So in the spirit of Lance Bass’s recent “coming out” I thought that I would announce my own, only of a different flavor. Over the past two years I have realized something in this often bumpy road to self discovery and that is that I am a science fiction fan. I know what your thinking and no I have not seen every episode of Babylon 5 or am even close to being a Treky. What I have done though is look at the different forms of fiction that I really like and I have seen reoccurring themes. Aside from the obvious sci-fi, over my lifetime there have been a lot of movies that I have loved such as: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Matrix, Minority Report, and Being John Malcovich and on and on. Movies that sometimes make social commentaries or help us examine relationships by tweaking our reality. Then there are my favorite books: 1984, Fahrenheit 451, A Brave New World, several books by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and of course the obvious Orson Scott Card all of which are science fiction of one form or another.

According to Wikipedia part of the definition of sci-fi is:

“The science fiction genre is essentially a literary device for creating a type of "alternate reality," wherin writers can explore human issues by way of metaphor, exaggeration, and abstraction —thus maintaining both a removed distance and a broader perspective toward current human life and events”

I guess I had always assumed that they needed to be in space or involve aliens to be sci-fi, which it doesn’t. According to the very definition a movie such as Back to the Future would be in this genre. It was only until recently that I really got into Orson Scott Card and the TV show Battlestar Galactica that I realized that I am a fan. So now I have the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, and Robert A. Heinlein to read and enjoy for years to come thanks to this discovery.

So here I stand, proudly proclaiming my dorkiness and that I am no longer ashamed or intimidated by the stigma. I am a science fiction fan.

PS Could I have found a better picture for this post?

For the most part I’ve tried to keep my blog free of technology news or applications that I love, but I couldn’t resist the urge to share this discovery. For those of you that have a Mac and have a large collection of books, movies, and music (digital, analog, or hi-fi for Soto), I have found the worlds coolest application. It’s called Delicious Library. Not only is this app eye candy but it also is very functional way to organize large collections and even share those collections with others. I wont go into too much detail because I wouldn’t do it justice. Just check out the website and see for yourself. I’m just now getting into everything this can do and I have to say that it might be one of the greatest applicatioins around. So go check it out and buy it.

PS One of the coolest features is you can scan the barcodes of your media with your webcam and it automatically finds the cover and all of the info. How could anyone still be an atheist after playing around with this program?

Being a sports fan I find myself really wanting to get into the world cup this year. I realize that it’s the most popular sport in the world and every time they have a world cup I hear those crazy stories about fans doing insane things to property or people. I also realize that in the USA it’s not that popular and our best athletes choose other sports either because of our culture or the professional athlete salary discrepancy between the MLS and the NBA, NFL, or MLB.

So here I am really wanting to get excited and in to it, but I find that I just can’t. So here is my rant:
First off, scoring, or lack there of. I can REALLY appreciate the excitement of scoring a goal because it doesn’t happen often but waiting hours and hours watching players run around with no scoring is not exciting to me. It’s the same reason in football I LOVE the spread offense that was made famous by the old BYU teams of the 80’s. I love high scoring offense heavy games and hate watching football games in which both teams have amazing defenses and the scores never reach double digits. It’s boring to me.
Secondly, the refs. In any sport you have the referees making crucial calls that may decide games but when a game’s score is 0 to 1 and a team wins on a penalty kick that was questionable, where is the fairness? Absolute power corrupts absolutely and giving the ref that much power on a call is the NBA equivalent to giving one team 50 points on one foul. Plus, in soccer they flop A LOT so the right flop in the last minute of the game decides everything.

So there you are. This isn’t a “Texas” thing where I don’t understand why people like it, I do, its just that I have some grips about the sport in general. Have I offended soccer fans? If so I’d love to hear why you love the sport so much, and all of the others, what are your feelings on the world cup and soccer in general.

So I decided to mess around with photoshop and I made this pic "Tom goes to the Mayor" style of Tiff and I encountering a giant Pi (our cat). This show is my newest obsession and if you have yet to see it on Adult Swim, I highly recommend you do. Here is the show's website.