Tag Archives: Star Trek

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Midnight Baking, Love Poetry, and Not Sleeping.

It is 5:12am and I haven’t been to sleep, per say. I took a nap at about 9pm until midnight. I’ve been awake with a whirring brain since then. I think my voodoo of Selina is finally starting to come back some. I midnight baked, like the old days, and then started a new story. I am toying with a new concept. Who knows how it will work out, but writing a potential failure is better than not writing at all.

Speaking of potential failures: I decided to change up the look of the blog for a bit. It is so girly it is almost cool. I’m sure I will get complaints and will revert back soon enough, but this was fun.

Speaking of writing: I wrote a nerd-tastic love poem. No, I didn’t specifically write it for the Viking. I wrote it more for all of the kooky nerds in love. There are so many more variations on this I could write, and I probably will toy with them. This one was crazy fun to write. Tell me what you guys think.

The nerdiest love poem ever

There might be a reason I stopped writing poetry

I’m going to dash off and either be epic or pass out. Right now, I’m feeling either is a possibility. It just feels incredible to be feeling the crazy writer vibe again. This was a short blog. I might write you more later.

 

 
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I Actually Went Outside

Today I spent the day at the Rock Island Arts Festival and had a blast.

I heard four different versions of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” one with a xylophone.

I defended pole dancing as a legitimate art after seeing the girl I used to baby sit when she was just a sweet little girl climbing up a pole. It was pretty cool actually. It was really more like a performance art and less like dirty crack whores. Only one of the dancers had fake boobs. (Lets not discuss the tramp stamp tattoos.)

I think there was some art there. I saw a few painted cow skulls. Mostly I was hanging out with Cynthia and her kid. We did a lot of walking between the huge sand piles and the bouncy castles.

Jewelry. I saw jewelry. I like shiny things.

I got to meet many of my friends offspring. I am a terrible friend and I haven’t met any of my friends’ spawn. Autumn is still cute as hell and you can’t even tell she had a kid two months ago. It is ridiculous.

I spent four hours talking non-stop to Cynthia and her son. When we were at school, Cynthia was gorgeous girl. (I have always had hot female friends. It was good for my guy friends but not good for my chances to pick up guys. But, yeah, I know all the hot chicks.) Now she is an amazingly beautiful woman.  She looks almost exactly the same (there is a picture of her in an attic… NERD reference) but she has a new grace about her that makes her stunning. She was the same sweet, smart, funny Cynthia I loved so much in college but only better.

I did NOT get drunk at the wine tasting then try to get a pony ride. I did encourage LaNell to though.

I awkwardly talked about writing and my book a lot but my friends are great people and handled it well.

I have the strangest sunburn. I burned around my necklace and I have to white lines V-ing down my chest pointing straight to my boobs. I am going to think of it as added advertisement. I also have a stripe across my eye from my chunky sunglasses. I can pretend to be Geordi LaForge. I would take a picture of it but my dumb camera is refusing.

On a completely unrelated note: there is a pile of laundry that I took out of the dryer before I left this morning. I put it on my bed thinking that I would put them away after I got home today. Okay, I knew it was a slim chance I would hang them up, but I had the best intentions. When I got home I moved them from my bed to my computer chair so I could lay down and then moved them back to my bed after I woke up. I have accepted that they will just moved back and forth between the two spots until they dwindle away from me wearing them. I might put away the panties since I don’t have to fold or hang those up.

And I wonder why I am single.

 
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Genre Talk: Science Fiction

If it can be said that fantasy is defined by containing some element of the fantastic or magic then science fiction is all about the technology. Just like fantasy, though, sci-fi is a lot more than its base elements. There are many different kinds of science fiction that is written for many purposes.

The first flavor of sci-fi is space operas. Space operas are the space adventures like Star Wars or others stories were the hero goes jetting about the universe saving the world. Now just because it is a space opera does not mean that it lacks any substance. In many ways, I think Star Trek (yes, I know it is a show not a book, cut me some slack) falls in the category of a space opera since all but one of the series are about people on space ships zooming around the universe interacting with alien races but it is not all fluff. I have heard some very intelligent people argue the social implications of Star Trek. (This goes into a sci-fi rant I have later. I might even get to it today.)

Awesome Flipping Book

Amazing book

One of my favorite flavors of science fiction is called cyberpunk. Worlds in cyberpunk tend to be grittier and filled with a blurring of the lines between humans and machines. Elements like cybernetic implants and highly advanced artificial intelligence are very prevalent in cyberpunk.  William Gibson’s books and short stories also embody another popular element in cyber punk with the highly urban settings and encompassing urban sprawl. His books and Philip K Dick’s books (more specifically Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) also epitomize another big element of cyberpunk, the blurring of the lines of what makes us human.

I am absolutely positive there is a term for the rest of science fiction about technologically advanced societies. I just don’t know it and I am not in the mood to go searching for it. But, there is another more popular area of science fiction about futuristic societies doing futuristic things. Some of these are highly technical and intricate. I guess these would be considered along the line of “hard” science fiction. Issac Asimov is one big example of this.  I haven’t been a big fan of this kind of sci-fi since  they seem somehow cold to me. They are more interested in the technology than the people. I am probably absolutely wrong here though and I need to go back and reread stories.

It is now time for my big science fiction rant.

Ursula K. Le GuinScience fiction catches a lot of crap. People look at it as a bunch of nerds thinking about aliens and gizmos. This is true in some cases. I think, though,  science fiction always the author to make observations about society in an effective way. Think of it this way; science fiction allows a certain distance from the problems that the author is commenting on. It is much more comfortable to discuss prejudice when it is about aliens and not making automatically triggering our social sensitivities. It is much easier to discuss racism when the colors involved are blue and green and not black and white. Gender roles are much easier to examine when it takes place on some ungodly frozen planet with aliens with changeable gender rather than men and women in a modern setting. This is the purpose for science fiction, to allow us to examine ourselves from a safe distance so we can understand not only our prejudices and roles in lives but also what makes us human. (Go read some Le Guin and William Gibson, you will be a better person for it!)

 
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