Yo people of the interweb!!  How goes all that studying for exams and whatnot?  yeah?  Yeah?  Well glad to hear it!!

Seriously though, happy studying y’all – hope nobody’s burning themselves out.  Remember, small breaks here and there really help you digest what you’re studying!

Anywhooooo, I just wanted to give of a review, or vopinion, as I like to call it, on the lovely Man of Steel.

Loved the movie!  So cool!  They really twisted and revamped the story, quite the different spin/look at our man of steel.  And I quite enjoyed it.  It was different, so if you’re going in with a mindset of what you are expecting, well, you just might not enjoy it as much as you could….

And so, we get to the point where ONE THING really just peeeeeeeeved me straight off.  I mean, I get that Warner Bros is an American production company, and yayayaa, this is an American made film, whatever.  The point is -

Hrrrrrmmmmm, ok, I’m not saying anything, but fanboys and fangirls alike might get ticked at me if I don’t say it’s a quasi-spoiler alert…but it’s just a line….I don’t think it’s a spoiler…well, your call.  If you’re good to go, read below this line ________________________________

- as I was saying, the point is, we have Superman at one point saying “I’m about as American as you get – I’m from Kansas” and this just made me want to SCREEEEEEEEAAAAAMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!  GAH!!!  No.  NO you’re not.  Dear Superman, you are Canadian – and if you want to get technical, well ok, then you’re half Canadian.  Jeeeez!  I know I’ve got uber Canadian pride myself, but that just rankled me to the point where I automatically raised my hands to my head and started pulling my hair.

And then looking at the rest of the film, the only time Canada actually is portrayed, it’s with a nasty, no-good trucker that not a single CANADIAN (think the stereotype here…strong morals, friendly, polite – everything that SUPERMAN IS SUPPOSED TO EMBODY – geeez, wonder where her got that from, eh??!??!), not even the two Canadian Army guys, do anything about.  What a bunch of crock!  Baloney!  PHOEY!!!!!

Le sigh.

But other than that, SO AWESOME!!!! Loved it, great actors, super cool, wicked design.  Success!!

Yo peoples, so has it been? I imagine everyone’s been starting to get rather wired up as the end is near!! That is to say, school’s almost over! (isn’t that exciting???) Seriously guys, treasure your summer’s off like there’s no tomorrow, cause as soon as you hit university that’s gonna stop dead in its tracks.

Anywho, it’s been a while since I reviewed a book – to be truthful, I’ve been on a bit of a YA book hiatus…I’ve been reading a bunch of (adult) fantasy and sci-fi after having read a ton of tween books I had to read for a course I was taking. You just need to refresh sometimes, you know? I imagine you keen readers out there might sympathize – YA books, as good as they can be – are just too short for some real book delving, you know??

And so, rather appropriately, the YA book I’ve jumped back into happens to be the debut YA novel for this author, who has written A TON of super awesome, amazing, glorious, holyholyholy fantasmic fantasy books that are shelved in the adult fiction…aka. check them out!!  Ladies and gents – Brandon Sanderson!!!

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson was, simply put, awesome.  For those of you who enjoy fantasy, this is something you have GOT to pick up! Sanderson has recreated the world as we know it – America is actually the United Isles (essentially, from the map it looks like the same basic land masses are there, but it’s divided as a bunch of islands), and there’s magic, and there’s a war on one of the ‘frontier’ islands between humans and wild chalkings (yeah, as in ‘chalk’), and there’s a whole lot of worldbuilding and intricate new magic that it takes a good chunk of the book to begin to properly understand how the magic and this world actually work.  Basically, it’s glorious.

Our main character is 16 yr-old Joel, who has never wanted anything as much as he has wanted to be a Rithmatist – a person who has been imbued by the Master with the power to bring life to chalk drawings.  Unfortunately, this is something he never will be.  All children go through a ceremony that is held once a year when they are 8 years old – one at a time they go into the inception chamber and when they come out, they either have the power of a rithmatist or they don’t.  And Joel didn’t.  But this has not stopped his interest and passion to learn all that he can on rithmatics.

Joel lives with his mother on campus at what would be considered a private school and attends this school on scholarship – his father, who passed away when he was 8, was good friends with the dean.  And during his time at school, Joel has taken every opportunity to glean as much as he could from the Rithmatist professors.  When a new professor, fresh from the war, comes to his school and overthrows his favourite professor in a melee duel, Joel finds himself caught in the midst of of a kidnapping mystery…one that  is slowly stealing the best rithmatist students at his school one by one.

Vopinion: Wooooooowwwwwwwww.  Ok, so I don’t think I gave that nearly the proper little synopsis that it deserved, but there was just SO MUCH going on in this book that it was very hard to put a summary together properly.  Let me try this in another way using as few words as I can to explain the world of this book:

There are wild creatures that are chalk drawings – and they will kill you.  A small number of the population are somehow selected by the Master to become rithmatists, who then have the power to imbue strength/power/life into their chalk drawings that they then use to fight the wild chalkings.  All between you and death, is a piece of chalk and your drawing skills.

Yeah.  It was glorious.  It was awesome.  IT WAS SO FREAKIN GOOD!!!!!
Honestly, this book had depth, it had intense worldbuilding and magic creation, it had a dynamic plot and unique characters.
Let’s put this simply, people – this book has class!  Read it!!

Alright, alright – so we’ve kind of bombarded you lately with some sweet sounds from the yesteryears, so I figued I’d look at some of the stuff that’s going on right now. Mainly, I really really want to show you guys Guetta’s latest video – love the song and love the video!!

Glorious, n’est pas???

And this one, cause the song’s freakin catchy, and the video, as much as I love the Indian flavour, kinda bugs me just for her wardrobe selection….I mean, I know it’s what Hollywood does, but it really bugs me to see the young(er) artists start doing the skin thing. Thoughts?

That, and I really hope she isn’t singing to Bieber. Really.

That’s right, as the joys and sweet, sweet vibes from listening to those glorious selections from below have been ringing through my ears, I’ve been thinking about which songs I learned when, and how certain songs were very clearly from particular segments of my life….And after thinking about that and mulling it over for a bit, I got thinking that a whole bunch of you are wrapping up your grade 12 year and will soon be off gallivanting in the wild fields of post-secondary education.

Which made me think of the which songs were really, really, REALLY big when I first went to university. AKA – the songs you NEED to know so that you don’t look like an utter fool when they come on and you’re all “Huh, what song is this??” and everyone around you is all “Say WHAT?!??!” And trust me, these songs never change.

And without further ado…

Alrighty then – soooo, I don’t know about you guys, but I am SICK AND TIRED (can you read my subtle emphasis on those words there??) of turning on the radio and hearing for the one hundred billionth time either Timberlake, Rihanna, Bruno Mars, Demi Lovato or Pink! As much as I loved those songs the first 60 times they were played over a 3 day period, enough is ENOUGH!! I mean, comeON! It’s not like there aren’t hundreds of other super awesome, catchy songs that they can mix things up with!

Anywho, in order to alleviate the insane frustration from the lack of joy that music normally fills me with, I’ve gone back to my own mixes and have really been burrowing deep in the 90s – almost like a cleanse, I’d say. That said, it’s been a while since I’ve tried to expand your musical horizons, so here’s some way back playbacks of the 90s – Enjoy!! =D

BOOM!!!! And there’s more where that came from!!