It’s Just a Two-Man Con

“Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.”

– Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Before I delve into the best-selling novel and new Starz series, American Gods that I put off reading for ages I wanted to address my long hiatus.  Over the past few years, a quarter life crisis has had me in its claws. I’ve been trying to figure out how to better my life and feel better about it. It’s been a struggle and I’m still not any closer to figuring anything out but I decided I want to continue doing the things I enjoy. First and foremost I love a good story, whether it be fiction or not, no matter the format a great story sucks me into a great new world.  Second I love learning new things and even old things, like history and writing. So I’m bringing myself back and hope you enjoy it.

Now I want to start with the fact that it took forever for me to even sit down and read this book. I was and still am under the belief that you either love Neil Gaiman or you hate Neil Gaiman. After finishing American Gods I still can’t decide how I feel about him, but I do know how I feel about this treasured novel.

Honestly, this book left my brain slightly melted. To begin with, the way Gaiman writes is a lot to take in. I kept feeling like I was missing a little detail that would be important later and then I’d be left confused. Well, I still think that happened but I also think he did write this book very well. He covered so many different pantheons and even if it took me some time I still managed to figure out where these deities or figures came from. It sparked my interest in other myths, aside from my current love for Greek and Roman mythology. Gaiman covered parts of Egyptian myth, Native American lore and even the new-age worship of technology and tv. That’s the part I really enjoyed because he used these characters to make me think.

“Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you – even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers and over all opposition.”

Before I go further in my review STOP NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS!

A Disney Wonderland

As winter drags on here in Chiberia I have been struggling to find ways to distract myself from the cold and the fact that all I do is work and never have a weekend off. (the perks of working retail…..) So recently I got to experience the wondrous Science and Industry Museum in Chicago. (I haven’t gotten out much since I moved here…sad I know) Not only did they have awesome an awesome storm exhibit and one on genetics one of their limited time exhibits is the Walt Disney Archives. As most children did I grew up with Disney movies as my bedtime stories I loved them all as a child and I love them even more now as an adult. I was like a kid in a candy store at this exhibit. I didn’t know how to contain myself with all the facts about Walt Disney and how it all came to be. (Did you know he’s from Chicago because I sure didn’t) I have decided to grace you all with my new found knowledge of Disney and his wonderful stories.

The Great Existential Crisis of 2014

First off I really have to acknowledge the fact that I haven’t blogged in months. Ever since I moved to Chicago in May time has flown by. Now I’m trying to figure out what I want to do for a career and if I want to go back to school etc. In other words I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Internet for work and so I can feed my need for television characters and fictional stories. I’m mostly watching tv these days and scrolling through Tumblr. It feels good to catch up on some of the shows I enjoy watching but there are some that I have been dying to watch but are having problems starting them. Their fandoms are everywhere and they are blowing up my feeds.

 

Sherlock

 

This fandom is so big it’s ridiculous but that’s acceptable since this show is worth watching multiple times. I’ve known about this show for a while and when I watched it I was able to watch the first two seasons in one sitting. I was dying for the third season but now that it’s airing I’m finding it hard to sit down and watch. Mostly because I’m having problems finding a solid site to watch it on (any suggestions would be greatly appreciated). I know I’ve written about this show before so bear with me.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful detective (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) and his lover…ahem sidekick Dr. Watson who assists the police in solving crimes. Throughout the long episodes they solve many different cases along with following Holmes conflict with Moriarty, his big bad arch enemy. Sherlock is a high functioning sociopath with high intelligence who has poor people skills and rude manners. You will fall for him quickly. Dr. Watson makes up for what Holmes lacks. He was a former military “doctor” who had previously studied medicine. He is the complete opposite, he is kind and caring and pretty much takes care of Holmes since he is so erratic.

Just wait till you get through the series. You will be an emotional wreck….not that that’s anything new….

The Summer of Playing Catch Up Has Come and Gone!

Well, I haven’t blogged much this summer which has made me really sad because I enjoy it and the only reason I haven’t is that I’ve been so busy. Now that I have time I will share some of my summer plans that I had wanted to accomplish before time slipped through my fingers. I have accumulated a list of books I wanted to read this summer but I have yet to get around to doing much of that so hopefully, I can start this sooner rather than later.

Summer was made for reading and that is all I wanted to do. I have slowly created a large list of books that I wanted to read. It may have been unrealistic to think that I could read all of them but I would have liked to finish one or two of them. So in honor of those, I will share the wide range of books that I wish I could have finished or even started for that matter.

Game of freaking Thrones season 2!

Now I know I’m pretty late on the draw for this but I have been preoccupied and didn’t make an attempt to find a way to watch. I have been watching it non-stop on demand and it gets better and better! I was pretty surprised at the outcomes of the different people and the season finale so as a closure I decided I was going to talk about the various characters and their current positions.

House Lannister

“A Lannister always pays his debts.”

I thoroughly hate this house they are disgusting people well except for Tyrion. Joffrey is the worst of them all next to his mother and I am just waiting for the day he gets beheaded. He has a sick fascination with pain and killing but he is too much of a wuss to fight his own war he just sits on his throne and starves and kills his people. His mother, Cersei, is the worst sort too. I mean come on Joffrey is a child of incest no wonder he is so messed up. Then she is just as diabolical and is overall a terrible creature who doesn’t care if she throws away her family or others children to satisfy her needs. Now I’m beginning to like Jaime a little more I don’t know why but I do. Then there’s Tyrion who is the best person ever he tries so hard to be accepted by his family to no avail and it sucks because he is the best of them all and he’s way smarter than they are.

Coming to a close

The semester is quickly ending and I will be graduating in a little over a week. Last week I posted about what I learned in college but this week I want to talk about my campaigns group. For my capstone project, the Public Relations and Advertising Seniors collaborated to produce three years worth of campaigns for the Mall of America. We were all separated into 6 “agencies” of about 10 people, roughly 3 PR students and the rest advertising, and we competed against each other to see who did the best in the trade show and the following presentations. Minerva was the name of my agency and aside from placing fourth in the trade show, we placed either first or second in each presentation. The judges used golf scoring to place us and in the end, we were the WINNERS!!! It was so satisfying to know that all of our hard work paid off but it was even better knowing that we were so successful because we got along so well. Usually in a group that large not everyone likes each other but with us it was different. Over the course of the semester, we became very close friends and I wouldn’t change these people for the world.

Recapping the last four years of my life

My final year of college is coming to a close very quickly and I don’t really know where it all went. These past few years have been full of risky decisions and memories I wouldn’t trade for the world. I learned about the real world and managed to figure out what I want to do in life (if it all works out all right). I have met some amazing people that I will keep in my life forever no matter how far apart we get or how little we talk to each other (especially my friends that have been with me the last three to four years and my campaigns group, I love them). Overall I think that the most rewarding part of college is the fact that I was able to find myself and figure out the kind of person I am and what I believe in. Even though a lot of what I do may seem contradictory to each other I have found a way to live my life and be very happy about it. For this post I’m just going to re hash a bunch of picture quotes that represent me and my views and beliefs.

Deviantart is the fountain of art

Recently as I was trolling PR Daily I came across an article about the new up and coming social medias. Along with Whisper and the Chinese version of Facebook, DeviantArt was among the few. I have known about the site for the past few years and was quite surprised that more people haven’t heard about it yet. I am really into it because I have access to many peoples art from tons of different genres. I think it’s super cool because it makes communities for artists to share their work with people who enjoy the subject. Once you create an account you can set up a profile for yourself, submit your own works whether it’s an image or writing, you can search through topics you like and find groups or specific artists to “watch” and you will get messages of all the new posts. You can also favorite things so that you can go back and look at them. The site also gives a lot of good artists the recognition they deserve to have so for this late weekly post I am going to share a few pictures that I have saved over the years and as a pre-warning most of them will probably be manga/anime related. If any of the work is the property of my readers or someone they know I would like to thank them for their work and that I enjoy being able to spread your talent for the masses to see.

The Infernal Devices

Since I had this weekend off I got the chance to read the final book in a trilogy I have been reading and waiting for. I have to say that this was one of the best series I have read. The Infernal Devices is a prequel to my previous review of The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. This is virtually the beginning of everything and this book had so many elements to it it was amazing. It is a love story wrapped in a whimsical and fantastic world that resembles the real world. There were so many emotions involved in this book anger, sadness, fear, happiness, heroes, honor and of course a million literary references that fit the story very well.

Tumblr Addict

As this is a blog for my PR class I figured I could do something that is kind of related to social media. I did a presentation in class about the uses of Tumblr but I left out how addicting it can be especially for personal Tumblrs. When I have nothing to do I find myself trolling Tumblr. Once you have your account set up and follow a lot of different blogs that peak your interest you can keep scrolling for hours especially on your dashboard or specific pages that have a lot of content. I also love that Tumblr monitors the blogs that I constantly like or reblog since that is what most of my blog consists of and sharing artists work from DeviantArt because I believe that more people should be seeing how great their work is. For this post, I think I am just going to put up some of the great things I find on Tumblr because it’s a great site to find just about anything you like and people that share the same interests.

Art/Photography