - Gandhi


The third part of my English project (1 being speech and 2 being Powerpoint) was to make a video describing my views on my topic. I wanted to make a vlog, since that style in itself related to my topic, but we were supposed to make a "commercial" type thing. Below is my video.


Things I learned from the making of this video: I'm a terribly geeky optimistic liberal. (although perhaps "learned" isn't the right term considering I already would have used all of those adjectives to describe myself.)
My dad's reaction to me confessing that realization to him: "Sounds like someone raised you to be a geeky optimistic liberal."
Me: "No, you raised me to be a pessimistic geeky liberal."
Him: "Maybe you're only optimistic because you're too young to see how screwed up the world is. Or maybe you're optimistic because you're young and have the tools to work the change in the world that I didn't have."


Let's see...
My dad is awesome.


Also, I suggest Google imaging "censorship." There's some funny stuff there that...wasn't school-appropriate. Plus some funny stuff that was, of course, but didn't make it into the video.

Project For Awesome 2010

"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" - Henry David Thoreau


For those of you not familiar with the Project For Awesome: http://projectforawesome.com/aboutp4a

My video:





This is not intended to offend any nuns, or people against Harry Potter, or Christians who AREN'T against Harry Potter. This is just intended for laughs and to raise money for a charity I support.


In addition, the HPA is not by any means the only good charity out there. In fact, I recommend that you donate to other ones.


Charities I donated to:

• Partners In Health 
• The Make A Wish Foundation

If you click through to the pages I linked to, you will see that I donated to PiH for the raffle prize (not that PiH is a bad charity. I just had ulterior motives.)
Make A Wish, however, was not for the prize. A length of time ago so large that it is rather shameful, I raised a bunch of money by crocheting and selling scarves and promised to donate the money to cancer-related stuff. Then I never actually donated it. So I donated it to Make A Wish earlier this evening, and the possibility of Star Wars novels is a bonus that I actually secretly hope I don't win. Not because I don't like Star Wars...but because I don't have the shelf space right now.


So am I selfish, donating simply because I want the prize in the first case and out of duty in the second? I couldn't have lived with myself if I transfered the scarf money from its envelope into my wallet. Therefore am I not doing it to help others...only to help myself? Is any charitable donation selfless, if it's just to make us feel good?

In Which I Am A Massive Dork

"It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter." - Marlene Dietrich


http://www.youtube.com/vihart


Those math class doodles are the best thing that has happened to me today, I think.

Debate Tournament Videos

"We do not remember days, we remember moments." - Cesare Pavese


I wanted to do a video in the style of John and Hank Green's Thoughts From Places series, so I took my camera along to the tournament. This is what happened. Plus you get to see what a mess my hair is in the morning. Ha, the things I do to be true to form.





And here's a more normal video that I shot over the course of the day:









Now about that quote:
This is...quite perhaps my favorite quote I've ever posted here, simply for the stark truth of it. I love things that penetrate to the core reality of things.

NaNoWriMo: We're Still Alive

For those who do not know, this is a parody of the song that plays during the credits of the game Portal, which I love.

"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship." - Thomas Aquinas


Toda'y post comes in some number of parts that I haven't counted yet.


Part 1: Lost


Basically, I started watching the show. We're 3 episodes in, and expect to go crazy once we're done with this disk and have to wait for Netflix to send us the next one.


Part 2: Recommendations


I enjoy passing along reading material-- especially that which is written by people I know. So if you aren't the creator or the other people who know about it already, go look at The Strand for the 21st Century-- a blog on which teen writers may get their writing available for the consumption of others.


Then there's another friend of mine whose blog I mentioned awhile ago. She's only posted a few times, but I figured I'd point you all towards her, since she said she didn't mind-- partially because her stuff is amazing, and partially because I want her to have the motivation to post more, because her stuff is amazing and I miss reading it. Meet The Fleur-de-lis. Play nice, Strand. You don't get to hog the spotlight in this Part of the post. :)


Part 3: NaNoWriMo


So it's over, or may as well be as far as the people I know are concerned. Congrats, guys. I look forward to hearing what you churned out over the past month, but if you're like me and don't want people seeing until its much, much better than it is now, I completely understand.


My sister said to me this morning, "Zoe didn't make it. She got stuck at about 36,000." 
I said, "Yeah, that's the roughest part. I don't blame her." 
"Her dad did, though. At least, he was only 2,000 words away a couple days ago."
(I hear our dad getting himself a bowl of cereal in the kitchen) "That's awesome. That's so cool that he's doing NaNoWriMo too. I wish I had a dad as cool as that!"
Dad: (laughs) I knew you'd say that!


Now comes the months of dilemma: To watch House, or to write? To watch Lost, or to write? To read Book X, or to write? To watch Buffy, or to write? To play Oblivion, or to write?


Part 4: Haircut


Go choose your own adventure with the creator of the Potter Puppet Pals, and then go back and try all of the other options. All are hilarious.

How To Be A Writer

"You like someone who can't like you back because unrequited love can survive in a way that once-required love cannot." - John Green


How To Be A Writer: Because, you know, this guy has it down way better than I do, so I'll let him do the talking from here on out.





Thanks to KTLiterary for the link, as well as the query review she did for me in October, and for a generally informative blog.

Presence

"There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves." - Albert Guinon


Earlier today, Hayley G. Hoover of Five Awesome Girls fame announced a new project: Presence.


The idea is for it to be part advice column and part online magazine, and while the only post on it so far is a description of how it came to be, I love it already. 
Read the first post (or the About The Blog page, or both), and then come back.


No, seriously, go read them. :)


I think this concept and mission are definitely things that the world is lacking. Hayley has a decent-sized following on both her YouTube channel and her personal blog, the majority of whom I assume are girls, and Presence will only grow from there due the fact that it looks like it will apply to girls (and guys) outside of her normal YouTube sphere.


I only wish I had the audience and the inspiration to launch a project similar in structure to this. Unfortunately, I only have 10 of you subscribers (officially, I don't know who reads it outside of Blogger) and no ideas as to what I would write about.
Therefore, it is a wish to be shelved for a long time, possibly forever.


Oh, and I've decided to try and re-read Deathly Hallows by Friday night. Wish me luck.

A Succession of Worthwhile NaNo Links

Kristina Horner posted an excerpt from her NaNoWriMo novel today. It's hilarious.


http://italktosnakes.blogspot.com/2010/11/novel-excerpt-1.html


An agent whose blog I follow (the one who critiqued my query letter for me), tweeted this next link to "The Fantasy Novelist's Exam," detailing all of the things aspiring fantasy writers should avoid. While I knew most of them already, it still amused me greatly. Especially the last two questions and the one about Robert Jordan.


http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/


Last and MOST DEFINITELY NOT least, is the Office of Letter's and Light (those behind NaNoWriMo)'s post about...me. Yes, me. I opened up Google Reader and saw my own name staring back at me. Awesome.


http://blog.lettersandlight.org/post/1481338441/letters-and-light-around-the-world-olivia-wood


So I have about 800 words minimum to write for today...

The Quad N: My Deeply Fascinating History

The comments on my query are slowly trickling in.


Here's the latest installment in the Epic Saga of the Quad N:





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At9iJ-6QFoo&feature=player_embedded


Sorry for talking a bit fast. The first take was almost 10 minutes long, so I had to cut out a lot of stuff that was even less interesting than what I ended up including. Enjoy or ignore at your discretion.


The complete synopsis of Ishaera can now be found on my NaNoWriMo profile. Add me as a buddy if you haven't already, and leave your username in a comment so I can add you (it's not reciprocal like Facebook, for some reason). http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/502334


Book updates: I read Cloaked In Red, which was brilliant in multiple senses. I especially liked "Deems the Woodgatherer" and "Little Red Riding Hood's Little Red Riding Hood" (the one with the smart cloak).
We're reading Siddhartha in English, which has provoked some interesting thoughts that deserve a post of their own.
Finally, my dad's birthday present for me came, which is a book entitled The God Debates by someone he went to high school with. It's a collection of all of the already-discussed reasons why a higher power may or may not exist, intended to stop ignorant people from repeating stuff that's already been presented. I've only read the preface so far, but I like that it aims to encompass more than the Judeo-Christian God, using "God" when referring to that and "god" when referring to the generic concept of a higher power(s).