Ever since school has started, I really havn't had time to write, unless it was for english class. The expectations in english are really high; my lastest assignment was to read a complex 280 book in less than to weeks. It called Ender's Game, and its pretty decent for something that you have to skim in several days.

Ender's Game takes place a couple hundred years in the future. The world now consists of two huge contries; the Hedgemon (the United States), and the New Warsaw Pact ( U.S.S.R snd other territories). Both countries have been ravenged by an alien race nicknamed the buggers. Several decades after their second invasion, the Hedgemond start monitoring thousands of "gifted" children to see if they could become great commander. One of these childrenis Andrew Wiggen, often nicknamed Ender, who is a third (a third child is frowned apond in the Hedgemond). Ender soon "enroles" into battle school at age six, and then into command school at age ten. He eventually wipes out the buggers and becomes a resident on a colany on the bugger homeworld.

The book is actually deeper than it sounds, filled with political descusions and internal conflicts. I recamend the book, but only if you're the type of person that will read non-stop.

Ben Folds Unrapped

After seein the musical Wicked(based on the book by Gregory Maguire about how the wicked witch became so wicked), so I decided to read the book. I was supried at how adult the feateres were. So much for the family freindly musical :-(.

But I shouldn't complane. My favorite musician had songs about such themes. His name is Ben Folds(still trying to figure out if that's his stage name or not). Heres why I like him:

1. His voice. I don't know how to describe it, but he has a fairly unusual voice for his age. But hey, the dudes from North Carolina :p. PS: NC is acually a state. Who knew? I considered it more like the District of Columbia(burn).

2.The lyrics to his songs. they don't really rymn, but they're thought provocing. Sometimes you have to think to get the point of the song. When you lisin to his song "Brick", you'll understand.

3.The way he uses the piano. Its practicly in every song. Seriosly, he's the Vince Guiraldi of this geration.

My favorite song by him is possibly "Army". Its about the aimlessness of life and is somewhat self-biographical.

FYI: Vince Guiraldi did the piano music for Peanuts(with good ol' Charlie brown).

My First Post

Wow, my first post. Not only is this my first time writing for a blog, but also the first time writing on something other than a word document.

I decided to write on this blog to share my many ideas. One is for a movie; pesificly a prequel for Micheal Bay's mercy killing movie and its engine gunk of a sequel, Transformers( how did Steven Spielberg get persuated into producing such crap). I just hope Bay doesn't read this or he'll be the one making another million bucks.

In the first Transformers movie, Optimus Prime mentioned the war on the Transformers' homeplanet, Cybertron(oh the names are oh so creative). This got me thinking. Why not go into further depth of this war? Better yet, why not explane how Megatron became a dictator and how Optimus became a CGI version of Winston Churchill?

There are many things that I wanted to introduce a few of these concepts:

1. The Transformers could always transform, but not into feeble merchandising atempts, but into futuristic war machines. Now the media will finally use imagination(hey, I can dream, can't I).

2.The war wasn't just fought on Cybertron, but on dozens of backwater planets. In some cases, some Autobots and/or Decepticons actually transform into large metallic beasts.

3. Megatron actually built and brainwashed most of his troops. This is just an excuse to explain the emotionaless antaganists in the other films :p.

I would spare more details, but then this intry would be take a parsec to read(a parsec is about 3 lightyears, just FYI).

Also FYI: the Autobots are the good guys, the Decipicons are the bad guys, and Megatron is the leader of the Decipicons. Oh, and Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots.

The Very First Post of No Substance

My father Charles began as a journalist and evolved into a freelance writer. He lives in New York City.

I am a computer programmer by trade, but have always liked to write and have recently been writing freelance online articles, as well as a regular column about the Cleveland Indians. I have other unpublished works of fiction that resist editing. I live in Austin, Texas.

My son Chris (born August 1996) has always loved to make up his own stories. He has been developing fiction-writing and poetry skills in school and in extracurricular camps.

We are the Buffums. And the Buffums write.