Beyond My Geeky Life

So this one is going to start with 'In my day' and make me feel like an old man, just talking even if no one is listening. Here we go... In my day they had prizes in every kid cereal.  Most everyone I knew picked their cereal based on the prizes. I know I did. Prizes were the number one aspect in the choice, then you worried about if you actually liked the cereal or not. I still have all manner of cereal prizes from when I was kid. Yes, I am horrible when it comes to getting rid of things. Of course that means I have a really cool collection of such prizes covering all level of toys. Over the last few decades the idea of prizes in cereal boxes have faded to the occasional promotion for some reason. It makes picking your cereal far less exciting. So when they do a prize promotion, it is noticeable. Movie promotions and such are the common way to go and can have a better level of prize than there used to be. A recent one they just did was for Star Wars Character pens....

We let our boys choose the movie today.  It was between Catching Fire and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It was a hard choice, but the boys picked The Hobbit. The movie itself was enjoyable, although the forced love story slowed things down and got really boring, feeling 100% out of place. It doesn't help that it was one of the many added scenes/stroylines that are not in the book. One of the most obvious isseus with the Hobbit movies is this is Peter Jackson's ego gone wild. With the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it seems like Jackson really believes himself to be above it all.  We are getting a trilogy from him that should never have been a trilogy. I understood going for two films, and that might have worked just fine. The story from the book could have been told in one film and expanded nicely for two. But here we are getting three.  With the end of the second, we are close to the end of the book.  So what are they going to do to flush out...

Warning, I am not going to try to be spoiler free in this post.  So if you have not seen The Time of The Doctor and are worried about spoilers, stop reading now. Not sure where to start with this year's Doctor Who Christmas special, The Time of The Doctor.  For eight years now we have had a Doctor Who Christmas special, and now that we here in America get to see them on Christmas, it makes for an enjoyable end to the holiday. The Time of The Doctor was Matt Smith's final as the active Doctor.  Yet for some reason it lacked the emotional impact of the last two departures, which includes Christopher Eccleston, who we only got one season to get to know. We have had so many emotional moments of actors leaving the series, so we know what it should be like.  There is something missing from The Time of The Doctor denying us the full emotional ride that should have been there. We had a lot of throw away scenes that did nothing for the story, such as the Doctor needing ...

This year Christmas in our house has been strongly Doctor Who themed. I got two Doctor Who t-shirts, a classic Doctor adventure on DVD, a Doctor Who character encyclopedia and a random titans vinyl figure that ended up being the 8th Doctor. My boys got a TARDIS that makes all the noises from the show, a TARDIS nightlight, a TARDIS pillowcase, a build your own sonic screwdriver set, they each got a random titans vinyl figure (One got the 11th Doctor and the other got a Silence). There were plenty of other Geeky gifts, but Doctor Who undeniably dominated the gifts this year.

Twenty-Seven hours until the beginning of the end of the 11th Doctor. Since BBC America started airing Doctor Who we have been getting the new episodes the same night as they air on BBC One back in the UK, instead of waiting months for them.  That means that we get the Christmas Specials on Christmas Day, making it so Christmas Day ends with a nice little gift. This year's the episode is 'The Time of The Doctor' and will be the end for the 11th Doctor. Supposedly we will also get answers to just about all the big questions still out there from the last few years. We'll see how that goes. We will also be introduced to the 12th Doctor, although most likely this will not give us much of an idea of the character.  We'll have to wait till fall next year for the new season to start up to see just what the new Doctor is like. It is going to be a long wait.

Looking through the displays of models at Wal-Mart I picked up the general Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard.  The pictures of the model were very clearly missing some, as were the obviously photo-shopped promotional pic from the TV show. They have removed the Confederate flag from the roof of the car.  Not really sure how I feel about that. I understand the reasoning behind removing it, yet it feels odd for it to not be there. As a child when the show was on I never understood what the flag was. It meant nothing to me, just a design. I don't remember the show beign racist, at least not directly as I do not remember there being any black characters in the show ever.  Of course the show aired when I was too young to understand racism, so if it was there or now I would not have noticed at that point. I doubt they ever dealt with racism one way or the other, as that was just not a theme you dealt with back then. It seemed that Americans for the most part back then didn't...

Just found out about http://www.pleygo.com .  It is basically Netflix, but for LEGO building blocks.  I'm really not sure what I think about this service. Not fully sure what the point of renting LEGO sets is.  It seems a little counter to the greater idea of what LEGOs are all about. The service works just like Netflix.  You make a list of the LEGO sets you want and you get them one at a time after you send the last set back.  They claim to sterilize the blocks in-between shipping them out, although I picture that would fade the painted on aspects or ruin the stickers that some of the pieces have. Part of the fun of LEGOs is to collect the sets and reuse the pieces to build new things. Unless you plan it out ahead of time, no hope of doing that with pleygo.  When I do mess with LEGOs, it is unplanned for the most part. I also like having a great deal of various pieces available when I want to mess around with them. I also like to collect the mini fig...

Today I finished rereading The Stars My Destination.  As it turns out today would been Alfred Bester's 100 birthday, the author of the book.  Interesting coincidence there. For those of you not aware, The Star My Destination is considered by many to be the greatest Sci-Fi novel of all time.  There is a good reason for this.  It is an incredible novel. The first time I read it about fifteen years ago or so, I enjoyed it then.  I remember how intense it was and enjoyed the fact that you didn't know where the story was going next. It was a wild trip. A good read. Rereading was an even better experience. I saw it in a different light this time, as my sensibilities have changed. I saw the commentary that was clearly there, especially once you get to the end and the mortality question is straight our presented unedited. So much of what was said in the conclusion of the story very much applies to what we are seeing today with the privileged and their priorities. ...

A collection of my writings, My delusions of Godhood can be found in the following formats- Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/My-Delusions-Godhood-Collection-Fictions/dp/1460996410/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1332009490&sr=8-3 Kindle: ( http://www.amazon.com/My-Delusions-of-Godhood-ebook/dp/B004WOVZ3Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303161244&sr=8-1 ) My story 'Enforcers: All in a Day's Work' can be found in in Tales of the Talisman  ( http://www.talesofthetalisman.com/ ) Vol. 7 Issue 3 ( http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Talisman-7-3-Carol-Hightshoe/dp/1885093616/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_4 ) My story 'A Night at the Club' will be Volume 9 Issue 4 coming out spring of 2014. My story "Naked Diplomacy" can be found in Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 9 ( http://sdpbookstore.com/anthologies.htm ) My story "Brew of the Gods" can be found in Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 6 ( http://sdpbookstore.com/anthologies.htm ) My story 'All  Things Being Equal...

I recently finished Ray Bradbury's Sci-Fi novel The Martian Chronicles. While it might not be the worst book I have ever read, it is beyond a doubt in the bottom ten and is not even close to being worthy of the modifier 'classic' that seems to be attached to it. Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is pure crap.  The few interesting concepts, and there not enough to make it worth suffering through the garbage that is the rest of the novel, are not well presented or explored as much as they deserve. I am not making these criticisms on the basics of the science in the novel. I very much understand the style of story telling fits in just fine with the age in which this was written.  I can appreciate classic sci-fi written in that era and not be bothered by ideas of a Mars perfectly inhabitable by humans or the simplistic ideas of interplanetary travel. When you get a good writer like Heinlein, none of that matters as the rest of the aspects are enjoyable and work toge...

As if the Subway and Cover Girls promotions for Hunger Games: Catching Fire from my earlier blog on the subject did not seem out of place and way off the ball enough, I saw these today at a grocery store http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4272038453339362685#editor/target=post;postID=3453757492217523926 . So they made 12 candy bars, each themed to a specific district with truly unique flavors (beef jerky + smoked mesquite + 41% cacao milk chocolate for district 10). The idea of the candy bars in and of itself is not what gets to me, it is the price. The ones I saw at the store were $5 a piece and this complete set of 12 is $65. A little pricy just for candy bars. At such a price point, it puts the candy bars into the realm of being an indulgence for the upper tier. It is an impressive looking gift set, but it really gets me that such merchandising so goes against the concepts promoted in the books.

I have a new reason to win the lottery now.  I really would love to add this piece to my collection: http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/harrison-ford-han-solo-dl-44-blaster-from-star-379-c-44e307f3bc Yes, the screen used DL-44 Blaster belonging to Han Solo, as seen in The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi.  No bids yet and the starting bid is only $200,000. Now that would be one awesome conversation piece to have in your house.