Hope everyone made it through eng.111. Looking forward to my three weeks off. Hope to see some of you this fall. Enjoy the time off and rest up, because the fall semester will be here in a flash. I hope some of my classmates from Eng.111 will continue to blog. See ya around Chris.
Hey everyone. Hope all is well. Class is over, so let keep putting up blogs. Have a great three weeks off. I know I will. Make sure you get plenty of rest, because we will be back at it again shortly. Blog ya Later. Keith
What is your favorite thing to do, when you have some extra time? I love to bake cakes and decorate them. When I first started doing this my son didn’t like it. He would tell me he wanted a chocolate cake and if I had to decorate it do it in chocolate. I would say what good is that if you can’t see it, but I would do it anyway.
I learn to decorate cakes on my on. I didn’t take any classes; all I did was buy a book and the decorating tools. I made the icing and just tried to make the flowers the way the book showed to do. I loved it and everybody said I was getting pretty good. I would make everyone’s birthday cakes and when there where no birthdays, I would just decorate them for fun. The fun thing was to come up with an idea and make it come to life. If people could figure out what it was, I figured I did a good job.
I remember making my first wedding cake. My aunt talked me into making her daughter’s wedding cake. She told me that my other aunt would help me and that she had made one before. I said O.K., but when we started to put the cake together I asked her how to do it and she said I don’t know. That was a scary moment. That’s when I knew I was on my on. My cousin was happy with the results and that was all that mattered. Everyone said it looked great.
I love baking my grandchildren’s birthday cakes, they get so excited. They especially like it if you make it look like a car or a train. They like helping me make cakes. I give them all kinds of sprinkles and let them do it any way they want. Seeing the smiles on their faces make me very happy and makes up for the mess. I hope they remember all the fun we had when they get older because I remember doing things with my grandmother and when I do it brings a smile to my face.
I want to talk about TV today. How many of us are consumed with TV shows. It’s like they take over our whole lives. I am just a guilty as anyone else. From the time I wake up in the morning until I got to bed, there is a TV on somewhere in my house. The problem is that there isn’t that many shows I like, so why do I keep paying top dollar for 150 channels. I only watch maybe five of them. Ok it may be a few more than five. Sometimes I even watch things I hate just to occupy some time. Unfortunately it makes a great babysitter for my children when I am doing my school work. Surely I’m not the only one dealing with this problem. One of my kids would rather sit and watch TV than go outside and play. When I make him go out he just mopes around until its time to come home, then its back to the TV gods. When I was a kid, I was never home long enough to watch TV. Maybe that’s why I watch so much now, to make up for lost time. Family game night has now been replaced with family TV night. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t choice TV over my children, but it ranks pretty high on my things to do list. Now that I think about that it’s quite sad. What do I do? I’m addicted to it. From Barney, to CSI,to Mythbusters, to First 48, I watch it all. Yes,Barney still comes on, but it’s my daughter watching it, I just happen to be there when she watches it. It becomes very distracting when some one in the family is watching something, and I am trying so hard to concentrate on my school work. My eyes always wander to what on. At least during the summer we all go to the pool several times a week, but as soon as we are home we are fighting over the remote. If I wouldn’t have paid so much for the TV set, I probably would throw it out.
Keith
How the world has changed, from slavery and hating blacks to a nation coming together to morn the death of Michael Jackson. Here is a man despite his many flaws, was loved by people all over the world. He dreamed of becoming a superstar and look at what kind of life that stardom got him. Sure, he had money and could buy anything he wanted, but he couldn’t go to a baseball game or get in the car and drive to the store. He had to spend most of his adult life in seclusion because he couldn’t go out in public, for fear of being mobbed. This kind of life, I think lead to his strange behavior over the years. He was so busy making records when he was a small boy, that he missed out on all the things little boys do growing up. He was a young boy in a man’s world. Once he became an adult he tried to make up for all he had lost as a child. There were many other celebrities who were in the same situation as Michael Jackson. Elvis Presley, Ann Nicole Smith are just a few that endured the same attention. They had all this fame and fortune as well, but couldn’t enjoy it either. Do you think that they were truly happy? I don’t see how they could. It’s not a good way to live your life much less try to raise children. They will have to endure the same life styles you have had to put up with all your life. I think if this is the way your life is when you have fame and fortune I would have to pick the one that I have with my small, but comfortable house in the country, where life is so much simpler. Chris Reddick
A motorcycle rider is like the cowboy of the old west, with nothing like his prize steed, riding the paths on his own personal quest. The sound the horse makes, when the cowboy pulls back on his bridle, compares to the roar of the engine. His clothes and boots can be associated with the biker’s apparel. The hat a cowboy wears for protection from the elements is like the helmet, a biker wears for the similar reason. This is worth mentioning the comparisons, so a person can understand the feeling, of riding, one of these magnificent machines. The motorcycle rider, who travels the roads of this great country, is only concerned about his bike, the entertainment the ride provides, and the strong sense of observation a rider has, while riding a bike.
The most gratifying feeling a biker will have is, when another biker comes up to him, and tells how great that bike looks. I think most bikers would rather be told their bike looks pretty, instead of their women. That is the way things are for a motorcycle rider. The bike gives them great joy, and nothing stands in the way of their feelings toward the machine, while enjoying a ride on one of them.
The ride is all a biker thinks about. It is nothing anyone can experience, unless they do it themselves. Just like a group of cowboys, ending their long hard cattle drive, and going to the quickest place for refreshment, so it is with the biker after a ride. The great joy and fun a biker has after a ride is hard to understand, unless you were there involved in the process riding, with them on the open road.
They say bikers are loners, but most who ride would disagree. Once you have tasted the experience riding the open road, then you will understand the feeling of being up close with nature at your finger tips. The panorama view on a bike is like being in a large theater with screens all around you, but instead of the smell of popcorn, you smell the great outdoors. You are never alone.
The people, who will not ride the steel steed, must remember that motorcycle riders are just like the person, who drives the other machines. They work, eat, and hold positions in the community, like a lot of other people. The difference is that the motorcycle rider envisions life as a road to travel to greater horizons, instead of a road with twists and turns that lead to nowhere. This is what you must understand to become, a motorcycle rider.
(Bill Thomas)
When I was a boy, I loved pretending to be somewhere else or someone else. My picnic table took turns being the Millennium Falcon, an aircraft carrier, and many other props within a childhood world of pretend playing. As I got older and learned to read, I looked forward to new paperbacks so that I could dabble in the minds of people like Timothy Zahn and Steve Perry. When I got older and started getting a more regular paycheck, I discovered video games and got to play in the work of other people’s imaginations as well as my own. Some people go home and watch sit-coms or movies, but I prefer to sit down to a video game.
I suppose that newer mediums attract the best talent. While movies aren’t going out of production, video games have become a bigger money maker than movies in the U.S. and many European countries. The last time I drove by the marquee to my local theater, every movie playing was a sequel to an older movie. I enjoy seeing a movie if it is new and creative but I rarely ever see a movie that is new and different that isn’t based on a play, or a movie, or even a game. Perhaps that is why games get ridiculed so much. Whether a person likes video games or not, I think that it is fair to say that Final Fantasy and Grand Theft Auto are creative and different ways of enjoying fictional settings and situations. I’m amazed sometime at how movie makers will gush about how innovative and ahead of the curve they are with one technology or another, like virtual sets, even if the technology was used years before hand to better effect, like Wing Commander.
I enjoy escaping to another world, or another version of the world. Television and games should not be reality based. I could turn on the television and watch people learn how to color coordinate their wardrobe with the new paint on their walls, or I could cruise the streets of San Andreas, or even frag aliens that look like giant cats, or even take down a star destroyer. I still think that reading a good book is the most engaging medium for my imagination, but the video game is probably second.
I believe good writing is interesting and passionate. It should be like going on a journey exciting, you should feel like you are there. Professor Alan Lightman agrees, “When I’m reading a good essay, I feel that I’m going on a journey.” A good story should flow and be easy to understand. Facts are important, but you need much more. Seeing how someone’s imagination works and how they get their ideals out is amazing. They should take you on the journey with them. When writing you should consider your audience, because you would probably write it differently for different people. Good writing should make you feel like you are there with them. If you can’t someone’s attention they won’t read what you write. It could be the best ideal in the world, but if it is boring no one will read it.
A good writer gets you interest in what he is saying from the very beginning of the essay. A good writer can get you interested in things you would never think about reading. Professor Mike Rose wrote an essay called Potato Clips and Stars. He let you know what it was about from the beginning when he wrote, “IT’S FUNNY HOW SCANT ARE MY RECOLLECTIONS OF SCHOOL.” Do you remember much about school? I can’t really remember too much. He tells you a few of the things he remembers and gets you to thinking about your school days.
One of the things wrong with my writing is I only write from my point of view. I should think of it more as conservation than as writing. I need to consider other peoples point of view when writing. I need to think of better ways to get people interested in what I am saying. I have a tenacity to say the same thing over an over again in a different way. I believe everyone can improve their writing with practice.
Brenda
To me, good writing is mostly about when someone writes something that’s real deep, something that comes from the heart. For instance, when you lose someone that you truly love, whether they moved to another city or country, you start writing letters to the love of your life and you fill your letters with your deepest feelings. You also tell your love that how much that person means to you, how your life is incomplete without him or her, what you love about that person, and so on. Another good example of good writing would be when songwriters write about how they feel when they’re in love or express about the events that happen worldwide.
The way I see it, good writing can be anything that could result on a positive change with current situations. We all know the old saying “Action speaks louder than words”. To me, when it comes to good writing, words actually speak louder than action. For example, many hispanics today are writng letters to the President of the United States about Hispanic Immigration and how desperate they are in need of help. There are even little kids who have illegal parents that try to send letters to the Preseident saying that they want their parents to stay here in America.
I can remember being assigned boring and uninteresting reading material that was supposedly good because someone who was dead and gone before I was ever born, and probably wasn’t that good even when they were alive, even if I were in their target audience, and I hated it. Good writing engages my mind, from the opening sentence of the introduction, to the final phrase of the written piece. If a writer is going to get my attention and keep it, I need to feel like I could be talking with the author, or if I’m lucky, like I’m an audience of one where I relate to what the writer sees and what the writer thinks and feels. Kathleen Norris wrote that “a writer must attempt to breathe life into the words on a page, in the hope that the reader will discover something that resonates with his or her own experience.”
Would you volunteer your free time to read something that you found uninteresting? I wouldn’t. While I’ve read authors that opened weak but found stride a chapter or two into a book like J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship Of The Ring” and books that sucked me in from the first paragraph but then cheated me of a gratifying ending by breaking suspense too early such as Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” That’s why I cherish writing that pulls me in as if I’m being kidnapped by the author with all my senses chained to whatever I’m reading so that I cannot put down the work until I’ve finished it, even if that means cracking the book open by the night stand and either sighing in relief or else, throwing the book across the room even as my alarm clock goes off-and feel the ride was worth a night’s sleep lost. Read “Republic Commando” by Karen Traviss. She opens by saying, “It’s pitch black below and we’re fast-roping into the crevasse, too fast: I can feel the impact in my back teeth when I land. I’m first down and I flood the chamber with my helmet spot-lamp. There’s a triple-sealed blast door between us and the Geonosians and I haven’t got time to calculate the charge needed to blow it. A lot, then. P for plenty, like I was taught.” Good writing makes me want to read a piece even if its not my favorite subject or genre.
My writing currently sounds like the meanderings of and absent minded but intelligent person with good ideas that often find their way onto the paper, but often times in a way that’s seems out of order. Reading my writing can sometimes be like reading a story with the odd chapter placed in the wrong order. Most of what I write either gets deleted from the screen or wadded up in the trash. In fact, the only writing I’ve kept are a couple of letters I kept copies of after they were printed in the paper and some letters to my wife that she’s kept. Most of my writing finds its home in the trash can.
