Week 3 Prompt III

Try an I-said, he-said conversation. Set the scene somehow.

Della is my black standard poodle. She has many queer habits, one of which is purring.

She has nightmares quite often, and she only pays attention to me, so:

"Hi Della," I would say, "It's okay."

"Yipe!"

"It's okay Della."

She wakes up.

"Purr."

"Good Della."

"Purrrrrrr."

"What a good girl."

"Purrrpurrrrrrrr!"

"So I guess this was another 'rabbit chasing Della' dream, right Della?"

"Purr."

These conversations are generally quite one sided, yet are quite fulfilling in their way, as her "purr"s are highly expressive, of how much she appreciates to wake up and not have giant rabbits trying to eat her, and to have me petting her instead. She only does this for me, no one else, and we do have a whole conversation there, even though it only seems like one side is participating intelligibly.

Week 3 Prompt II

Go to a crowded public place (not one of your classrooms though) and be a fly on the wall. Just watch. What's going on? Set that scene.

My sister is taking part in an English thing, where she reads one of her best papers aloud to a group of other English students and teachers and such. And she has asked me to take pictures of it. First of all, I get to see the mysterious Mr. Goldfine, who I had heard so much about. He is talking to her about her Xanthe paper. We entered the area. I felt a little in the way, seeing as I was not a student in any English class yet, so I pretty well stayed way off to the side where no one would see me, and plastered myself to a large plant. And it turned out that Felicia went pretty close to last, so I sat and I watched as students from other English classes read their English work. And I listened to all of it. I heard their revenge poems, their where I am from papers. I watched and waited, until Felicia read hers, then I took a couple pictures of her reading and cleared out. And from watching all of this, I arrived at I a definite conclusion. I would never be able to teach an English class. To me, most of the writing was hideous, distasteful, and poor. I knew that I would never be able to read things like that and say "This is a good start," or, if something was halfway decent "I like this." I just would not be able to do it, just because apparently from reading so many classic books and such, my level of reading tolerance is not normal enough to accept anything that isn't exceedingly high quality. Which is why if I look at my writing I generally dislike it. So I watched her little English recital, and I watched my own reading standards, and I was convinced that they are far too high to be realistic. But I am quite content with them as they are, and always will be.

Week 2 Prompt II (Self assigned redo)

Those who forget history are forced to relive it, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Playing football with myself is quite interesting. Especially when I never learn. I play football with myself outside in the winter, and it appears that there are some things that I will never learn, which are actually becoming quite humorous at this point. Firstly, I landed on my right elbow pretty hard once. So, I did not learn from that, I went out later and did it again. Until eventually it developed a sort of perpetual sore bruise, lasting for months, getting reaggravated as I was constantly landing on it. So then, since that was not enough, I had to land on my right knee instead. I ignored it, and it developed into pretty much the same thing. So then, I had to complete the trifecta, sliding along the ice and ramming my right hand into an outjuting protuberance of ice a couple of days ago. It had only been my palm, and with a little effort, I could still touch my pinky finger with my thumb, so I went out two days later, and landed on my hand, elbow, and knee repeatedly. It is pretty much just humorous now, as I know I will not stop to let them fully heal while there is still snow and ice outside. I will just try to be a little more careful next time. And try not to start in on the left side.

Week 3 Prompt I

Writers have to listen to themselves; writers ought to be always talking to themselves. Try a conversation between you and yourself. Sometimes arguments are fun.  

Me: "That guy looks a heck of a lot like Paul LePage."

Myself: "Funny coincidence. But the library has many mentally perturbed patrons, and why shouldn't one of them look like Paul LePage?"

Me: "It is strange."

Myself: "Just ignore him and go to the checkout desk on the other side of the library to check out your books."

Me: "I have one book that is lacking a barcode or anything again, it seems that I always seem to get an Oppenheim one like that."

(Insert most gigantic sneeze you can possibly imagine, emanating from the opposite side of the library.)

Me: "Oh my. Paul LePage's doppelgänger just sneezed, and it was louder than the majority of people could scream."

Myself: "Ignore it. LePage's double sneezing is no business of yours."

Me: "But it was just the most ridiculous sneeze I have ever heard!"

Myself: "Ignore it! Look at the librarian then."

(Librarian has a shocked and bemused look on his face, almost as humorous as the sneeze.)

Me: "Oh no, that is too funny!"

Myself: "Come on, it was just a sneeze!"

Me: "It's the look on the librarian's face!"

Myself: "Stop laughing!"

Me: "But when I stop, I start thinking of it again, and then I start laughing again. I can't help it. This is the first time it has happened to me, uncontrollable laughter like this. Normally, when I laugh, it is because I feel like it or am being polite. The last time I came close to actually finding something that histerically humorous was when Mr. Goldfine said how because your hat said WC on it, that you must have played on the toilets."

Librarian (handing books over): "Be careful." (referring to the horrific cold LePage's impersonator must be in possession of.)

And I don't believe I shall ever hear anyone sneeze like that again. Maybe unless LePage tries to give a speech with a cold.

Theme Week Two

When I was four years old, I naturally did not pay much attention to politics. So, in 1999, when my mother took me into the voting booth with her, and suffered a sudden attack of diffidence, who would she turn to? Me, of course.

"Who do you think I should vote for?" she asked, "Bush or Gore?"

I had no clue who she had in mind, but my intelligent mind determined that a bush was a nice thing, leafy and nice, while gore was like goring people, and nasty. So,

"Bush," I replied.

She fortunately had already been going to pick Bush, but I gave her confidence in her choice a large boost.

When I was 6, I saw 9-11. I remember my father betting that that tower would not fall over. Unfortunately it did, though I had no knowledge of what it caused at the time. To me, it was just something on the television. I did not get the sad part of it.

I was 7 I believe when we declared war on Iraq and Afghanistan. My mother asked me who I wanted to win the war, the U.S., or Afghanistan. Unlike the time in the voting booth, she was not asking me to confirm her thoughts. They were already set. I returned to my logic of the past, and thought. An afghan was a warm wool like blanket that we had several of in our house, while the U.S.- we didn't have any of those in our house.

"Afghanistan," I responded.

She kindly informed me that it should be the U.S. I should want to win, not Afghanistan. I figured that getting 50% of these guesses right was pretty good.

When I was 11, I remember Katrina hitting Louisiana. The thing that stuck out to me was that the worst part of the hurricane went over Alabama, yet Alabama got hardly any media attention at all. This hurricane, along with all the other hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, heat waves, etc., in the news for the rest of the country and world, reaffirmed my prior convictions that I was very glad I lived in Maine.

When I was fifteen, I saw the Haiti earthquake. I got to see the Haitian man standing before the cameras with devestation and death at his back saying

"We got no internet, no cell phone, no food, no water."

And I sure hoped that this Haitian had a peculiar personal habit of his, of naming the least important things first, otherwise, I would have difficulty sympathising with him.

When I was seventeen- wait, I am yet to find out what occurences of great significance to me and the world shall happen this year into the next, but I am certain that it will memorable. To all of us.

Week 2 Prompt III

It was the first, but not the best-- or was it?

Weird baseball games are always the best, they are always memorable, whether in a good way, or a bad one. The first weird game I played was when I was ten, and it was quite queer, but I don't believe that it was the strangest one I have played in. I played an extremely queer one when I was fourteen, in the state Junior League championship game, when the umpires told us to "Not look over there where the lightning is. It does not exist." There was also the game when I was sixteen in New Jersey, where the other team had two players and a coach ejected. But the first weird game I played in was highly unusual.

I was ten, and I was having a pretty good game, considering that I was a ten year old. We were playing Mount View, I was starting in right field, and it was sort of an interesting game from the start in that there was an announcer, which never happened in any other little league game I ever played. I was having a good day hitting the ball, and I had gone three for three with three infield singles by the fifth inning. But the game was tied at 9-9, when the umpire called the game on account of darkness, even though the sun was hardly getting dimmed yet.

Since it was only one full inning left in the game, and neither team really wanted a tie, we went back to Mount View, this time to a different field, one that was much lower quality. Our leadoff hitter singled, and eventually, with two outs left, he rounded third to head for home on a hit. The throw came in, he was almost certainly safe, but the umpire called him out.

So we went to the bottom of the final sixth inning. Our pitcher walked two batters, and ended up having a runner on second and third, with two outs. The ball was hit out to shallow right field. I ran in on it, knowing that if I caught it in the air, then the game would go to extra innings. I dove, for the first real time in my baseball career, which was probably the reason I closed my eyes. It went in and out of my glove, and they scored two runs and won the game. Since we had travelled all that distance to play one inning, we started playing a scrimmage with them. The umpire left. The coach came and told me to take the ball on the bounce and throw it to the plate next time. I was not upset by it though, I was actually pretty pleased. It had been fun. We got a few innings in, when someone somewhere realized that Mount View's pitcher from that last inning had already pitched too much too recently according to the pitch count rules, and shouldn't have pitched the game. The game would have been forfeited to us, but it turned out that our pitcher had the same thing, and it was illegal for him to have pitched the last inning of this game because of his pitch count earlier that week. So, the umpire was called back, and she was very annoyed at it as well, and we played the inning again, this time with legal pitchers.

Once again, our lead off batter singled, and with two outs was once again rounded third headed for home on a hit. The throw came in, he slid again, and once again, even though it was pretty obvious that he beat the tag, he was called out precisely like before. This was a little frustrating for that to happen once again.

Our new pitcher walked the first two batters, and got in a two out, runners on second and third situation again. And once again, the ball was hit out to shallow right field. Again, I ran in on it, but this time, I took it on the bounce. The runner was trying to tag from third, and I made my first ever throw to the plate from the outfield without hitting the cutoff. It went quite high in the air, but made it down right to the catcher, while the runner was only about two thirds of the way to the plate. Our catcher stood and waited for the runner, who ran towards him, stopped, unsure what to do. Our catcher lunged out towards him, and the runner tried to jump over the tag, though he was drilled by the tag in the knees, and was tipped over in his jump because of it and almost fell over because of it. He staggered on, missing the plate. The umpire said "Safe!"
Mt. View knew that he was out, it was so obvious that neither they nor their parents cheered at all, they were pitch silent, knowing that they were given a gift from an umpire who was determined that Mt. View would win and was irate that she had to come back to make them win all over again.

And we ended up losing the game because of that.

Thinking back on that, it actually might have been the weirdest game I've ever played in. It certainly was very memorable.

Week 2 Prompt II

The stuff I've collected over the years in my little box/bureau/drawer/keepsake chest marks every step of my way.

I have a box that contains most of my baseball things. There is the first baseball glove I used when I was 8 and 9; then there is the second one I used. This one lasted until I was twelve, when it started falling apart near the end of the year. The string snapped, and I had to try to tie it all together. In an important game in the District tournament when I was on the Waldo County all star team, I made my first two fly ball catches in the outfield ever in the game, including a diving one that saved us a couple of runs. And there is the glove that has lasted me since I was thirteen, and has made some pretty good catches for me as well. There is the bat I got when I was 9. It was very heavy for a little league bat, twenty ounces, and 28 inches. Most little league bats were going sixteen, fourteen ounces. Eventually, the coach had me try another bat when I was ten, and I found that with that lighter bat, I could actually hit better, so that bat got discarded. Then there is the bat I got the next year when I was eleven. It worked for most of the year, until the coaches determined that the reason it hurt everyone's hands to use it was because it was broken. I got another bat when I was twelve, and this one helped me with a lot of hits, and I liked the bat a lot. Then, in Junior League, when I was thirteen, one of the players on my team gave me their old, lighter (at thirty inches, 23 ounces) bat, because I had difficulty using the heavier ones. It helped me a good bit, and I used it for the next three years. When I was sixteen, I was hitting definitely the best I had since I was twelve in my last year of little league. And I was doing it using this bat. Then the coach had me switch to another bat, and it resulted in my playing so poorly as to not start the next week during the state tournament. Once we won the states and were in the regionals, I realized that I needed my old bat back, and I had the best batting practice session of my life, where every single pitch was a really hard line drive right back at the coach's face. Unfortunately, even though I impressed this coach greatly, as I had easily had the best batting practice of any of the players, by far, it was still too late, as once the season concluded, it was the last year I will be able to use this bat, as the new requirements entails that all bats must be BBCOR bats. So next year I shall have to use another bat. But fortunately my glove does not have to be BBCOR, so I shall continue to use it as long as it holds together.

Journal Entry, 1-21-12

I shall certainly have difficulty with this, the last day of my week, as this was as unremarkable a day for me as imaginable. So I shall most likely have to cast about for some filler. Anyhow, some paint chips got jammed up my finger nails, never a pleasant occurrence. I petted Della, and I listened to Linkin Park, and I read more Oppenheim. Oppenheim wrote through the Great War, and wrote several books on espionage and other fascinating and enjoyable things during the war, while it was occurring. Then, after WWI was over, he went and predicted that WWII would occur, because of the reason that the Treaty of Versaille was too cruel on Germany, and that they would retaliate. He was very intimately acquainted and knowledgable on all of the subjects pertaining to governments and policy and national feelings and such, and he predicted the thing with WWII in 1922, three years after the treaty, and he predicted that it would happen in 1935, only a couple of years too early. He also said how Japan was biding their time in WWI, waiting to attack the U.S., and that Germany would attack the U.S. east coast, while at the exact same time Japan would attack the west. As it happened, Japan attacked Hawaii, and simultaneously, Germany attacked Russia. Oppenheim foresaw a lot, and I have learned a lot from his writings, namely that I would very much like being a spy. And I think that this is long enough without adding too much more filler. So I wrote the first week 2 prompt today, and did other homework, and this journal assignment is I believe arrived at its completion. So, finis.

Week 2 Prompt I

Looking in that photo album, I see--

I see a picture of the knife my cousin and I had made. Four pictures of it to be precise. One of it perfect, two of it broken, and one of it salvaged. My cousin hand makes knives and sells them. They are very high quality and they realize quite a bit for each one. This one was being made out of an old file, and he ground it, and did file work on the handle. The handle was made out of some material that for some reason I can not recollect at the moment, but it was blue and aquamarine streaked. The file work on the handle was on the metal, and in the design of a vine. It was a small knife to begin with, but the temper was apparently not right, and when he tried to clamp it- snap! The blade snapped in half. My cousing was very frustrated and annoyed at that, as it had never happened to him before. We ended up grinding it to a rounded end there, so I have about a 4 inch handle and a 1 and a half inch blade. But it is incredibly sharp, and a good whittling knife, and exceedingly decorative as well as useful. And, I could probably bring it to the college without having to worry about bringing a dangerous weapon on campus. Mr. Goldfine had a pocketknife once that had a larger blade than mine.

Each year, as a Christmas present I would use pictures of the players on the Patriots, and I would put them together on a sheet of newspaper, as a type of collage. This year though, I tried doing it on the computer instead, which is how this picture of a bunch of their players in the photo album came from. It took me a long while, but eventually I located a website called Postermywall.com, where I could make the collage exactly how I had hoped I could, being able to erase anything I wanted to get the shapes of the pictures better, and I could download it as an image file when I was done. This picture naturally now resides in the album, and I can think of how I used to do it with paper, and now I do it with a computer. An album used to be a photo book, now it can be on a computer.

Times change, but the pictures and memories remain.

Journal Entry 1-20-12

My sister likes to run everywhere. I guess she thinks that she will get there faster if she does, which may be true, except that our yard is covered in a solid slippery sheet of probably three inches of ice. And Felicia disdains to recognize that as a harbinger of a time of not running. So, she went outside this morning to run down to take care of the chickens, took one step off the steps, and fell down. This was highly distressing to her, so of course she went back outside and tried running again. And fell down again. Once we finally made it to the college, we had a rather unremarkable day, except that in our speaking class, we got paired up with another random student in the class to introduce each other. I got to say about my DYAD that "And he can see Canada from his house!" The teacher said "Really, he can see Sarah Palin- I mean, Canada from his house?" Our GIS class finally got a room. The English assignments for next week are up, and I finally get to do something beside throw down my random thoughts and occurrences onto a paper, I was getting a little fatigued of this. Just a little though.

Journal Entry 1-19-12

College has started, and contradictory to my previous misconceptions, that does not mean that I have more to write about now than I did before. On actual college days, maybe. But not today. Today, I did the homework that I had from the prior classes yesterday, and that was just about it. I read Oppenheim, listened to Linkin Park, watched our chickens slipping around on the ice coated yard outside, and petted our poodle Della. I showed the music video to a new song by Foster the People called Don't Stop (Color on the Walls), and my mother thought it was a riot. I looked at the Billboard charts, and found that there were about ten or so songs in the top hundred that I actually liked, which is actually a good bit more than usual. And I watched the red light on my flash drive flicker. Repeatedly. And I have classes again tomorrow. I wonder when Mr. Goldfine will post next week's assignments.

Journal Entry 1-18-12

Most experts agree that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, because- it breaks your fast. I agree that it is the most important meal- the most important meal to miss on college days. After skipping breakfast as usual this morning, I headed off to college for the first day this semester. Though I am taking six classes, two of them are online, and one of them is one day a week, so I only had to handle ten of my seventeen credits in a classroom today.

To commence was my first ever class in Penobscot Hall. I had my Trigonometry final there last spring, but never an actual class. I experienced my first one, and can say that it was not significantly different than any other classroom I have had. The style of teaching for the teacher was somewhat unusual, and I suppose unconventional, but I shall surely get used to it as the semester progresses. One problem was that the course has a required course pack, and when we bought it from the bookstore, they gave us the fall version instead of the spring by some form of negligence or nonobservance on their part. We will have to hope that it is not too different.

My sister attempted to direct me to the classroom for our next class, but since she runs everywhere, she had long past me by the time I got to the stairwell she had mentioned, and I went up instead of to the right. I went back down, and walked past the doorway of the classroom. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that this next class started as soon as my last one ended, so I thought I was just seeing where the classroom was so I could find it easily an hour later (Don't ask me why I thought I had a class at noon). But as I walked by, I noticed how full the classroom was. Then I thought "Wait, aren't I supposed to be in there?" I recognized someone from my english class last semester that I had known would be in this class, and I head in, and locate my sister. I was very lucky to get in there at all, as unless my sister had tried to direct me there, I would have probably gone somewhere else to begin with, and I was lucky to realize that I should actually go into the classroom instead of just survey it.

The textbook for this class is supposed to be 11^th edition, but my uncle found that online he can get an 11^th edition for about $55, while he can get the 10^th edition for $4. The teacher said the tenth edition would work, so we ordered one of the abundance of 4 dollar tenth editions. Unfortunately, someone had scammed us with this particular one, and sent us the second edition instead. The teacher thought it was very interesting, as she had thought such old editions of the text would be nonexistant anymore, so she wanted to buy it from us. I just gave it to her, but as she could not accept gifts from a student, she will pay us later, I think.

After eating my lunch of two granola bars- I really do learn best on an empty stomach- I emailed my uncle to ask him to get us another tenth edition, and I headed to the Calculus II class. That went well, except that I would have thought that more people who took Calculus I last semester would have taken Calculus II this semester with us, only two other people progressed to the next one with us.

I do eat breakfast on other days, just not days when I head to the college. I haven't for the 3 semesters I have had already. I don't drink at all for the day either. Some people may say that hardly eating and not drinking at all for probably about 21 hours straight counting the night would be a little strange. I call it perfectly normal for me. Though another student once termed it as a "Starvation Diet." But I haven't starved yet, so I won't concern myself with that. Yet.

Journal Entry 1-17-12

I woke up again this morning, which was nice, but I also woke up with a bruised ear. I don't know how it happened, but one part of it is bruised and a little swollen. It is naturally a little sore, too. One of our bantam roosters had gotten stabbed in the neck a while ago by a chance shot while he was having fun sparring with another rooster. We did not think he would survive, as he would not eat or drink for several days, only wheezing. But instead, he is now up and anxious to get back out to the hens. If I suffered the bruised ear in return for his safety, then it was definitely worth it. My mother and I went on another escapade to the Bangor Public Library, as we typically do just about once a week. I ventured into the stacks as I always do, and selected four Oppenheim books. We went and checked them out, and something happened that I shall surely find a way to use as a topic at some point this semester. SAT's, and library now for things I need to use for topics. Amazing how once you are in an english class, you start considering anything that may occur as a possible candidate for a paper. Oh well. The life of a linguistics and lexicon loving bibliophile. Sorry, that was an accidental almost alliteration. As was that.

Anyway, once I stop accidentally alliterating things, I finished another Oppenheim book, and I listened to Linkin Park. Our dog had a nightmare, and that is another thing I need to write about. Her nightmares. It's like I am a Topic Falcon, perched atop the English-man's Ledge, surveying life flow down below, tensed to spring at the slightest glimpse of the subject of an essay passing below, seeking to conceal itself in the flow of life's desultory traffic. Well, poor Della's nightmares got snatched up in my somewhat tenacious claws just now, and deposited upon my ledge, to be used later, if I still remember it. Fortunately, it is on here, so I think I shall remember it, and will make full use of it when the opportunity arises.

It is interesting, that when I was younger, I started out listening to older music, and have now ended up listening to recent music. I started reading recent books when I was younger, now I read old ones. And when I was younger, I watched just about no television. Now, I still watch no television. At the most, I watch things like Nova or Nature, or Jeopardy. (Yet, my knowledge of television programs was good enough last year for me to get an entire Jeopardy category right on what programs are on what stations, just from my remembering the commercials.) But, as my mother has always liked Tim Allen's humor, we have tried his new comedy, and we like it. So we watched that tonight. Unfortunately, it gave me no topic ideas. So I stayed clawless the entire time. But wait until college tomorrow, then my claws will be reaching out with great rapidity, I assure you.

Journal Entry 1-16-12

I woke up, which is always a good start to your day, as if you didn't wake up, well, let's just say it might not be one of your most enjoyable days. I got to watch as Mr. Goldfine commented on my posts from last night, as I had my email open and each time he commented, I got an email. The GIS class I am in is still trying to set up a time for the class. I got to send screen shots to Mr. Goldfine of how to find the blog statistics. I then started and finished my third psychology paper, one of the five due in April for my psychology class. Always good to get ahead. I like psychology much better than the sociology class I took last semester. Same good teacher though. My other online course. Any time I can save will be good, as I am taking seventeen credits this semester. Which is fine, except that four of the credits are Calculus II. Calculus I was hard enough. I petted Della, our black standard Poodle. She is really nice, except that she has the most awful stinky breath, and seems to find every opportunity she can of yawning directly in my face. I read Oppenheim, listened to Linkin Park, I reminisced on something that happened while I was taking the SAT that I have to get into an english paper at some point. And I concluded that by Wednesday, when college starts, I might actually have something interesting to write about.

Week 1 Prompt III

Alone in a quiet room. What do you see?

I see the laptop screen, where these words are magically appearing. I switch to my blog. Interesting. It of course is currently unpopulated, but it shall not be devoid for much longer. If you read my first "Alone in a room" post yet, you will know why it is called "LP Tom 16." 16 is my favorite number. Though why my blog is orange, I cannot really inform you as to the reason of that. At first, I did the brown template with birds in the upper corner like my sister had, but I had looked at the other blogs of other students in these classes, and it seemed that the majority had also chosen that one. So I wanted something more interesting. I figured out how to customize, took a simple one, and changed the coloring and things a bit. But I had left it at orange, as it looked pretty good. I changed the font to orange and "puritan", as my sister said that "lobster" was too curly. Orange is not one of my favorite colors, in fact, it is probably more towards my least favorite. But that is the color of my blog, and it will be this color for the rest of the semester. Probably. In less I get tired of it. Incidentally, orange is also one of the colors of the Denver Bronco's uniforms, who got demolished by the Patriots last night. Maybe I should change this blog to blue and white?

Week 1 Prompt II

Alone in a quiet room. How did you get there?

Unfortunately, how I got to this room is not very interesting. If I rode in on an elephant, or jetpacked in, or rappeled in, or ziplined in, it might be more interesting. But I didn't. With all of those wonderful options for me, I chose the most boring way to enter a room. I walked in. If I had come in a more unusual way, I could have written much more about it, but I didn't. How about I try again.

One moment.

I am back. How did I get back to this quiet room? I petted our poodle Della's head, threw a football to myself, spun around my sister, ran out of the kitchen into the living room, bounced the football off of the window, climbed over the back of the couch, jumped over the armchair, leapt over my sister's bed, ran for a second more, and dove back to the laptop. I think that that is more interesting. It certainly was to me. And to my mother (Don't worry, she didn't mind it.)

Week 1 Prompt I

Alone in a quiet room. Listen. What do you hear?

The empty, quiet room, is not usually an experience I have very often. Recently, I either have had the 37 year old radio playing, or as is more often the case, I have the laptop playing music. Whether I am reading E. Phillip Oppenheim, writing english, or something else, I generally am listening to music at the same time. And most of the time, that music is from the laptop, from my favorite band Linkin Park, as it is at this current moment. A couple of years ago, I had a John A. Goldfine (A term meaning to be in very little possession of knowledge about current music- people defined by this term are often thought to be quite fortunate by me) amount of knowledge on anything related to recent music, but over the last couple years I have picked it up, and am glad I did. And the one band that has really pulled away for me is Linkin Park. In all of my listening to recent music, I despise rapping. I just don't see the appeal it holds to some people. But I like what little rapping Linkin Park does do. I like it a lot. Linkin Park is queer, in that they are somewhat undefinable, either called "rap-rock", or "nu-metal", or something like that. They have one singer who raps, and another who sings. They also are unusual in that one of their main instruments that one member of the six man band does is 'Scratch', with a record player. They have been very popular with songs like "In the End", "Numb", "Breaking the Habit", "What I've Done", "Shadow of the Day", and "New Divide." But what I have found is that it took a long time of hearing them for me to desire an affinity for their music, yet, once I did, it grew rapidly, to the point where every song they have ever made is at least ten times better than the best song made by anyone else. Linkin Park are unusual in that they do really loud songs, with a lot of rap, like "In the End", and really quiet ones with no rap, like "Shadow of the Day". Also interesting, in spite of their rap and sometimes raucous style, they did not have a single swear word in any of their songs for their first two albums. They have varying styles, but in the end, it seems that it is inherent to me to enjoy their music. As I am right now while I am writing this.

Journal Entry, 1-15-12

I looked at my blog this morning, and I looked at the statistics for it, seeing that it had been viewed 22 times, 17 by Google Chrome, 4 by Internet Explorer, 1 by Firefox. The Google Chrome were definitely mostly mine, and the Internet Explorer ones were probably Mr. Goldfine, but what accounts for the Firefox one? How many other people have been looking at my empty blog already in one day? I look at the operating system, all Windows. I look at the countries. Interesting. My blog has been viewed 22 times from the U.S., and once in Germany. That sort of rules me and Mr. Goldfine out of it. With a sudden idea, I look at my sister's blog that has been up since August. If I got a German view in the first day, then what would Felicia have? She had 513 views by Internet Explorer, 174 by Google Chrome, 138 by Firefox, 14 by Granparadiso (Never even heard of it), 10 by Opera, and 8 by Safari. I go onto our browser, Comodo Dragon, and view her page, just to give her some variety, as if she didn't have enough already. She has 821 Windows views, 21 Macintosh views, and 16 views by Linux operating systems. Then I check her country page views. Well, you can't say she hasn't had good foreign exposure. 763 views from the U.S., 60 by Russia, 25 by Germany, 4 by Latvia, 3 by Ukraine, and one each by Italy, the Phillipines, and Poland. I hope they enjoyed her English writing. I then wrote all of my English homework for the week. At least that's out of the way. Quite enjoyable, too. The week has technically started, so I can post them on my beloved by the Germans blog. I listen to Linkin Park all day. Nothing better to get me in a good writing mood than "Shut up when I'm talking to you!" I watched the Patriots spifflicate the Broncos last night, so I watched the Ravens beat the Texans today to earn the right to play them. (The Texans would have won except for the rookie mistakes by Yates.) I read E. Phillips Oppenheim, predicting World War II happening for the exact same reasoning that it actually did occur, and he predicted it in 1922. He was foreseeing. Why have I never heard of Granparadiso?

Myself as a Writer 3rd Person

A picture taken in the dark, indoors. Never a good plan to get good quality.
This anyhow is a picture of Shoegerhith that at least somewhat resembles a
dog anyhow.

He has been writing books for many years. His books were mainly just pictures with a few words, so a comic strip would pretty much be exactly the same except with an excuse to slip humor in. His sister was making one, and since anything she did, he had to at least duplicate, it was an easy decision for him to make to start one of his own. He decided to have a dog with his owner, and the dog would be yellow, and have a green spot on his side in the shape of an eagle head. He just needed a name. He decided on Shoegerhith, a combination between the comics Shoe, Garfield, and Heathcliffe. He had a lot of fun writing the comics, and showing them to his mother and sister. Multiply his years times two, and he is still drawing his Shoegerhith comics. Still with the same stick figures, still with the same yellow dog. They have even appeared on the walls. Now they are even on the walls of his new English blog. He is an English dog, by the way. An English dog on an English blog. Totally unintended humor there. Sorry.

Myself as a Writer, 2nd Person

You went into the room with some trepidation, as the accuplacer was surely going to be something completely foreign, as since you were homeschooled, you never experienced tests of any sort. You get through the math part of it, and onto the English section. Then your eyes widen in startled amazement. The direct cause of this surprisal is the words on the screen.

"Should private stuff be private?"

Now this was purely befuddling to you. Not having written many random test papers, you do not have much experience at handling odd subjects. This subject to you is difficult to do anything with. All you can think of is "Yes." It is incomprehensible to you.You struggle through it, and find out that you did well with the math, but got a 4 out of 8 on the writeplacer. You get told that you can not take english yet based on that score, which you did not mind all that much, as you didn't really want someone else reading your writing right off. But the person suggests that you can take something online, called Plato, and then you could take English. It doesn't sound that bad...

Myself as a Writer, 1st Person

I have always found writing interesting. I have written a lot all my life, and I have enjoyed it greatly. I experience at writing had not been very extensive considering essays, until the English class with Mr. Goldfine last semester. I learned much during that course, but it is true that the five paragraph form is limiting. Creative writing provides me with much more leeway to be creative, as it does not follow a specific format, and that left me lost for a little bit, until I figured out how I could do these assignments, as I had not faced anything of this sort before. The one thing I can say is that I disliked having to do this first person one again, as it feels that I had done it a few times already during the first course. This made it annoying to have to do it again, as I could not see any other way really to do it then I had before, for the first person part. The other two were fine. But this one, it just felt like I had exhausted my creative abilities on this one, so that is what I put in here, that it was frustrating me, which ended up working fine I think, which means that the assignment ended up being pretty good. It is good experience for me to work with something I have already written, and figuring out how to write it exactly the same way, yet differently.