World Wide What? Tolkien Meme-ia

In honor of the impending release of "The Hobbit" in theaters, I thought it would be fun to therefore release the horde of LotR memes I have lying around in my computer, much like Moria released its hordes of goblin. I also wanted to see how many times I could use 'release' and its variants in one sentence. Apparently I can only pull off three of 'em.

First up, we have Starry Barad-Dur. Mad props to whoever pulled this off.

The wizard's cat has been acting up again for attention...

Motivational alarm clock.

Ever the fashionable one,

Moriapoly.

Must have graduated from the Shire's School of Smart-Assery.

And you were complaining about summer heat?

Muppets of the Rings.

Mission Nerdpossible.

The Bad-Ass Wizard.

 Look who just joined the Dark Side...

Remember, The Hobbit comes out in 2 days. I'm going in costume, how about you?

Until next time this is the AmazonArtiste signing off.

Wisdom Along the Way

"Women, you can't live with them and yet they're everywhere." ~ Harry Solomon, 3rd Rock from the Sun (French Stewart's role)

Saved by the Bell...Professorisms

I promised this post to a fellow HR-er (meperson!). I can't remember if I've stated this before or not, so I'm doing it again just to be clear (or safe). I'm taking a creative writing class and our Professor is probably the wackiest professor on campus. It is impossible to fall asleep in his class, mainly because he's just too darn fun and you wouldn't want to miss anything.

When our Professor screws up or makes great joke, or just says something in a funky way I call it a Professorism. I'm compiling a list for my fellow HR-er (should it be HR-er or HRer? Both are confusing to those outside our community but should it be confusing for those of us on the inside?) and also so I don't forget all the fun times (memory like a sieve over here).

If I remember other Professor's professorisms I'll be sure to place them here with the appropriate professor/subject.

Second Class Day

Fricative Nut Butter - He believes we should be able to invent a fricative nut butter. No one has been able to do this yet.

Fourth Class Day

Imaginary McStudentson - The name on his papers that are used for examples.
"I care more about your commas" - When workshopping, he has stated that we are not allowed to show more care for the paper than for the person writing it. We have to be nice (which we all agree with, but that sentence was funny)

Fifth Class Day

Abrakadabraly - We get extra credit in his heart but not our grade if we use this in our next paper. I did.

Sixth Class Day

Dersun - Apparently couldn't spell "person."
Charactater - Apparently also could not spell "character." (It was obviously a hard spelling day for him. I used all of these misspellings in my paper)
Unsuck it - A classmate-ism. It sounds less worse than "suck it" does but means the same damn thing.

Seventh Class Day

Prepicife - Could not properly say "precipice."
"Pump huckey out of bunny" - Was trying to say "pump honey out of bucket" while discussing a honey bucket disaster for a setting as an example for our next assignment. This was better than what he was originally trying to say.

Ninth Class Day

Zombiecrats - Apparently, if you want to figure out if your sentence has the passive voice, add "by zombies" at the end of it. If it works your sentence is passive. He had used the example "mistakes were made...by zombies." Someone said bureaucrats so he said that.
Winking Verbs - My classmate misheard "linking verbs" after we ran off a list of verbs, so our professor invented a conversation for both:
The Winking Verbs "Hey, what are you doing tonight?" (mind you that's in a creepy come hither voice)
Verbs "Killing, running, eating, chasing, sleeping apparently." (though not necessarily in that order)
"Killed the classroom like a teacher" - We were trying to come up with an object for our puppy to kill and someone said "classroom" to which another student said "like a teacher." So our Professor invented a phrase that he demands we get accepted into everyday speech.
"Subject Verbs Object; Object gets Verbed" - He was discussing the difference between active & passive voices in writing. A standard English sentence goes Subject, Verb, Object. In an active voice the Subject is Verbing the Object. In a passive voice the Object gets Verbed by the Subject. Hence the aforementioned Professorism.
"Germans think they're weak, we think they're weird" - In German the verbs are either weak or strong. In America they are either regular or irregular. It should be fairly obvious where our Professor was going with this one.
The Passive Yoda Voice - One of our examples of active-voice sentences was "You will steal your mother's winnebago." We had to make it passive and one of my classmates made it active-Yoda-voice. So our Professor promised to give us the passive-Yoda-voice: "Your mother's winnebago, stolen, will be."
"You Struthered it" - Apparently Sally Struthers doesn't breathe when she talks or something like that, because our Professor read a paragraph in one breath and someone said "you read that like Sally Struthers! No breathing required." So our Professor also wants that phrase admitted into everyday speech.

And apparently with periodic sentences, you have your skillful and less skillful. The difference? Skillful is equivalent to a striptease and less skillful is equivalent to a flasher.

We also learned of the "Worst First Line Contest," "Bad Metaphors Contest" & "mittromneywithasmallface.com" (This one just sounds funny)

"My brain had a tumor shift." - Math professor said this whenever he forgot something.

Personally, I think we should get a collab going for worst first lines and bad metaphors. I think Raja would be all over that! 

22.31

Happy Saturday the 13th! That poor little sociopath missed his killing-spree-day by one. Poor guy.

Next Friday the 13th will be September 2013. He gets to wait a little while...

I did make it to class Wednesday and it turns out that sickness went around over the weekend. Most people have colds and some have the flu. I kept telling everyone I had influenza because flu is too mainstream (influenza does sound cooler). Out of our workshop group of six, four of us were sick. Three years ago when I took creative writing I had the loudest group in the class. We also were easily sidetracked, finished our work faster than anyone else, and laughed a hell of a lot more. I don't believe we are the loudest this year, but everything else was the same. If anything, this group is smarter.

It's practically a monsoon outside. So much rain with a side of winds. Good for plants, bad for lungs.

Everyone in my group was asking me to bring my portfolio because they like my writings. For the past decade or so, my portfolio has lived in a variety of binders, notebooks, and stacks of papers. Suffice to say, I didn't really have a portfolio. Last night I decided to go through and clean it up and put it all in one place. It's huge but organized. It of course is still missing some things, so I'm still adding to it for now, but it's almost complete. My portfolio goes back to the sixth grade. It literally is my life's work.

My brother pointed out, "Isn't it sad that you life can be boiled down to a stack of papers?" Thanks little bro! I would hope that a writer's life would be boiled down to some pretty awesome stacks of paper, since you know, writers write on paper. (Ooh, the sun is just starting to peak through. Can it hold its ground?) So no it isn't sad, and yes my writing life can be boiled down to a rather large stack of paper. My photography life can be boiled down to a rather large collection of photos, my music life can be boiled down to stacks upon stacks of sheet music and instruments (most of which collect dust), etc. My life can be boiled down to...to...well I don't think it's near the stage of boiling down yet. Maybe melting down...never mind.

I think it's silly to say one's life can be boiled down to X. Life is complicated and every individual has their own complications to add to life's complications (that wasn't complicated at all). (sun just disappeared) I don't know how to explain what I want to say or even where to start. I just know I disagree with my brother fully and completely. If he were right his life could be boiled down to computer code. Personally, I think his life is worth more than that and contains more than that. There is more to him than code, though no one is willing to admit it to his face.

Until next time this is the Amazon Artiste signing off.

22.26

Technically today marks the start of the third week of college. I say technically because while it is a Monday and the start of a new week, we have school off for Columbus Day. I have no idea why it's an actual holiday, we don't give any presents to loved ones and there's no grand moral to be had (ex: Thanksgiving = giving thanks [gee, that was hard to figure out]). Some guy kinda sorta discovered America. And he gets a holiday? I don't recall a Nikola Tesla Day or Thomas Edison Day, or shoot even a Sir Isaac Newton Day. I think it's extremely unfair, but alas, I am grateful for not having to go to school today. Wednesday when everyone asks each other, "What did you do over the weekend?" I'll get to sarcastically say with a perky little smile, "I contracted bronchitis! How was your weekend?"

My poor aching, burning lungs. Not to mention I look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I must say though, my bronchitis had impeccable timing. I got sick on a 3-day weekend not to mention I have no class on Friday (when I got it) or Tuesday. I did not get sick in the middle of a very busy school week. So I have to give it props for that.

It's mildly ironic; my brother felt sick last week (it lasted a day for him the lucky duck) and was concerned about getting everyone else sick. I arrogantly said he wouldn't get me sick and it's like the illness said, "Challenge accepted." It promptly abandoned him and attacked me a few days later. At least I'm on the mend, so I should be able to go to class (cross your fingers folks!).

And here endeth the shortest blog post I have ever composed.

Until next time this is the Amazon Artiste signing off.

From the Shelf - Franz Kafka

On the first day of class we were asked what makes a story memorable and what makes it worth reading. These kinds of questions are often difficult to answer, because the answer more often than not depends upon one's opinions or experiences with the stories they've read. One person may say a story is memorable if the characters were relatable and had attributes that were applicable to one's own life. That's the case for me every time I read R.A. Salvatore's novels pertaining to his character Drizzt Do'Urden. I can relate to this character and wish to embody many of his characteristics as they would make me a better person if I did so. For some, the worth in the story is in its themes which are usually many or a single grand one. Herman Melville once stated, "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it."

Franz Kafka's short story "In the Penal Colony" had many themes and was indeed a memorable read, but it is worth less than a handful of dirt. I understand that to be a well-educated person in the literary realm one must read at least one piece by Kafka. He is after all considered a literary great, but a well written monstrosity is still a monstrosity. I had been warned of the violence of this particular story, but I was surprised to find that it was not violent through the use of action like a movie would be. "In the Penal Colony" is violent in the very nature of the story itself, the ideas which are embedded in the myriad themes, are they themselves the agents of violence. The most evident theme, which I'm sure was the primary one, is that of justice or the contortion thereof. The "villain" of the story, the Officer (none of the characters had real names), is the purveyor of a so-called justice within the colony. The "hero" is to be found in a lone Traveler who slowly recognizes that the Officer is in fact the purveyor of injustice through torturous murder.

The colony has a flawed judicial system; no trial, no jury, no defense. Any infraction, no matter how minor it be, is punishable by execution. The Officer declares those in question to be guilty, writes up the sentence for the now condemned, and then performs as well as presides over the execution. The execution is applied through a machine, an apparatus, that etches the sentence in a script (probably a fanciful one for more effect) onto the flesh of the condemned by way of needles for twelve hours. The Officer is completely dyspathic towards the condemned and is rather a bit of a sadist as he takes great pride in this apparatus and great pleasure in watching the execution being performed. This flawed system of guilty-with-no-trial is representative of a totalitarian judicial system. I cannot think of anyone who would willingly accept this system much less live under it, so I think it's pretty safe to say, no one wants a system like that. The system is not one of justice but one of a cruel, torturous murder to men who more often than not were probably guilty of nothing more than falling asleep on the job.

This particular piece was striving to make a point of how horrible a totalitarian judicial system is, in fact a totalitarian system of any kind in any branch of life is a bad idea. That was the grand theme of this "volume" so Kafka obeyed Melville in that regard. But the grand theme (this grand idea) was no match for the moral depravity that presided within the structure of this piece (structure being characters, plot, setting, etc.). What made this story worthy of the claim "morally deprived?" To make ones readers feel no more emotion other than a sickening sorrow and a fear of death at the hands of an unjust judge is wrong. To write and further publish a story that leaves your audience sitting traumatized in an emotionally drained state is cruel.

The worth should have been in the masterfully crafted exposé of what a totalitarian judicial system is. However, this was clouded by the failure to present a clear solution to the problem. We've all heard the phrase "if you aren't a part of the solution you're a part of the problem." Well Kafka deftly pointed out the problem, but he forgot to mention an escape clause for those poor, unfortunate souls we call characters. The reader is left not with a feeling of relief for the characters, but a feeling of dread as they continue to live in the unjust penal colony. The only relief to be found is when the Officer dies by the very machine he commands, and the Traveler gets to leave, but he leaves the colony in a state of disarray (the original condemned man is free from execution but is left to fend for himself amidst a riot of the penal colony's residents). How is this a solution or even a happy ending?

At no point is it acceptable for traumatization to be written and considered worthy of publication. As this phrase states, "some things are best left unsaid" so to are some things best left unwritten and unpublished.

Out of the Closet, Into the Hamper

"What woman doesn't like shoes?" ~ Stacy London

Ballet Flats

Here's a close-up so you can see the fun sequins:

These are the shoes I wear on a daily basis. Most people don't enjoy standing next to an Amazon in heels sadly.