Small Town Diary 1

Small towns with small people and big heads. Everyone romanticizes them. I'm going to tell you the truth about small towns. They suck. Entering my sixteenth year in Carbondale and my third year at Carbondale Community High school, I pretty much know every single secret that this piece of shit town has to offer. The cheerleaders gossip, the jocks are class clowns and totally juvenile, and the female athletes are totally top of the food chain. And yea, I am saying that because I am one. Some of you may be asking what gives me the right to say that female athletes are the best. Well, don't worry because I have some proof for you.
1. Firstly, We don't talk shit. (well not as much as the guys)
2. We don't need help running from cops at parties.
3. We probably don't go to too many parties because we don't want coach to find out.
4. When we do show up, the parties are 100% better because we party harder than any cheerleader.  And we bring our own booze.

Anyway, in my group, or my team if you will, there are about ten of us. Lizzie, Alice, Becky, Emily, Katie, Lilly, Bri, Chris, Mickey, and myself. Emily, Chris, Bri, Katie, and Lilly all play for the soccer team. The rest of us play softball. We're pretty evenly separated. Honestly, we run the school. The cheerleaders think they run it but if anyone has ever had a small dog with a big ego you'll understand this. The cheerleaders think they run this but they don't. It's kind of like the kings parliament in britain. The King used parliament to make his people think they have some power so they would be compliant. They didn't actually have shit because the king did what he wanted to anyway. That's exactly what high school is like. The female athletes are the big dogs that only show their teeth when they have to while some of the lesser dogs are baring their teeth whenever they don't get their way.

If you can't tell, my team and I cause quite a bit of mischief. Our freshman year we crashed every single senior party and they couldn't kick us out because our team mates invited us. Not that they wanted to, exactly. We weren't the freshman sluts, though. You know the girls that only want to be "popular" so they'll do anything with anybody? We weren't them. We came out, dressed to the nines, with a look but don't touch mentality. We seemed like total hard asses, but we all had a little back story. Secrets in a small town are hard to keep. I'm writing the tell all, so you may as well know our backstory before you learn the whole story.

Let's just go in list order, shall we?
Lizzie, oldest of four kids. Short stop. Varsity as a freshman. Dad (MIA) mom- working nurse who works nights to support the family. Not rich but not struggling like she should be. Mom stealing money to help support the family. (DETAIL)
Alice, Doctor Michael Johnson and Dr. (PhD.) Mary Johnson. Doctor and lawyer. Not struggling at all. Center fielder for the Carbondale softball team. Been my best friend since early 2000's.
Becky- Mom's  kindergarten teacher dad owns his own business. Second baseman. Has trouble hitting. Never had a boy friend but is NOT gay.
Emily- parents still in a loving relationship, one older brother (weird) and parents that support anything she wants to pursue. Easily the best dressed person at CCHS. Defensive player in soccer.
Katie and Lilly- Twins born two minutes apart. Tall blond and beautiful. Very reliable and amiable but it doesn't hurt that their dad is cheif of police and we can (and do) get away with anything. Both play forward and defense in soccer.
Bri- Been dating Brody for about ten months now. Went to Junior High together. Parents work at grocery stores but we don't look at her differently and she sure as shit isn't struggling. Forward for soccer.
Chris- Total brain at stats and most all numbers. Parents have been happily divorced since Chris was in 7th and we share very similar abusive father stories. Defense and goalie for soccer.
Mickey- Kicker for the football team and parents have been married many years. One older brothere and they fight all the time because  Mick could kick his ass. (Michelle) She's one of the most unique out of all us. Long wavy hair and easily the prettiest of all of us.
Then there's Your's Truly
Raised by wolves after my father died. My brother and sister are primarily those wolves until I got to be eight. I can't remember the last time I saw my mom. My dad was an abusive drunk who used to beat on his daughter. Piece of Ass. My mom is never home so that's why my house became the crash house. I don't take shit and I sure as hell don't care what anyone has to say, which is why I'm writing this. This is the only place where I can drop the act and actually care.
You can probably see that we're a force to reckoned with.
 My small town diary starts on October 4th (homecoming) and the day we decided to take things up a knotch for the month of October. We love halloween and we love spooky shit so this was our time to shine.


We obviously went bat shit after homecoming and I don't really remember much. The cops were called and Brad warned Mickey who took off running into the woods and skinned her knee. We all followed and that's where the story takes a turn. We heard Mick screaming at the top of her lungs and we thought she broke something. We all break into a dead sprint and find her drunk off her ass pointing to a tree with dead mangles branches. She had fallen and broken a fence that she had tried to hop and whatever she had been smoking was screwing with her head. She kept saying "Swing. It's swinging." At first I laughed it off. It wasn't a huge deal and we were all giving her a hard time. The cops hadn't actually been called and everything went back to normal. When I looked back at the tree, though, I swear I saw a shadow of a man swinging by his neck. I never said anything but sometimes I wish I would have. Maybe it would have changed something. We went back in and finished up the party but none of us could really shake the eerie feeling. That's really all I remember from that nigh so I though that it couldn't be real.

Now would be a good time to explain my heritage. I come from a small town just north of Salem Massachusettes. We're really supersitious up here.....

Letter to the Caulfields

Dear Mrs. and Mr. Caulfield,

Your son, Holden Caulfield, has been placed under my car in the rest home he is currently staying in. That biggest thing that I have noticed about your son is his failure to interact with piers in the home. So far we have diagnosed this as Avoidant Personality Disorder or APD. While talking with Holden in our on-on-one sessions, I have noticed a trend with his sister, Pheobe. he loves his sister very much, but he can only spend a short amount of time with her, otherwise it is not as enjoyable. He may also have Compulsive Lying Disorder (CLD) which basically explains his habitual lying to himself or others. He is addicted to the thrill of lying. He loves it. His vital signs shoot up when he tells a lie, but he has perfected it. He has almost no tell when he lies and almost everyone  believes him.

 He could also be diagnosed with being a compulsive liar because he believes himself most of the time. When he tells me about a girl named Sally, he tells me how he didn't scream at her and never hurt her feelings, but when I contacted Sally about Holden, she got very upset and said she would rather not talk to about him. I am not saying the girl is telling the truth, because teenagers lie, but given the evidence, it is more likely it is Holden.

He may also have bipolar disorder or depression. My best recommended advice is to socialize him. The depression and APD may just be because he is lonely. The CLD could be caused by minimal social interaction and the bipolar disorder may just be because of the depression. The influx of hormones and what-not. However, I will keep and eye on him and try to socialize him. Depending on how he starts doing within the next week, expect him home within the month. I will keep you updated and he may be able to speak with you all soon.

Sincerely,
Director of the Cincinnati Rest Home

Mark Tobey- Abstract Expressionism

1) Mark Tobey was born in Wisconsin into a family of carpenters and painters. He wanted to do something more than paint walls though. He wanted to paint a canvas. He was introduced to [ainting in 1918 when he was asked to pose for a famous artist. Then his wife divorced him and he needed a change. He met a young Chinese woman and started painting abstract art and Chiese symbols.

2) His work makes him appear confused at first. The more I look at it though, the more uniform it appears. One of his paintings looks like a chalk board with a drawing on it of a child with some sort of aminal. It could symbolize innocence. Honestly, it could symbolize anything. I don't really know anything about art.

3) The colors are dark so I feel like it's almost a storm instead of a rainbow. It kind of makes me nervous or anxious.

4) I react pretty negatively to the artist. I think, however, that this was how he wanted who ever viewed his art to react this way. I thinnk he wanted people to be curious about his art and he wnated poeple to think about it.

5) Yes, I think abstract painting has flourished because before WWII almost no one did any abstract art from the United States.Afterwards, though, we surpassed all other art  capitals of the worlf in New York City and became THE art capital of the world.

Poetry Unit

"Bridges" by jquill89 on authspot.com
It is too easy for me because the meaning isn't really concealed or hidden at all throughout the poem.
This poem is about someone who tries to cross a bridge on their path and something always gets in their way so they have to keep starting over.

"Annabelle Lee" is my favorite poem by Edgar Allen Poe. I thought that the meaning was hard to understand at first but the more time I read it the more it made sense to me. "Annabelle Lee" is about a girl he loved when he was younger. Then Annabelle got sick and she died and he just wants to lay there with her in her coffin and die with her. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/annabel-lee/

  "Elegy in a Spider's Web" Laura Jackson
I'm pretty sure this poem it about killing a spider or something. The poem didn't make sense because they words weren't supposed to go in the order. For example, "Does does dies does it not." http://graywyvern.blogspot.com/2003_12_07_archive.html

Dystopian Novel

I chose the book The Host because it looked the most interesting out of the books that were left when I got to class and I had already read the book Delirium. The book is pretty good thus far but I don't really know what's going to happen. Melanie hasn't really come out yet and Wanderer is still trying to silence Melanie. I am only on chapter three. Again, it looks like it is going to be pretty good.

The book takes place in the future. It seems like a hierarchical society will come into play as I read more into the book. I feel strict conformity has started to come into play because the souls are not allowed to lie to eachother. They are not afriad of or discusted by the humans, they feel bad for us because we're a violent race with raging wars. It's not really a familiarity that connects us with this dystopian novel, more like fear. We are afraid that aliens might come and attack us because we would be totally defensless, even though it might not be an out right fear.

Huckleberry Finn debate on the "N-word"

In my opinion, saying the "N-word" in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a racist word and it is not prejudice at all. For the time the book was set in, pre-Civil War, the "N-word" was commonly used. In his book, Twain wanted to get the attention of the readers by drawing attention to something that we don't like hearing. In the article it said that when the "N-word" is replaced with the word slave people tend to ignore it or be less bothered by the word. The word reflects a history that most would like to ignore, but in my opinion if you ignore it, it will only repeat itself. Sure, the teach tolerance, but if they don't teach the way it used to be then we'll never know what we're avoiding. I know it seems like a small issue but I think it impacts a lot of people.
 We have the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. They shouldn't be able to take that away from someone who wrote the book anti-slavery. They shouldn't be able to take it away from anyone. If you don't like the word, don't say it. I would never say it in public or even in my own home, but that doesn't mean it should be taken out of a classic story because of it's frequency and offensiveness. People listen to this word everyday in a song, but as soon as they see it written it's all of a sudden racist.
In my school, if we read it, I hope it isn't censored. It will be a pretty big deal for me if it is, but by high school we should be mature enough to handle a word.

Satire in Shrek

 We recently watched the movie Shrek looking for examples of satire. The type of satire I saw the most was probably exageration or reversal. Satire is a literary composition in veerse or prose in which human folly and vice are held  to scorn, derision or ridicule. There are four types of satire.Exageration is to enlarge and increase or represent something beyond normal bounds so that it's faults can be seen. Reversal is to present something the opposite of normal order. There are four types of satire. Incongruity is to present thigns that are out of place or absurd in relationship to it's surroundings. Lastly, parody is to immitate the techniques and/or style of some person, place, thing or idea.
When Donkey starts to talk it is incongruity. It's out of place in normal order because normally donkeys don't talk. I thought Dulac was an exageration of order and hiearchys of the past. I thought that because it made fun of Dulac when the children start singing about how everythings perfect and if you follow orders you'll be perfect, too. Fiona saving Shrek is reversal because normally it's the damsal in distress that gets rescued by her "kinght-in-shinning-armor." When Fiona split kicks Robin Hood's Merry Men it's exageration because it's beyond normal bounds. It's beyond normal bounds because she was suspended in mid-air for a few seconds and everything paused. I think the whole movie was reversal, though. Shrek being the "kinght-in-shinning-armor" and being and ogre or Fiona being so competent. Those thing make it reversal because in the time frame this is technically supposed to be in, ogres didn't save anyone and princesses were always being rescued instead of rescuing.