English and Me

As you may have noticed during class, I'm not very talkative. I'm like this in about half my classes. I don't consider myself a shy person, but when I'm in a group of people I don't truly understand, I'm pretty quiet. This goes double if I'm in a class I don't completely understand. Tripley, English is something I don't completely understand. When I'm in a class of people with the same major, or I've talked with them all enough to get a solid idea of them, I'll say whatever I'm thinking about in class. For instance, in my Digital Media Studio class, I have no problem talking, partly because I feel like I know the people there (even if I don't truely know them well) and because I know what I'm talking about when it comes to the topic.

As for English, I've always been told I was pretty good at it. In fact, if you Google my name, the third result is an for an award I won for an essay in middle school that I like to think is a reputable accomplishment for my current writing ability in some way. I read very little outside of the occasional blog post or webcomic. I write even less; this class is the first English class I've taken since my first semester (currently in my third). For these reasons, I feel like I miss a lot when I read; I read for content, and rarely pay attention to writing styles or the narrator unless they are extraordinarily different from the norm. When I write, I don't have a multitude of voices to choose from, I write like this all the time. Infront of a keyboard, I have an English Paper mode and an Everything Else mode. I don't even truly know if there is a difference between the two.

I suppose it is what it is, and I should be thankful that I'm not terrible at writing.

Sorry if this post bummed you out, here are some adorable kittens.

World of Warcrack

I play a lot of video games. I don't deny it, it's how I spend a lot of my downtime and I may go into a career involving video game design. However, I recently stumbled upon a game that is ridiculously addictive. It's a popular game and currently has more than 10 MILLION subscribers. This is astounding, considering that these people pay $13-15 a month (most of them continually). If you haven't guessed, I'm talking about the popular Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) called World of Warcraft.

I've heard people talk about it being addictive, but I truly didn't know how addictive until I tried a 10-day trial. It was a mistake from the beginning. I told myself that I wouldn't get sucked into a subscription, because I don't have $15 a month to blow on video games. I started the free trial about 2 weeks ago, and even though I knew that I would be getting close to finals toward the end of my gametime, I didn't think much of it. Boy am I glad I didn't have my account subscription active during finals week. I lost track of how much I played, and I am honestly too embarrased to give a guess for how often I played during those 10 days. I almost feel like I need to go to another NA meeting because I'm considering asking for a month's worth for Christmas.

Crispy Hexagons

My mother babysits for a unique woman. I'll call her Jane, even though she doesn't go by that name. Jane is the mother of five and all of the children are under the age of . She normally has two or three nannies working for her at any one time. As you can imagine, if you have the ability to support five children and hire three nannies to help, you probably aren't poor. Jane was born into a fairly rich family and has what I would call "all kinds of sweet hook-ups."

Today my mom came home with a giant box. The family gathered around as she pulled out boxes of cereal, at least 6 of them. I don't know the conditions under which my mother received this bounty, but she said that Jane didn't want or need the cereal. My mom suggested that she bought these with the food stamps she recieves (even though she doesn't really need them) and essentially said that she uses them as props to downplay her good fortune. Her kitchen cabinet is filled with main-brand cereal.

But whatever, free cereal for us. They were all generic brands with generic names; my favorite one was named "Crispy Hexagons".



Oh yeah, that's some great marketing. The box had "Great Value" along the side, which basically screams "CHEAP, LOW QUALITY". I opened it and tried it out. The cereal was similar to Chex, except it was in a hexagon shape (which is a plus, two more sides), but wasn't as tasty. I couldn't tell what was missing, it just wasn't quite the same. In the end, we donated the rest to a church.

Born in Flames

Write a memory of something you couldn't possibly remember - ie, your birth or your grandparent's wedding

On a breezy fall evening on the grounds of an old Italian cottage was the perfect setting for a fire. Not too cold, not too windy, but just enough to give the fire a purposeful existence. My relatives sat around this fire, hypnotically staring at the way the flames danced in the same way I imagine cavemen used to do. I was two at the time; the parents spoke of things that were of no concern to me. Even if I could speak Italian, the subjects they discussed weren’t meant for my ears. I was waddling around, partially interested in the fire and partially interested in everything that wasn’t the fire, but not interested in the chatter between my relatives. With one tumble, I defenselessly fell into the fire. As I was partially engulfed in flames, the chatter stopped and a single pair of hands reached in to grab me. After being non-symbolically reborn like a phoenix, I was sat on a table and inspected, almost like a doctor’s patient. They were looking for signs of injury, a burn or a wound. What they found was a single blister which they couldn’t hide from my mother. I didn’t cry at all.

On Staying Up All Night

Choose a subject to freewrite on title - title your essay, "On ______"

In-class Writing Assignment

Staying up all night is a commitment. It is the end result of a large workload and little time management. Before it becomes an all-nighter, you have hope. You aim your sights high. 4AM, I say to myself. Not a moment later, it'll get me three hours of sleep. But by 2AM, you know it's an all-nighter. I grab a monster out of the garage fridge and prepare myself for the long night ahead. Since I know I'm doomed to a lack of sleep, I take my time but work diligently.

Hours of chugging away at worksheets and bullshitting essay questions, I feel I've earned myself a reward for my hard work. This is my downfall, I get carried away in the "reward" system. Sometimes I'll play a video game or watch TV and lose track of time. Other time's I've been so tired that I try to sleep for 10 minutes. That 10 minutes becomes 20 after I spend it trying to sleep. After restlessly waiting for sleep in that 20, it becomes an hour in the hopes that I can get any sleep. At this point one of two things is likely to happen; I'll either sleep through the rest of the night and wake up slightly earlier than normally in a shock or I'll give up on my hope for sleeping and do another none-homework task: getting dressed, eating breakfast, etc; something I can do productively that isn't homework.

In the morning, I feel my body not as able to function as well; some part of my body hurt that've never hurt before. My eyes feel heavy and my throat feels rougher. But when I'm in class, and I don't have any other work to finish, I can really enjoy the moment. Even if I know I did horribly on something I stayed up all night to finish, in class I don't care; it's done.

I wrote this in class after an all-nighter.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Narrate a scene from you Thanksgiving weekend (can be TG dinner, shopping, watching, football, whatever) from the perspective of an outsider (literary journalism-style).

Thanksgiving at an Italian-American Family's House

Thanksgiving for most people consists of turkey, football, and family; for this Italian-American family it is no different. The action occurred in the basement of the house of a baker. There are approximately 30 people here; most of them fall in the range of 50+ years of age. There are about 5 young adults (ages 18-23) and 4 children. For the majority of the time, I couldn't understand what the older generation was talking about because they were speaking to each other in Italian; asking one of them, though, most of the talk was about gossip.

Most of the newer generations spoke only in English; they talked about school and bands. The youngest group sat at the kiddie's table and the adults sat at a long joined table for dinner. The dinner included a good variety, including turkey, ham, rice, stuffing, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, green beans, dinner rolls, salad, sausage, and two variations of sweet potatoes. The table during dinner was no less noisy than if they had not been eating dinner, with what seemed like at least one person yelling at the top of their lungs at any one time. There was a pretty clear segregation between the more Americanized, newer generation and the older generation. The newer generation stayed mostly in the television area and ventured out occasionally to play a board game at the opposite end of the dinner table. The newer generation horded old Italian cookies and coffee on the dinner table and talked loudly to each other.

(That's hard for me to make interesting.)