MY EYES DRIFTED OUT THE WINDOW, DOWN TO THE ROAD BELOW

- Micheal Crichton might have been kind of a pseudo-science hack, but he wrote some pretty entertaining stuff. Evidence of this: his novel Next, the last he published before he died. I'm about a third of the way through it, and I'm digging it so far. Some of the scientific descriptions can be overly dry at points but there's generally enough movement to keep things interesting and fast-paced. In fact, this could make a really good movie or TV mini-series, if someone were willing to invest the large amount of money that would be needed to make that happen. I've always liked the off-the-cuff feel of Crichton's work, it feels like he's just taking ideas and issues he wants to talk about and wrapping a fast-paced thriller around them (in this case, it's genetic testing); he feels authentic passion for his subject matter, even if the way he presents it is very pulpy. Of course, the standard complaints about Crichton all apply: there's a lot of assumed logic and leaps of faith in terms of storytelling, he can't write female characters for crap, he can be overly verbose and his prose style is intensely hokey. Also, I could do without the graphic sex scenes. Still, I'm liking it a lot more than I liked State of Fear and it's about as good as Prey, thus far.

- Cell is a pretty good Stephen King book. Even if it does remind me a lot of the beginning part of The Stand. There's not a whole lot I can say about it though; it's a interesting story hook and King fleshes it out enough to keep you going. Really, everybody likes at least some of the things King has written, so, I just need to say it's a good Stephen King book and that's all that really needs to be said.

- Our school's REACH team had a tournament today, we won two of our games and lost one game by ten points.

- I don't want to be all "Woe is me!" but I am sort of sad that I'll be spending Valentine's Day alone. It's no big deal though, I guess, I've got my James Patterson romance novel and my stuffed Hershey's rabbit to keep me company, I'll be good.

- Finally, because I promised to write this: MR. OAKES IS A COOL DUDE.