Even so, a lot of people showed up. Family, friends, the landlady, NYPD officers. I always knew that my father was well-loved, but the huge turnout surprised me. I rode with my mother and my aunt in a limo provided by the funeral home. Officers in dress uniforms flanked the front entrance, and men in uniforms stood gathered in the building among the friends and family. I met many people there whom I haven't seen in years, from distant cousins to family friends I'd grown up with who, sadly, had went their separate ways as they matured into independent adults.

It was, of course, a somber occasion, but the service was also marked by upbeat gospel singing and funny anecdotes shared by Father's loved ones. My niece, Shanti, gave a particularly wonderful speech about the time she'd spent with her grandfather. My brother Jameson read a letter, written by his wife and children, so they could express their feeling despite not being able to attend.

Father was one of the few people who believed in my abilities as a writer from the very beginning. When we first moved into this house, he introduced me to the landlord and landlady as "my son, the writer." He read my work enthusiastically, and at one point even tried to pitch it to a friend who works for the Fox network. For this reason I decided that it was only right that I put those skills to use in honoring his memory. I wrote an elegy, which was printed on the back of the funeral program, and I requested the honor of being the one to deliver his eulogy.

No one I spoke to seemed to know the difference between an elegy, a eulogy, and an obituary. For this reason the funeral director expected me to recite the poem, and instead I gave a speech. I was then called back to the podium to read the elegy as well. Anyone who knows me is aware that crowds and I don't mix. On a good day I have social anxiety and stumble when I am forced to deal with more than one or two people at once. On a bad day I am agoraphobic and don't even want to leave the house. So standing up and delivering a speech was the last thing anyone seriously expected me to do. My mother was afraid that I'd choke on stage, or get cold feet and refuse to deliver the speech.

Neither of those things happened. There is a time and a place for one's personal baggage, and my father's funeral was neither of those things. This was about him, not me. To be perfectly honest, delivering the speech was easy. It didn't matter what the audience thought because I was not talking to them. I was talking to my father, and expressing my feelings to him.

The speech and the poem went over far, far better than I expected. While speaking I got nods and a nostalgic laugh or two, followed by applause. After the services people came up to me and said that they had no idea that I was such a talented writer. Some people asked if I was a poet. I told them that I write fiction and normally don't do poetry, and they said that I should. A relative asked if, many years from now, I would eulogize at his funeral. My writing was the talk of the occasion. I know my father would have been proud.

For the first time in my entire life I was publicly acknowledged as a writer. I think this was my father's final gift to me: the validation I had always sought, even though I myself never fully realized that I was seeking it. I realize now that this isn't some farfetched dream of mine, it is reality. I am a writer, no matter what happens. This has solidified my desire to be the writer my father always knew I am. When my first book is published, it will be dedicated to him.

An NYPD color guard rendered honors and saw my father's casket to the hearse. Police cars escorted the funeral procession; again I rode in the limo with my mother and my aunt. We were each given a rose, with the option of keeping it as a memory or laying them on his grave. I decided to give Father my rose; I do not need an object to remind me of him.

My mother wept as we returned home. My work here is not yet finished. For the past year I had been helping to take care of my dying father, and now I will be there for my mother and help her come to grips with the loss of her husband. At the same time I will continue my work, get my book published, and finally have my dream. This time I am no longer doing this only for myself.

Rest in peace, Dad.

As a result, it's only within the past few years that I've had the opportunity to really play games on my computer, to actually use the much talked about mouse and keyboard controls and experience the often vaunted superior graphics and sophistication that PC gamers love to point out. Well, it's been three years and I've played many games. Frankly, I am not impressed.

One of the first things I did once I set up my then new computer and configured it to my liking was open a Steam account. A quick check of my Steam library reveals that I currently own 75 games in total. The funny part is that I probably will never play most of them. I'd bought most of those games in a kind of frenzy. Awed by the vastness of the gaming pastures that stretched out before me, and wooed by the cheap prices of Steam's holiday sales, I snatched up any game that interested me. I could not believe my good fortune. I was ready to declare, then and there, that the PC was now my platform of choice.

Then the honeymoon phase passed and I began to ask certain questions. "Sure these games are pretty," I thought to myself, "but are they $1200 worth of pretty? Would I be willing to shell out hundreds more dollars in order to maintain this relative level of prettiness in the future?" To answer this question I consulted my wallet. It stared at me with a downtrodden expression, pining for the days when I'd occasionally have money to put in it, and calmly said "ARE YOU INSANE?"

Finding myself low on funds with which to buy games while simultaneously saving for a new video card, I inevitably fell to the dark side. Thus began a whole new honeymoon phase where I pirated games. This did not last long. Eventually I had an attack of conscience when I realized that I had just been contributing to one of the negative factors of PC gaming that make it a less desirable platform in the eyes of developers. Oh, and there was that whole feeling guilty for stealing thing as well. So my Steam library grew as I began buying the games I'd stolen previously as a form of penance.

As time went on I began to wonder what exactly I was getting out of the PC gaming experience that I couldn't also get on my Xbox 360. I began looking for ways to differentiate my playing experience and came up pretty dry. Some games support mods, assuming that either the developer made modding tools available or some clever players found a way to do it on their own. The problem with mods, though, is that I hardly ever use them for anything more than cosmetic purposes on my first play through. When I first play a game like Fallout 3 I want to experience it as it is, so mods don't become relevant to me until I've already beaten the vanilla game and want to play it again. Considering all the games on my plate, I hardly have the time to replay any given game.

"But PC gaming is so much more pure!" I've been told. "The mouse and keyboard is the best gaming interface ever; so much better than the clumsy, unintuitive, inaccurate controllers!"

I could never, for the life of me, feel comfortable playing computer games with a mouse and keyboard. I can certainly use them, but after nursing my cramped fingers after an hour or so I start yearning for the ease of a controller. In fact, if a PC game supports a controller I use that by default. I consider the wired Xbox 360 controller to be the best PC gaming purchase I've ever made. My freakishly large hands thanked me for no longer having to have their fingers cramped over the WASD keys and stretched at odd angles to perform basic actions. "Want to use that shotgun you just picked up?" my PC shooter asks me. "Well too bad because now you have enemies shooting at you and that weapon is designated to the 7 key. Good luck reaching that without getting your head blown off, you loser!"

When using a mouse and keyboard it feels less like I'm playing a game and more like I'm operating a jet fighter without having had the required training. I find myself going to the pause menu to be reminded of which key does what, and heaven help me if I stop playing a game for a month or so and come back later. While I will agree that a mouse is more accurate than an analog stick for aiming down the grey muzzle of your gun and peering through the brown landscape at generic identical bad guy clone number 476, I'm just not having any fun while doing it. I'll take a small hit to overall accuracy if it means I actually get to enjoy splattering said bad guy's brain matter all over the wall in a spray of fine red mist.

Overall it's the keyboard part of mouse and keyboard I have an issue with. That and the fact that I likes me some rumble, and they've yet to invent a vibrating keyboard. A controller is an unobtrusive interface; after a while I hardly notice it's even there. I just think about performing an action and muscle memory does the rest. With a mouse and keyboard I'm constantly reminded of the interface and have to take a split second to think about how to do what I want to do. This can be a death sentence in a heated firefight where the difference between life and death can be measured in fractions of seconds.

Then there are the other problems. Namely, the fact that when I buy a new game for my PC it's a tossup if it will even work. You have to bow your head as the game installs and offer up a prayer to the PC gaming gods that your game will function without errors when you're finally allowed to run it. I must have angered the PC gaming gods--possibly by reciting my prayer wrong or leaving an unsuitable sacrifice on their sacred altar--because half the time I find myself on the troubleshooting sections of PC gaming forums trying to figure out how to get the bloody thing to run properly. There always seems to be some bug or incompatibility that conspires to keep me from the game.

Even when the game does work a part of me is afraid it's going to crash at any given moment, because it usually does. Just a few weeks ago I was merrily playing Dragon Age 2 and it crashed several times in the space of 30 minutes, and not just a normal crash where you can simply start the game again. No, it was a system-killing crash which meant I had to reboot my machine each time it happened.

Overall I'm just not into PC gaming, regardless of how much more precise the mouse and keyboard is or how much more sophisticated the games are. Though, from my experience, I'd replace the word "precise" with "convoluted" and "sophisticated" with "needlessly obtuse".

The PC is also the only platform where I've bought a game and was told that I'm not allowed to play it because the DRM is malfunctioning and locked me and hundreds of other purchasers out of the game. Granted that was sorted out a few days later, but while that was being fixed I slinked back to my console. The simplicity and trouble-free access came as a relief. It was a breath of fresh air in a place that had previously stank of bugs, driver updates, compatibility issues, and system crashes.

Well at least I got to chuckle when I realized that I was being treated like a thief now that I was legally purchasing all my games, by a piece of anti-piracy software that the actual pirates bypass faster than a porn star's underpants.

And before anyone says I'm just being an ignorant console fanboy, I will be the first to point out that console gaming isn't without its problems either. My currently 4th Xbox 360 can attest to that while it regales you with the tales of the deaths that befell its predecessors. The first had a broken disc drive, the second had its GPU fried, and the third came down with a good old fashioned case of the Red Ring of Death. I'll give Microsoft some credit; their hardware may break down all the time, but at least it does so with some variety.

So what are you waiting for? Pay whatever you want, get some fantastic games, and support charity! Why are you still reading this? GO! BUY! NOW!

Xtazy energy drink is a guarana-based energy drink which, in a decided break from energy drink conventions, comes in 3 distinct flavors instead of just one. It also utilizes some unique ingredients to further set it apart from the competition. All of the available varieties offer a smooth taste with no aftertaste to speak of.

Orange Blast is my least favorite of the three. It's surprisingly bland and flavorless, bitter, and tastes almost nothing like oranges.

Cranberry Blast is sweet and syrupy, with a pleasant touch of cranberry flavor.

Lime Blast offers a smooth citrus lime flavor reminiscent of Fresca and similar beverages. Overall, this flavor is my favorite of the three.

While by no means potent, Xtazy does provide a good boost of energy and noticeably increases focus and awareness. This is a good drink to choose if you need to write, study, or perform any task which requires focused thought.

Overall this is a good choice, both in terms of taste and effectiveness.

Two years after his battle with the Lord of Demons, Seyonne is tired, troubled, angry, and frustrated. As Ezzaria's only remaining Warden, he carries the entire burden of the worsening demon war on his shoulders, and some Ezzarian elders have set a watch on him to make sure he has not brought some subtle corruption back from his years in slavery. Then a demon encounter unlike any in Ezzarian memory leads Seyonne to question everything he has ever believed. And his search for a demon-possesed child becomes the search for his own soul and the soul of his people.

Whenever I read a novel I consider to be outstanding I am hesitant to read its sequel. This is because sequels to good books tend to disappoint, especially in comparison to the first. This is especially true of fantasy, a genre with no shortage of sequels and trilogies. So, in my opinion, the true measure of an author is not whether he or she can write a good first book, but whether he or she can write a sequel without screwing it up.

I am happy to say that Revelation truly is a worthy sequel to its predecessor. Taking place a few years after the first book, the story follows Seyonne once again as he struggles to settle back into his old life as a Warden of Ezzaria. However, his own people are all too happy to turn against him at the first opportunity, and early in the book he is banished from his profession and shunned by the very people he'd heroically saved in book one. Seyonne then goes on a quest to investigate the true history behind the war between the Ezzarians and the mysterious Rai-Kirah, a search that leads him to some shocking discoveries.

This books sees the return of the first book's beloved characters and introduces some new ones. Among them is Fiona, a fanatical Ezzarian with a deep resentment for Seyonne who is sent to spy on him, and Blaise, an enigmatic outlaw with outlandish powers. Also making a return are the Rai-Kirah, who play a much larger role in this book than they did in the last one.

While not quite matching the first book in terms of attention-grabbing plot twists, this volume is no slouch. My only real criticism would be that Revelation sheds some of the first book's uniqueness in favor of some more tried-and-true fantasy conventions, such as the "ancient prophecy" plot device. But this is only a minor gripe at best. Revelation does what it sets out to do, and that is more that can be said for many books in the fantasy genre.

Overall, if you enjoyed the first book you'll enjoy the second. Definitely check it out if you happen to see it on the shelf. It's one of those sequels which can be read and enjoyed by itself even if you haven't read the first book.

Shock-A-Lots are, in a nutshell, M&Ms for caffeine addicts. They're coffee beans covered in chocolate and coated with a yellow candy shell. Yes, they are whole coffee beans, as in put-in-a-grinder-and-brew coffee beans. This may sound weird to some, and mouth-wateringly tantalizing to others.

Each candy contains roughly 20-22mgs of caffeine, so about 5-6 of these puppies are equal to 1 cup of coffee. Considering that one "serving", as defined on the package, is about a dozen of these, you can imagine the kind of fun that can be had eating these. Why take No Doze when you can have these?

So how do they taste? Surprisingly good, actually! The chocolate (which also has caffeine in it) is rich, and the beans are pleasantly flavorful. I had no trouble eating a dozen of these. My only real complaint is that the beans tend to be a little chalky, but I doubt the makers of this candy can do much about that.

They get the job done, they're convenient, and they taste great. Overall I can easily see this candy becoming a staple in my caffeine diet.

Seyonne is a man waiting to die. He has been a slave for sixteen years, almost half his life, and has lost everything of meaning to him: his dignity, the people and homeland he loves, and the Warden's power he used to defend an unsuspecting world from the ravages of demons. Seyonne has made peace with his fate. With strict self-discipline he forces himself to exist only in the present moment and to avoid the pain of hope or caring about anyone. But from the moment he is sold to the arrogant, careless Prince Aleksander, the heir to the Derzhi Empire, Seyonne's uneasy peace begins to crumble. And when he discovers a demon lurking in the Derzhi court, he must find hope and strength in a most unlikely place...

After a long stint of reading dull, cliched, and downright boring novels, Transformation came to me like a breath of fresh air. It was one of those books I simply couldn't bring myself to put down. I spent hours devouring the pages, eager to know what happens next. I know I'm reading a good book when I get physically annoyed at interruptions because I don't want to stop reading.

The two main characters---the slave, Seyonne, and Aleksander, prince and heir to the Derzhi empire---are one of the most dynamic pairings I've ever encountered in a fantasy novel. By themselves they are pretty ordinary: a bitter slave who has given up all hope in the world, and a spoiled brat of a prince who's not above utterly destroying people in the throes of a royal temper tantrum. However, the interaction between the two is very unique and really makes the novel shine.

As the story progresses a real bond develops between Aleksander and Seyonne. At first they are merely master and slave, then they become bound by oath and necessity, then by their mutual need for survival, until finally they reach such depths of friendship and trust that each would happily give his life for the other. The growth and development of this relationship alone is worth the price of admission.

The plot deepens to involve conspiracies, demon possession, and an immanent coup d'etat planned by one of the empire's allies who have a hidden agenda. There is also a lot more to Seyonne's past---who he was before he became a slave---than one immediately realizes. The pacing is near-perfect. Never once did I feel that things were going on too fast or too slowly. You are always hooked with the promise that something interesting is going to happen soon, and rarely does this book fail to deliver on that promise.

If you're looking for a good fantasy novel to pass the time with, I highly recommend checking out Transformation.

The land of Alagaesia is suffering under the Empire of the wicked Galbatorix, and Eragon and his dragon Saphira, last of the Riders, are the only hope. But Eragon is young and has much to learn, and so he is sent off to the elven forest city of Ellesmera, where he and Saphira are tutored in magic, battle skills, and the ancient language by the wise former Rider Oromis and his elderly dragon Glaedr. Meanwhile, back at Carvahall, Eragon's home, his cousin Roran is the target of a siege by the hideous Ra'zac, and he must lead the villagers on a desperate escape over the mountains. The two narratives move toward a massive battle with the forces of Galbatorix, where Eragon learns a shocking secret about his parentage and commits himself to saving his people.

When Paolini's second novel, Eldest was released I was one of the first people to buy it, curious to see how time and experience have shaped the author's ability to give life to his imaginings. Having one novel under his belt and the opportunity to learn from the mistakes in his first book, which the author must be aware of if he reads any of his own press, there was a lot of potential for real improvement in the second novel over the first.

Overall, however, Eldest merely delivers more of the same with little, if any, improvement. The writing itself is as dry as before, and the dialogue still suffers the problem of being proper to the point of sounding mechanical, lacking any real personality. This is evidenced by how we have country farmers who'd never lived outside their village their whole lives talking with the kind of proper speech patterns you'd expect from more learned characters, such as scholars or nobility. In fact, everyone seems to talk like that, no matter who they are. The only instance in which there is any deviance in the dialogue comes from the sailors, who talk in typical cliched sailor-speak.

Eldest is quite a bit longer than its predecessor, and most of this time is spent in the forest of the elves, where the details of Eragon's training in the ways of a Rider are gone over in nauseatingly drawn-out detail. Eragon has the whole Luke Skywalker thing going for him, with his mentor being his Master Yoda. Eragon spends much of his time debating the finer points of the meaning of war and life and existence, and at some points the author chooses to preach on about the virtues of agnosticism and vegetarianism. At some points I felt like I was reading a philosophy textbook, and not all readers would appreciate being preached to about the moral rightness of choosing not to eat meat.

One significant departure Eldest makes from its predecessor is that the story no longer revolves entirely around Eragon. His cousin, Roran, also takes up the mantle of "main character," and has an entire story arc all his own. This helps relieve some of the tedium, as the arc changes from Eragon's story to Roran's story, and back again, right when I'm getting sick of the current character. But this is simply not enough to compensate for the crushing boredom that is prevalent in both stories. As if realizing how dull the book was becoming, near the end Paolini throws in a battle between two armies and reveals the most significant plot twists in the book. However, at that point it was simply too little, too late. The damage had already been done.

Overall I would only recommend this book to readers who are extraordinarily interested in finding out what happens to Eragon after book one.

Shadow dreamed of nothing but leaving prison and starting a new life. But the day before his release, his wife and best friend are killed in an accident. On the plane home to the funeral, he meets Mr. Wednesday, a beguiling stranger who seems to know everything about him. A trickster and rogue, Mr. Wednesday offers Shadow a job as his bodyguard. With nowhere left to go, Shadow accepts, and soon learns that his role in Mr. Wednesday's schemes will be far more dangerous and dark than he could have ever imagined. For beneath the placid surface of everyday life a war is being fought, and the prize is the very soul of America.

American Gods was a mixed bag for me. It has a very ambitious storyline filled with thought-provoking concepts and memorable characters, which, in the end, turns out to be as much a weakness as it is a strength.

There are many parts of the story that fire the imagination; some scenes I'd even go so far as to call transcendent. The characters are, for the most part, what I call "humanly flawed" in that they act like real flesh-and-blood people and not automatons reciting dialogue. The entire concept of the storyline is what I'd call brilliant. When so many cultures commingle in a single land (America), what happens to their gods? It's a strong foundation with which to construct a story.

But writing an ambitious story is like building a house of cards. If even one card is out of alignment the entire structure will collapse, or, if you keep building it too much, the structure could fall under its own mass.

All the good parts of American Gods seem to be counterbalanced with flaws. Namely, a fluctuating pace. Some parts go by quick and smoothly while others drag on to the point of tedium. For example, there are several points when Gaiman breaks away from the storyline entirely to tell mini-stories with characters you'll only see once in circumstances that have nothing to do with what's currently happening in the plot. The book would be a lot better overall if these sections alone were cut out.

And then there's the main character, who is the least believable of the entire cast. Shadow, the protagonist, lacks many of the characteristics which make all the other characters memorable. Throughout the story he takes everything with a kind of cold detachment, as if absolutely nothing affects him. From the death of loved ones to walking, talking gods waging war in the American landscape, to being transported into alternate dimensions beyond space and time. Its simply unbelievable that he could take all the things that happened to him so lightly. He always seems to know exactly the right thing to do in any given situation, and its made clear that everything happening in the story revolves around him. In other words, Shadow is a Mary Sue.

American Gods also has a very anti-climactic ending. While the story begins well, and there are many hooks and unexpected twists and turns along the way, the ending left me scratching my head thinking, "that's it?" Not to give away anything in the plot, but don't expect much to come of the "storm" that is "coming" or you'll be ultimately disappointed.

Overall American Gods is a worthwhile read. While not the timeless classic I was expecting, it did succeed in delivering an entertaining and thoughtful experience.

In the little town of Palomo Grove, two great armies are amassing; forces shaped from the hearts and souls of America. In this New York Times bestseller, Barker unveils one of the most ambitious imaginative landscapes in modern fiction, creating a new vocabulary for the age-old battle between good and evil. Carrying its readers from the first stirring of consciousness to a vision of the end of the world, The Great and Secret Show is a breathtaking journey in the company of a master storyteller.

Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show is a very ambitious work that is too convoluted for its own good.

I found the narratives to be extraordinarily dry and long-winded. It takes Barker forever to get to the point. This is one of those books where I feel you could easily edit out a third of its pages without affecting the story, and end up with a much tighter work.

However, Clive Barker has one of the most singularly unique imaginations of any author I've ever encountered. I very much enjoyed the concepts presented in this book, I just feel they could have been presented better.

Overall, I can't honestly rate this book much higher than average. Not for lack of good ideas, but for sheer long-windedness. This is the kind of book that makes you feel smarter for having read it, but leaves you with no great desire to ever read it again.

A recent article about Pixar tells the story of how their first movie, Toy Story, almost didn't make it past the Disney execs' slush pile. To quote the article:

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"as Pixar celebrated the 10th anniversary of "Toy Story", its debut film, the creative minds behind the studio for the first time told the real story of how they almost lost the picture. Not only did the big-money folks at Disney who bankrolled the film not understand the vision of "Toy Story,'' they hated it so much they shut down production."
---

This is one of many examples of why I have always advocated the freedom of artistic expression, of creating the things you want to make, which are not always what businessmen may think is profitable, and why I say that advice isn't necessarily good advice just because an editor said it. One thing I am fond of saying is "when everyone writes what sells, nobody is writing anything good." On the surface that sentence may seem like the ramblings of a frustrated writer, but there is logic behind it.

Progress is achieved by those who are not afraid to do something different. In narrow-minded business thought, "different" is unprofitable (it's true everyone is looking for innovation but too many places are only looking for what they deem the "right," meaning lowest-risk, innovation), which is why many of the creative community's greatest achievements had to go through a trial-by-fire in the form of editors and execs concerned with the bottom line.

Here I will give some famous examples. A manager named Brian Epstein was trying to get a contract for a band he represented. He approached Decca records, where he met a man named Dick Rowe who had this to say to him: "Go back to Liverpool Mr. Epstein, groups with guitars are out!"

You may have heard of the band in question. They were the Beatles.

A young man who worked for a newspaper was once told by his editor that he should forget about a career doing anything creative because he "lacked ideas."

That young man was Walt Disney.

The movie Jaws was rejected by 20th Century Fox. They said it would only make a mediocre TV movie. Star Wars was rejected by Universal Studios, who said that the movie audience wasn’t interested in "antiquated Buck Rogers comic books".

Can you imagine how the world would be if people like these just gave up when they were rejected? If George Lucas had left his script for Star Wars unfinished, condemning it to fester in his closet? If Walt Disney had resigned himself to menial work instead of doing what he loved? If the Beatles had put down their guitars and got "real jobs" instead? It doesn't take a psychic to say that the world would be a far less interesting place.

Take any "helpful" advice with a grain of salt, no matter who it comes from. Stephen King once wrote this on the subject of taking editorial advice:

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"Show your piece to a number of people - ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story - a plot twist that doesn't work, a character who rings false, stilted narrative, or half a dozen other possibilities - change that facet. It doesn't matter if you really liked that twist of that character; if a lot of people are telling you something is wrong with your piece, it is. If seven or eight of them are hitting on that same thing, I'd still suggest changing it. But if everyone - or even most everyone - is criticizing something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say."
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Now, more than ever, the creative world is in need of innovators. The current statistics paint a picture of jaded consumers who are seemingly uninterested in the stories and movies presented to them. I do not believe this is true because when something truly fantastic is released nothing on Earth can keep movie goers out of theaters, or fiction fans out of bookstores (think Star Wars Episode 3 and Harry Potter 6).

It's not the consumers who have lost their passion, it's the writers. With Hollywood churning out the same formulaic crap every month you can understand why movie goers seem jaded. When you've read the umpteenth story about an intrepid group of adventurers setting out to save the world from an ancient evil you can understand why some people say fantasy is a dead genre.

This current ultra-competitive, sink or swim marketplace is the result of a self-fulfilling prophesy. You cannot blame companies for erring on the side of caution, given the great amounts of money involved in the production of a movie and the printing of a book. However, the intrinsic problem in all this caution is that the majority of people are now afraid to take risks, of doing anything that may rock the boat. This kind of environment is like a straightjacket on true creativity. When companies choose to take the path most traveled in order to ensure security they neglect to notice that they are walking to the same place everyone else is, and by the time they reach their destination there may not be enough room for them in the marketplace anymore.

We need people who are willing to tread in unexplored territory and cut a path through for others to follow. We need people with the ability to take a thing that works and make it work better. We need weirdoes and eccentrics---the kind of people others tend to laugh at until they become successful. So whatever you do, never give up just because someone shook his head and said "no", or called you an idiot or said you have no talent.

In closing, there was once a writer who devoted her time to writing when she was not working as a teacher. She was very poor, raised a kid, and battled with depression. Her completed manuscript was rejected by several publishers before it was finally printed.

That writer was J.K. Rowling.

Budweiser Extra, which also goes by the tragic moniker "B to the E" is an incredibly lame and pathetic attempt by Anheuser-Busch to appeal to a younger audience.

Apparently the company views the popularity of Red Bull and vodka to be a real threat. After all, for every Red Bull and vodka sold, a beer is not sold. Thus this drink, which tries to be a beer and an energy drink at the same time, and fails at both.

Bud Extra's taste can be best described as "beer esque," which is basically a polite way of saying that it tastes like stale piss-water. Not even a thorough chilling can make it even remotely enjoyable. I felt ripped off after tasting this, and if it weren't 97 degrees outside at the time I would have returned my remaining cans for a refund.

Beer that tastes this terrible should have a warning label attached. I never intend to buy this again, and I recommend that you stay away. This is a waste of money, water, hops, and aluminum.

Born the bastard son of a Welsh princess, Myridden Emrys -- or as he would later be known, Merlin -- leads a perilous childhood, haunted by portents and visions. But destiny has great plans for this no-man's-son, taking him from prophesying before the High King Vortigern to the crowning of Uther Pendragon ... and the conception of Arthur -- king for once and always.

The Crystal Cave is a classic Arthurian story which, despite its slow, dragging pace, is a gripping and highly enjoyable tale.

Myridden Emrys, who would later be known as Merlin the Magician, is a surprisingly engrossing character. He starts off as a lonely, insecure, generally-despised bastard child and ends up as an infamous prophet, equally admired and feared by the kingdom. He is a socially awkward intellectual, as well as a classic loner.

The story follows Merlin's life from childhood, all the way up to the fateful day when King Uther and Lady Ygraine together conceive King Arthur. Everything in between is one engrossing drama after another.

One complaint is that the pace is rather slow. It takes some time for anything really important to happen, and quite a few inconsequential details tend to get dragged out longer than is warranted.

Overall a satisfying read for lovers of fantasy, especially those who are interested in Arthurian legend.

A speech made at a Stanford University graduation by CEO and Founder of Apple Computers and Pixar Animations, Steve Jobs. My opinion of the guy completely changed after reading this. I think anyone who has ever taken a risk on following a dream should read this.