John Green and Other Awesome, Nerdy Things

My always awesome friend C-Monster introduced me to The VlogBrothers, an amazingly entertaining, clever, smart and nerdy video blog by brothers Hank and John Green. Hank is the founder of EcoGeek.org. John is an award-winning YA* author. Upon learning that last bit, I realized I had to read one of his books... if not all of them. So, being kinda broke, I hit up my local library's website and requested one of his titles (yes, at random. I'm not picky). A few days later, in came An Abundance of Katherines for my reading delight.  And a delight is has been thus far. Yes, "thus far", because I'm enjoying the book and the author's style so much that I'm writing about it before I've even finished it!

Here's how it went down. On page 1 the main character (Colin) is thinking about Archimedes shouting "Eureka!" There was also a footnote explaining the Greek translation of "eureka". My thought was something like, "I already knew that, but an informative footnote in a novel colors me impressed".  By page 10, there had been a few more footnotes that were informative, witty (sometimes both) or simply said, "More on that later." It was on this page that I was fairly sure I was going to want to own this book. By 'fairly sure' I mean I had made the majority of the climb up the mountain and was within sight of the summit, but not quite there because at only page 10 out of 215, there is a lot of room for disappointment.  Page 30 sealed the deal by containing a joke about sodomy and a footnote containing a Venn diagram! I laughed myself to tears. While I will likely finish the library's edition, I will be venturing to buy my own copy in the very near future.

On that note, to the right of the previous paragraph is a picture of the cover of the book I'm currently reading. See that? Right there? The one with all the heads on it? Well, while searching for that image to put on here, I also found THIS image of an alternate (?) cover for the book!



I have to say that I like this cover much more. It's my inner design nerd coming out. The color use is more appealing, I don't have some soulless-eyed chick(s) staring out at me and I dig the title-as-a-math-equation relation to the story. Now, I have not done a great deal of searching at this point, but if someone can help me find a copy with this kickin' cover, I would be verrry grateful. Like cookies-for-you grateful.**



Moving right along to other awesome nerdery, I'm getting hooked on The Nerdist podcast. I discovered it in a bass ackwards kinda fashion in that I was watching The Walking Dead on AMC and suddenly there was this fun after-show called The Talking Dead hosted by Chris Hardwick (hot!). I mentioned The Talking Dead in class the following Thursday and a classmate got all excited and told me to check out The Nerdist, which is also hosted by Chris Hardwick, usually with Jonah Ray and Matt Mira, is just freaking hilarious! They have awesome guests (like Wil Wheaton*** (heart) Adam Savage (boom) and Neil Gaiman (brilliant) or when they don't have guests still manage to give my funny bone a hander. Go. Listen. Good times will be had. The podcast was recently turned into a TV show on BBC America and I aim to start watching that regularly... or as regularly one can for a show that's been ordered as "specials" by the channel. In this same vein, my bestie J-bot snagged us tickets to go see them live when the tour comes to town in March. You can't see it, but I'm doing my happy dance.

In the food realm, my instructor A mentioned this thing called Cookie Butter.  I'll type that again for your comprehension, because if you're like me, your eyes just bugged out of your head. Cookie Butter. I made a jaunt to Trader Joe's yesterday and procured some. It's a spread made with crushed biscuits and tastes a bit like gingerbread. It has definite nom factor. I've had it on celery, on chunky cinnamon toast, on matzo (yep, we eat Jew-food in this house) and now...cookie butter on a cookie! Just because I could.

That's all for awesome, nerdy things today folks. DFTBA****


*YA is book industry speak for the "Young Adult" genre. Special, nerdy terms? Yep. Get used to it.
** I was going to go dirty there and say 'blowjobs-for-you grateful', but I realized that A) that's a bit extreme, even for an awesome book and B) if you're a chic who helps me get the book, you're kinda left out of that reward system and that's not fair.
***I'm currently listening to the Wil Wheaton Nerdist podcast and learned that Chris and Wil are long-time friends and used to be roommates. This made me realize that that would make for an awesome, nerdy threesome! HOW have I never come to that idea before?!
**** An initialism (not an acronym because acronyms are pronounceable) used by the VlogBrothers that stands for Don't Forget To Be Awesome.

Random Post #1

Hello. Been awhile, I know. Fall quarter had me going crazy and my "break" was not really due to the holidays and work and such. C'est la vie.

My holidays were nice. For the family portion I made mini cherry pies using a muffin tin. Lessons were learned about using a proper-sized biscuit cutter. The best gift I got from fam has to be a tie between the first two volumes of Good Eats by Alton Brown and a killer fashion ring. I got some awesome gifts from my friends. Jo, Dawn and Heather all did great on our crafting-only gifts for each other. However I do have to say that the best gift by far goes to Chris for the TARDIS mug and Green Day Blue Grass CD. Sorry gals, but it's hard to beat the TARDIS... literally.

I've also been very distracted by YouTube lately.  Here are some of the awesome things I've been watching:

My Drunk Kitchen - Cookery, booze and one seriously funny lady! In her case, I feel it's best to begin at the beginning.


C.G.P. Gray - Smart and entertaining explanations of things. This guy is like the Alton Brown of everything. This is his most recent and I completely agree with him. Fuck pennies.


Vlog Brothers - Two brothers. One channel. Copious amounts of fun nerdery that will leave you smarter than before you watched. Bonus point: John is the John Green of YA literature fame; I haven't read his books, but after viewing this channel, I am definitely going to.


MukPuddy - Some hilarious animations that make me want to be an animator.


Chap-hop - Unquestionably the most entertaining and awesome music genre to arise in some time.


In fact I've been so distracted by YouTube that I've had two discs from Netflix since October. Shit. Gotta get on that this weekend.

Back on the 7th I went to my first viewing of the musical Les Miserables! That was pretty fucking sweet. Big thanks you my friend J for just randomly buying the tickets and telling me we were going. It was pretty sweet. The sets and lighting effects were great. The main men and Eponine we fantastic. Fantine was really warbly though, so I wasn't too disappointed when she died 10 minutes in.  I'm not sure if it was costumer choice or error that Marius blended in with most of the other revolutionary students in the battle scene. Personally, I found that annoying. High point of the night was the pre-show visit to Candyland and getting some sponge candy and key lime kisses (they're like butterscotch buttons, but lime! I never knew those existed!).

The Little Things

I've worked 5 days in a row now. I had to be to work at 7am all but Sunday.  This means my alarm goes off at 5:20 which gives me enough time to wake, quick shower, get a bit pretty and grab some breakfast before heading to work. 

Tomorrow (and all weekend actually) I'm off and while I am really excited for my MN Zoo outing with a few friends (finally get to see the penguins!) there is something I am looking forward to much, much more.

"What could that possibly be?" You must be wondering.

Being able to sleep-in 'til 7:30 and having the time to take a shower long enough to shave my legs.  Yep, I have an exciting life.