Seeking a Home Where He Himself is Free

~~~~ Content

Muuuch better! :laugh:

All the Stars and Boulevards

~~~~ Sleepy

Changed my design today. Don't know if I like it as much as my other one. It seems like a lot of people do a star theme. But I kinda like it for now... we'll see. It's hard to have multiple themes on one account here... I have noticed that. So if I decide to switch back it'll take some work. Oh well. I've had that ivy theme for years.

I think I'm going to New York on Thursday. Grandma wants to go and my cousins are going up but not until Saturday. So it all of a sudden became "hey, why don't you drive?!" oh, okay... it might be fun. At least I love love love my aunt and uncle's house in new york. They have these great window seats in this bedroom that's great for reading. Maybe I'll take my laptop. They should have wireless...

Wally just called. He has this bad habit at calling at inconvienent times. I mean, it was 12:30. I spent the evening with my family. I'm not in the mode of going out now. Well, I was planning to have coffee with Chanda tomorrow anyways. I gues we'll just have to call him.

25 days til Cairo... :eek:

Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting, For fear of little men

~~~~ Pensive

I have an overactive imagination.

Alas, Alagaesia! I did love thee, once . . .

~~~~ Melancholy

Hahaha. So I was perusing amazon.com for all things Eragon. Chanda and I went to see the movie last night and while it did have it's low points it also had some very high ones and I think I did like it overall. Anywhoo, I figured I better get around to reading the Eldest book. Even before I buy the paperback edition in march. So I requested it from the library, then I went to check out some reviews. This evaluation isn't the most positive but I thought it was really funny. Potentially it wasn't suppose to be funny but I got a laugh and I thought I'd share. It does make me a little worried to read the second book of the Inheritence trilogy but it won't stop me yet!

"Eldest" is the second book of the "Inheritance" series, and is a sequel to "Eragon". In "Eragon," we meet the title character, a fifteen-year-old boy, being raised by his uncle in a rural area (but his name isn't "Luke"). Eragon happens to find a dragon's egg, and a beautiful, blue dragon hatches, and chooses him as her Rider (but this is not Pern). The egg had been magically hidden by a beautiful Elven princess, Arya (not Arwen), just before the servants of the evil king Galbatorix (not Sauron) catch her and imprison her. Eragon does his best to care for the young dragon, but the king's men come and burn down his home, and kill his uncle (whose name isn't "Owen"). Eragon leaves his home village, to draw the king's men away, with an old story-teller, Brom (not "Obi-Wan") who is really a dragon Rider in retirement (and never was a Jedi Knight). Eragon makes many friends, and ends up living in a stronghold of those who oppose the Empire, er, I mean the King.Now, on to "Eldest," which starts off right after the huge battle that ended at the end of "Eragon," and during which Eragon defeated the evil Shade, but was also wounded most grievously. Eragon is recovering, and the Varden (think "rebel fleet" without spaceships) are trying to regroup, but one last attack by the Urgals (think Uruk'Hai, but bigger) leaves the king of the Varden dead. His daughter, who is named "Nasuada" instead of "Leia", takes command, Eragon tries to form alliances with all the factions, and then sets off to finish his training as a Dragonrider, with the elves. He is accompanied by Arwen and Gimli -- no! wait a minute! -- by Arya and Orik the dwarf. They travel through the dwarf kingdom, Eragon finds allies and enemies, they cross the desert, they enter Du Weldevarden (the great forest where the elves, led by Queen Islanzadi, instead of Galadriel, live), to meet his trainer/teacher. Yada yada yada, blah, blah, blah. There was more, but nothing interesting, or anything even equally uninteresting, but only more uninteresting. Really. Christopher Paolini's first book, "Eragon," was highly derivative and unoriginal, but I still liked it. I especially liked the one original character, the werecat Solembum. In "Eldest," there is no originality, and there is very little action. As soon as I saw the book, I knew I was in trouble (or it was), as it is twice as big as its predecessor. "Eldest" is bloated, inflated, and laden with endless descriptions of characters, characters' dress, facial gestures, buildings, languages, customs, rituals, history, traditions, and other minutiae. Nothing happens. Also, someone must have suggested to Mr. Paolini that he should beef up his vocabulary. His response appears to have been to ingest a thesaurus whole and, like some nauseated seagull, regurgitate indigestible words in a rather random fashion. I'm not done! The characters have almost all been flattened by steamrollers, leaving totally one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs of archetypes and stock fantasy-epic-story generics. Only Roran, Eragon's love-struck but heroic cousin, comes off as a real person. No one else is likable, realistic, or interesting. Well, now I might be done. I sold my copies of "Eragon" and "Eldest," with the money going to charity. In this way, those books will accomplish some good for someone. I hope that Eragon, Saphira the dragon, and their friends can go on without me. If they can't, too bad.

Hand in hand they stumble into the story

~~~~ Indifferent

Well... break. It's been nice so far. Lots of relaxing, lots of people seeing. Haven't gotten to see Chanda yet because she's sick. Boooo. Really though, I haven't done anything. I unpacked and I've been reading a lot. I really don't want to work but I know I should call Tumbleweed. Perhaps I'll go pick up a Starbucks application tomorrow. Just to see what happens. If that doesn't work I'll go back to Tumbleweed after the Holidays. Because, I mean, I'll still have 20 days here! Sigh. Yesterday Carolyn and I went to see In Pursuit of Happyness. It was okay. The only way I liked it was to remind myself that it was a real story. Then we drove around and hunted for inflatable holiday decorations. hahaha. The best one? An inflatable carosal that went round and round. Yes! I can't wait to go see Eragon with Chanda.

Clan MacPherson

~~~~ Amused

Awww I think I finally found the tartan from my Scotish heritage.



This is the tartan from Clan MacPherson of Gillis.

I kinda like it :laugh: now imagine all my ancestors sporting this!

A Mystical Sense of Reality

~~~~ Recumbent

I'm begininng to realize that whenever I feel alone or scared I bury myself in reading. And when I say bury, I mean reading multiple books in a day.

I wonder what book I should read next.

Nervous twitching, Fingers curled.

~~~~ Dorky

I am officially done with any and all forms of Western Civilization! The exam certainly could have gone worse. I rocked out the essay. Feudal societies bias!!! Thank you Kilbreath. And as a props to Dr. Thurston I even threw in a reference to Russian feudalism! hahahaha. The id's probably could have gone better but I normally feel that way and end up doing okay. I might have fudged up the Peasant's Revolts a little. I couldn't remember what exactly the Magna Carta had to do with them so I made it very general. Oh well, it could have been worse. Plus, I got a glance of quell'uomo so I'm pretty happy. I've just finished my World History paper too. All I need to do is hop over to the computer lab and print it off since that class literally broke my printer. I'm hoping if I put a new ink cartridge in it'll be okay but they're sold out of cartridges at Shirver and I have a gift certificate for Staples at home so I might as well just print things off with my Mulaa and not buy more ink until I get home. The only other thing I'm gonna worry about today is studying for Arabic alittle more. Saleh emailed me today telling me to make him proud on all my exams! Seriously, I'm gonna miss that man sooo much! Four more exams. No worries, right?

Hahaha!

~~~~ Recumbent