DeMille's Lost City

As someone who uses the internet frequently, I'm always picking up on random pieces of information, which works out as great fodder for irl conversations or wayward blog posts. Some of these facts or stories that I pick up are amazing, humorous, or bizarre. Sometimes it's all of the above.

In 1983, an amateur filmmaker, following a cryptic clue left in an old book, found an ancient city, complete with sphinxes and a 20-ton statue of the Pharaoh, buried beneath the sand dunes of not Egypt, but Southern California. I'm not making any of this up. The man who made the discovery was Peter Brosnan, the book was the autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, and the ancient city was the complete set to his silent classic, The Ten Commandments.

Week One with Skyward Sword

I don't think I'm going to be blogging this entire game, but I definitely wanted to give you all my week one reactions, especially since, a) I've been waiting and saving over two years for this game, and b) I know quite a few people who haven't been able to play it yet, and have been asking me what I think. This'll be long, and I apologize in advance - but there are many pretty pictures to look at!

Sarcasm Hand

The problem with sarcasm is that it isn't always easy to detect.

In speech, sarcasm is relatively easy. There's a certain inflection used when being sarcastic, stressing words to point out how obviously untrue, and thus sarcastic, a statement is. This becomes less clear when being sarcastic with a person you don't know very well, but most people tend to shy away from sarcasm with anyone besides friends.

Sarcasm becomes more of a problem in writing, because there isn't any good way to point it out. For example, I could write the statement "I love that movie," visually stressing the word 'love' with italics, but there's no clear way of knowing if I stressed that word because I seriously do love that movie, or if I stressed that word because there was obviously no way on earth I could love that movie.

Friday Comic

I always used to wonder how they decided where to place the borders between countries and states. Now I know.

Zelda's 25th

Look at that - I'm talking about video games again. Oh well.

I mentioned this in my E3 Coverage post, but this year marks Zelda's 25th Anniversary, 25 years since the first Zelda game was released in Japan by Nintendo. This is pretty exciting for me, as The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite fiction series of all time.

Adventures in Cat-Training

We recently bought my cat a scratching post. She's been getting older, and goes outside less often, so she had taken to scratching at our furniture. Our old couch was fraying at all the corners where she'd attack it, so when we got this new one a few months back, we used a special kind of double-sided tape to keep her away; the fabric on my piano bench was also coming apart, though now it's been reupholstered.

I've also noticed my cat's claws getting caught in things. Cats, unlike dogs, can retract their claws (well, except for cheetahs), but when my cat stretches out in front of the doormat, she flexes her claws into the fabric to hold herself steady, and finds herself pulling the carpet up with her as she tries to move. Something had to be done.

Social Media Changes

Those of you who use Facebook regularly are probably aware of the new User Interface changes just released. Facebook has gone through a series of almost constant changes since its inception, and it seems like once the users finally get used to the last change, another one rolls around.

My language on Facebook is currently set to "English (Leet Speak)," so I actually have no clue what the new Facebook changes look like. If you've seen the changes and hate them, like most people seem to, I may sound like I'm bragging. I am. Of course I am.

Avast! These be Strange Waters!

 Aye, and they'd have to be, too; today's tide bring in one of the best holidays ever: International Talk like a Pirate Day! That's right, landlubbers, ye heard it here. It's the one day a year dedicated to the fierce, rogue, sea-loving pirates, when everyone around the world can affect an accent and dress up for school or work (assuming, of course, you've explained yourself to your captain).

I'm pretty bad at Piratey lingo, so I wont even pretend to try to keep it up for long.

First Day

About a year ago, I came onto my local community college campus to start my first day of classes. It was a truly terrifying experience.

For starters, I had to take the bus to campus. The college campus is a 20-30 minute drive from my house, and since I didn't have my license at the time, one of my parents would have to drop me off on their way to work (which, by the way, is in the opposite direction). Instead of taking me all the way out to campus an hour early just to get to work on time, they dropped me off at a local bus stop. My first experience riding a bus was that first day of school, and I had no idea what to do. I managed to deposit the money and find a seat without too much hassle, though I ended up sitting in the same spot for almost the entire semester.

The Amazing, Versatile Semi-Colon!

A few months ago, when my mom was boasting about how smart all her children were, I turned to her and proudly said, "My favorite punctuation mark is the semi-colon."

My mom looked back at me and said, "Never, ever, say that in public."

Sorry, mom; I'm obviously still in my rebellious phase.

The Ghost Ship Mary Celeste

While wasting my time on the internet a while back, I stumbled upon a very strange story; that of the Ghost Ship Mary Celeste. I don't know too much about maritime lore, but this story is apparently very famous, because it's both very bizarre and seems to have no real explanation. Modern day researchers have been able to come up with an answer to what happened to the Mary Celeste, but even their most plausible explanations don't make this story any more normal.

Everything Bad is Good for You

A while back, I wrote a review on a book titled Reality is Broken (by Jane McGonigal). If you didn't read it or don't remember, the book is about video games, and how they can positively impact the people who play them. Jane McGonigal's goal in writing the book was to help dispel the negative image associated with video games and to try to get people to incorporate the positive aspects of gaming into their everyday lives.

While writing that review, I discovered a similar book, called Everything Bad is Good for You (by Steven Johnson), and the idea intrigued me so much, I decided to buy it and read it as well. Johnson's book, which was written a few years ago, is about Pop Culture in general, and how it's actually making people smarter.

The Shot Heard 'Round the World

I'm almost certain that every one of you has heard of the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World', as long as you've taken an American History class. Not the shot that kickstarted The Great War, but the shot that marked the beginning of the American Revolution.

I wont give you all the dates of all the significant events before the American Revolution, but the actual fighting for the war didn't start until April, 1775 (a full year before the Declaration of Independence was finalized). Before then, the Colonists on the American continent were just protesting the fact that they were being treated as second-class English citizens. As hostility grew between the Colonists and the British officers sent to calm them down, both sides started preparing for war.

Statue in Concord

Vacation Time: Results Show

Monday, August the first, my parents and I set out for our official summer-vacation-get-away thing. The goal, I believe, was to visit my brother in Utah, see a few people in Idaho, and get to know said-brother's future in-laws in Oregon while we scouted out places to eat in Portland for the upcoming wedding. My own personal goals, meanwhile, were to work through some of my 'to-read' backlog, figure out our new car radio, and drive at least one leg of the trip without mom yelling at me (she's a very nervous passenger).

The drive to Utah took about ten hours, and I drove the first three. The road goes straight through the Mojave Desert, which is relatively pleasant to look at but pretty boring to drive through. Add that to the fact that I didn't know where I was going, and I was kinda stressed (I'm not used to using the overdrive button, so there were a few people riding my tail, and mom was finicky throughout), and by the end of my shift my back was sore and I was ready to stop.

Like this, but with no clouds. Ever.

What's Up With...? (July Edition)

...The Pepsi Challenge Not Working?

If you've ever watched TV, you're probably aware of the blind taste tests that Pepsi started back in the 70s, called the Pepsi Challenge. Essentially, they'd set up a table somewhere and have random people taste a cup of Pepsi and a cup of Coca-Cola, without labels, to see which one they preferred. Most people agreed that Pepsi tasted better, and the blind test was considered a success for Pepsi.

Except that Coca-Cola's sales didn't go down - Coca-Cola sales had been and continued to be higher than Pepsi's. Pepsi marketers were baffled; they'd scientifically proven that Pepsi was better, but people were still buying Coca-Cola. When actual scientists repeated the Pepsi Challenge, they got the same results, so they decided to see what happened when people knew what they were drinking. The same people who, on a blind test, said they preferred Pepsi, on a labeled test said Coca-Cola was better.

Subcultures and the Internet

Last Wednesday, in my Myth and Legend class, I gave an extremely well-thought-out, well-prepared presentation on the mythical perspective of Subcultures, and how the internet is changing them.

It was an interesting class; we didn't take the approach I thought we were going to take on the subject matter, but I wont even attempt to explain everything we did talk about (though, if you're interested, practically everything we did came out of this Bill Moyers interview with Joseph Campbell), because there's so much. The goal of our finals presentations was to find some sort of 'modern myth' - not 'myth' as in an untrue thing we all believe in, but 'myth' as in the way we align ourselves with the world at large.

Joseph Campbell

The obvious choice to me seemed to be the internet. It's huge, it's vast, no one quite understands it, and we all believe in it and take part of it anyways. I narrowed my topic down to Subcultures, as a way to approach this vast idea of 'the internet', and then did a bunch of research to decide what exactly I was going to hit upon during my allotted 10-20 minutes.

When it came to making the visuals for my presentation, I decided, instead of making a PowerPoint presentation and hoping the school computer would read it correctly, to make a Google Docs file. I was introduced to Google Docs only a month or so ago, when a brother announced he was getting married. Google Docs lets you create Microsoft-esque files online, like word documents, or in my case powerpoint presentations, so you can access the file form any computer. I felt this was only fitting, with my chosen topic.

Here is a link to my final Google Docs presentation. I don't have a transcript of everything I said that day (and honestly, why would I?), but I'll go over basically everything I said, and you can follow along with the visual presentation.

Wilde and Unruly

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have the beginnings of what would be a list of dead people who I really admire. It's not really a fully-formed list - in fact, I can only accurately think of two names from it, the first being Albert Einstein, who I don't have to say anything about, and the other being Oscar Wilde.

I get the impression that many people today don't actually know who Oscar Wilde is, which is really unfortunate. In my opinion, he's one of the best and one of the funniest English writers of all time. In all fairness, however, he only ever wrote one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. When he was alive, he was most famous for his children's fairy tales, published in two collections titles The Happy Prince and Other Tales and A House of Pomegranates, but nowadays I'd wager most people recognize his name from the numerous plays he wrote, including Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Bookshelf

I talk a lot about video games, movies, and TV shows on this blog, and I worry sometimes that people might think I'm not as bookish as I really I. Because I really am.

These are the bookshelves in my room. As you can see, they're nicely decorated with knick-knacks that I've collected over the years - the majority of those kick-knacks being books. For some reason, I prefer to own the books that I read rather than borrow them, so if I get in the mood to read something, I almost always go out and buy it instead of checking to see if it's at the library, or if a friend owns it. I do occasionally get rid of books, but currently the number of fictional or otherwise narrative novels (or anthologies) on my wall is 232 (given a 1% margin of error).

The Cake is Magic!

There is a certain dessert dish made in my house; one of the ingredients is magic. My mom puts the rest of the necessary ingredients together, then applies some magic and a few micro waves, and a magic cake appears.

If you've never tasted a magic cake, it might not look particularly appealing, but fresh magic cake, warm and gooey and chocolaty, is delicious. The magic essence fills your soul and gives you powers you didn't know you had, like the ability to fly, or control things with your mind. Regular old chocolate cake is fine, but I don't think anyone would disagree that the magic cake reign supreme.

I can not disclose the full secrets of the magi cake, though I can promise you there are no mood-enhancing drugs, beyond the already admitted chocolate. The magic cake, in all honesty, is magic. It cooks up in eight minutes, and can be ready ten minutes after pulling the magic cake dish out of the cupboard. Years ago, when Marie Antoinette supposedly said "let them eat cake," no one could have imagined that in 2011, the cake would be magical.

Of course, trying to survive on just magic cake is probably a bad idea. As powerful as it is, the magic cake doesn't include all the necessary daily nutrients, and it doesn't help with my pretend diet. I forget that all, however, when I bite into a delicious scoop of magic cake, unorthodox, mysterious, wonderful, magic.

Manual Entertainment

I really need to start writing some more blog rough drafts in advance. I only have one semi-ready, and it would require me to download some pictures off my camera (which of course requires me to find my camera, first).

Today's the third day of Summer Semester at Generic Local Community College. I take the bus there and back (about a 20 minute ride), so I get to experience the great desert outdoors, something that never happens during break, or the days I happen to not have class. I don't have a car, nor do I have my driving license yet (we were all very late with it, in my family), so I'm also getting my exercise, walking home from the bus stop - almost two miles away - while my parents and their vehicles are at work.

The first day of the semester, I left my keys at home. I was in such a rush to get out the door, making sure I had all my books and knew where my classes were, that I decided I wouldn't lock the door behind (left Dad to do that for me) and didn't even realize I'd need the keys to unlock the door later. Luckily, my mom works at an elementary school between our house and the bus stop, and she just happened to be heading out for recess duty when I called her cell phone to ask if she had hers.

When I got home and recovered my complexion (my face gets a bit red when I'm exhausted from exercise), I posted on Facebook:

"Not that I'm complaining, but why isn't it 100 degrees outside? Stupid global climate change means I no longer know what to expect from anything! Next, they'll tell us we don't have to pay taxes anymore, and we'll have a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!"

In the Southern Californian desert, in June, it's kind of expected to be really hot. I know I've mentioned this in a blog before, but it's been unseasonably cool this year. I figured, if a hot summer is no longer guaranteed, who's to say that anything in life is certain anymore, even death and taxes!? Of course, it's still in the 90s here, with a cool breeze, so elsewhere in the world they'd say it's pretty hot, but in a bona fide desert, we're used to 100 to 110 degrees (Fahrenheit) and hot air blowing.

It was hotter on Tuesday, and I remembered my key. Today, I forgot my key again. I got all the way to the house before I realized I needed to turn back and get mom's from the school. This blog is a bit later than I expected because of how tired and annoyed I was when I finally got into the 82 degree house.

Along with the start of Summer Semester, this week is also E3 - Electronic Entertainment Expo! It's an annual trade show of video game related technology and hardware, and a major geek fest! All the major companies give presentations on the work they'll be doing and releasing in the next year, and tech companies show off some of the newest, highest quality technology for people in the industry to see and get ideas from. Only people in the gaming industry are allowed to attend, so normal geeks who want to go have to get engineering degrees and get hired by a developing company.

Last year was the first year I actually watched one of the presentations; namely, Nintendo's. I was surprised by how fun it was - these aren't boring, 'here's some numbers and things to expect in the future' presentations, they're exciting, humorous, of geeks for geeks by geeks. Yesterday was this year's presentation by Nintendo, where they unveiled their new Wii successor system. Unfortunately, I had a ton of homework to do, so I wasn't able to watch it live.

As soon as I finish this blog, however, I'm going to go over the the E3 website and watch the tape. In case anyone's interested, I'll write my feelings on what happens as a blog post for either tomorrow or Saturday. I may also watch Sony's presentation, depending on how I feel.