Game #1 – Quirkle

Quirkle doesn’t look very challenging at first sight; I actually thought it was something for toddlers to mess around with. It didn’t take long for me to realize that it’s really an in-depth strategy game. You play by placing rows of tiles down that have a certain pattern or color in common. In all, there are 36 different kinds of tiles, each with 3 copies. The goal is to get as many points as possible by making long lines of tiles. A line of 6 is called a Quirkle, and gets you bonus points. Whoever’s got the most points when somebody runs out of tiles is the winner.

I recommend this game for anybody who likes a games that makes you think, but isn’t too intense. It’s for 2 to 4 players.

Game #2 – Bananagrams

I, personally, am a guy who likes words. This is why I’m usually up for a game of Scrabble or Boggle. However, when my mom walked in with a banana-shaped bag of something, I was rather suspicious of it. It turns out that my first impression was wrong yet again. Bananagrams is a kind of speed Scrabble, in which you connect words and generally vomit up a dictionary or two. When you’ve used all your letters, you say “Peel,” and everybody will take one tile out of the pile in the middle. When you run out of tiles, but there aren’t enough for everybody to peel again, you say “Banana” and you win. Other than the odd tile exchange, it’s mostly just you, your wits, and your nimble fingers.

I recommend this game for anybody who likes word games like Scrabble, Boggle, or Slam. It’s pretty intense and fast-paced, but it doesn’t require strategy like Scrabble does.

Game #3 – Jishaku

If you thought the other two games weren’t weird enough to warrant interest, then you’ll like this one. I used to play this a lot with my younger brother, but I kind of lost all of the pieces (you’ll see why in a minute). It is a strategy game, in which one places little magnetic rocks on the kind of bumpy foam you use for packaging. You try to place all your little pieces on the field, without them attracting another. If this happens and they click together, then you pick the whole cluster back up. And let me tell you, some of them qualify as “supermagnets” and will do Olympics-worthy tumbles and flips to reach the nearest piece.

I recommend this game for anybody who likes magnets, strategy games, and/or annoying your buddies. It’s slow paced and fun to play, though butterfingers are frowned upon unless you want to see all the magnets on the field do a dogpile.

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the delay! If you know any other under-appreciated games, do tell in the comments.

I previously stated that I have minimal love for Miyazaki movies. Well I’m going to have to retract this statement, because I loved this movie so much I’m not sure I have coherent words for it.

The movie begins by introducing a girl named Arrietty, who is absolutely tiny and a “Borrower”. She lives inside the walls of a human’s house along with her mother and father, and they’re not sure if they are the last Borrowers left, since their species has been gradually declining in population. They live by stealing tiny bits of food and things to make into objects to use. The movie begins with the arrival of a sickly boy named Sho, who Arrietty sees as he drives up to the house. Arrietty also has her first expedition to go gather materials that night with her father, and while they have a mildly successful time, it ends in disaster when Arrietty is seen by Sho. With their secret exposed, the Borrowers must find a new home before they and their home are discovered by people less kind than Sho.

I loved this movie for so many reason I really can’t encompass them all. The graphics were amazing. They were beyond amazing. From the moment I began watching I was captivated by the beautiful colors and artwork, and that feeling was exacerbated when Arrietty entered her tiny home. The quaint little place, with its adorable furniture and items adapted from little human trinkets, was mesmerizing to see. It brought back nostalgic memories of reading the book series The Littles as a kid. (That said, this movie is based upon the book series The Borrowers). The music was also fantastic, and I found myself in love from the song that played at the very beginning of the movie. I mean that I literally paused the movie to look up the track that had been playing because I liked it so much. The ending of the movie had me wibbling with tears threatening to spill (spoiler alert: they did). This movie was just overwhelmingly perfect in too many ways.

However, this movie did not manage to escape criticism, even if my problems with it were relatively small! I am entirely unsure, but for some reason I sometimes felt like things just didn’t measure up in terms of proportions. Sometimes it just felt like things were bigger to Arrietty than they should have been, but I’m kind of awful with proportions and I only got that niggling feeling occasionally throughout the film, so it’s entirely possible I’m wrong. It was something that bothered me though. My more pressing problem was just that the film felt sort of…anticlimatic.  The exposition was beautiful and I was constantly on the lookout for the true conflict, so when it appeared I was rapt but also wondering why it had only appeared almost 3/4 of the way through the movie. The conflict was resolved beautifully but almost too quickly. I felt like I had been driving on a gentle incline expecting to soon go over a mountain, but instead it was just a small hill. It just felt strange.

However, this does not deter me from recommending this film to everyone. Please please please watch it! It is fabulous and beautiful and every time I thought about the movie for a week after watching it it brought a happy smile to my face. If you don’t see this movie you are definitely missing out. This movie is rated G.

It was still okay. I haven’t watched the Green Lantern yet and therefore have not yet formed any sort of attachment to the characters, so I guess if you liked the Green Lantern and its characters then you might like this. Basically, the more senior Green Lanterns tell Arisa, the new recruit, stories about themselves. It’s mostly Hal (the guy with the brown hair) who is talking while they get ready for the battle against Krona. For you Green Lantern fans out there, there were stories about Kilowog (a tough trainer who deems the weak as “Poozers”. My sister started calling me Poozer, and I can say from experience, it is not fun being called one), Laira (a skilled Green Lantern woman who sacrifices much in her return to her home planet), and many of the other very familiar characters.

I didn’t like the cartoon style; it was too flat and 2D for me. The animation was pretty good, but I feel like this series of short stories was more for those with Green Lantern background. I couldn’t really connect to the characters. However, I did enjoy Laira’s story. And the one about the planet that was actually a Green Lantern.

Lesson? Know what you’re watching before you watch it.

Here’s the trailer; see if you like it. Here’s also a clip about Kilowog and Deegan (Kilowog’s trainer, who was as tough as Kilowog is today; in the movie you can tell that Kilowog took a page out of Deegan’s book), and one of Hal attacking Krona at the very end.

Speaking of movies, I went to see the Muppets over break. It was insanely awesome, and watch for a review soon

The Top Ten “Teen” Resolutions:
1. Get Healthy
2. Get Happier
3. Be a Better Person
4. Find Love
5. Show More Love to Your Family
6. Be a Better Friend
7. Get Better in School
8. Learn Something New
9. Be a Role Model
10. Make Some Money

I asked several of my friends what their goals were and all of them fit somewhere in the top ten “teen” resolutions (listed above).  I think that all of these are fine New Year’s goals, but they are objectives that I strive to accomplish on a daily bases, not especially in a New Year.

Resolutions are generally hard to stick with, after all most people think that they should be life-changing goals. After only one week, just 64% are still on track, and after six months, less than half of the “resolvers” are keeping up with their plan. This goes to show that you should keep your plan SMART.

Specific and Simple- Have a goal that explains exactly what you are trying to achieve, and are able to in a year or less.

Measurable- Be able to come back in a week, or even six months and see where you stand on your road to accomplishment.

Attainable- If you have a mammoth goal that seems almost impossible, try breaking it down and choosing the first step as your resolution.

Realistic- Don’t be so strict that your goal is unrealistic, instead of “I will exercise every day” try “I will aim to exercise 3 or 4 times a week.”

Timely- You have to set a time frame with your goal. If you say, “I want to lose 10 pounds someday” then you might keep on pushing it off. An example of a timely goal is “In the next month, I want to lose at least 10 pounds” this way you have set your mind to action working on your goal.

By having this type of plan, it is easier to stay on track and to come out with a better result. If you choose to make a resolution, even after New Years, I hope this helps! Best of wishes with your resolutions!

With us on Women’s Time today we have Mrs. Barbara Wilson, here to tell us about her own unusual choice of a Christmas tree. Barbara, I hear that instead of the traditional cut evergreen, you decided to build your family’s tree out of books, am I right?

Yes, yes I did! You see, it’s our family tradition to gather ‘round the tree every evening and read together, and I thought why not celebrate what really matters to us?

Perfectly reasonable, Mrs. Wilson, perfectly reasonable! So, tell me, exactly which books went into the making of this tree?

Well, of course I started with the Ladies Home Journal Compilation. I think it’s really quite fitting, using that book as the base, since it certainly is responsible for most of the cooking and decorating I do to make the holiday… And my little ones contributed a few of their ‘comic books’, which I added to humor them. And of course I have the traditional Christmas collection – Nothing like Christmas books to make a Christmas tree! A Christmas Carol is my personal favorite. I also included  From Here to Eternity, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Farenheit 451, On the Road, The Communist Dream -

Aaand there’s our time for today, folks! Well thank you very much for speaking with us, ladies, that was Mrs. Barbara Wilson hailing from Smelton County, Virginia. We’ll conclude today’s programming with an old Christmas classic, rewritten just for Mrs. Wilson’s tree.

O’ Christmas tree, O’ Christmas tree,

Thou structure most sturdy,

O’ Christmas tree, O’ Christmas tree,

Please let me read thee

The sight of thee at Christmas-tide,

Spreads the written word far and wide,

O’ Christmas tree, O’ Christmas tree,

Thy paper branches doth beckon me

Thank you for listening, that’s all for this evening, but be sure to tune in next week for our Christmas Day broadcast!

(Here’s my book Christmas tree. Post a pic of yours below!)

One of the first and foremost things you should know about me is that I’m a card game junkie. I dabbled in Magic The Gathering, the Naruto Trading Card Game (TCG), and Yu-Gi-Oh, but my hands-down favorite would have to be the Pokémon TCG. I forget why, but at some point in third grade a girl gave me a couple cards. I took a look, and was instantly hooked. Ever since, I’ve begged shamelessly to go to all the tournaments near us; they’re just that fun. Let me tell you, like so many other random nerd hobbies, it has a fantastic community. You will find some of the nicest people on Earth chattering away about what deck to use for the next event, or what they think about the latest idea doing its rounds on the internet. They’re devoted, too: they’ve risked life, limb, weekend, and social standing to be a part of the huge, hidden family that spans the world.

This is from the 2011 National Championships. And some people say Pokémon is dead... Oh really? I happen to know the guy in blue- we're both part of team BL.

The game is about skill, perseverance, mental stamina, the willingness to sacrifice your lower back muscles and a big dose of luck. You start with a deck of 60 cards, which you build yourself, stocking it with the cards you think can hold their own. Play your Pokémon down, evolve them, use the rest of your cards to support them, and hopefully KO a few of your opponent’s Pokémon in the process. If you defeat 6 or they run out of Pokémon, you win! Of course, there’s the luck factor. Lady luck likes lulling players into a false sense of security, then delights in giving them hands of one measly, tiny wimp of a Pokémon and a whole bunch of junk. You can’t outmaneuver her, beat her or bargain with her. You can only try to outwit her. Truly devoted (or insane, take your pick) players have been known to stay up all night perfecting their decks (this is where the lower back muscles come in, most games are played on the floor), then play a 12 hour tournament the next day. When you see baggy eyes and a 5-gallon coffee cup staring you down from across the table, you know who you’re dealing with.

All in all, I recommend the game to anybody with free time and $15 to spare. All you have to do is spend a little time exploring the Pokémon website (just google it and click on the card game link) and you can find everything you need to know, like where your local league is, when events are, etc. Join the community if you want; think I’m crazy, raving nerd (you’d be right) if you don’t. Thanks for reading my first ever article! Ja, mata!

Junior year is so much fun that I may potentially be losing my mind. Or that could be the sleep deprivation. So much like my post last year about how to not prepare for the SATs, I’m going to tell you guys a story about my past week at high school, where my eagerness for winter break was suddenly overshadowed by looming piles of schoolwork that frankly came out of nowhere.

I think this is something I should get out into the open: I am currently taking a bunch of AP classes and AP lunch (not really), which will soon be replaced by another class. Have I overloaded myself? Yes, most likely. Can I handle it? I thought so, up until this week. Test weeks (every other week) always stressed me out, but during those weeks, homework was always sporadic and during non-test weeks I felt almost relaxed. Junior year was treating me pretty well, even if I wasn’t getting as much sleep as I wanted. I was having fun with friends, watching my Senior friends freak out about college applications and acceptances, and sailing on pretty smooth waters. Then this week happened. Suddenly it became apparent that I was headed directly for disaster. If you want an analogy, I was the Titanic headed straight for the iceberg. This is what spelled my doom: 6 tests, an essay, and a project due the 3 days before winter break, and a C in a class that I had previously been doing well in. In the middle of the week I was suddenly struck by intense sleep deprivation that made me fall asleep sitting up in class, and a budding eye infection from said passing out in class was developing.

Welp.

“Where did things start to go wrong? Why did I do this to myself? Dude, why do I suck?” I wailed to one of my friends.
“If I don’t come back next week, tell my Tumblr followers I love them.” I gravely told my best friend, before logging out of Gmail.
“I think I’m going to die.” I informed my mother, who remembered this same routine from last year right before my trainwreck of an SAT score and probably began mentally preparing herself for inevitable bad news and disownment.

However, dramatic monologues aside, this isn’t a lost cause at all. I’m certainly not ready to write it off as inevitable failure. But first, let’s talk AP courses.

AP is short for Advanced Placement, which I’m sure you all know is a step above Honors and two steps above Standard courses. AP goes through more difficult material most teachers have a tendency to give lots of homework. These courses are college level, and don’t let anyone make you think otherwise. But the thing is, I like AP courses. Why? There are a couple of reasons.

1. I can get college credits for them.
2. I find honors/standard classes slow and boring.
3. AP courses boost your weighted GPA.

I’ve heard tons of people complaining about AP courses and scaring underclassmen away from them, and that’s completely wrong. While I can’t advocate taking more courses than you’re ready for, there is nothing to be gained from not challenging yourself at all. AP is definitely not as bad as some people make it out to be, and if you think you can handle a couple or more, I think you should definitely take them!

“But wait,” you are probably saying. “Didn’t you just tell me a horror story about Junior year and AP classes? What are you doing?! Why are you being contradictory?! AHHH!!!”

Do I regret taking 7 AP courses? Not at all. While I am suffering a little right now, this is quite literally the first time this whole year I’ve been so busy. It just happens that it gets a little crazy before break. And even if it is stressful as mess right now, I can still handle it. Like I said, I’m not ready to write myself off as a lost cause just yet.  School only gets harder from here on, and it’s no use babying yourself before college! Underclassmen, take AP courses when you can! Juniors, we can do it! Seniors, I’m cheering for all of you applying for college! I’m sure we’ll all get out of here at least partially alive.

Last night I decided to make eggplant soup, which I found a recipe for on AllRecipes, since we had a bit of eggplant left. It turned out delicious, but it wasn’t such a good idea after I realized that I didn’t have a blender. But I’ll share it here, in case any of you do, or want to be like me and have to mash everything up in batches with a wooden roller. Here is my slightly modified version, depending on what I had at hand.
EGGPLANT SOUP (serves two people and one very hungry sister)
Ingredients
-1 eggplant, cut in half lengthwise
-1 tomato, cut in half
-1/2 large onion, cut in half
-3 pieces of garlic
-Salt
-Pepper
-Goat cheese
-Vegetable oil
-1 chicken bouillon cube
Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2) Place your tomato, eggplant, garlic, and onion onto baking sheet. Drizzle and spread vegetable oil over the tops and bake in the oven for about half an hour, or until they have some brown spots on them.
3) Take four cups of water and put on high on the stove. Add a chicken bouillon cube. Peel the skin off of the eggplant and place the eggplant, tomato, garlic, and onion into the pot. Stir around for a while (and mash a bit with your spoon) until soft. Once the water starts bubbling (when it’s boiling), you can turn it down to medium heat.
4) You’re supposed to puree in the blender in batches, but I realized that I actually broke our blender and we didn’t get a new one yet (long story), so I actually took the solids out and mashed them in a bowl with a roller. It was hard work, and the consistency wasn’t the same as if I had done it in a blender. But it still turned out delicious :) Yeah, so puree or mash until smooth. If you puree it’ll have the consistency as a thickish soup, but mine was more like a watery soup.
5) Place on the stove again at medium heat and stir, stir, stir. Season with salt and pepper to taste. I left it on for about twenty minutes more before serving it and then adding clumps of goat cheese, which balanced out the flavor of the eggplant nicely.

During Thanksgiving break, I helped my cousin and his girlfriend make the most wonderful dish ever. Surprisingly, it has Brussels sprouts in it. Normally in books, the protagonist dumps his Brussels sprouts down the toilet. But if he had THIS dish, he would be eating it in no time
ROASTED BRUSSELS SPROUTS (serves…not sure actually. It was a predinner snack and in a house of about twelve people, it was gone in about half an hour with someone randomly picking at it every few minutes)
Ingredients
-Brussels sprouts (as much as you need, we used about 1 ½ pounds)
-Olive oil
-Salt
-Black pepper
Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2) Take the Brussels sprouts and remove the leaves into another dish, throwing out the yellow ones. Keep peeling leaves until you can’t peel anymore, and then also place the core of the Brussels sprouts into the dish. What we actually did was use the core of the Brussels sprouts for another delicious dish of Brussels sprouts and bacon.
3) Put the Brussels sprouts onto baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil over it. Then shake a generous amount of salt and pepper over it. That way, the bitter taste of the Brussels sprouts won’t be as strong. Some people also put everything into a large plastic bag and shake it to spread the olive oil, salt, and pepper around.
4) Put in the oven for about 30-45 minutes, or until the leaves are crispy. We left them a little too long in the oven so some of them turned a little brown. The ones that tasted best were the green ones.

Every year my sister asks for hot chocolate. Every year I make this homemade kind with milk, whatever chocolate we have, and candy canes. For this recipe, I’ll just use Hershey’s milk chocolate in squares. The hot chocolate to the right is actually Bob Evan’s hot chocolate, which was delicious by the way
PEPPERMINT HOT CHOCOLATE (serves one)
Ingredients
-Milk (the only milk we have is 2% Horizon Organic, so that’s what I use)
-Candy canes (I use about half for each cup)
-Hershey’s milk chocolate (4 of those squares), but if you find this too sweet then you can use semi-sweet chocolate
-Marshmallows or whipped cream (optional)
Directions
1) Pour the milk into the mug. I’m not really sure, but I think that’s about 1 1/2 cups.
2) Crush the chocolate and candy canes into small bits and pour into the mug along with the milk.
3) Microwave. Stir every twenty seconds so the chocolate doesn’t clump at the bottom. Microwave until the sides and bottom of the mug is hot and when you stir, you feel no more chocolate at the bottom.
4) Take out and garnish with marshmallows and whipped cream if desired. Enjoy!

AllRecipes has this amazing email subscription that gives you the best recipes. For the month of December, they’ve been having a cookie countdown, and one of the recipes was the Magic Cookie Bar: a mixture of graham crackers, semi-sweet chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, walnuts, and coconut. Naturally, I tried it, taking out the butterscotch chips and adding almonds in addition to the walnuts, and also a sprinkling of crushed candy canes at the top. However, I didn’t add enough milk, so my Magic Cookie Bars didn’t stick together. So they kind of turned into Magic Cookie mess…but it still tasted delicious. You can subscribe to these newsletters by creating an AllRecipes account. Here’s the FAQ. Here’s also their collection of Christmas recipes…I know I’ll be making some of these over winter break!

Junior year has been busy sucking the fun out of my life, but I managed to find time on Halloween to watch Howl’s Moving Castle, a movie I’ve been meaning to see for quite a long time but had never quite topped my priority list. Bored and at a friend’s house, we started the movie up and I found I liked this movie. I may not feel motivated to see it again anytime soon, but it was definitely good and worth a watch.

The movie begins with Sophie, a quiet hatmaker, going out to meet her sister and facing trouble from the henchmen of the evil Witch of the Waste. She is saved by a mysterious wizard named Howl, who is rumored to eat the hearts of girls and is feared by the general public. The Witch of the Waste, seeing this, is jealous of Sophie and sets off to the girl’s hat shop. Sophie is then cursed by the Witch to become an old woman, and she runs away to try and break the curse. She eventually ends up at Howl’s titular moving castle, where the story and conflicts truly begin.

First off: the art is fantastic. Second off: the characters are unbelievably charming and frankly just adorable. Calcifer and Howl were  just the best, hands down no questions asked. The only characters I really didn’t end up falling head over heels for by the end was probably Madame Suliman and surprisingly enough Sophie herself, but that’s just because she occasionally holds the idiot ball a little too long and I end up frustrated at her. Not often, just occasionally. The music is also fantastic, and I seriously cannot get enough of the theme song. All in all, the movie was solid in almost all aspects. It definitely kept me entertained the whole time and captured my attention enough that I didn’t end up talking through it at all. Of course, I do have one complaint.

My sole complaint about this movie is my general complaint about all Miyazaki movies– they proceed too quickly with little to no explanation and require a huge amount of suspension of disbelief. While I am certainly not saying that suspension of disbelief is bad, there is a certain point where strange things are happening with no explanations forthcoming, not even fantasy ones, and you end up sitting there scratching your head and understanding nothing. That is the only thing that really dampens the magic of Miyazaki movies for me. While other people may enjoy vaguer storytelling, I am dumb. I need things laid out on the table for me.  I didn’t even understand the movie until I looked up the synopsis on Wikipedia, and while I did manage to retroactively piece it together that way, there was no way I would have understood the plot without it. Eventually things are proceeding really quickly and nothing is making sense and that’s where the movie just kind of starts to fall apart for me. Maybe I’m just not smart enough, maybe it’s too deep for me, but I really just cannot truly enjoy any Miyazaki movies simply because I rarely know exactly what’s going on.

If you are a fan of other Miyazaki movies and you for some reason haven’t managed to see this one yet, do it. If you’ve never watched a Miyazaki movie in your life before, I highly recommend you watch it because it’s more likely you’ll love it than feel neutral like me. And if you are solidly neutral about Miyazaki movies like I am, it’s up to you. Howl’s Moving Castle is charming and beautiful, but not a movie that I think is an absolute must see. I do recommend it though, so if you are interested you should definitely check it out! This movie is rated PG.

Just after less than a month, the occupy movement had already spread to more than 95 cities in 84 countries. You may have heard of their slogan, “We are the 99%”, which refers to the wealth inequality between us, the 99%, and the top wealthiest 1%.

Yes, there are occupy movements currently in North Carolina. There is one in Raleigh and arrests have been made with pictures of the arrested on the website under a picture labeled “October 15 OccupyRaleigh Heroes”. In addition to Raleigh, there’s Occupy Durham and Occupy Chapel Hill (A Movement Too Big to Fail).

On October 15, the document “99 Percent Declaration” was published, calling for a US general assembly on July 4, 2012, to discuss amendments such as higher tax rates for the rich. However, the current problem is the continual confrontation between the protesters and the police. With such big masses at one time, it’s hard for all the protesters to be “peaceful”. One man was charged with pushing a policeman into a moving bus, while many other protesters have been threatened with pepper spray and batons.

Protesters are organizing over sites such as Occupy Together, which includes a how-to-occupy section and premade posters for protesters to print out.

“Even nine year old Sam knows something is not right”. As he points out in this Youtube video, ”They’re just doing the reverse of Robin Hood. They’re stealing from the poor, who need their, all their things to live, and giving it all to the rich. It makes no sense.” Others agree that the economy is failing and America is in a bad situation, but do not feel that the Occupy Movement is the right way to approach the problem. According to some people, the Occupy Movement is complete finger pointing. What do you think?

-hils

Sources:
http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/11/the_occupy_movement_stimulates.html