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