In The Future

Five years from now, phones will be smaller, televisions will be bigger, and advertisements will be everywhere. I’ll be a much more successful version of myself so long as I can keep up with the ever-changing technology in photography.

Ten years from now, I see phones being irrelevant. Something much like a phone will be in our own minds, activated by our own minds. I think we’ll be able to vacation to far away places without ever having to leave our beds. Bodies of water will be dirtier, trees will be fewer, and many creatures will have died off due to pollution or loss of habitat. Hopefully by then they have invented something so that the earth isn’t completely polluted and disgusting. If I keep dying my hair the way I have been, maybe I’ll have to shave my head by that time.

Twenty years from now I’ll be able to photoshop in my mind. I will be able to visualize an image in my own mind and it will be created. I can’t take a picture by blinking my eye, and share it to everyone in the world just by saying so. My son will have blonde hair and green eyes, and my daughter will have brown hair and blue eyes. Hopefully by then, women will have equal rights, so my husband and I will see each other as equals. We will be very lazy in the future. Robots will do all of our housework and errands for us.  Marriage will be less relevant, but still considered traditional. Cosmetic surgery will be the norm. everyone will be beautiful.

Fifty years from now, I will ride around in a hover-chair. My hover chair allows me to still play catch with my grandkids. Whenever I drop trash, it will be absorbed into the floor. We will be able to reach into our computers and take out whatever item we see in the screen. We will be able to absorb all information. Hopefully humans will have found out how to open up the other 90% of the human brain so that we can retain more information- all information- making everyone’s arguments and thoughts based completely on logic and fact. 

This Is Not Another Star Wars Post I Swear.

Spaceballs.

People talk about space balls as if it's its own movie, not a parody.
What I love most about space balls is the fact that the main character is a perfect mixture of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. It's really rare in parodies that you see that kind of thing. In most parodies, characters' already existing personalities are magnified and make comical, but in Spaceballs, the characters are completely different from the characters in Star Wars.

The Aquatic Uncle

Am I the only one who pictures the uncle in "The Aquatic Uncle" looking a lot like Merlin in Disney's animated rendition of The Sword and the Stone? And am I the only one who was instantly reminded of Old Gregg the scaly man-fish from the television series "The Mighty Boosh"?

I loved this story. I thought that the whole evolutionary-thing was hard to picture at first, but as the story went along I opened my mind up to the realization that NONE of the characters were human. It was really hard not to imagine everyone with human qualities.

The ending was not at all what I expected. I expected the uncle to eventually leave the water and try to evolve. I did not at all expect the young girl (or whatever she is) to run away with him (ew), but I do see the point of that ending. If every fish ever jumped out of the sea and tried to become human or any other kind of mammal, I suppose, there wouldn't be any fish left! I think the author was trying to point out the fact that some people are stuck in their ways, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Perhaps being stuck in their ways keeps diversity alive! What would the world be like if there were no other animals but humans since every single other animal had evolved?

Oh, Look. Another Scott Westerfeld Post

Big surprise. Scott Westerfeld is one of my favorite writers. He pretty much solely writes Sci-fi distopian novels, which are my favorite kinds of novels. I purchased the first book of the series "Leviathan" years ago, and it had literally just been sitting on my shelf because I hadn't had time to read it (don't judge me). I started reading it last week and I am already so in love with the story. This series is classified under the sub-genre of Steam Punk. The writing is wonderful, as usual. Westerfeld's imagery in always so detailed and intimate. Unlike his other novels, though, Leviathan has illustrations that are just breathtaking. The setting is kind of hard to explain. Basically, if you took World War II and threw it into the future with strange creatures (Beasties) and obscure gadgets (Clankers), you would have Leviathan. Leviathan is also a love story- a forbidden love story. Alek has the whole I'm-a-king-but-I'm-not-really-a-king thing going for him, much like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Deryn is a badass fighter girl who is disguised as a guy (what, no equality in the future either, Westerfeld?) like Mulan, who was basically based on Sarah Edmonds who fought in the Civil War dressed as a man. The two of them are enemies (Mulan vs. Aragorn, anyone?) but they are destined to be together blah blah blah, Romeo and Juliet, blah blah blah. To be honest I'm much more interested in the machines and animals, but that might just be me.

^^^ JUST LOOK AT AL THAT STEAM-PUNKERY^^^

SO. MUCH. PUNKERY.

My Absolute Favorite Book Series

OKAY. So excuse me if I get a little bit excited, but for this week I read the last book of my favorite book series of all time: the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. The original trilogy includes Uglies, Pretties, and Specials. This is a science fiction series about a futuristic distopian society. From the ages of 12-15, kids are referred to as "Uglies" because they are out of their cute kid-phase, but also they are pre-operation. On their 16th birthdays, kids get a plastic surgery makeover- giving them clear glowing skin, prettier eyes, smaller waists, bigger muscles, thicker hair, longer legs, smaller noses, bigger lips, etc. After their operation, they are allowed to live in New Pretty Town where there are beautiful skyscrapers, and parties with champagne and fireworks every single night. What they don't know, is that when they get the operation, lesions are added to their brains to keep them from thinking as an individual, and to keep them from questioning the government and the system. The main character, Tally, escapes from her town and runs away. She meets a hidden society of runaways who have come up with a cure to the lesions. Tally and her friends try to basically expose the government (the Specials)  for the monsters that they are, but in order to do that, Tally has to become a pretty herself.
What's interesting is that I can see this kind of society being a reality. As society becomes more and more obsessed with appearance and more and more mesmerized by the beautiful, looks become even more important, and intelligence and independence and uniqueness (unfortunately) is viewed as dangerous rather than progressive.

The science-y gadget-y stuff in this series is awesome. So awesome, in fact, that Westerfeld released an entirely separate book that serves as a guide to the gadgets and such. His predictions of technology were really well thought out. The guide also contains sketches of not only the gadgets, but also of maps of the city. Here's a sketch of the center of Tally's city:

Extras is a fourth book that takes place years after Tally's story is completed. Extras centers around a new character named Aya, who is nowhere near as developed of a character as Tally. Tally's character arc is leagues more interesting that Aya's partly because Tally had three books dedicated to her story and Aya was only given one. Tally and her boyfriend, David, show up randomly at the end of the book in order to almost "insure the audience" that Tally and David really truly did turn out alright after the Uglies, Pretties, Specials adventure was all said and done. This frustrated me so much because I wanted to know more about what happened to Tally in the years after Specials. I went into Extras hoping to have closure for the characters, but what I got was a watered down, vague, and unsatisfying nudge in one direction. To be fair, originally Westerfeld wasn't even going to write a fourth book, but fans wanted more so badly that he humored us with Extras. As always, the writing is wonderful and the story is wonderful, but since I was going into the book expecting one thing from it and was left empty handed, I almost wish he hadn't bothered to link Extras to the rest of the trilogy. I almost wish he has started a new trilogy with the new generation of characters under the same concept. I feel like I would have been able to appreciate the story more. Then, as the second trilogy progressed, he could relate it back to Tally and how she changed the world into the place that the Extras now reside in.

George Lucas and James Cameron

YAY! SPACE OPERA! *rants about all the wonders of Star Wars*
I'm going to spare you the extended version of my Star Wars rant because there's nothing really constructive about it... unless me just stating over and over everything that is so awesome about Star Wars is considered constructive (let's be clear: I'm referring to strictly the original trilogy- NOT the plot holed, poorly directed, and badly acted prequels of the 2000's). I WILL however state my favorite part of the trilogy and why. BY FAR my favorite movie of the three is The Empire Strikes Back, and in my opinion, the most interesting scene cinematography wise, story wise, and acting wise is the scene where Han Solo is frozen. Fun Fact: did you know that when Leia says, "I love you," and Han responds back,  "I know," Harrison Ford was improving?!?!?!
Anyway, If you haven't seen it already, please enjoy this well-made parody about how Star Wars was imagined.

*Insert clever transition here*
Now let's talk about the movie Avatar (NOT to be confused with the amazing animated series with the same title). I think that this movie is Space Opera and here's why:
I'll start by saying that the Space Opera genre is a genre full of regular stories that just so happen to take place in space, and Avatar is basically Pocahontas in space. I want to focus on one particular scene of Avatar for this discussion, though. In Pocahontas, the English are digging for gold- destroying the Indians' homeland. In Avatar, the Americans are drilling for oil- destroying the Na'vi's homeland. Despite all of the story problems in Avatar, this aspect of the plot is extremely believable. Assuming that we still use oil in 2154 or whatever year Avatar was set (somewhere in the 2100's), the first thing we would do when landing on a new planet would be to try to strike oil.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

I only got a few chapters into this book, but already there's so much to talk about. First of all, if I didn't know that the main character was seven, I wouldn't believe that he was seven. The kid is way too smart to be a seven year old. I know this because I have 3 little sisters who are about that age. One of them is 3 grades ahead in math, and I can have full on adult conversations with her- sometimes, our conversations are more constructive than conversations I have with my own mother (sorry mom). Yet, the main character of The Ocean At the End of the Lane is STILL more intuitive than any seven year old I've ever met. So far, it seems to be a pretty classic innocent-child-on-an-adventure story with a darker twist. I wish the child had a name though. It's always a pet peeve of mine when the main character doesn't have a name. I think that a name says a lot about a character, and this character deserves a name. Since I haven't read too much of the novel yet, I don't have much else to say about it besides the fact that the writing style is really nice. Hopefully, I can go back to this novel later.