http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/opinion/19barrett.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

The article talks about how the Taliban are beginning to fall apart because they are having troubles finding new people to control them. As such, the Pakistanis are beginning to get scared of the reconciliation that will come from opposing nations.

This article caught my attention because for years everyone has been talking about the taliban being the enemy. But then it seems like nobody has bothered to talk to the Taliban leaders about what they are doing. Now it seems like the Taliban are beginning to fall apart without anybody to control them.

Genres

Topic: Running

Song: I can go the distance, from Disney's Hercules

This song creates a feeling in the reader that makes them want to keep working towards their goal of being a better runner; however, there are limitations to this. This song is not specifically designed to help people run better by teaching them about running or getting good at it.
Article:
http://www.active.com/running/Articles/Tempo_Running_Tips_to_Boost_Your_Speed.htm

The article is about how one can become a better runner. Unlike the song, it doesn't make you want to jump out of your seat and go for a run, but it makes you think of a strategy that will help you to reach your goal of becoming a better runner.

Poem: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/running-61/

In a poem, it creates a different thought environment about the act of running. It makes you feel the writer's love of running instead of the idea of it.

Writing Metaphors

To me writing is a way to create an escape from the world we live in. With words one can create a whole new world with new whole new worlds and universes. In the world of writing one can be whoever, do whatever, and make anything happen. In the world that is created by words, imagination roams free. People can put ideas into a language that everyone can understand and share. Not only writing down ideas or inventions, but writing down the ideas of whole new worlds. Worlds inside worlds, and words inside words. An endless dance of letters creating all new combinations. With only 26 letters people can create endless amounts of words, and then combining those words into sentences doubles the endless possibilities of combinations. So writing is a creation rivaled only by the cosmos that created us.

Storm of Steel: Ernst Junger

First there should be an umlat on Junger.

This book is about a German Soldier (Junger) who fought through World War One, and kept a very detailed journal about it. He fought in numerous of the famous battles throughout the war and wrote about the hardships and evils caused by war. What I love so much about this book is how simplistically Junger writes about war. He has just enough details in the writing that you can picture it in your head, yet the wording is so simplistic that a 12 year old could read it all (maybe not understand it), but I didn't have to find a dictionary to understand what they meant. I highly recommend it for anyone.

Mary Walstonecrap

I have had dealings with Ms. Walstonecrap in Academic Decathlon, and I have grown to hate her and her writings. It seems as though she grew up in a very hostile environment that grew to hate men. Yes feminists do have points, men do get treated a little better, but some of these are just outrageous. At one point she talks of the man eating from the tree of knowledge and the woman got drawn. WRONG!! Eve ate and Adam was drawn to it. She talks about how the common woman should rise up against wrong doing, but in her time period the language and vocabulary she uses wouldn't make sense to the common woman, let alone the fact you can barely read it now. Bland, boring, and just Blah!!

Google?

I agree and yet despise the thoughts proposed in this writing. The thought that reading things in a shorter amount of time and wanting information faster makes sense to me, and that the "deep reading" is leaving us is a good point. But being unable to focus long is not because of the internet. I was born with ADHD, I automatically lose focus. You can't blame google for a mental bonus that I have had my whole life. There are things that I can focus intensely on for hours, including reading, that does not mean that when I lose focus it's because of a website. It's true that I don't read deeply into writings, but that is because most of the writings that are now being published do not have the deep writing prowess that writers like John Steinbeck had. It is not so much that we are unable to read deeply, but we do not have enough writings that we can read deeply into. So it is not that google and the internet is making it worse. It is ourselves that cannot write or read deeply.

Skunks

This essay was both boring and weird. It seems as if the writer had to write about everything, literally, EVERYTHING!! Every agonizing detail, every weary feeling, and they loved to mention the odor of skunks. And they compared things that at times did not make sense. "I thought of a woman tossing, anchored in passion: calm one instant, full-throated the next,". Overall I really did think it was bland and quite boring.

Talk of the Town

These were quite interesting essays in my opinion. Adam makes a good point in saying "the point of law-making is to act as comprehensively as possible, in order to prevent the next one". Does this sound like something our government would do? Plan ahead? Adam quotes in his writing Virgina's governor talking about how people use these events as a political hobby horse, but then he continues to write on against the government using example much like the Virginia college tragedy. He writes almost hypocritically. In some ways he is just speaking mournfully and in others he is talking against everything our government does. Yes shootings are horrible, but we must think about the millions rather then just the 100's that die, that sounds horrid, and it is, but that's the truth.

Susan makes interesting points about the 9/11 attacks. She talks about how America is not ok and this was not pearl harbor. And I entirely agree with her. America today compared to Pearl Harbor had almost no response to the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon. When Pearl Harbor was attacked a Japanese general was quoted saying, "I fear we have awoken a sleeping giant". We were attacked and the world then saw one of the greatest showing of arms in history. We reacted in anger. The whole nation jumped at the chance to go overseas and fight for our country. Now people say, "I want war!!! send the troops not me". How do you fight a war with that?

Intro

Ahh senior year has arrived; yet, I know I am in for a year of lots of hard work and tears.

You see I have forgotten myself already. My name is Alex Olson, some of you know me as AO; whichever you prefer. I am 17 at the moment and am involved in cross country, track, drum corps, school, academic decathlon, breathing, living, and one day dying. At the moment I feel that's all some of you need to know. If you want to know more about me, ask me. I don't bite much.

Caucasia: a thought

So far into Caucasia, I have found the book is very slow and boring. It seems to be instead of letting the plot shape her characters, she is setting the characters as more important then the plot. She is creating almost no action, or twist, that makes me want to pick up the book and read. But I don't know if she is doing this for a specific reason. Maybe it's a style that she has chosen to write with or just being a pain to the readers. Since I can't ask her myself I will just have to stick with guessing that it's a style choice. But as I delve farther into Caucasia I hope to find more twists and action.

Killing Us Softly

In the video we saw Jean Kilbourne talk about how the media is portraying women. Her assesment in ways is correct, the subliminal messaging being put on young girls about how they should look can effect their lifestyle. However she completely misses the fact that women "supposed" to be skinny has been around since ancient times and has been a status in our culture forever. We cannot trace the origins of these effects in just this time period. She instantly assumes that the advertisement is causing the genetically honed NEED to be perfect. Of course the argument can be made of who decides what perfect really is. Is it the population that decides? Or one individual? But that is a different topic entirely.

She brings up the issue of abuse against women that has been brought on by advertisements. She states that showing men in more powerful positions and as more agressive. However, we all know younger men are pumped full of testosterone which increases violent activity. This is not advertisement which is causing people to become more violent, but a natural reaction of men. Once again this has been around for hundreds of years and she is trying to make an insignificant connection to advertisements. Most of these advertisements with women are portraying women's products. Why would a man want to read about a product he will never need?

Some of these connections made are far-reaching at best and can be counted out. This is only one person's opinion. Every scientifical discovery ever made has to be backed by numerous sources and repeated again and again.

I am the messenger.

I have been assigned to the book "I am the Messenger" by Mark Zusak. I have since finished the book but will attempt to not give anything away. This book is an extremely easy read with simple vocabulary and an easy linear plot to follow. The book follows a 19 year old boy named Ed Kennedy. It starts with him breaking up a robbery and then receiving a card with three adresses on it. He begins to find that these adresses are real places in which people need his help, and so he begins to help people all over his town. Ranging from getting some shoes to helping a women from her husband.

In our lit circle, we found that Ed reminds us quite a lot of Holden. Not so much that he hates everyone and complains about everything, but more the fact that he doesn't have very many outside connections with friends and family. He has only three friends and his dog the Doorman. He is a 19 year old who wrote his age as being 22 to be able to drive cabs for his job. He realizes in the book that he's probably never going to amount to anything and he lives with that. However we find as the book progresses that he has a purpose.

Choice novels

So we have been introduced to the idea that we will have a choice novel to read and think about. However, my classmates and I have been led astray by our leader, for the "choices" of books are among a predetermined list that must include our decision. Therefore in essence we are not really choosing which books we read but being told we have to read a specific book from the predestined books. I am not so much angry at the choice of books we get because they are fairly decent looking books, no, I am angry at the misleading that has been put onto us by giving us the "choice".

Persepolis

And so I begin my first graphic novel. I must say going into this I assumed that the pictures would merely slow down my reading and that I would be unable to focus on the plot and details that are happening in the book. But I find that the pictures do not bog me down as expected, but rather they make me read faster. However, this increased speed is beginning to make me wonder if I am missing some of the key factors of the story due to just skipping over them.

I almost prefer reading graphic novels the more I read into Persepolis. It feels as if I do not have to think about what the writer is trying to actually say to us and I can see what they mean. With this graphic novel I could merely look at the picture and still understand the concept of what the author is saying.

Monologue

For this monologue I will be taking the voice of Zero Punctuation. He is a video game reviewer who swears (i will not include that) and creates random metaphors and similes to show how much he dislikes almost every game he reviews. Some of the language that follows is still slightly vulgar and do not think that I actually think this way for I am merely copying his voice. Enjoy

So recently after years of listening to you half-wits out there going on about Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens being one of the best books ever I decided to review it, actually more realistically is that Academic Decathlon decided to leave the burning pile of dog crap in a bag on our front porch so I had to read it. This book was supposedly written about how London and Paris were in ways parallel or something during the French Revolution, of course this was told to me later because the actual book just switches scenes back and forth between each city and we are supposed to assume there's a reason to his mental ramblings. For the first two segments or "Chapters" of this book the reader is literally sitting around with their fingers up their butts wondering when the writer is going to get off his bong and start making sense. For it seems that the writer wants to make sure you know every insignificant character's entire family history and their life story, taking two pages to talk about the man who came in, said "message" and then walked back out of the darn door. Then you never see that character again in the god forsaken book. Now it only gets interesting in the third "chapter" when the French Revolution finally gets rolling and starts to involve the characters a little bit more then just fleeting glances. I don't want to give away the book but the true part I liked was probably only the last 10 pages or so. Otherwise the rest of the book follows my previous description as a burning bag of dog crap.

And so you historic book lovers you can keep your Dickens crap to yourselves.

The Lavender Ladies

When Holden decides to go to the Lavender Room Bar in the hotel he runs into three young ladies lounging around looking for movie stars to walk in. When Holden arrives at the bar he wants to try and order an alcholic drink but the waiter denies him without ID. This makes Holden a little upset at the turn of events. Then he starts eyeing a bunch of girls sitting in a booth a little ways from him. He decides that he's going to go dance with the blonde girl because the others were just out of "hunger". When he actually gets up to dance with her however he soon hates her for the way she acts and thinks. Once again Holden is following the path of bipolarism that his character constantly breeches on. This is a very confusing time for the reader because he makes us wonder why he got up to dance with them in the first place. Then when he finds out that the girls are merely there because they saw a movie star there recently, he jokes one of them how she just missed the movie star walking by behind her and then thinks that that was such a mean thing to do.

This once again brings about the question, "what is wrong with Holden?". We see that he decides to go to the bar to dance and drink yet when he gets there he hates the band and hates why he even went. Then he decides to dance with girls and hates every minute. He is able to torture people with his words and chooses to do so, yet he is sorry for how mean he is to them after the fact. "What is wrong with Holden?"

Catching Catcher Fever

I am much farther into the book then I was in my last post and yet I still find that the Holden's overall character has not changed much at all. When Holden went into the city to stay in a hotel he decided that he would go down to the club. But just like him what he thought was a great idea, when he got there he just talked about how much he hated the place and how he was surrounded by phonies and all that. He sees three girls sitting near him and he decides he wants to dance with them, and yet as soon as he gets near them he hates them. It seems as if noone is up to his level, as if he is superior in one form or another to every single person he sees or meets. And at the club when Lillian came up to talk to him he lied his way away from her after saying how she was kind of nice.

Later when he got back to the hotel, the elevator guy offered him a prostitute and he decieded that it would be a good idea to get one. When she got to his room however he decided against the whole thing and just talked to her. That scene reminded me of the movie Moulin Rouge, when Ewan Mcgregor just talked to Nicole Kidman even though she was a "whore" (apoligies for language and or bad feelings to anyone). And when the man came back to demand that Holden pay more he just tried to fight him after saying that he was one of the biggest wimps in the world. I am trying to decide whether Holden has some sort of mental "handicap" that stops him from 1. creating relationships 2. allowing people to see him for who he really is, or 3. hating everything and everyone around him for almost no apparent reasons.

Catcher

So far I'm only a little into the book; however, as much as a find the character to be a stupid kid who purposely fails his classes, I find a weird attraction to his character. His laid back hate-life attitude is appealing in ways and I find that his dialogues have hidden meanings to them and that he is really an intelligent young man beneath the outer layer. Except when he visits his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, he seems as if as much as he talks nicely about a person he finds every fault he can and then critizes them for it. Later I don't know if I can trust Holden due to the fact that he states "I'm the biggest liar you have ever seen". This makes me wonder if what he is actually telling the reader can be really trust worthy in his descriptions of what happens. He also seems to vary his feelings in record times. When he's with Sladlater he is pissed about how he is clean yet secretly not, and as soon as Sladlater mentions he's going on a date with Jane he becomes extremely hyper, but he keeps mentioning that he should go down and say hi, and yet he never does. This reminded my of Dr. House. How he hates life and hates people and seems to have relationship phobia. Almost as if he doesn't want people close to him and realize that he isn't a stupid kid who flunked but a kid who just didn't try. The book keeps leading me back to the idea that Holden is a liar when he starts lying about the lady's kid when he's on the train. What's the use of telling his mom the lies? It seems as if he gets pleasure out of seeing how many lies a person is able to take before they see right through them.

To Esme by J. D. Salinger

The entirety of this story very much reminded me of Band of Brothers. The scene when he went into the church to watch the choir reminded me of one of the episodes when the company watched a choir after the assault on Foy. And when Salinger met the girl in the cafe, it reminded me of when Winters ran into the young boy on a tram. But the way he talked about the girl sometimes made me wonder if he was a pedophile, until later in the story when he talked to her about how devoid of human contact he was and I realized he was just looking for someone to talk to. But the girl seemed to be beyond her age in intelligence, but there were times when I was reminded of how young she really was. However later in the story when it talked of him after the war was over I became slightly confused. He never explained whether it was the war or something else that happened that caused the mental breakdowns and weird habits. It seemed more and more as if he was suffering under post-traumatic-stress, and yet at times it seemed as though he was just under a lot of stress. By the end of the story it seems as if he has found a way to rise up out of his stressful slump and become a normal human being again.

"Who am I?"

My name is Alex Olson. Most of you readers will know me. However, for those who don't, I am 16 going on 17. I am about 6 feet give or take a foot. I like to run but I'm quite lazy. I love drumming but I don't like music that much. I compete in Drum Corps International which is marching band only professionally done and much more competitive. I am an avid reader when I can find the time. My favorite book series has got to be the Eragon series. Although the plot is not the greatest and it is not very intellectually challenging I very much like the idea of it. Those who have seen the movie of it after reading the books though will agree that the movie was one of the single worst remakes of a book that has ever been created.