I picked up Flow­ers for Alger­non almost on a whim. My friend told me about it when I picked it up in a book store. Curios­ity got the better of me, and 10 dol­lars later I had what I con­sider a great piece of lit­er­a­ture added to my col­lec­tion. I con­sumed the book with a hunger I haven’t had from many books. It almost hurt me to put it down for any amount of time, and I found that when I did sit down to read it, I’d end up get­ting through about a 3rd of it in one sit­ting. These are the signs of a great story.

So I’m making this post while bla­tantly aware that some of my read­ers will prob­a­bly have no Idea what I’m talk­ing about. If you’re one of those people, just nod your head and pre­tend to listen.

Setting up the scene

A while back I came across a little web­site called 9rules. As it turned out 9rules was very much sim­i­lar to Digg.com, Design Float, Mixx, and so on. It was a social hub where ideas were exchanged, par­tic­i­pa­tion was rewarded, and all was well. Some­what of an oppor­tunist, I took advan­tage of 9rules and their con­tent sub­mis­sion to help my site gain some pop­u­lar­ity (I’m sure I gained noth­ing from it) by sub­mit­ting my design-​related posts to their ever-​flowing river of content.

I admit that this is a bit dubi­ous in nature, but it is a white hat way to get your name out there, and that’s some­thing I’m still work­ing on doing. Hate me if you want, but that’s what I used it for. I regret that a little in ret­ro­spect, because they had a good com­mu­nity, and I chose to throw my sto­ries into the pile instead of par­tic­i­pat­ing and making it better.

The lament­ing has a point, so stick with me.

Never in my life have I read a book with such bla­tant use of the word “fuck” and all of its deriv­a­tives. Hon­estly, The Elec­tric Church has more swear­ing in it than Theresa’s sister in a bad mood, and let me assure you that that is a siz­able amount. Jeff Somers either has a severe case of sailors mouth, or he has an almost unhealthy pen­chant with the word.

I’m a bit of a sleeper fan of Motion City Sound­track. I had their albums avail­able to me for over a year before I lis­tened to them. The only reason I really gave them a chance was because I was dri­ving through a snow storm and the radio couldn’t pick up any­thing. I was really shocked when I went through both albums that I had of theirs (Commit this to Memory and I Am the Movie) and was crav­ing more. Their bouncy, feel­good sound had me totally hooked. I lis­tened through them all again, and I real­ized that in con­trast to their sound, much of what was said bor­dered on major depressing.

Phoenix Wright: Jus­tice For All is very much like the orig­i­nal, but with a few added tricks. Released in North Amer­ica Jan­u­ary of 2007, Cur­rent fans sali­vated over the new game. Fea­tur­ing slightly improved graph­ics, - maybe I’m nuts but I don’t recall moving mouths in the first game - slightly better music, an expanded cast, and a new fea­ture to aggra­vate the player, Jus­tice For All pro­vides hours of enter­tain­ing Lawyer-y fun.

Over the Christ­mas hol­i­days, Theresa and I went to our local inde­pen­dent movie the­ater, and watched Juno. I have to say that it’s easily one of the best films I watched in 2007. It was sweet, funny, and potent in all the right spots.

The movie Juno is about one Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) and Paulie Bleeker (the ever master of awk­ward pauses, Michael Cera) and their joint child-​making. The movie takes place during the nine months of Juno’s won­der­ful adven­ture through preg­nancy, and her inter­ac­tion with the adop­tive couple Vanessa and Mark Loring (Jen­nifer Garner and Jason Bate­man).

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attor­ney is for the most part, a rather enjoy­able game. Released in Octo­ber of 2005 (if you live in North Amer­ica as I do) this game became an instant hit and flew off the shelves. Now granted I waited two years before play­ing it (since then a second game has come out, and there are a third and fourth in exis­tence some­where) but only because I have only recently bought a DS. I have to make sure to buy my friend Dane a dec­o­ra­tive cake for lend­ing me his copy.