Close-reading Bingo

1. This student said "this" without putting a noun or a noun phrase after it. "This suggests that the day to come might be a little overwhelming and bleak. Sunlight is shining onto the handrails “formed by intersections of the lobby’s towering volumes of marble and glass.” http://kellylee25.blogspot.com/2011/10/practice-diction-analysis.html

2.This guy who likes peanut butter had a little bit of a blunder by using the past tense: "With the use of his realistic descriptions, the promt was easily visualized."
http://addie-line.blogspot.com/2011/10/practice-diction-analysis-mezzanine.html

3. The horse lover who wrote this slipped up by using common mistake number 6, the fatal use of "use."
"Salinger also uses the character's brother to enhance this "run-down" life with describing how his brother has nice things, like a Jaguar automobile."
http://livelaughloveridehorses.blogspot.com/2011/10/practice-diction-analysis.html

4. Finally this notorious Fulla of Moes exhibited one of the nine deadly weaknesses by being vague. "He compares the way view from the escalator on sunny days, and on dark days."
http://notoriouslymofulla.blogspot.com/2011/10/mezzanine.html

Practice Diction Analysis

The colloquial, coarse, and somewhat unmannerly diction in "Catcher in the Rye" exemplifies the narrator's down-to-earth, pissed off at the world personality. His defiant and thick skinned nature jumps out when he explains that all the background information about his life is just "David Copperfield kind of crap" that bores him. As the passage goes on, the author uses phrases like "He's got a lot of dough" and "they're also touchy as hell" to make it feel as though the narrator is just another regular kid who is telling you a story. The terse and all together informal nature of the narrator echoes through the entire passage in this excerpt from "Catcher in the Rye."

My reading

So far the past couple weeks (all of them except the first two) I have really been slacking on my reading. However, this weekend I kicked my reading skills into overdrive. My problem with reading before was that i just read painstakingly slow. Like 3rd grade level slow. Like "Ahh that was quite a nice hour long read, how much land have we covered Jim Jam.... 10 whole pages, golley gee what an achievement. So in search of a way to fix this issue I did what any man in my shoes would do, sit on the internet and browse through silly pictures of cats until all of my problems go away. Then suddenly, there was something that was not a cat, it was a post about reading faster.I was like AWWW YEAH, and then the wonderful power of the internet directed me to this website called http://www.spreeder.com/ where i learned how to read SUPER FAST. If you go there, you should click on the "Click here to speed read this introduction" to check out how pro you can be at reading. After that you should click the "The Application" button at the top of the screen and paste in any text from a book you want to read. What I did was download a book and then paste a giant section of it into the speed reader thing, and then BAM Jim Jam is reading like a boss at 300 words per minute. I read for an hour today, but the bad part is that my shamefully downloaded book does not contain the page numbers written in the corners. To quell this issue, I used my extra special skills with the google machine to discover that the average number of words per page in a book is 250. So then using my proficiency with the calculator program on my computer I was able to find out that I read SEVENTY TWO WORDS IN ONE SITTING. I then proceeded to fist pump triumphantly in a manner reminiscent of the "Nintendo sixty four kid" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU).
So yeah Mr. Hill, prepare yourself because I'm fittin to overtake those reading leader boards with my all new secret speed reading weapon.

Other People's Sentences

This week I went a little light on the reading
35pgs

Style Mappers, Top 5


-"In contrast to Stardust, the narrator of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian demonstrates a thorough understanding of sophisticated, picturesque language." http://estella-havisham.blogspot.com/

-"The common language doesn't detract from the poetic melody of the sergeants thoughts" http://thinking-anonymous.blogspot.com/2011/10/style-mapping.html


-"In this passage from Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," he uses common familiarity and suggestive language mixed with a harmonious and sweet sound. In the passage from Neil Gaiman's "Stardust," Gaiman uses formal elegance and straight-forward language." http://twilightlover2.blogspot.com/2011/10/style-mapping.html

-In Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Gaiman writes poetically with colloquial language, using words that are neither dissonant nor melodious, in order to describe the setting." http://academiczengerine.blogspot.com/2011/10/style-mapping.html 

 - Similarly, in Sarah Dessen’s Dreamland, the story is told with a rather low energy, and the inferred emotions are depression, grief, and loneliness http://kaylaepicblogger.blogspot.com/2011/10/style-mapping.html

The twilight lover post was my favorite because she/he used the word harmonious which is one of the greatest words ever. The other sentences were all good, it's just that HARMONIOUS is an instant win for best sentence.

Getting Free Stuff

This week, I was playing the video game League of Legends when I decided I really wanted a new "skin" (an in game add-on for characters that make them look cool so you can boast to all your friends). The problem is that they cost money and I was a few dollars short of purchasing it. So, being the crafty aka cheap person that I am I wrote their company an email about why they should just give me the skin. Except since the skin is cowboy themed, I wrote quite a phenomenal little story about cowboys. Here it is...

I realize that with great power comes great Spiderman quotes, but please consider the following.

Ever since I was a young boy I have dreamed of becoming a Cowboy. Yes I know, this is a common fantasy among boys growing up in the 1950's, but I believe my situation is a little bit different. You see I was not born in the 1950's where it was widely accepted to aspire to become one of these heroes of the Wild Wild West. I was in fact born in the 1990s, where the only desperado was Will Smith in the movie Wild Wild West. However, I can easily say that this movie single handedly triggered my fascination with cowboys. I began dressing up as a cowboy EVERY DAY after my mother bought me a cowboy costume for Halloween 1999 (the year Wild WIld West came out). But everything came to a screeching halt when I awoke on New Years day 2000.My mother told me that we had been robbed and the only thing taken was my cowboy costume. In shambles, I accepted the news and was forced to settle with solely playing with cowboy toys. For the next five years I often would exclaim to everyone that I LOVED cowboys and i dreamed of becoming one.... Until that fateful day in 2005 when Brokeback Mountain came out. I was in the fifth grade, and upon hearing there was a new cowboy movie coming out I instantly ran down to the movie theater. I knew it was rated R because it was gonna be so awesome and full of cowboys, so i sneakily bought a ticket to The incredibles, then snuck into the room that was showing Brokeback Mountain. The things I saw... my god... the things they did... I screamed in fright, sprinting out of the theater I exclaimed at the top of my lungs "I HATE COWBOYS". For the next six years I emotionally torn because I couldn't tell anyone that I did in fact still like the cowboys of the west. I was forced to forever hide my aspiration of becoming a cowboy, a REAL cowboy.
As the years went by, my friend introduced me to League of Legends and I discovered there was a cow champion. I instantly began to play Alistar round the clock. Finally, I was able to live up my dream of being a man who controls the movement of a cow. And now, in 2011 after seeing the success of the game Red Dead Redemption and the fact that people only remember Heath Ledger for his performance in The Dark Knight, it is socially acceptable to love cowboys again. In the past week I have spent all of my income buying cowboy costumes, posters, and action figures. Then, this morning when I discovered that Alistar has a skin in which he is dressed up as a cowboy I decided that I would need to buy it instantly. The problem I ran into is that I possess a measly 325 RP, which is not quite enough to purchase this glorious skin. Under normal circumstances I would just go out and buy more RP, but I have already spent all of my money on the other forms of cowboy swag. So I beg of you Mr. Rioter, please use your divine powers to grant me the remaining 195 RP I need to make my life long dream come true.

AND HE GAVE ME THE SKIN!

Quarterly Post

This quarter I read an entire book and part of two other books. I am fairly impressed with myself because I haven't read anything since I was in 5th or 6th grade. I have pretty much enjoyed everything I have read this year the only real difficulty I've had is that reading make my brain tired and then I end up falling asleep. This can become quite problematic if I am reading at 5 in the afternoon because that means I'm going to wake up at 8pm and then I have to pull an all nighter because my sleep cycle just got thrown out the window. Besides that, I have really liked reading, especially around 11-ish. I fall asleep in the middle of the read then wake up in the morning with a book on my face, confused as to what happened, like there was some sort of crazy 1 man reading party going on and I got totally hammered off literature.

End of the Quarter Goodies

Since I did my currently post after school yesterday, I guess I'll just dive straight into the sentences of the quarter that I liked.

1. "We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe its our job to invent something better."
Definatly an awesome series of sentences there. Its so cool because it makes me feel like its eff the world no rules.

2. "I drive Abbie’s mint-green Ford Taurus to Fat Tuesday, one of those days-of-the-week restaurant chains: T.G.I. Friday’s, Ruby Tuesday, Ash Wednesday’s, Holy Thursday’s. Fat Tuesday wasn’t as much a comedy club as it was a bar that had a comedy night."
Even though i posted this one very recently, it is still one of my favorites because of the phrase "days-of-the-week restaurant."

3. "It's funny how the beauty of art has so much more to do with the frame than with the artwork itself."
This is a quote from way back in the beginning of the quarter and it remains legendary because it is a perfect metaphor.

"Sleepwalk with me" update

I am growing to like this book quite a bit. Something is just so great about reading a book that isn't taking its book-ness so seriously. The book is fairly autobiographical, but instead of being super serious it's just sharing the funniest stories that have occurred over the course of his life. His stories about his childhood make me lol out of control. Some of the highlights have been his childhood experiances have been his stories about not being part of the not-makeout club in middle school and finding out he is not jump-out-of-a-tree guy.

The weekly stuff from friday

Pages

This week: 105 pgs
Total: 499

Sentences:
"I drive Abbie’s mint-green Ford Taurus to Fat Tuesday, one of those days-of-the-week restaurant chains: T.G.I. Friday’s, Ruby Tuesday, Ash Wednesday’s, Holy Thursday’s. Fat Tuesday wasn’t as much a comedy club as it was a bar that had a comedy night."
This sentence has officially caused me to integrate the phrase day-of-the-week restaurant into my vocabulary.

"My professional basketball plans may have been cut short by the reality of opposing players, but as long as sharks still rhymed with parks, no one could convince me that I couldn’t be a professional poet or rapper. And when the Shrewsbury police department visited St. Mary’s School to conduct their “DARE to Keep Kids Off Drugs” program, I saw the opportunity to launch my career as a rap star who also happened to hate drugs."
Mike Birbiglia is just showing off how much of a boss he was in second grade.

New Book

Mike Birbiglia is one of my favorite comedians, and last night I discovered that he has written a book. I immediately began reading it, and this thing is pure gold. The way he wrote it makes it sound like he is just speaking to the reader. You know what i mean, its just like he is saying this stuff live on stage except its written down and its a full book length rather than 30 minutes. The title is "Sleepwalk With Me" because he sleep walks and it leads to some good bits of hilarity.

Anyway here's a video of him in case you're interested in who he is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ5GXPg_gD8&t=0m39s

The weekend that changed my life [Part 1]

It was a breezy Friday afternoon in early autumn, I had just gotten home from school and I was beginning to tear into the nutty bars in the pantry. Shearing the cellophane that encased the delicious after school snack, I begin to do a Tyrannosaurus-esq dance with my hands to rid them of the static charged material. Just as I set the delectable treat free there was an intense buzzing coming from my left pocket. I knew it had to be one of two things: I had not completely washed out the honey in my pocket from the night before and a large colony of bees was commandeering my pants, or it was my phone. I stuck my hand into the potential battlefield blind, my heart racing I let out a sigh of relief as the tips of my fingers grasped the cool plastic edges of my five year old LG Chocolate. Sliding open the menu I discovered a text message from my dear friend Angelo
-"Do0d3 we3 pLayyyyinnnn dis sik game uh volleeebawl goin' on tonite. U in? thar fittin tah be sum seck-see lay-dees dare."

Startled by his impressive display of grammatical prowess, I decide to retort with an ivy-league level response.
-"AwW H33eE3lLzZzZ YeAh BoiiIiIi"

I passed the hours before the coming event by reading a debate between some of the world's wisest minds. I am of course speaking about the breathtakingly brilliant discussions in the comment section of an "Xbox is Totally better than Playstation" youtube video. After the opposing sides of the argument exchanged blows back and forth in their incredible bout of intensified verbal retorts, they both came to the same conclusion: the opposition was a "no life fanboy." I admit, I was quite taken aback by such a unifying theorem, however when I let that golden claim wash over me, something magical happened. It seemed in a bleak moment of clarity everything made sense to me, string theory was all clear, Einstein's theory of relativity was all reaffirmed, and the plot to kill Rachel and Harvey Dent in "The Dark Knight" didn't seem stupidly over elaborate.

-To be continued

Panda Attack

Finished Choke

For the first time in a long time, I actually finished a book. To my surprise, its actually not that hard to do. The best part might have been the story, however the sheer accomplishment I felt completing it probably out did the book itself. On top of that, the fact that I have had your book checked out for over 5 weeks has sort of been weighing on my conscience and it felt good to get that weight off my chest. "Choke" was awesome, and he raps up the story very well. There were plenty of plot twists and "ah-ha" moments towards the end, but it was an appropriate amount. One of the coolest things was seeing how all the loose ends throughout the story all got tied up at the end. As the novel came to a close, it didn't leave me with a cliche cliffhanger to make me beg for a sequel, it just ended. I got to feel like I had completed something. The type of "AWW YEAH I JUST DID THAT" moment that makes me wanna go waltz around town like I recently conquered a small Mediterranean island. So without giving away any spoilers to the book, I can summarize the book as awesome, and worth reading.

End of The Week Stuff

This week: 82 pages
Total: 394 pages

Sentences

"What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction."

This is a very cool quote, however it hits a little too close to home for me. /foreveralone

"We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe its our job to invent something better."

Very cool way to rap up the book and it was pretty thought provoking.