This is a Kick-Ass Post

Who hasn't wanted to be a superhero before?  I think that is a dream everyone has shared at some point.  The superpowers, the fame, the fighting of crime.  It all sounds great, so why can't we all be one?

All it takes is a Snuggy, some imagination, 30 seconds in Photoshop,
and the realization you look like a complete idiot.

In the sea of superhero movies, it is hard to find one that truly stands out among the rest.  It seems that every movie is a reboot of a series or another part of a trilogy.  One movie takes the spotlight from the rest, not because it has amazing superheros, but because it has a geeky kid who wants to play superhero...and fails.  That movie is Kick-Ass (that's the title, but it is also pretty kick ass).  

The Writing Process of a Neurotic Perfectionist

Unlike a lot of people, I love writing.  Everything from research reports to creative essays to persuasion papers.  Well, not everything.  Poetry is terrible. 

Simple is poetry when sentences sense make none.

So, my writing process...

Step 1:  I usually start my writing by staring blankly at a wall for a couple of minutes or hours.  Hopefully in this time a subject comes to me.  If not, well, I stare at a different wall.  Something usually comes to me within a week. 

A true genius at work

The Near Drowing of an Innocent Child

I have been a swimmer my whole life.  Not a competitive swimmer.  I cannot breaststroke or backstroke, but more of a water basketball and doggy paddle kind of swimmer.  The first time I experienced a full size swimming pool was incredible.  By incredible, I mean incredibly terrifying.  Picture an innocent six-year-old boy getting outfitted with a life jacket so he can swim with the big people.

Swimming is fun.

Brave New World

"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able …"  This quote is the basis of Brave New World.  In 2540 A.F. (After Ford), England believes that they have created a perfect world, a utopia.  The key to a working society, in their eyes, is stability.  To create and maintain stability, humans are artificially “born” and are sorted into social classes based on their genetic structure.  From birth to adulthood, everybody learns to appreciate their social class, mainly by hearing recordings like the one quoted above for the Beta class.  Through all the lifelong social conditioning, only one person opens his eyes to see that the so-called “utopia” is actually a dystopia. 

This book is definitely an interesting read.  It tops my list as one of the unique books I have read.  The message Huxley is sending is great.  The idea that in the future there will be a government that strips everyone of their rights is a common theme among writers, but Huxley took the theme and built a great story out of it.  Though the book did start out slow (it had to explain a lot about the society), it picked up after a few chapters and kept a fast pace.  Brave New World definitely needs to be read twice because there are many things I missed the first time, like foreshadowing and other messages.  This is an excellent book that I recommend for anyone to read. 

Let's Start!

I always wondered what it would be like to have a blog.  I guess I will find out.