Lauren's blog

Last Blog

2007-11-30T21:56:00.001-08:00

Yay! My last blog. I am so glad that this moment has finally arrived. Finding time to blog has been really difficult for me. I usually work on school work till late at night and at that time I am too tired to even think about blogging and I usually don’t feel like I have anything to write 500 words about. I actually enjoyed reading other peoples blogs but I didn’t really have a lot of time to do that either because on the days that I did blog that came first priority and after writing a 500 word blog I was usually half asleep and didn’t feel like I could comment on anyone else’s blog.
I think that I could have enjoyed this blogging assignment more if it was less demanding. When we originally had to blog each day I felt like that was impossible. I really don’t have that many interesting things to say every day and I certaintly don’t think that anything remotely interesting that I could think of deserves 500 words to be written about it. Also, having to write 500 words a day left little time to intelligently comment or even read other people’s blogs. Since I was always trying to make up at least 500 words about something my blogs ended up being kind of crappy. I think that if we had been required to do less words each day or maybe even had less blogs to do, I would have been able to actually write good blogs and to read everyone else’s blogs. The three blogs a week was much more manageable but still that 500 word requirement messed me up. Had less words been required I think that my subject matter and actual quality of writing would have been stronger. As it happened the only thing that I really feel like I can say a lot about is myself so that’s really what I ended up talking about. I think that if we had maybe had a minimum requirement of 200 words per blog but were required to write one 500 word blog that was really good each week then I could have done really well. I could have been thinking about what to do my big blog about during the week and then produced something good near the end of the week.
In spite of my blog problems, I really enjoyed this English class. I feel like I learned a lot about how to approach a text and look for meaning in it. This whole idea of valuing the meaning and focusing on concepts instead of the facts and plot in a story was so different from high school. I am so glad that we didn’t have any quizzes about plotline or the authors. This really helped me to focus on what the author was trying to say instead of being worried about remembering exactly what he said so I could do well on a quiz. While I found the essays we had to write challenging, I actually enjoyed thinking about the things that we had to write about. Anyway, with all that said I think that this was a great class to take during my first semester of college.

me and music

2007-11-30T21:55:00.002-08:00

Ok, so heres something weird about me. I don’t like to listen to music. I know, that sounds so strange but since I really cant think of anything else to blog about I am going to go ahead and explain my feelings about music.
First of all, I am not opposed to all music. I actually do enjoy listening to classical music on occasion and I love to listen to Sam play the guitar and sing. I think that I like to listen to classical music because I can really see how that can be a form of art. The way that the instruments go together and the different emotions that can be expressed in the music seem so beautiful to me whereas other kinds of music, pretty much the kinds that have words, doesn’t seem to have as much complexity or just plain beauty involved. I think that I also like to listen to classical music because it doesn’t have words. In most music that has lyrics, your emotions or train of thought is somewhat dictated, and in classical music your mind is free to wander and you can typically find many different emotions expressed in the piece and your own mood can dictate how your feelings compliment the piece. I guess another reason why I find classical music enjoyable to listen to is that I can just have it on in the background while I work or read and it doesn’t really contradict the activities that I am doing. Because there aren’t any lyrics you can listen to classical music either actively or passively and you can easily forget about the music if you get absorbed in something else. The thing that bothers me about music with words is that I am incapable of just not listening to the words, for some reason my brain wont let go of the words or the song if its playing and I end up feeling like I am only half paying attention to whatever it is that I am doing. The only music with words that I really like to listen to is songs that Sam plays and I think that this is probably because I love him so much and almost everything he does seems wonderful to me. I think he has an amazing voice and I just like to watch him playing the guitar and singing.
I know I said at the beginning of this blog that I didn’t like to listen to music and after my description of the value in classical music and in Sam’s music ya’ll are probably thinking that I pretty much lied at the beginning. Well now I'm going to explain that rather strong statement. I don’t really ever think of listening to music on my own. Usually I’ll decide to turn on some classical music if I hear my brother playing his music really loud and I want to drown out the noise, that doesn’t really happen anymore though since I don’t live at home, or if Sam calls and tells me he’s listening to a specific piece that I like or occasionally if I am reading and the words from the page are echoing in my head. I'm not sure how to explain the echo thing but it really annoys me and classical music helps to drown out my brains emphasis on the words and helps me absorb the meaning on the page. The thing is, I don’t listen to music unless I am doing something else and need to listen to something. I don’t know why this is, but I just really don’t enjoy listening to music just to listen to music. I don’t ever listen to the radio while I am driving. I actually enjoy silence. I like to hear myself think and a lot of the time when I am by myself and its quiet, like when I am driving, I talk to God. I feel like when everything is silent I can hear him better and I like the thought that He is with me when I am alone and I like thinking that I am sharing my thoughts with Him. Anyway, that’s my weird thing about music. For the first time in a really long time though I have been able to listen to music just to listen to it when Sam plays for me. Even though I absolutely love when Sam plays, my feelings concerning music in general have not changed at all.

useless stuff

2007-11-30T21:55:00.001-08:00

My room is filled with meaningless stuff. I am looking around me and I have realized that I can do without most of the things in my room. I have tons of stuff covering almost every surface of my room and it seems ridiculous. I don’t know why I felt like I had to buy all of these things. I have 3 different glass candy dishes that have snowflakes and Christmas trees and stuff like that on them so I can only use them in the winter. I also have a couple of non-seasonally decorated candy dishes that I can use year round so I really don’t see why I felt the need to buy these other candy dishes a while back. This is a pretty good example of all the stuff that is cluttering my room right now. Most of it is Christmas themed and I just recently put these little dishes and figurines and things out to replace the all year ones that I usually have cluttering my room. I seriously think that I have a problem about buying stuff. I go shopping a lot and I am usually pretty reasonable about purchasing clothes or food or toiletries. I tend to look for bargains and cut coupons, anything to save money, but when it comes to useless decorating things I go overboard. I have like thirty miniature ceramic shoes that I have purchased over the years and I have no use for them. Right now they are just sitting in a bowl on my dresser and I am wondering why on earth I spent so much money on them in the first place. I guess I thought they were really cute and I am obsessed with shoes but that still doesn’t explain why I had the strong urge to buy them. In general I am not very focused on material things, I tend to value experiences over stuff but I my discretion seems to disappear whenever I see a cute unnecessary item. I have twenty to thirty little pads of paper that are decorated with random things ranging from jewelry to birds. Why do I buy these things? What is wrong with me? I have never used these pads of paper and most of the decorating items that I buy just look stupid when I bring them home.
I honestly don’t value these things that I buy so I don’t know why I derive so much pleasure from purchasing them. I had the sudden urge to go shopping today and since I really have no money right now I decided that I would be safest going to Old Time Pottery, one of the cheapest home decorating stores ever, in hopes that I either wouldn’t find anything worth spending money on or that I whatever I became attached to wouldn’t cost very much money. For some reason, I really have no idea why right now, I fell in love with these cute little ornate nutcrackers. They were short and looked fat but they had beautiful clothes and didn’t look like the normal soldier nutcrackers. Somehow I managed to resist my impulse and I made it home without spending any money but even right now I am really wishing that I had purchased at least one of the nutcrackers. I can see that this idea is crazy. First of all where would I put it, it doesn’t exactly match my satiny and pink floral décor, and secondly its just a nutcracker, after I buy it I am going to forget about it and move on to something else. Still, even though I realize all of this, I want it.

lots of stress

2007-11-29T21:45:00.001-08:00

Right now Sam is snoring loudly in the chair next to me. We have a big calculus exam tomorrow and he fell asleep while he was studying. He was so tired today, I was really worried about him. He stayed up all night last night working on rewriting his synthesis essay which was originally really bad but after he rewrote it I think it sounds great. At least his all nighter proved fruitful. Anyway, Sam was so exhausted today that he could barely form complete sentences by the afternoon. His eyes were so blood shot that they looked almost completely red and he could barely even move. I really don’t see how Sam and I are going to make it through three more years of this without seriously crashing. We are working so hard to complete everything and we are so stressed about maintaining our scholarships that hardly ever do anything fun anymore. I know that this next semester will be even more challenging because Sam is going to be either interning at a small accounting firm or at first tenessee bank so that is going to require a lot of his time. I plan on working with this lady that I know who makes wedding cakes so I really shouldn’t be very stressed but its going to be hard for me just trying to help sam out with his work and still get my stuff done in time. I really think that something is going to have to change in order for us to get through this next semester. Either we are going to have to get a lot faster in completing our work or we are going to have to learn to care less about the grades that we make.

We are planning right now on getting married after our sophomore year so I really don’t know if that will make things easier or harder. Most of the adults that I know have been telling us that getting married will make things a lot harder but then again we have talked to some younger couples who say that they are really happy they decided to get married in college. I think that at least when we are married we will live together and share our finances and stuff like that so the difficulty in living separately and still spending all of our time together will disappear and we can start buying groceries and car insurance and stuff like that together instead of having separate bills for everything. I like to think that even though things will be difficult when we get married at least we’ll be a lot happier and have each other to share the burden with and talk to before we go to sleep about all the crappy stuff that’s going on. That really doesn’t fix our issues right now though so I don’t even know why I was thinking about that. Right now sam and I are so burnt out that I don’t even know how we are still functioning. Every weekend we make plans to go out and end up canceling them because we are too tired and simply want to relax and watch a movie. Typically we don’t even see the movie because we both fall asleep about ten minutes into it. I haven’t seen a movie all the way through in a really long time. Anyway, we are both really looking forward to this break and are hoping to come up with some ideas on how to get our work done faster so we can avoid being so exhausted and stressed next semester.

Cravings

2007-11-29T21:24:00.001-08:00

I tend to get really really obsessed with things. For some reason I get these urgent cravings for very specific foods and they last for weeks. Right now I’m experiencing my apple cider and hot chocolate cravings. I’m not craving apple cider mixed with hot chocolate but whats been happening is that I’ll drink some hot chocolate almost constantly for a couple of days and then I’ll suddenly hot chocolate and desperately want hot apple cider with wassail spices mixed into it. This is so weird. I really have no idea why I get into these phases and I think that this current one that I am in right now is probably one of my stranger cravings. I actually craved apple cider so badly last night that I ran out to the Kroger at 1 in the morning to buy some. I absolutely had to do this because I really felt like I wouldn’t be able to study anymore if I didn’t get any apple cider. Sam and I had to stay up all night last night working on some papers and other things so it was necessary that I be able to concentrate. Surprisingly enough after I drank the apple cider I was able to focus and I just blew through the rest of my work.

I had this same thing happen to me a while back with chocolate covered strawberries so I’m actually starting to think that there may be something wrong with me. I don’t know if it’s a mental thing or maybe I have some sort of deficiency that makes me get such strong cravings. I usually crave some thing with chocolate in it. I really only eat dark chocolate and I am actually so addicted to dark chocolate that I carry emergency chocolate around with me in my purse so that I wont ever have to suffer when I get those sudden cravings. I was at the Godiva store the other day and they have this new thing out that is a cute little tin that looks like it has mints in it but it is actually filled with little pearls of dark chocolate that you can pop into your mouth whenever you need to. So Ive actually been able to focus a lot better in class because of my new tin of dark chocolate pearls and this kind of scares me.

It seems really wrong that food should have such a big impact on how I perform academically. As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, I felt like I couldn’t do my work until I had the apple cider that I was craving and a lot of times when I am in class I will really feel like I cant take any more notes unless I have some chocolate or something. I think this is probably going to cause problems for me in the future so I guess I should try to take control of my cravings and not let them influence me so much. Im not really sure how to do that though. Now that I think about it, there really is no reason why I cant eat exactly what I want all the time. Sam says he likes to run out to the store at weird times to get me the food that I am craving so I guess if I can always get the food that I need then I am never going to have any major problems. Wow, I sound really spoiled maybe I need to seriously think about this craving thing, its making me very demanding.

thanksgiving eve

2007-11-29T21:04:00.001-08:00

I really cant think of anything else to blog about so I am going to write about the horrible day that sam and I had the Wednesday before thanksgiving. Ok, so we had arrived at my grandparents house in Hendersonville North Carolina at 9:00 Tuesday night with the idea that we would just stay up that night and finish up our synthesis essays. Well when we got there my grandmother had gone all out preparing this amazing dinner for us so we of course had to eat that and then my grandparents wanted to talk to us about school and our trip and our future plans over some tea and an incredible cake which my grandmother had made specifically for us. By the time we finished all that it was about 10:30 and since Sam and I had been driving all day and eaten a huge meal after already getting dinner on the road we were exhausted and couldn’t really even think straight. So after making plans to get up early the next morning and finish our papers by that afternoon, I made my way to my perfectly prepared bedroom and Sam was left to fend for himself with a bunch of sheets and a deflated air mattress in the basement.

For some reason neither of us thought to set any sort of alarm or anything that would ensure that we would actually get up early the next morning to finish our papers as planned so the next morning I woke up to the sun shining through my windows and some light flurries in the air and panicked. It was 11:30 and I quickly realized that there was no way our papers would be done before dinner now. I quickly trudged down to the freezing basement and woke up sam. In spite of our predicament we were both in a pretty good mood because of the cold snowy weather and the hot breakfast that my grandmother had prepared for us. After breakfast we began to work on our papers and quickly realized that my grandparents house was not the best place to study. Most of my relatives live in Hendersonville and for some reason everyone decided to come over to my grandparents house at the same time and talk like they hadn’t seen each other in years. Also, my grandparents don’t have wireless internet and they internet that they do have very rarely works. So sam and I realized that we wouldn’t get any work done at the house so we decided to go around town and try to find a place that had wireless internet.

Heres the part of the story where things begin to go down hill. Hendersonville is a very small town. Everyone knows each other and the most exciting thing that happened there recently was that some teenage “hoodlums” loosened the screws on some of the street signs on Main street and apparently caused a lot of confusion. So needless to say there really aren’t very many places that would have wireless internet. We found an amazing coffee place that we figured would have internet access but when we went inside they told us that they had turned off the internet because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Finally we were able to get internet in the Hendersonville public library and we spent the whole day there finishing up our papers. I finished mine at 7 when the library was closing but sam still had a lot of work to do so I decided not to put mine in the drop box until he could read over it and make corrections. So we went back to the house and Sam proceeded to work on his paper until 11:30 that night and just as he was finishing we realized that we had a huge problem.

The main problem was that we had no way of getting our papers off of my laptop and on to my grandparent’s computer. No one in the house had a flash drive or anything like that and most of my family was asleep anyway. The next big issue was that there was a huge thunder/hail storm going on outside and the power at my grandparents house began to flicker. I was able to send an e-mail to wendy on my grandparents computer saying that we were trying to find a way to submit our papers but after that the power went out. So at this point Sam and I were pretty much stuck. We didn’t really know how to proceed but we finally decided that we would drive around Main street (it really is the main street in hendersonville) and try to see if we could pick up any signal on my laptop. So we did this for a while in the pouring rain at midnight and after having no luck we decided to try some of the hotels in the area. Ok this is the absolute horrible part. Sam and I were both in our pajamas because we hadn’t thought things through and didn’t think we would have to get out of the car and we realized that we would have to go into these hotels and ask if they had internet because we couldn’t tell if the hotels did or not because the lights on the signs were out because of the storm. I think that the actual hotels must have had like emergency generators or something because they still had power. Anyway, we drove up to one place, parked and both of us ran in. Sam wanted to pull up to the door and let me run in to ask but I didn’t want to do that by myself so we both ended up getting soaked. As we walked into the hotel we must have looked pretty sketchy, especially to the old conservative Hendersonville people running the place. I mean my already somewhat threadbare pajamas were pretty much plastered to my soaking body and it was the middle of the night during a massive thunderstorm so we must have looked really strange. We asked the old lady working there if they had internet access and unfortunately they didn’t so we ran back to the car and drove to another hotel. This time we lucked out and were able to come inside and be stared at by the few hotel employees who happened to be in the lobby while we submitted our essays. Ok, I’d like to mention that at this time the dropbox had already closed and I couldn’t figure out how to submit the essay through ecourseware so I ended up emailing them to Wendy and making some lame sounding excuses about the weather and lack of internet access. Sam and I returned to my grandparents house absolutely soaked and had to stumble through the dark house (the power had finally gone out) and try to find some candles so we could at least see to get to our rooms. We finally did find some light and were able to dry off and go to sleep at last. I actually had an amazing Thanksgiving the next day but I don’t think ill ever forget driving frantically around Hendersonville in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm trying to find internet access.

A is like B

2007-11-29T19:03:00.001-08:00

Lip gloss is like crowds because lip gloss is sticky and when there are a bunch of people together, especially in hot weather, it can often seem kind of sticky. Also when you put on lip gloss you are putting on a kind of front, you are hiding your lips behind a shiny coat of gloss, and when people are in a crowd they often are slightly uncomfortable and tend to put up an altered front from their true self.

Hot weather causes shots. This is because there are many diseases that originate in hot climates and there also many diseases that are caused by bugs, like mosquitoes, which live in hot weather. It is in this way that sickness thrives in hot weather and because of this there is often a need for shots either to become immune to those diseases or to recover from those diseases.

My interpretive conclusion based on this list of what I like is that I come across sounding like a very materialistic person who isn’t really interested in anything important. Most of the things that I like can be purchased at the mall. Also, this list makes me sound lazy because aside form stuff I mainly listed things that are relaxing like taking a bubble bath or getting a facial.

Weird sentence story

2007-11-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

The sky turned black and a screaming wind began to blow. At this exact instance a shadow flickered over the dense trees in the last rays of the extinguished sun. the shadow materialized as the dark flacon sliding the prestigious kettle to his harsh owner. The contents of the kettle were deadly, no doubt, and, as the falcon flew to his master, drops of liquid and powder within the vessel splashed soundlessly to the nearing ground. Upon reaching his master, the falcon was received with humiliating neglect. His master wrenched the kettle from his talons much like an ostentatious bird runs a repulsive puppy. With the prize in his hand, the master shoved his noble feathered servant aside and prepared for his concoction. After preparing a thick gritty brew, the master set out to test his potion. He dropped a splash of the foul liquid into a small container of sand and dumped in a squirming slimy creature. In less than a second the serene litter box obliterated the bloody frog. The master smiled joylessly to himself. He knew that his scheme would work perfectly and his dreams would finally be realized. With a sharp dry laugh he thought to himself, “Finally, the pretty dog will saunter the pretty mile.”

from chemistry to wedding cakes

2007-11-27T22:40:00.000-08:00

All of my life I have wanted to be a chemical engineer. I know that sounds kind of strange and any one who knows me even the tiniest bit knows that I don’t seems like the kind of girl who would want to study chemistry. I don’t always come off as the most intelligent person, I really don’t know why, and so whenever I tell people what I plan on doing (well, planned actually) they look kind of surprised and confused and usually say something like “reaaaally” or “wow…..” Typically after I have floored someone with my admission that I love chemistry and math and would like nothing better than to work in those fields for the rest of my life I acknowledge that, yes, this is somewhat unusual and then answer the questions that these puzzled people seem to need answered. Usually I have to explain that I don’t really know exactly what I will be doing with my chemistry major and that no, I really don’t plan on teaching but that’s not entirely ruled out. I will then quickly change the topic to something much more normal in hopes of reassuring the person I have been talking to that I am not as crazy or unusual as I have just appeared to be.
I decided that I loved chemistry when I was really young, I think I was between kindergarten and second grade. I had asked for a microscope for Christmas and not only did my parents get me one but they also got me my own little lab set with all sorts of containers and color changing kid safe chemicals for me to play with. I had already had an easy bake oven for a couple of years now and I already loved to play around with mixing the ingredients in different quantities and examining the results. Right about now most of ya’ll reading this probably think that I am the biggest dork ever. Just so ya know, I wasn’t some little pale 7 year old who stayed inside all day playing with chemicals and recording data, I actually had a lot of friends and I looooved to shop even when I was that young so you can just tweak this whole geeky image you probably have of me by adding a cute pink cordurouy mini skirt and those chunky heels that they make for little kids, add a hot pink lab coat and a couple other equally decked out chatty little girls who have just returned from the mall and are anxious to sort through their purchases while that excruciatingly slow light bulb cooks the brownies they have just prepared. That pretty much describes me from the around first grade to eighth although I graduated from the easy bake oven to an actual kitchen and fake colorful chemicals to mainly home designed experiments. In highschool my interests changed very little although I did get more attached to chemistry after finally taking the class.
So now that I’ve described where my love originated I can move on to attempt to explain why it has recently mysteriously disappeared. The love that I have for chemistry and math is still present and has not diminished at all since I started college but my desire to involve those two interests in my future career has absolutely vanished. I have no idea why but I simply don’t want to be a chemical engineer anymore, I still find it fun to work with chemicals and I still greatly enjoy working through a complicated math equation but the drive to do that for the rest of my life just isn’t present. I have decided to change my major to foreign languages with a focus on Spanish simply because I like language and know that Sam plans on working with the banking systems in poor countries and other parts of the world so being multilingual could be extremely useful in that situation. All in all, though, my new major doesn’t represent my true passion, Wedding cake design. I know exactly what I want to do as a career, I want to design and create extravagant wedding cakes. This occupation may be even more random than my chemical engineering thing but I am so so interested in cake decorating. I have been interested in this art for a long time but just recently I have actually realized that I would like to wake up every morning and think, “I’m going to go make a beautiful cake.” I know this sounds really ditzy and probably shallow too and its sounds completely opposite to my interest in chemistry, but if you think about it baking definitely involves chemistry and the sculpting and layering of truly exquisite cakes involves physics so I’m getting my math in. Maybe this is a bit of a stretch but at least I know now what I absolutely would love to do and even though there is no great major that goes with wedding cake design, in that line of work you probably don’t even need a degree.

First memory essay

2007-11-27T22:04:00.000-08:00

* again, I know we did these a long time ago but I didnt want to accidentally exclude something that might count as a blog.*

My eyes slowly open. Hesitantly they adjust to the ever changing natural light that is so typical of late Texas afternoons. I lie in bed watching my room switch gradually from light to dark wondering what causes this strange phenomenon. The autumn wind hisses violently outside my bedroom window, but, instead of fear, I am confused. My world is filled with questions. I don’t understand anything yet and my only experiences are either joyful or bewildering. My thoughts are still blurred from sleep when I hear a familiar voice singing far away. I become focused; I see only glimpses of pink wall and gold doorknob as I stumble out of bed and unsteadily make my way to the top of the stairs. I can hear the voice even clearer now, I recognize the words but they stay simply as known sounds in my head, refusing to reassemble themselves into any meaning. I look down to my goal far beneath me. I know that voice, it belongs to the kind face I can clearly see in my head but that person remains nameless and I have no way of vocalizing my desire to ascend the slope before me. My curiosity and desire finally supply me with enough courage to attempt the stairs. I turn around and slide down to a flat landing where I can see around the walled bend in the stair. I take in a big bright room and long curly blonde hair bobbing around and singing. I am shocked and again perplexed. This is not the form that I had hoped to see. The source of this familiar voice is not the person I had expected. I sit here for a second or two more and then carefully make my way down the rest of the mountainous stair case on my stomach. My hopes were dashed, yet I still continued hoping that my eyes were lying. They were not. I wondered for a long time where the person I had hoped to see had gone and why an, equally dear yet, unexpected person possessed that same sound.
I distinctly remember the scene I described above, not because of my surprise or disappointment but, simply because I was filled with an overwhelming sense of confusion. I remember puzzling over this unexpected turn out for a long time and eventually crying because I could make no sense of my mistake.
Looking back on this occurrence now, I realize that it was my grandmother’s voice that I thought I was hearing. I know that when I was younger my grandmother came to stay with us because my mother was very close to giving birth to my younger brother. I always associate my grandmother with singing. All throughout my childhood she was never quiet. She was usually either talking a mile a minute or singing at the top of her lungs. I think that during this visit while my mother was pregnant she must have been singing a lot too. My mom has told me many times that I loved to sing along with my grandmother and would follow her everywhere, hanging on to every word she spoke. This must have been why I decided to forego the comforting warmth of my toddler’s bed and venture downstairs seeking the source of that wonderful voice.
I now also realize that it was my mother’s voice that I had mistaken for my grandmother’s. I remember from previous experiences that whenever my grandmother had to return home after a visit, my mother would sing the same songs as my grandmother in attempt not to miss her so much. I can still see my mom dancing around the kitchen on a typical afternoon after my grandmother had left, her big blonde Texas hair fanning out behind her bobbing head. This image mingles with the one I have of my grandmother in the same place except this time it is silky strawberry blonde hair that bounces on her shoulders as she cleans the kitchen and belts out gospel music in her strong yet gentle voice.
In many ways my mother and my grandmother blur together. Their voices and mannerisms are so similar that as a little child, I am told, I often referred to them interchangeably. This explains why I truly believed that I would find my grandmother in the kitchen after awaking from my afternoon nap and venturing down the stairs.
While I believe that the scene I described at the beginning was the first time that I ever mistook my mother’s voice for my grandmother’s, it was certainly not the last. I have many memories from my early childhood of waking up early in the morning or after a nap to the sound of what I thought was my grandmother’s voice in the kitchen. I would always hurry out of bed and rush down the stairs sure that I would see my grandmother’s face smiling up at me. Every time that this happened, though, it was only my mother singing.
I have never told anyone about the many times that I rushed downstairs hoping to see my grandmother. This is most likely because, even in my little child’s mind, I thought that my mother would be hurt if she knew that I only jumped out of bed because I thought that my grandmother was here. Over time I have been able to make sense of that earliest memory because of the many times that I was doomed to repeat that same blunder and the various bits of information that have filled in some of the gaps I missed as a young toddler. Even now, I can still see my mother’s bright hair and perfect smile looking up at me from the bottom of the stairs. I feel my disappointment acutely for only a moment and then I join her in the kitchen comforted by the pure joy that is always emanating from her.

family tradition essay

2007-11-27T22:02:00.000-08:00

* ok. so im not sure if these essays count for our blogs but I decided that it would be better to include it just in case *

“Lauren, what are your exact goals for this week and how do you plan on executing them?” My whole family is staring at me. I can clearly see the relief on my younger brother’s face as he slowly exhales, thankful that he was not the one called upon. My dad is eagerly awaiting an answer to his question and I rack my brain for a reply that won’t disappoint him. I honestly don’t have any “exact goals” for the week, I can’t even recall what assignments are due but I know that if I don’t have something concrete to talk about then my dad will feel bad. “Um, I hope to clean and organize my room this week as well as create a recipe folder of my favorite recipes from Mom’s cookbooks. I plan to start cleaning by first organizing my clothing drawers and then I’ll clean my bathroom and from there do the vacuuming and dusting of my bedroom. Also in order to compile this recipe booklet I will first need to decide which recipes I want and then make copies of them, from there I will organize them by meal and then cross reference them alphabetically.” I pause waiting to see if my answer is sufficient or if my dad requires more. He nods his approval and asks if there is anything that the rest of the family can help with before moving on to the next person.
While this particular scene I described makes my father sound strict and demanding, in reality this is far from the truth. My dad was a captain in the Army for four or five years and rapidly climbed the corporate ladder after his service. He has always been accustomed to leading a company either of soldiers or of focused men in suits.
Contrary to his serious occupation, my dad is actually very fun and humorous. He is always ready to try something new and exciting like bungee jumping or eating a snake meat sausage. When my brothers and I were younger he would play all sorts of games with us when he came home from work. Sometimes we would wrestle with him, the three of us trying desperately to pin him down while ducking to avoid his flailing arms. I remember playing two-hand touch football in the fall with the whole family and beating my dad at chess three times in a row. My dad is always joking around. He likes to sneak up on people and surprise them, something that I have never gotten used to, and he usually has something strange on his head like a folded napkin or some sort of lid that he pretends is a hat. Even when he is being serious my dad is lighthearted, supporting me and my brothers in whatever we decide to do. It is only in our “family meetings” that I described earlier that he ever becomes critical or rigid, a persona I assume was/is reserved for ordering his men or assigning responsibilities at a board meeting.
I think it must be his previous military service and current occupation that cause him to attempt to run our family like a business. We have family meetings at least once a week, typically on Saturday morning. My dad opens the meeting with a few words of praise for our accomplishments over the past week and encouragement for the week to come. He begins by giving a detailed yet numberless description of our family’s financial status as well as an update on where we are concerning our goals as a family. While he is delivering his opening speech the rest of the family is advised to take notes which my dad peruses after the meeting has closed. I usually take notes in a somewhat sarcastic manner which my dad does not seem to find amusing. I scribble down things like “we have a lot of money right now so its okay to buy Jimmy Choo shoes this week” or “we are ahead of schedule on operation yard clean-up so go ahead and slack off for a couple of days.” While I am aware that this is pretty immature, I just can’t pass up the chance to mess with my dad a little bit and it helps keep me amused instead of becoming annoyed and bored. After the opening updates, the floor is open for announcements that anyone would like to share concerning their recent triumphs or momentous events that have taken place over the last week. My mom always has a positive announcement to contribute at this time and usually this encourages everyone else to share something as well. After announcement time, my dad likes to ask each person what their specific goals are for the week and what their plan of action is concerning those goals. As I mentioned at the beginning, this process is usually pretty tense because everyone dreads being called upon before they have a good answer and no one wants to say something that will make my dad realize that this meeting really was not necessary. After we talk about our goals for a little while my dad talks about any current issues going on with our family and extended family. Next, he and my mom discuss the meal plan for the week and pretend to take suggestions from the kids on what we should eat for dinner. Typically my mom will mention that broccoli casserole or lentil burritos sounds good, my dad will second that and then I throw in a comment that goes something like, “that would be fine except maybe we could try something new, maybe something that has meat like pork chops and rice or baked potatoes and beef.” My mom and dad look at each other and say something to the effect of “that doesn’t sound very exciting or different, I like beans and vegetables, meat is so over rated, maybe we’ll eat that next week.” After this short exchange my dad quickly changes the subject to an update on our grades. Usually he would get this information from “Powerschool” online but since I graduated from high school I get to simply relax and sympathize with my brothers as they go through this unfortunate ordeal. The meeting closes with my dad good naturedly congratulating us all on a successful week and encourages us to accomplish our goals in the upcoming week.
While I have described these family meetings in a somewhat negative tone, I really don’t harbor any feelings of hatred or dread toward them. I am actually quite amused by the goings on and I often find it hard not to break out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. I completely understand why my dad insists upon having these meetings and it really is a great way of staying connected to each other especially when everyone is so busy all the time. The truth is, I love my dad and I respect him so much especially in our family meetings. Even though the method he uses to stay involved in my brothers and my lives is a little too stiff and formal for my liking, I truly appreciate the amount of care he has for us and the interest he takes in our lives. There is a part of me that loves to sit down at the kitchen table with my mom on my left side and my youngest brother on my right elbowing me in the side whenever my dad says something that is entirely too serious. I like being there with my family my pen poised for note-taking and my mind racing to find something that will be an appropriate goal to discuss.
These meetings aren’t entirely useless either. The fact that my dad requires us to come up with some goals for the week has actually helped me to be more focused and driven instead of being bombarded by my many responsibilities. I also like to know what we are having for dinner each night because that information greatly contributes to my decision on whether or not I come home that evening.
While I began this essay by painting a picture of the most tense section of our family meetings, the more accurate scene that I associate with them has a completely different feel. I see the four faces I know best in the world gathered around me in a circle. I feel the assuring warmth of my mom’s hand on my knee and the sharp stab of my brother’s elbow in my ribs. I look across the table and notice the sincere focused expression on my other brother’s face as he diligently scribbles down notes, only looking up for a second to flash me a quick understanding smile. Finally, I take in my dad, excited to hear about his family’s week and help them accomplish their goals in the week to come. He glances around the table, taking us all in before opening the meeting. His expression is, on the surface, serious, but a closer look reveals his normal playful smile flitting across his mouth threatening to disclose the immense joy that he is deriving from this familiar exercise he loves so much. I see myself, sitting there, taking it all in, and I know that, no matter how jokingly I relate to them, these meetings define my family and in some ways myself.

First creative essay rewrite

2007-11-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

* This is the first creative essay rewrite that we did. I rewrote Sam's essay on the mysterious golf cart that showed up on his front porch. The essay Sam wrote was true but I added some things and changed the ending so mine is kind of mixed with truth. I feel that this is the way the story should have gone.*

I awoke for Bible Study early Wednesday morning and headed towards the front door. My housemate Daniel, who had stayed up all night studying, said goodbye to me as I opened the door. But as I gazed through the glass door, I beheld what was perhaps the most unusual thing I had ever seen.
“Daniel, why is there a golf cart on our porch steps?” I asked.
“What are you talking about, Sam?” He got up and walked to the door. Sure enough, there was a golf cart perched on the slope of our porch’s steps, front wheels on the porch and back wheels on the ground. We went down to inspect the vehicle. It was a deluxe six-seat golf cart that boasted an impressive twelve feet in length. “Oh my goodness Sam, we have a golf cart!”
We attempted to hide it in clever places in our front yard, but we had to settle for half-cover behind a tree. My first thought was that one of our friends had left it on our steps as a prank, and Daniel’s list of potential culprits was very similar to my own. The next thought that crossed my mind was the question of who it belonged to. We knew that the University of Memphis is only a block from our house, but we preferred to believe that whoever it belonged to chose to leave it on our front steps as a gift. We decided to pursue this latter line of thinking.
Daniel cleared out half of the garage to store it, and my housemates scoured the vehicle for identification or proof of ownership. None was found, but that my have partly been because it had been spray painted over where some insignia had apparently been. We called all of our friends that could have done it, but no one claimed to have pulled off the prank. We instantly began to conjure up grand visions of what this golf cart would do for us. We decided that we should keep it stored in the garage until the spring semester; we would then be able to drive it around without fear of someone actively looking for what may very well be a stolen golf cart.
We had to come up with a story for how we got it, so Daniel agreed that he would tell others that his grandfather, whom we would say was an avid golfer, had given it to Daniel shortly before he died. This story having been agreed upon, I devised the name “Pappy’s Pride” for the vehicle. We had ideas to paint it bright red, install carpet on its floors and rear-view mirrors, and hang curtains around the rear. We set aside Saturday morning for our day of customizing.
Pappy’s Pride immediately found its way into our hearts and everyone in the house grew very attached to it. After we had “pimped it over” as I like to say, Pappy’s Pride looked incredibly authentic. Bright candy apple red glossed the sides of the cart and plush cream carpet covered the floor. Some might suggest that the crushed black velvet curtains that cloaked the interior and the flashy square foot side mirrors we added made Pappy’s Pride look a little cheesy and ridiculous but I didn’t really care. To me, Pappy’s Pride had come alive. I ceased to view Pappy’s Pride as stolen property most likely, judging from the scraped off and painted over U of M decals, taken from my own university, and began to believe that it really had belonged to Daniel’s grandfather.
I could vividly see ole’ Pappy driving along the golf course paths with his visor jauntily askew and his set of golf clubs in the back seat each with a different colored cover. He was always the talk of the country club and all the old men wanted to take a ride in Pappy’s Pride. I visualized ole’ Pappy washing his golf cart every night and reverently putting him to bed in a dusty cluttered garage that most grandparents seem to have. I forgot the shady history of Pappy’s Pride and knew only of the glorious past that I had created for him.
I began to spread the word to all of our friends that Daniel had been given his grandfather’s golf cart and bragged that we would soon be offering rides to anyone who wanted one. I now whole-heartedly believed that Pappy’s Pride was a providential gift from God. But, just when I had completely forgotten that Pappy had ever been anything other than my wildest dreams come true, threatening things started happening.
At first it had just been casual remarks from a friend here and there that our golf cart was in danger. Then I got a call late one afternoon from my housemate Cam who said that he didn’t want to drop any names, but he knew that some guys were going to break into our garage and steal Pappy’s Pride. I reacted to this news quickly and ran home to sit in Pappy with my girlfriend and her brother to wait for the potential thieves to appear. I must have scared them off or maybe Cam warned them but, either way, Pappy’s Pride was safe for another day. This safety was short lived though for a few days later some of our friends began to ask us to give them Pappy’s Pride. They reasoned that we weren’t driving him around and said that if we gave Pappy to them then they would actually drive him because they live over in Cordova. We declined, there was no way Daniel or I could ever part with our Pappy.
A week or so later, we had a house meeting and realized that we would have to give Pappy up. My housemate Drew mentioned that if Pappy’s Pride really was stolen then we would get in huge trouble for not turning it in to the police. We discussed the issue and came to the conclusion that if someone stole Pappy from our house and then the police found him, our story would not be very believable. We knew that if we weren’t the ones to report Pappy to the police then no one would believe that he had just magically appeared on our front lawn one day. No one in the house wanted to risk being charged with auto theft so we reluctantly agreed to turn Pappy in the next morning.
On my last night with Pappy’s Pride I sat in the front seat and played guitar. I talked to Pappy for a little while and I might have even cried a little knowing that I would probably never have a golf cart like him ever again. Pappy had become real to me and I thought of him only as the golf cart of Daniel’s ole’ Pappy. I fell asleep with my head resting on the fur trimmed steering wheel we had fashioned for Pappy’s Pride. The next morning I woke up to find all three of my housemates asleep on the expansive floor and three benches that Pappy possessed. We all said our good-byes to Pappy and then called the police.
Within minutes the Memphis Police department sent out an officer who informed us that the university had been missing a six seat golf cart that had been stolen the night before Pappy’s Pride had mysteriously appeared on our front lawn. The officer was very confused by the cart’s customized look and asked us if we had found it this way. We responded truthfully that we had actually transformed Pappy into the magnificent vehicle he was looking at. The officer was so impressed with our “Pimp My Ride” skills and our farfetched lawn story that he let us keep Pappy. He did decide, though, to drive the golf cart over to the U of M and show it to the golf cart people so that he would be able to affirm that they said it didn’t look anything like the golf cart they were missing. Everyone was so overjoyed that we decided to camp out in Pappy that night. The next morning we were able to ride Pappy’s Pride to class and his mysterious past was never spoken of again.

Story rewrite

2007-11-27T21:48:00.000-08:00

*This is the creative story rewrite that we were supposed to post a while back. i was just looking through my recent blogs and realized that i hadnt done that. Mine is a rewrite of phil's rewrite of Adam's zombie story.*

All was silent. The stillness that surrounded me was not that of death but of unspent potential. The gentle wind caressing my face seemed to whisper rebirth. Upon entering the garden I was mildly surprised at the warmth emanating from the soil and the misty vapors clinging to these other worldly plants. This was, after all, Alaska, but when I pursued my thoughts further I realized that I hadn’t really expected anything else.

I had spent years searching for this mystical oasis in the heart of the Alaskan Tundra. For as long as I can remember I had known about this magical place. As the war that would eventually consume the entire globe crept nearer and nearer to the secluded dwelling of my family, we had held on to the hope that one day someone would discover the original breeding ground of this unspeakable terror and somehow put an end to the vicious nightmare that was slowly engulfing humanity. Unfortunately no one did come across the root of this evil and little by little the whole world succumbed to the mindless bodies that had risen up against them.

I stand here now, utterly alone. I watched and waited as the world around me was destroyed by the living dead. Everything that was ever good or wholesome was contaminated by their unknowing sin. Just as they were dead in their farse of life so also had that army of mindless brutes been separated from their souls and humanity in general. They had not been able to comprehend the beauty in nature, the warmth of relationships, or the pleasure of purity. They surrendered to the most carnal desires and gave worth to only to what could be enjoyed by the flesh. Like a flood, their kind filled the earth, wiping out every last glimpse of decency. Again I watched and waited for the entire world to be destroyed by the base immorality that defined them. The rest of my family died during this drawn out wait but finally the end came.
The disease ridden populace dwindled daily, decomposing in such a way that decayed their bodies, extinguishing any chance of another resurrection. Eventually the entire earth was clean again. I emerged from my isolation with a desire to start anew.

I traversed the world in search of this garden, the root of all evil, and now I had found it. While it may seem strange that the birthplace of living death would be my destination, I knew that it was not the garden itself that possessed evil but the twisted desires of the human who had misused this sacred place.

I wandered slowly through the colorful flora breathing deeply of the heavenly aroma that infused everything around me. As I made my way to the center of the garden I noticed that the air grow sweeter. Thus far I had encountered only the types of vegetation that I was accustomed to except perfect and much larger. Now I noticed that a low hedge of deep red vines surrounded the source of that sickly sweet scent. Beyond the hedge there grew an exotic tree with flowers that looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Smooth black purple bark covered the curving trunk of the tree branching up and out into twisted limbs teeming with shimmering iridescent leaves. The flowers perched upon the branches were mesmerizing. Smooth slender snow white petals feathered out from the center revealing blood red liquid encompassed by a sheer yellow film. The smell beckoned me, the leaves glowed with an other worldly light, and most of all the flowers lay perfectly open, ripe for the plucking. All I had to do was reach out and touch the dark center and my thinking would cease, mindless bliss would engulf my body, I would be free. I felt myself raise my arm, I slowly leaned forward already tasting my sweet reward when my whole body shuddered. I jerked back. In that instant, my mind regained control. I remembered the depravity of the living bodies with dead souls. I knew my hope lay in the formation of a new humanity, one who would stand strong against the baseness of flesh and uphold the purity of spirit.

I knew the truth about those beautiful flowers. I saw them in a different light. Yes they glowed with an enticing gleam but in that perfect beauty I saw ugliness. The scent they emitted grew rank and the blood red centers I had so foolishly coveted now seemed to embody death itself. The man who succumbed to their allure just as I almost had must have seen only the perfection and felt only his greed. There were so many other perfect flowers and fruits in the garden, why covet this useless tree.

I would again watch and wait here for I knew there must be some others who had evaded the decimation of our society and they, like myself, would be drawn to this mystical oasis. I would struggle against the temptation of that deathly tree my whole life but I would not submit. Now I knew the truth and the truth would set me free.

the high price on wings

2007-11-19T17:41:00.000-08:00

* I wrote this at 8:00 this morning but didnt have internet access till now so keep in mind that I wrote this blog while i was still somewhat asleep*

So a few minutes ago I realized that I had not even thought about blogging in quite some time. As this thought came into my head I also felt like I was falling and suffocating at the same time. Right now I am sitting on an incredibly comfortable recliner chair and I honestly feel like there are metal bars sticking out of this chair and poking me all over my back. My fingers are shaking as I type and I know that it won’t be long before my arms and eventually my legs begin to shake as well. My stomach is making the strangest noises I think I have ever heard and my head feels like its just floating a couple of inches above my recently numb neck.

There are so many people and circumstances that I would like to thank for this excruciating and strange sensation that I am currently experiencing but I think that I can honestly really only blame myself. It all started when Sam and I told our friend William that we would throw him a retirement party to celebrate the end of his high school football career. About the same time that Sam and I offered to host this party we also received an invitation to a much anticipated dinner with one of Sam’s bestfriends and the guy’s girlfriend. Also, we decided in this same time frame that we would need to drive down to my hometown, Hendersonville, N.C., on Tuesday morning after finding out that grandmother needed to have surgery and would not be able to do all the thanksgiving preparations or even drive by herself. Shortly after this decision was made Sam and I also realized that we would have to go by his parents house at least for lunch so they wouldn’t be too upset about us leaving for Thanksgiving. So after realizing that we had made plans to throw a somewhat complicated party, have dinner with friends, prepare to leave town and go to lunch with Sam’s parents we did the responsible smart thing and planned out our busy weekend. At this time we didn’t know about all the unacceptable language that we could not incorporate into our synthesis essays. Anyway, we planned to spend time on our essays and various other papers that were due around the same time Thursday after class knowing that we would have no time on Friday because we would have to set up and everything for Williams party on Saturday night and go to dinner with our friends that Friday night. Maybe the smart thing to do would have been to cancel our dinner plans but this thought didn’t even occur to me or Sam until later and even though I feel like crap right now we did have an amazing weekend so I guess its worth it. Anyway, we also scheduled time for school work on Saturday morning and decided that we could finish any extra work on the ten hour drive to Hendersonville.

So this was our plan. It wasn’t fabulous or anything, we knew we would be rushing to finish everything in time but we also thought that this plan would give us enough time to sleep and eat so it seemed to be pretty good. This was all Wednesday night and our plans came crumbling down around us on Thursday. On Thursday we realized that this synthesis essay was going to be hard, also on Thursday William’s grandmother died. Sam and I tried to start on our essays but we had tons of other hw due Friday and William needed support so needless to say we just didn’t have a chance. On Friday I rushed around after classes buying party stuff and baking when my brakes on my car failed and I had to get it taken to some car place to get it fixed. It was ready later on that day but unfortunately I had already lost a lot of time and my list of things I was pushing back to Saturday was growing huge. Sam and I were able to have a wonderful and somewhat relaxing dinner with our friends before we resumed our preparations and I ended up baking a cake at 1:00 in the morning. Also, on Friday night we found out that the funeral for Williams grandmother was going to be on Saturday morning during the time that we had planned on writing or Synthesis Essays. Needless to say we went to the funeral and pushed back our essays once again, this time for Sunday afternoon. We rushed around some more and somehow got all the food and stuff together in time for Williams retirement party which he absolutely loved so at least Sam and I accomplished something important this weekend. We once again were up late, around 2:30 am this time, cleaning up Sam’s house and putting stuff away. The next morning we had church and then lunch with Sam’s parents and then we had some last minute errands to run before we leave town. We got back to my parents house on Sunday around 5, got a quick bite to eat, and then started our Synthesis essays. We realized before we even began the essays that this was going to be an all night thing. We knew that we couldn’t count on internet access in Hendersonville and we also knew that we wouldn’t have a lot of time to finish on Monday. We decided to stay up all night Sunday night so that we would at least be able to get some sleep Monday night before we drove for nine hours on Tuesday. Anyway, having realized this we bought some Red Bull and sour skittles and camped out at the kitchen table, barely even able to keep our eyes open after the hectic weekend we had. We read and typed and wrote notes and talked about our notes and ideas until about midnight. We were unable to even form proper sentences anymore so we decided that it was time for our Red Bulls. This helped immensely. Suddenly Sam and I regained brain power and could speak coherently again. We were able to keep this up till about 4:00 in the morning before I finally stumbled into my room and Sam stayed up a couple more hours typing stuff in the guest room. We got the hard part out of the way. Both of us have detailed outlines and examples from the texts and everything ready. All we have to do now is flush out our rough drafts with sentences and the exact quotes and stuff like that. This really isn’t the hard part, I’m guessing that it’ll take us a couple of hours but I know that we will get it done today.

The point of this drawn out story is… Red Bull. I know that the reason I feel so incredibly strange is because of the Red Bull I drank. My body is dead tired, my eyes are closing, and my limbs are now shaking but my brain is surprisingly functional. I am thinking clearly right now but my body feels like I just fell off of a cliff. Maybe that’s kind of what happened in a sense. I guess the Red Bull gave me such a huge burst of energy when I needed it and now my body is just crashing to a completely energyless state. I’m actually not sure if this horrible feeling I have right now was worth the necessary brain power that got me through the night. Never mind, I take that back. Without Red Bull I would probably be at my house sleeping through my alarm and anticipating a long day of packing and essay writing. I’m still anticipating that but at least I know that its going to get done.

No Regrets

2007-11-11T15:18:00.000-08:00

* Okay, so I meant to post this blog last weekend but I completely forgot and so since I already wrote it I decided to go ahead and post it anyway. *

Last Friday night I went to an ECS football game. Maybe for other people this really wouldn’t be very remarkable but, in my case, I never thought that this would happen. First of all I don’t like football. I know most of ya’ll reading this probably think I’m crazy or something, but I honestly never understood the game. Usually, I will just stare blankly at the field and cheer whenever everyone else does. This can also be quite risky because, occasionally, I’ll hear the other side start cheering and accidentally yell some sort of encouraging phrase along with them. Needless to say, the people standing around me will glance over, looking at me as if I am absolutely insane and usually say something to that effect. I’m not against all sports though, just football. I don’t like the hitting and the confusing rules. I do enjoy watching soccer and basketball and even baseball sometimes, but football is just beyond me.

Now for reason two why I never thought I would go back to one of my high school’s football games. I really cannot stand the majority of the people in my grade at ECS. Also, most of the people that I could actually tolerate were guys and they were either on the football team or incredibly interested in the game. I usually went to every game though when I went to ECS. This is because if, for some odd reason, you did not go to the game, everyone in every one of your classes would accusingly ask you why on earth you weren’t there and then give you a detailed description of each point we scored and the different cheers we did. Most people would end this drawn-out play by play by encouraging you to attend next time and ensuring you that the team needed your support. Now, maybe it’s not like this at other schools, but ECS people are insane when football is concerned. I seriously doubt that “the team” would have played any better if I had been present and when I went to ECS I don’t think that the football team ever lost a game. Now that I think about this, its kind of interesting. I graduated from high school after 11th grade and before I left most of the football guys were like “how are we gonna win if you aren’t there to support us” and “If you leave now we’ll probably lose a lot” and stuff like that. This is interesting because now that I have left the ECS football team has had a pretty bad season this year compared to the last three years when I actually went to school there. Maybe I am lucky. Anyway, I didn’t enjoy going to the games because it was always either incredibly hot outside or freezing cold and I would usually just stand around talking to people that I didn’t like. Also, there are only so many times that you can go to the bathroom to apply lip gloss or check your hair before people begin to look at you strangely.

Okay, reason three. Every time that I went to a football game something bad happened to me. The first ECS football game I ever went to, in ninth grade, I got yelled at for quite some time by my best friend’s mom. I had lent her a non-trashy tube top and a pair of jeans before we went and when she arrived at the game her mother freaked out and blamed me for “leading her astray.” At another game my boyfriend at the time decided that he wanted to break things off and instead of telling me he decided to ignore me and avoid the “unnecessary confrontation.” One time I actually got food poisoning from a hotdog that I got at the game and spent the majority of the night trying to stand in spite of the intense stomach cramping and waves of nausea that I was experiencing. There were so many other unfortunate things that happened to me at football games and these things that I have mentioned are definitely not the worst, they are simply the occurrences that I am not to embarrassed to write about.

So anyway, I was at the ECS vs Briarcrest game last Friday night and I was wondering why on earth I consented to come. Sam’s best friend William plays for briarcrest and he asked us to come and support him with a big banner that said “The Bateman #16” on it. Sam and I had not been having very much success displaying this banner on the Briarcrest side so we decided to see if we could get the enthusiastic ECS student section to cheer for William. I guess it wasn’t that weird for Sam to talk to the ECS people because the people from his grade weren’t there but for me it was really strange. I saw my whole grade as seniors cheering in the stands and I knew that I was right in assuming that coming back to a game after I graduated early wasn’t a good idea. Sam and I stayed until the end of the game so we could talk to William. And in the meantime we were actually able to convince the ECS student section to hold up the banner and chant “William Bateman.” Just seeing ECS chant for a Briarcrest player was worth the whole awkward experience of seeing my grade again. I actually had a nice time talking to some various ECS people and that was really surprising. As Sam and I drove home though, we both agreed that we never wanted to go to an ECS football game again unless it was absolutely necessary. I think some good came out of this experience though. As I saw the people from the grade that I should have been in this year placing so much importance on a football game and behaving in the same way that they always have, I was reassured once again and for the most likely the last time that I did the right thing in graduating after 11th grade. I realized that I really don’t miss anything about high school and definitely am not missing out on anything by foregoing my senior year.

Eddy is my Amika

2007-11-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

I can’t think of anything to blog about right now so I’m just going to talk about the only other mildly interesting thing that has happened to me this weekend other than attending my high school’s football game last night which I will talk about in my next post. Anyway, I was at the Oak Court mall getting lunch with Sam after class and we had been talking about how much we enjoyed talking to people who aren’t from the U.S. We were finishing up our lunch of Chinese food which is what sparked this conversation.

Before we had purchased our food, we were walking over to Subway when a Chinese lady stopped us and offered us a sample of chicken from the Malibu Wing (yes, that’s really the name of the place) right behind her. We took it just to be polite and then Sam said a couple of things to her in Chinese which she seemed to understand. This was a huge relief because a lot of times Sam will say something in Chinese to an Asian person and they get really offended because they aren’t Chinese. We were so happy that Sam was able to converse with this woman without offending her that we decided to go ahead and get Chinese food from the restaurant. I was pretty hesitant to do this because I’m always freaked out that our food will have a bunch a MSG in it or something even worse, but the food was good and I feel fine so I guess I was worried for no reason.

Ok, back to what I was originally talking about. We were so excited about talking to the nice Chinese lady and Sam was really happy because Coach Calipari was sitting at the table right next to us with a bunch of tall athletic-looking men, that we decided to walk around the mall for a little bit before going home to finish some homework and paint a banner for the ECS vs. BCHS game. We got some chocolate at the Godiva store which further elated me and as we were leaving this guy from a hair straightener kiosk approached me. He asked me what kind of hair straightener I used and I was about to just kind of ignore him and walk past when I decided to be nice and talk to him for a little bit. Usually I don’t talk to these kiosk guys because most of them are freaky looking and I can barely understand them because they are always from some where like Israel or Egypt or something. Also, the only time I ever decided to listen to one of them pitch their product I got sucked in to the whole thing and was convinced to buy this overpriced nail care set which isn’t very remarkable.

Anyway, this guy seemed really nice and I let him tell me about the superiority of his straightener. At this time I really wasn’t hooked or anything but I decided to let him straighten my hair with it because I was getting kind of frizzy and I needed a new straightener. Sam started talking to the guy about where he was from and why he started this business while he was straightening my hair and he turned out to be really interesting. The guy is from Israel and he just came to Memphis two weeks ago. He said he was hoping to go to U of M and study finance when he got enough money. He kept on asking us if his English was okay and we assured him truthfully that it was great. I was so surprised when I looked back in the mirror and my hair looked great. Not only did the thing straighten my hair but it actually improved my split ends and made my hair really shiny. The guy showed me a couple of other things that the straightener could do before he made his final pitch. He did this weird thing where he wound my hair around the straightener then slid it to the ends of my hair and it made this perfect bouncy curl. I know I’ve been going on way too much about this straightener but other than homework my weekend has been surprisingly uneventful.

Finally, after showing me all the amazing stuff that the Amika straightener could do he told us the price. It cost $250. Sam was floored but I had been expecting this so I acted normal. I told the guy that there was no way I could afford this right now and instead of acting rude and blowing us off he actually said he understood and gave me his card. The name on the card was Eddy which I don’t quite believe and he gave me a coupon for 50% off the product. Sam talked to Eddy for a bit more about Israel and about places he should go in Memphis before we left.

I just read this post through and it is really dull so I am sorry to whoever is reading this. I am exhausted and have tons of other work to do so somehow this story didn’t come out as interesting as it seemed after it happened. Anyway, I am currently saving up to buy this hair straightener and I encourage any girls reading this (or even guys) to talk to the Amika kiosk guy because the straightener really is incredible.

Tired

2007-10-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

I am so so tired. Every part of my body aches and I feel like I couldn’t possibly do any more work. The tips of my fingers are numb from the incessant typing that has filled my night and most of my afternoon. I have had so much work to do in every class that I am taking. I don’t think that I can write another paper or even read another word until I have slept at least twelve hours. I am falling behind in my school work. I missed a couple of my calculus and chemistry classes for family stuff and I am now finding that I cant quite follow my professors. I worked most of my afternoon on Chemistry and Calculus and at least I think I am starting to grasp the concepts. In reality the lessons aren’t really very hard, its just that I keep falling asleep or zoning out during class. This is so strange to me, I am usually so focused and now I can barely listen for five minutes before my mind just kind of blanks out.

I am getting sick. I can feel sinus problems coming on and I know that it is because of my lack of sleep and abundance of stress. My little brother has a horrible sinus infection and I am sure that a couple of days from now I will be feeling even worse than I do in my current state. I am working late into the night and getting up early in the morning. My eyes can barely stay open as I type this. I am a very fragile person, If I lose sleep then I get sick. That’s just how it works for me. I stayed up especially late tonight working on the only non-school-related work that I have done in a while. I decided to make a scavenger hunt for my little brother Ben (the one who is sick) because he is staying home from school for a couple of days. He was telling me that he wanted to do something fun with me and I unfortunately had to explain that I had no time for anything except work. I felt so bad about this and wanted to show him that I love him so much so I decided to create some interesting clues and hide them around the house before I go to sleep. I say go to sleep, but recently its been more like a short period of unconsciousness followed by intense pain upon waking.

I have no time. My days are filled with cramming in school work and then trying to accomplish some of my other responsibilities. Aside from writing English and UNHP papers all the time, I try to spend a little time with my parents and my brothers. I usually have to make sure that Sam has enough food and clean clothes and stuff like that because he is even busier than I am. There are so many other random things that I have to cram in like church stuff and work. The one thing that I consider most important in my day is my time with God. Ideally I would like to spend an hour each day reading my Bible and praying but over the past couple of weeks that time has slowly dwindled down to twenty minutes. Sometimes I even forget to spend time in the Word altogether. This really upsets me because in my hectic life right now one of the first things to be reduced is my God time and right now I need Him most. I hate that I don’t spend enough time praying and reading but I am just so tired in the morning and night that I tell myself God will understand if I make my time with Him short. I know that he does understand and that my worth is not measured by my actions but I really feel that when I don’t spend enough time with God that I am hurting myself.
Wow! This post is all over the place. I am exhausted and I just kind of wrote without thinking. I guess that the things I typed are the things that weigh heaviest on my mind right now. Anyway, I’m not trying to complain. I am ecstatically happy with my life right now even if things aren’t always the way I want them to be

The Little Book

2007-10-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading one of the sweetest books I think I have ever read. It wasn’t really like any of the other books I usually pick out. I was at the Central Library browsing through the novels and I was feeling very overwhelmed. Most of ya’ll reading this have probably been to the Central branch so you know what I’m talking about but just in case you haven’t I’ll try my best to describe it.

I think that the most remarkable thing about the central library is simply the huge amount of books that it has. There are four floors filled with bookshelves that are in turn stuffed with books. Even though I think there may actually be too many books to just go in and casually look for one to read, I absolutely love to go to this library. The reason that I just love this particular branch is that whenever I enter through the front doors I feel just like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. The first time that I ever went to the central branch was on one of my first dates with Sam and he knew that I love to read so he took me there. As we stood in the middle of the first floor looking up at the tall wall of windows and the four floors of books, I was speechless. That’s when it hit me. I instantly got this picture in my head of when the Beast opens the door to his massive library and Belle prettily gasps in delight. I know this is a really childish reason to love a library but Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney movie and I like remembering one of my first dates with Sam whenever I go there. Anyway, the image stuck and I get the best feeling just walking into the Central Library.

So, getting back to what I was originally talking about, I was wandering around the fiction section not really knowing how to start deciding on a book when I got a call. It was Sam and he was calling from the floor above. He had been looking for books on international business and especially banking in China. Needless to say he was pretty bored and told me that he was ready to leave immediately.A really little book on the shelf in front of me caught my eye so I grabbed it and headed to meet him on the first floor to check out the books. I didn’t really even look at the novel that I had hastily decided upon until we got into the car. I read the back of it and was surprised to see that it was described to be “a book about the perfect marriage.” I wasn’t necessarily excited about reading it because I usually go more for exciting, travely, historical type books but I was intrigued by this description. In most of the books I have read, marriage is either not explored very much or it is given a somewhat negative connotation. Judging from the back cover, this book was about an eighteen year old girl named Annie and her new husband, 20 year old Carl, living in the late 1920’s – early 1930’s and putting Carl through law school. It sounds kind of boring but once I had read the first page I just couldn’t put it down. Carl and Annie were so endearing. They had this open pure love for each other that neither their money problems, one room living quarters, or Annie’s unexpected pregnancy could taint. They took each day at a time and cherished small things like eating dinner together at the cafeteria where Carl worked and walking together in the early morning. They really did have a perfect marriage of trust and selflessness even though they had very little time to spend with each other and had many financial difficulties. I just can’t stop thinking about this book and recommend it to anyone who appreciates sentimental things and could use a simple relaxing read. I love the title too because it reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses that I happened to write my creative essay around. The book is called “Joy in the Morning” by Betty Smith.

Joy Comes in the Morning

2007-10-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

*hey ya'll, I couldnt find my eighteen copies of my story in class so I decided to go ahead and post the essay.I'm not sure if this is non-fiction or fiction. It is kind of in between because its based on one of my closest friends who really is dealing with all of these things but I made up the stuff about her running and the sun and rain.*

Joy Comes in the Morning

The sun beat hard arid rays upon Annie’s shaking shoulders. She felt as if the very foundation of her life was crumbling to the ground around her. Everything that she cherished most had been ripped away leaving a sensation that the person she had been was fading fast. She waited on this course grainy dirt for the tears to come, and still her cheeks remained dry. Annie had been running haphazardly trying to deal with her problems; unsure if she was hoping to outrun the recent events or finally catch up with them. It didn’t really matter because she had fallen and was now staring up into the harsh winter sunlight, simply floating between who she had been and who she would have to become. She was no one, nameless, and yet in the back of her mind a persistent thought nagged at her anonymous bliss. That thought plainly told her she would eventually have to address the horrible things that had happened to her. But for now, Annie couldn’t think about those things. She couldn’t focus on the fact that her grandmother had passed away just a few days before her dog suddenly got sick and died. She didn’t know how to deal with her close friend choosing to attend a college thousands of miles away or her mother’s worsening paranoia. Most of all she refused to acknowledge that the one person who remained by her side through all of these things, not only her best friend but the man who had loved her for years, was not even speaking to her anymore. She wasn’t angry about these things, only numb to any emotion. After all there wasn’t anyone to blame. Her grandmother had died because she was old, the veterinarians did all they could for her dog, it was Hannah’s dream to attend whatever college it was that she kept chattering about, and neither her mother or anyone else could help her mental state. William had fought a long time with his parents about their decision to not let him date her and Annie knew that if he disobeyed them he would be thrown out of his house. She didn’t blame his parents too much either because both of them had grown up in very strict Baptist homes. While she thought it was extremely excessive that they had forbidden her and William to even contact each other, she knew that they only wanted what was best for their son and viewed dating in college as a sin. The emotions were welling up inside of her but they just wouldn’t come out. She sat up and felt herself slowly returning to cognizance and, with that first appearance of her alert mind, she experienced a flash of clarity before her adopted state of numbness engulfed her. Maybe it is easier to deal with pain when you are mad because you can let in at least some emotions and consequently have to recognize that whatever has happened has indeed taken place. But for me, Annie thought bitterly, that realization will never come because I can’t even feel anymore. Again she paused, looking up and hoping for some glimpse of the passionate deep-feeling person she knew herself to be, but still her eyes were tearless and she barely noticed the dark clouds passing over head. “O Lord, you are my rock and my redeemer,” Annie whispered, “but I no longer feel your peace or comfort.” She felt so lost and weak staring into the ensuing darkness of the expansive sky left with only the knowledge that she was becoming estranged from herself. In the final wave of her cognizance, she silently cried out for something that she could not even name before succumbing to the falling depths of despair that at least allowed her to feel. As she slipped away from her former self, soft cool rain began to fall, gently caressing her upturned face and wrapping her whole body in a refreshing embrace. She let go of herself completely and tears slowly formed, running down her face and pooling in the shallow hollow of her neck. She no longer feared pain but welcomed it and felt that though her heart was breaking, she had finally seen her suffering and in that instant learned to overcome it. Her tears mingled with the falling rain as she grieved and healed. “… for weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” Psalms 30: 5.

Reader Response Essay

2007-10-17T22:12:00.000-07:00

Lauren Woody
Wendy Sumner-Winter
Reader Response Essay Draft 1
10-18-07
Through detailed descriptions and thought-provoking scenes, Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting: A London Adventure” evokes a feeling of escape, examines what defines our self identity, and explores what is truly beautiful. Woolf employs such vivid imagery that I felt as if I were the one who wandered London’s streets in winter. I experienced the liberating feel of escaping from your normal self, I saw the beauty Woolf finds in even the most unlikely subjects, and I struggled with her between surface appearances and the deeper connectedness she originally tries to avoid.
With the simple excuse of needing a pencil, Virginia Woolf escapes into the streets on an early winter night in London. She describes in great detail the many things she sees and the various things she experiences. She travels the streets of London simply taking in the obvious beauty of such a lovely night; emphasizing her desire to stay on the surface for a little while longer. She switches from a pure uncomplicated beauty to appreciation of that which is irregular or even ugly and exposes the beauty to be found in those things. This change in sights ushers in a new tone of thinking and connectedness that allows Woolf to imagine herself in the people around her and create a background for the different things that she encounters. These mental wanderings take place in areas such as the Thames River, a second hand book store, and a shop owned by a quarreling older couple. She seems to be developing an identity for herself in regards to her surroundings but in the end of the essay as Woolf returns to her house she realizes that identity is found in our wishes and wanderings as well as the reality of our life and familiar environment.
From the very beginning of the essay I sensed Woolf’s restlessness and desire to escape from, not only her familiar self, but also her conscious thought processes. Woolf’s need to leave what is ordinary and venture into the world outside herself is evident in her weak pretext for exiting her home and venturing thorough the streets of London. The fact alone that Woolf cites a pencil as her reason for wandering around on a winter night shows me how strong her inclination to elude normality is, but she carries this sentiment even further by applying it to her identity and mind. Woolf’s emphasis of the importance that darkness and winter have in her evening stroll made me realize that she was trying to evade her typical persona. In the second paragraph of the essay, Woolf explains “The evening hour, too, gives us the irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight bestow. We are no longer quite ourselves.” These sentences cause me to think that Woolf wanted to be someone other than her normal self, not only because she plainly states it, but also, because she gives a positive connotation to irresponsibility and seems to crave the cover that darkness and the unique air that lamplight create. I further connected with this idea of breaking away from your self towards the end of that same paragraph when Woolf paints a striking picture of our familiar selves emerging into the outside world. “The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughness a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye.” I can literally see Woolf slipping into the streets, shedding her old identity, and assuming the role of the detached observer. I identified with Woolf so much in this section because I have many times felt the desire to assimilate myself into a crowd and passively notice the things going on around me.
I found this similar urging to escape later on in the paragraph only this time connected to cognizance. Woolf expresses a wish to stay on the surface of things taking her surrounding in only at face value all throughout the first part of this essay. She describes her journey as “gliding smoothly on the surface” and voices a desire to “be content still with surfaces only”. Woolf seems to be working hard to elude her thoughts. This leads me to believe that Woolf wanted to evade her mind just as much as her self and normal environment. She depicts her observations in a way that is unconnected to thinking by mentioning that “the brain sleeps perhaps as it looks” and warning herself that “we are in danger of digging deeper that the eye approves.” In these ways Woolf is distancing her senses from her mind, further escaping the familiar.
Woolf’s plan to remain only on surface appearances begins to fade as the essay progresses. Originally Woolf expresses a desire to look at pure obvious beauty by saying “For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty; like a butterfly it seeks colour and basks in warmth.” I get the feeling from this expression that Woolf is trying to make a distinction between what appeals to the eye and what appeals to our emotions. She later describes this method of observing beauty, however, in a way that gives it a shallow connotation. Woolf mentions that with “this simple, sugary fare, of beauty pure and uncomposed, we become conscious of satiety.” As I read this line I thought that Woolf was beginning to see the need for her conscious thoughts and was preparing to let them back in. This idea was further cemented when I recalled the line directly before this one in which Woolf remarks upon the shortcomings of passive sight. She says, “The thing it cannot do (one is speaking of the average unprofessional eye) is to compose these trophies in such a way as to bring out the more obscure angles and relationships.” Woolf begins to appreciate irregularity as beautiful and this change marks the emergence of her cognizant mind into her observations. After this switch, Woolf describes beauty in ugliness. She finds beauty in the foot of a dwarf and attributes a strange sort of grace to the walk of two blind men.
As Woolf begins to redefine true beauty, her detachment in surveillance melts. I think that this is because originally she was looking only at beauty that can be taken in at face value but as she switched her focus to the beauty found in ugliness she was required to react or at least think in order to understand its beauty. This evolution from surface beauty to hidden beauty stood out to me in another way as well. I felt a contrast between detachment and connectedness in Woolf as she describes the various things that she observes. She was able to stay detached from the “simple, sugary fare, of beauty” mentioned earlier because visual pleasure was the only thing it had to offer, however, the raw emotions of pain or humiliation found in the beauty of the ugly, deformed, and unusual draws us in and makes us feel. We are required to think when confronted with such things because there is great depth to the subject. Woolf shows us this ability to connect to pain in her description of the street crowd’s reaction to the shoe-shopping dwarf. After returning to her ugly self after her momentary glimpse of normality, the dwarf “started a hobbling grotesque dance to which everybody in the street now conformed,” and Woolf later reinforces that “all joined in the hobble and tap of the dwarf’s dance.” Woolf originally claims to desire detachment from her surroundings but finds later on that visual and emotional pleasures require a deeper look into subject matter and a connection to it.
I noticed a similar contrast between detachment and connectedness in Woolf’s morphing identity in regards to the crowd around her and her changing environment. The quote mentioned earlier about Woolf’s emergence into the streets of London, “The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken,” demonstrates the idea that our identities are altered when we leave behind the familiar things that define us. Instead of assuming her normal responsible identity in the crowd, Woolf adopts the position of a removed observer becoming “an enormous eye.” This forced detachment is, I think, brought on because of a lack of the familiar. When we no longer derive our true self from our familiar surroundings and those who know us, we automatically morph into the crowd’s perception of us. Woolf’s detailed scene with the dwarf demonstrated this theory. The dwarf was able to see herself as normal and beautiful when her feet were the center of attention and she was engaging in the familiar behavior of shoe shopping. However, when she returned to the streets and no one could see her perfect feet Woolf says that, “she had become a dwarf only.” It is as if Woolf is saying that, when the things that we love or know about ourselves are not apparent, then they cease to matter.
At the same time she is expounding upon this point Woolf is also explaining the antidote. Woolf shows us that by not limiting what defines our self identity to the familiar but by also allowing our desires and the experiences of others to shape our person, we can avoid being lost in the flurry of street- wandering in London. At first, Woolf limits herself to what can be gleaned in glimpses but eventually she lets herself imagine and think and in that context she truly finds meaning and pleasure. We see that it is our innermost thoughts and experiences whether real or imaginary that influence us most and that by finding our connection to the crowd we discover true freedom and escape. Near the end of the essay, Woolf emphasizes the importance of connectedness in our identity and experiences saying “And what greater delight and wonder can there be than to leave the straight lines of personality and deviate into those footpaths that lead beneath brambles and thick tree trunks into the heart of the forest where live those wild beasts, our fellow men?” Woolf encourages us to dig past surface appearances and find where we connect to our surroundings because it is only in this way that we achieve a true identity and effective escape at the same time.
“Street Haunting: A London Adventure” impacted me for several reasons. I was drawn into the story by Woolf’s brilliant depictions and identified with the open emotions she conveyed. Woolf’s exploration of true beauty stood out to me because I tend to deem things beautiful that are unique or have sentimental value over things that are perfectly visually pleasing. I felt like I journeyed alongside Woolf as she evolved from detachment in identity and observation to a more connected stance. Most of all, the theme of escape in Woolf’s essay spoke to me. I enjoyed seeing how Woolf struggled so hard to elude her thoughts only to discover their importance in the end. I felt as Woolf must have as she wandered the streets of London on that winter night while reading this essay. I banished my more analytical thoughts at the beginning of the essay in order to truly appreciate the beauty of Woolf’s descriptions, but, as the essay progressed, I realized that there was so much more to the scenes than what can be gleaned from near subconscious reactions. I had to slowly let in my perceptive thinking in order to fully understand the import of Woolf’s accounts and achieved a rich experience that I had not expected.

Warning against silence

2007-10-10T20:02:00.000-07:00

The scene with the rake from David Mamet’s story made me think about how even the most innocent people can turn into the things that they loathe. Mamet describes the beatings that his sister received as a child throughout the story and then details how he ends up hurting his sister in the same way. Though Mamet didn’t intentionally hurt his sister, his actions derived from similar emotions. He was frustrated about having to rake leaves on a lawn that he hated and was disappointed in the life he was living in what he described as the middle of nowhere.

I think that Mamet incorporated his absence into the scenes where his sister was being mistreated to show that while these things were going on he remained silent. The fact that Mamet didn’t speak out against his mother and stepfather’s cruelty towards his sister emphasizes the idea that, even though we may disagree with something that is going on, unless we take a stand against it we are actually condoning those actions. Repetitive refusal to acknowledge what we think is wrong can make us grow accustomed to those things and even breed that kind of evil in our own lives. Mamet throwing the rake at his sister made me think that he had unknowingly let a part of what he hated so much influence him. Reading the final scene with the rake caused me to think about the things that I fail to speak out against and the things that I disagree with but accept as normal. I began to wonder if I have let any part of the things that I loathe into my life and if the things that I ignore affect me in the same way that the domestic violence affected Mamet.

Mamet had been constantly exposed to cruelty and violence in his own home to the point where he came to expect it and probably even view it as normal. I think that we run this same risk of recognizing deplorable behavior as acceptable in our culture because of the numerous ways we are exposed to such behavior. Television is a huge way that we are influenced to see something that in real life would be considered horrible as acceptable because it is being dealt with in a very everyday approach. So many TV shows (like the ones on the CW) depict young adults as wild and irresponsible; constantly having sex, drinking, and doing drugs. Most of the people that I know don’t behave anything like this but in our culture we have come to expect this from teenagers and I think that young people have become influenced by this type of behavior. While I disagree with the conduct that is depicted on TV, I tend to assume that is how most people act. This scene made me think of how the Christian church is guilty of the same things as Mamet. In many areas, Christians have allowed things from our culture that the Bible clearly defines as sin to become acceptable behavior or at least refused to acknowledge that it is happening. I think that it is because of this silence towards sin in the church that has allowed many Christians to commit those sins. As I read Mamets final scene, I felt like he was warning us to speak out against violence and other things we view as wrong so that we will not eventually become guilty of those same actions.

A Cycle of Violence

2007-10-09T15:21:00.000-07:00

“The Rake: A Few Scenes from My Childhood” by David Mamet had an important theme that violence is cyclical. We see that the grandfather in the story beat the mother and the mother inflicted this same kind of pain on her children. At the end of the story Mamet ends up accidentally hurting his sister. This theme stood out to me because the people who inflict pain in this story seem to be doing so out of frustration, disappointment, and their own personal pain. The grandfather beat the mother because his wife wouldn’t have sex with him. The mother most likely beat her children because that is what she knew as a child and also because she was concealing her own pain from being beaten. David throws the rake at his sister because he is frustrated at having to rake leaves on a lawn that he doesn’t even appreciate. The idea that frustration breeds violence in the Mamet family made me think that this same frustration must be let out in different ways in other families. Not all families are violent but most people have things that frustrate or disappoint them in their lives.

I guess that my family’s way of de-stressing is to pray or laugh together. We take a lot of family vacations too, probably because my dad has a really stressful job. Maybe other people are able to bury their upsetting emotions without any violent consequences but I think that most people have to let their feelings out in some way. The parents were unable to acknowledge their pain and because of that they took out their bottled up feelings on their children. I think that we can learn from Mamet’s relation of the parents violence that we have to recognize the things that hurt us in order to not let them affect us. Maybe if the mother and stepfather dealt with their problems instead of concealing them they wouldn’t have hurt David’s sister.

Another thing that became apparent when I read about this cycle of violence in “The Rake” was that this domestic violence will continue unless it is acknowledged for what it is. None of the family members would mention the violence that went on and because of that it was kind of like they were accepting it as normal and allowing it to happen. When we encounter violence we need to speak out against it in order to prevent ourselves from becoming accustomed to it and eventually repeating that violence. I think that this theme of a cycle of violence leads into the theme of silence and complicity. By remaining silent as violence goes on we are actually condoning it.

The Model Home

2007-10-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

The model home in “The Rake: A Few Scenes from My Childhood” stuck out to me for a few reasons. At first I thought it was ironic that this incredibly dysfunctional family lived in the model home. Then it occurred to me that, even though author David Mamet’s family is an extreme example of the pain that families often inflict upon each other, most families seem to be this “model” family on the outside but are really very dysfunctional on the inside. It made me think that the fact that the Mamet family lived in this perfect house wasn’t really a contradiction to who they were but instead added to this appearance that they really were this perfect family. Many things in the story supported this idea that the Mamets had the appearance of a typical family. They lived in a nice, new subdivision and the two children attended the local high school. No one in the family talked about the beatings and hatefulness that the parents inflicted upon their children, and Mamet even mentions that the children would be punished if their parents deemed that they were disgracing the family in public.

Also, a model home is the house that the builders of a subdivision show their clients to give them an idea of what their homes will look like or what the possibilities are for their own home designs. The model home has to appear perfect but usually the builder doesn’t construct it as carefully as he does the houses that people actually live in because the appearance is the only thing that matters when he is trying to influence people to buy his houses. I know about this first of all because my family has been through the house-buying process many times and has actually owned a home that the builder later decided to use as his model home, also my grandfather is a contractor. This is why after reading the story I was immediately drawn to this model home image. The model home is designed to look great but isn’t built as well as it could be. This reflects the way that the Mamet family takes great pains to appear normal but the parents neglect to build healthy relationships with their kids. The whole family is in a lot of pain and is definitely unstable just like the typical model home.

I remember when my family and I lived in our neighborhood’s model home. We always had to makes sure that the house looked perfect because people could come by anytime to look at it as it was also on the market at that time. We constantly had to do that superficial kind of cleaning where you stuff all the clutter in drawers or rearrange your stuff so it looks less messy. This kind of cleaning doesn’t really help because you just have to deep clean later but it works because people are only looking at the surface of your house. As I read the story I remembered this because I began to think about why the Mamets were so dysfunctional. I think that maybe the Mamet parents didn’t seem to care about the relationships within their family because they knew that people on the outside only see the surface and it was just easier for them to stay on the surface and take their pain and frustration out on their kids than deal with it. Its like they were constantly surface cleaning by stuffing their emotional baggage on their kids instead of dealing with it and putting it in its proper place.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries = High Maintenance

2007-10-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

Now that I have eaten about ten chocolate covered strawberries, I am finally ready to blog. I have been putting off posting this whole weekend because I felt like I didn’t really have anything to talk about and also because I felt like I was missing something. At eleven o’clock tonight I figured out what I was missing: chocolate covered strawberries. I know it sounds crazy that I couldn’t write because I didn’t have any chocolate covered strawberries but I’ll briefly explain why this makes perfect sense (at least in my mind). Whenever I write anything school-related I always have some sort of snack, usually its either chocolate or popcorn but sometimes I branch out a little and try something new. I hadn’t had much time to blog during the week so I tried to find an inspiring snack that would help me post something good over the weekend. On Friday I tried Asian-resembling food and fried chicken, but that didn’t really spark anything creative. Saturday morning I decided to fall back on my classic choices of movie theater butter popcorn and dark chocolate, neither worked and I even experimented with covering the popcorn in the dark chocolate but the results of that were surprisingly unfortunate (apparently insane amounts of artificial butter flavor and bitter 80% cocoa melted chocolate just don’t mix). Anyway, Sunday night arrived and I still hadn’t posted anything and I began to freak out a little bit. I knew that I was craving something but the worst part was that I had no idea what I wanted. I took a long bubble bath which is one of the only things that can actually help me de-stress and while I was desperately trying not to let the fact that I hadn’t blogged this week affect me, I realized what I was craving. I was just pouring in loads of hot chocolate bubble bath when I looked up at my strawberry ice-cream shampoo and it hit me. I called Sam and told him that I absolutely had to have strawberries and that “frutti-dolci” stuff from Kroger and asked him to bring it over ASAP. He of course forgot and we had to run out to the store at 12:00 in a freaky part of town while I was wearing pink slippers and threadbare pajamas. Needless to say the few questionable-looking people that were in Kroger at the time were staring at me and I felt incredibly stupid for absolutely having to have chocolate covered strawberries (Sam was wearing normal clothes so no one was staring at him and he claims that he felt completely comfortable buying strawberries and chocolate from a deserted Kroger at midnight). Sam bought the strawberries, we came back to my apartment and I began making them right away. Its amazing how much better I feel after eating chocolate covered strawberries. I feel relaxed and comfortable even though I still have a lot of work to do and I am actually enjoying typing out this blog and working my calculus problems. While I know this post is all over the place and pretty point less writing it has actually made me realize something very startling. The fact that I needed chocolate covered strawberries so much that I couldn’t write my blog and I had to have my boyfriend come with me in my pajamas to a Kroger at midnight to buy them probably means that I am really high maintenance. My mom and dad are always joking around saying that I’m high maintenance and that they feel sorry for Sam and stuff like that, but I never really took them seriously. I mean most normal people don’t crave things so badly that they can’t do school work without whatever it is that they are craving. Maybe I need to work on this. Actually I think Ill just ask Sam if it bothers him, maybe it’s not that big of a deal if I am high maintenance.

Taylor Bradford Essay

2007-10-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

I don’t really feel affected by the shooting of Taylor Bradford. I know this sounds horrible, but I didn’t know him so while I can register this as something sad, it doesn’t really seem to be connected to me at all. I can’t say that I was surprised that something like this could happen at the U of M because Memphis in general has a lot of violence. You hear about people getting shot in Memphis or near campus all the time so this shooting wasn’t shocking. My parents didn’t consider it a big deal probably because they live in Memphis but I did get a few phone calls from my grandparents who were really scared. I explained to them that things like this happen in Memphis and that I feel very secure in my classes and at my apartment. This doesn’t make me feel unsafe on campus because I know we have a good system of security and I don’t think that the kind of thing that happened to Taylor could be prevented by campus security. I know it seems like I just contradicted myself, but what I’m trying to say is that there is no reason for me to be more careful about my safety after what happened because I don’t think that there is any way to prevent things like this from happening. I feel safe on campus in the sense that I don’t think that I would be attacked or anything, but being shot at is not something that our security force can do anything about. I trust in God, the same way I always have, that I will be safe, and I try not to worry about things. Maybe if I lived on campus or was more involved I would feel more connected to the shooting this weekend, but because I simply go to my classes and then leave I don’t feel much attachment to the U of M. I feel sad that Taylor Bradford died and I have been praying for his family and friends to be filled with God’s peace and comfort. Other than that, this event didn’t seem to touch me. I feel that it is kind of messed up that I don’t feel connected to this, so I am looking to become more involved with the university. While I feel that I should be more connected to this incident, I do not think that being affected by this can prevent such things from happening in the future. I think that as individuals and as a society our way of thinking needs to change. Maybe if our culture valued human life more in general, instead of focusing only on ourselves, there would be less violence. The only thing I can think of to bring about this change in values is by vocalizing our discontent and by recognizing that, no matter how much we have become accustomed to it, violence is not normal.

Self evaluation of the textual analysis essay

2007-10-01T17:16:00.000-07:00

My approach to writing this essay was very laid back. I am accustomed to writing papers longer than 2,000 words because my high school has a challenging English department, so I didn’t really bother to start on my essay until the day before it was due. This was a huge mistake because I didn’t realize that the essays I had written in high school were based wholly on facts and the textual analysis essay required my own thoughts. After discovering this monumental error in my thinking at 6:00 in the evening, my process drastically changed. I read David Griffith’s “Prime Directive” another time and then I formulated my thesis. I didn’t have any time left to carefully review my ideas so I included only the things that jumped out at me from the text. I read through the article one more time and took notes next to sections that I thought supported the certain points that I planned to expand upon in my essay. Then I began to write. I wrote my paper all the way through with no breaks and went back through a second time to edit out anything that was too wordy or didn’t make sense. I finished at 3:00 in the morning and wasn’t very happy with my paper. I still think it’s fairly mediocre even after I have revised it.

Next time I will definitely start sooner on my essay and try to begin formulating ideas ahead of time as well. I would like to make more substantial changes to my future essays from the first draft to the final. I also want to write more interestingly in my next essay. I think that my textual analysis essay is very boring and it certainly didn’t have to be. The text that I analyzed was very meaningful and the points that I brought up in my essay were interesting so it’s entirely my fault that my essay isn’t exactly riveting. I think I could have used more interesting words and sentence structure to make my points stand out more. Also if I had incorporated examples from the text in a different way, I think that the essay would have seemed less flat. I didn’t really receive anything new to work on in my peer edits but I think that is because my writing was just adequate enough that it was hard to find something specific to improve upon. I had problems revising my essay for this same reason, nothing stood out as wrong to me so I was unsure how to go about fixing it.

This assignment has changed me as a writer because it forced me to come up with my own ideas to write about. I am not used to thinking for myself in my papers so this was a big shift. My previous English teachers discouraged me from using “I” or expressing my own opinions, it was all about properly citing authors and works. As a person I don’t think that I changed much except that I have maybe become a little less confident about my writing. It’s kind of scary to express my own thoughts with authority in a paper, I am much better at citing other people and focusing more on making my essays interesting. I am slowly realizing, however, that my thoughts are important and that it is perfectly acceptable for me to have definite opinions about things. The way that I read has changed from this assignment as well. As I read “The Last Battle” by C.S. Lewis, which I have read a couple of times already, I began to notice more of the symbolism that he uses in the book and the way that his words emphasize certain ideas and give off a certain feeling. This assignment was very different from anything that I did in high school and even though it was much more challenging than I thought it would be, I think I have learned a lot from it.

Unexpected Joy (the walking essay)

2007-10-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

A light silence fills the air, instilling a quiet peacefulness in everything around me. What is usually bustling and tense now seems beautifully still. As I sit on this ancient looking bench placed here by the class of 1937, I realize that U of M has much more history than I originally expected. Suddenly my thoughts drift to a similar day 5 months ago when my dreams changed forever. I had been sitting on a bench under a tree on a rainy day like this crying because I knew that the life I had imagined for myself would never become reality. Two paths lay before me and, while I knew without a doubt which one to follow, I was terrified. My dad no longer had a job and I suddenly had a choice. I could forego my senior year in high school, graduate early, and stay in Memphis with my boyfriend and friends, or I could move for the ninth time with my family. Staying in Memphis meant going to University of Memphis because the money that I had planned on using to go to Rhodes College was gone. This is why I was crying. I had dreamed of attending Rhodes since my freshman year. I loved the trees and beautiful architecture at Rhodes; I could see myself fitting in there. I had never imagined that I would go to anything other than an expensive private college and U of M was impersonal and cheap. I knew that the only way I could remain in Memphis was to go to U of M. I had received enough money in scholarships to cover rent, food, car payments, etc. But I was scared. I wasn’t ready to handle adult problems. I cried incessantly for almost a week and then I stopped, moved on and haven’t thought about these things since. I am surprised to feel all of these emotions rushing back. I moved into an apartment before I was ready to say good-bye to my family, I gave up hope of attending my dream college, and I finished high school online. Sitting here in this peaceful atmosphere has suddenly helped me to accept my decisions as not only the best ones that I could have made under the circumstances, but as ones that will make me truly happy. I feel like I did whenever I visited Rhodes: quiet and peaceful. I trusted in God every step of the way and I finally see how He has brought everything together. I got all the scholarship money I needed to live on after the application dates had passed, my friend randomly decided to find a new apartment and needed a roommate, and I got my high school diploma in less than two months. My boyfriend, Sam, found out that he will most likely get a paid internship at an accounting firm that will pay enough money for us to get engaged somewhat soon. The way all these things have fallen perfectly into place shows me God’s hand in this and that He has given me things that I didn’t even know that I wanted. I have new dreams now. I want to be married instead of going to an expensive school, and I want to be a devoted mom instead of having an amazing career where I travel all over the world. Most of all, I want to discover God’s plans for me in Memphis. Sitting on this bench in the stillness of a normally busy campus, I am now seeing that God has given me the desires of my heart in a completely unexpected way.

Sydney White and the seven dorks

2007-09-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

I just got back from seeing that Amanda Bynes movie, “Sydney White.” I know anyone reading this is probably wondering why on earth I would spend money to see that movie, but I had a momentary lapse in judgment. There really aren’t any good movies out right now and I didn’t want to see anything violent or dirty (my mom was coming), I just wanted a light-hearted easy to understand movie. So after looking online for a while my mom and I headed off to see “Sydney White.” Upon arriving at the theater we probably should have realized the error in our decision because they were only a handful of people in the theater, a couple old ladies and a group of middle school girls. Needless to say, we were blissfully unaware as we chatted about shoes and makeup and where to buy the best toenail polish (I know this sounds really shallow but its not as shallow as what is to come).

I’d like to say that we realized how incredibly cheesy and stupid the movie was going to be from the very beginning, but unfortunately even after sitting through previews for movies that were unimaginative and just plain dumb, we still had hope. Finally ten minutes into the movie it hit us that the extent of the poor acting, cheesiness, and stereotypical characters was more than we could have imagined. Sydney White, Bynes’ character, wants to join her deceased mother’s sorority but unfortunately it has turned into a bunch of blond bimbos who need attitude adjustments. These prissy Phi Kappa somethings don’t like brunette working class Sydney and reject her. Shocker! Sydney has no where to stay because she vacated her dorm to stay in the sorority mansion while pledging so she goes to the Vortex house. Vortex is described as a haven for social outcasts, seven dorky guys live there and welcome Sydney into their bizarre little family. Sydney decides to run for student council president so she and her seven dorks can take the power away from Greek Row and make the university an enjoyable place for everybody. While campaigning for student council she and Rachel Witchburn, President of the sorority, exchange harsh words and Rachel tries unsuccessfully to sabotage Sydney. Rachel hates Sydney because Sydney’s new boyfriend, Something Prince, is Rachel’s ex. Sydney wins the election and everybody, even greeks, admit that they are all dorks and social outcasts.

The whole message of this movie is that being popular does not matter and that looks don’t matter because everybody is a dork on the inside. This whole idea was kind of undermined because Sydney’s new boyfriend was supposedly the hottest most popular guy in school. I personally didn’t think that Something Prince was very attractive but then again I don’t really like pretty boys. The message kind of morphed into girls who are popular and attractive are absolute witches (like Witchburn) and boys who are popular and attractive are nice and accepting. I’m not going to say that I don’t agree with this idea, because that’s exactly how things are at ECS, but I think that the movie went completely overboard in driving that point home.

For Sydney and Prince guy’s first date he took her to a church where he served food to homeless people. Oh please, like any guy would take a girl to do community service with him unless he was trying to get a little something which Prince guy, by the way, did not. In order to ask Sydney out, Prince guy had some freshmen pledges lay a single red rose at her desk one by one and then serenade her. Gag! Finally, in true fairy-tale fashion Sydney had fallen asleep in the library after studying all night before her final presidential debate, she was running late so Prince guy tried to wake her up unsuccessfully and then kissed her until she woke up. At this point in the movie my mom and I knew what to expect so I wouldn’t say we were surprised but we did shout things at the screen which seemed to anger the other people in the theater.

This movie brings up questions that have been bothering me for quite some time. First of all, who makes these horrible movies and what where they thinking? Second, How did these movies get funding and actors to play these roles? And finally, Who goes to see these movies? I’m beginning to think that because of all the dumb weak movies that have come out recently that filmmakers are seriously underestimating the intelligence of movie goers. A more scary thought is that the majority of people really are this unintelligent. Anyway, does anybody have any thoughts on why movies are so bad right now?

Withdrawal pains

2007-09-29T18:13:00.001-07:00

As I said in my last post, I got very little sleep this week. I slept about 4 hours each night and felt really sick towards the end of this week. I got sick most likely because I haven’t eaten much other than chocolate and coffee and occasionally fast food. These past couple of days have been very hectic with lots of family stuff and work so I didn’t really have time to do much other than school work. By Friday I was shaking really bad (probably because of all the caffeine) and looked absolutely horrible. I hadn’t eaten a proper meal or taken a good shower (I did shower in like 5 min) or taken time to look good in a couple of days. I’m saying all this not because I want to complain about this stuff but because I am now going to talk about my main concern during all this stuff.

Even though I was sleep deprived, food deprived, sick, and looked like crap, all I could think about was that I hadn’t seen the last episode of “Friends” season 8 yet. Sam and I are systematically going through all of the “Friends” seasons and we usually watch a couple of episodes each night. Needless to say, because of our horrible week, we hadn’t really had time to watch an episode in a while and season 8 was already a couple of days late to Blockbuster. As I worked on the Textual Analysis Essay at 3 in the morning Monday night I was really worried that I wouldn’t get to watch “Friends” and when I studied for my chemistry exam late Thursday night I was experiencing these weird withdrawal pains from “Friends.” I don’t know how I got so addicted to TV, I guess its not technically TV because I don’t really like to watch current shows on TV, I only like to watch the seasons of shows when they come out on DVD. With the exception of “Gilmore Girls” which I watched faithfully every Tuesday night ever since the very first episode, I just don’t watch very much TV.

I guess my point in this blog is that I don’t think we realize how addicted we are to TV or music or whatever until we have to do without them. If someone had asked me if I loved to watch TV before this week then I would have told them that I really don’t like to watch TV, I like to read. I honestly did think that this was true until this week when instead of freaking out about not reading my book I got really messed up because I hadn’t seen “Friends.” Maybe TV has such a big impact because it engages more of our senses and we don’t have to work at understanding what is going on. Reading mainly involves your brain but TV and movies occupy our sight and hearing. Neil Postman warns about the dangers of TV in “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” I read this book and found it fascinating but I didn’t really think that it applied to me. I love to read and I read all the time, Postman mainly talks about our disregard for the written word and our replacement of literature with television. I figured that since I like to read way more than I like to watch TV then I was not vulnerable to the effects that Postman describes TV having on people. I realize now that whether we are addicted to television or not, it can have a profound impact on us.

Why Perfect?

2007-09-29T10:13:00.001-07:00

I’m trying to catch up on blogs for this week b/c I only posted one on Tuesday and just ignored all the other days. I’m not the kind of person who can not do homework and its been bothering me all week that I didn’t blog so I decided to post a couple today so I wouldn’t be feeling guilty anymore. I think there might be something wrong with me because I don’t see why I should feel so weird about not posting blogs this week, I mean I had a lot of other assignments to do and I didn’t get to sleep before two this whole week. I have been pretty much surviving on chocolate and coffee so I’m an absolute wreck. Both Sam and I were feeling sick this week but because I was less sick than him I went to classes Thursday and he went to classes Friday because he got to sleep in on Thursday. Now that I think about it, I don’t understand why we both were unable to just sleep in both days. When we talked about what we were going to do about being sick and missing classes we just took it for granted that one of us would have to go to each class, we couldn’t both miss (we have most of our classes together so that’s why we were even discussing this in the first place). It probably would not have hurt us very much to just miss class once, I mean even if we didn’t know what happened in class for one day it couldn’t lower our grades very much. I’m trying to figure out why Sam and I freak out about grades so much. Neither of us had pressure put on us by parents to make good grades but we always feel like we have to do all assignments perfectly. That seems really strange to me right now, I don’t even remember when I started to freak out about school so much but its come to the point where it’s impossible for me to do anything less than my best. That’s not to say that I always complete assignments to the best of my abilities but if I don’t do something perfectly it really really bothers me. I know Sam is the same way because neither of us was very happy with our textual analysis essays and we keep saying things about them like “Oh I just thought of what I should have said in this paragraph…” and so on. Why on earth can’t we just let things go? Why do we feel like we have to be perfect all the time?

I’ve decided to blame our high school, ECS, for our OCD problems. ECS ingrains in its students that you should do everything to the best of your abilities because that is what glorifies God and that is what will get you into a good college where you can get an excellent job and then glorify God even more. I agree that God desires my best and that in order to honor Him in all that I do I should do my school work well because at this time in my life this is what God wants me to do. I don’t think that it glorifies God to be obsessive about school work because when I’m freaking out about my work I’m not thinking that God will be dishonored by a poorly written essay. Also, I don’t think God cares at all if i get a prestigous, well-paying of job, I mean it’s not even up to me where I work because I am going to follow God’s plans for my life even if it means staying in Memphis and being a teacher or spreading His truth in Russia (by the way, I don’t want to do either of those things) , it’s up to Him to decide. Worrying about my grades seems selfish to me, I think that if I am going to do something to the best of my abilities it should be something for others because I think that would glorify God much more. Anyway, I think that ECS has it all wrong, God isn’t glorified when I’m perfect, He is glorified when I follow Him and do His will with the abilities that He has given me. I’m going to try to relax more about school and maybe I’ll be able to more clearly see God’s plan for my life.

A Different Point of View

2007-09-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

While at first “Prime Directive” may seem like another article criticizing the war, a deeper look reveals that it is about human nature especially in regards to pain and feelings of superiority. Author Davidriffith uses a lot of symbolism in this piece to subtly show his readers a different side of our society and the surprising things we, as humans, are capable of. His arrangement of this article shows us how his perspective changes toward the Abu Ghraib atrocities and the people who committed them. As Griffith describes the events of his night and his shift from numb disregard to strong passion, his words convey a feeling of dark confusion and unbalancedness giving readers the idea that he and others are blindly searching for something. Griffith incorporates the shadiness of Halloween along with the clear-cut Prime Directive and even our Pop culture to illustrate his realizations and their significance.

“Prime Directive” is Griffith’s retelling of his experiences the night before Halloween and Halloween night. Griffith is dressed as Captain Kirk from “Star Trek” but is repeatedly mistaken for an extra who dies. He and his friend go to a couple of different parties because Griffith says he doesn’t want to be home alone as his wife and things are gone. His wife had to move before him and he will soon be joining her. At the last party he goes to, Griffith poses for an Abu Ghraib-like picture with a friend dressed as Graner. The next day, Griffith is remorseful and helps his good-hearted neighbor pass out candy and terrify children.

Griffith’s description of his Halloween experiences is very dark and causes the situation to seem out of balance and confusing. From the very first paragraph of the piece we get the idea that things are not normal when Griffith tells us that the sky darkens at the “exact moment” as the street light goes out. He goes on to say that “the world seems rife with omens,” a phrase that foreshadows the symbolism yet to come. During the first party scene when Griffith is misidentified, we get the feeling that he is depressed and ready to escape his problems after he considers imitating Kirk. Griffith says that he is “not feeling up to it. No one is drunk enough for it to be funny, including me.”

This last phrase brings up an interesting theme in “Prime Directive.” In many instances in the piece, people seem to be trying to stay on the surface of serious subjects or to be numb and shut out their troublesome thoughts. As Griffith describes his empty apartment, we see that he is uncomfortable being alone in a bare apartment because his thoughts keep him from peace. He says that he has to drink a few beers to go to sleep and compares the “crammed bookcases” to the new sparse living space saying that there is “nothing to deaden the sound.” This makes me think that this emptiness leaves him no other choice but to explore uncomfortable ideas, where as normally his many distractions shield him from harsh reality and serve to “deaden the sound.” We see this same need for distraction in the party-goer dressed as Prozac. After the party lightly discusses the connections between the war in Iraq and Star Trek’s Prime Directive, Griffith says she “began to get impatient; she’s ready to move one.” Prozac wants to go to another party because when we keep moving we don’t have to stop and think. Griffith emphasizes this idea again when he decides to continue on to another party because he wants to be “away from my empty house, away from thinking.”

Even though Griffith is trying not to think, a couple paragraphs later, the absence of his sane thoughts seem to let in these abnormal ideas. While standing in line for the last party, Griffith imagines himself attacking the bouncer and attending a “Hieronymus Bosch-like party.” Griffith’s word choice here immediately evokes graphic images of the scene he is imagining simply by saying the name “Hieronymus Bosch.” It is ironic that just as Griffith is trying to be mindless, all these violent images take over. I think Griffith is showing us that when we refuse to acknowledge that incidents like Abu Ghraib are pertinent to our lives then we begin to become just as perverse and guilty as the people responsible for such heinous acts.

It seems that though Griffith is trying to escape his thoughts, the abnormality of the events has caused him to think in a different way. Griffith says he needs some “proximity to strangeness, something to take my mind off of the stuff that was waiting for me when I was alone,” but instead the “strangeness” causes him to delve deeper instead of hovering on the outside of his thoughts. A good example of the “strangeness” that causes Griffith to think is his picture with the Graner impersonator. Griffith claims to find the costume “somehow exhilarating” because it goes “beyond the point where rational people turn back.”

The idea that Griffith now find it “exhilarating” that the Graner impersonator went so far shows how much Griffith’s thinking has evolved since the beginning of the article. Originally, Griffith is trying to hide from his thoughts and now he appreciates this guy who has plunged in to the heart of the Abu Ghraib issue. This shows that what is necessary in order to effectively learn from and respect the Abu Ghraib atrocities is a correct balance between recognizing the actions and perpetrators as deplorable and seeing that same perverseness in ourselves. Griffith sees this after taking the Abu Ghraib-like picture with his friend.

Griffith mentions Abu Ghraib many times from the perspective of one who cannot understand and would never do such things but finally at the end he shows us that the tendency to take advantage of those who are weaker exists in every human in some form. He leads us to this conclusion throughout the article by first demonstrating his feelings of disgust towards Abu Ghraib from an observer’s point of view. He describes the incident as something that would “bring everybody down” but later begins to connect the exploitation of humans in Abu Ghraib to our own pop culture. He uses words like “near-naked” and “gyrating” to show us the humiliating way that the women in music videos are being exploited and then ties that in to the naked, humiliating pictures from Abu Ghraib. Slowly we begin to realize that people are being exploited in horrible ways even in America, though we don’t equate this kind of exploitation to that of Abu Ghraib because it is more voluntary and less cruel.

Griffith's emphasis on Star Trek’s Prime Directive and his depiction of himself as Captain Kirk symbolizes how in America many times we don’t even consider that we could be capable of such horrible actions. We were all raised to respect each other and to not infringe on anyone else’s rights but we should ask ourselves if that is really how others see us. As Griffith went around the night before Halloween, he was mistaken a couple of times for “one of the guys that dies” in an episode. He was mistaken for an extra that doesn’t even have an identity while all the time trying to be Captain Kirk, a protector of the Prime Directive. This shows that while we usually think of ourselves as these great human rights people, we are often not just the people who inflict pain but, the faceless people who are dehumanized like those in Abu Ghraib and the extras that die in Star Trek.

Griffith realizes how closely connected he is to the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib after taking the picture with his friend that mimics the Abu Ghraib pictures. The next morning this picture makes him realize the fine line we struggle with in order to properly react to atrocities such as Abu Ghraib. It’s hard to find the balance between condemning Graner and those like him and recognizing our disgusting similarities.

At the end of the article, Griffith demonstrates the extent of unbalancedness in our culture. He first tells us that his neighbor Mel “is a kind, loving man,” and then describes how he helps Mel pass out candy and terrify children. In Mel, we see how even the most unlikely people can still derive enjoyment from the pain and terror of weaker individuals. Griffith takes a turn as the fake looking grim reaper and is supposed to scare the kids as they come for candy. He fails to convince the kids that he isn’t real and one suggests that the other kick him to find out if he is really dead. Griffith uses this depiction of a real person acting like an object to show us how we sometimes fail to see those weaker than us as people until they react to pain, and even then we may not understand. The kid’s natural reaction in order to find out if Griffith was fake is to inflict pain.

“Prime Directive” shows us two different viewpoints that we normally would never see ourselves as. Typically we are Captain Kirk, always on top of things and doing what is right, but through the examples of Mel and the party picture we see our natural tendency to inflict pain. We also see that instead of being the inflictor of pain or the protector we can just as easily be the faceless object that is exploited. As Griffith waits to scare the trick-or-treaters, is mistaken as the dead guy, or describes the women in music videos, we see how we are so often unknowingly dehumanized in our culture. Griffith puts us in his place that night before Halloween. We feel him shift perspectives from observer to the guilty party in a dark, confusing atmosphere as he tries in vain to stay on the surface.

Do reasons justify the crime?

2007-09-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

The whole “Jena 6” situation is such a controversial issue right now that I was surprised I could only find an article about it in Slate. I couldn’t find anything about it on any of our other recommended sites which I think is kind of strange, even The Daily Helmsman reported on the incident. After reading The Daily Helmsman’s take on “Jena 6,” I felt like the author was trying to manipulate me through exclusion of information and by including quotes from only one point of view. I know that you don’t have to present information in an objective way and that your writing should express your opinions, but I think that the front-page story for a campus newspaper should at least acknowledge another point of view especially when the tone of the article is that of a formal report. I also think that a report on an incident and a description of the university’s response to it should include factual information. So I decided to compare our own newspaper’s report on “Jena 6” to Slate’s and to what actually happened.

First of all I want to say that I think that our campus newspaper usually has some interesting, well-written articles. My boyfriend really likes The Daily Helmsman and makes an effort to always read every article of every issue. This alone shows me that it must be good because Sam usually hates reading and I don’t think that I have seen him voluntarily read anything other than Carl Sandburg poetry or Sherlock Holmes stuff during all the time we’ve been together. Anyway, I don’t want this post to turn anyone away from our school newspaper because I don’t think that this article is a good reflection of the things that are normally printed.

Travis Griggs, the author of the Helmsman article, describes the occurrences at Jena high fairly accurately except for one huge detail. He fails to mention that the six black students attacked the white student until he was unconscious and were said to have repeatedly kicked his head after he passed out. Griggs includes quotes from a few different people that all essentially say the same thing: the white students should have been charged as well. If you knew nothing of the “Jena 6” events before reading this article, then it would probably seem like an incredible injustice to only charge the black students involved in the school violence and not the white students who fought back and provoked the black students, but knowing a little more about what actually occurred I didn’t see things this way.

Slate’s article didn’t actually describe the events that took place, but it at least included the actual crime that the six students are being charged for. The article was mainly about reporting the various opinions held about the “Jena 6’ events so it was fitting that author Michael Weiss didn’t spend much time on the basics of the incident. Weiss included a wide spectrum of views in his article ranging from those who believed more white support was needed for the “Jena 6” cause to those who think the offenders should go to jail. While I thought it was really interesting to hear all these different opinions, I wish that Weiss had revealed where he stood on the issue. Weiss’s writing was pretty neutral, he mentioned the major facts without using strong language and had quotes from people who saw the situation in different ways. If I had to say how he felt, I think he probably feels that the charges of second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit battery are a little harsh judging from the quotes he included.

Before I talk about what I think, I want to mention something from the Helmsman article. Griggs begins by describing “Jena 6” as a national controversy, and he should because there are so many different opinions about the occurrences, but he doesn’t follow up his description by actually including any ideas that contradict his own and those of others who agree with him. He of course makes the Jena authorities out as the bad guys, but never mentions why this is a national controversy. I know that this issue isn’t the whole nation against Jena, La, so why aren’t conflicting views presented in this article? I think that if Griggs wanted to express his views in this piece then he should not have tried to sound informative, and if he wanted to be informative he should have included at least two sides on the issue. Over all, this article seemed poorly written and inappropriately constructed in regards to its purpose.

I completely disagree with Griggs on this issue. I certainly don’t think that the charges against the six students should be dropped. The issue is not whether or not these students had a good reason for attacking the other student, the issue is that they violently beat him until he passed out and continued to do so after he was unconscious. These six students broke the law when they attacked the student and they should be punished for it. The fact that the white students were horribly offensive and racist toward these black students does not give them the right to resort to physical violence. The idea that the white students involved in the incident should be charged equally doesn’t make sense because they did not attack anyone to the point of unconsciousness. I do think, however, that the white students should be harshly punished by their school for the deplorable ways that they insulted the black students. If the circumstances were turned around and six white students had been provoked to attack a single black student, I would still insist that the six students be similarly charged. I don’t think race should be a factor in this issue, nor do I think that the reasons why the six students attacked the other student should matter. When someone commits a crime, they should be punished accordingly.

"Don't Tase Me, Bro"

2007-09-20T16:49:00.000-07:00

If ya'll haven't heard the story already, this student at the University of Florida, Andrew Meyer, started heatedly haranguing Senator Kerry during his on-campus speech. Meyer's microphone was cut after he asked Kerry if he was a member of Skull and Bones while at Yale. After his mic was cut, Meyer got louder and more worked up which caused the campus police to attempt to escort him to his seat. Meyer violently resisted and yelled obnoxious stuff until the police brought him struggling to the ground and tased him. (Check out the video on You Tube http://youtube.com/watch?v=y3FFnpS-eYA )

I know that our assignment this week said that we needed to use two similar articles from the list of recommended sites, but after reading "The Adventures of Taser Boy" from The National Review, I was dying to hear a different side of the story. My second article came from The Independent Flordia Alligator, the UofF campus newspaper. I found it really interesting because it described the incident from a student perspective.

The word-choice in either article was fairly bland and the tone in both articles was mainly informative, however both views defend their sides in various places. The main differences I saw were in the specific way information was given and what information was given. In the National Review article, author Jack Dumphy includes an explanation of why the officers approached Meyer. Apparently a university official signaled that things were getting dangerously out of hand. In contrast, the UofF publication blamed the officers for agitating Meyer and provoking the riot. A look at the video shows us that Meyer was getting loud and angrily waving his arms around right after the mic was cut and a few seconds later the police approached him. In this situation, the National Review seems to be reporting more accurately but it is interesting to see the way that this situation appeared to the students in attendence.

Another interesting dissimilarity between the National Review and The Independent Florida Alligator is their reports of Meyer's conflict with the police. UofF went straight from "Meyer was told to comply with the officers, but continued to resist," to " 'Don't tase me, bro!' Meyer screamed as officers attempted to drag him outside . . . police then shot Meyer with a taser gun." The Alligator portrayed Meyer as a helpless victim merely resisting out of fear who is then cruelly tasered. Maybe it seemed like this to some people after hearing Meyers screams as he is tasered, but in the video, not only did Meyer "resist", he ran , flailed, hit, yelled, you get the idea. The National Review described Meyer as an attention-getter who carried on long after he was warned to calm down. Dumphy writes what we can clearly see in the video, that Meyer was acting in a threatening way to Kerry and was a potential danger to both officers and students. We see the officers point of view as their attempts to subdue Meyer only make him more volatile. He has on one handcuff, is running from them, yelling at the top of his lungs, and in a room full of people. Even though Meyer did not seem to be a threat in the video, its the officers job to ensure that everyone is safe and because Meyer was acting in a threatening manner the police had to take him down. The National Review also included that Meyer was warned several times by the police to calm down or they would taser him but Meyer, obviously, did no such thing.

The UofF paper explained that many students were planning on marching in protest the next day. Students were said to be demanding the charges of felony against Meyer to be dropped and the officers to be suspended. While I think these demands make sense if you are truly outraged at the whole event, but the students are also demanding that all taser guns be removed from campus. That really doesnt click with me, I mean taser guns are something that increases security and just because they were used on a student in this instance I dont see why they should all of a sudden be banned.

Anyway, I agree with the Dunphy. Meyer was considered to be an obnoxious jerk by many students and has videotaped a lot of his own practical jokes and stuff. I think his harangue of Kerry and violent resistance to the police were just attention-getting stunts that Meyer took way to far. Meyers yells on the video seem fake up until he is tasered and then they just sound horrible. I found this topic interesting because the differences in information made me think about the information that I accept as accurate. I'm definitely going to look for more than one source from now on because neither the National Review or The Independent Florida Gator was able to give the whole story.

A Different Point of View

2007-09-19T23:01:00.000-07:00

While at first “Prime Directive” may seem like another article criticizing the war, a deeper look reveals that it is about human nature especially in regards to pain and feelings of superiority. Griffith mentions the atrocities of Abu Ghraib many times from the perspective of one who can not understand and would never do such things but finally at the end he shows us that the tendency to take advantage of those who are weaker exists in every human in some form. He leads us to this conclusion throughout the article by first demonstrating his feelings of disgust towards Abu Ghraib from an observer’s point of view. He describes the incident as something that would “bring everybody down” but later begins to connect the exploitation of humans in Abu Ghraib to our own pop culture. He uses words like “near-naked” and “gyrating” to show us the humiliating way that the women in the music video are being exploited and then ties that in to the naked, humiliating pictures from Abu Ghraib. Slowly we begin to realize that people are being exploited in horrible ways even in America, though we don’t equate this kind of exploitation to that of Abu Ghraib because it is more voluntary and less cruel.
On a side note, I think that Griffith's emphasis of Star Trek’s Prime Directive and his depiction of himself as Captain Kirk kind of symbolizes how in America many times we don’t even consider that we could be capable of such horrible actions. We were all raised to respect each other and to not infringe on anyone else’s rights but we should ask ourselves if that is really how others see us. As Griffith went around the night before Halloween, he was mistaken a couple of times for the “one of the guys that dies” in an episode. He was mistaken for an extra that doesn’t even have an identity while all the time trying to be Captain Kirk, a protector of the Prime Directive. I think that this shows that while we usually think of ourselves as these great human rights people, we are often not just the people who inflict pain but, the faceless people who are dehumanized like those in Abu Ghraib and the extras that die in Star Trek.
Anyway, getting back to my main point, Griffith realizes how closely connected he is to the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib after taking a picture with a friend of his that mimics the Abu Ghraib pictures (his friend dressed up like Graner and carried around a camera and a hood). The next morning this picture makes him realize the fine line we struggle with in order to properly react to atrocities such as Abu Ghraib. It’s hard to find the balance between condemning Graner and those like him and recognizing our disgusting similarities. I think that this brings up another reoccurring theme of Griffiths, the idea that everything is unbalanced. Griffith points to this idea a few times throughout the narrative. He mentions the street light flickering in the beginning which gives us the feeling that things aren’t quite right. Griffith then adds to this feeling by describing how strange he feels in his empty apartment without his wife. We get the idea that he would normally not be doing the things that he describes in the story as he subtly ridicules the different parties and people, further insinuating that this night is strange.
Finally at the end of the article, Griffith demonstrates the extent of this unbalancedness. He first tells us that his neighbor Mel “is a kind, loving man,” and then describes how he helps Mel pass out candy and terrify children. In Mel, we see how even the most unlikely people can still derive enjoyment from the pain and terror of weaker individuals. Griffith takes a turn as the fake looking grim reaper and is supposed to scare the kids as they come for candy. He fails to convince the kids that he isn’t real and one suggests that the other kick him to find out if he is really dead. Griffith uses this depiction of a real person acting like an object to show us how we sometimes fail to see those weaker than us as people until they react to pain, and even then we may not understand. The kid’s natural reaction in order to find out if Griffith is fake is to inflict pain.
I think that “Prime Directive” shows us two different viewpoints that we normally would never see ourselves as. Typically we our Captain Kirk, always on top of things and doing what is right, but through the examples of Mel and the party picture we see our natural tendency to inflict pain. We also see that instead of being the inflictor of pain or the protector we can just as easily be the faceless object that is exploited. As Griffith waits to scare the trick-or-treaters, is mistaken as the dead guy, or describes the women in Chingy’s video, we see how we are so often unknowingly dehumanized in our culture.

Eastern Promises

2007-09-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

I read an article from The New Republic called “The Brutal Charms of EASTERN PROMISES,” and one from Slate called “Eastern Promises : The Metaphysics of David Cronenberg’s violence.” Both reviewed the recently releases film Eastern Promises that starred Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts but focused on different aspects of the movie.

Christopher Orr, author of The New Republic article, mainly raved about Mortensen’s part in the film. He is obviously a big Viggo fan because he began the article with one of Mortensen’s lines and then goes on to talk about the development of his character and his overall performance. He uses phrases like “ those cheekbones could have been cut by a jeweler” and demonstrates the importance of Mortensen’s character in every part of the movie. Orr says that though Watts is the main character, “on a gut level this is Mortensen’s movie.” Orr concludes by saying that the film is slightly lacking in meaningful tension or originality and that, while Mortensen’s performance was exceptional, the “ultragraphic violence” it contained didn’t help in the end.

In contrast, the Slate article written by Dana Stevens, focused more on the plot line and the meaning behind the violence of Eastern Promises. Stevens acknowledges that the film is enjoyable to watch but agrees with Orr that it is not an exceptional film. Steven’s approach to the article was deeper than Orr’s, she looked for what Cronenberg was trying to say in the violent scenes and over-all dark feel. Stevens explains that Cronenberg can be distinguished from others in his genre because his violence is not senseless but exhibits a healthy respect for the body. She shows her dislike of many recent violent films by describing them as having “Blam-pow jokiness.” Her deeper approach to the movie can also be seen in her idea that Cronenberg uses much of the violence in his films to show the social uses of violence. Stevens is also a Mortensen fan as we can see when she gushes about him at the end of her article. She calls his performance amazing goes on to say that you haven’t lived unless you’ve seen Viggo in the climactic fight scene where he is nude.

Over all, I think that Stevens used more descriptive language and more clearly described the movie than Orr did. Stevens paints a more detailed picture of the movie with his impressive vocabulary. By using words like naïve and idealistic to describe Watts character and saying that Mortensen looked like a Caravaggio martyr in a particular scene, Stevens made me recognize the feel of the movie and characters without actually seeing it. Orr’s review, while certainly interesting, did not measure up to Stevens in vocabulary or focus. I would have liked to hear more about the actual movie before talking about Mortensen’s part because I was kind of lost.

Without having seen the movie, and not planning to ever see it, I can’t really agree or disagree with these authors. However, I do think that I can talk about Steven’s views on violence in movies. I agree with her that much of the violence in movies is for effect and has no real meaning. I don’t like watching violent movies because they of course gross me out but also I think its kind of wrong to fill our minds with such violent images if their only purpose is to entertain us. I would have to say, though, that if Cronenberg’s work actually focuses on deeper meanings in its violence I would not be opposed to watching it, even though I know I would hate it.

Naomi Klein "Shock Doctrine"

2007-09-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

I know that ive already talked about my UNHP class before and how i think its kind of confusing and pointless, but Im gonna talk about it again anyway. Im still not sure what Im going to get out of this class but at least im becoming more accustomed to questioning what I hear and see instead of blindly believing new information. So we watched the film that Alfonso Cuaron made about Naomi Klein's new book the "Shock Doctrine" in UNHP today. Id heard about her book before talking about it in class, but I still didn't know very much about it even though I thought it sounded very interesting. Our class discussion today was mainly about the things we had heard about hurricane Katrina and New Orleans compared to what had actually happened. We watched the film because it went along with the idea that governments use all kinds of methods to control or decieve us, even taking advantage of national emergencies like Katrina. Klein has done all sorts of research on how we respond to shocking situations or even electric shock. What she found is that when people experience extreme shock they are more easily controlled or decieved because they are not able to respond to or process things like they normally would. Klein applies this concept of an individuals weakened state of mind after shock to large people groups. She says that after a shocking national emergency, powerful people can try to push through all sorts of policies or make decisions that normally would not have been allowed. While I agree with her that this often happens, i don't think that the way she represents her theories in the film is fitting. I think that she is guilty of the very thing she accuses governments of doing, using shocking material and events to instill their beliefs and control others. before I start criticizing her though, I want to say that I definitely think that our government has done this sort of thing in the katrina situation and with 9/11 but ill talk more about that later. Anyway, Klein and Cuaron use shocking material such as images of people experiencing electric shock therapy and illustrations of methods used by the CIA to "interrogate" prisoners in order to demonstrate the effects of shock and its documented effects. She talks about the brutality of CIA interrogation by describing things such as the use of phobias, solitary confinement, pain, and sleep deprivation used to crack the prisoners. The film then shows crowds of people being cruelly beaten back by police and other methods used to disperse large riots. next we see all sorts of disasters such as wars and floods to show us instances in which the government or others in power might have pursued their own agendas with disregard to the populace. finally, Klein ends by saying that information can keep us from experiencing and being controlled by shock. Ok, so during this whole movie I was thinking "how did i not know about this," and "surely this isn't happening in my country" and so on, but later on when i was walking to my car i remembered one picture in the film that completely shattered the illusion for me. The scene was of George W. speaking through a megaphone to people in New York right after the attacks while Klein says that after shock we "become inclined to follow leaders who claim to protect us." Im not a big W supporter, in fact i think he has messed up a lot, but i just about wanted to cry when that picture came up of Bush and klein used it in such a negative way. I certainly think that there weren't enough good reasons to enter Iraq and that the reasons he did have turned out to be pretty wrong, but I dont think that when he was standing up there encouraging a nation that had just been attacked that he was trying to maliciously control us, I think he was actually trying to protect us (even if it didnt work out well). I know that Bush hasn't made good decisions but, to me, those decisions don't seem like he has some sort of detrimental agenda, it just seems like he isn't thinking clearly. I hate that Klein made him out to be this big bully trying to control and decieve us when especially in that particular instance I dont think that was true at all. Maybe if Cuaron had used a different scene (maybe a public address or something) this would have come out better, but to me it looked like the leader of a nation trying to encourage and lead his people in a time of national emergency. Aside from the way she portrayed Bush in this film, I think klein went a little overboard in portraying governments as scarily trying to control us and harm us in national disasters. I mean sometimes rapid decisions are made during emergemcies because the situation calls for fast decisions and usually rapid decisions are not the best. I dont think that means that every bad decision or action taken is an attempt to decieve people I just think that sometimes in disasters people dont have time to think clearly before they act. I know that there are plenty of cases in which the government corruptly used disasters like when that department in Lousiana tried to get like 8 Billion or something right after the storm hit. Most cases like that dont seem like an attempt to control the populace though, they seem greed-driven or for some other personal agenda. So thats one way that I think she is wrong but let me get back to my accusation that she is using shock to control people. Ok, so her film shows shocking images and information that most people have never heard of and would find inconcievable. I think she is over exagerating the situation and people are initially responding to their surprise and of course shock by believing her. Most people have never seen anybody undergo electric shock treatment and its very disturbing to see. Also, the images from the CIAs interrogation methods are shocking to watch. i think, whether she is doing this intentionally or not, klein is instilling her beliefs into her viewers by presenting them with shocking new information and images that are initially hard to resist. had it not been for the scene with Bush that I strongly disagreed with, I dont think that I would have really thought about the film in a discerning way after it was over, I think I would have simply thought of it as freaky but true. So to sum up, I think Klein is right about the people in power using emergencies to further their own agendas but i dont think they are usually trying to control us. Also, I think that Klein's film used the same shock treatment like she discusses in her book, to influence her viewers. I plan on reading at least parts, if I dont have time for all it, of "Shock Doctrine" I think it sounds very interesting even though I think she is exagerating a little bit.

Group Paper (Shari, Phil, and I)

2007-09-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

Pets can be a huge part of our lives, we wish for them, pick them out, train them, and care for them. At first, this idea of longing for and loving an animal seems completely normal, but when you really think about it, what makes us care so much about an animal? Of course, our pets are cute and cuddly, but there has got to be a better reason to devote so much of our lives to our pets.
We think that our pets are so important to us because they love us unconditionally. Its very appealing to know that your dog is never going to be mad at you or that you don’t have to convince your puppy to like you. Another reason why an animal companion is so desirable is because they rely on us completely. There are so many things that we have no control over and its nice to think that we can at least control our pets or know that they see us as authority figures. Especially when you are young, the idea of a pet is enticing because you have someone to take care of and boss around while everyone else is telling you what to do all the time. In a world where so many things are changing and uncertain, our pets provide stability and something that we can dictate.
We each have specific memories of longing for and loving pets, specifically dogs. After thinking about why we feel this way, we realized that we craved the unconditional love and simplicity that dogs provide. Though we each recollect different instances that make us think about our love for our pets, we all felt the same way about why our dogs are so important to us. These stories show how much we care about our dogs, the different stages we go through in loving them, and how important they are to us.

I always dreamed of having my own dog ever since I was a little girl. I wanted a dog that would sleep in a beautiful dog house in the backyard. I imagined a small fluffy dog with long white hair that I could brush and braid and wash as often as I wanted to. My dog would be fun, hyper, and always excited to play. She would have a pink leash with a rhinestone handle and a fuzzy pink color that jingled when she walked. Most importantly, I wanted a dog that I could take care of all by myself. When I turned four and still no dog showed up I decided to take matters into my own hands. Even though I had asked for my own dog at Christmas and my birthday it didn’t seem like my parents were ever going to do anything about it. I looked around the house and realized that I had a few things that were very similar to a dog. First of all I had lots of stuffed animals that certainly looked like the dog that I envisioned but I decided that those wouldn’t really work because they couldn’t walk or fetch things very well. Then I saw some squirrels in our backyard and thought that one of them might make a very good dog but after trying to catch one I decided that they wouldn’t really work either. Finally I looked at my baby brother, Timothy, and knew that I had found my dog. Timothy crawled around like a dog and even held things like balls or sticks in his mouth just like a dog. He was a much better choice than my stuffed animals because they couldn’t play with me and he was a lot easier to catch than the squirrels so I knew that he would work perfectly. After making my decision I knew that there was a lot of work to do. I have always been kind of crafty so I set right to work making all sorts of doggy supplies. I made a leash and collar for Timothy out of his bib and a piece of ribbon (don’t worry I didn’t choke him or anything, I just tied it onto his bib not his neck.) I collected some squeaky toys from around the house to play with and then got some sticks from the backyard so we could play fetch. My final project was a dog house that I made out of a cardboard box. I set the dog house out in the backyard and put a big pillow inside so that Timothy would be very comfy. All that was left to do was to tell Timothy about the new arrangements and pitch the idea to my parents. Timothy seemed to be very happy about being my new dog and played with the toys that I had collected for him, but, needless to say, my parents were not pleased with the situation. I tried to explain that this way we could all share Timothy and that if he slept out in the backyard then maybe he wouldn’t wake us up when he cried in the middle of the night. I showed them the toys and sticks I had gathered and even the dog house I had made but they weren’t very supportive. My parents explained to me that even though Timothy acted like a dog sometimes, he was a boy and wouldn’t be able to sleep outside or crawl forever. They told me that soon I would have a walking little brother to play with instead of a dog. They were right, but I still fervently wished for a dog. I had to wait a while but, finally, when I was six I got my own dog.

I was so excited to find out I was getting a dog. I had been waiting for so long and was happy that the moment was finally there. My mom had found a breeder in Mississippi who had brand new Shih-Tsu pupppies. The kind she wanted. So that afternoon we got in the car and took a two hour drive. When we arrived at the breeder, we got to choose from a big selection of puppies. She had all kinds from white dogs with black spots to black with white to brown with white to black with brown...... get the piture?! So we started looking around and came across a pretty all black puppy with curly fur. We tried to play with her, but she just laid there. We came to the conclusion that that wasn't the dog for us. We wanted a fun, upbeat, friendly dog that we could have fun with. So we kept looking. the breeder let out a few dogs at a time and told us to try to get one to come to us. She did that and we began whistling, clapping and doing other things to get the dogs attention. Immediately we were rushed by a gorgeous tan dog with a black face and white stomach. She was so friendly and hyper we just immediately fell in love with her. She jumped all over us, nibbled on our fingers, and tried to lick our faces. She was perfect. We paid a grip for her (totally worth it!) and brought her to the car. She sat in my lab the whole way home and played with me. She was so small I was afraid I would smush her!
When we got home, we let her explore the house at her own pace. She went into of our rooms and explored everything, She decided my room was her favorite and started sleeping under my bed, even though she had a cute little dog house. We eventually decided to name her Pebbles (from the Flinstones) and said if we were to get another, we would name him BamBam. we never did. Pebbles is a handful!

My dog immediately took to us, and expressed a love that was truly unconditional. The human condition is so messed up in general; I think it's safe to say that a great deal of "love" is artificial. People often act nice only for personal gain, but dogs seem to express a very authentic love towards their owners. We fed her, played with her, picked up after her, and gave her a place she could call home, and that was it; what more does a simplistic animal need in life than the fulfillment of these very basic desires ? We tried to teach her tricks, but to no avail. She was too hyper and stubborn, or perhaps she realized somehow in her tiny dog brain that she was being degraded to some sort of object of amusement.We eventually quit trying , and no longer did we seek entertainment through the frivolous obediance of a pet. Besides, how would humans feel if they were forced to perform tricks for somebody? We let our dog do as she pleased, as long as it brought no harm to any of us. Her sweet and innocent face somehow managed to charm and delight even the most cold-hearted people. It is humorous to point out the fact that the single greatest thrill in her life was her daily stroll around the neighborhood. It shows how little it takes to satisfy a dog, and how spoiled humans are for requiring such large doses of mass media and extravagant forms of entertainment to keep themselves happy. She was an integral part of the family, and her passing away left a large hole in our hearts for many weeks. We eventually got over it though. We smiled and knew that we had given her the best life a dog could ever have.

As you can see, we each remember how important our dogs are to us because of different things, but the reason we care about them is the same. In every stage we go through with our pets, whether its wanting them, bringing them home, or simply living with them, we love them because they are always there loving and adoring us.

My Own Dog Story

2007-09-10T19:20:00.001-07:00

I always dreamed of having my own dog ever since I was a little girl. I wanted a dog that would sleep in a beautiful dog house in the backyard. I imagined a small fluffy dog with long white hair that I could brush and braid and wash as often as I wanted to. My dog would be fun, hyper, and always excited to play. She would have a pink leash with a rhinestone handle and a fuzzy pink color that jingled when she walked. Most importantly, I wanted a dog that I could take care of all by myself. When I turned four and still no dog showed up I decided to take matters into my own hands.
Even though I had asked for my own dog at Christmas and my birthday it didn’t seem like my parents were ever going to do anything about it. I looked around the house and realized that I had a few things that were very similar to a dog. First of all I had lots of stuffed animals that certainly looked like the dog that I envisioned but I decided that those wouldn’t really work because they couldn’t walk or fetch things very well. Then I saw some squirrels in our backyard and thought that one of them might make a very good dog but after trying to catch one I decided that they wouldn’t really work either. Finally I looked at my baby brother, Timothy, and knew that I had found my dog. Timothy crawled around like a dog and even held things like balls or sticks in his mouth just like a dog. He was a much better choice than my stuffed animals because they couldn’t play with me and he was a lot easier to catch than the squirrels so I knew that he would work perfectly.
After making my decision I knew that there was a lot of work to do. I have always been kind of crafty so I set right to work making all sorts of doggy supplies. I made a leash and collar for Timothy out of his bib and a piece of ribbon (don’t worry I didn’t choke him or anything, I just tied it onto his bib not his neck.) I collected some squeaky toys from around the house to play with and then got some sticks from the backyard so we could play fetch. My final project was a dog house that I made out of a cardboard box. I set the dog house out in the backyard and put a big pillow inside so that Timothy would be very comfy. All that was left to do was to tell Timothy about the new arrangements and pitch the idea to my parents.
Timothy seemed to be very happy about being my new dog and played with the toys that I had collected for him, but, needless to say, my parents were not pleased with the situation. I tried to explain that this way we could all share Timothy and that if he slept out in the backyard then maybe he wouldn’t wake us up when he cried in the middle of the night. I showed them the toys and sticks I had gathered and even the dog house I had made but they weren’t very supportive. My parents explained to me that even though Timothy acted like a dog sometimes, he was a boy and wouldn’t be able to sleep outside or crawl forever. They told me that soon I would have a walking little brother to play with instead of a dog. They were right, but I still fervently wished for a dog. I had to wait a while but, finally, when I was six I got my own dog.

Free-Write List

2007-09-09T19:21:00.000-07:00

First came to visit my dog, Jasmine, when she was first born
Used to pretend my brother was my pet (build him a dog house in our yard)
Draw names for my dog as a family
Took my dog home
When I was 9 let my dog sleep on my bed
Jasmine almost got run over by a huge truck
Got an electric fence put in and Jasmine got pulled over it
Took Jasmine to obedience school
We got another dog that Jasmine was afraid of
Took Jasmine to a lake and let her swim
Giving Jasmine baths (always hard b/c she hates water)
Jasmine got lost in the snow in our yard
Jasmine got stuck in our grass that hadn’t been mowed in a while

High school makeover

2007-09-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

After sitting in a 3 hour long class of listening to my driving instructor talk about the danger I am to society and my 2 ton bullet that I drive, I just need to rant about something. Back in May I was driving to school and got pulled over by a Germantown cop for slowly rolling through a stop sign covered by trees in a practically deserted neighborhood. Ok in the real version of this story I was speeding and fully intended to “disregard” this stop sign because I was running incredibly late, but that doesn’t really matter because the ticket just says disregarded stop sign so I get to fill in the blanks with whatever I want. Anyway, apparently in Germantown there’s this first offenders program that let’s you keep your ticket off of your record as long as you do six hours of community service and attend the “Safe Driving Class.” So I did my community service and tonight I went to the driving class. While I was pretending to listen to this retired cop talk about the dangers of drinking and driving (which apparently all teens do), I realized that our educational system is really flawed.
Most classes that we are required to take in high school and college are about an hour long or more. Now compare that time to the average person’s attention span which is between 15-20 minutes. That just seems crazy to me that so much time is being wasted in class when students are no longer able to effectively retain information. Even though our attention spans regenerate after a quick break, it doesn’t really help because they become shorter each time. I mean by the end of a class we should statistically be zoning out every couple of minutes. So with these things in mind, why are our class periods so long?
I actually had time to formulate a couple theories in between the videos “Red Asphalt” and “What’s In Your Breathalyzer Test” I think that one of the reasons that our school days in high school are so long is that parents and other people in authority are trying to keep us occupied. Maybe they think that if we spend so much time in school and then do a couple hours of homework that we’ll “stay off the streets,” or maybe they simply don’t want to feel responsible for the things that we do. Also, I think that maybe high school teachers have to work 8 hours a day so they can get benefits and, of course, enough money to live on. Tell me if you have any other ideas because there has got to be a logical reason why we have to spend an hour in class when most of the material could probably be covered in half that time. While I think that high school classes are way too long I can understand that our college classes have to be lengthy because we don’t meet every day.
So I’m pretty much supportive of the way college courses are set up but I think that high school and maybe even middle school could use some work. While I haven’t had much time to think these ideas through, I like how they sound at least right now. First of all class periods, would be shorter, probably about 30 minutes, and would mainly focus on the difficult or main points in the lesson and there would probably be some sort of assigned reading to fill in any gaps. After those class periods there would be an optional study hall type of thing where all of the teachers of various subjects would be in their class rooms to more thoroughly discuss anything they think is necessary or that the student needs help with. Also, the extra classes like Art, Drama, or Business would meet twice a week and mainly have projects due. Even if these ideas wouldn’t actually help our educational system, I still think it desperately needs some sort of makeover. We have come so far from the more classical approach to learning which involves individual attention and lessons adapted to the student’s abilities that I think the system has lost its true goal. Now, instead of offering students knowledge and broadening their points of view, schools try to occupy us, teach us discipline, and prepare us for college. I am not saying that these things are necessarily bad; I just think that they shouldn’t be such a huge goal. Anyway, after talking about all this stuff I’ve begun to see home schooling as an excellent, and maybe even superior, alternative to regular high school.

Gordimer, Ngugi, and Professor Duck

2007-09-05T20:12:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I was dreading having to read some of the assignments for UNHP Global Community Challenge. I still have practically no idea what this class is about and I personally don't think the name could be more vague. I can't believe that this course is required for the Honors Program, I mean we are already taking honors classes why isn't that enough. But anyway, I approached this reading assignment with a lot of hostility toward the class and a pessimistic attitude about the relevance of the story to my life or to school in general. I was so surprised when I actually found the stories and articles interesting even though I wouldn't say I enjoyed them. The reason they were so interesting is that they made me think about the way that our culture as a whole thinks and organizes information.

Ngugi (thats his first name I can't remember the rest of it) wrote an article about how the things that we think separate us from other people and define us can actually serve as a way to connect us to each other. He briefly touches on how Western Civilizations have a very categorical way of thinking and how educational systems instill this type of mindset in kids from the beginning of their school careers. The rest of his article talks about how to bridge the gap between cultures by beginning to look at similarities instead af differences like our categorical thinking tells us to do. While Ngugi says that our categorical thinking harms us because we cannot be as open minded and accepting of new things and different people, I think there is another way that our mental organization system can be detrimental.

If we get so caught up in trying to categorize something new or seeing unusual material through our preconcieved notions and definitions necessary to categorize things, we can entirely miss what is truly present. I think that this problem is present in many areas of our lives. For example, when we learn at a young age how, say, vegetables should idealy look or what colors make up a shadow we are actually hindering ourselves later down the road. Though it might seem easy at first to learn things in nice neat sections, when we get older we realize that things rarely ever divide up that simply. Going back to my example with the vegetables and the shadow, when we attempt to draw an actually vegetable or a shadow on the side of a person's face we end up subconsciously mixing reality with our preconcieved notions. You usually end up making vegetables perfectly shaped or mono-chromatic and fail to see the many colors that are present in a shadow. It takes a lot of practice for artists to see what is actually there instead of drawing through what they think should be there. I think this same concept can be applied to the way we view different people or new information. Instead of seeing that a person is similar to us we can sometimes only see what our categories have already told us they should be like . When I approached this reading assignment I was ready to read something boring and pointless because that is what my school reading category is like, but instead I found it interesting and maybe would have enjoyed it had I not been so prepared to dislike it.

Well, to wrap up, I think that how people think is fascinating and I'm not as angry at UNHP even though I'm still not sure what the point of the course is.

"Chill" by Anthony Lane

2007-09-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

The article I chose from a January 2006 edition of The New Yorker pretty much bashed the movies released in 2005. “Chill,” written by Anthony Lane, used illustrative word choice and a slightly sarcastic voice to describe what he thinks is wrong with the movie-making industry today. His points were very interesting and, while I have definitely spent a lot of time discussing the string of bad movies recently, the different things he brought up never occurred to me. Lane says that there are two main things wrong with movies today, 1) there is no original material just remakes, sequels, or portrayals of already popular books and stories, and 2) movies go to extremes of action-packedness or meaning, and, consequently, the art of subtlety is lost.
In terms of tone, Lane has been a fan of American movies in the past but is disappointed in the more recent movie releases. He obviously considers himself a film connoisseur and has different sources to explore the root of the problem. I was impressed when he mentioned that he had taken the ideas of film students and their instructors into consideration when he formed his opinion of the short-comings of the film industry. Also, I was glad that he didn’t over-analyze the movies he used as examples because that was something he had accused film makers of doing. His approach to the subject was good, he came across informed and with thought-out opinions that he was passionate about even though they contradicted his previous opinion.
His enthusiasm for the subject comes out not only in his impressive choice of words but also in the slightly sarcastic voice he used to emphasize his point. Lane’s writing was light and humorous, punctuated by interesting anecdotes from various movies to further illustrate his outlook. Lane contradicts himself by claiming to favor American movies as a whole but writes with a pessimistic point of view concerning future US-made films. I think that while the sense of despair Lane used was certainly relevant in reference to the “bad” movies he describes in 2005, he should have switched to a more optimistic approach at the end of his article talking about future movies to support his opinion of America as a “formidable movie-making machine.”
Lane’s diction in the article was very impressive. He used topic-fitting meaningful words to explain his stance and, to be kind of cliché, painted vivid word pictures with his vocabulary. One of my favorite lines, “producers, in their lavish innocence, seem to believe that cool, like Christmas leftovers, can be reheated ad infinitum,” is a great example of both Lane’s ability to emphasize his point with appropriate words and create illustrative metaphors to further explain his views.
I don’t think the structure of this article did the points justice. While Lane’s sentences were well constructed, he jumped around between a couple of different points and examples in each of his paragraphs. Also, Lane didn’t really have a great flow to his article. He started out discussing the weakness of 2005 movies, gave some examples from movies, talked about film schools and their serious focus, incorporated some more movie examples, and then wrapped it up with some great foreign movies and a sense of despair for future American films. I think the article would have been more clear had he more obviously stated his points and wrote in a more systematic manner. While his ideas were well thought out, his writing was all over the place.