CARINA Cantina

One of the best ways to find a good book is to ask the people who never read. While avid readers can list off dozens of books that you know you'll never have the time to read, a few of the non-readers will tell you that although they don't have the patience/time/interest to read much of anything, there was this one book that they couldn't put down. There was just one book that caught their eye, and was wonderful. That's why I love people who don't read even more than those who do. For a book to catch their eye, it really has to be something special.

Of course, as an avid reader with no time to read, I'm reading the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, which I of course recommend to anyone interested in one of the best examples of great storytelling in existence.

I got accepted to the University of Western today! Exciting, I know. Although happy as I am to finally be accepted to a school that I can actually afford going to, it's still sort of bittersweet knowing that Guelph, where I really want to go, has yet to let me know the time of day. Still, you never know, I certainly wouldn't mind going to Western, so maybe you'll see me posting about my life in London, Ontario six months from now (so close!), giving you the ups and downs of majoring in Animal Behavior.

While on the subject of schools, my course-load for the last semester of grade 12 has been really quite nice lately. I have only three courses, two of which are Communications Technology and Earth and Space Science, so the only hard subject is Chemistry. Although I do suspect that my lack of work is due to the fact that we're doing Organic Chemistry right now, which is incredibly easy (and therefore I love it). That and Carnival, easily the biggest holiday in Trinidad, starts this Monday. I'm hoping to see it this year before I go. I don't really think that being in anything is something I'd enjoy (not even going 'on the road'), but I do want to see it. The majority of Carnival I'll leave for another post. It's a five day weekend.

More exciting right now is the trip that my Earth science class is going on! I'm going to a star party! My art teacher (I love it when art gets associated with something awesome like space) is involved with an organization called CARINA, the Caribbean Institute of Astronomy, which already sounds awesome, and they host these parties on a regular basis from what I understand. Trinidad has got to be one of the best places for seeing stars. You may remember earlier postings of the wonderful mountains that are literally everywhere you look here.

I remember first coming out of the airport and thinking "FUCK it's hot" right before jaw-dropping at the mountains. The site we're going to is atop one of these majestic beauties, at an old tracking station that my Dad tells me was built by the Americans in WWII. The sky should be clear and free of interfering lights from towns and such, and the best part is that Mars and Saturn are supposed to show up. I'd be upset that my favorite planet, Jupiter, is a no-show, but I've seen Jupiter before, and Saturn should be cool (just not as cool as my main man). One of my brothers left an old telescope in his closet, which I stole before finding it broken, but this led me to the discovery of my Dad's binoculars. I adore finding old things from my parents. Like when you're a kid searching through old drawers of stuff that you never knew existed. Finding the binoculars was like finding the slide rule all over again. Only they didn't require hours of Wikipedia to figure out how to use. So, I spent the day watching people at the local grocery store, and investigating the houses on the mountain, waiting for some sort of catastrophic event to take place. No murders occurred, so I didn't get to go all Rear Window, but it was still a lot of fun. I can't wait to use them next Saturday at the star party. We're supposed to show up in time to see sunset. I love sunset because there's that certain time where the sky turns that one colour that tricks you, and for just a moment you're on Tatooine.

And yes; eventually everything ends with Star Wars.

Deep Space Galactica.

While making my way through the only Star Trek series whose re-runs had never really matched my TV watching, Deep Space Nine, I've had a few interesting surprises.

First of all, I'm becoming pretty attached to the show.

I'm just making headway into season two, and it's taken a long, long time to get this far. Season one was rough, and only started to turn the corner towards the end. Eventually, though, something wonderful happened: I started to like the characters.

You know how when you first start watching the show, even more so if you've already heard little snippets of information about it, you're always trying to guess which characters you're going to like? I'm always picking sides within the first five minutes. It takes a lot of time and development to sway me from these early biases, but a few characters in Deep Space Nine are starting to wear me down.

My initial impressions were that I hated Sisko. Star Trek fans will be happy to know that this feeling stuck. To this day I can't understand what possessed them to hire that actor. Anyway, I had also decided against Major Kira, feeling that she was one of those poorly done strong female types(Lookin' at you, River Song). I liked Odo 'cause he seemed cool and Quark because... well, I challenge anyone to not like Quark. Ferengi, man, that's where it's at. I swear it has nothing to do with the fact that he was in Buffy for a couple years. Nothing at all. I loved Dr. Bashir simply because I'd heard him be compared (with a grimace) to the great Baltar of Galactica, and Dax because I've always been a hardcore Star Gate Gal.

Then as the first season progressed (roughly), Odo seemed less great, Dax was getting boring, and the show didn't seem to know how to focus on anyone but Sisko and Kira. Towards the end of the season, things started to change. First of all, the relationship between Odo and Quark is quite possibly my favorite part of the show. It's pulled off extremely well, and the lack of Sisko makes for some great acting. It's one of the best frenemy bromances I've seen.

Through a lot of hard work on her part, I'm actually warming up to Kira. Kinda. Sorta. Sorta-kinda. I still dislike her a lot, and find many of her little Bajoran rants and tantrums boring and worse, aggrivating. But I'm starting to like HER. Also, Bajoran clothes are fucking great, I'm loving the 90s Sci-Fi hippie look. It being probably the only fashion I'd ever get behind, I really can't see it coming back (not that it ever came) any time soon.

While watching the show today I had a strange thought- I really wanted to watch Battlestar Galactica again. It's then that I realized that Deep Space Nine is really a corny 90s version of that sci-fi drama that started really well, before getting really confused.

In an era of light and fluffy science fiction shows, Deep Space Nine is more gritty, the Federation feels out of place on the old Cardassian station. I love O'Brian, in likeness to the Chief he adds a lot of realism to the station with frequent mechanical problems (also- Kaeko meets Boomer, anyone?). There's also the heavy use of politics, which yes, is a common theme in most Star Trek shows, but none more so than in DS9. Then there's that general feeling of being forced into an unlikely and very unstable situation. Even similarly weird and cokey religions are used.

Plenty of 'lols' to be found in this comparison since Ron Moore's Battlestar Bible thingy places a lot of stress on NOT being like Star Trek, it seems as though BSG was more of a modern twist on an old Trekkie idea, Deep Space Nine.

But here's hopin' that DS9 continues it's trend of getting better and better with time, unlike it's successor.

It's Amazing the Things you can Accomplish Between Semesters

So my mother recently started buying me all those little Nintendo-themed tins with cheap candy in them. My favourite tin is the bombbomb (which isn't actually a tin) and my favourite candy can in the little mushroom. By far the most disgusting was the Wii remote gum. The pepperminty flavour lasts a few seconds but the puke-like aftertastes goes for the whole shot. I look forward to filling it with juicy fruit. As a side note about gum, I cannot see, smell, or taste Big Red without instantly going back to my first years back in Canada after living in Scotland. Never in my life had I tasted so much cinnamon power.

The main point that I was getting at when I started this post actually had nothing to do with gum. It occurred to me last night that while I'm totally fine with video companies making me candy, the fact that Dove makes chocolate is utterly disturbing. Where did they even come up with that? It's like SyFy showing wrestling. It just doesn't sit right. Toothpaste people coming out with a chocolate. That might make more sense. Get some minty flavours going on.

Another thing my mother started doing is playing solitaire on my DSi. I love buying on there from the shop. I do it when I've spent the day on the internet looking at all of the cool games that I can't afford. They're cheap, and you can buy like three of them in one pop, so it's just great. Plus that little present that shows up on the menu is just adorable. One of my favorites is Art Style: BOXLIFE, which I heard of from Kotaku. It's basically a game about cutting up nets to make cubes, but it's done really well has adorable music. It's set up as a sort of office room-style game; if that makes any kind of sense. I highly recommend it though. I like Extreme Hangman as well, which has the awesomeness of replacing the noose with a army of zombies; luckily you have a shotgun, but when you make a mistake, the zombies take a chomp out of your arm. And that's just one of many scenarios like ninja attacks and profanity filtering killer chalk erasers. The only problem is that I'm worried about running out of words. It does have a few (but not enough) cool genres, like Comics and Comic Heroes. And Doctor Mario is just generally nice to have.

I keep wondering about those music game's they've been pushing lately, but I don't want to waste my money. Anyone know anything about them?

News from life in Trinidad: I went outside today! I'm not going to lie, it was scary. The outside world is a strange and frightening place. But it was well worth it for what I saw. I went to the botanical gardens in Port of Spain and took some great shots. They even had what I like to call (since there was no sign) the retro 80s tree.

You see how I shit you not. The only thing it was missing was a big leg warmer wrapped around the bottom of the trunk.

Does this trunk not look like a giant octopus? Because it really was GIANT. See the menacing eye? It's watching you.

In the fanfiction world, I finally finished a new AU science fiction Zelloyd for the Tales of Symphonia section. It was a birthday present for Thingbe. Last April. But it's done now, and should be up tomorrow or the next day. I'm quite proud of it. It's pretty long, which is pretty short for me, and focuses a lot on the characters and their relationships with each other in this cool, post apocalyptic world. I started it a few months after I finished reading 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' by Phillip K. Dick (Blade Runner if you don't know it, and it's an awesome read) so you'll see some influence of that in there. All you really need to know is that Zelos has a pump action shotgun. Oh! And that Yuarcy's in it. Yuarcy being the pairing of Yuan and Forcystus; it and science fiction Zelloyd are both my personal contributions to the ToS fanfiction page. The other scifi Zelloyd (currently the only one) is a one shot I wrote about moon colonization. It's called Founder Effect. And if you like my writing, Touche is an AU crossover high school fic that I'm collaberating with Thingbe on, and although it updates slower than molasses ever could, it's got a great plot coming. And because I'm going links crazy here, this is an AU 1940s fic (also ToS) written by Thingbe, it's called Carry On. I love it.

You are my Lava. You are my Friend.

After thinking about it, I can honestly say that my lava lamp is one of my most prized possessions. Few things in this world can compete with it's elegance, it's creative power, and it's general cool-factor.

When I look at it my mind goes into a wonderfully blank state. The outside world is nothing, all that matters is that little globular sphere of molten wax and it's epic journey. First escaping the land of the heating blob, and when it finally breaks free, its captor sends it off, almost acknowledging it's desire and conquest. The parent blob propels the glob at top speed as it races for that far off haven; the top of the lamp. It climbs and climbs in the slow dragging speed of the liquid, hardening all the way. It becomes darker and darker as it begins to see that its dream will never be achieved, and he falls back to the blob to heat once more. But fear not! Our little sphere returns! It bubbles and plops its way to individuality one again, this time larger, stronger, and most of all faster against the dirge of the liquid. It shoots up, leaving dribbles of wax drifting in it's wake, and it drives up, up, up; until finally we witness the culmination of all the hopes and dreams a little blob of molten wax could have as it reaches it's prized home. For a moment, the darkish wax left behind from last night's race ponders whether or not this new sphere is worthy of the uppermost station, but as we join our little blob in spirit he cannot lose, and the pressure he places on the darkish scraps proves too much. They blend; they join! Victory is ours! Yet even as we rejoice for our little blobs happiness, a new hero begins to protrude...

You can work out all of your issues in there. You can sort out all of those thoughts or ideas that you just can't get out of your head. It's particularly wonderful with music added, but just looking at it on it's own is a wonderful visual enough. One day I'd really like to do some art on my lava lamp. Maybe something in watercolour, to really bring that glow into it. It'd be cool to have an entire room lit entirely by lava lamps of all types and sizes. You'd probably feel like lava after being in that room, but it'd be so worth it. Especially if you were high. I've never been high myself, but I can only imagine how cool a lava lamp must be if you're high.

In general, the world needs more useless but cool ingenuity like the lava lamp. Does it serve as a particularly useful lamp? No. Is it practical in any way? Well, why should it be? The lava lamp is amazing and it knows it. It doesn't need any other purpose than to look cool.

Like it says, quite truthfully, on the cylindrical box, "Lava Lamps: The Original Shape of Cool".

I really don't want to study for my math exam.