You won't be jolly after eating a Jolly Roger

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Jolly Rogers are at best unoriginal – at worst debilitating. "Bursting with Bold Fruit Flavor"? More like bursting with evil. Accidentally bite down on a Jolly Roger and in return it will viciously, violently, voraciously rip your fillings from their comfortable, happy home in your mouth. This one tiny candy will make you choke down bits of dental-grade porcelain, sending you to painful hours in the dentist's chair. Enjoy Sour Apple? Enjoy these sour grapes: The tart acids and sugar will corrode your defenseless, wholesome tooth enamel like battery acid. At 17 calories each, Jolly Rogers might seem like a prudent indulgence, but you are deceived. Jolly Rogers are miscreants – a counterculture confection masquerading as a harmless hard candy while waiting to drag you behind the bushes and ravish your teeth. Don't be fooled. Eat [marshmallows] and keep your teeth.

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Names were changed to protect the innocent. (Innocent = me! Don't sue me, bro.) This is another short writing piece from a rhetoric class. The assignment was to use only 150 words to write an Invective warning about the evil nature of a specific candy. We had to use various rhetorical schemes and tropes. I love Jolly Rogers, but I had to take a shot at somebody. The "evil" of Jolly Rogers was so prevalent in my parents' circles that even those of us who did not have fillings were not allowed to eat Jolly Rogers for fear of our teeth accidentally being pulled out from the roots or some such silliness. Or at least, that's what my 5 year old mind chose to remember. :)

Extra credit super bonus points and bragging rights to anyone who names the rhetorical schemes and tropes!

Serious Consequences.

That is all. Carry on.

Spring Semester Ramblings

This January I started my fourth semester of Mandarin Chinese. It's absolutely mind-blowing to think that I'm still here and still getting A's in this class. The longer I continue, the more apparent the "holes" in my language study are. Because I finished an entire year of Chinese in 10 weeks a lot of information was only sticky-noted into my brain ... in place just long enough to get a decent grade on the test. All of that is definitely catching up to me now. I'm doing my best to go back, review characters, re-memorize grammar concepts, and catch up on some listening practice. I am horrible at listening and understanding -- which is so embarrassing! My test scores are great but my conversational skills are debilitating. (Not to mention a "performance anxiety" I suffer from.) This is the sort of thing that only gets better with practice -- just like public speaking. Time to dig down deep, find my brass ovaries, and stop being a noob.

I miss British Romanticism so very much. I'm taking a Whitman class now because it was the only literature class that fulfilled the requirement this semester. I'm pretty sure that Whitman is more in love with himself than any man, woman, or child could ever be. (I would say that he screams his own name during sex, but I'm trying to keep it clean here, folks.) Maybe Whitman will grow on me, but now I'm seriously regretting an entire semester dedicated solely to Whitman. Guh. Why couldn't they have an entire semester dedicated to Byron, William Wordsworth, or Coleridge??

I have to take a 100 level PE class in order to graduate and since I have horrible arches and am afraid of drowning that leaves only one option for me: Indoor Cycling. I have to be able to bike 10 miles in 20 minutes by the end of the semester or else I am doomed. Also, I need to be able to do 60 super-crazy-uber-particular sit-ups in 2min and 60 super-crazy-uber-particular squats in 2min. SO. That means this semester if I don't work my ever-lovin' tail off I will fail this class and have to take it again. Also, if I don't get skinny from taking this class (and all of the outside of class training I have to do) I will sue my body for criminal neglect.

Batman vs. Superman

The Batman impersonates Bruce Wayne. Like shiny baubles, the playboy false identity distracts from the true persona: Batman. Driven by the murder of his parents, Batman fears nothing. Obsession drives him. Protecting Gotham and fighting crime trumps all. Batman exudes excellence, intellect, intimidation, and an indomitable will. The World's Greatest Detective needs no superpowers. He keeps his body and mind voraciously honed as the ultimate destructive force. His agility, strength, and cunning set him far above other so-called superheroes. An elite martial artist, Batman embodies mind and muscle, brains and brawn – a force that not even Superman can reckon with.

While Batman is the Dark Knight, Superman is only an empty shell. Superman is the false identity, the painted figure that hides the real man: Clark Kent. Superman is merely motivated by the existence of his own powers. Though he has flight, super-speed, super-strength, and laser vision, Superman's greatest selling point is that he’s the "good guy." Big Blue, the ultimate boy scout, always keeps his nose clean. Self-righteous do-gooder. Not a great strategical mastermind, Superman's motto is, “Why investigate when I can simply demolish the place?” He is all brawn and physical power with no room left for brains.

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Behold! A piece of writing from my infamous rhetoric class last semester. The assignment was to write a comparison using two paragraphs of equal length - one paragraph must be in noun-style writing and the other in verb-style. The Batman paragraph is in verb-style and Superman is in noun-style. I used exactly 100 words in each paragraph.

P.S. I like Superman a lot, but somebody had to be the butt of this comparison. Sorry, Big Blue.

If I ever ...

I'm sure this will be the first of many "If I ever [do xyz] then do an intervention" blog posts.

Just ran across a blogpost in which the blogger was chiding people and "strongly urging" her readers to get with the times and only use one space after each sentence (instead of 2).

If I ever write a blog post to make fun of people, assert my dominance, etc. in the realm of grammar PLEASE do an intervention. That is not the kind of person I want to be.

I know a couple things about grammar, but my grammar isn't perfect. I try my best not to fuss at other people about their practices. (Unless, it's a professional document and people are paid The Big Bucks to write it and it's sloppy -- THEN you're fair game.) We're all amateurs. (Most of us, anyway.) No one is going to be perfect. Language, style, and rhetoric will be argued over until the end of all time.

Put your [body part] measuring sticks away. No one needs to know how big your [body part] is.

Stage 2 Procrastination

I should be studying Chinese right now, but instead I'm making a blog post. Huzzah. I decided that I would begin posting some of my in-class writing here, since I don't have much other writing these days to speak of. (Aside from journal entries that read like, "Gee my life sucks, when will I graduate? I think I'll be fat forever ..." etc. But, we won't talk about those here. Ahem.) My previous blog post was an in-class assignment and I just thought I'd let you know there may be more in the future! I may actually post some of the more creative papers I've written this semester, if they're short enough. Cheers.

The Country (Hypotaxis)

After the sun rises, I lumber out of bed and sloppily throw on overalls. Although there's still sleep in my eyes, once I drink a tall glass of milk I'm ready to tackle my chores. If I finish my chores I can play in the pond with the frogs. Mid-morning turns into afternoon, afternoon turns into evening, and soon I realize I've spent the whole day romping around the fields with my dog. But the best part -- what I've been waiting for -- is when Gram and I sit on the porch with milk and cookies watching the sunset.

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This was part of an in class writing assignment to write a short, Hypotaxis-style paragraph about a day in the country. I modified it slightly to make it a drabble. (As I understand it, Hypotaxis is about subordination of clauses. It's a particular style of writing that joins clauses to create a hierarchy, such that everything builds to the end of the paragraph where the "pay off," the most important piece is.)