Episode 6: Return of the Journal

always interesting to see where these entries go. the last one, for example, is conclusive proof that i'm psychotic to some extent. Its my first day of school and already I don't feel like going back. Now, to clarify...this isn't "i wanna relax, so i don't want to go to class" or anything like that. I mean that I already feel like I've been at school enough to just be through with it.
Much as I like the whole "education" thing...i really lack the motivation at points to care about it. I think it all stems from that I can't imagine having an actual job or anything like that that falls under doing something with one's life, even if it is just working. I think I'm so used to getting into ruts where I don't do much that to do something productive seems foreign beyind the realm of possibility.
I figure there's also something wrong in that I always feel like I've already wasted both the best years of my life and any potential I may have once had to, well, do stuff, but such is life.

On an uplifting type note, the Iraqi elections happened, and thats big. To me, so long as the U.S. is supportive of whoever was elected, this is a justification for removing Saddam and is a marked improvement for the Iraqis. Its just, the sort of stuf you can't just attack and say doesn't mean something. That a country can now vote, and so many were so dedicated to voting, that speaks far louder than anything else the administration or the media or the Bush critics could say on the subject.

today has proven to be such a perfect example of my failings at life. so much i had meant to do, and nothing got done. i need money in my bank account, so i've some checks and stuff to deposit, and some tutoring calls to make. none of which happened. also need to take the chupathingie in to jiffylube soon and i didn't do that, either. heck, i didn't even get around to going to best buy to use the gift cards i got.

i do, of course blame this all on the fact that i installed jedi academy today, and am now quite a ways into it...i think i might be able to beat it tomorrow. i've got a good routine down, so thats working for me. roll and jab.
on the plus side, i got a cel of animation from ewoks, so that just is outright cool.

i think i need to get myself into a proper rut again...where i'm busy with work to the point that i'm not thinking about feeling out of place socially and that all. i suppose thats why the tutoring is a good job, i don't have time to think while i'm working. honestly, sometimes i just hate thinking. nothing good ever comes of it for me. i just dwell on things and let them eat away at me for long periods of time. i suppose its better when i'm able to not be optomistic, because when i am optomistic, i then crush myself with reality before reality gets the chance to do it. it skips the anticipation part.
the real issue is that i bounce around a lot as to how i can cope with the whole "social misfit" type thing. i try to be realistic enough to never lie to myself about that, like, i could ever come close to the life of the party or anything like that...thats not me, that involves energy. and i'm an edge above over most people in that, yeah i'm a jerk most of the time, but i at least know i'm a jerk or generally...unpersonable. is that a word? and if so, does it mean anything even remotly close to what i just used it for? anyway, i know that i'm not big with redeeming social skills or qualities...i'm just stubborn to the point that i won't change myself jsut to have them. so that leaves me in this nice little spot where i don't belong in social settings and feel guilty trying to intrude on them half the time...but still having the need to have social interaction. one of these annoying things that comes with being a person. i mean, robots don't feel like they NEED to be in contact with other robots at some point, do they? thats it, i'll just upload my conciousness to my computer and hope it all works out. i'll make it work, or die trying.

sometimes I wonder if I should be proud of my near-perfect record of causing problems for myself.

anyway...
last night i gathered up people for a slurpee run and so people could get their stuff. fun little night in that. also opened my christmas presents, which included the most important thing of all....money.

today was rougher. got up late since i spent much of the morning sick. finally, left a bit befoer 2 to go with bryan down to csun to get books and parking permits. ton of books, but at least they were already gathered and paid for. thank YOU internet.

so...from there it was off to get Liz to this party type thing for her. I'm not fully sure why volunteering to do the drive was the best of ideas. Or well, I suppose it was fairly good plan considering Jennie wouldn't have had the time to get out there, and I knew sorta where I was going. I mean, I'd been out there a few months back, so i vaguely remembered it, but still needed a mapquest thing for the street names and all. from CSUN out to Colton was 85 miles. I remembered that no traffic it took about an hour and a half...so I figured that I could probably get out there in a bit over 2, since I didn't think there'd be much traffic until like 5. Oh how I was wrong. Turned into somewhere around 3 and a half hours to get out there, mostly on the eastbound 210 after passadena and eastbound on the 10. So get out there, eat some cold pizza courtesey of jason. thank god for that. then figured i needed to pick up the pace to get to chris's for the party, which turned out to be 98 miles away. I covered that distance in an hour and 15 minutes. :D So, around 77 or 78 mph. Meant that we got to chris's at 9:15. I pretty much got some coke for a headache, took some advil, and laid down. Though, that did mean I stuck around far longer than I'd planned. Had traffic been better, I was just going to drop Bryan and Liz off at the party and come home to take care of some phone calls, but 9:30 was rather late to be making them so I'd only headed out to try to return one call I'd gotten while I was out. Went home to grab the souvineir box so Liz could get her stuf and came back, then stayed longer than I'd intended, with a fair bit of talking to Chris's brother where it wasn't so loud and chaotic. Then picked a good time to head home around 11.

Important conclusion for the night...i've got to head back out to colton to just hang out there one of these weekends and relax out there.

well, after much confusion in a range of things, i have now made it back.

first bit of business...sam and i won at trivial pursuit my last night. hurrah to that.

now, on to the flight, the important stuff. first things first, the person at the counter was going to ask if i needed special assistance until he realised I was 19. apparently i had looked rather on the young side. i thought this would be my story of the trip until the second thing happened.

as we all know, i like fire. along these lines, i had gotten some lighters as souveneirs. when i went past security, they didn't have a problem with it. however, when i went to check my luggage, and they asked if i had lighters and i said yes, this turned out to be rather a large problem. add in that i'd just sealed up my suitcases with some ziplock thing and that meant that i couldn't just open it all up. no one at the counters had scissors either, so they had to get someone from security that DID have scissors to come cut it open so i could take the lighters out. i took one with me, the rest are being mailed back.

my flight was also delayed a bit. and by a bit, i mean an hour. apparently the cooling system for the electrical system wasn't working and this had to be fixed before takeoff. it would've been worse, but i had the luxury of having three seats (from the aisle to the window) all to myself. now thats a nice deal. i was spread out and it worked well.
flight itself wasn't so bad....read half a book, played plenty of video games, worked on crosswords, listened to the radio and mp3 player, and watched "without a paddle" which was actually much better than any trailer had ever led me to believe. for starters, it had a plot.

the plane landed a bit over half an hour late, which was then held up first by being told we needed to just taxi around for a while to give another plane time to clear out, then customs taking a while before saying we could get off the plane.

finally though, i made it all the way back to here. odd thing is, though....i'm back in my house...but i don't feel like i'm home.

i figure that this is getting to the point where i should let people know when i'll be back...so for the general knowledge of everyone, i'm going to be back thursday morning sometime as my flight will be landing at 7.

for some general discussion...sam and i were back in the city today so that i could take care of some last bits of buying things. on the way in though, i noticed something...well...note-worthy. we were outside a 7-11 when i realised that a block a way and fully visible was a second 7-11. you could actually SEE one from the other.

also, i bought 7 aussie lighters. unrelated, i burned my hand.

well, i said there would be another update, so here we go...
first thing is first, the update on what books i've read, all over the past few days...like 3 or 4.

• The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls by Chris Morton and Ceri Louise Thomas (414 pages) A sorta-non-fiction book about crystal skulls that have been found and claimed to be coming from central america, there was a bit of a slide as things went on into the realm of just theory and an absense of fact. Though, I will grant them that there isn't that much scientific fact to go on, as there is very few tests one can run on quartz like these skulls. Also, since I was hoping for more things of a scientific nature, I suppose that puts me a bit biased in my expectations. They do do a very good job, though, of presenting a pieced together view of the skulls based on the beliefs of tribes throughout the Americas, as well as legends elsewhere in the world. Plus, they do bring up Atlantis, and that was equally interesting, to me. Though I do think that they too quickly jump to tying any skull imagery in central american artwork or stories as potentially a link to the skulls.
  
• True Vampires of History by Donald F. Glut (190 pages) Again, a book that went a direction not what I had expected (this is what happens when you buy books from somewhere where they are already sealed), but I still found it really interesting. I was expecting more of historical accounts of people that were vampires in the sense that they drank blood and that all sort of good stuff, and while there are several accounts of that towards the end of the book, much of it is recounting stories of vampires that are the traditional sort of bodies rising from the grave stuff. So, from more of a literature or cultural perspective, it was still really interesting to read. As a cool bonus, the book is a first edition copy from the 70's.
  
• Sex & the Paranormal: Human Sexual Encounters with the Supernatural by Paul Deane (204 pages)Third book that was not really what I had expected of it (see a pattern?) as while I expected more of a look into accounts that would be vivid, like things during the day when people are awake, much of this dealt with encounters, from ghosts to succubi to aliens, that happen when people wake up in bed. Moreso, Deane uses statistics and studies to tie the characteristics of all these phenomena together as well as a single occurance that is, technically, called old-hag attacks. Basicly, its when you wake up in bed paralized, feel pressure on your chest, and that you're not alone. What its interpretted as is then a feature of cultural surroundings. Very insightful. Of course, there was also a lot of discussion about the sexual elements of the witch hunts, phallic worship, and how false memories play into alien abductions and satanic worship. Very insightful, and much more analysis than I had thought it would have. Still though, I found it quite interesting.
  
• Poltergeists & The Paranormal by Dr. Philip Stander & Dr. Paul Schmolling (198 pages) The only one that was really what I thought it would be, this had an interesting comparison between phenomina and possible causes, straddling unknown elements of established science (such as electric fields) and the truely unknown. I also found it interesting that it really tried to steer clear of the idea of poltergeists and, indeed, most spirits, as actual entities from people that used to be alive and really only mentions that for the sake of discussing all possibilities. Overall the attitude is much more that such things are created based off of the energies of people. My only real issue I took with it, and it is a small one, is that while Spiritualism was discussed in the book, the fact that two prominant spiritualists discussed in the book were sort of excused for having at one time said they were frauds, though I would say that distinctly dents the credibility. Granted, there are other spiritualists discussed that were not disproven, but ones that said they were frauds, like the fox sisters, are not terribly reliable, in my opinion. I did, however, find it interesting that the views of both Freud and Jung are discussed quite a bit in this, plus I give them credit for also mentioning the Amazing Randi, who works hard to debunk spiritualists and psychics. I feel most enlightened from this one. Also nice that its view towards parapsychology is much as though it is a real, albiet fledgling, field of study in science. Though, that the two authors are both Doctors sorta explains that viewpoint.
  

now for our additional segment on "Done Down Under"

• While in Victoria, I noticed that AM stations end in really any number, whereas within the U.S., or at least Cali, they all end in zeros.
  
• A Melbourne only thing perhaps, but because of their trams, there are many intersections where you have to be in the leftmost lane to turn right. To americanise this, that would be like having to be in the rightmost lane to turn left at an intersection in the U.S.
  
• While we, i think, just call a shake a milkshake, here there are two varieties; a thickshake like any milkshake i've ever had, and a milkshake, which is thinner in its texture
  
• while there isn't raisin bran, there is saltana bran. apparently, a saltana is like a raisin but not. i don't quite understand the difference and the two cereals seem the same to me
  

finally, as me being here is always a sign that I end up trying foods that I've never tried prior, a little list of things I've tried here for the first time:

• meat pies...these are freaking awesome. a bit smaller in size than a hamburger, they're basicly a pie with meat, and one of the closest things to aussie food. i worship them, nearly.
  
• Indian/Afghani food as a whole
  
• Vietnamese food as a whole
  
• beef and chicken sushi (and the chicken was good)
  
• battered fish
  
• battered and marinated calamari. that will never be eaten again on my part. no.
  

it is important to note that this means that i've tried food from two countries the U.S. has fought wars in in the last few decades. now I just need to try Iraqi food. any foods that I missed will either be added later either when I remember them or sam tells me i forgot them.

back from the trip southwestward so its update time!

first of all, i have built a small sparkler bomb. while i have no pictures of it in practice, i will discribe it as a flame about 4 inches high burning for approx 6 seconds as a yellow flame. i took the coating of a sparkler and put it in a film canister lid using a coin to scrape it off. when it was done, only the outer ring of the film canister lid was left as the middle had melted to a rock



now then, as for the trip itself....first stop was wangaratta, which is sort of middle of nowhereish. i had an american pizza. apparently there is such a thing. it was a several hours drive from sydney, and i noticed that a lot of the area was reminiscent of california if you go north just a bit.





the route was basicly towards melbourne, until we turned south about an hour before getting to melbourne to go first to phillip island, home of the fairy penguins to be discussed shortly. in the process we passed some intersting things...such as yea...

...the wine country...

...the asparagus tours...

...the giant worm attraction...

...and a sign that said "caution cemetary ahead" (not pictured. dang it.)
anyway, killed time watching tv in the motel room until it was time to go see the penguins. phillip island is one of the homes of the smallest penguins in the world, called fairy penguins in the past, but they are now called Little penguins. i smell political correctness.
anyway, basicly you wait on the beach either in the grandstands or a special boardwalk that costs more for sunset to approach. we did the latter. shortly after sunset, you begin to see groups of penguins gathering on the water's edge. i could never see them in the water, only after they were out. once there was enough of them, a group of penguins would start to cross the beach, numbering roughly 15 or 20 a group. they'd just walk along a path next to the grass, with some breaking off to head back to their burrows or whatnot. very cool to watch. as an added thing, the penguin chicks could be seen around waiting for their parents to come back with food, and you could actually watch some of them run out and tackle the incoming penguins trying to find a parent to give it food. i kid you not. they were tackling the adults. one of the most hilarious things i've ever watched. sadly, cameras werent allowed so i didn't have mine with me. the even more tragic thing about that is that back in the parking lot there was a penguin walking along that i could have gotten totally awesome pictures of had i had my camera. nevertheless it was very, very cool.

next day we drove up from philip island to melbourne, going to the queen victoria market, which is rather big and what i'd normally call like....a swap meet or something. maybe tad higher class than that. i bought american doughnuts. apparently we have those, too. they have filling and are sort of....elogated with no holes. nevertheless, good. i also did a bit of souvineer shopping. good ol' powerful american dollar. i'll also add that melbourne is crisscrossed with cablecars, which was san fransisco reminiscent. also, there are more parking lots in the traditional so. cal. style of things....so it was oddly familiar in some senses.

went to ripon lea estate (some historical house) because sam's sister wanted to...sorta interesting i suppose. very low door knobs.
went to melbourne's luna park and rode the world's only roller coaster still in use that has a brakeman. what that means is that between the two cars there is a person that stands there and controls the brakes. no straps or anything. not a bad coaster, either. good ol' wooden. i've got film pics, but nothing i can show now.
on monday, went to the Haunted Bookshop, which has this awesome selection of books about all aspects of the paranormal...i got 6 books there totaling $168, and have thusfar read 3, which will be discussed in a future post. very cool place. they have a website, i believe.... www.haunted.something i think. an au or something like that.

that night went to the australian open, which is one of the big tennis events in the tennis world called a grand slam. didn't see any americans play, but did see two matches. first match was 2^nd seeded Amelie Mauresmo of France play Samantha Stosur, an Aussie. This meant that there was a VERY vocal crowd, which made for an interesting experience. before every point you'd hear 3 or 4 people yell "come on sammy" and every couple points this wierd thing where one person would yell "aussie aussie aussie" and then a whole bunch of people all over would yell "oi oi oi". i've been told it came from the olympics somehow. unfortunitly she didn't win, and just got outplayed with too many unforced errors.
second match was 4^th seed Marat Sufin of Russia vs Novak Djokovic of Serbia etc. Djokovic had a style i liked, but he just couldn't hold up to Sufin. You could tell, though, that by the end, the locals were all behind Djokovic. The biggest giveaway of this was that for the first match, everything being yelled was in languages I didn't know, but by about halfway through, a lot of people were yelling, in english, for Djokovic, with Aussie accents.
I also now have a t-shirt (courtesy of Sam) and a keychain from it. good stuff.
bummer part on the tennis was my telephoto was too big to take in, so i was restricted to my digital's zoom for pics...which wasn't all that good.
Mauresmo of France:

Stosur of Australia:


Sufin of Russia:

Djokovic of Serbia, etc:


day after the tennis started off, first, with a visit to the Melbourne museum that has some fancy name that presently eludes me. noteworthy part of this museum, though, was that i got to see the only first generation computer left in the world...feast upon its glory!


as a final snapshot of melbourne, i give you the intersection of Chaucer and Canturbury. My first shot of this failed (a pic while driving by) but as a sign from fate, we happened to stop at a chemist that was at this intersection later, when i got this shot of it.


we drove that day up to ballarat, which had its glory era during the gold rush in the 1850s. at a lake up there i went through a good roll and a half or so with the black swans. they stand out as they have red beaks. they also didn't really react to me getting closer, so i hopfully have some good shots.
spent the night in a house we rented, then the following day went to the museum for the eureka stockade, which is basicly where there was a rebellion on the gold fields...led to some equal rights type voting things or more or less that.

then it was the long drive back to sydney, first passing back into the state of new south wales (melbourne and the other places are in Victoria)

and across the open land, which included passing a large ram that i saw on the trip back from canberra last time....its not nearly as intimidating in the daylight as it was last time at night


i sadly missed my chance to get a picture of a sign for mcdonalds that was the golden arches, followed by the city name of "Yass". i leave it to you the reader to figure out just how that sign read to the casual observer.
finally sun set, and the trip wrapped up getting back into sydney about 10 pm last night


finally, today has been pretty laid back, sam and i went and saw the incredibles with her friend steph, and then its been nothing much at all since. so quite relaxing. tomorrow look for a new update on the books i've read (one involves sex!), as well as a new installment of "Done down under" and some aussie words. plus, i'll add in anything that i somehow forgot in this.

alright, update time cuz i'm lazy. first thing is what i've been up to....
been to centrepoint tower in sydney, which is 250m above the city and has an awesome view, so lets start with some of my aweseome pics from there.
looking towards the gap, where sydney harbour opens to the pacific.

this is just generally towards where sam lives, somewhere in this pic

the highest in service mailbox in the southern hemisphere!


went to luna park monday, which was awesome...its really small, but was very historic at points. they had some old fun house stuff, and some carnival rides, some pretty new. and they had a wild mouse which i have never been on before, or indeed, even seen. for those that don't know, thats a type of roller coaster. small scale thing though.

went to look at macquarie uni today...not bad campus. they have astrophysics, amazingly.

my dad had surgery the end of last week, so my mom's admitted she brought it up initially as a guilt-based thing. hernia surgery...they think it was 3 this time. i think he's eligible for frequent-flier miles or something now.

i also bought my books online today....$280 for them, and i don't have all of them. that is way way way too much. on top of that, one of my classes is basicly C++ it seems...i already learned that. so...that kinda doesn't seem so bad, actually.

I'mstill disappointed with how little money the U.S. seems to have donated to the tsunami. Here, its well over 100 million, and to give an idea of the rate...there was a 3 hour telecast shown nationally. Or well, about three hours. They raised over $20 million in that time. Putting that in perspective...that is MORE than the population of the whole country. Why can't the U.S. do that?

and now, a little book update:

• Saddam Defiant: The Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Crisis of Global Security by Richard Butler (258 pages) Written by the Australian director of the weapons inspection program in Iraq for 2 years, it basicly chronicles everythign Iraq did to try to keep its weapons and resist the inspectors. It was written in 2000, and i'd say he's got more ties with left-leaning people than right-leaning, so its hard to throw out what he says as biased. Very interesting read.
  
• 10 Things Employers want you to learn in college by Bill Coplin (252 pages) So....my mom bought me this for Christmas and I read the whole thing. Having done so, I want my time back. Honestly, total waste for the most part. The big thing is this is a lot more for people that are just going to get some corporate job in a cubicle or office or something. It doens't apply really for more specialised careers, as either physics or journalism would be. Though if you have no idea what you'll do with your life, i suppose its helpful to get you prepared.
  
• Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism by Thomas Friedman (399 pages) Written by the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, this talks a whole lot about the Arab world, both before and especially after 9/11. He actually goes to many of the Arab countries, and its a mix of his columns (about 70% of the book) and then journal entries that go more in depth. I'd go so far as to say that everyone should read this. Absolutly awesome.
  

and now for another installment of "Done Down Under"!

• There is no law that says you have to pull over for emergency vehicles, so police with sirens just sort of try to make their way through traffic.
  
• Times are written in the format 7.15 so there's a period, not a colon.
  
• With dates, the date itself, then the month, is the typical order. ergo, 2 January and not January 2.
  
• Street addresses here start at 1 for every street. So while my house number is 22*** (we all know the rest. if you don't, you're not meant to), here its rarely into the hundreds, and thats down in the city. around here...i don't see more than maybe 30 or 40 really. Don't look much either, but still, the fact remains.
  

And now shortly I'll be off to Melbourne including getting to see penguins and theAustralianOpen (tennis). Hurrah!

Ok, if you want to see the recap of what I've been doing, scroll down. Now though is time for when I compare the Australian and American ways of things.

First, I'll go through general differences in how thiings are done here, in a little segment I like to call "Done Down Under"

• The obvious one, driving here is on the left and not the right side.
  
• While in california you can make a right turn on a red light, you cannot make the comparable turn (here it'd be a left turn) on a red light. you have to have a green light to turn.
  
• There are no tips. Like, at all. Its just not part of the custom. I tiped a buck fifty on a $40 dollar meal and they yelled thank you out the door as we left.
  
• The smallest bill is $5. Then its just coins. Also, the smallest coin is 5c. They use c and not our fancy thing. But still, theres no equivalent to pennies. Most things are priced accordingly, but if they're not, they round the cost to the nearst 5c increment.
  
• Most restaurants have very limited business hours. Rather than open all day, they're open like....5 to 10 pm or something. Makes it hard to get lunch.
  
• Most businesses are 9 to 5, and in fact, its a big event how on thursdays some stores are open later.
  
• An odd subtlty, wheras I've been used to people walking on the right side of stairs, or the right side of a pathway, here its flipped. Makes sense with the driving thing, but hadn't thought about it prior.
  

Our second segment features translations of american phrases and words into australian.

American	Australian
Quantas	Qantas
Theaters	Cinemas
Ketchup	Tomato Sauce
Emu (E moo)	Emu (e mew)
Napkin	Serviette
Cookiee	Biscuit
Broken	Stuffed
"How did you do?"	"how did you go?"

There will be more of both of these segments next time I update, plus there will be the new and exciting additional segment on Aussie roadsigns!

alright, stuff to update. for new years, sam and i were out at a hillside starting at 5 to get a good spot...then waiting up till first showing at 9, and the second one at 12.

i've used a gift certificate from christmas to buy league of extraordinary gentlemen and shattered glass....as well as buying a clive cussler book to be mentioned later in more detail. its the non-american version too, so everything is in meters and theres a lot more u's in it. i bought jedi academy as well. its the pc version, and it cost me 7.45. thats australian dollars, too. in american, thats...roughly... 6 dollars. this, therefore, is totally awesome.

went to featherdale sunday, which meant that i got to see australian animals, presuming i can't find them for real. already though, i should be able to get real pics of possums at some point (when i have a camera and they are around), fairy penguins if i can steal shots while in melbourne, and with luck, kangaroos. i also finally saw what a wallaroo looks like. for those that don't know, vanilla ice was in the news recently because his wallaroo had gotten loose. i also successfully got my hand stuck in a car chair while it was folding up. ouch.

12 rolls of film went in to be developed today, so in a few hours, i'll have over 250 pictures back, hopfully a few good ones in the lot. i also intend to get hold of a fair number of sparklers, scrape off the coatings, and create some fashion of incindiary device. sam's mom has had me promise not to get myself killed or maimed in the process, as she feels this would relfect poorly on her as far as my parents are concerned.

now, first thing is the list of books i've read since i've been here (including flight):

• Deception Point by Dan Brown (558 pages) The fourth of his books (Brown is also the author of the Da Vinci Code), its the last one left for me to read, and its good, but I think his others are stronger. I also felt that this one had to rely too much on U.S. politics and the like, which just...is distastful imo.
  
• Shock Wave by Clive Cussler (537 pages) This is the second of Cussler's books I've read (first being Atlantis Found) and his writing truely does rule. Odd that I brought the books as it features Australia and the islands off it to the east very prominantly and a good half the characters involved were Australians. I didn't realise this when I brought it. Creepy. His books are amazing as they integrate both real legends and stories with fiction with amazing results. Plus, a character named Clive Cussler appears in every one of his books, and its always fun to find that reference. Its rather like how Hitchcock had cameos in his own movies where he'd just pass by.
  
• Driving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti (211 pages) This was..wierd. Basicly, its about a guy that tracked down someone that has Einstein's brain and chueferred the guy from the east coast to the west, to meet with Einstein's granddaughter. I have no idea if this is real or fictional or what. It had interesting moments...but overall, I think it took itself a bit too seriously and turns too much of it into these great dramatic or psychological things. still though, i figured once i started reading, i had to finish.
  
• The No Spin Zone by Bill O'Reilly (183 pages) First, for the record, I did not seek this book out, its part of a large sum of books I got from Sam's family that I'm trying to work through. It was sort of interesting to read, though I had my disagreements, and a lot of the book is basicly just transcripts of his show he uses to try to illustrate his points. Also, when someone refers to himself as humble that many times, it gets really, really, really, agrevating. There is, however, one quote from an interview with Dan Rather that I found interesting (regarding scandals durning Clinton's presidency):

  We're not going to report the news the way a Republican pressure group wants us to report it, any more than we are going to report an unfounded allegations against George W. Bush.

  
  Well well well....I do believe Dan's actions contradicted that now, haven't they?
  
• Inca Gold by Clive Cussler (619 pages) I found this for 5 bucks at a sale here, and so its been the Australian (or possibly British) version of the book. This means a lot of u's, and all the measurments are given first in metres, then in parentheses the equivalent in feet. I've found that to be rather interesting, and probably added a page to the length of the book by the time I'd read through it. Basic story: find the Inca gold before a crime syndicate specializing in artifacts does. This was a totally awesome book to read through, and like Shock Wave I thoroughly recommend it. Cussler might well be my literary god. As I didn't mention it before, all of cussler's stories have the same main character, Dirk Pitt and his sidekick Al Giordino. Again, awesomeness.
  
• The Chaser Annual 2004 (130 pages) So, I think I need to explain what this is...The Chaser is a publication, and also has some tv stuff it does, thats basicly all satirical. A lot of it is Aussie politics and stuff, but of course, quite a bit is American, either directly or indirectly. The copy I got also is signed by three of the guys that work on it, personalised and all, with them knowing that this was for an American. It was a Christmas present from sam's family, and hilarious to read. Great satire, some of which was definitly LOL level.
  
• Bad Astronomy by Philip Plait (262 pages) I just finished this a few minutes ago, and it made for a quick read...summation, its all about incorrect things peopl think about astronomy, example, and very important now, that toilets do not flush different directions north and south of the equator, at the least not because of the Coriolis Effect. That only effects things on very big levels, such as storm systems. So for the last time, stop asking me about that. Oh, and of course, Star Wars got a special mention in the section debunking things that come for movies, mainly for the asteroid field.