Quote of the day

"I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.


I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the martian in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

-Neil Gaiman, American Gods


I have been feeling a bit out of sorts recently and it seems that once again the only solution is Gaiman. This man is my prophet.

Graphic Novels on E-readers

Why hasn't this happened yet? I mean really? Graphic novels are on the internet everywhere. I can find all the comics I read online some place. So why do I still have to pay so much if I want to purchase one? They are normally four to five dollars more than a regular book. I understand that the giant painted American kind would not translate they are too large and detailed, but the thousands of manga books already would fit on the e-reader screen.

This needs to be the next thing that e-reader companies can give us. The market for manga novels is huge, go into any Barnes and Noble or Borders and check.  Both have entire sections dedicated to these books. In fact most Borders even carry snacks and merchandise attached to some of the comics. This could open up the e-reader market even more so. The page dimensions are the right size and a zoom in function doesn't seem like a huge leap from larger font.

This could happen. This should happen. I want to be able to buy my manga on my Nook the same way I buy books. Tapping into this fan base could create millions in revenue. Bleach and Naruto alone could make this a viable option. We are talking about putting e-readers in the hands of every person going to Comic-Con.

Am I the only one that see this?

Quote of the day

"Have you ever fought an opponent you had no defense against? Like a fire breather or an acid spitter?"

"Once I faced a female with diamond skin," Nix said breathlessly. "I was transfixed - even as she was choking the life out of me."

"Really?"

"No, I saw that character on X-Men. I just wanted to commiserate. Alas, I have no weaknesses."

-Kresley Cole, Pleasure of a Dark Prince

Quote from my weekend snowboarding

"Why must the small children always stop right at the point where its tricky to not plow into them."

Book Review: Ecstasy In Darkness by Gena Showalter

Its interesting how reading a series out of order can show the growth of a writer. The Alien Huntress series was one of the first ones that Showalter put out there, but this book was published this past year. She has been slowly taking her time juggling several series and her growth shows.

The last book I didn't feel the characters. Neither of them seemed that real to me. This book has a huge jump in the interest. Every character has more character too them. The dialogue has a more natural feel and sound more like stuff I would say to my friends. Also the plot is way more interesting, I am much more intrigued by a race of disease ridden aliens trying to wipe us out. Well wipe out everyone, because they have to spread the disease to live. Which really seems like an interesting idea. I desperately want to know more about this but Showalter is making me work for it.

The main male for this book is Victor McKell who was a bad-ass vampire in the last book. After the vampire king found out he didn't kill Bride he got kicked out of the underground world. Seeing as this series goes with the whole alien thing, vampires are really aliens that made it to earth a long time before the other aliens came knocking.  Remember the disease aliens? Well they found out that Bride's blood stops the disease so they want to talk to McKell. So the alien investigation forces send Ava and Noelle to bring him in, and these two pretty much are the coolest girls ever. Ava is the lead in this book.

So Ava and McKell get the hots for each other and in the mean time they are trying to a) figure out more about vampires that live above ground and b) stop the queen of the disease aliens from destroying everything c) deal with the mating bond thing d) figure out what these magical door ways that follow McKell are about. The answers are the following. A) there are lots and they have to drain a human dry to go out in the sunlight. B) McKell's daddy has some neat stuff that kinda makes the mystery  less epic. C) They like it but Ava doesn't want to be a vampire just yet, well maybe. D) McKell's daddy comes from an alternate reality and has magic doorways.

Yeah that last bit comes in at the eleventh hour and just sorta ends the tension. I was horribly worried there for a while about the disease aliens and what was going to happen. I mean I was on the edge of my seat, and then daddy is like "Calm down, I got this!" and there goes the tension. The big bad evil woman is not so scary when the time traveling vampire just sends her away because he doesn't like that its pissing his son off.

On the other hand Ava and Noelle make me crazy happy. They have that trash talk to your best friend thing down. I loved it. Best friend trash talk is the best kind. They make it very realistic, although they take it a little too far at times. They suffer from serious ADD in a couple scenes. It sounds so much like my friends and I when we get in rants. I loves me some silly rants.

This book has convinced me that I need to go back and read the rest of the series.

Things I Learned Today

You can get Poison Ivy in the winter. The sap is active all year round, and leather on your snowboarding gloves can pick it up when you crash into the bushes to avoid hitting a pack of ski school kids.

So yeah I have a rash. Book reviews to come later today.

Quote from my weekend snowboarding

"The more I watch Disney channel the more questionably gay all the male characters are."

Quote of the day

"So what'd the girls say when you asked about the carnage?"

"Ava said her hand accidentally slipped and made contact with her guy's nose. I said Repeatedly? And she said, 'Uh, yeah. I'm really clumsy.' And Noelle said her guy was trying to escape, so she took him down like we'd trained her. And oh, we shouldn't worry about the gaping wound in his neck because he probably had that before he entered the bar."


-Gena Showalter, Ecstasy In Darkness