steeling

recently i had a few items stolen from me. My room was locked too. And there were i-pods sitting outside my window that they could of stolen, but didn't. this whole thing disturbs me that this happens. i grew up in a small town. and the thought of being vulnerable like that i really don't like. i lost huge investment of merchandise and going through the night, it doesn't make sense how i lost it.

If i had a super power

Somebody brought up the question, if you could have one super power what would it be?

Flying
Who wouldn't want to be able to fly. Soaring through the skies, and what not. Pretty bad ass.

Telecanesis
The power to move objects would be super powerful, it's part of the force. and every one wants the force to be with them.

Instant Teleportation
Living in montana, if you want to go shopping you usually have to visit another town. Instant teleportation would be great. I would also not be late for class as much.

Man i want to be a super hero.

drinking and fraternities

We've been working alot with the College on improving the greeks system, but alot of people give the greeks a bad name, fraternities, or "frats" as they calll them get most of the blame.
First off is the drinking. People say you are more likely to drink at a fraternity. I think part of the problem is that anybody who doesn't drink doesn't want to join a fraternity, so then the percentage of people who drink in a fraternity is way higher than living in a dorm.
Secondly there are more people living in a greek house than if you were to rent a house with some friends. therefore there are way more opportunities to drink.
The third thing is that, well, no one understands that greeks were founded to produce quality men. and althoughdrink occurs to gentlemen who joined a fraternity, they still do end up leading great lives, and having a way better time at college.

Religion

Religion was always an interesting topic of mine. I think that the religion that makes the most sense to me is Buddhism.
The thing with buddhism is that you don't need to have strong beliefs, you just need to practice their ways of improving the quality of life. Which i am a huge fan if.
I don't believe in heaven, hell, god, or gods. The thought of praying for wealth, is well stupid. You're wasting time to where you could be working hard to make more money.
I dont feel that i need to find comfort in an afterlife, or be threatened to be a good person. I can be a good person no matter what my religion is or isn't.

Spiderman 3

I went and saw spiderman 3 last thursday on opening night. I always find it easy the directions in each movie change. It's almost as if there was a director for each movie.
In spiderman 3 there was a large portion of it i wasn't a fan of. First off when MJ breaks up with peter, the acting was horrible.
The second thing i didn't like was emo spiderman, when peter was obsorbed by the symbiat. I thought that the way he portreyed the transformation, did not align with the original porteying of the charachter.
Even with that, i thought it ended well with great fighting. which is one of the most important things with comic book heroes in movies. after all it's the super powers and the fighting sequences that guys like me like movies like those.

Toughest Man

The was a Sherman Alexi story we had to read a while ago about the toughest man. The big part of the discussion led into homosexuality.
Part of it was that how come it's not fair that a girl can kiss a girl, and it's not gay, but when a guy kisses a guy it's gay. The biggest reason for this instance is that girls kissing girls has started to become a common occurance. Who's to blame, probably the male scociety, but the females weren't tortured till the point of giving in. never the less, females are allowed to explore a little quicker than guys.
The difference in this story is that it was two guys having anal sex. I think that's a different situation. If two girls have sex, i would call them gay. You can't compare kissing to sex. They had sex, they were both guys, they are therefore gay. end of discussion.

Voice(final paper)

So I’m supposed to write this paper talking about voice, but what is voice? It’s more than opinions or the sound that comes out of your mouth. Voice is also about expressing your voice as a personality.

In smoke signals Victor had a lot of voice coming out of him despite that Thomas was doing most of the talking. You could tell what Victor wanted in life, who he really was, and everything else just by his voice. Victor represented the warrior; he was never smiling, always reserved, and had kind of a grumpy outlook on everything. It was easy to tell when the warrior came out in him. He was a great basketball player in his tribe, and hated losing. When ever he got scored on he immediately called “Foul” and if any body argued he would respond, “when I say it’s a foul, it’s a foul.” This showed off his over competitiveness of a natural warrior. The biggest part though when the warrior came out is when he went to run to find help, and he ran for miles upon miles, fighting his desire to take a break, not wanting to give up or surrender.

Personality traits came into play also. When Thomas was talking with the 2^nd team gymnast for the Olympics, Victor showed off this personality of shut out and reserved. He got upset with the Thomas learning more about this girl, and he yelled at her and pissed her off so she quit talking to them. Victor stays reserved through out the movie not wanting to hear Thomas’s stories, or listen to him talk at all. All that stays on Victor’s mind is the mission at hand.

Thomas has a completely different personality that comes out through his voice through out the movie. First thing you notice is the need for acceptance. Thomas wants to be accepted as a part of Victor’s life, mostly because he feels like they were brothers. Victor’s dad was like a father to Thomas because Victor’s dad saved Thomas’s life, and bought him a grand slam at Denny’s. When ever Victor would be around Thomas would always ask, “Hey Victor, what about your dad?” or something along those lines. This was Thomas’s socially challenged way of trying to be a part of Victor and his dad’s life. And when Thomas offers to put up his own saved up money to help Victor get to his dad’s house on the basis that Thomas gets to come to, it shows how loyal and dedicated Thomas really is to Victor and his dad.

The other trait you would notice is that opposite of Victor, the warrior, Thomas portrays the medicine man. I don’t think ten minutes went by and Thomas didn’t tell a story, or talk about how he can feel things by listening to the winds and the trees. Thomas is very spiritual and wants to be completely positive in every aspect of life.

Victor and Thomas’s name could also represent this. Victor’s name as you could probably guess represents victory. He never wants to lose or give up, like any warrior victor wants to achieve victory.

Thomas’s last name was Builds-a-fire. This name is a very ironic name since Thomas’s parents were killed in a fire. At the beginning of the movie, after the devastating fire, Thomas narrates that, “Some kids are made of fire and burn everything they touch; others are made of ash and burned by anything that touches them. Me and Victor were made of fire and ash.”

Builds-a-fire could go along with the medicine man idea that Thomas is there to help, and fire is known as a tool. But fire could also be the one thing that is referenced as the big symbol of struggle between Victor and Thomas. Since they were both made of fire and ash, they were the ones who could burn each other. Thomas’s constant fire building was what aggravated victor the most after Victor’s father left him.

Voice is more than just what you say, it’s more of how you act or the way you say something. Victor the warrior and Thomas the medicine man are great examples of voice by the way they approach life.

Voice shows up everywhere you look, everything you read, everything you watch, everything you listen to, and basically in almost anything. In my last English paper, “Johnny Dudeguy and the Radical Rangers,” you could find a lot of voice coming out of it.

One thing you will probably notice is the humor and fun that this story has, which represents a lot of my personality. There were many quotes from characters, and even the character name that really stood out with a fun personality of the story.

With in the story, the protagonist Johnny Dudeguy represented Robin Hood, for although he stole food one day, he gave it to poor kids starving in the cafeteria. Johnny is very selfless, carries around a sling shot that he is very handy with(like Robin’s bow and arrow), and always wants to help out those less fortunate than him.

The bad guy of the story was Notso Niceguy, who was not so much of a nice guy. Notso was the prince John of the story. Wrongfully put into power, Notso was enveloped in greed and demanded all he could. He even took away everything dear to Robin by stealing his girlfriend Mary Ann, showing how ruthless he was. Notso and Johnny used to be best friends when they were young, but Notso got rich and started rolling with a different crowd. He really showed how money and power can corrupt someone who used to be good hearted.

Of course in the end, Johnny triumphs over Notso. Which, you should be thinking to yourself right now, “Oh good, good triumphed over evil.” This is part of the story hugely represents the voice of it. For if you were to describe the voice of this story you would say that it’s about good triumphing over evil.

Voice is a tricky subject, mostly because it’s hard to define. You say something, and sounds come out your mouth, and then you say, “Hey, that’s my voice.” But in this instant voice is more than sound, for you can’t hear a story written on paper. Voice is the personality of stories.

The Wild of College(1st assignment)

In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, there are a lot of similarities as an upcoming freshman going into college. It might not be as extreme, but there are similar challenges and adventures. McCandless started out hitchhiking, otherwise on his own, very similar to High School grads, no longer able to stay under the roof of their parents, eating their food, watching their satellite television on their high definition TV.

On his journey he meets Gaylord Stuckey, his companion and ride to Fairbanks, AK. McCandless and Stuckey become great friends through their journey. And much like college, everyone finds a friend, someone that they can rely upon. When they reach the University, McCandless and Stuckey split, but Stuckey makes the other promise to write a letter later on in life. Similarly some friends don’t last in college, because some of them will end up transferring to another college, but you can still keep in touch.

At the University McCandless buys a rifle known as the Nylon 66, which is no longer in production, which represents the buying of used books as apposed to new ones; college students are cheap. Along with his rifle, McCandless had a half full back pack, which included a scarce amount of food, and nine or ten hardbound books. And much like in college life, you spend a majority of time to study, and eating, besides the occasional night drinking.

While in the wild, McCandless starts off struggling, he finds it hard to kill game, he is battling weakness and massive amounts of snow, not to mention the occasional disaster. But then finally gets a little bit of success by acing down a spruce grouse. As time goes by in the wild, he starts shooting better and soon becomes a very astute hunter.

However McCandless didn’t survive the wild, and ended up dieing. This is an exacerbated outcome of college students, since the worst is usually failing out of college. But McCandless did find his soul-flight in the wild, an important part of any journey, where he discovered himself and his capabilities. And it is near impossible to not discover something about yourself when you take your journey in to college.

There is also a poem that has similar types of relativity. In “The Poem that Takes Place of a Mountain,” the writer writes about a poem that sets his amazing ness, something that makes him more than just an amateur poet, in a sense, it’s his “degree” in poetry. It’s like the aspiring singer who needs that one hit to make it to Hollywood. This poem that he writes is what sets him from amateur poet to just poet.

Of course now any story that tells a journey could be considered a college related story. College is and always will be a journey of every student. Take Jorge Borges’s The Circular Ruins, for example, a story about a journey similar to Krakauer’s Into the wild.

These both consist of a man treading into land to which he knows nothing of. Whether it be an uncivilized land for McCandless, or an ancient temple inhabited by natives for the foreigner, the main character in The Circular Ruins. While in this new territory, both characters are inevitably, in some sense, alone. There is no to hold their hand or tell him how to survive. The foreigner does however have some natives that give him food when he arrives, which could be considered his financial aid in a sense, and there is Fire that acts upon the Foreigner as professor at a time.

The foreigner also had close similarities to being in college. Just for starters he’s in a new area and has to figure what the buildings are for. He has two temples and has to travel between the two, trying to figure out what each temple is for.

The biggest connection to college life is when the foreigner creates his son out of his dreaming. He creates this human that is purely out of imagination. His creation takes years of concentration. Using his mind is what he relies on most, it takes lots of concentration to create his son. Day after day studying the anatomy, making sure everything is as it needs to be. Treating it like a huge senior project that could make or break his grade.

Using your mind is important in all journeys you take. Whether it using your mind to master the rough snowy terrain of Alaska tying to survive against the odds in Into the Wild, writing a poem that could turn you to a poet guru as in The Poem that took Place of a Mountain, a journey to a temple where you must use create the most complicated idea in your mind from Circular Ruins, or making through those four plus years of college to earn that important degree. Your mind is your most powerful tool.