Tag Archives: Star Wars

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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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State of Mind

The weather outside sucks. It is cold, bleak, and just nasty. I have a headache. I have spent my day being whined to, growled at, and almost bitten. I want to binge eat chocolate and nap. I was walking into the super wal-mart trying to keep myself in a decent mood because a wal-mart trip is only made worse by a shitty attitude. I almost succeeded. My attempts at trying to be pleasant completely and utterly failed when I got home. I was cranky as fuck.

Cranky Face

Cranky!

Then I went onto the Facebook and followed a link from my friend Kathleen.

I ended up on James Hance’s Relentlessly Cheerful Art site. My friend Craig had told me about it before but I promptly forgot about it, the way I do, and I finally realized how awesome it is today.

It is all simple, beautifully done artwork that evokes feelings of geeky nostalgia and pure happiness. I am bolstered. It has bolstered me. I have made the decision to concentrate on the things that make me happy. I am stepping back, taking a deep breath, and then celebrating the things that made me happy today. (Beware of the videos if you are a sensitive soul.)

Number 1: A wildly inappropriate youtube video Tina’s little showed us. I started thinking about this morning in bed while I was trying to wake up, and it made me giggle like a maniac.

Number 2: My strange relationship with logic makes me happy. I know this sounds a bit egotistical to say my own sense of weird makes me happy, but it does. Logic, reality, normalcy, and I flirt with each other. We talk, and sometimes we even have coffee, but I am not married to any of them. I move through the world on my own terms, mostly because I know no other way, and it gives me joy. Most of the time I blunder through things moving without knowing how other see me or thought about how I compare to the rest of the world. I think I am happier for this.

Number 3: I have yogurt, bananas, frozen fruit, and low fat whole wheat waffles again.

Number 4: Sunny’s Diner. Lemme explain. I don’t listen to pod casts. I have the attention span of a coked out three year old. I have a hard time watching an hour long television show, much less sit still long enough to listen to a pod cast. Maybe if I had a smartphone and could listen while I did other things, it might be different, but right now, it isn’t.

But

Tina, Dave (her husband), and I game with these doods. This weekend Tina was telling me how awesome this podcast was. Our guild is a mesh of two GIGANORMOUS guilds but I still managed to have played with one of the guys and tease him mercilessly while I did, so I thought I would give it a shot while I played for a bit this afternoon. I was thoroughly entertained. So next time I do something at my computer that only requires a quarter of my brain, I will listen.

Number 5: I will be done with this evil section of my book soon. I am facing down the end of it. I am staring it dead in the face. Sometime soon. I hope.

Number 6: 100 calorie packs of fudge covered pretzels.

 
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Geeking It Out

I had my cooking extravaganza on Thursday, and yesterday was my first day of my second beta weekend for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We are no longer under gag order so I can write about it. Unfortunately for most of you cats, it means that you have to sit through a blog about a video game. I am excited and it is my blog, so I do what I want.

I wasn’t going to get the game at first because of my fears about it taking over my life and interrupting my writing. I am going to counteract this by only using game cards so if I don’t write enough, I won’t have my game automatically renewed. Also, I started a Face Book group for my beta readers so, even though they never say anything, I feel accountable to a group of people for getting it done. The game is awesome. I am going to educate you as to why.

Questing and Companions:

I thought I was going to skip the game because I heard all of the quests were given in a conversation and cut scene. I thought this would get obnoxious. Turns out, I was wrong. The things I love in an mmo is questing, lore, and professions. The conversations with the quests not only gives you a chance to immerse in the game but it also steeps you in lore. It helps you feel more attached to your toon.

I didn’t really get the companion idea until I started to play. Basically, every body gets helpers. They really change the way you play because they fight with you, do errands, get mad at you if you do stuff they don’t like, and provide an interesting side character. The companion with my smuggler makes the character so much more fun.

Two Sides:

The Republic:

These are the light users like the Jedi. They are the “good guys.” Unlike the other mmos I have played with factions, this side really is good versus versus bad, unlike in Rift and WoW where it was just one different looking group from another.  My max level character is only 14 but so far the focus of the quests have been restoring law and order and fighting corruption.  All of the people on the Republic side aren’t all hippie do-gooders, but most of them don’t have an evil lair, and they fight those that do have an evil lair, if only for monies.

The Empire:

These are the doods on the dark side, or the Sith. I have gotten a toon to 12 on the Sith side, and I really didn’t like it. I know some people really dig being the bad guy, but mostly the pervasive black hat bad guy stuff got on my nerves. Yes, we get that you are evil, will you please stfu now. On the plus side, the second zone for the Sith is freaking stunning.

The Classes:

There are four classes with a different coordinating name depending on if you go hippie or villain. I have played two for any length. I tried to roll a Sith Knight but I freaking hate pure melee classes and the Sith force users starting grounds piss me off, so I think I might have got her to level 3, maybe, but probably not.

Jedi Consular:

This is the first class I played because I love casters, and this is Star Wars real casting class. I only got my first one up to level 11 because I thought I wouldn’t want to get too familiar with the Republic quests so when the game came out, I would still want to play, so I went over to the Sith side. The spell effects are awesome. I love hurling a chunk of rock at bad guys. The Jedi do get on my nerves though. I have never been much for a lawful good character. I was willing to stick through it for the casting abilities though.

The Sith side had a different problem. The class quests were freaking obnoxious because the main Sith Sorcerer dude was so stereotypically “I’m a villain” that I really wanted to kick him in the scrot… hard

Smugglers:

This beta weekend I found my true love, smugglers. You get to play Captain Fucking Mal or, in my case, Zoey. They can either be hide behind stuff and shoot shit or they can be stealthy, shoot shit from behind, and heal. I went for the second option, except I don’t sneak. I throw a grenade into a group and go in blasting and, you know, heal. My character has this move she can do were she kicks the enemy in the nuts and the enemy is stunned while it is bent over in pain. I like to follow this up with a shot to the head. The bonus with the smugglers is that their companion speaks common so you don’t have a strange clicking hissing voice and subtitles like you do with a consular, and the companion’s personality is epic. He isn’t as straight laced as the lizard guy.

 

 

 
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Techno Junkie

I have always known that I love technology. I have two computers; a gaming desktop that I built myself and a laptop. I am very seldom found without my cellphone, and while it might not be the latest greatest smartphone, it does have a qwerty keyboard. I know what a qwerty keyboard is. I have expensive gaming keyboard and mouse, actually, I have two expensive gaming mice. I run my own website and I am learning web design. I contribute to the best humor site on the web urlybits. I try to keep up with internet culture. I have a twitter account though I am not really into it. I have played three mmorpgs (only one hardcore) and I am looking forward to the new Star Wars game. (I have an ipod but I hate the damned thing. That is a post all in itself.)

With all of this, I would think I would realize that I am a techno junkie. I knew that I relied on my electronics a lot. I went something like ten days without power one winter. I survived. I had books. I have always told myself that if all of my other forms of electronic entertainment failed, I could always read. Of course now, I desperately want an e-reader but BUT I could always fall back on my old fashion paper books. I thought that I was fairly well balanced for a techno junkie. I only use my computer and phone because they are convenient but if I didn’t have them I would be okay. Damn I was in denial.

The first clue that not having a computer is a major bad thing is that I use it for my writing. Yes, I know I could write with pen and paper but, honestly, that is a terrible idea. I type far faster than I write and my handwriting is terrible. In college I had people offer me money for my class notes until they saw just how bad my handwriting and short hand is (during Civil War lectures, I referred to the Confederacy by atleast four different names) and I had to tell them no.

Today, though, I got an even clearer indicator that I am a techno junkie. Hotmail is down and I cannot handle it. I load up MSN and it tells me I have twelve e-mails but when I click the link that is supposed to take me to my inbox, I get an error message. Twelve unread e-mails waiting for me and I cannot get to them. The link is like some sick sadistic torture begging to be clicked but won’t flipping work.

Logically I know that is all probably e-mails from travel website and the hippie sites that I am on for some strange reason. I know when I finally do get access there will be nothing of any importance. Logically my brain knows this but my heart tells me there is something important in there and I can’t get to it. It is just not fair.

So I here I go:

Hi, my name is Selina and I am a techno junkie.

 
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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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