Last Paper

I think that for my last paper I would like to copy the works of Szymborska. I enjoyed reading her poems because I felt that her sarcasm masked the feelings she was too afraid to come out and say bluntly. Unlike other poets who use metaphors and similies to express themselves, Szymborska uses a twisted sense of humor that can give off the opposite idea of what she is trying to say.

I think that I would do a couple of short poems about subjects that humans cannot avoid. In our book Szymborska talks about love and death. These two subjects are inevitable for the human race. I think that it is going to be really hard to come up with two new subjects but I was thinking about evolution, in the sense of becoming more globally aware. I would talk about "going green" and how that is probably better than the alternative of dying or killing the planet. The other subject I would talk about would probably be divorce. I know that this is something people can avoid but I feel like it is very common and could be related to by many people. Through these two subjects I'm going to try to mimic Szymborska's sarcastic tone and underlying messages.

Thinking about the text

I think that the reason it is so easy to laugh at Lawrence is because there is nothing physically wrong with him. Unlike Laura who actually has a medical condition, Lawrence is just strange. He is amusing because of his oddities, I personally know of no one who would actually collect swizzle sticks and name them. I also think the reason why he is so funny is because he is gullible and so much under the control of his mother. If she told him to jump off a bridge he probably would. He takes everything too literally. The relationship he has with his mom is also really funny. She is sarcastic and animated while Lawrence is serious and dull.

There are some boundaries though. If Lawrence is mentally challenged it wouldn't be funny at all. The fact that you were laughing at someone who couldn't help the way they are would be very wrong. I also think that if he had some sort of physical problem then it wouldn't be funny either. But that is the main difference between the two plays and that is the thing that makes one funny and the other serious.

Doll's House Blog

I think that the character of Nora is very complex but can be related to by many young women in today's society. I know that this play was written a long time ago but I feel like Nora's personality and conflicts can still be applied to modern day.

In the first act we learn very little about her as a person. To me, at first she was portrayed very childish and silly. It was like she was very ditsy and didn't have a lot of common sense. She was portrayed as money hungry and careless. The only wise thing she did (which may not have been so wise in the first place) was to take out that loan. This was the only thing that showed she actually has thoughts.

In the second act we learn that she is smarter that what she actually appeared to be. Although she still puts on an act of stupidity and helplessness she is thinking more about her future and how to handle her problems. We also learn that she is trapped in a marriage where there is no love. But the man she truly wants to be with cant support her so she doesn't leave her husband for him. This shows us that she does have feelings and is a compassionate person, but is still greedy and is only concerned with money.

I don't think it is until the last act that she can be related to. When she sits down with her husband and claims that is the first time in 8 years they have had a serious talk, is when she breaks free of her stereo type. She can be related to in the sense of always have a man control her, and finding that strength to get up and move on by yourself. She finally does whats right and leaves her house and marriage with no love for independence. I think that a lot of young women go through this act of "growing up" and leaving your security behind to go out in the world on your own.

Concerts!

So yesterday I just bought my tickets for the spring show to see Citizen Cope and Vanessa Carlton. I think that this should be a really good concert and I'm definitely excited that the tickets were so cheap (relative to his other shows.) I really like Citizen Cope's music and its nice he is coming here because he was permanently kicked out of the venue at home... I just hope when he comes here he wont be as intoxicated as he was at home :-/

I'm pretty excited to see Vanessa Carlton too... I remember being younger and really enjoying her music. Although she only had like two hit songs she was still pretty good. So all in all we got our tickets early enough that all of my friends could sit together in a relatively good section.

This Friday I'm also going to be seeing Third Eye Blind which I'm super excited about. All last summer they are pretty much what I listened to. I think that the forecast is calling for rain but either way it should still be a good show! I think it is going to be pretty big too Because it was moved out of Marz to Battle Ship park.

Also in April I'm hoping to go see Dave Matthew's Band. They are going to Raleigh and I think my friends want to all get together to go see them. They were another band that I listened to a lot last summer, plus I grew up listening to them so hopefully I'll have enough money for tickets.
:)

Turtle Tug

Yay! We are the co-ed champs of the first annual DZ Turtle Tug. This is a tug of war game played over a giant pool of green jello... it sounds gross but it was very entertaining!

My team consisted of 8 people, four boys and four girls. So we showed up to the gazebo fields today and there were over 100 people who had signed up to compete. Fortunately there was only one other co-ed team and although they consisted of mostly boys, they were very petite boys; probably weaker than myself (not trying to be mean.) So we beat them after they put up a fight for a good minute or so.

Next they were going to put our team into the girl's division because they didnt have enough teams. So obviousley we won again and made it into the championship round for the girls too. Now knowing that this was an unfair match up, the organizer of the event asked if they could put a boy on their team to even out the competition. We agreed, making it 8 people vs. 9... little did we know that they were allowed to chose a tractor trailer as their 9th player. Honestley the kid looked like Hulk Hogan and he alone pulled our team straight into the jello.

So even though we lost the girl's championship round we still made out with a nice trophy and the title of co-ed champs!

Paper Outline

Thesis: Through the similarities of themes of punishment, sacrifices for happiness, and strong consciences, we learn the truth about what each narrator is trying to prove.

Intro: Adress how each story is different but similar in the sense that each has a narrator trying to convince the reader.
Explain what each narrator is trying to convince.

1st: Common theme of punishment
The heart beating in "Tell Tale Heart."
The small boy who is locked away in "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas."

2nd: Common theme of sacrifices for happiness
Not brining the small boy out of the basement so the town of Omelas can stay joyful.
Killing the Old man so that his eye doesn't bother the narrator anymore.

3rd: Common theme of strong conscience
The people who do actually walk away from Omelas, proving the narrator to be truthful when convincing the reader that the townspeople have feelings.
The narrator admitting to killing the old man becuase hearing his heart beat after he has died was driving him crazy. He is proved to be a liar because he actually is mad.

Conclusion: Although both of these stories differ greatly from one another they are connected by these main themes.

Billy Elliot

So this past weekend I started out my spring break in New York City. My mom decided to take my sister into the city to meet up with one of her friends she used to model with. The travel was planned very poorley, I flew from Wilmington, to Laguardia, to Burlington VT. My mom picked me up, we went to eat lunch then went back to the airport to fly back to JFK.

Despite the run around, we made it into the city Friday night and headed into Times Square to see the bright lights. I have been to NYC before but my little sister has never been so it was an exciting experience for her. We just hung around and ate dinner on Friday becuase Saturday was going to be very busy for us and we needed our energy.

We got up early on Sat. and headed out. The weather was BEAUTIFUL. You didnt even need a jacket when you were walking around. We met up with my mom's friend Ellen at Rockefeller Center and headed all the way down to the bottom of Manhatten to work our way back up. Our first stop was the remains of the Trade Centers. It was kind of an eerie experience seeing it again and realizing what had actually happened there. We started walking back to mid town and stopping all along the way to do some sight seeing and shopping. We went through So-Ho and eventually grabbed a taxi back to the hotel. After a short 30 min break we headed back out for dinner and our show.

We were going to go see Billy Elliot. And if you have never seen the movie you need to rent it! It is about a young boy growing up in Brittan during the coal strike. He is a boxer but desperately wants to become a ballerina. I think that the show was MUCH better than the movie, although both are great. The lead in the broadway is a fourteen year old boy and it is incredible to think that someone so young can be such a good dancer starring on broadway.

We got up the next day and headed home. Its nice to be back in my own house but there is honestly nothing to do here. Im not wishing my vacation away, I just wish there were more exciting things going on...

New Fish Species

So the other day while I was checking my e-mail, one of the side news alerts caught my eye. I'm not usually one to think twice about these ads only because they usually are pointless news feeds like "The Ugliest Cat Alive" or "Chris Brown and Rhianna back together?!" but this one seemed pretty interesting to me.

Apparently, last year while a scuba diving tour instructor went out on the reef he discovered a new species of fish. This new Psychedelic fish has some characteristics of a frog fish. And if you have not ever seen a frog fish, it's pretty self explanatory, it looks just like a frog. However, this new fish has some crazy swirls, tan and white, all over it which gives it its name, Psychedelic.

When I was five, and first decided I wanted to be a marine biologist, I had some pretty daunting dreams. I was convinced that when I got older, I was going to be the greatest marine biologist and find a new species of fish. As I got older, my childhood dreams had changed a little and I had realized that being a whale trainer was probably and easier task to complete than to find a new fish. Seeing this news article though has made me realize that although I truly want to be a trainer, its not out of my reach to find a new species. As we were learning in my Oceanography class the other day, we know more about the surface of the moon than we do the deep ocean.

There is still hope out there to fulfill the dreams I had when I was five years old... cheesy but true.

Short Fiction Essay Prompt

I am choosing to do prompt number 3 for our short fiction essay.

The main points that I intend to speak about are the three main things both of these stories have in common.
1. Although "Tell Tale Heart" and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" both have a different tone and feeling to them, their endings are both a quick change and can startle the audience.
2. Both of the stories deal with punishment. Poe's story is the punishment of the narrator by hearing the noise of the heart beak. Whereas the punishment in Omelas is the young boy who is locked in the basement.
3. Both stories also convey a sense of a strong conscience. Both of the narrators realize that what is going on in the story is wrong. They both have different consequences from the story's actions but it is stemed from the same sense of morals.

I plan on discussing how different these stories are from on another but they are connected by these main themes.

Third Person Blog

Today, Sydney had a pretty busy day. Wednesdays are usually the worst for her because she has her chemistry lab right in the middle of the day. She hates lab only because it takes so much time and chemistry isn't always her forte.

So last night Sydney decided she should start to review for her chemistry mid-term. Not only becuase it was right around the corner, but also becuase she had a four question quiz in lab the next day. However, Sydney is a professional procrastinator. She decided that after ten minutes of reviewing it was time to take a break. She left her notecards and books in her room to visit with friends down the hall. She thought she would only be in her friends room for a short period of time, but it turned out to be a whole two hours! She ended up watching the movie Mr. Brooks and blew off studying.

In the end it wasn't all bad. Her quiz that she took today was pretty easy and she still has plenty of time to study for her exam. Plus she was able to watch a pretty good/suspensful movie with her friends.

Sydney lived happily ever after.

What to write about...?

So I have officially run out of steam for blogging. At first I though it was really easy to come up with topics for posts. But now, everyday when I try to think of a topic, I fail... miserably. It scares me that I am getting so far behing with blogging!

It is also a little ironic that I, personally, can't find a thing to talk about. I am usually the type of person that will never shut up. I love to tell stories, chat with people, and tell jokes. I'm a little concerned that I can't even imagine a topic for a blog. What's even more threatening is that this is a graded assignment.

Speaking of assignments, I do kind of miss our once a week blog entries that are mandatory. I feel like they were the ice breaker to our other blog that is supposed to be due that week.

I think that even if we were assigned just a broad topic to discuss, it would help minimize the daunting task of TWO blogs. I realize it's not that big of a deal, it's just that it is a little intimidating to talk about one thing when our world is filled with so much.

Las Vegas

I just found out that I am going to be traveling to Las Vegas this April to watch the Miss USA pageant. Last year I was Miss Vermont Teen 2008 and was able to watch Miss USA 2008. It was held at the Planet Hollywood resort and casino and it will be there again this year. I'm so excited to go and watch because a lot of the girls I competed against at Miss Teen USA 2008 will be there. I'm going to go out there with one of the girls I competed with, my friend Caroline who was Miss Mass Teen last year.

I'm so excited to go out there and watch it because last year I wasn't able to enjoy Vegas at all. I was only there for three days and as a Teen contestant I had appearances and events that I had to attend. So this year when we go out we will be able to sight see a little more :-] Overall I super excited and I think this is going to be and awesome trip!

Half Time Show

So I'm not really a fan of either of the teams that are playing at the superbowl tonight. I am however watching it becuase I feel like its ahuge tradition in the American society. Becuase I'm not too interested though I thought that I would multitask a little and do some homework.

One thing that I have noticed about the superbowl in the past four or five years is that the performer for half time has been very outdated. There are no new or current singers/bands that perform anymore. I understand that they are looking for a specific type of music to appeal to all ages that watch the game, but there are some new and cooler performers that could do just as good of a job as these past few year's performers.

This is not to say that I dont appreciate the music that is performed at half time, I just think that it's a little boring... sorry to anyone who likes the Rolling Stones, Prince and all of the other performers from 4 years past.

It makes me sad that there is a very good possibility that becuase of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson, the younger and more recent performers cannot be trusted with the responsibility of entertaining at such a large event.

Robert Frost

The article that I found on Robert Frost is based on his burial in Bennington, VT. I remember studying Robert Frost in fifth grade and talking about his life VT and the poems he had written while he was there. This article on Bennington also talks about Frost's experiences in New England.

It is told that Frost actually lived in a town called Shaftsbury until 1938 when his wife Elinor died. He then traveled back to his early home, a farm in NH, to scatter her ashes. When he found the old barn run down and the owner unfriendly, he decided to keep his wife's ashes in an urn in the closet until he could later find a burial spot.

In the summer of 1940, Frost had bought two burial plots in the Old Bennington Cemetery behind the Old First Congregational Church. The article gives a brief history of the difference between the Old and New Bennington Cemetery and how the Old part dates back to the Revolutionary War. The article also argues somewhat about Frost's beliefs and how some thought that he was and Atheist.

The stone used for Robert Frost's grave was made from granite that came from my home town and the granite capitol of the world, Barre. It has laurel leaves hand carved into the sides and a quote that reads " I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

Trip to the Aquarium!

On Martin Luther King Jr. day my friends and I decided to take a trip down to the Cape Fear Aquarium. We packed into my little VW bug and headed out.

Once we got there we worried that it was going to be really expensive but luckily it was free becuase of the holiday. I was pretty dissapointed at first looking at the entrance exhibits. They were all fresh water fish. The only thing that I though was cool were all of the alligators. I am majoring in marine bio so my interests are in tropical fish and larger mammals. Once we got further into the aquarium there were more exhibits with tropical fish and reef fish.

During my senior year of high school I took a marine bio course. My class actually went to Bermuda to do surveys for the organization Reef. We were required to be able to identify the fish that are most likely found off of the keys of Florida, Bermuda, and the Bahamas. While we were in the aquarium it was a lot of fun to be able to identify the fish in the tanks.

The cool thing about this aquarium is that they don't just house fish. There were GIANT lobsters, poisen tropical frogs, and an exhibit on hurricanes. Overall my favorite exhibit were the seahorses. It was almost like a "Where's Waldo?" game becuase they blen in so well with the rocks and coral that they live on.

I'm hoping to get a job at the aquarium next semester. I think it would be a good idea to have a job like that on my resume for the future.

Writing About Issues, #3

I'm sure that everyone who has gone to a public high school has experienced stereotyping in one way or another. I know personally that in my high school there were many different cliques and social groups you could belong to. Although my school prided itself on unity and acceptance of all kinds, there were always small groups of kids who gathered with their own "type."

I could easily list the main groups from my high school; hippies, rednecks, football players, cheerleaders, skanks, freshman, wannabe gangsters, artists, emo, nerds, gays and lesbians, druggies, and who could forget the popular kids?

When I was going through middle school and the first years of high school, I found myself making friends with a lot of different people from these different groups. I love art, and I was on the cheer team. I have friends who play football and I have friends that are gay. I have friends who are super smart and some friends that are freshman. Even though I had all of these different people to hang out with, I guess I ended up in the "popular" group. The reason why I would call them that is because they were the ones who ruled the school, had the world eating out of the palms of their hands.

Things were good for a while. I went through my whole high school career with the same tight knit group of friends, that is, until my senior year. During my senior year I noticed that the group I hung out with started to be very critical. They judged quickly and used disrespectful connotations towards other people in my school. Eventually I didn't even like hanging out with them any more.

Looking back on the situation now, I realize that it was better for me to go in my own direction than to judge others the way my friends were.

Always taking applications

Due to lack of money, I've decided that I really need a job. And at first I had my standards set pretty high. Of course I knew that because of the economy not a lot of businesses would be hiring, but I figured I'd still get my pick of a job.

Early on last week there was a part time job fair that I thought would be worth checking out. Instead it turned out to be about 10 companies that I was not interested in at all, and the ones that were interesting were only hiring for the summer.
So I set out with my friend to collect applications and pass out resumes. The only problem was that every answer from every store we went to was the same.

"We aren't currently hiring but we are always taking applications." Bummer.

We were pretty disappointed so we decided to call it quits after ten stores and grab lunch. I'm sure that buying food was probably not the best idea seen on how we are short on cash but queso dip and chips were really the only thing that was going to make us happy.

After all of that trouble I didn't even start on filling out the applications until Tuesday. Two hours, one headache, and a hand cramp later, I had finished all of my applications. I feel like it was pointless to waste my time on filling all of them out because of the generic response we had gotten the week before. Hopefully, after more searching, I will finally get a job!

Evaluation of two blogs

The two blogs that I found were shapefit.com and NYmag.com/daily/fashion.

Shapefit.com uses photos with instructions on how to achieve the fitness level of some of the models on their page. It also uses links to other related fitness websites. There is only one person who makes the posts but each post is a different model and work out routine. I think that the blog would be helpful when trying new fitness routines because it offers a lot of different ideas and it also shows the results that come from the actions.

NYmag.com uses a toolbar with links to redirect to other fashion pages. There are small blurbs relating to different areas of fashion with pictures and hyperlinks relating the text. I think that this website works really well because it is branched off of a fashion magazine. If you wanted to search the rest of the website there is also a search engine that could be very helpful. One thing that this website uses unlike shapefit.com are adds along the top of the page. These adds are all related to fashion (example: Neiman Marcus Sales) and can take you directly to another web page.