forrealzzz?

I like how almost everyone that didn't even post a response dissed mine. really? lol oh and I think mine was used in like everyone's post. lol well this just shows how awesome I am at english!

-howdini

Common Weakness

I feel really bad doing this because I know that everyone tried and I hate having to point out weaknesses on something that they did and having to link their blog to this post. So to anyone that I like their blog to this post, I'm sorry.

• weakness 6: "As the passage goes on, the author uses phrases like" used the word use. blog link.
• weakness 1: "He says whatever comes to mind, saying that his parents "would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them," shows that he doesn't really care what he says, just wants to get his point across. blog link.
• weakness 3: He describes the boy’s feelings towards his parents with a negative, abusive and defiant diction. blog link.
• weakness 2: Baker describes his surroundings as "towering volumes of marble and glass" and "long glossy highlights to each of the black rubber handrails". They use the quote for the whole sentence without describing it. blog link.

Best overall response: blog link.

Response to the Catcher and Rye Excerpt

In the excerpt from "The Catcher and the Rye," Salinger's noisy, comical banter highlights his childish gullibility. Although he is a teenager, he makes no effort to compose in impressive vocabulary. He describes his childhood with the word "lousy" and a general introduction as "stuff that bores me." On the subject of his parents, he says "they're touchy as hell." Salinger has no boundaries as to what can be said; he lets Holden say what he wants about everything in life. Writing with such a low, familiar diction emphasizes how some teenagers truly feel about their home life and their story.

poem

I really liked this poem that was read in class yesterday so I thought that I would post it on my blog.

Bus Boy

by George Bilgere

O teenage bus boy of the summer dusk!
Lugging your gray tub of swill,
bathed in slop and ooze and bits of spaghetti
in the alley behind the Applebee's—
hate me if you will,

as I pass by in my tennis shorts and Obama t-shirt
with a vibrant, dark-haired woman,
on my way to watch game three
of the NBA finals at our local microbrewery.

Hate me, but you cannot know
that I once labored as you do now, at a Big Boy
in Riverside, California, elbow deep
in the very same lumpish goop and ooze.

Like you, I was of the slime of alleys,
of the same immemorial cigarette butts
and rotting cottage cheese.
And like you,

I dreamed of a certain waitress,
and of driving a fork into the forehead
of the night manager,
and of spitting in the soup
of plump, complacent, well-dressed diners
who snapped their fingers at me.

But most of all I dreamed of being clean,
and cool, and never, ever again
slogging through the world's filth and stink,

which is something I have achieved,
as must be perfectly obvious to you.


-howdini

practice diction analysis

In the exert The Mezzanine, by Nichason Baker, the author uses high language to describe the lobby of his office building along with his over the top apperance. His use of connotation suggests a picturesque vision of his apperance while walking through the lobby. "Turned toward the escalators, carrying a black Penguin paperback and a small white CVS bag, its receipt stapled over the top," describes the harsh clattering of the setting.

I'm not really sure how to end this or how long it is suppose to be so I'm just gonna end it now haha\

-howdini

friday post

1. "The elevation of his diction is pretty average - not rude or flowery - and the sound can be described as both grating and melodious as he switches between describing the horrors and beauties of war." - Becca's Blog

2. " In the excerpt from The Help, Kathryn's literal meaning of certain things are common and colloquial in ways that makes her writing unique." - Book Lover

3. " In Stardust, Neil Gaiman articulates his description of Wall, the people and the area formal, harmonious, flowing, descriptive language where words can be taken for their face value meaning." - Contemplations

4. " The whole work is symbolic and metaphoric, a "noble lie" in which the denotative meaning of the story isn't always true persay, but reveals a deeper truth, transcending the literal meaning." - A Scrap of Parchment

5. "The diction falls into the category of being very denotative with a high and elevated tone wtih a light use of figurative language. The narrator uses only common adjectives such as "old" and "square." - So Many Books, So Little Time

My favorite sentence is sentence 4 becasue it is very descriptive. It uses a varitey of words to decribe the book and it caught my attention.

-howdini

styling mapping

Stardust
In the exert Stardust, Neil Gaiman uses high language as he describes the house in Wall as, "old grey stone, with dark slate roofs." The tone is more connoting then denotative because it is suggesting and picturesque of the city near Wall and the long roads lined by forest are packed all hours of the night with travelers making their way to and from the city. The harsh tone used in Stardust creates a dull, clattering effect to the whole story.

Blood Meridian
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy describes the early morning dusk with low connotating language to convey the hash and gentle setting of the exert.The vast and stormy setting of the exert conveys a connotating language throughout the novel. Meridian uses figurative language aswell and describes his fear of citizenery to add a vast diction that adds an old fashioned apperance to the novel.\

Falling Hard
The book Falling Hard edited by Betsy Franco is a collection of love poems written by teenagers. it has a high elevation with elegant and fancy diction. The tone is connotative because it has an emotional feel to it and it describes the poetic and lyrical emotions of young love.The musical sounds generated by these love poems convey a harmonious and melodious tone to the book that adds to the fragile yet helpless attitude of the teenagers in love.

-howdini

Quaterly.

Quaterly.

This whole independent reading thing is new to me. I personally don't like reading, so having to read 100 pages a week is definitely a challenge. Not only is it a challenge to force myself to take time out of my day and read but it is also a challenge to find a book that is interesting enough to me that I would actually read it.

I'm the type of person that buys all of the gossip magazines and looks at the pictures. I know that sounds pathetic, but that's all that is interesting to me. Well I do read the picture captions but those are literally like three words naming the designer of the clothes that the celebrity is wearing, so basically that doesn't count. Occasionally I will read a three to four page spread on some scandal that a celebrity is involved in but even then the only thing I can think about is how much I hate reading.

Next semester I really want to challenge myself to find a genre of books that are interesting enough to me that I will actually read them. Maybe like a series of books that I have to read more than one book to figure out the ending. But still, I just don't think that I will read them. To me, reading is not relaxing. It makes me think about things in a book and concentrate on someone else's problems and I don't know, it's just not fun to me. Listening to my ipod with the lights dim or sitting outside on a hammock with my ipod listening to music is relaxing. I wish that I could find a way to make reading relaxing to me but I just can't think of anything. Maybe what I will try next quarter is listening to books on my ipod, so that I will kind of be listening to music but not really. I don't know? It's worth a shot.

-howdini

H.A.M.

H.A.M.

This is not the type of ham that people usually think of, well its the eating ham not the other ham if that makes any sense, so maybe it is that ham your thinking of.

Any hooters, these hooters refer to owls not hooters the restaurant, but yea I can't find any sentences that I like in my book so I'm just going to go through other peoples blogs and see if I can find some that I like. And of course I will put the blog that I found that sentence on, I'm not a plagiarism person. That's not cool.

Oh and this is off subject like all of my post are but Maddie just told me that she likes the smell of books, and she was just smelling one in the corner of the class. hahah omg I'm dying right now.

why i hate school.

Vent.
This week it seems like I haven't had a lot of homework but I feel like I have been bombarded with projects, long assignments, and tests. In government I have a project due today that I procrastinated on and did last night. It sounded easy so I waited until the last minute to do it and it took forever. And in the middle of doing it, my computer crashed and wont turn back on, oh and I forgot to mention that I had already spent two hours on it and was still not finished. So since all of the other computers in our house decided to have viruses at the same time last week, I was left with one computer that was already occupied. So pretty much my day was ruined. Well until Maddie texted me and said that our paper was moved back for this class. But still I had to wait a few hours to re-start my government project, so that sucked. I also have a chemistry math quiz on Thursday that is going to whip my butt, pardon my language. So I don't think that I am going to waste my time studying, which is probably not a good idea but I'm doing it anyway. Uh and for this class I have my rough draft due Friday and another vocab quiz Thursday. I don't mind the vocab quizzes, its just that no matter how many times I study I still get a bad grade. I mean I know all of the definitions and synonyms but I just can't figure out what word works well in the sentences and then I get confused and pick a word that doesn't make sense at all. So pretty much each Thursday when we take those tests my brain literally farts. I don't feel like writing anymore so I guess I'm done.

-howdini