On this blog I'll mainly post information about work I'm doing on MB. I'll probably also include information on short/long stories I'm working on as well as just general information about things going on in the blogosphere and the rest of cyberspace.
It's been nearly three months without an update, and you are owed an explaination.
First off, I am now almost completely moved into my new bedroom, which is still devoid of any carpet. . . but enough about that. I have also moved my base of operations from a room next to the second freezer and furnace to my desk in my (new) bedroom. Boring stuff that you don't care about: over.
I am still looking into WordPress for this website so you can comment on blog posts, and I am also completely revising some sections.
I'm even planning on moving one completely, which will take some boring tasks that will eat up a few hours of my free time. Eventually, there will be an address that looks something like 'republic-of-tiernan.mechanicalbats.com' that will have fully functional buttons that allow you to order (purchase?) citizenship documents, passports, stamps, currency, and titles of nobility (probably.).
Expect more updates in the following weeks, because I'm mch more comfortable in my new base of operations and can spend more time revising and updating, as well as writing (the primary purpose of this website). However, expect a slowdown (and eventual stop?) of production of comics a la xkcd. It takes a lot of time that I won't have during school.
So those of you that regularly check this website for updates (yes, all two of you) have probably noticed the lack of updates as of late. There is an explanation, and I will give it now.
I've been moving. For the past thirteen years of my life, I've had to share a room with my younger brother. This is currently changing, as I am moving into a room in my basement. As you may've already guessed, it's hard to update a website when you're working on breaking free from living with another person. If everything goes well, I'll be moved into my new mole-person lair by the end of May (and hopefully will've updated before then). Until that time, feel free to follow my personal twitter and/or the MechanicalBats twitter for info on developments. I'm also posting stuff on FictiomPress that'll eventually be added as .pdf to the writing section. A free cybercookie if you find me on FP. So that's all the explanations for now. Cool stuff, eh?
Now onto the future plans portion of this post. I'm going to look into WordPress after I've moved in, so expect to be able to comment on posts by summertime. Expect major changes to the 'about' page (I've decided that I don't much like it) and I'll try to set up some sort of forum by the end of summer.
Today, outside of a Shoppers in Reston, Virginia, my sister, my dad, and I sighted a UFO.
While at an interesection waiting for a light to turn green, I noticed a shiny object in the sky (appearing to be several kilometres above the ground, but I am not the best judge of that) that was losing altitutde. My dad noticed it too and we both watched it for several seconds before it became shinier for a brief moment (appearing to almost glimmer) and subsequently disappeared.
Prior to seeing this, my dad, my brother, and I had all noticed two aircraft heading in the same direction (which was later determined by all four of us to be the direction where the UFO was). By the time we got out of the car (approximately a minute to a minute and a half after the object disappeared), two more aircraft were sighted heading in the same direction as the other two.
I have no clue what it is, and I doubt I will ever figure it out. It is possible that it was simpy a piece of trash dropped out of the window of a Cessna (they do have windows that open, although not intended for the purpose of disposing of garbage). We were only about fifteen kilometres from Andrews Air Force Base and twenty from MCB Quantico, so was it some sort of aircraft test or possibly a training exercise, with pilots attempting to intercept whatever was heading toward the ground? Was it aliens?
There are often ordinary and rational explainations for events or happenings that appear rather extraodrinary, so I will not get ahead of logic. That being said, if we do become overrun by aliens, I will sign up for Blue Squadron.
I had no idea what to do for a first blog entry, so I figured I'd review one of my favourite books in the hopes that it will prompt somebody to read it. I am one out of about a dozen people in my school who actually read books. Anyway, onto the review:
Like I said on the about page, The Bourne Identity is one of my favourite books. It is so unlike the movie adaption that even if you have seen all three movies and think you know how it will turn out, you don't. In The Bourne Identity, the protaganist, Jason Bourne, is near death when found by an alcoholic doctor named Washburn. He is slowly nursed back to health by Washburn, but he cannot remember anything that happend to him before he awoke on Port Noir, the island where Washburn lives. After Bourne is well enough to leave the island, he tries to do the only thing that really matters to him: discover his identity. Throughout the novel he suspects that he is actually an assassin, but the woman he loves (named Marie St. Jacques, although the similarities to her character in the book and in the movie end at the name.) never gives up on her belief that he is a good person. In addition to being chased by another assassin, Bourne is hunted by members of the elusive 'Treadstone Seventy-One', who believe that he has turned and is now working for their enemies, whoever they are.
This novel is a rather difficult one for people who aren't at least a little familiar with basic spy jargon, but if you can persist through it's five-hundred thirty pages of deep, intense plot (and if you read past the first few chapters, you'll want to), the conclusion will all make sense, regardless of how much language you understood.
Over all, I give this book a 5/5 rating, and definately recommend it to those who may have tastes in literature that are similar to mine.
