End of the Semester Blog

I thought that this semester of English was pretty good. Usually, English isn't my favorite class but it was one of my favorites so far. Maybe it is because I liked what we read or because my other classes suck, I don't know. It is probably a combination of the two. I really liked reading Hamlet. Even though I did not really understand some of the language, I could still understand most of it because of the movie. Also, I thought that the story was pretty interesting. I also enjoyed how we did many different and unorthodox projects and class discussion thingys like the circles. I hope next semester was as good as this one.

Project Blog

I think that Matthew and I have a pretty good idea of what we are going to do. We are pretty far along in rewriting the scene, once we finish that we are done. What we have chosen to do is change up Gertrudes character a little bit during Act four scene seven. Originally, she didn't know anything about the plot to kill Hamlet between Claudius and Laertes. So now, we have changed it so that through some new plot events that Gertrude goes through, she knows what is going on and tries to stop Hamlet. I'm not going to tell you how it happens though. You will have to wait until you read it. And no I am not doing this as a way to write less on my blog.

Soliloquy

I have an idea of which soliloquy I am going to do. I think that I will probably do the one where Hamlet says "Frailty thy name is woman." It is an interesting speech because it is really the first time when the reader gets to see the real feelings of Hamlet. This speech takes place after Claudius and Gertrude finish talking about the death of old Hamlet. Another reason I think this is an important speech is because our English teacher said it was. But besides that, it is easy to see lots of emotion in this soliloquy. There are many easy and simple words that show emotion such as stale and flat and rank and gross. Because of these words, it will be a lot easier to portray the emotion present in this soliloquy.

End of R & G

This act begins with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern waking up on a boat on the ocean. There is a big umbrella turned over and three barrels. Later, Ros and Guil look at the letter Claudius gave them and it says to have Hamlet executed. They then go to sleep as Hamlet blows out the lantern. Next, the audience sees that Hamlet replaces the letter Claudius gave them with a new one.
I have a hard time understanding what happens next. I understand that pirates come and raid the ship and then the lights dim. When the lights come back on, its just the tragedians and Ros and Guil left on stage. Ros and Guil look at the letter again and see it has been replaced and now says to have them killed instead of Hamlet. Then, I think that the tragedians betray the two guys and then they start talking about death. Guil grabs a knife and stabs the tragedian. It then turns out that it was a fake knife and then Ros calls for another performance. From then on, I am really confused. All I know is that at the end of the act, the audience is shown the corpses of Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet, and Laertes. I have no clue what to think about this.

R & G 73-95

I noticed in this reading of Ros and Guil, there was a lot more interaction between Ros and Guil and the main characters of Hamlet. More specifically, we see a lot more of Hamlet in this act. The scene begins with Guil asking lots of wierd questions about Hamlet. I don't know why he asked these questions, the seemed a little strange. Then after he is done asking questoins, Hamlet leaves and Ros and Guil overhear Hamlet talking to Ophelia. Then the two guys bump into someone who they think is the queen, but is really just a player dressed like a queen. So, the two guys watch the play and then make fun of it because it is a tragedy. They think it is stupid because hveryone should be dead at the end of a tragedy. Later on in the act, Ros and Guil see Hamlet carrying Polonius' body and they hide. They then show themselves so they can find out where he hid the body.
The main thing that struck me as interesting was the metafiction part of this act. Mainly, it is Ros and Guil making fun and talking about the tragedy they watched. This is metafiction because they are in a tragedy. Also, this act is more important to the plot of Hamlet, so we see less of Ros and Guil talking and more of Hamlet and others from the original Hamlet cast.

Ros and Guil p. 53-73

The start of act two begins with Hamlet and all of the other important people entering. Hamlet is talking to himself again trying to decide wether or not to kill himself. Ros hesitates about trying to ask Hamlet to chat, then gives up. He then went back to Guil because he wimped out. The players then enter and start a mute performance of the Murder of Gonzago. The main player guy narrates the play for Guil and Ros. The reason that the player did the play silently is because he thought that talking didn't communicate the ideas well enough.

Ros and Guil Summary

In the beginning of act 1, Ros and Guil start out by tossing coins and guessing if it lands on heads or tails. Ros keeps winning every time because he is smarter and he probably knows something that Guil doesn't know. After they finish their coin tossing charade, Ros starts talking very philosophically, and sounds smart. He also starts to question time. I don't know why he does this, it really doesn't add much to the plot, but it might characterize Ros more. Then the play people come, or the tragedians. They give Ros and Guil a spot in the play. Then something really weird happens with fate showing up. Then the shakespeare characters show up and everybody seems tense. Ros and Guil practice a Q&A session for Hamlet. Then the act pretty much ends.
Some major elements are the difference between the shakespeare and normal language, and the mentioning of probablility and also the discussion of fate. Lastly, the arrival of fate is important as well.

Ros and Guil Number 2

This section starts with the two guys talking to the queen about seeing Hamlet, but then everybody leaves, leaving Ros and Guil alone. Of course since they are alone, they have to start talking about philosophy and things of that nature. Next they play this language game similar to a whose line is it anyway game. They have to talk in questions instead of just normal talking. I don't know what the signifigance of this is, but maybe it is showing that they don't know anything and are just lowly guards. Or, maybe I am overanalyzing this.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Act I

I think that this play is very strange so far. Pretty much, two guys are tossing a coin a bagillion times and it lands on heads every single time. Imagine that. Its pretty postmodern that these two guys are talking about how the coin lands on heads every single time. That is so random and strange, it has to be postmodern. Also, talking about how fingernails have to be trimmed is very strange. So, I thought that it was postmodern. I don't really understand why the author included this prelude to the real hamlet, it doesn't make any sense. Maybe that is another postmodern element. I really don't know, I'm just speculating. Which is good sometimes, I guess.

Vocab Usage

On friday afternoon after soccer practice, I walked home and my mom asked what happened to my shirt, because it had changed from a gray color to brown. I told her that it was besmirched from diving a bagillion times playing goalie. Later that night, I asked my parents if I could come home later than eleven. They said absolutely not it is against the law, you have an early game, and all of that crap. I said, "wow ya'll are being very explicit tonight, how about you lighten up." Obviously they didn't agree and I had to go home. After the game the next morning, I was penitent to my team because I had goofed up and let in a goal that eventually led us to tying Dutchtown. Which still isn't that bad. They are a 5A school and we are 2A. But, we still should have beaten them. Other than that, I didn't really use any of my vocab words, there just weren't any opportunities to.

Paper Ideas

I thought that I had a pretty good idea to write about for this literary analysis. I used the archetype style of criticism and the hero as my topic. My main thesis was that the hero was and is the most popular archetype ever used. This is because the hero archetype brings to mind certain emotions and ideas that are enjoyable for the audience. These emotions include, a sense of power, refuge and most importantly, hope. That is why so many authors use this archetype, because people enjoy reading it.
I also used a different organization than I usually do. I used three introduction paragraphs instead of my normal one paragraph. For the first paragraph, I introduced Beowulf and Perceval as heroes, then in the second paragraph, I talked about the heroes in the Canterbury Tales. And the last paragraph was my thesis paragraph where I summed up my other two intro paragraphs and put my thesis.

CT Presentation Critiques Part 2

Well, I don't know what to do for this because apparently I did the wrong thing for last weeks topic. I posted my thoughts on all four presentations. I guess I misinterpreted the instructions. So, here are the last two groups critiques by me.
The Pardoner's presentation was okay. I thought that some of the questions on the worksheet were worded badly. For example, the last question was which character was most characterized by the story. I said death because I had no idea what the answer was. The group said that the answer was the pardoner, but that didn't make sense. The pardoner wasn't in the story. So I think they meant to say was, who did the story reveal more information about. Other than the quiz, I thought they did good.
For our group, we had to much stuff to do for the time allotted. I would have really liked to discuss the questions we had more thoroughly. Also, I would have liked to so the Chappelle skit. But maybe we can show that on Tuesday. All in all, I thought we did pretty good.

CT Tales Questions Changes

Now that all of the lessons have happened in my class, I have changed my ideas on some of the answers I wrote. For example, I learned that the Miller's tale characterizes the miller more than I realized. At first, I wrote is that all the tale shows is that the miller is a low class peasant. I now know that it also shows that he is a vulgar person and also a very dirty person. Also, during the class discussion, I learned that the frame narrative other than making the story more interesting, gives Chaucer a way to comment on things without himself coming out and saying it. Lastly, I learned after the Pardoner's presentation how much the author hates the church. Before the presentation, I thought that his dislike was just for the upper class clergy members, but this tale showed how he disliked the lower class church officials as well. He makes the pardoner out to be a huge hypocrite, which further shows his dislike of all of the clergy.

Canterbury Lessons Reflection

This was an interesting project. My group had all of our ideas finished with lots of time left, but we didn't finish them off until almost the last minute. Well, not really. We had two days left when we were done. I thought that the Franklin's group did pretty good. They were the first group so they didn't have everything they needed but maybe that will be okay. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have done our evaluation sheet. Their discussion about the most generous character was good. It was mainly an argument between Mo, Ross, and Liz. I have no idea who won the argument. But, other people added some ideas every now and then.
I thought that the Miller's movie was pretty good. I don't know if it was intended to be funny, but it sort of was. The movie made the story much clearer to me. When I read the story, I was very confused about Abhorsen. I thought that he was the main guy trying to get the girl, but I was completely wrong. So, I got a good bit out of this presentation, which is all that matters I guess.
The Pardoner's presentation was okay. I thought that some of the questions on the worksheet were worded badly. For example, the last question was which character was most characterized by the story. I said death because I had no idea what the answer was. The group said that the answer was the pardoner, but that didn't make sense. The pardoner wasn't in the story. So I think they meant to say was, who did the story reveal more information about. Other than the quiz, I thought they did good.
For our group, we had to much stuff to do for the time alotted. I would have really liked to discuss the questions we had more thouroghly. Also, I would have liked to so the Chappelle skit. But maybe we can show that on Tuesday. All in all, I thought we did pretty good.

First Quarter Reflection

I thought that first quarter in english this year was pretty good. It was much better than last year when we had to read all of the colonial and revolutionary junk. I would much rather read about a superhero ripping off demon arms than reading that Bradford guy's Puritan diary. That was awful. But back to this year, I liked reading Beowulf and some of the Canterbury Tales. I did not like the Franklin's Tale that much. It wasn't interesting enough. I also didn't like how sometimes the prolouges were longer than the tales. Other than that, it was pretty good. I was suprised that we didn't do too much writing this quarter but I expect that to change. It did last year. All we have written so far I think is the epic paper. And that was fun to write because it was creative writing. I also liked doing the altered book project. It was a very different project but it made us think about the book we read so I guess it did its purpose.
So, overall I think it was a pretty good quarter. I liked most of the books we read and I liked all of the projects. I just have a bad feeling it will get a lot harder next quarter. I have a feeling we are going to write at least 3 papers. Just because.

CT Class Questions

Unlike other books and poetry written in the medieval time period, The Canterbury Tales was written in English. Chaucer wrote the story in English because he felt that there should be literature written in the vernacular, or the common spoken language. Most literature was written in Latin and English was thought to be unworthy to use to write. Chaucer felt otherwise. He saw that English was just as worthy as Latin or other languages that were used in writing in his time period. Chaucer also writes about many cultural issues. These include, social class, views on women, and the Church. These issues are all shown throughout the stories inside the main story, which is known as metafiction.
Chaucer uses the story of the Wife of Bath to show the role of women in the medieval age. It was thought that women should be subervient to their husbands in all matters. The husbands made money so they could do what they wanted. This is not what women want according to the story of the Wife of Bath. Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, says that women want control over their husbands. This did not occur often in her time period. Another cultural issue that is revealed through the prologue of the Miller's tale is the issue of social class. The host wants the monk to tell his story after the knight, following the status of the group. This does not happen because the Miller interupts and tells his story. Also, the miller's tale uses imagery more akin to farmlife. The Knight's tale used more noble imagery. Even though the imagery was described differently, they are still equally descriptive. Chaucer also reveals his thoughts on the church by how he describes the clergy and workers of the church in his story. The monk, friar, and the pardoner are all bad men. The monk and the friar break almost every single one of their vows, and the pardoner is shown as being corrupt. Maybe the pardoner is corrupt because he has to be for his job, but that is left for the reader to decide.
The Canterbury Tales were very innovative. It was one of the first stories to use the frame narrative technique. This is when there is a story told within a story. Also, many times during prologues, the speaker speaks directly to the reader. For example, when the Miller apologizes to the reader if the tale is offensive. Lastly, The Canterbury Tales was one of the first storys to be written in the vernacular of the time, English. This is very important because English was thought to be unworthy to use to write. So, Latin and French were used most of the time. Chaucer thought that English was just as worthy and poetic as Latin or French and decided to use English for his story.
The stories inside of the Canterbury Tales all reveal something about the teller. For example, the story of the Wife of Bath has a lot to do with women. It shows that the teller believes that women should have power over their husbands. The Miller's tale uses very common items in the imagery of the tale. This shows that the imagery can be as nice as the knight's tale's imagery, but uses farm - like words in the imagery which also describes the Miller. The Pardoner is an official of the church, so in this story, he is going to be shown as a bad person. Before his story, we know the pardoner as a bad and corrupt man. He says he doesn't care about the people he sells his pardons to, which clearly shows the type of person he is.

Free Post

I don't feel like talking about football this week. I am upset. LSU had a very hapless game. So, I will talk about Baseball. A change from soccer. The Yankees are out of the playoffs. They were swept. I am so happy they are out because I hate the yankees. They are one of those teams that one a few championships in a row in the 80's and 90's and since they have an owner who has an inestimable amount of money, they can use their winnings and the owners money to buy all of the good players. Thankfully it didnt work this year. Also, A-rod did very bad this post-season. He had a very lackluster performance. He went 0-24. ESPN said that in the past three years, A-rod has had 68 opportunities with men on base to get an RBI, and he has driven in zero. Not a very clutch player. So, the Indians beat the yankees, the red sox beat the angels, and the red sox are leading the series against the indians 2-0. The Rockies beat the Phillies, the D-backs beat the cubs and I think the rockies are beating the diamondbacks in the NLCS series. I think that the rockies are going to win the world series because they are on fire right now. They are having a stellar post-season.

Plan for end of the Quarter

In my 6 classes I have 3 borderline grades. I can easily pull up my physics grade from an 88 because there have been so many grades that she has not put online. But, I have done good on quizzes and tests so I will probably get an A. In AP Chemistry, i have a 89.3 because of the stupid daily quizzes. But, I have a 30 point lab report due tommorrow so that will be pulled up. In english I have a 91 so all I have to do is participate and do my homework and I will be fine. History, I have a 95 so I am good there. In bible, I have a 95 so I'm good there as well. I just have to finish my work and participate and I will most likely finish with 5 A's and a B in math. I just had a bad first half in math like everybody else. I have an 84 so there really isn't any chance of an A or a C.

Group Ideas

Our group has some pretty good ideas for this project. For our learning activities, we are going to research some of Chaucers opinions on the time, and how the cultural issues affect his opinions. Also, we are going to research about what people thought of women at the time Chaucer wrote his book. And how big feminism was back then. That would be a very important issue involved in writing this tale. And then we are going to be boring and create some questions for our group to discuss in class.
The fun stuff begins with our presentation to the class. We are planning on finding a skit performed by Chappelle or MADTV or SNL. This skit would show cultural issues that are prevelant today but also in Chaucer's time. We will compare and contrast the skit and the book to get the class involved. We will also make a soundtrack and ask the class to write what they think about the songs and what emotions they get from the songs and how they compare to the emotions in the book.

My Tale

For this tale project paper thing, I thought that all we had to do was write an original story that followed the hero formula or be a courtly romance. I was wrong. Two days before it was due, Doug told me that the story had to reflect cultural issues from today's society, like the old stories. I didnt believe him so I looked on instructions and there it was. I had to write a new story all over again. It would be too hard to try to include cultural issues in the story that I already wrote. So I decided to write about college football and steroids in sports. The story is about a scrawny white linebacker named Luke Sanders who wants to play at a DI school. He is not big enough so his coach gives him something to make him bigger. He didnt know they were steroids and tried to play at LSU. The coaches found out and suspended him. After his suspension was over he played and learned a valuable lesson.

Free Blog 9/30

Since there has been so much posting about American football. I think I will talk about English football again. In my fantasy team, I am getting killed. The three all-stars that I have are hurt and are out indefinatley, so james and jordan are going to murder me. Something really rare happened this week, an 11 goal game. Portsmouth beat Reading 7-4. That is unheard of. That would be like a 35 - 25 baseball game or a 100- 75 american football game. Some African guy got a hat trick which is also rare. Arsenal is still number 1 with 19 league points. Man U is behind by two points, liverpool is back 4 points and Chelsea is sucking, they are back 7 league points. Thats the important points of this weeks EPL games.

Class Projects

I don't have to many class projects right now. Mainly it's just English. I just finished a gubernatorial debate paper for History. I actually did not know it was due on Friday and had to write it during lunch. It wasn't really a paper though, just a report on what I thought about the debate, so it wasn't as formal as a paper. We never have projects in pre - calc because Mr. Davis thinks that we are in pre calc 101. He never gives any grades besides the occasional spiral, quizzes and a few tests. I guess that okay to get us prepared for college but its annoying. I have not had any projects in AP Chemistry yet, which is good because that class is turing out to be a little hard. Now that we have finished reviewing regular chemistry, we have gotten into the hard stuff. We just finished a vector project in Physics that had really confusing directions but I think I did it right. Bible is Bible, lecture for three classes and take a quiz. No projects in that class. And in English we have the epic paper and I guess you could call blogging a project. But, thats it.

Free Blog for Week 6

I think that this week is going to be pretty good. I only have one test in AP Chemistry and it isn't even that big, its 40 points. Thats all of the tests this week for me. Probably going to have to do some work on the paper thing for English, but it won't be as hard as writing a reasearch paper because it doesn't need a bibliography. Bible is bible, easy. Physics won't be to hard this week because we are learning about vectors and they are not that hard. Thats all we will do this week in this class. Math might be difficult this week because graphing trig functions is not fun at all. History is going to be good. No tests. We really dont do too much political theory, all we really do is argue about current events like the governer race and the credit crunch. We are going to have a debate this week which is going to be fun. And the best part is that I get to play soccer 4 times in 5 days this week. Im going to some select goalkeeper training that apparently made Danny a lot better last year so I'm hoping that will stay true for me. I think I will have an easy week.

Development of Hero Formula over Time

I think that the basic structure of the heroic journey has stayed the same since Perceval because it works. Those types of stories are the ones that people enjoy, and have enjoyed for 1,000 years. Why should movie writers and book authors change something that works. Sure, there are a few minor tweaks to the formula but nothing to major, usually. The changes are most often superficial like adding more explosions or fight scenes. But sometimes, the changes drastically affect some part of the formula, usually the ending. A really good example of a hero from a modern story is Neo from the Matrix. He has to learn everything in the beginning, has a romance with the girl, I forgot her name, he has two mentors, Morpheus and the oracle lady and he also has many challenges. The main change is that everything is not happily ever after for Neo. It is for the human city, but Neo dies. I think that is right, but even if it isn't right, the other drastic change is his girlfriend dies. So the story mainly follows the formual for a hero story, but hollywood added some changes to make it more entertaining.

Powerpoint Critiquing

Alfonso:
I thought that he did a very good job on this powerpoint. He went above and beyond what was required and answered all of the neccesary questions in great detail. My only question is that when he says that when Beowulf learns of the dragon, he believes he has done something wrong. How does that relate to God? Overall, very good job.

Doug:
Pretty good job, but it was a little hard to read. Also, maybe you could elaborate more on your slides answering how Beowulf is heroic. The evidence is very good, but it could use a little more explanation.

Helen:
Good job. She explained the six questions very well and elaborated on some of the evidence given for the first half of the assignment. Easy to read.

Matt:
Good powerpoint. Same colors as Doug and same information for the first half. For the last six slides, you provided lots of evidence and good elaborations and analysis of the details. You might want to add a little more to the impact of anglo-saxon on today.

JL:
Since you are in the same group of Doug and Matt, you had the same first half information. You need to put more information on the how is it poetic slide. Also, explain what you said more. Pretty good job.

Alex S.
I was unable to view her powerpoint because I do not have office 2007.

Claire D:
Very good job on this powerpoint. Lots of evidence, lots of analysis, and lots of personal input. My only complaint is that I dont like the color yellow that much. But thats just me.

Clare G:
Same initial information as Claire. I like the color blue. Much of the last six slides are the same as claire's but you used some different evidence than her. Good job.

Liz:
Same initial powerpoint as Helen and Alfonso but with a little more information than Helen and a little less information than Alfonso on the last six slides. Pretty good job. Maybe you could write the line from page 115 on the slide about how is it anglo-saxon. But what you did is ok too.

Jenny:
Same initial information as Claire and Clare because they were in the same group. It had some different colors that looked good, but where are your other six slides?

Matthew J:
Good job on providing enough information, there was a lot of it. Good analysis of that information as well. I was suprised to see that the powerpoint was not in purple and gold.

Morreed:
Lots of information, thats good. Good analysis of that information as well. I don't understand the slide about oral tradition. How do all of those bullets relate back to Beowulf being an oral tradition. Include that next time. Overall, good job.

Ross:
I was unable to view his powerpoint because I do not have office 2007.

Alex C:
Good information on the first slides but needs more information on the last six slides. You didn't use any evidence. You just said what you thought. That is good, but you need to include evidence along with what you wrote.

Paige:
Good information on the slides done with the group. Also, your slides you wrote yourself were good. They included evidence, analysis and sometimes your thoughts. Thats pretty much all this powerpoint needed.

Colleen:
I could not view her powerpoint because I do not have office 2007

Merritt:
Good colors. They are easy to read. Good information on the first half and also good information on the second half. All you need to do is add some evidence on the slide about how Beowulf is Heroic. Good job.

Holy Grail and Heroic Journey

I thought that the monty python movie was pretty funny. Stupid, but funy. The did lots of repetitive things. Like the guy that was running in the field for so long and then all of the sudden comes and kills the guards, they took that way too far. But other things were really funny. The monks hitting themselves in their heads was pretty funny. The black knight was the funniest though. Or maybe the lack of horses, that was funny too.
The interesting part about the movie was how it didn't follow the heroic journey all of the way like I assume Perceval will. For the first half of the movie, the writers introduced the audience to the different knights of the roundtable. After that was accomplished, they started the heroic journey part of the movie. The interesting part was that the journey was not finished. They did not get any rewards or have a journey home. The movie just stopped after the French didnt let them into the Castle of ughhh. I think that the reason they ended it was because they wanted to say something about the journey, or how the questers do not gain anything from the quest. I dont know, its just an idea

Free Blog 2

I don't have much to talk about right now so I guess I will talk about the English Premier League. The English Premier League is the soccer league from england. There were not to many good games this weekend, but there were a few suprises. There are four teams that usually are the top four in the league. Those are Chelsea, Manchester Utd., Arsenal, and Liverpool. Liverpool tied a bad team, Portsmouth, which is suprising. Chelsea also tied a middle class team, the Blackburn Rovers. That is not to suprising becasue Chelsea was missing their two superstars, Dider Drogba and Frank Lampard. Unfortunatley, both of those guys are on my EPL fantasy team, so James and Jordan beat me this week. Arsenal won 3-1 against Tottenham, which is a good win. And Man U beat Everton 1-0. That was the best game of the week. But, I was watching college football. That is much more important. So, yeah, that was the main highlights of the EPL weekend.

Free Blog 1

I cannot believe how bad the Saints are doing right now. I'm watching the game and I don't understand what is going on. One of the announcers said Brees threw something like 65 passes against Tampa last year without an interception. Right now in the third quarter he has 90 yards passing. That is not very good. Well, now they just got a 40 yard pass and are about to score, so maybe they are starting to do better.
Even if the Saints are doing bad, LSU did well. 44-0 against any team is an accomplishment. A certain Florida fan in our grade who will remain nameless thinks that Florida will beat LSU. He is completely mistaken. LSU has allowed 7 points in three games. Florida has allowed 54 points against Troy, Western Kentucky and Tennessee. Miss St is better than Troy, Mid Tenn St is better than Western Kentucky, and VT is much better than Tennessee. I think that this Florida fan will be in for a suprise on October 6.

Saturday

I had probably one of the best days of my life yesterday. It started by mowing my neighbors grass and making $30. Thats a pretty good start, because I like to have money. Who doesn't? By this time it is 11 o'clock. After I go home and eat something, I go to the library to get books for a govt. research paper. That was the worst part of my day. After the library, I went to redstick sports to get some tape for a soccer game for a cut on my knee. The funny thing was there was a VT fan there and he asked if redstick had any VT apparel. When the cashier said all they had was LSU stuff, he got really mad. He said, "I cannot believe that an apparel store doesn't have any thing from the number 9 team in the nation. I am uterly shocked." He said that exactly, word for word. The other older cashier then said what do you expect, you're in Baton Rouge. I thought that conversation was funny.
After all of the errands, I went home and watched Michigan get beat again. Then at 1:30, I went to my soccer game at the Burbank fields. That took forever to get to because of LSU traffic. We tied 2-2 and it was a pretty fun game overall.
After that, I went with Matthew Saltz to the LSU game. When we tried to park halfway in a ditch, a security guard came and told us that we couldn't park there. So, Mr. Saltz tries to move his car, but he gets stuck in the mud. Then, some random redneck with a tow strap pulls us out and Matthew and I go to Gaudet's tailgate spot. After some burgers, we went to watch LSU beat the $h!t out of VT. That was a fun game to watch. Keildan Williams is really good. The best part is still to come. After the game, we go to Walk-Ons and get a table in 10 minutes, that was pretty lucky. I then find out that Mr. Saltz did some custom lights and sirens for a guy's tailgate RV before the game. And that guy is coming to Walk-Ons to eat and talk to us. It was Shaquille O'neil. So I get to go with Mr. Saltz, Matthew, and his brother Josh and talk to Shaq for an hour. I also got a picture of me and matthew and his brother with shaq, that was fun. It was a pretty fun day.

Question about Hero Story Structure

I was thinking in class about the hero story structure. I thought of pretty much all adventure movies and the all follow those guidelines. Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, the movie I'm watching now, Gone in 60 seconds, and lots of other movies. They all have the same basic structure. But what I don't understand is why people, including myself, like to watch new movies if they have the same structure. I don't really get it. Just because the characters change and the complications change it is more interesting. If they all follow the same structure, then you should know what is going to happen.
Well, while I was writing this, I think that I answered my own question. I kept saying the same basic structure. But the change in the characters and plot make it more interesting. But the thing that makes the stories seem interesting everytime is the small deviations in the resolution and climax. Those are the things that make the stories always seem interesting. that and big explosions and guns.

Question on Beowulf

There is something that I do not understand. In the scene where Beowulf fights Grendel's mom, he starts out in a lake or swamp or something like that. But what I am wondering is how Beowulf fights her for so long underwater. I assumed that it was exaggeration of how long the fight went on, but I don't know what to think because of what happens next.
In the next scene, it says that Beowulf sees a body and cuts it's head off. This is Grendel. Beowulf cuts the head off for revenge. But if there was a body underwater, it would have floated away. So I think that there must have been some misunderstanding in the translation. It might just be a fallacy in the story.

First Section of Beowulf

This section was a little better than I thought it was going to be. It is still pretty hard to get through, but I can enjoy it a little, maybe. Maybe not, but I tried to enjoy it. It just takes to long to get to the action scenes. There are too many pauses between them for it to keep my interest. And when the action scenes come, they last for a few pages, and then it is back to boredom. But I did say that I tried to enjoy it, so this isn't all just a complaint.
The homework that we did for Beowulf was interesting. It was interesting because I have never had a teacher tell me to draw the main characters and setting. I kind of liked it because it was easier and more fun. I like drawing more than I like listing character traits on character maps. Also, it was much easier to do because it did not take very long. The first section of work for Beowulf was easy, but I think it will get much harder towards the end when we write a paper.

Beowulf

I have heard some things about Beowulf from last years juniors. They all said it was crap. And I can understand that because I have read some and it was very hard to get interested in the story. I don't really know what is going on yet because I have only read two pages, but hopefully it gets better. I really do not think it will.
Hopefully it is possible to write an interesting poem. I really don't think that it is. So that already makes this book seem bad to me without even reading some of it. But the back says that it has dragons and monsters and a hero, and that sounds like it might be okay if it were written today, not 1000 years ago, or however long ago it was written. I think it is going to be worse than colonial literature, but I hope it is better.

The Vocab Quiz on Section 1

Last year, we had some quizzes that I thought were a little bit weird. For two quizzes we had to draw pictures that defined the word. That was strange and somewhat difficult because I can't draw very well and it was hard to show what I wanted to clearly. The next weird quiz we had was that we had to write a story using the words in the section. This was a good idea for a quiz, but it took to long to incorporate all of the words in the story.
But, the first vocab quiz this year was very good. It was good because it was easy. Also, the quiz was straightforward. We had to define five words and use five others in a sentence. A good quiz that is easy to grade, easy to take, and also makes the taker study the words a little.

Book Editing

This project was somewhat difficult to start. We had to edit the book and show what we thought the book meant to us in a creative way. That sounds easy but once I tried to start, it wound up being really hard. I thought that I was somewhat creative, but I found that all I could come up with was painting pages in the book. And that idea came from Ms. Duke. I eventually got some ideas with the help of some of my group members but it took about thirty minutes to come up with ideas.
I ended up editing Murder at the Vicarage. With the help of Cameron, I decided to take the schedule in the book founds towards the end and glue the different parts of the schedule throughout the book. Then I would paint the pages I glued things in for no reason, I just felt like it. Im also going to make a window out of the last few pages but I haven't decided what to put in, probably a picture of a bullet.

Summer Reading

For this summer reading, I read Murder at the Vicarage, The Eyre Affair, and The Metamorphasis. All of these books were decent. My favorite was Murder at the Vicarage. I liked how it was a mystery, but I did not like how all of the characters speculated for 200 pages. It was the same thing over and over. They would specualte, then someone would fin something interesting, and they would specualte with that new interesting item involved in the speculation. I also think it is weird how an old lady can solve the murder mystery but the detectives who do that for a living can't, that seems strange to me. Other than that, it was a decent book.
I also think that I had a good strategy for reading. I read all of my books in the last three days before school. I thought that we would be tested for detail. I was able to do a good job on all of those maps because I read the books almost the day before I was tested on them. I did not even need notes.

Straw Warmup

This was an unusual warmup. Last year we did not have to many warmups that were not written on paper. I still don't understand how that warmup related to the class that day but I don't care, it was better than other warmups. Maybe it was just trying to get our groups to work together. But if that was the point, then why couldn't we talk while we were assembling the structure.
I think that our group really did win the straw contest. According to miriamwebster.com the defenition of free - standing is " adjective1 : standing alone or on its own foundation." Our straw structure was technically standing on its own, but with the help of the light. Even though the intstructions did not say that we couldnt't use tape, we took the tape off and it still was connected. I think that we should have been champions.

Vocab Section 1

This vocab book looks a whole lot different then last years. Last year, the vocab was pretty easy. This year, the first section is harder than some of the sections towards the end of last year's book. Maybe that's just because we are older now, I don't know. But, I do know that those vocab squares were very time consuming. I really don't understand why we need to know that much about the vocab word. I know the SATs are coming up but do I really need to know the etymology of a word? How is knowing that convene came from latin going to help me? And furthermore, I don't think I need a symbol to remeber a word. I just remember things.
I wonder how the tests are going to be set up. I hope they are going to be normal vocab quizzes where there is matching and writing sentences. I don't want to write a story using all of the vocab words. That would take too much time. Also, I would rather fill in blanks than have to draw pictures illustrating the wordsl.