Gigi!!

So around last week I went into the store Pet-Smart for the first time in my life. I didn't actually own a pet (long story as to why I was there in the first place). Soooo...I was completely taken by surprise when I saw that they had cats for sale there. And being the enormous sap I am I begged my parents to come and see them and adopt them. Turns out they're saps too cause in no time we were filling out the adoption papers.

They're called the Forgotten Cats Foundation and they take in cats and kittens off the street. This is how I adopted Gidget, my new kitten. She's 3 months old, a calico, and completely and utterly adorable. Gigi was found in on the streets Trenton, NJ, and was the only one to survive out of her litter.

She's been running all over the house sniffing and trying to eat/play with everything. And she purrs like a freakin' lawn mower. :D

Here's some pics of her:

A New Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?!?

I realize I've been talking a lot about books lately, but I just HAD to talk about this. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the others written by Douglas Adams are some of my absolute favorite books ever. In the words of Eoin Colfer:

"The Guide is a slice of satirical genius. A marvel of quantum tomfoolery. A dissection of the absurdities of our human condition. A space odyssey that forces us to face ourselves and collapse in hysterics. Imagine if Messrs. Hawking and Fry were locked in a room with the entire cast of Monty Python and forced to write a book which would subsequently be edited by Pink Floyd, then the result would need a lot of work before it could be cut from Douglas Adams’ first draft."

As you probably know already, Douglas Adams died before he could write anything after Mostly Harmless, the fifth book. :(

Which brings us to the big news: Eoin Colfer will be writing the sixth novel!!

Eoin Colfer is the author of the awesome Artemis Fowl series among other books.

"My first reaction was semi-outrage that anyone should be allowed to tamper with this incredible series. But on reflection I realised that this is a wonderful opportunity to work with characters I have loved since childhood and give them something of my own voice while holding onto the spirit of Douglas Adams and not laying a single finger on his five books.
Once again I am terrified by a Hitchhiker book and this time it is my own. I feel more pressure to perform now than I ever have with my own books, and that is why I am bloody determined that this will be the best thing I have ever written. And if it isn’t then I will make sure that the cover is extremely pretty."


So what do you guys think? Will he write something worthy of the Guide to the Galaxy name or will he completely screw up the series?



P.S. I may *crosses fingers* be getting a kitten soon! We submitted adoption forms for a 3 month old calico kitten and right now its pending.

New Terry Pratchett Novel!

Terry Pratchett, one of my all time favorite authors has a new novel called Nation coming out September 30th!! He was diagnosed last year with early onset Alzheimer's, but he's still planning on writing as many books as he can. He has also donated 1 million t research for it.

It isn't part of the Discworld series, but it still looks really good.



SUMMARY:
The sea has taken everything.
Mau is the only one left after a giant wave sweeps his island village away. But when much is taken, something is returned, and somewhere in the jungle Daphne—a girl from the other side of the globe—is the sole survivor of a ship destroyed by the same wave.
Together the two confront the aftermath of catastrophe. Drawn by the smoke of Mau and Daphne's sheltering fire, other refugees slowly arrive: children without parents, mothers without babies, husbands without wives—all of them hungry and all of them frightened. As Mau and Daphne struggle to keep the small band safe and fed, they defy ancestral spirits, challenge death himself, and uncover a long-hidden secret that literally turns the world upside down. . . .
Internationally revered storyteller Terry Pratchett presents a breathtaking adventure of survival and discovery, and of the courage required to forge new beliefs.







On a totally unrelated and environmental themed note:

This Saturday as part of the coastal cleanup, me and some other people where cleaning up trash by this creek located in Wilmington, DE. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff we found! There was a flip flop, a really old Reebok sneaker, and a pair of Adidas. Not to mention a pair of underwear (!), a shopping cart, and countless bear cans and bottles, along with the usual garbage and pastic bottles. One of the guys who got there before I did, said they also found ecstasy pills! All the things that people through away just anywhere really disgusts me. :( At least we didn't find any medical waste though.

Wordled Favorite Bands

Wordle.net is awesome! I typed a list of my favorite bands, played around with the fonts and colors, and got this!




(click to see a larger image)


To make a list of occurence-weighted artists off of iTunes you can follow these steps*

1) In iTunes, select View Options under the View menu.
2) Turn off everything but “Artist.”
3) Select all and copy.
4) Search and Replace the word “track” with nothing.
5) Paste the results into the Wordle.net Create page.



*From Scott Westerfeld's blog

I've been really busy getting used to my new school, and today I had to help unpack the moving truck, so I really haven't had time to post lately.

One cool thing about my school is that all tenth graders get to take Driver's Ed as an elective!! I'm taking it the second half of the year. The rest of the electives at my high school really aren't that great though. They didn't have web design, digital photography, intro to java, or zoology there (some of the electives I was thinking about taking).

Another not so great thing: the school itself. Its was built in the 1960's. Which isn't bad in itself except for the fact that it doesn't have air conditioning. The past week and a half have been horrible and sweaty since its been in the 90's, and incredibly sunny and humid. You can see how that might be a problem.



Also, a new book came on August 26th called Cycler by Lauren McLauglin. It looks pretty funny and Scott Westerfeld has given it his review of approval.






Review
“Artfully fractured and wickedly smart. A brilliant screwball comedy about love, self knowledge, and the secret identities inside all of us.” —Scott Westerfeld, bestselling author of Pretties and Uglies

AS FAR AS anyone at her high school knows, Jill McTeague is an average smart girl trying to get her dream date to ask her to the prom.What no one knows, except for Jill’s mom and dad, is that for the four days Jill is out of school each month, she is not Jill at all. She is Jack, a genuine boy—complete with all the parts. Jack lives his four days per month in the solitude of Jill’s room. But his personality has been building since the cycling began. He is less and less content with his confinement and his cycles are becoming more frequent. Now Jill’s question about the prom isn’t who she'll go with, but who she'll be when the big night arrives.

Midnight Sun On Hold Indefinitely!!!!

Nooooooo!

For those Twilight fans who didn't know already, an unfinished version of Midnight Sun was illegally posted and distributed online. In response to this, Stephenie has decided to put it on hold indefinitely.

Stephenie from her website on the matter:

"I did not want my readers to experience Midnight Sun before it was completed, edited and published. I think it is important for everybody to understand that what happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being. As the author of the Twilight Saga, I control the copyright and it is up to the owner of the copyright to decide when the books should be made public; this is the same for musicians and filmmakers. Just because someone buys a book or movie or song, or gets a download off the Internet, doesn't mean that they own the right to reproduce and distribute it. Unfortunately, with the Internet, it is easy for people to obtain and share items that do not legally belong to them. No matter how this is done, it is still dishonest. This has been a very upsetting experience for me, but I hope it will at least leave my fans with a better understanding of copyright and the importance of artistic control.

So where does this leave Midnight Sun? My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math; in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything. If I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn't dovetail too well with the original story. In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely."



I myself am personally disgusted with the person who posted it illegally and every single person who downloaded it and read it. I'm not too surprised that this happened, and I believe Stephenie definitely has the right to do this after what's happened. I am glad that she didn't say that there was no hope of her ever finishing it. This whole thing is a disaster.

I don't know how her fans who claim to love her and her writing could do this to her. I mean, after all she's down for us, making sure each book gets out every year, having no time to spend with her family, and then some people, who give the whole fandom a bad name, just steal something like this from her.

Stephenie has posted a link to the unfinished Midnight Sun because she knows that postponing Midnight Sun will drive even more people to look for the illegal copy. However, she says she rather her fans not read this unfinished version of Midnight Sun since it's messily written and has some mistakes.

I am going to respect her wishes and not read it, and I urge others to do the same.

New Rise Against CD

On October 7, 2008 the band Rise Against plans to have their new CD released!! It'll be called Appeal to Reason. They've just released the first single from it called Re-Education (Through Labor). It's one of the better rock songs I've heard in a few weeks and I can't wait to get the rest of their album.






First two days in my new school so far, and my feelings are mixed, generally leading towards dislike. I'll write (ok, more like complain) more about it later.

Moving Day

I've mentioned this briefly in comments and elsewhere before, but this is the first time I'm posting about it. Anyway, I'm moving to Delaware.

Tomorrow we're going to rent a truck and move over most of our stuff to the house we're renting before school starts August 26th. (ugh!...So soon!)

I'm not really too fond of my new house, but we really did have to move (because of my dad's job). I guess I'm sort of OK with it. At least I get to take Driver's Ed for free this year at my new school.

One of the worst things about it are the bugs. We've been staying in the mostly empty house for a couple of nights now and we've been finding all sorts of nasty insects and spiders. I think the worst is this thing. We have like a freakin' infestation of these disgusting little (actually not so little, more like two inches long) creatures!

They're called house centipedes and are insectivores. They eat a lot of other insects (which I suppose is good), and they can grow 2-3 inches long. And, did I mention, they bite.

I really do not care how beneficial these guys are. They CREEP me out. Especially after finding one crawling around on your bed. *shudders*

Does anyone else have these things in their house?

Anyway, I'll be posting more about the move and my new house later. I do have some good news though. Twilight the movie's release date has been moved closer by three weeks! This means it'll be coming out on November 21st instead of December 12th!!

Max Ride Movie

Maximum Ride by James Patterson is officially going to be made into a movie with Columbia Pictures holding the screen rights!

Arad has hopes that "Maximum Ride" can hatch an original superhero franchise, with the elements of alienation and angst that resonate in those spandex-clad movie heroes.



Also, one of the interesting things in the article: "The fifth installment of the book series will be published next year."


I wasn't expecting that. I like the series, but I'm not sure that's the best idea after the fourth book. I love the series and the characters, but Patterson might be overusing the story. I mean, the fourth book was a little cheesy.
Oh well, I'm still looking forward to this new fifth book anyway.

BREAKING DAWN IS OUT!!!

Breaking Dawn was released three days ago!!










And yes, I have finished reading all 754 pages of it.

I'm sort of...speechless about it at the moment. NOT in a bad way. Its just...wow. I really never expected her to write something like that. I'm not going to give away any spoilers in this post because I know a lot of people haven't read/finished it/don't care. But I am going to say a few things about it.

Ok, the sort of bad thing about it first: It was, (how do I put this?), fanfiction-y. Of course, Stephenie Meyer's writing was a trillion times better than any fan fiction writer out there, but still... Some of the things in the plot...

On the plus side, it was still an excellent read. I enjoyed it immensely, and I really do believe that she ended the series (at least those from Bella's point of view) very well. The ending was a whole lot better than that of the 7th Harry Potter book's in my opinion.

Also, I adored the section that was from Jacob's point of view!! I'm hesitant to admit this, but I may have liked it even more than the part from Bella's. Jake's funnier than Bella and the whole werewolf pack thing was very interesting to read about.

SPOILER FROM THE BOOK:
I'm also extremely happy that Jake imprinted on someone. I won't say who though.

Oh, and: Renesme? Really Stephenie, what were you thinking? I guess she wanted an original name or something. Whatever...







By the way, where did all the commenters go? Its feeling kinda lonely here.