Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales Of H.P. Lovecraft

The Necronomicon puts together the best of H.P. Lovecraft throughout the year with writing from throughout his career. The Necronomicon's stories shattered the normal of its time and inspired many writers during the later part of the 1900's.

The Necronomicon has stories around the world with the focused area being New England. The characters in the book experience their horrors in dark, damp places with terrors lurking in each corner waiting to cause them pain or snap their mental sanity. H.P. Lovecraft details his stories with gruesome detail to the grotesque areas his places his characters in.

The main theme of all the stories is how people can be fortunate to not remember their terrible ordeals and the limits of the human brain to handle terror. Later stories go into a supernatural force that desires to destroy the world. The later stories emphasizes that Earth is barely a speck in the vast universe.

The characters range from simple farmers to educated doctors. Each either barely escapes his terror with his sanity, breaks down into a blabbering husk, or does not return at all.

The Necronomicon inspires the horror genre. I recommend this book or any of the stories contained inside the pages.

Et tu, Brute?

Throughout his life, William Shakespeare entertained the masses of people in London for years with his plays that continue to be preformed. Julius Caesar was the first of his many plays written and preformed. Julius Caesar is a classic that will continue to be performed for many years.

The play detailing the events just before and after the death of Julius Caesar. The setting is Rome during just after Caesar returns from his conquests through Western parts of the Mediterrean. Julius Caesar, when the play was first performed, drew in the Londoners due to their fascination with the Roman and Greek people.

The play contains all the elements of a Shakespear play from solioquies to obvious ways around the limited space to use for the play. Julius Caesar was a first of a immortal playwriter and should be at least read by people today.

I Wish A List, Yes A List

I demand a list of grievances of snake haters as my snake has seen complete intolerance in just the thought of him. This list should include the following:
1. An apology to me and my snake
2. Money for his food
3. Time to see my snake
4. An actual reason to hate a non-venomous snake with no fangs

This list will be required in my hand by the end of the year or punishment will go out.

Leaders Leading

A leader can be just acknowledged as the one who has the most sense of a group generally. A true leader, however, sparks inspiration into his or her group into achieving greatness or surviving long enough for the day to come for a change in their dire situation.

One leader who was just a leader is one of the largely unknown kings. He is not remembered for anything but holding the country together until finally something significant happened to his country.

A true leader can be in thought like Ghandi or in a physical sense like George Washington. Both definitely spoke inspiration though Ghandi used pure though and George Washington later went to defeat the British in combat.

Leaders can be great or mediocre, although, none are truly weak as they do hold the burden of five to billions of lives.

Mind States

Playing a few games, I wondered what state of mind would an actual person need to be in to say doom their entire home that they were born into. Of course, there are external forces in games such as demons or magic, there are real thoughts and objects that could symbolize those.

Some people are thought to just be pure evil in their nature. Those people could spread their hatred into others, forming a "demon". Words act as a form of realities "magic".

There of course is the much simpler mind state of the hero.

Heroes shine a radiance throughout them. Shunning evil, although some twists have become more common, with a righteous fury or even sometimes self righteous fury. The hero fights the unknown for everything they stand for without flinching.

With all the inspiration of this topic in a story, I still wonder if all the real world evils had some relation to some of the fiction evils such as Hitler or a martyr.

I am thankful.....

As this was written around Thanksgiving, I thought of the things I was thankful for. With nothing popping out that did not sound terrible or overused, I finally decided on a few things. I am thankful for the fact my country isn't as terrible as it seems at times although it could use major improvements, there aren't bombs being dropped physically on this land.

Another thing I am thankful for is the freedom of artists to make whatever they choose. This is mainly movies and music for me since they are some of the best life enhancers I have during my week.

A last thing I am thankful for is how I don't really have to do much compared to the past or some places now. I generally do what I want and not need to do...generally

7 Habits

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey shows a pathway to success as a common teen. 7 Habits dredges through its examples with the author's opinion on every page.

While all the habits only give ideas to some, habit 2 - begin with the end in mind attacks many people's way of life as they go through their life on instinct and impulse. This is not the only part of the book that focuses on one way of life the author sees as unhealthy and destructive. Many parts of the book feel like the same repeated warnings and sayings teens have heard from every adult in their life. The author portrays himself as a faucet of knowledge that needs to be listened to for success in someone's life.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey is an adknowledged source of self-help by many reviewers. This book, however, is falsely praised and I do not recommend this book.

Rise of the Horde

In the effort to explain why things are like they are in World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment has authors writing deeper stories for the story of the game. Rise of the Horde shows the betrayal of whole groups of people as the Horde begins its descent into demonic rage.

Rise of the Horde begins with the orcs living as clans who fight over disputes but were generally at peace. The story is mainly seen through the eyes of the father of Thrall, Durotan. Durotan witnesses the misguided Ner'zhul persuade the orcs to destroy the draenei. With the destruction not progressing fast enough for the true commanders, Ner'zhul is overthrown by his apprentice, Gul'dan. Gul'dan works with the demon Kil'jaeden, who was the one giving orders to Ner'zhul, to give the orcs the power of the demons. This power gives birth to warlocks and the crazed bloodthrist of an orc warrior. With the destruction of the draenei and power of demons, the Horde is born and quickly requires expansion into a new world.

Rise of the Horde showed the sadness of the orcs with self-control as they saw their brothers and sisters become demonic monsters bent on destruction and the reasoning behind the orc and draenei hatred. I recommend this book to anyone who plays the game series and is interested into why the orcs are so savage with their brown brothers being peaceful.

355 pages

Arthas: RIse of the Lich King

With the release of their top MMO's second expansion, Blizzard Entertainment begins to tell more about their expansion's main antagonist. Arthas: Rise of the Lich King expands on the existing story with deeper emotions from the characters to show why each does what they do in World of Warcraft.

Arthas, the main character of the book, begins his life as the Prince of Lordaeron. He dredges through his studies and prayer sessions as he's molded into a paladin of the Light and king of Lordaeron. All the events of the original games happen during Arthas' childhood. Arthas meets Jiana Proudmoore during her journey to study at Dalaran. Later in their life, the two fall in love with Arthas destroying the relationship only to further destroy it during the events at Stratholme. Arthas: Rise of the Lich King shows the reasoning behind Jiana's wanting to purify Arthas to the way he was as a paladin of the Light.

Arthas: Rise of the Lich King broadens the emotional ties of the lore in Warcraft. I recommend this book for anyone who plays the Warcraft games and takes an interest in the story of the game.

308 pages

The Time Machine

The novel, The Time Machine, gave inspiration to science fiction to the writers in the last century and this century. When The Time Machine begins, the novel accelerates into a desperate struggle for survival in a bizarre and twisted future.

The main character, the Time Traveler, makes a massive claim to his colleagues in his own time on the idea of time travel. With his knowledge of technology, the Time Traveler tries to prove his ideas and jumps to the year 802,701 A.D. The setting of the story looks alien to the Time Traveler as he finds the decaying of society with 2 groups of devolved humans. The Eloi show interest in the Time Traveler and welcome him to eat and sleep with them. The nocturnal Morlocks come out of their machine filled caves to feast on whatever meat they find. The Time Traveler becomes lost in this time after his machine is lost to the Morlocks. The Time Traveler finds himself alone until he meets a Eloi named Weena. Though a language barrier prevents communication, the Time Traveler lets Weena cling to him as he works to find a way to his time machine.

The Time Machine changes from the current of his time and creates a story that helped change and create a entire genre of books. I recommend The Time Machine for any science fiction fan or someone wanting a book that drifts from their normal genre.

"Scar Tissue"

The book I read tells the story of Anthony Kiedis's life, the sing of The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Anthony Kiedis's Scar Tissue renders a picture of the life of Anthony Kiedis with its successes, failures, and renewals.

Anthony Kiedis used drugs for years and truly wanted to quit during the later years of use as he saw what the drugs did to him the next day and what the drugs did to those around him. Anthony Kiedis lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan until he was 13 and moved to Los Angeles, California. Anthony's drug life began while living with his dad. Anthony met the original line-up of The Red Hot Chili Peppers as he went through school. The band began after everyone graduated out of high school. With a surrounding of drugs, Anthony clung to his sanity as he switched drugs to keep from becoming completely useless. The band went through the years with band mates leaving and rejoining. Anthony's life changed drastically as he committed to sobriety after the dead of guitarist Hillel. Anthony, though tempted after every show, kept himself sober to this day even with the constant use around him as he toured and lived in Los Angeles.

Scar Tissue pulled me into Anthony Kiedis's past. The book should be a great book for fans of The Red Hot Chili Peppers or anyone who wants into the life of an ex-drug addict.

465 pages

Bubbles of Fire

In Pre-AP Chemistry on Wednesday, the class was going normal with things being passed back out and worksheets being handed out for the first time to be done with work about the elements printed on all parts of the worksheets. Near the end, my teacher told the class that he was going to set up an activity that we would probably enjoy closer to the end of class. This activity happened to be lighting bubbles full of natural gas on fire.

The bubbles were made by putting natural gas through regular bubbles that little kids would play with. When everyone who wanted to try handling the bubbles, we proceeded to try and make a chain of bubbles so that the flame would go down a line of about 15 people. The chain died two times and didn't reach the end of the line like it could have if every had gotten bubbles before they started to go away.

This made me want to deal with fire for the rest of the day as the singed hairs on my arm were a constant reminder to my nose that i had dealt with the flame earlier in the day.