Rainflash

Leopard shining through milk,
Spittle on the windowsill.
Tearing pink tissue,
Slipping softly forward
With kettle corn thoughts.
A dripping faucet.
Liquid sunshine falling
gently,
Cotton soaking in the light
And dripping gray
Upon shingled umbrellas.
Muddy waters,
Pooled pavement,
Sinking ships,
A glass mirror.
Remembering.

Leopard shining through milk,
Spittle on the windowsill.
Gathering the light.
A blackening carousel,
Crunching against
Clashing mountains.
Gloom on the outside,
But warm by the fire.
Soon started,
Soon over,
A string on my finger,
A moment.


Original "found poem" haiku:

Rain Leopard shines through milk
Spittle on the windowsill
Tearing pink tissues

Creative Writing; A Shift in Site

I'm a writer, but I tend to dislike everything I write. Is that normal? Guess it doesn't matter. My parents and teachers tend to shower my work with cascades of compliments (dislike), my friends tend to grunt and play video games (like). Hmm.

Anyway, at a teacher's suggestion, I started keeping a wiki of my works, for some sort of organized file I could look back on later. However, the recent changes in pbwiki.com have made it difficult to keep my wiki working. The main reason I even started that wiki was so people would read it. And, well, nobody read it, so that was kinda useless. Sure, nobody reads this blog either, but why have 2 seperate pages that nobody reads when I can have one? Easier to manage, at least. So yeah, I'm going to start infusing my writing into this blog. Hurray for making decisions!

...that's about it, I'll probably start off by adding my older works in as seperate posts, then see what happens from there.

Adventures in Lateral Thinking

Acting on an anonymous phone call, police raid a house to arrest a suspected murderer. They don't know what he looks like, but they do know that his name is John. Inside the house they find a carpenter, a lorry driver, a car mechanic, and a fireman playing cards. Without even asking his name, the police immediately arrest the fireman. How do they know they've got their man?

This is an example of a lateral thinking puzzle. Lateral thinking puzzles are solved by thinking creatively rather than thinking by analytical steps. For example, when asked which side of a chicken has more feathers, the analytical approach would be to examine each side of the chicken to decide which has more feathers. However, the lateral thinking answer would be the outside: it is technically a side, and it has more feathers than the inside (hopefully). So do you have the answer yet?

For the final English project I had originally planned on creating a short film about The Tommyknockers by Stephen King, but due to complications (no actors, script, or camera) I'm changing my book to Mind Benders: Adventures in Lateral Thinking by David J. Bodycombe, and I'll probably subject the class to dozens of mind-breaking torture puzzles like the one at the beginning of this post. I'm sure it'll be fine...considering anything would be better than presenting a non-existing movie. Harumph.

Figure it out yet? I'm not one to spoil answers, so just try to get the answer yourself. And don't cheat! Not that I can stop you, or anything.

Digital Aging

I stumbled upon this digital painting called "Last Men on Earth" by Wojciech (Voytek) Nowakowki, and I absolutely love it. He's an amazing artist, check out his website: http://www.voytek-art.com/

This particular image made me immediately think of 3 things: First was the collapse of Skyworld from Kid Icarus, the second was the collapse of Laputa from Castle in the Sky, and third was a more abstract swirl of philosophical images concerning humanity and its fate. To avoid seeming too dorkish, I'll just avoid all three of these images and talk about something completely different.

One of the English presentations someone did involved Pop Culture Jeopardy, with the generation gaps facing each other (the teacher against the whole class). Categories involved Game Shows, New York Times Best Seller List, VH1 Reality shows, the Digital Age, the 2009 Oscars, etc. Everyone in the class pretty much knew everything, except for the teacher...and me. I knew almost none of the answers, which did nothing for my self esteem. I tend not to think about how seperate I am from society, but events like these force the truth to surface. How am I supposed to relate to my peers if I don't even know what the heck a "tweeter" is? Its no wonder I have so few friends...

Well, what are my options?

1) Spend years in intensive study on every potential pop culture reference someone may make. Impossible! This pop culture thing is so rapidly evolving that if you don't already know everything up to this moment in time there's no way you'll ever be able to keep up! This must be why girls are always gossiping and texting - to keep up with current popular events so they don't lose all their friends. Sigh.

2) Fake it - make up pop culture references and hope they pertain. "Did you hear Brittney has flat feet? Seriously, she's like a duck!" Nevermind, that's a terrible idea.

3) Give up on ever understanding culture, and potentially ever having peer-group friends. Possible...very possible. Who needs these lazy, arrogant, backstabbing people as friends? Though I may be 18, I have the digital-age abilities of a 70 year old, and therefore should remain in that social group. Ah, who am I kidding...I do need these backstabbing friends! Its so weird that no matter how cruel teenagers can be to each other, I still feel a need to belong. I mean, I've seen people laughing it up and being totally friendly with someone, and the instant they turn their backs they say the nastiest things about each other. Like no matter how hard you try, there will always be something to damage your reputation, but you have to keep trying so you get a good reputation...It doesn't make any sense! We're all just tearing each other down to build ourselves up, but we don't seem to realize if everyone is busy destroying, nothing can possibly be constructed!

BAH! I give up! I'll just become a hermit who hates everyone.

Creature ConGraduations

My original plan for this blog was to post something every day, just as a break from real life. However, I haven't posted in a couple days because my sister graduated on Saturday (hurray!) and I was doing chores all Sunday (ugh), so I figured I'd drop a message down while I'm on a school computer "doing work". My graduation is coming up soon too...its oddly depressing. Oh well.

...well, I can't really think of any interesting stories to tell right now. I'm a little overwhelmed from the weekend's happenings and exhausted from reading all night. Right now I'm on John Saul: Creature. Its pretty cool so far. I really relate to Mark Tanner, a nature-loving kid who is pretty much shunned because he doesn't like sports. Saul's style is good too, and keeps the reader's attention with the action and changing point of view. I can't really draw a solid conclusion on it, having only read 88 pages out of 377, but so far I would suggest this read.

I never really liked football...