Junkyard Quotes Week #10

1. "What's he talking about?" -Me
    "Meth." - Sister
    "Oh, cool." -Me
    "You're lack of reaction gives me confidence in my parenting." - Mom
               - This is a conversation between my mom, sister and I... Just more playful dialogue that inspires me to keep the sarcasm alive in my writing.


2. "Just so you know... if we ever split up you're totally taking Stewie with you." -Me (FYI- Stewie is a cat)
    "What?! Why do I have to take the fail cat?" - Adam
    "Because I refuse to be stuck with three kids, especially when is handicapped, one who has an IQ lower than Forrest Gump and one who is determined to kill me." - Me (FYI- kids is aka for our cats)
    "So basically you're telling me if we split up I'm going to be the one that ends up getting assassinated?" -Adam
    "Exactly." -Me
    " I don't think we should ever have children." -Adam
                     - More playful banter!  I have an endless supply of sarcasm in my life that ends up in my writing.
                               And because I talked about them I feel compelled to show a picture of them

3. "I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination." - Walt Disney
          -Had to pull out this quote since we talked about him today in class. I think it's ironic that a man who built an empire off a mouse believe he was limited by his imagination... I mean really?!


4. "I've only been in live of a beer bottle and a mirror." -Sid Vicious
         - I don't really know exactly why I picked this quote... I guess because of the irony again but also because that one sentence leaves so much room for interpretation.

5. "Politics are like diapers. They both need to be changed and for the same reason." -Bumper Sticker
          -I thought this was funny so I though I would share.

Reading Response Week #10

Chapter Five and Six - Steering the Craft

I never really thought of adverbs, adjectives, pronouns and verbs as being the main things that dictate the tone/genre of a story... Silly me. I guess I never stopped viewing them as the bane of my existence since fifth grade. BUT now I see that they can be fun! In class today when we played around with the tones (I guess that's what you would call it...?) of the paragraph describing the weather it made me realize just how important they are. I detested them but really I need to be thanking them because without them I'd be writing the like eleven and twelve year old kids in Whitney's class. I can't have that if I want to make it as an author... well technically I can't have that if I want to do anything substantial with my life. So yes, thank you chapter five and six!

Reading Response Week #9

Chapter Three - Steering the Craft

When I first saw that the chapter was over sentence length and complex syntax I couldn't help but that that "are you effing serious" reaction. But after reading the chapter I found it really helpful. I guess I had never really though of sentence length relating to the rhythm of the story. Whether the sentences are short, long or varying between the two effecting the rhythm never crossed my mind. But looking back at someone of my work I can see where it gets awkward because I either over whelmed it with too many long sentences or underwhelmed it with too many short sentences.

Random Impulse

First of Week #9

  This might be cheating because I had to write this abstract for my criminological theory class... but it's about Ted Bundy and has big words like "neuropsychological" in it so I figured I would share. 


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Ted Bundy is one of America’s most notorious serial killers; a stain on the memory of the American people. Bundy is known for his thirty-six known victims, most of whom he murdered, raped, and sodomized. He was also known for engaging in necrophilia with the remains of his victims. Examining Bundy’s childhood, teenage years and adulthood using Travis Hirschi’s Social Bond Theory, as well as Terrie E Moffitt’s Developmental Theory of Life-Course-Persistent Antisocial Behavior reveals deviant tendencies and environment factors at an early age that support Hirschi and Moffitt’s theories. Bundy’s lack of attachment, commitment and involvement, as well as his understanding of Methodism but total disregards of the laws of his belief, sustains Hirschi’s Social Bond theory. Also, Bundy’s “manifestations” of antisocial behavior at a young age, which included abuse to others and animals as a toddler and shoplifting, in addition to thievery of friends, families, and strangers personal belongings, throughout his teenage and adult life, corroborate Moffitt’s Life-Course-Persistent Antisocial Behavior Theory. Unfortunately, Hirschi’s Social Bond theory falls short because Bundy did have some ties to his community; he was the Vice President of his Methodist Youth Fellowship, and excelled throughout most of his education. Furthermore, Moffitt’s theory falls short because it is based on neuropsychological functions and neural development which, due to Bundy’s execution, cannot be analyzed, tested or proven present. But it is still important to understand, so we can learn to identify and prevent antisocial behavior and serial killer tendencies.

Junkyard Quotes Week #9

1. "Is there anything greater than infinity?" - Adam
    "The national deficit." - Me
    "Touche" -Adam
                         - Just funny banter to help motivate the prose dialogue.

2. "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." -Idk
         - How do hands become a workshop? I still have not been to answer that question after seeing this in my Criminology Theory book. So it made the junkyard because it's stuck in my head.

3. "Hey, I can play with my own stick just fine, he needs to learn to play with his own stick before he starts playing with the bigger sticks." -Adam
     -Taken completely out of context makes this quote epic. However, Adam is just a big goober and his "stick" is slang for his "sword." He was just explaining to a new SCA fighter that they needs to learn to fight with their own basic sword before moving on to another weapon.

4. "When I said 'death' before 'dishonor', I meant alphabetically...." -Leslie
          - This just tickled me. I like it when quotes I've grown up hearing get twisted.


5. "Real G's move in silence like lasagna..." -Leslie
           - I have no idea what this means and I love it for that reason. It's just ridiculous enough to be awesome.

Random Impulse

        I got stuck on my previous ideas of bunnies, butterflies and fairies... and this is what happen. I got bored really quickly, I'm sorry!

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    Aurora Vaughn pulled up to her best friend's house in her flat, black ford bronco. Today was the big day! The day Sage, Aurora’s best friend, had been talking her into for months. Aurora’s head hung for a second, she wasn’t really looking forward to this, even though the school and even Sage called it the opportunity of a life time. What was the big deal about being the first demi-Fae to step inside the Unseelie Court in three hundred years? The fae and she were nothing more than pixie loving monsters under the end.

            Sage stuck her head out of the second story window of the yellow house. “Don’t even think about changing your mind Rory! I made brownies!” She yelled with a wide smile on her face knowing that her friend had a major weakness for the fudge brownies.

Random Impulse

This is what came about from Exercise One in the Steering the Craft book. It is also what inspired the short story I'm writing for class... I'll write about something happy like bunnies, butterflies and fairies eventually.

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Every morning when I wake up I can still feel the chard bits of my flesh flaking away with the morning’s cool breeze, I can feel the stream of blood running down my finger tips as the ropes that bond me buried themselves deeply in of my skin. I can still feel the raging fire licking and wrapping itself around me. I can still hear my own screams and cries for mercy in the hollow holes in the side of my skull that were once my ears, before the fire’s caress.  I can still see the faces of those people, the people that were suppose to protect and care for me, which tied me to the stake and set the hay at my feet on fire. And I hate them all, hundreds of years later they still plague my sleep, they still haunt me. All for something I had no control over… something that got me burned at the stack for being a witch when I was thirteen years old. A biological trait passed down from my parents, which gave me enough strength and power to survive their supposedly holy flames and feast upon sweet revenge…which I took piece by piece from their flesh.

What am I? 

Retribution. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vickytreleaven/4425675930/

Classmate Response to Kimberly's Random Impulse

I enjoyed Kimberly’s random impulse this week. It has that strong, suspenseful, punch in the face ending that I have a love/hate relationship with. I dislike it because I want to know now but it will make it to I look for the continuation of the piece and that’s success in my mind. With that said, I do think there are some improvements that would help strengthen the body of it. First, Kimberly throws a lot of names at the reader, it makes it extremely confusing… the end clarifies the beginning a bit, but until that point I was confused (it’s not that hard to do). Also, I think there is a lot of room to add in more detail. It starts with her fixing her hair and then it jumps to opening the door to her daughter’s room. What happens in between the two points? If you are going to make the jump, I’d suggest at least adding in a transition sentence about her walking down the hall or something to that extent. It will help the reader keep up with what is happening in the story. Kimberly does this big jump again in the paragraph where Ruth is waiting and Mary walks in the room. The paragraph starts with Ruth walking down the hall and then waiting for the others. Then Mary walks in and Kimberly instantly jumps into describing her and then there is another jump when Sarah walks. The paragraph starts with Ruth waiting and ends with Sarah in her scrubs ready to go to the doctor’s office. It is a lot going on in only seven sentences. I think with more detail and flowing transitions that section of the story would make more sense to the reader…. But yeah, I’ll be waiting for part 2!

Reading Response

Second reading response of Week #8

Chapter One of Steering the Craft

I like the idea of writing having a sound, whether it's poetry or a story. It sets the mood and the tone for the entire piece, at least in my opinion, and I feel that without the right sound the piece will fall short. I never really thought about reading my work out load. But that is probably something I need to start doing since I am the anti-comma queen and when I get on a roll I like to add words that don't belong. For example, when I'm writing about a crime scene I like to type "sense" instead of "scene." So reading out load might alleviate that issue... might. I really liked the "A Note on Names" section of the chapter. In my work, I take names very seriously... well, kind of. I am very picky about names, they have to flow with the story and have meaning. In high school I came cross the last name Vaughn... since then the main character of everyone of my stories has the last name Vaughn. It's one of those names that just sounds right, no matter the first name. Stephanie Vaughn.Phillip Vaughn, Boris Vaughn, etc. Plus it means "little" in Welsh and since I am little all of my main characters are little. It's like an inside joke with myself. I'm lame and need more friends... I know.

Reading Response

First reading response of week #8

"1/3 1/3 1/3"

 Honestly, I didn't like this short story at all until the last half page. Besides that last half page I found it extremely dull. I know Brautigan was setting the stage for the "pounding at the gates of American Literature" line but if it hadn’t been an assigned reading I wouldn’t have made it passed the first page. I think the melancholy tone of it weights it down too much (funny coming from me, I know). But there were a few things I did like… I like the repetition of “1/3,” I like it when stories return to past ideas and I think Brautigan did it without over doing it. I mean, when you read the title you have no idea what the story is going to be about but he clarifies it in the first three lines and then reminds you throughout. He made sure the reader knew money was, basically, the motive behind the characters creating a novel. The only thing you know about the characters is the fact that they all live in poverty… he gives you little glimpses of who they are, but he goes into more detail about the welfare check than he does any of the characters. None of the characters even have names! At the end I love the transition into the characters creation. The horrible spelling, grammar and the typewriter slash marks, just by doing that it makes the whole story believable in a way. It was something I’d never seen before. Then, the last line… “pounding at the gates of American Literature,” I just love it!