Analysis: The Scarecrow

I'll admit, I'm not really a "music person." Music just isn't a very big part of my life. I can't just sit around and listen to it-- that gets boring fast. I need to actually be visually doing something to keep myself from getting bored, so music tends to end up as background music for me. Though that's probably because I don't listen to dance music. Or pop music. Pop music is a scourge that must be purged from this world. But I digress. My point is that I'm not a music person, but that doesn't mean that there isn't music I like. In fact, there is music I love. I am a metal fan. To be more specific, I enjoy power and symphonic metal (for those of you unfamiliar with metal, there are many subgenres, and the fans of each subgenre can be downright vicious toward each other). One album in particular strikes a chord with me. It's a rock opera. Or a metal opera I guess. In fact, it's the first part of a trilogy. I just love the whole thing. I love how it sounds, and I love the story it tells. It's a very personal and very relatable story. It's a story that I can really sympathize with, and no matter how many times I listen to the album, it always manages to get me emotionally. That album is The Scarecrow by Avantasia.

Review: Hamlet's Father

Sometimes you hear about a work of fiction so outrageously insane, so utterly stupid, that you know that you would never forgive yourself if you passed up the chance to experience it. Call this phenomenon what you like: bile fascination, a simple love of so-bad-it's-good-cheesiness, The Room Syndrome... For some unfathomable reason, psychologists don't seem to have gotten around to assigning it an actual term. But I'm beating around the bush. You see, some months ago, I read a review of a novella, written by respected Sci-Fi author Orson Scott Card. It was a re-imagining of Hamlet and was printed in a collection of four stories called The Ghost Quartet. Well, I have finally gotten around to reading this... fascinating... piece of literature. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: "Hamlet's Father.