Assignment 3 - True Friends -

I think that writing a paper with a completely open topic is something hard to do. The only real instruction we were given was it has to be something we care about, for me this narrows down my topics none, as there are tons of things I care about. I didn’t want to write about materialistic items, and objects, such as technology, or something like that. So instead I decided to write about friends, true friends to be more specific.
What is a true friend? A true friend is the person you go to call when you’re on the toilet and have an amazing epiphany. They’re the only person that will gladly accept that call and laugh at your awesome epiphany all while knowing you are currently sitting on the shitter. It’s being able to decipher an acquaintance from a true friend.  The differences are slight at times, but they are always there to remind you. True friends do not judge us; they accept us for who we are. They do not try and change us, or force their views upon us. True friends give you the unmistakable feeling of complete comfort that you only feel with those certain people. The simplest way to put it is an acquaintance will help you up when you fall down; a true friend will stand there pointing and laughing until you pick yourself up. True friends, the ones you can’t stand at times but wouldn’t give up for anything in the world. I cherish these moments I have with my true friends, moments that when you look across the room at a person and the two of you burst out laughing for no particular reason at all.  The moments in life when you have an entire conversation with a person that lasts for hours and the only real topics covered were things like how you managed to get stuck between the wall and the bed, or how you manage to get your nose ring stuck in a spiral notebook. Topics like how many hot dogs, or miniature sausages, you can fit in your mouth at one time, or how twizzlers and mountain dew don’t mix well together. Topics like these that make getting up and doing your daily chores worth-while. I’m not talking about people we spend a few minutes a day conversing with. I’m talking about the people in your life you couldn’t bear not speaking to for more than a day, the people that sincerely mean something to you. The people that lead to your every day happiness in life, the same one’s that give you that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when they are upset with you.  Experiences and adventures with my true friends have been a learning experience in the past, and continue to keep me guessing about what will happen tomorrow, or on any of our future endeavors.  I couldn’t live without the nights of steady rocking out on guitar hero, or spontaneous trips to the park in the middle of the night, or even the road trips we take were we drive each other insane from being in the car too long with one another.  To have someone there to make me laugh and to comfort me on difficult days, and the patience to deal with me, this is the most wonderful thing in the world. The quote “A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.” Pretty much describes how I feel about my friendships, and relationships. You can never really truly accept someone until you understand their past and once you have attempted this, you will pass your judgments, and where people fail is they use these judgments on someone’s past to determine their future, as friends. Rather than get to know the person as they are in the present. It’s a rarity to find someone who accepts you, the past you, present you, and the you to come. I love that I do not have to hide my past, or lie about anything I have done, or will do for that matter. I like to be completely open and honest with my friends and loved ones, and by doing so it seems to put our relationships to the test. The ones that stick around through thick and thin are really the only ones that matter. Life isn’t about making as many friends as possible and spending 5 minutes a month saying hello to 40 different people whose last names you probably couldn’t guess even if they spelled most of it out for you. It’s about finding those certain select few that will be with you until the very end, and put up with your sorry ass along the way.
This, my colleagues and acquaintances, is a true a friend.

Assignment 2 - The Death Of Humpty Dumpty & Anne Yokely

Okay so here is the rough draft of what I have written so far. I don't know if this is the story I will use, or if I will write something different. Please let me know what ya think.. I think the ending needs some work, but I'm pretty much tapped out for the night. Also Neverland is underlined because I might change it, I'm not sure, as well as " Anne Yokely" again that might not stay the same.. Hahah. I'm open to suggestions if you have any...Anyway enjoy the story....

This is the story of how Humpty Dumpty met his great demise one late afternoon. There are many points in this story that are going to show you a darker, more twisted side to your favorite childhood fairy tales, so be advised. This story begins in the streets of Neverland where our main character Humpty Dumpty rest’s night after night playing his guitar on the top of a great big wall that overlooks Main St. He sit’s wallowing, strumming his guitar heavily, singing one tragic song over and over while he trembles and cries. He belt’s out this sad song in memory of his wife whom he lost in a drug deal gone bad with Neverland’s local Mafia of sorts, Pan & the Dwarfs. You see Humpty wasn’t really an innocent fairy tale character. He had addictions and faults just like we do. The story of the drug deal gone awry starts with Humpty’s addiction to cocaine. He met his wife at a party his friend Cinderella invited him to. They went to college together, and he knew she threw the best parties to get trashed at, so of course he decided to go. His wife, Anne Yokely, was there with a friend from school as well. Humpty saw Anne Yokely, from across the room and they instantly locked eyes. She slowly made her way through the abundance of drunken, and drugged up people scattered about the room, and over to Humpty. Meanwhile Cinderella’s cocaine dealer, or fairy god mother, whichever you prefer to call her, showed up to drop off her latest shipment of goodies. Humpty was the type of guy to try anything offered at a party and has tried cocaine once or twice before. So he decided to hit a line that Cinderella offered and put out for the two of them. Humpty, being the gentlemen that he was, offered Anne Yokely his line. She decided against doing both of them so Humpty snorted it up like there was no tomorrow. Humpty, enjoying the cocaine so much, thought it would be a good idea to get the name of Fairy God Mother’s dealer, he didn’t like dealing with middle-men. After a long talk and some heavy persuasion she finally gave up the number of her trusted co-worker. Now we fast forward a couple of years into the future. At this point Humpty and Anne Yokely have been happily married for a year and a half. Their addiction to cocaine got progressively worse and worse as their relationship continued. Each ones addiction seemed to fuel the others. It was a very unhealthy relationship, but a sort of love none the less. So anyway, remember when we talked about Humpty getting Fairy God Mother’s main connection’s phone number? Well up until this point every transaction Humpty has had with this person has been a smooth one. Well, one night when Humpty was at home with the misses pouring a glass of Jack Daniel’s for the two of them, they hear a loud pounding on the door, as if someone is trying to beat it down. He walks calmly to the door and opens it, only to find his friend Peter Pan soaked from the rain, his stomach protruding from his skin tight green t-shirt that was obviously too small for this middle-aged man. Again this is not your typical fairy tale character anymore, in this Neverland, Peter Pan is the head of the Mob. He’s gained a few extra pounds, and hasn’t shaved in months, his hair is matted and he would most likely remind you of a homeless man rather than a mob boss. Peter wheezes and coughs a few times, spitting as he does so, and pushes his way past Humpty and into the living room. Once his enormous figure shifted its way out from in front of the door Humpty then realized that he had brought the 7 dwarf’s along with him, this was never a good sign. Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy make their way into the living like a bunch of kid’s with ADHD on crack. They smash into the side table almost knocking his lamp onto the floor. Grumpy & Dopey were like the second in commands; they stood proudly next to Peter, chests puffed out as if they were capable of serious damage if you got on their bad side. The rest of them kind of just stood around talking amongst themselves, as if they had no purpose in being there. Peter started discussing the nature of his visit with Humpty as most of the dwarf’s settled onto Humpty’s couch. Peter began explaining that it had been 6 months since Humpty got an advance on a kilo of cocaine, and had still yet to pay Peter for it. Peter says something about him being a patient man, but hard times call for desperate measures. As he’s doing so Grumpy and Dopey slowly make their way to Humpty’s wife, each of them with this devilish look in their eyes. Anyone who was anyone knew what these two we’re really able to do if commanded by Peter. Humpty glances over and watches as Grumpy and Dopey grab his wife and pull her into the bedroom. Humpty of course starts to run over to his wife’s aid, as he does so Peter extends one large pudgy arm in front of Humpty, stopping him dead in his tracks. He shakes a single fat finger in Humpty’s face, telling him that he will stay right where he’s at and not move. Peter then walks to Sleepy asking him for a hammer. Sleepy sluggishly hands over a hammer that he brought inside with him. Peter then gets back to the room, going in and shutting the door behind him. This is where our story takes it’s most grim turn, I won’t go any further into detail than need be for this section. As Grumpy and Dopey hold down Humpty’s wife, Peter walks up to them, hammer clutched tightly in his hand, he holds it with both hands for a better grip. He then swings the hammer down onto Humpty’s wife’s hard shell, splitting her right down the middle. A huge crack turns into thousands of smaller ones right before their eyes. She begins oozing all her fluid’s out onto the bed and takes one last heavy sigh as she breathes her last breath of life out. Peter has an evil grin on his face as he throws the hammer down and exclaims to Grumpy and Dopey that they should clean this mess up. Peter walks back out into the living room laughing hysterically, pointing at Humpty and shouting how next time Humpty will pay with his own life. Humpty falls over crying, screaming for his wife. He’s in shock and frozen as he kneels on the living room floor, his head in his hands as he weeps. A few minutes later Grumpy and Dopey return to the living room and rejoin the group, smiling and laughing, as if they didn’t just help Peter commit murder. The group nonchalantly walks out of the house, slamming the door behind them, leaving Humpty there in a puddle of his own tears. Now back to present time where we return to this lonesome egg sitting on top a giant wall singing his sad song. This night is not like any other for Humpty. He sit’s and reflects, more so tonight than most other nights. He thinks about how life isn’t worth living without his darling, Anne Yokely. He comes to an abrupt decision to end this pitiful life he leads. He stands up and bellow’s as loud as he can, proclaiming his love. He takes one step forward, stepping into thin air. Plummeting forward and down, Humpty falls to his death from atop the wall, splattering him onto the crowded street below.

Interactions & Expressions

This is a blog I wrote a while ago while going through a discussion with a friend on how the people she chose to hang out with effected her attitude and her persona when she was around them, or speaking to them. I thought it was very hilarious, and interesting, how she talked down to certain people, or sounded condescending. As if she was speaking to a 6 year old. So I decided to go back and re-write this blog and take my thoughts on this subject and weave it into my photography to start a series I will call “ Expressionism “. I have a few select friends that have agreed to let me photograph them during some of their daily conversations and interactions. As well as photograph their different versions of various emotional expressions, to study and gain a set of images with a unique concept. First we’ll start off with interactions like in the original blog I wrote a while ago, and then move our way to expressions.

 Interactions...it's something we have on a daily basis, whether it is with someone you know or a complete stranger. Interaction: a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects (people, in this case) have an  effect upon one another.

Have you ever had the time and the want to acknowledge your own mannerisms, so well known to your circle of friends and, or to discover those of your acquaintances, or the people generally around you? Take a closer look at your conversations and actions as you go through your day. I’m always watching and listening to the people around me. I always interact with people, but at the same time I watch the way they interact with me. People are very quirky. It’s interesting to see the differences from person to person. The dramatic change and how quickly these mannerisms change based on the person you are talking to, or the mood of the conversation. How one person can have a false arrogance about them while talking to a stranger, but when this same person is talking to a friend all sense of indifference has left. They way people have a hesitation in certain situations, or give false encouragement to people, heavy sighs, hand, and foot movements, nodding, smiling, eye contact or lack there-of. All of these are things you can notice when a person is interacting with someone, and for a lot of people they don’t even realize what they are doing. We unconsciously assimilate information from the people whom which we are interacting with. This assimilated information help’s to guide our behavior and help in the decisions we make, whether it directly concerns this person or not.  

“ For both our pleasure and self-protection, we measure people frequencies, and we push for encounters with those in whose company we delight, and we guiltily seek to shirk meetings with the bores and bombasts. “ – David Manners. We go through our day to day life thinking we are individuals that you are your own person and you make who you are. But this is not entirely true. At the end of the day you would not be the person you are today had you not learned and processed each and every interaction that you’ve had starting from day 1. Even as baby’s we are slowly but surely soaking in everything around us. It has been proven time and time again. But hey that’s another subject entirely.

Assignment 1

The assignment is to write my overall experience with reading and writing up to this point in my life.

This is what I have so far, I don't know If this is actually what I'll turn in or not. :/

When asked to sum up my experience with reading and writing the first thing that came to my mind was “ How do you take a lifetimes worth of reading and writing and put it on paper in about 750 words ? “ I can answer the reading half of this because I have read enough to write about it, but to write about writing? It seems a bit redundant. I really have nothing to write about other than I never have enjoyed writing assignments in the past, and I can’t say that I have felt the need to sit down and regularly write my thoughts. I am more of an “actions speak louder than words “type of person, and am very outspoken. I think that plays a large part in my lack of want to actually write my feelings or thoughts, rather than speak them. I can only remember about 3 blogs that I’ve ever written in my lifetime, that have been something I had a general interest in actually writing. These blogs were written in a time of spiked emotion or lack of sleep, but for whatever reason I felt the need to do it then, but not now. I have never had a passion for writing, and I have never been able to get what I am really thinking onto paper as easily as I can in other ways. As for reading that is a different subject entirely for me. I have enjoyed reading since I was little. I was definitely one of those kids reading at a RED reading level while most people were stuck on BLUE, you’ve got to love public school’s measurements of people’s reading levels. You remember that color coded system of telling what the “average” is that you are reading at. So anyway starting out of course on childhood books that everyone read’s, classics like The Giving Tree, The Lorax, Charlotte’s Web, and yes even the Harry Potter series. I also used to read the Dear America books because I liked the perspective it gave while reading. These books were mostly written in first-person, like a journal. That always interested me. To think that these could actually be journal’s written during the war in Normandy, or whatever I was reading at the time, just blew my mind when I was younger. I eventually grew out of the Dear America books and moved my way up to my favorite author of all time, Ray Bradbury. My mom took me to the library one day and told me to check him out, as well as Robert Heinlein, another one of my favorites. The first book I picked up of his was The Martian Chronicles. To this day it’s still probably my favorite book in the world. My brain doesn’t choose to remember many things, but this book is definitely burned into my mind for life. This book was like a series of short stories, all having to do with Mars. He called it “a book of stories pretending to be a novel”. What made me want to read more of Bradbury’s work was the way each story differs and yet continues to stay around one central concept; that man can and will ruin earth. Like in a few of his short stories, where we manage to ruin mars as well, that relates to real life in my opinion. Which is more sad, the fact that Bradbury saw the end of society in his mind in the 1950’s, and how society will ruin the world as we know it. Or is it the fact that we enjoy reading about it? My full experience with reading and writing, or as a reader and writer, isn’t something I think I can put into 750 words. You would think a profile of me and my experience as a reader/writer would easily reach 750 words, but I don’t have anything more to write so I will be ending this paper at 665 words, or so.

I have nothing to say but....

I think my Creative Writing teacher is going to have a hell of a time with me. :)