Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

In 2006 a comedy came out called “Idiocracy” staring Luke Wilson. It was about the decline in human intelligence as the natural way of evolution until in the future the world would be nothing but a bunch of hicks and morons. The movie is rather funny, my husband and I love it, but the sad thing is how possible the movie’s scenario actually seems.

The way society is heading now we really are doomed to one day have our own Idiocracy.
Read the rest of this entry »

Still no official news on Captain America, although The Office guy, John Krasinski is thankfully out, as are others, and a few more are in, so who knows at this point.

Looks like Mr. Smith himself, Hugo Weaving, will be playing Red Skull, which I couldn’t be more thrilled about. I’ll keep you posted.

First let me start by explaining what I originally used role playing handbooks for. I owned the 3.5 edition Player’s Handbook for D&D, and White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade early on, but not because I was actually playing either of them with a DM or storyteller, or a crew of fellow geeks. I used them for character creation.

I am a writer, if you haven’t figured that out yet, and not only for ranting opinionated blogs like this one. I write fiction. The format of role playing handbook character sheets and subsequent measurements for, say, strength, as an example, really helps in imagining the actual strength of a character. And it doesn’t just have to be a character for role playing.

You can fill out a character sheet and by the end have a well-rounded character for a story, or your latest role playing endeavor, with a clearer picture of what that character is like and what they are actually capable of.
Read the rest of this entry »

Forgive me if my heart is not quite in this blog entry as I had already completed it to my great satisfaction last week only to have it wiped when a virus attacked my computer at work. But as one of my faithful readers said,

This just goes to show that these new-fangled transistors are unreliable. We need to learn about steam technology as quickly as possible!

And so I return.
Read the rest of this entry »

I hate Twilight. I think Stephanie Meyer’s poorly written and inane series is the worst thing to ever happen to fictional vampire culture. Possibly the entire fiction world.

Vampires that sparkle in the sun? Seriously?

And don’t even get me started on the abusive relationship between Mr. Hot Vampire Guy and his totally unremarkable leading lady.

But this isn’t a forum for me to bitch about Twilight. At least not today. Today I am comparing as impartially as possible the franchises of Twilight and Anne Rice’s older series, The Vampire Chronicles that began with its most notable title, Interview with the Vampire.

My bias is even worse here since I have reed the entire original series by Anne Rice and I absolutely adore it, at least up until the point when the author lost her mind, but again, I will do my best to remain impartial throughout.

Onto the history.
Read the rest of this entry »