Scribbles

1.         The sky is reddened by a typical Midwestern sunset.

2.         The sky begins clouding over just before dusk.

The sky is reddened by a typical Midwestern sunset, and begins clouding over just before dusk.

3.         But no threat of rain can stop something.

4.         Twenty thousand rock fans flock to Cincinnati’s River-front Coliseum.

5.         They are coming to see and hear Pink Floyd.

Twenty thousand rock fans flock to Cincinnati’s River-front Coliseum, but no threat of rain can stop something, they are coming to see and hear Pink Floyd.

6.         The concert is still three hours off.

7.         The concert has already attracted early birds.

8.         There are several thousand of them.

9.         They are all decked out.

10.         They are wearing their best rock-concert, faded blue jeans.

11.         They are wearing their best rock-concert, tie-dyed T-shirts.

12.         They are all keyed up for the high-energy Pink Floyd show.

 The concert is three hours off and has attracted several thousand decked out early birds, wearing their best rock-concert faded blue jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts, all keyed up for the high-energy Pink Floyd show.

13.         There are newcomers to the rock scene.

14.         Their newness is obvious.

15.         They wander about.

16.         They gawk at the others.

17.         They are conspicuous.

18.         They wear neatly pressed checked slacks.

19.         They wear expensive shirts.

 There are conspicuous newcomers to the rock scene, their newness is obvious as they wander about and gawk at others, wearing neatly pressed checked slacks and expensive shirts.

20.         There are loners.

21.         Their eyes are barely open.

22.         Their arms dangle uselessly at their sides.

23.         They weave aimlessly around the circles.

24.         The squinting is so they can steady themselves.

There are loners, their arms dangle uselessly at their sides, their eyes are barely open; the squinting is so they can steady themselves as they weave aimlessly around the circles.

25.         There are couples.

26.         They cling to each other.

27.         They are near fountains or in remote corners.

Couples cling to each other near fountains or in remote corners.

28.         There are real police.

29.         They are not the rent-a-cop breed.

30.         They stride confidently.

31.         They stride in large groups.

32.         They stride among the crowd.

33.         They twirl their billyclubs.

34.         They sweep their eyes over the area,

35.         They look for trouble.

 There are police looking for trouble, they stride confidently in large groups among the crowd, twirling their billyclubs and sweeping their eyes over the area, they are not the rent-a-cop breed.

36.         Hawkers call out.

37.         They call wherever there are crowds.

38.         They try to unload cheap T-shirts.

39.         They try to unload pennants.

40.         They draw only laughter from most concert goers.

 Hawkers call out wherever there are crowds, trying to unload cheap T-shirts and pennants, yet they draw only laughter from most concert goers.

41.         The numbers grow.

42.         There are circles of roamers, couples, and cops.

43.         Roamers swarm confusedly over the acres of concrete.

44.         Couples swarm confusedly over the acres of concrete.

45.         Cops swarm confusedly over the acres of concrete.

46.         The acres of concrete that lead up to the auditorium.

 The numbers grow, there are circles of roamers, couples and cops, all swarming confusedly over the acres of concrete that lead up to the auditorium.

47.         The management realizes something.

48.         The hordes can no longer be contained peacefully.

49.         Then, the doors open.

50.         Waves of fans pour into the coliseum.

51.         They are already tired from waiting.

52.         They are already sweaty from waiting.

53.         They are just in time for something.

54.         They wait out the final hour before the show.

 The management realizes the hordes can no longer be contained peacefully, the doors open and waves of tired and sweaty fans pour into the coliseum to wait out the final hour before the show.

Tricolon-

Cloning is immoral, unethical, wrong. 

There is no sense in cloning, there is no point in cloning, there is no benefit from cloning.

Tetracolon-

Cloning is the art of manipulation, the art of deception, the art of science, and the art of ungodliness.

There has been a successfully cloned sheep, who proved the capability of cloning an animal, who lived for 6 years, and who died inevitably. 

A valiant knight dressed in brilliant shining armor riding on a white horse, rides towards his maiden’s tower, risking his life, to defeat the horrendous dragon that dwells within the castle and imprisons the princess. This sort of bravery is what usually comes to mind when the word courage is brought up in conversation. Courage seems to be a word used when someone goes to great lengths in order to accomplish something, and most of the time risking something of value. When I hear about courage, it’s usually used in such context as “Oh yeah, that girl from chemistry got up right in the middle of class and asked the cutest boy there if he wanted to go to Tolo with her.” Or when courage is in the news, the latest thing I’ve heard was when a plane crashed into the Hudson River, and everyone amazingly survived. People all around the U.S. had said that the pilot was very courageous, and was very skillful in landing the plane into a body of water without anyone getting hurt or having the plane completely ripped to shreds by the impact.

Courage has been shown in history books; people like Harriet Tubman, who led black slaves to freedom through an underground railroad. Being hit on the head by her master by a piece of metal when she was younger had caused her brain damage, giving her seizures and a possible case of epilepsy. Harriet traveled during the night, following the North Star, cautiously gathering fellow slaves and leading them along the Choptank River to freedom. She risked her life and the lives of others in order to save them from the cruelty of slavery. All during our lifetime in school, we read about the courage of others who have changed the course of the future for the entire world. But I think each one of us should look more at the little things that we do ourselves that is courageous, and be proud. Be proud of the things that we do that change the course of the future for ourselves and possibly the lives of others around us. Because changing the lives of others can set off a chain reaction, spreading itself from one person to the next, and giving them their own courage. The courage to stand up in what they believe in, speak out, and admit their own faults.

I have a story of when I was courageous that drastically changed my life. It was merely a year ago when I got my very first job. I wanted to work for a demo, handing out little samples of food as customers passed by at Safeway; it was their grand re-opening after they had finished re-modeling the building. During my interview with a woman who worked there, I was as nervous as I could be, and she could tell. Although she was kind and smiled at me, I felt a hint of pity behind her happy expression. This small girl quietly and shakily answering the woman’s questions such as “How many hours can you work?” and other simple questions about birth date and personal skills that most other people would calmly and confidently answer. After the interview was done, I slowly walked away and sat down on the bench, taking long deep breaths. I couldn’t believe what I had just done, and I was praying that I would get the job. A couple days later I got a call, and was notified that I had gotten the job. My first day was terrifying, but I knew that this was something I had to do, and I would just have to suck it up and be brave. I was kind to customers as they walked by, and handed them samples of food. I was a bit humiliated while wearing the puerile nametag, a dwarfing black apron that had it’s pockets stuffed with my keys and cell phone, and a little black bow tie that had always gone a bit sideways on its own that I would always have to straighten out. That bow tie was my worst enemy; the first day I had worked there I somehow put it on the wrong way, and was completely embarrassed as my boss pointed it out in front of all the other employees. From then on I always had my head down whenever I took my break in the small room in the back of the store with some of the other workers. After the breaks I quickly went back to work, just wishing that the day would end soon so I could go home and relax. Every day I had kept a small smile on my face and greeted people with a shaky voice, saying things like “Hello, would you like to try some freshly cooked halibut from the meat department?”

Throughout my time at Safeway, I learned more about myself, about people, and about the working environment. The experience had opened my eyes to a bigger world. At the end of each day while I was there, I felt proud of myself for being courageous and pushing myself into getting the job and sticking with it, even while I was humiliated and felt like leaving in the middle of work to go home and be by myself. Though perhaps I did not change the lives of others, I had begun to shape the course of my own future, and I had grown brave and more independent. That’s what courage means to me, a person taking a small step out of their comfort zone to make a big difference in their own life, and possibly the lives of others.

Courage-The-Cowardly-Dog-Courage-Meets-Bigfoot

Happiness for me is having no stress, no worries in the world. A state of calmness and tranquility. I feel happy when I’m just relaxing on the couch with my cat, or going to the movies with my friends. Cookies make me happy, because they taste so delicious, depending on who makes them. Being comfortable and social makes me happy, talking to friends and family, or just random strangers. Speaking Spanish makes me happy, because I know that no one else can understand what I’m saying, and it makes me laugh. Laughter is happiness.

~When I was your age…~

I used suck on salty pickles, eat olives off of my fingertips and munch on little buttercup flowers. I was probably one of the strangest children known to mankind, and I honestly didn’t care. Afternoons, coming home from school, I would grab a can of black olives out of the pantry with my petit little hands. My parents never understood my actions, but nonetheless they opened up the can for me so I could stick my fingers into the cold shadowy olive liquid and pluck out each of the coal colored fruits. Popping them into my mouth, I grinned with jubilation at the salty taste that burst on my tongue as I bit down. When I was a child I was nearly obsessed with eating olives, and now I absolutely hate them.

I truly adore the fact that my past has made me into who I am today, and that I got to experience the best of the 90’s. Back in the day, there were so many things that kids enjoyed that kids nowadays don’t have a clue about. Like ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’, ‘Hey Arnold!’ and The Oregon Trail. I’d always get angry when I couldn’t kill a single deer, or when little Jimmy got lost in the storm for 3 days and someone ended up dying from Cholera, I would start growling at the computer and furrowing my brows.

So many things that I used to play with are now almost extinct. I love having the ability to tell people that I’ve memorized the Macarena and played Super Nintendo. Any time I find my brother’s old Annimorphs Transformers or look through my entire collection of Goosebumps, a gigantic smile spreads across my face. I can’t read them anymore because I find them so incredibly boring, but I won’t bring myself to give them all away. When I got the whole set in the mail, it completely made my day and I didn’t want to do anything else but sit and read those spooky stories. Sitting on my bed while having my back against the wall, my knees holding the pages close to my face while I quietly chewed my worn down fingernails. My eyes darted from page to page as I sunk deeper and deeper into the suspense, only to be disappointed at the end. This happened for every single book of the series, yet for reasons unknown I kept on hoping for disaster. There never really seemed to be much of an ending to it, either the monster would be fake or everyone survived, and I would look up from the book with the most saddening puppy dog face you could possibly imagine.

 It always amazes me how the biggest part of who I am changes over time, like my interests and pet peeves, my goals and dreams; yet the little details that lie far behind the surface still remain. The little details such as I still won’t eat the crust of a sandwich or straighten my hair. I suppose what I’m trying to say, is that no matter who you are, some things just never change. And I believe that those things that never change, make us truly unique from everyone else, and we should be proud of our strange quirks. 

I wish someone had stopped her. I didn’t notice much of a hook, she starts off telling us about her grandmother. Many of us have to listen to our grandparents go on and on about their past, and reading about someone else’s grandma is boring.  After about the second paragraph, I began to space off. For example the line, “The stories were collected in the late 1930s by the Federal Writers’ Project, a unit of the Works Progress Administration that employed out-of-work writers. But before the intended series of anthologies could be published, the Writers’ Project was Red-baited out of existence.” Do we really need to know this? It was more of a history lesson, and I don’t like reading about some historic event that’s taught every year in school. The lines “Sifting through the 150,000 pages in the dusty storage room, I was looking to fall in love. And I did—with a collection of people who were by turns scared, determined, funny and brave, and whose clamorous vitality seemed to burst from the pages.” Sounds so cliché. She looks for something intriguing among a dusty storage room, and suddenly she finds ‘treasure’. It’s basically just a bunch of facts and stories she read and found out about, and then she goes on a refers to Obama. She goes back to talking about our current economic crisis. The only part I actually like in this essay was, “Listening to each other’s stories may grant us a sense of common purpose that money can’t buy,” because it’s a fact that we can all agree upon, that all of us can relate to. We can’t relate the making quilts and silver dollars.

1.) The hurricane was pretty cool. ~

My feet slipped against the soaked grass of my lawn as I desperately ran to get inside to safety, the wind swooped around and tried to coax me away from the front door by shoving me aside like a bully from elementary school. I finally grabbed the slippery metal handle of the door with my trembling fingers, and pulled myself inside onto the hard-wood floor that smelled like my old dog Ruffus. I crawled on my hands and feet in the darkness, searching for a safe place to curl up in to get away from the howling winds that tore at the roof of my helpless home. My heart pounded in my ears as I slid my rain-soaked self into the bath tub, and I pulled my knees to my face, hoping that this would all pass quickly. I had always seen hurricanes on the news, but actually experiencing one was a totally different story; the excitement of the storm was enough to make me quietly laugh to myself.

2.) The whole class was bored. ~

Tick tock, tick tock. The seconds were practically screaming at us as the teacher’s voice blurred and transformed into white noise. Someone sitting in the back of the class tapped their pencil against their desk that was covered with graffiti and sighed, while others were almost drowning in a pool of spit. I laid my head down onto my dead arms and rolled my eyes back into the depths of my skull. This day couldn’t possibly get any worse, and everyone else in the classroom knew it as well as I did.

3.) I drove into a clown on the road. ~

The sun was high in the clear, cloud-free sky. As I turned the corner, its rays shot through my dirt speckled windshield and stabbed my eyes, causing me to flinch back and squish my face in agony. My hands felt loose against the steering wheel for a mere second, but it was enough time to slam into a euphoric, frolicking clown. Stacks of cream pies splattered their guts across the glass of my windshield as I slammed my foot against the breaks and screeched to a halt. I stared blankly at the wheel and at my knuckles, which had now turned a ghostly white. I didn’t dare open the door, for fear of seeing a deceased clown wearing a happy face sprawled out on the hood of my car.

When I heard her essay, I couldn’t believe she was so into analog, and didn’t want digital technology being really involved in her life. I couldn’t believe it because I am so knee-deep in technology in my everyday life it’s almost like I’m being suffocated by it. Susan Chang said she met her husband over the internet, and now they live in the country. I’d also want to live in the country when I finally get enough money to move out, however, I doubt I could live without my cell phone and computer.

I really like how Susan describes things, for example, the line, “We live in the country, where dial-up is standard and sometimes progress just puts its feet up and takes a nap.” And what she writes isn’t an entire essay of her life, she doesn’t talk about her childhood, what toys she got, or birthday parties, etc. Susan just writes how she lives her life, that she lives it in analog and wouldn’t have it any other way. She goes back to what she said in the beginning as well, about the smudges, whispers and crackles that we hear in old movies, records, and so on.

I admire that in her, I wish I could live in analog. Sadly though, she wasn’t born in 1991, so she wasn’t bottle-fed technology like most teens today have been. 

For Rittenberg’s essay, he is very good at flashing back and forth to his past, and what his father told him. “Tomorrow will be a better day”. I can relate to what he’s saying, about how his relatives and such went through World War 2 and have a bleak outlook on the future. But worrying about the future only wastes time, it’s best to look forward in optimism, like Rittenberg. I like how Rittenberg talks about the illnesses that occured, and adds that we found a vaccine for the disease. There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, and I believe the same as he does. I also believe that after something terrible happens, something good is guaranteed to follow.

I love writing, from fictional stories to poetry. The last thing I wrote was a Creative Writing project for our final. I started writing when… well, when I was little. I used to write ridiculous little stories that make absolutely no sense, but nonetheless it was fun. Over the years my writing skill has greatly improved, and I have become more and more proud of my work. I mostly like to write fictional stories, mostly horror based. I was asked to write an essay about my life for the Culminating Exhibition, which was very important and I worked very hard on it. I wish we didn’t have the Culminating Exhibition, but I doubt they’re goi I still have some corrections to make, but overall it explains who I am and who I will be in the future.

I don’t really like being forced to write, because I feel there is no room for imagination then. But, I do what I have to do in order to pass class. 

Welcome to your brand new blog at Edublogs.

To get started, simply log in, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.

Also, please consider becoming an Edublogs Supporter – you can remove ads from yours and other blogs, upload up to 5GB or audio, video and every other sort of content and access great features under your ‘Plugins’ menu.

Supporters are what keeps Edublogs running and providing free blogs for education, so give it a go today

For assistance, take time to view our some helpful introductory videos, read through our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or stop by The Edublogs Forums to chat with other edubloggers.

You can also subscribe to our brilliant free publication, The Edublogger, which is jammed with helpful tips, ideas and more.

And finally, if you like Edublogs but want to be able to simply create, administer, control and manage hundreds of student and teacher blogs at your school or college, check out Edublogs Campus… it’s like Edublogs in a box, all for you.

Thanks again for signing up with Edublogs!