cycle paper 2

Well, I have to write a cycle paper tonight sometime, and this is what it did:

Around 7:30 I went to the blog site and looked at whatever was there. I got bored and opened up this word doc. I stared at the blank page for about 15 minutes then typed my name, the class, and the date. I got stuck there for a while.

Meanwhile, I was doing some IMs, watching funny videos, and generally being unproductive. By this time, it was about 9:30, and I still had nothing done. I just decided to write a paper about not writing a paper. So I started. Right up there. Took me about an hour to reach this point, and by this time, my vision is getting blurry and I’m starting to write incoherent sentences. I’ve just corrected about 12. AIM is still open, but I figure I should shut down that internet blogish sort of thing (not the English one) if I want to get anything done.

Seeing as it is 10:30 already, things are getting a little crazy. I still have another paper, the production log to do, not to mention math and science homework. Yet here I am, still surfing the internet for funny random videos and crazy stunts. This internet thing is kind of dangerous. I’ve gotten practically nothing done for 3 hours.

Ok, I’m back. Succumbing to boredom, I just spent 10 irresponsible minutes playing stupid arcade games online. Stupid, but addicting. This is getting out of hand. I just need to strap down, finish this thing, and go to bed before I start hallucinating. I’m starting to get mad at myself for

Whoops slipped up on the AIM again. What am I to do? This is way too distracting but I don’t have the self control to shut it off. What a dilemma.

I was distracted again, but then I just had a thought. Shouldn’t like 3 plus hours of slacking off while writing equal 1 hour of diligent work? Makes good sense to me. Although, right now, going into the kitchen, making a banana split, and putting it under my bed to save for later also makes good sense to me. Ok, so I exaggerated that a little. Whatever sleep-deprived logic I’m running on right now, I should probably disregard it.

Well, here I am, almost at a page, pretty much just spouting crap. But good crap. Or so I think.

Right as I was so close to the end, I got distracted again, this time by a game called Helicopter. It’s online. And its really addicting. I just blew like 6 minutes on that. Silly me.

At this point, I am so close to the bottom of the page I can almost taste it. Or maybe my taste buds are jut protesting to the lack of rest, like the rest of my body. Hah. I just used that same word, rest, twice in a sentence. That’s bad form, right there.

Hum de dum, I don’t know what to write to finish up this page. I’m past being distracted now, presently I just float on in this state of non-work. Well, not right now, because I am obviously typing this. But even this paper is not really to be considered work. It’s more like pseudo-work, poorly masquerading as a critical thinking paper with no real point to it.

Well, this is the last line, and by my standards, I’m done. With this I save a tree.

And that’s what I would have wrote had I been the irresponsible kind of student who does the minimum work, and slacks off on homework. That kind of student would probably try to use that mess of words as an actually paper That is the kind of student that would write a paper like that.

But even the irresponsible person that I am not is not dumb enough to try and pass that as a paper on its own. Being the slacker that I am not, I would try and pretend that that was just some clever fiction to show the dangers of the internet and ADD combined. I would (if I did that, which I did not) try to trick the reader into thinking that I am clever by inserting a small paragraph at the end telling that it wasn’t me who was doing this.

That being said, I think this was a quite worthwhile fiction paper. It is so realistic, it’s almost as if I was the narrator. Now the very thought of that is ridiculous, but if I can fabricate such a thing, it makes me a writing worthy of an A, does it not?

I am actually writing this paper on Friday afternoon, long before this paper is even due. Notice I put the date of a night after the paper was due. This is just to add some realism to the first page. So clever!

Well, I hope you enjoyed my venture into the mind of a horribly irresponsible student. Not many (including myself) get to ever glimpse into this rare viewpoint, so believe me, it was difficult writing it.

This may have been hard to deduce, but the last paragraph was a little bit of a lie. Ok, the whole thing was a lie. Except for the first page. That was all true. But I never said that. Ok? Good.

So basically, the point of this paper was three-fold.

1. I couldn’t think about what to write about, and started the paper as a little joke to myself.
2. It was kind of interesting to read, so I finished it. It was a good look at what my average night is, but I never really thought about it before. Basically, a glimpse into an average week night.
3. The third bit was a bit of satire. Of what, I’m not sure, I was tired at the moment, but reading over it again, it is definitely satirizing something. Just a theory. I can’t really decipher my mind when it’s in that state.

Brainstorming

Our class documentary should really try to avoid just interviewing students. Most will probably just say the same thing about how pressure is too much for them. we should really focus our questioning on college students, or parents, or teachers, to avoid the same opinion that we hear everyday from our friends. Our target audience should really be the students, of any opinion, because they have the most to gain from finding out the viewpoints of others. The point would be to show students that it might acually be a good thing, but they would be hearing it from other people instead of the constant voice of parents, etc. that they are more prone to ignore than to listen to.
Interview with a parent, teacher, graduate, etc.

-when did you go to school (high school)

-what did you do most of your high school career?

-how do you think you were as a student?

-what do you do now?

-Are you doing what you wanted to do at this point?

-What advice can you give some students just starting their sophomore year?

-do you wish you could have done a little more while in high school to prepare yourself for the future?

Animal Magnetisim

Beauty is in the eye of the
Beholder
Commanded Frog King
toady eyes linger longingly:
Princess, pulls finest silk
from her coarse hog hair.

Fake People

Wander through the false streets
Of the imitation city.
Gaudy colors show in
Crisp detail and sharp focus
the blurred, superficial
Unreality of lathered make-up
And bogus slang.
Sickeningly sweet speech
Leave drops of poison where it falls.
Insincere, to say the least.
Pulled along by the overwhelming tide,
weary spirits pace the sidewalks
No memories, only morose cigarette butts left behind.
Yellowed newspapers, soaked in the stink,
Hawking cynicism and unnecessary baggage,
Blow through the sea,
Past fish of silver, black, and Volkswagen.
The cold ocean.
Or was it rain? Sheets of
Grey wash out color,
Flows like warm anger.
Deluge cleans the grime from the streets
And scum from the soul.

Documentary Topic

(I didn't post this until today, I didn't realize we needed this up on our blogs. kinda pointless since the topics have already been chosen, but oh well.)

I think that a good documentary idea would be to talk about the large issue of growth of civilization vs. the environment. this would be a good topic to choose because its a very big issue, and most people have some sort of an opinion about it. now, most projects for school that have to do with the environment are anti- any sort of growth whatsoever, and suggest that we throw everything away and go back to the stone age. while not necessarily disagreeing with this idea, its just not feasible for our society today. with this in mind, we could interview and get relevant opinions on both sides, not just the one-sided view of most "green" projects. It would be really interesting to see what the other side has to say.

Cycle paper 1

Recently, I read a book I picked up at an airport bookstore. I never read a book quite like this one, titled A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore. It was funny, in a thought provoking, twisted sort of way. Because of this, I decided to research the author a little bit and maybe get a few more books by him. In the process, I found out about a new genre of books that my book apparently belonged to: Absurdist Fiction.
Well, the book I read was certainly absurd, but did silly books deserve a whole genre of their own? I googled the term, and discovered that it was a bit more than a group of “silly books”.
Absurdist fiction is primarily about human behavior, and a theoretical adventure that just usually happens to be funny. In an absurdist fiction story, the character is a normal person thrust into odd, disturbing, or fantastical situations. While this premise is not unique to the genre, what makes it interesting is that usually, the author puts great effort into showing how a normal person, one of us, might react when presented with the things in these stories.
In my book, for instance, the main character Charlie Asher is a typical, average guy who is, much to his chagrin, put in the position of Death. He must do his job, or the world will actually end. This book puts an oddly humorous spin on the concept of death, and makes it seem a little lighter in the process. Using these issues usually never thought up, much less addressed, the author shows us more about the behavior of humans.
Another interestingly hilarious study found in the novel talks about the concept of the beta male, who, unlike the alpha, makes his way through life not by overcoming adversity, but by anticipating and avoiding it.
Absurdist Fiction is by no means a new thing. On Wikipedia, there were lists for Absurdist fiction books that looked quite old. One, by an author I’ve heard of before but whose name I cannot recall now, involves a person witnessing the meetings of various famous and infamous people in Hell. The book was called A House Boat on the River Styx. The whole book is based on the question “What would happen if we put all these famous people in a room together?”
But back to my author. I did find more books he wrote that I will probably read sometime in the future. Some examples are Lamb, a chronicle of Jesus’ first 13 years of life on Earth by the Lost Disciple and the savior’s best friend, Biff.
Though I’ve not read much of it, I think I could get to like this Absurdist stuff. Deep studies on humans coupled with insanity and inappropriate jokes sound just fine to me.





P.S. The purpose of this was to share something that i just learned and thought was interesting. Thats all.