I'm So Exicted.... And I Just Can't Hide It...

So there's a lot of stuff coming out in the second part of this year that I'm excited for. Yeah, I know. I'm a pop culture whore. Some of it's guilty pleasure, some not. Either way, I'm pumped! Recently I was very satisfied with the new Taking Back Sunday CD as well as the new Marilyn Manson CD. Mandar and I are also loving the Sims 3 so I hope what still is to come won't disappoint.

True Blood: Season 2 - June 14th



Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince - July 15th



Wii Sports Resort - July 26th



Julie & Julia - August 7th



New Cobra Starship CD - August 11th



I Can Do Bad All By Myself - Sept 11th



New Super Mario Bros. Wii - Holiday Season



In addition I am also looking forward to the new Richard Dawkins book for which I couldn't really find a good YouTube video for. There are also new Tarkan, Shakira, and Atreyu CDs slated for release this year!

I Wanna Do Bad Things To You...

Yep, it was inevitable. I fell in love with some vamps. Anne Rice's books were good but never got me enthralled. My fault, not hers. Stephanie Meyer... ugh, sappy, predictable, boring. Her fault, not mine. Then came along Charlaine Harris.

She's a part-time author, part-time minister. She writes stories about sex, drugs, and lots of blood. Every single one of her books in the Sookie Stackhouse series contains the word "dead."

It all started over at Mandar's cousins house. Aurora had gone on for a while about being enthralled by the Sookie Stackhouse novels. She was psyched to be getting the upcoming ninth in the series. After I finished reading Contact by Carl Sagan I thought, sure why not, I'll give it a try.

I bought the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse series called "Dead Until Dark." From page one, I was interested. By page 292, I was hooked. Even better, HBO picked up the book and converted them to a weekly one-hour television program which they dubbed True Blood.

The story takes place in the rural Louisiana town of Bon Temps. The books are told from the prospective of 25 year old Sookie Stackhouse. Just months have the underground vampire community decided to "come out of the coffin" thanks to the creation of a sythetic blood drink called TruBlood Sookie is exited to meet a real live vampire when he walks into Merlotte's Bar (where she works of course). Mr. Bill Compton is a gentleman (and has a handsome 1800's look about him). From there Sookie finds herself getting slightly attracted to her dead new friend. The once quiet town of Bon Temps is shocked when several murders occur just months having the vampire's appeared. Sookie is torn between her new beau and the normal life she once had.

Above is the uber amazing Eric Northman (and his second in command Pam), the 1100 year old vampire who runs the vampire bar called Fangtasia. Oh, did I mention that they refer to the people who have sex with vampires as fang-bangers?

The series True Blood is a lot different from the book. Each season of the show represents one book. However, since the book is less than 300 pages long and the show has twelve one-hour episodes, there's time to fill. What I love is how every single scene from the book is in the show. And what's great is they have room to add more. Much much much more!

This show is not for the faint at heart. There is a lot of fucking. And I mean a lot of fucking! There's drug use. Gore. Violence. Blood. Lots of blood. Let's put it this way. Twilight is like huggies pull-ups and True Blood is like Victoria Secret lace lingerie. Don't watch unless you can handle big girl panties!

One of the things I love about the show is it's location. Deep south Lousianna. Just check out the show's opening credits. I love the song they choose and the imagery is perfect.



So it's my new addiciton. Good thing for me, I just finished reading book one and I've got eight more to go (and there currenlty is no end in visible sight for the series). I sure hope HBO keeps this series going for a nice long time!

Bunnies On The Highway

I just finished reading Carl Sagan's 1985 novel, Contact. I saw the movie when I was a teenager and loved it but the book was quite a bit better in some places and not as great in other. It was slow in places. Nevertheless, I still think that Jodie Foster played Ellie Arroway perfectly, maybe even better than Carl Sagan wrote her, lol.

The book was strange in a way because it was published in 1985 and it ends in the year 2000. For example, the Soviet Union still exits in the book. I'm not in anyway saying that was a failure in any sense (he couldn't have known) but it was strange and kinda funny at times. Not to mention, the President of America in the book was a Madam President which by 2008 we still have not seen. I bet if Sagan was alive today he'd be surprised that we had a black president before a female.

Overall, the ending was considerably better. More detail made it deeper. There was also a very thought provoking thing that had to do with pi at the end.

But while reading there was a very funny part where Ellie was talking to a old man who lived in a retirement home that orbited earth. I would like to share it:

"You see, the religious people -most of them- really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesman's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: the biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition."

I guess I never mentioned why I called this bunnies on the highway. There was a long exposition early in the book about rabbits in New Mexico that see car lights. It was interesting.