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Showing posts from January, 2024

The tale of a self-destructive reality

Long long ago, before the dawn of time and space, a being of unfathomable scale and power took its last breath, its limp body sinking through the surrounding void, veins bleeding time and body rotting into universes, but some universes were made of flesh that wasn't so decayed, that was fresh enough that it still had some of that infinite power that every primordial scavenger sought to harness, and harness they did, creating vast inter-universal empires headed by warlords wielding god-like power, who hoarded their territories like raccoons, if raccoons were so inclined to hold territory, but some raccoons are more ambitious than others, and warlords were no different, as one of them, Ygadle, had a scheme, by using their near-infinite power, they could repurpose one of their universes into a device known as the Eternity Engine, a hyperspherical construct, quadrillions of light years in diameter, with the capability of pumping the temporal blood back into the corpse from which all re...

The hounds of Baxterville

     1: Of what I could parse from the strange verbiage used In this essay, I think that tattoos are a symbol of individuality and personal history to Baxter. She relates stories of various people throughout history using them as a means of self-identification:  Anchors, pirate queens, bleeding hearts all offered something like an I.D. card. For the inked mummies of the Euro-Asian steppe and the bodies of the Iceman and an Egyptian priestess… what did their dots and dashes and their swirling chimerical animals mean to their owners? Perhaps only that they had names, even in death.      2: Baxter tends to relate her story to people of old, showcasing how tattoos have been important to a lot of people for a long, long time. In a series of two passages I found darkly humorous (At least, I hope she meant it to be humorous), she shares the story of two martyrs who were brutally tortured via use of poetic tattoos: Over the course of two days he had their fac...

week 3 discussion 1

     Fear tastes like a chili pepper that is way above your spice tolerance, making it hurt to swallow and difficult to breathe, something that replaces rational thought with a single-minded NEED to remove this horrible feeling as fast as possible, by any means necessary.     J oy smells like everything and nothing, because I can't smell.      My future sounds like a hellish cacophony of 30 different orchestras all playing different symphonies, probably beautiful individually but when perceiving all the possibilities at once it becomes overwhelming.     Freedom is a break from a long road trip in a cramped car to stretch your legs.     Hatred feels like two bubbling cauldrons of acid (one in your skull and one in your gut) that threaten to melt you from the inside out, and whos caustic fumes accumulate inside your cavities until you explode from the pressure.     Jealousy looks like a gnarled green imp contorted into ...

The Real Killer Whale Was the Friends We Made Along the Way.

     1: Morality is a mostly human-made invention to categorize actions and behaviors of other humans as either desirable (good) or undesirable (bad). Morality is not a binary, obviously there's a lot of grey area, in fact, most of it is grey-area, but my larger point is that ascribing it to stuff that isn't human gets messy. Is a lion "bad" for eating an elk? Is water "good" for hydrating us? Is lightning "a douche" for turning my hotdog into ash? The answer to all of these is, probably, no.      This was a longwinded way of saying that I don't think Tilikum was the villain in this situation. Were they the victim? Broadly speaking, yes. SeaWorld, famously, is a factory for marine-mammal misery, and if the article is anything to go by, Sealand was basically the equivalent of orca hell, “If you pen killer whales in a small steel tank, you are imposing an extreme level of sensory deprivation on them,” .     The villain of this story, in my op...

Juggling. Yes, really.

Juggling (Yes, really)      Adventure! Intrigue! Exploration!      I wanted none of these things. A hermit by nature, I prefer doing anything and everything at my house, indoors. There is a certain charm to doing things at your own house that you can't get anywhere else: the food is more appetizing; The chairs, more comfortable; The water, more wet! Yes, truly, the way to live life is to shut yourself indoors and never have any human interaction ever (this is sarcasm). So, what new activity and/or experience could I have with no budget and in the snug comfort of four walls? Well, you read the title, you know the answer: Juggling!      Juggling, the act of throwing and catching two or more objects over and over again. We humans clearly have very high standards for what we consider entertaining (this is also sarcasm). Now, I rag on it, but juggling is genuinely fun to watch, and is the perfect amount of clownish whimsy to fit the vibe ...

"The Power of Detail in Writing" assignment

"The Power of Detail in Writing" assignment     1. I believe Nguyen's purpose in writing the piece was to talk about culture and nostalgia as a whole, through the lens of Twinkies. They talk about being a child, and using Twinkies as an "in" to assimilate into a foreign culture. They bring up how outdated some of the word-usage/iconography was even when they, as a child, were eating them.     2. A food item (in this case, a beverage) that is important to me is Dutch Bro's chocolate milk. I doubt it is as important to me as Twinkies are to Nguyen, I just really, really love the taste of it. When I read about nectar in Greek mythology, a divine beverage that grants immortality and is reserved for the gods, I imagine that it tastes like Dutch Bro's chocolate milk.     Now, with a glowing review like that, you may think to yourself "oh, maybe I should try some!", what a FOOL you are! I did not compare it to nectar for the taste alone. No, just like...

Wowzah! It's The Two Short Essays Assignment!

Wowzah! It's The Two Short Essays Assignment!  Essay 1 Prewriting:     He sits at his desk, his eyes glued to the screen. Just a few chapters, that's all he needs to read, but as he reads he finds his mind wandering... wandering... wanderi- he snaps back to the page! where was he, did he already read that sentence? that paragraph? that page? or did his eyes simply glaze over it? who knows, certainly not him.      Not sure how I could improve my approach to reading assignments. If I try to take breaks I just end up wasting too much time. Maybe I should read it in a window with no other tabs open, to get rid of the temptation? That's all I can think of, short of getting a Ritalin prescription. Questions:      1: He learns that by slowly and repetitively reading, he can pick apart and discern the individual pieces of writing that add up to create a good story, which he can then use to write better, himself.      2: I think being t...