Fantastic Read!

Alyssa Day has done it again. I just got done reading Atlantis Awakening and it's awesome. It's also filled with some major shockers. This is Ven's story, brother to the Prince and future king and provider of the King's vengeance.

Ven doesn't like witches. He has no use for them. So when his brother, the prince, orders him to forge an alliance with the local witch's coven he is less than pleased. At least, until he meets Erin. Erin is a witch out for vengeance against the vampire who killed her family and has no time for romance, or so she thinks. But Ven quickly has her dreaming of long nights in bed.

This book is so awesome. I don't wanna give away some of the best parts, but let's just say some MAJOR things happen in this book. My only problem with the story is that it leaves one character's future up in the air. There is a kind of a cliffhanger ending for one of the warriors. Well, it won't hurt to say it. The cliffhanger involves Justice. And my major problem is that his story, where we find out what happens to him, won't be out till May. Total torture!

But there are quite a few surprises involving Justice in this book. And Erin is a lot more powerful than even she realizes. You will love this story. Alyssa Day's Poseidon Warriors series just keeps getting better. And even though we don't get to find out Justice's fate until May of next year, we do get a brief taste of the Poseidon series in March of next year when Shifter comes out. Shifter is an anthology and Alyssa Day's contribution involves the leader of the werepanther pride from Bastien's story in Wild Thing and Bastien's sister.

However, it still burns my bridges that I have to wait a whole 6 months to find out what happens to Justice. I love a guy with long blue hair.:-) But in the meantime, Ven's story is just plain dynomite.

The Best One Yet!

I just got and watched for the first time Shrek The Third. It's by far the best one yet. I was cracking up from the very start and didn't stop all the way through. It's one laugh right after the next.

Shrek's Frog-in-law King dies and Shrek finds himself heir to the throne. But he'd already been filling in during the course of the King's illness and knows the royal life isn't for him. So, along with his faithful friends Donkey and Puss In Boots, he sails off to find Artie, the only other heir to the throne. Just before he leaves, his darling ogre wife announces she's expecting. Shrek is none too happy about it.

Meanwhile, Prince Charming organizes all the evil villians of fairytale life and attacks the Kingdom of Far Far Away and locks Fiona, her mother, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella in the dungeon as bait for Shrek. But Shrek is having a hard time convincing Artie to take on the throne. But once he learns of the trouble in Far Far Away, he and Artie both head to the kingdom for a rousing dinner theater production of stop the bad guy.

I LOVED this movie. I really loved it. It was so funny. John Cleese from Monty Python's Flying Circus reprises his role as the frog king. And for this movie, his Monthy Python sidekick, Eric Idle joins as Murry the scatty wizard. Julie Andrews is back as the queen, Cameron Diaz as Fiona, Mike Myers as Shrek, Eddie Murphy as Donkey and Antonio Banderas returns as the cute swashbuckling Puss. Justin Timberlake joins the cast as Artie the reluctant king. Believe me, you don't wanna miss this movie.

Update

I've decided to remove the ad I do at the bottom of the page. For the past few weeks I have had a lot of trouble with Blogger trying to update the ad so it's just easier to take it out. Everything else though will very much stay the same. Besides, if it's something I'm really interested in I'll blog about it anyways.:-)

Stop The Madness!

In a news release today, it has come out that the intelligence community feels it is time to redefine the meaning of privacy. They believe that privacy should no longer mean a life free from prying eyes but rather a new defination in which the government strives to merely keep our financial information and medical info secure.

In 1978 a privacy law was enacted forbidding the government from spying on people's phone conversations on United States soil without first acquiring a court issued warrant. In 2001, Bush got it scaled back saying it was too hard to gather intel on suspected terrorists. The scale back involved allowing warrentless wiretapping in cases where they could show that at least one end of the conversation was not taking place on American soil. In other words, if you were calling your dear old granny in France from the USA, your call could be monitored without showing just cause to a federal court.

Now they are at it again. Congress is going back to reevaluate the current stance on wiretapping. Bush and members of the intelligence agencies want the 1978 law scaled back even further so that they can monitor anything they want without first obtaining a warrant and having the only restriction placed on them to be that they must guarantee the safety of our medical and financial info. They also want immunity from lawsuits for internet providers and phone companies that have been supplying the goverment's supercomputers with all our phone calls, emails and even websites we have visited.

I know many people haven't protested as much as they should to these infringements on our personal lives. They say they have done nothing wrong and therefore have nothing to hide. They say anything goes when it comes to security. I say no. This country was founded on the premise of freedom. How can you have freedom if your government is spying on you without even having to prove that you have done something wrong? Is that not the beginning or fascism? Is that not the beginning of a militaristic state such as they have in China?

Freedom is so easy to lose. And no one fights it because it's hidden behind smokescreens such as national security. Freedom is slowly bled away from us by those who use fear to hide their actions. And once those cherished freedoms are gone, it is almost impossible to get them back. I too have nothing to hide. If the government tapped my phones and checked into my internet activity, they wouldn't find me doing anything wrong. I spend a lot of time just searching through online stores such Amazon for things I want to buy. And most of my phone time is about setting up transportation to and from places I need to go.

But, while my activities are not criminal, and I have no reason to fear what might be uncovered, I do not think the government should have the right to monitor every aspect of my life without first obtaining a warrant. To obtain a warrant, the government must present evidence in a federal court to show that my actions are suspicious enough to warrant further observation. It might seem like a minor right, the right to privacy and not as important as security, but I disagree.

The terrorists hate us because of our freedom. They hate us because we have rights they do not. If we let the government take from us our rights, no matter how minor, in the name of protecting ourselves from terrorists, then the terrorists have won anyways. We are no longer the great country that America has always been. We become the fear controlled, paranoid country that the terrorist nations are. They totally win.

Congress, as I said is revisiting the wiretap issue. I strongly urge everyone who values their freedom and doesn't want to see it erode bit by bit to call or write their congressmen and senators and tell them not only to not do another scale back of the 1978 privacy act, but to also encourage them to end the scale back already in place as of 2001.