My New Obsession

Some of you might know this about me: I love trivia and I love memorizing things.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Ken Jennings, but I certainly enjoy the feeling of just knowing things.  When I was about eleven years old and had dreams of becoming a world famous chemist I came across the periodic table of the elements in my parents set of encyclopedia that I just happened to be browsing through and I thought to myself, “How great would it be if I could memorize all these elements?”  So by age twelve I could name all the elements by symbol.  And speaking of trivia, the only magazine that I’ve ever read every article, cover to cover, is Mental Floss, a magazine of pure trivia.  It’s such a fascinating publication.  I would recommend it to everyone.

Now that you know this about me, I’m ready for you to know what I’m obsessed with these days: Sporcle.com.  I think I might have mentioned it briefly earlier in my blog.  But if you haven’t heard of this website please go ahead and check it out.  It’s a website full of little quizzes.  Everything from naming all the presidents of the US to naming VH1′s top 100 songs of the 90s.  Even if you’re not a trivia buff and even if you don’t fancy yourself very good at remembering things it’s a great pastime and a great way to hone your geography or history skills and so much more.  Maren and I will often do quizzes together.  We compete on some and cooperate on others.  Since I’ve started my Sporcle habit I can now name all the US states and their capitals, I can name all the countries of the world (with a blank map in front of me) and all the flags of Europe.

So go check it out.  In addition to the ones I’ve already linked to above here are some quizzes that you might enjoy:

Car Logos. 90s Video Games. Guess The Language.   The “A” Game. Time’s Top 100 Novels.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs!

My brother, upon viewing my Where The Wild Things Are post, made me aware that yet another of our beloved childhood books was being made into a movie: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs!  This fall is gonna be awesome!

Where The Wild Things Are!

Do you remember this book?!  They’re making a movie out of it!!  I remember that it was one of the books that I would check out of the library over and over as a kid.  I’m excited to see what kind of movie they make of it!  Check out the trailer.

Peter Recommends

So I’ve had a lot of downtime at work for the last couple of days.  A lot of the kids go to their relatives for the holidays and I’m left with just a couple of kids who play video games all day.  Pretty easy.  So I read.  And today I picked up a book I saw at work called Go Ask Alice.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  I started and finished it today.  It’s a very poignant look at one girl’s struggle with drugs, told as entries in a diary.  Even though its authenticity is questionable (see wikipedia for more info) and it is, in fact, categorized as fiction these days, it got me thinking about my youth and it made me very grateful for so many things I think I normally take for granted, which is an appropriate coincidence considering today is Thanksgiving.  I’m grateful that I have a family that always loves and supports me, even if we may be a little dysfunctional sometimes.  I know that we’ll always be there for each other.  I’m grateful my parents raised me the way they did, however that was, because it kept me from making any seriously stupid decisions.  I’m grateful that I’ve always had such great friends that have been such great examples to me.  And I guess my point is that reading Go Ask Alice caused me to reflect on my life and I realized how good I have it.  And I would recommend reading Go Ask Alice even if you’re not as sentimental as I am.  But keep in mind that it is likely a fictional account.

Love you Mom and Dad and Andrew and Flora and Ruth.

Peter Recommends…

This is a quick note to recommend a remarkable book I recently finished reading: Watchmen.  It’s a graphic novel that was originally released as a series of 12 monthly issues in the mid ’80s.  It is the story of a handful of masked, non-super heroes and the world-changing events that bring their lives back together after years of being apart.  It has since been released as a single, compiled volume.  It has been regaining popularity due to its being made into a major motion picture.  And it is awesome.  

This, for me, is my first, real foray into the world of graphic novels and, frankly, I’m impressed.  It was fascinating to see how much the medium could contribute to the story.  There is symbolism everywhere and it really enriches the story and the experience of the reader.  And it’s all done in a way that could not be done in any other literary medium.  Few books have engrossed me so completely.  I found myself flipping back and forth through the novel as I recognized different symbols and references that related to earlier parts.  It was fun to see how many connections I could find and to try to understand the meaning behind every panel.  I really gained a new appreciation for the genre.  Although, I also worry that because of its high quality no other graphic novel will measure up to this one.  If anyone knows of other graphic novels of this calibre, please let me know.

Now, I imagine that some of you, upon hearing the words “graphic novel,” may have a thought sequence something like this: graphic novel = comic book = something only nerdy recluses read.  While nerdy recluses may, indeed, read graphic novels, I think it would be a terrible shame for a piece of literature as remarkable as this one to be ignored by everyone else.  As I understand it, it is the only graphic novel ever to win the Hugo Award and it is one of Time Magazine’s 100 best novels.  I recommend that you look it up on wikipedia or something.  Understanding a little of its background will go a long way in helping you appreciate it.  This is one book definitely worth reading, even at the risk of feeling a little nerdy.

I read Twilight.

So I just recently finished reading the book Twilight by Stephanie Meyer.  You’ve probably heard of it.  Among the people I know, it’s the book that has replaced Harry Potter, in a sense.  A book to build a craze around.  I wasn’t dying to read it or anything but enough people had told me I should read it and that it was amazing that I decided to go for it.  And since I just started working part-time at a bookstore I figured it would be good to know a little bit about one of the most popular books right now.  It was an easy read and enjoyable.  But it didn’t make me want to read more.  Many of my friends will be disappointed at that.  But I didn’t read all the Harry Potter books, either.  I stopped after the second one.  I just couldn’t get into enough to keep reading.  Same thing with this Twilight series.  I don’t know what it is about it; it’s well-written, it’s a decently interesting story, I guess something’s just missing for me.  

Even though I can’t determine exactly what made me not want to continue with the series, one thing that I know of that bugged me about Twilight is something for which Twilight is not alone in its guilt.  It’s the way that the supposedly teenage characters speak to one another.  Teenagers don’t actually talk like that!  They’re using words like ‘incredulous’ in everyday conversation and they speak more eloquently than the President!  That sort of stuff should only be done by pretentious word nerds like myself.  

And it’s the same with so many other teen novels and TV and so on.  I remember watching an episode of Dawson’s Creek back in the day and thinking to myself that those kids have larger vocabularies than my English teacher.  And that’s ridiculous!  But mine is a futile protest.  I acknowledge that that type of popular media may not be as watchable or readable if it were in genuine ‘teen speak’.  And I’m not saying that it’s always that way; teenagers can speak intelligently and sound normal at the same time. But too often they don’t sound like teenagers, instead they sound like English PhDs.  And it irritates the heck out of me!

And that’s my little rant for the day.

 

P.S. Remember my post about People Aren’t That Different?  Well, I just recently discovered another phenomenon to add to the couple I had there.  In California, when you don’t completely stop at a stop sign, but just sort of roll through, they call it a California Stop or a California Roll.  Let’s be honest, people everywhere do that.  Why does it get to be called the California Stop?  And I suppose the answer is that Californians made it up.