Aaaaand Here's a Poem!

Title speaks for itself.
This haiku is dedicated to Alison. :-)


Abnormal Larry
With purse he likes to carry
Rather kinky, eh?


Hope you enjoyed it.

~Kitstah

Reading Club??

Greetings all!

So, writers I hear you want to read too? Cool beans.
Why don't we post our ideas here and then we will vote! Everyone should post their ideas and then at the end of the week I will make a poll--hopefully it will work! And then we can start reading! Sound good?

Mrs. Gaboury


EDIT: Mrs. G, I don't know how, but the blog somehow gave me the power to edit other peoples' posts in addition to commenting. How cool is that? I made your text purple for fun!

~Tyler

UPDATE: It would also appear that I can edit the blog in whatever manner I wish, which manipulating the layout and security of the blog. How cool is that?!?! As you can see, the O RLY? owl now has an honorable position as poster child of undefined. I also fixed that spelling error on your previous post (Kudos, not cudos. Man, that was killing me).

Ah--but I like Cudos better!-VG

Heehee, i can edit too! So there, Tyler, now your text is colorful.

--Ali

Now it's bold and italicized! You're right! This is fun!
Kitster

Wo0Oo0Oo0O I can manipulate your words!!! Larger Font! Muhahaha! I feel powerful!

-Bo ☺

Reading

I love a good book, but most of the time there are books that I read that are not "well known". So I feel that you should know about a great book that I read at the beginning of the school year that was great even though it was not a classic. The book is called "Surrender" by Sonya Hartnett. It is a very thrilling fiction book that is told from two perspectives and the author uses very descriptive writing. It is about 200 pages (I think) and a little short for people who read insanely big books, but I don't read very fast and I choose books kind of on the shorter end. This book is found in the APHS library, and if you choose to read it I hope you like it!

-BO

Vacation

I bid you farewell, my people, as I depart for the great unknown (aka, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Florida). I will probably think about all of those projects due after school. Yet another thing I can be thankful for. In any case, my limited access to the computer will render my comments... Rather lacking. Ahh well. Enjoy your break, everyone.

You stay classy, Averill Park.

~Tyler

I must say I am impressed

Hello all,
I cannot believe how wonderful this site is turning out for you to communicate with one another, to have a forum. This is exactly what I hoped for! Yeah for you guys!

Keep up the promising work and the words of encourgement.

Cudos!

Enjoy and happy writing!

PS Anyone interested in a reading club component? Post your reply as comment to this post.

Mrs. Gaboury

Eduardo and the Room of Doom - Chapter 1

Alrighty. I hate to be following the crowd here, but I'm gonna post (part of) my Territory #2 here, because Kit said so. My paper was a (completely zany and stupid (in the good way)) story about a guy named Eduardo. If you insult my stupid jokes, I will be forced to attack you with my e-Pitchfork o' Doom. Don't make me do that, guys. Here's the first chapter:

Chapter One – Eduardo, the Flugelhorn and Crumpets (also known as The Beginning) (or the Origination)

This, dear readers, is the tale of Eduardo.

Who’s Eduardo?

You will find out soon enough.

Does he have a last name?

No, he does not. Thank you for asking, though. Are there any more questions?

Nope. Carry on.

Good. On with the story.

Eduardo was born on a small farm, out in the hilly (it was actually more mountainous than hilly) countryside. His parents, named Melinda and Felipe, were really quite nice people, and aside from the fact that Felipe suffered from slight short-term memory loss they got along fine. Right away, they began to notice that their son could, well, do anything. And I mean anything. He could lift elephants on his pinky finger. Melinda and Felipe realized that there were no naturally occurring elephants in the hilly countryside, so they were forced to ask Eduardo how he had obtained them. He replied, at the tender age of two, that he had summoned them from Africa by playing Beethoven’s “Für Elise” on his flugelhorn. Flabbergasted, his parents retreated back into their cozy little cottage to sit around for a while, because no one really cares what the parents do in dramatic tales like these. Said Melinda to Felipe, “Darling, what’s a flugelhorn?”
“I believe that it’s closely related to the trumpet.”
“So it’s a thick buttery pastry eaten toasted with tea?
“No, that’s a crumpet.”
“Dear,” said Felipe, “about Eduardo…”
“Yes?”, Melinda.
“I think we should have named him Pancho.”

Well, this went on for quite some time – fifteen years, actually. Not this specific conversation, of course. I was talking about Eduardo’s astonishing behavior and Melinda and Felipe’s complete and utter amazement at their son’s very random and not-quite-plausible abilities.
But then, one fateful night, Melinda, Felipe and Eduardo decided to experiment with Eduardo’s powers, to test his limits. It was then that they discovered a horrible thing – a thing so stunning, so monumental, that you could have knocked them down with a feather. It seems that there was one thing – just one thing – that Eduardo could not do. Eduardo, dear readers, could not eat a crowbar.

A crowbar?!?!?

Yes.

But why a crowbar?

We’re really not quite sure. Maybe the old, overworked man in the sky who muddles around with the gene pool just got lazy. I have my team of top research scientists working hard in their laboratory right now, attempting find a reason. But sadly, the world may never know.
No matter how many times he tried, Eduardo just could not get his jaws around that big metal stick with a flat end that you use to lever things up with. His parents were even more flabbergasted than they had been when he first started doing anything. Over all of that elapsed time, they had truly come to believe that his abilities extended to everything in the near universe.
When he recovered from the shock, Eduardo was faced with a difficult decision. He could remain home with his parents and become a farmer, albeit a farmer with amazing abilities, or he could go on a journey to discover a way to eradicate his only inability. Said journey would be fantastic, entertaining, and highly appealing to publishers and/or English teachers. Because this is an adventure story, he went on the fantastic and entertaining journey. Because this is a comedy, he tripped on his way out the door.

----------------- End chapter 1.

Remember the pitchfork, guys.

--Ali

Kit's Hopefully Humorous Essay

Alrighty then; Matt's ridiculously good humorous essay has inspired me to post my #2 Territory paper as well. Granted, it is rather weird and not all that funny...Please don't be offended if you find it really stupid...And kindly don't deem me a freak for the weirdness of this essay. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was really fun to write. So here goes.

*****

Our country is in bad shape. Corrupt officials, drug abuse, violent crimes, troubled youths – America is, most indisputably, in the middle of a disturbingly rapid downward spiral. Concerned individuals all across the nation are pondering the same question regarding this national crisis: how did this decline start? What on Earth could have caused it all? Thankfully, the answer to these troubling questions has finally surfaced, and the answer is that many of these problems have originated right in the root of society, in the schools of America*.

If people would take the time to peek into the agenda book of an average American schoolchild, the answer would become apparent to them, too. If one would look in the back pages of said books, they would realize that, amazingly, only four pages are devoted to hall passage forms. Apparently America thinks that children can survive on only one page of bathroom or water fountain breaks per quarter of the school year! Any school-going individual knows that this notion is quite preposterous.

Moreover, the schools of the United States are contaminated by so many teachers who care not for the physical comfort of their students. It is many a teacher who will refuse to let a student use the restroom when they feel the need! Such teachers lack empathy, and common sense as well. Teachers who repeatedly ask their students the embarrassing question, “Is it an emergency?” have obviously never been asked this question themselves, or have been so scarred by this humiliation that they feel the need to inflict this experience on other people. Many people believe that being forced to state whether or not their particular need is an “emergency” or not – in front of their peers, no less – is juvenile and awkward. As for the lack of common sense in aforementioned teachers – how are students supposed to concentrate if uncomfortable?

Come now, people of America, think hard – back to the days when you were in school. Now, many people associate school with agony, misery, or other unease. Have you ever thought about why this may be? Excess homework, unnecessary rules, limited time for fun, creative suffocation, and social awkwardness are only minor reasons for so many label the overall school experience as “bad.” It is the small, seemingly insignificant – but ever-accumulating – nuances of experiences that matter to humans the most, even if we realize them only subconsciously. Almost every American will agree that knowing that they, for example, are having a particularly bad hair day can ruin their whole mood. Surely being in constant discomfort at a place of learning can, over time, seriously hurt a person’s overall opinion of said place of learning.

The discomfort of not being allowed to use the facilities can damage a person’s personality indirectly in other ways as well. If the bulk of a person’s attention is focused on the fact that they have not been able to use the bathroom in five hours, their coherency, happiness, and level of how much fun they are to be around, will surely regress. A person whose main thought is how strong their call of the wild is will suffer socially, as they will not be able to focus on how to communicate, act with intelligence, and fulfill other social functions. If a student experiences this often enough (this is known as Personal Relief Initiating Social Slippage in Youngsters, or PRISSY), the peers of said PRISSY-plagued person will grow to think of them as strange, dislike them, and eventually ostracize them from the youth society*.

It addition to the embarrassment before and isolation from peers, the actual discomfort itself of some teacher’s ban on bathroom breaks has a severe mental effect on American students. Scientists have found that a high percentage of youths involved with violent crimes – young gang members, students who have been involved in fights on school grounds, et cetera – have medical evidence of severe bladder stress. Many recent studies provide solid evidence that this is, most likely, not a coincidence*.

In conclusion, the infestation of bathroom break-fearing teachers in America’s public school system is a major cause of many of the large problems befouling today’s society. The inability to use the facilities provides physical harm, humiliation, social regression, and isolation for American youngsters. All of these gifts from the United States’ public education system have lead to deep-seated mental and emotional scarring, leading to violent, troubled, or otherwise bad behavior*. There should be no doubt in any intelligent person’s mind that the shortage of bathroom breaks has lead to the horrible consequences that we see everyday in American society. For the sake of the children’s sanity and the sake of the nation, the PRISSY child must be abolished!

*This is absolutely and in no way true, and if it actually is, I was not aware of it.

I’m not going to write a title, because I don’t want to be restricted. That’s ok, right? I mean, should I write a title? Will my words be lost without one? Nah, maybe they’ll be fine. I take a deep breath and stare at the blank page—just write—I remind myself, the words will come...
And so they do. I don’t choose all of them, sometimes they choose me. I look at them and give them their one decisive factor in life: whether they make the page or not. They cycle through this massive line of words, each waiting in anticipation, hoping that this is their one chance, that today is their day, that this page is their new home. Hmmmm...next! And “buffoonery” quietly proceeds to the back of the line. The words come to me and I just paste them on the page. I’m just the zookeeper, watching the crazy animals run the show. Most of the time its amusing, other times its not. Sometimes they change into floating streams of water and silk braids, glistening under a dark set moonlight. The web of water and silk comes together into a frozen vortex; a shy tornado of blue diamonds. And sometimes, it’s all blue. Every word falls back to blue and all I can see is blue. Sometimes, I can’t see anything at all, and I have to close my eyes and pretend, pretend that I can. Some days, it’s so tough, I look at the crowd gathered in my head, and stare in amazement. This? This is the best you can do? I shake my head and return to my dimly lit bedroom. I don’t know. Honestly, most of the time, I just stare at a blank page. I prod an unopened cardboard box...nothing. Writing is so ambiguous and so random and so paradoxical, that it is like trying to grasp a feather in flight, one that slips and glides with the wind when you think that you’ve finally gotten it in your grasp; it’s like trying to be a bear. You look at the stream flowing downhill into the meadows and there they are, hundreds of them, fish of every color and shape, and you gently tip toe forward, you, with your big hairy feet and bear-ish toes, you wait until the right moment, there it is a bright orange striped fish, and you lunge head first like a dog into the water. Upon impact you realize, you no longer are a bear or even a dog, you’re a minnow, a minnow trying to eat a fish, and you’re trying to swim upstream. The thunderous noise of the water, the calamity of rocks and mad fish are all flowing with the violent current and this stream is now a river rapid, and you can’t even see, the water is so blinding that you get swept up in the furious crash of the waves and you can’t do it any longer; the biting waves sweep you away into the sea. Sometimes, that is how it feels to write, to try to grasp an idea that’s swimming around in your head. It can get scary so fast, but then you just have to remember: it’s ok, I’m only going to test the waters; if it feels good, then I’ll go in for a dip.
Writing is as much a tool for the living as it is a tool of the dead. Stories, histories, past events, that one time grandma came over and set the kitchen on fire, the day your goldfish died, old friends with long sherbert hair, and days that smelled of cribs and diapers, and deceased relatives, and friends who’ve moved away, and mysterious cats in the night; and all these things are as much alive as they are dead. The cat that crept in the shadows was hit by a eighteen-wheeler later that week, but it still exists as a cat of the darkness in you. Sitting by the fireplace at your family’s Christmas party with bodies awkwardly scattered throughout the house; that feeling of safety and security, that comfort of family, it still exists somewhere inside you. Inside your heart, perhaps. And writing is the excavator’s brush which grabs the dying flame in us all, the flame, smothered by words and time, which holds us together, the passion which is us. Life and the reason for living. That is the journal upon which writing’s fountain pen may write. It is the exercise that grants us truth. It is the delicate dance of reality. As Ray Bradbury puts it, “...writing is survival...You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you” (xii - xiii).
These random strokes of an ink cartridge form symbols, and these symbols form even more elaborate symbols that emerge out of the paper as colorful pictures and thoughts. Hieroglyphic blocks of awkward symbols emerge—they emerge! How beautiful this emergence is, and in the process they transcend the lines of chicken-scratch that they are. And they make us laugh, and they make us cry, and they make us ponder, and they make us think. This emergence of thought: a wild horse beating its long, powerful, black tail; it leaps out of the page, snorting through its big black nostrils; front legs tucked, its beady eyes swim around frantically as it enters our world, its big, powerful, sleek black body follows; its muscles, extravagant; its presence, awing. Writing is not a formula—
No! It is not! Writing isn’t fill in the blanks. You don’t turn the crank on a magical essay box and violá: writing. Writing is ugliness. It’s being crude and sass. Its uniform freedom and expression. It is intention and ambiguity. To write means to try. To fail and get better. To experiment. To speak and speak whatever your heart may desire. Writing is a process of self-discovery. It is truth, in all its forms. There is no facade on these words. Writing is no doubt, one of the most open, personal, and sentimental means of communication that exists today (Pirie, 1997, 76). Well known American writer, Joyce Carol Oates, puts it this way, “I've never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but as the attempted embodiment of a vision: a complex of emotions, raw experience.”
Where else can someone visit the past? Where too can bunnies fly and pigs speak? Show me also where one can proudly proclaim, I really don’t know what I’m doing, and not be fired! Furthermore, where else is someone accomplished in trying? In a world of perfection, writing offers an alternative. A cultivated stream, that recognizes the beauty of imperfections, that sees past the mainstream and the brain-drained social scene. It offers a lush valley of green meadows—of meadows of thinkers, and doers, and triers. It is a vacant land, where the turtle surely does beat the hare. Where rest is plentiful. A land where you may sit down to think and not be persecuted by the ‘faster, faster, faster’, blitz-paced society. A land where dreaming is reality, and to think otherwise would be foolish (Bradbury, 1990, 46).

“What if the man could see Beauty Itself; pure, unalloyed, stripped of mortality and all its pollution, stains, and vanities, unchanging, divine, the man becoming, in that communion, the friend of God, himself immortal;... would that be a life to disregard?” —Plato (Dillard, 1989, 23)

I ask you, what beauty exists that isn’t more wondrous and real than writing? It is too often, that we search for what we already have...and it is our word. Our truth. Our story. Writing and literature is the unending hymn of the universe. It is life, with its squabbles, and its ups and downs, and its smiles and frowns, on paper. There is no more true form, than that which is the product of a paper and pen. Shhhhh. Can you hear it? The lost laughter of our childhood. The worrisome fear of tomorrow and the future. The convolution of being. Life and its trivialities. A freckled face. A chocolate truffle. Writing.

By: S. Roff

Humerus Essays

I love humerus essays, it is one of my favorite ganras of writing. so when Mrs. Gaboury has assigned us to write something i tried it out so here is the first one i wrote. please comment and give me feed back and suggestions. note i copied and pasted from word document and there may be some problems.

The Great Napkin War

For the last five to six years now my mother has attempted to "civilize" my siblings and me. So in between my brothers yelling of "your mom" and "I'm going to punch you in the face!" my mom will tell us to put our napkin's in our laps. And for the last five or six years my siblings and I have been coming up with every argument we can come up with to fight our mothers stand on manners and more specifically her stand on the napkin in the lap instead of on the table and by the hands where it is of actual use. So every dinner from then on was another battle in The Great Napkin Wars.
During The Great Napkin Wars dinner time would go something like this: my mom would say to me "Matt can you go get your siblings for dinner" I would proceed to take about five steps out of the kitchen and scream "Sam, Katy, Melissa! Dinner!" They would respond with one of the following, "Coming!" or "Just a sec'" or "Be there in a minute!" So about five to ten minutes later my siblings will come slowly down the stairs or come crawling up from the basement. It would be five or so minutes into the meal when my mom would turn to one of us (usually Sam or me I guess she's just sexist like that) and say "Ahem, aren't you forgetting something?" Sam and me being the smart mouths that we are would reply in the most falsely innocent voice we could manage would say something along the lines of "No, whatever do you mean mother?" then she would give us that look that says ha ha that's cute now shut up then she would hold up her napkin and of course our sisters would come to our aid and the arguments would begin:

Siblings: What's the point of putting napkins in your lap?
Mom: It's polite.

Siblings: It's pointless.

Mom: When you grow up people will wonder who raised such poorly mannered, uncivilized, rude, barbarians.

Siblings: Yah because people will totally ignore our intelligence, generally pleasant personalities, and interesting input to conversation and see us as barbarians just because we don't have napkins in our laps. And it they ask us who raised us we will totally deny any affiliation with you.

Mom: But what if you're on a date don't you want your girlfriend to think you're a gentleman? Siblings: I don't want to be a relationship with someone who would judge me solely on weather I put a napkin in my lap.

The argument normally goes on for about seven minutes until my sisters and I usually give up. We figure it's not that big of a deal and that you should probably not get the person that pays your allowance too angry. Unfortunately my brother Sam, who believes that "Shut up!" and "Go eat yourself!" is a great argument by anyone's standards, does not share this view. He will continue to fight using the same arguments as long as he can go before Mom threatens to take away allowance or computer privileges.
Now don't get me wrong I love my mom. She makes homemade dinners all the time, she gives me a large allowance, and she makes cookies practically on demand. But sometimes she is a little bit hypercritical. Recently she has tried to become an environmentalist. My mom will take canvas bags to the grocery store so she doesn't have to use plastic ones and yells at us if we accidentally leave the lights on (by we I mean Sam who will go into two to three other peoples rooms in the morning for reasons unknown to me and leave the lights on in every single one of them). This is all fine except for the fact that my mom will leave her TV on (rarely), leave her lights on (occasionally), and leave the stove or oven on (frequently). Now this does relate to the Great Napkin Wars for the napkin that my mother forcibly places upon my lap goes to little use and with our sisters at college I needed a new argument to use on my mother. I tend to grab another paper napkin from the holder and put it to its actual use, the cleaning and de-greasing of hands. So at the end of the meal two napkins are thrown away only one of which is actually used. Those several extra napkins every night will add up, in just my family by not wasting those napkins can save three trees a year and enough electricity to run our house for hours (those statistics are completely made up but I assume that they can't be that far off).
It has been about five years since the beginning of the Great Napkin Wars. The side of the McFadden children has lost two of its soldiers to colleges but the two remaining have refined the arguments that first started this epic battle to nigh perfection. There is still no end in sight to the Great Napkin War with Mom being convinced that she is right and that this is for our own good and Sam still being in the obnoxious, stubborn teenager phase, which doesn't look like it will ever end. As for me well I still never put my napkin in my lap without being told, and neither do I fight as much as I used to. I just remind my mother how wrong she is and then I do what she wants. My mom still insist that this is going to ruin my future but I still don't see a problem in it as long as I don't fall in love with someone who is incredibly shallow, who only likes me for my amazing hair, and who, like my mother, believes that the napkin should go in the lap.

Welcome

Setting up.
We are going to post our work as a blog allowing comments, but each of you invited peoples ;-) may take a section of the page and dedicate yourself to it and the art of writing.
Enjoy!
More later!

Mrs. Gaboury

Kit's Writing Exercise!

I have this thing that I like to do that, incidentally, has to do with writing.
Lately (by that I mean the past year), it's been kind of difficult for me to think up topics for poems, and because of that, I have not written many poems just for fun.
But I do occasionally do this thingy which I will call an "exercise" for the sake of making it sound like a legit writing activity and not just near-plagiarism.
I take song lyrics (that somebody else wrote) and change the punctuation and create enjambed lines to make a different flow and try to make a different meaning or feel of the words by doing so.
One song I have done this to is "And So It Goes" by Billy Joel. I have written it out as such:

In every heart
there
is a
room. a sanctuary,
safe, and
sound--to heal
the wounds______from lovers past;
until
a new
one comes
along.

I spoke to
you________in
cautious
tones;
you answered me with
no
pretense.
And still I fear I said too
much;
my silence is
my
self-defense.

It goes on. I dearly hope this kind of "exercise" will actually help me or other writers in some way, and that doing it here is not illegal.

Draft

The Appeal
By: S. Roff

Please, a chair...so I may sit.

The older man across the table motioned to the wooden chair in front of him. He pulled the chair out and sat down. His right shoelace came undone.

I, I...I hoped—

Forget it.

The clock grew louder. The room was dark except for the dimly lit window pane. A pale night, interrupted by the occasional car, nothing. Silence.

I wanted to speak with you,

A long pause.

about tomorrow. I don’t think it’s safe.

The man's cold lips slipped into a frown.

—I mean, I think the suppliers are safe. Everything’s clean. This isn’t like ‘97. That definitely won’t happen again.

The man across the table rolled up his sleeve to read his silver Rolex. He pulled his sleeve back and ran his old fingers across his cashmere sweater, smoothening out the ruffles.

Well...

I think we shouldn’t show.
I have a bad feeling about this one.

At that instant the world stopped. Light shot into the room, shadows danced across the walls; the hollow yellow ran swift shades across his face. They revealed a pallid complexion, stubble covered his chin, his long graying hair pushed back in gentle waves behind his white, translucent, ghastly ears. He looked to be in his late fifties; his eyes were tired, his gaze impassive.
...(a muffled cough)
The light which had shone like brilliant rays exposing some—some darkness, was gone.
It left the room. It had come and gone, but now it was gone. Only darkness. Darkness and the faint moonshine of the night.

I’m sorry, I, I sh—I wasn’t, what was I thinking?

I’m sorry for interrupting you.

The face across the table slowly began to nod. His eyes were closed, lips shut, his heavy chin cradled in his hand.
He got up from the small wooden table, pushed in his chair and grabbed his coat. He turned and left.

Distant footsteps...and then the silence returned.

It crept back into the room, slowly filling every corner and every wall with its empty presence.

The younger man pulled out a worn, tattered photograph, it was folded in half. He opened it and stared at the boy in the picture for some time. The boy was young, five maybe six, dressed in an oversized blue plaid-button down. His hair, a bowl of black curls and his smile...overflowed with the happiness of being a child. The wooden chair creaked and its distant cry reverberated throughout the hall. Holding the torn photo he folded it in the palm of his weary hands.

His head fell down and he began to cry.

Quiet sobs.

The distant echoes of life.

Each tear gently caressing his face, falling down to the wooden table. The warm beads rolling, gently rolling off his cold skin and on the wood. He could hear the soft fall of the watery beads.
He glanced at his wrist, one AM. Wiping his face with his shirt, the man pushed back his chair, rose and left. The old piece of wood sat there, pulled out from the small table.


--Please comment on style and any and all areas that you think need improvement. Thank you.
Stephen Roff

Question of the Day

Can grayscale be psychadelic?
I say, yes, it can. I am thinking that psychadelic is more of a state of mind -- an essence, really -- than just a visual thing. So if said grayscale visual makes you feel psychadelic, there you are.

That was a test. I wanted to post something that wasn't being graded and that was what my fingers gave me.

This is a blog about writing. Here is my message of writing for you:
Writing is Good. Make sure to Write.

I like writing. Now I should practice drums.

Peace out, reader!

Random Junk

Hey everyone! I just wanted to say that I put a link to my blog Random Junk! I started it about 2 weeks ago and I just post what I think. I put a lot of time into it...SO READ IT OR ELSE!!!

Baby Steps

Hey guys,

I just wanted to let you know that I just created my first ever column! (Thought Provoked), please check it out and leave comments!!!

Peace,

Stephen Roff