TWEET TWEET: twitters from orangerful

• Just called my mom to wish her a happy birthday because I wrote it on my calendar...but apparently her bday is 22nd! DAUGHTER FAIL! #
• you listen to the new Pearl Jam album on their MySpace page right now! bit.ly/34E8b #
• wtf, Facebook keeps trying to say I am a fan of Megan Fox and I am NOT a fan....AAAAAAH! It's an evil plot! #
• last week, AD commented how weird it was that the cats don't sleep on the couch. Now Apollo naps on it every night! #
• they need to put Chelsea Dagger by the Fratellis on Rock Band, that song is too fun to sing! #

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"serve my madness, not my reason"

Yay, I finished my icon set for whedon20in20 - and just in time too! (if you want to see the set, they are here @ orangerfulboxes). I'm quite happy with how a lot of them turned out. Next month I need to actually try to make a few of them BEFORE the due date.

I saw Phedre at the Shakespeare Theatre today. It is the National Theatre of Great Britain's production starring Helen Mirren as Phedre. But let me tell you, EVERYONE was amazing. Just mesmerizing. It's a Greek tragedy that was reworked several times over the centuries (and you thought reboots were something new!) and I think the production we saw was adapated by Sylvia Plath's husband Ted Hughes, adapted from Racine's version from the late 1600s. But a story of an older woman lusting after her stepson is timeless...in a creepy kind of way. If she had just kept her mouth shut, she would have been fine, but then there were rumors that her husband was dead, and she confessed her obsession with the stepson too soon because, turns out her husband wasn't dead, just sailing. Whoops. AWKWARD! It's all pretty much downhill from there for the poor old girl. And her stepson, for that matter. It's an intense play, to say the least.

Oh, and did I mention our tickets were in the SECOND row. Yeah, just wow. It's going to be hard to top that.

After it ended, I checked out the gift shop and they had autographed copies of Helen Mirren's autobiography, so I had to buy one. Also bought a small poster that I will some day frame...my imaginary house has MANY empty walls.

book thoughts: Unwind by Neal Schusterman (2007)

Unwind

Neal Shusterman

After the Heartland war, a decision was made - abortion would become illegal.  BUT when a child is between the ages of 13-18, they are eligible to be Unwound - a procedure that takes every part of the child and allows it to be distributed to someone in need.  So the child is technically still living.  Just not as a single human.

That is the main plot of Neil Shusterman's disturbing YA novel Unwind. Like Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, this book takes an issue and does what all good sci-fi should do - takes it to an extreme.  It doesn't beat you over the head with what is right or wrong, but it does get you caught up in a story, with characters, but at the same time, your brain begins to think about the deeper themes and questions behind the story.

In Unwind, three teens runaway while on their way to the unwinding facility - Connor, whose parents scheduled him to be unwound after some bad behavior in school, runs away the night before.  Risa, an orphan, was scheduled by the state after they realized they could not afford another mouth to feed.  And Lev, a tithe, a sacrifice that is family had decided to make before he was born, raised knowing that he would be unwound.  Fate throws these three together and the book is the story of their adventure through this future world.

Unwind sucks you in from page 1 and doesn't let go until its over. It is an intense story, and I found myself needing to put the book down and walk away for a bit.  But it is the kind of book you want to read with your friends because you're going to want to discuss it.  Schusterman is careful not to preach  any sort of agenda - he is just playing with a scenario that feels all too plausible in a twisted way. 

If you're in the mood for some well written science fiction that has a good blend of action, suspense, and pseudo-science, pick up this book!

Originally posted on orangerful.vox.com