Just Sayin'

So, I just found out that Scholastic is coming out with new covers for all the Harry Potter books. I am completely outraged by this! I mean, who does Scholastic think they are, the publisher? I'm really not sure how I'm supposed to react to this. My first reaction was to drive over to Barnes and Noble and buy all the Harry Potter books with the old covers that they had in stock and then hide them under my bed in a fireproof lock-box. However, it was brought to my attention that this would be both very expensive and a little extreme. I don't know how anyone else feels about this, but I do, in fact, judge books by their covers. If I don't like the cover art, I will not buy the book, even if it's a text I really like, which is why I have a slight mistrust of buying books on Amazon, because the book they send you doesn't always match the picture. They could send you a copy of Macbeth with a picture of a grilled cheese sandwich on the cover, you just never know. ...

Recently, I've noticed a problem in my life. It's actually not a very problematic problem; I'm buried in books. Now, before you tell me about how wonderful e-readers are and how I don't have to have the clutter of physical books, let me tell you this. I have a nook and I like it a lot, but nothing compares to that book smell and the texture of the paper and all that other nostalgic, sentimental stuff that is causing me to lose all floor space in my room. Seriously, I have three book shelves in my room, one with three shelves and two with five shelves, and I still have big piles of books lying on my floor. Not to say that my room is a mess. I have everything very organized. I have one pile for library books, one pile for textbooks I'll probably never look at again but I didn't want to sell, and about a bazillion piles for books that I bought in the past couple of weeks and can't find a place for. Yes, my friends, I'm buried alive in books. I think my ...

Warning: Contains Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire Spoilers As a person who read all of the A Song of Ice and Fire books before watching the TV show, the 'surprise' ending of season three of the HBO show, didn't surprise me. For those of you who don't watch Game of Thrones , the third season closed with a massive massacre of the Starks and their bannermen during a wedding hosted by the Frey family. This event, known as the Red Wedding has, needless to say, upset some fans, but I am of the controversial opinion that the Red Wedding was necessary. Now, I am writing this blog mostly for the watchers of the Game of Thrones TV show because I think that those who have read all of the books have probably already figured this out. Nothing happens randomly in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Trust me, if you are writing a series that's going to number more than 7,000 pages in length, you go into it with a game plan. Like, I know that and the longest thing I...

I don't always disagree with John Green, but when I do its about pennies. Recently, I took the Nerdfighter census and one of the last questions was something like 'which issues are most important to you', and one of the options was pennies. Now, I didn't check the pennies box, not because I don't think it's important, but because, I believe that we should keep the penny. For those of you who have never heard of John Green (hey, it's possible), he's a vlogger/author/youtube activist/awesome person/a lot of other things too. Anyway, John has made severeal videos about why the U.S. should eliminate pennies. Basically, his point is that it costs about 2.41 cents to make one penny and they're not a very useful form of currency anyways. While this is fundamentally true, I would argue that it's not a good reason to eliminate the penny. First of all, in terms of the penny costing more than it's worth to produce, so what? The nickel costs 11.2 cen...

So, the other day I was watching Conan the Barbarian with my dad and I just have to say, huh? I mean, I've seen this movie a couple of times and I've tried, I've really tried; I just don't get it. It's not that I don't like barbarians, I'm very pro-barbarian. Actually, the word barbarian originated from the Ancient  Greek word barbaros , which referred to anyone who wasn't Greek. Hey, I'm not Greek, I'm a barbarian too! So yes, Conan, I get where you're coming from with the bad haircut and all that leather clothing - I've had bad hair cuts too, it's rough, I get it. Plus, I was a big fan of Dave the Barbarian when it was on Disney Channel. However, for all my barbarian sentimentality, there are a few questions that I just have to ask. First off, why do the snake people kill Conan's parents? I get that, when you're a barbarian, sometimes you just want to go and pillage, but you have to have a reason. I mean, what, was it ...

So, on Sunday, I was watching the U.S. Open (you have to make sacrifices on Father's Day) and I noticed that quite a few golfers had made some interesting fashion choices. I saw one person in pink pants, someone in plaid pants, Tiger Woods had a shirt with a weird, vertical line going through it, and, as always, I have no idea what Ricky Fowler was wearing. But the real story were the octopus pants. In case you haven't heard, Bill Horschel wore Ralph Lauren octopus pants on Sunday during the U.S. Open. Now, I could say several things about these pants, but I think that most important question is "huh?". Like, I understand that Ralph Lauren is trying to make a statement and trying to attract attention, but seriously, what was the thought process there? What does the octopus have to do with golf? You might as well put rabbits on his pants, at least you have rabbits on a golf course. I think the problem is that, in a lot of ways, golf is a pretty sedate game. I k...

So, here's the thing about vampires: if you really think about it, I mean, really think about what a vampire is, it's pretty terrifying. A vampire is a person that drinks your blood until you die. Bjorihoihgtroihrti! That's freaky! So, what I don't understand is why people are all like 'oh, Edward Cullen, he's so cute! I loooove him! I wish I was a hot vampire like Edward Cullen!'. And I'm like, 'no, no you don't, because then you'd be dead and you would be drinking people's blood and that's not good'. Like, I'm not criticizing vampires for being vampires, because, hey, life's tough and sometimes you become a vampire. But if you're a vampire, you should at least have the decency to be tortured about it. I mean, you're not supposed to be cheerful about being undead. Which is why I really miss good, old-fashioned vampire fiction, like Interview with the Vampire and the other books by Anne Rice. Let me just s...

So, in the spirit of blogs about aquatic creatures (which seems to be becoming a theme on this blog), I'm going to write about something that's been bothering me for some time: the name Nemo. Ever since Finding Nemo came out, people have been going crazy about the name Nemo. Everyone's like 'oh, Nemo, that's such a cute name. I'm going to name my dog Nemo and my cat Nemo and my car Nemo and....". But what no one seems to realize is that Nemo means 'no one'. That's horrible! Finding Nemo is actually Finding No One ! Like, Nemo already has a bad fin, are you really going to make his life worse by calling him a no one? That's tottally child abuse. Like, his mom and all his brothers and sisters were killed right in front of him, doesn't he have enough emotional scars? Now, I know that they were thinking of Captian Nemo from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , but I don't think the people who wrote Finding Ne...

So, as you can probably guess by this blog's URL, I have a fish tank. Fish ownership has taught me a lot of things about aquatic creatures that I wouldn't have known otherwise. For example, did you know that guppies are cannibalistic? I'm assuming it's that kind of thinking that kept them from developing thumbs. Anyway, another thing I've observed is that, towards the end of the day, after it gets dark outside and the lights are turned off; the fish go down to the bottom of the tank and sort of lay on the rocks. It looks like they're sleeping, but I'm not really sure because I'm not really sure if it's possible for fish to sleep. Sure, it's all fine and good if you're a tank fish. In a tank, you can cuddle up next to the statue of Thor (which is currently in my fish tank, don't ask) or you can lay down under the fake plants, but how do fish sleep in the wild? Like, I saw Finding Nemo just like everyone else, so I know that clown fish...

So, after I made all those disparaging comments about squids last week, I thought I should write a positive blog post about animals. Because, generally, I really like animals. Anyway, I decided to write about the turtle because, if you can't trust a turtle, who can you trust? To begin with, allow me to say that I have tremendous respect for the turtle. I mean, who else can grow their own home and carry it around with them all the time? Snails? Snails don't even have a tongues (they have radulas, which are barbed tongues of weirdness)! Not only does the turtle have a shell, but it has a real mouth and tongue and eyes and can bite things! I think the turtle is pretty much the only animal who has all those things and the ability to grow a shell. I had first hand experience of turtle awesomeness when I went to the New England Aquarium in Boston. They had big sea turtles there and I watched them for life a solid hour. I even made a video about my turtle experiences (well, the...

So, two days ago (which was quite the day for animals, as I mentioned in my bear blog), I was out at Penn State's turf research facility, helping to spread some compost (not as fun as it sounds). Anyway, the turf farm borders on a cow enclosure and, while we were there, they put some cows into the pen. "Oh," someone said to me, "those are the teenage cows." Teenage cows. That's quite something. I had no idea that cows went through a teenage phase. I guess that's because you never see a cow with a smart phone, listening to One Direction (or Moo Direction, as they are known to the bovine population). I guess that's because they all have blue tooth; that must be what the yellow ear tags are for. Luckily, I have yet to see a cow wearing Uggs with shorts or leggings as pants. However, as I have learned, there are several key differences between teenage cows and adult cows. Teenage cows are smaller and more leggy than adult cows, they run around and ...

So, it was a pretty good day for me in terms of animals. I saw some cows (more about that on Friday) and when I got home from work there was a family of bears in my neighbor's tree. Let me repeat that: right now, there is a mother bear and three cubs in my neighbor's tree. There was a bear next door. A BEAR. My reaction to this was somewhat like "afhreughevburtrtiirhi where's my camera?". It's not like black bears are rare or anything (I mean, I do live in central Pennsylvania). Actually, once, when I was a kid, there was a bear in our backyard, eating our trash. Because my neighborhood is pretty heavily wooded and borders on State Game Lands, we have quite a bit of wild life and, occasionally, deer and bears will wonder over. What's really cool is that A) this bear has cubs (they're sooo cute) and B) the bear is in a tree, so you can get pretty close and take lots of pictures.    I quite like bears. They have lovely ears and are thoroughly r...

So, I was watching the Animal Planet the other day and there was this show on about squids. On the show, they were talking about how, if you get in the water with squids, they'll surround you and start attacking you and end up eating you. Actually, on the show, they said that a group of squids (they hunt in packs because one squid is just not terrifying enough) can be more dangerous than a shark when it attacks. Let's think about that for a minute. Squids eat people. That is completely ridiculous! The world needs to know that this is going on! Like, you plan for sharks, you plan for lions and tigers and bears; you don't plan for squids. I had no idea that this sort of thing was going on in the world! As you may recall from earlier blog posts, I was kind of concerned about the potential dangers of the octopus, but I'm over that now. I'm much more concerned about squids taking over the world. Like, the problem is, no one is paying attention to the squid. You...

So, as you may or may not be aware, we are now smack dab in the middle of what I like to call HBO season. When the moon and the stars all align, three of my favorite TV shows end up airing at the same time, well, give or take a week or two.  You've got your Game of Thrones , you've got your True Blood , and even a little of The Borgias (I guess that that's Showtime, but it's kind of the same thing), which are some of my favorite television shows. Even The Tudors used to be on HBO, if only it hadn't ended. I still maintain that they could have continued the show if they wanted to. I mean, there are other Tudors besides Henry VIII; if they wanted to, they could even start with Henry VII if they didn't want to continue the show after Henry VIII's death. I mean, that did put a bit of a damper on things. Even True Blood looks like it's winding down. If they were following the book series, which they're not, there could be as many as 13 seasons...