My favorite book series (currently) is the Discworld set of books by Terry Pratchet. Its an amazingly well written fantasy universe and requires no previous introduction. Just pick up any book and enjoy. To spur you guys, here is the prologue of the first discworld book, The Color of Magic:
In a Distant and Secondhand Set of Dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling starmists waver and part... See... Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters. Through sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and asteroid dust He stares fixedly at the Destination. In a brain bigger than a city, with geological slowness, He thinks only of the Weight. Most of the weight is of course accounted for by Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen, the four giant elephants upon whose broad and star-tanned shoulders the Disc of the World rests, garlanded by the lng waterfall at its vast circumference and domes by the baby-blue vault of Heaven. Astropsychology has been, as yet, unable to establish what they think about. The Great Turtle was a mere hypothesis until the small and secretive kingdom of Krull, whose rim-most mountains project out over the Rimfall, built a gantry and pulley arrangement at the tup of the most precipitous crag and lowered several observers over the Edge in a quartz-windowed brass vessel to peer through the mist veils. The early astrozoologists, hauled back from their long dangle by enormous teams of slaves, were able to bring back much information about the shape and nature of A'Tuin and the elephants but this did not solve the fundamental questions about the nature and the purpose of the universe. For example, what was A'Tuin's actual sex? This vital question, said the astrozoologists with mounting authority, would not be answered until a larger and more powerful gantry was constructed for a deep-space vessel. In the meantime they could only speculate about the revealed cosmos. There was, for example, the theory that A'Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics. An alternative, favored by those of a religious persuasion was teh A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, aslo carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis. Thus it was that a young cosmochelonian of the Steady Gait faction, testing a new telescope with which he hoped to make measurements of the precise albedo of Great A'Tuin's right eye, was on this eventful evening the first outsider to see the smoke rise hubward from the burning of the oldest city in the world. Later that night he became so engrossed in his studeis he completely forgot about it. Nevertheless, he was the first. There were others...
And that is the prologue. It shows the humor that Pratchett employs so well. Please do yourself a favor and read the books. This has been another procrastinating Mo production.
Chill music, give it a listen. The instrumentals are where its at. I'm not terribly in love with any of the vocals, but the beats in the background more than makeup for it.
You know, its an amazing world that we live in today. 2007, the twenty first century. Fifty years ago politicians and scientists predicted that the 21st century would be completely unimaginable. We would be living on the moon, mars, and possibly even Pluto. Spacetravel would become a common occurrence and the average computer would be the size of a house.
Well, its not THAT spectacular yet. We haven't yet conquered the final frontier, we haven't even been back to the moon since the days of Apollo. Thats not to say that we haven't progressed at all. Technology is progressing at a lightning fast pace, computers are doing more and more every day. We have cars that can drive on the highway by themselves and if desired, parallel park themselves too. Computers are getting smaller and smaller everyday, have you ever though how amazing it is to have a 2gb microsd card? I mean the thing is about the size of the nail on your pinky! The internet allows us to stay connected with everyone in the world, and now almost any electronic device can access it. I mean my washing machine can go online, thats pretty odd. Not to mention the great little device known as the cell phone. I can play full HD quality movies on mine, nevermind the fact that the screen is less than 2 inches.
So with all that said and done, it must be a wonderful world that we live in. (oh and for the extents of this entry, by "us" I mean the middle-class and up of the United States, sorry this isn't about world poverty or anything). However, I don't really know if that is completely true. The world that we live in today demands a lot from its kids. We learn more by the time that we are in freshman in high school than our parents did in college. Academically this is great for the world, the smarter we get the better it is for the future. But that is not the only way in which we are growing too fast.
Back in the day, most kids did not know what sex was until atleast they were in their early teens. Now, a kid is lucky to get to age 7 without knowing what it means. I know that sounds a little too abrupt, but back in my elementary school, kids were talking about sex when they were in second grade and having sex atleast as early as sixth grade. I remember atleast two girls were pregnant in my 8th grade class.
That isn't all there is to it, I wouldn't be so distressed if the only thing that was aging kids today quickly was sex, afterall back in the middle ages kids were having sex as soon as they were able to. What frightens me more is the amount of violence and terror we are exposed to these days. I remember back in sophomore year of high school, I was fourteen and I saw the Twin Towers come down on 9/11. It frankly shocked me, and the days that followed hit me really hard. How is a 14 year old really supposed to deal with death and destruction on that scale? The worst part is that I know that I was numbed to the full effect atleast slightly because I always watched violent movies and played violent games.
So there it is, the things that distress me about the way we are growing up today. We are numbed by movies, games, current events, sex, (insert any random thing), etc. We lose our childhoods way too quickly these days and most of us forget to smell the roses along the way. What if we all took time to slow down, smell the roses, admire the scenery? Would we all be happier? I don't know, what I do know is that I am only nineteen years old and already I feel like I carry the world on my should and I know a lot of you feel that sentiment.
It is slightly foolish to hope for things to be more wholesome, I realize that cannot be done. And I also know that more than likely my kids will be learning calculus in fifth grade and realizing the true meaning of death atleast 5 years before they really should. I won't really try to stop it because I know from the way that I've lived life so far that the notion of protecting your kids from the dangerous world is an illusion. But I will try to slow down their growing as much as I can, remind them that its important to smell the flowers. Maybe by the time they are 19, they won't have the world on their shoulders.
I was reading CNN today and like I always do, I was scanning the headlines. Heres something funny, mind you its not unique, CNN does stupid stuff like this all the time.
Ok, now lets zoom in
Now how exaclty does Paris Hilton rank up ther with Al Qaeda? Comeon people I know America has a love affair with its celebrities, but this is ridiculous.
