Week Elevin Independent Reading

This week I read more from Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. I thought it was interesting how the ending of the book was so different from the movie's. The movie ends with the main villain Sean Miller, killing himself while trying to kill Jack. the movie end with a large shoot-out between the terrorists and a group of marines and policemen.

Short Story Project Three

I decided to do this short story project on The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson.
This story is about a small town, and it’s the day of the town’s annual lottery. The head of each family draws for their family. After each head of family draws, it is discovered that Bill Hutchinson, the head of the Hutchinson family, drew the marked piece of paper. All five member of the Hutchinson family must then draw from a group of five pieces of paper. After the family draws, it is discovered that Mrs. Hutchinson has the piece with the black spot. She is then stoned by the people of the Town.
I thought that the story was interesting, but at the same time rather sick.
One thing that I thought was very strange was how each person in the town came so willingly. Mrs. Hutchinson, who ends up being the person who gets stoned, comes running to the lottery because she “forgot what day it was”. The character Old Man Warner says that this was his “seventy-seventh year in the lottery, seventy-seventh time”. It is strange to me that a person would participate at all, let alone seventy-seven times. Although this is fiction it shows how people go along with things, simply because they don’t know any different. The people who stone Mrs. Hutchinson are her neighbors and friends. Someone even gives her son a stone.
The subject of this story is the town’s lottery. The theme, in my opinion is that, people sometimes do things just because it’s a tradition. The people of the town continue this lottery every year, because they did it the year before, and the year before that, and so on.
The movie I chose to include in this project was Real Genius. The subject
Of the movie is, Chris and Mitch have to build a laser so that Chris can graduate from college, and Mitch can pass his first semester. The theme is, people need to lighten up, do things for themselves more, and stop trying to make everyone else happy. The theme is shown during the movie on many times, mostly by the character Chris, who refuses to be serious and not have fun. For instance, Chris and one of his buddies coat their dorm’s hall floor in ice and skate around on it saying they are disgusted by everyone just wanting to study. Another example is shown in the video below.

Common Misconceptions about American Pit Bull Terriers

In recent years the American Pit Bull Terrier (APBT) has been a subject of great controversy. There have been many attacks against humans and dogs by APBTs. They have been referred to as being blood thirsty, kid killers, killing machines, and other things that are both unpleasant, and stereotypical. They have been destroyed by mainstream media, and have been outlawed in certain countries and areas of the US. What people seem to forget is, most of these occurrences could have been avoided if the owners had had a better knowledge of the breed, had better prepared for the responsibility of ownership, and had bought the dog for the right reasons.
The breed was made for specific reasons, and owners need to know what
these were, and what genetic tendencies this would give the dogs. American Pit Bull Terriers came into existence from cross breeding of Old English Bulldogs and various Terriers living in the area of the British Isles. Terriers were bred for hunting small game, such as badgers, and weasels. Old English Bulldogs were bred for bull-baiting. This is a sport where an enraged bull is put in a ring with any number of dogs. Then the bull and the dogs would fight until there was only one species alive.
When bull-baiting and dog fighting was outlawed in 1835, illegal dog
fighting became popular because it was easy to hide. Many of these fights are to the death, but not all. Other are stopped by the owners, who usually pry the dogs’ jaws open with a jack, then spray a water hose down their throat. Breeders wanted the dogs to be aggressive towards other dogs, but not towards them, and so they bred for those specific traits. Dog fighting can be very traumatic for dogs, especially because of the way fights end, and since the owners usually beat the dogs before fights. This can cause the dogs to be irrational, and quick to violence (hence the attacks).
There are certain things owners of APBTs should do from the start of their ownership. First of all, they should not practice dog fighting. They should socialize the dog with other dogs, and continue this throughout the dog’s life. They should also practice strict obedience training.
Most of the attacks were done by dogs that were either in bad living condition, were untrained, weren’t socialized, had been beaten, put in dog fights or any combinations that can be made from the many. Because of their history, they have been considered “tough guy dogs”, and are bought by people who think that having a “Pit Pull” enhances their status. These people think that by having a dog that was bred to fight, they become just as tough as the dog. This causes other people to think that the dogs are instinctively mean. There is a phrase that says “attitude reflects leadership”. Well, a dog reflects it’s owner. No matter the breed.
The breed of dog that most commonly bites humans is the Cocker Spaniel. You probably didn’t know that. The reason why is that, when a Cocker spaniel bites someone, nobody hears about it, because they can’t do any real damage, and because they’re just so cute. When an APBT bites someone, it’s all over the eleven o’clock news, because they can do damage, and because they’re so vicious looking.
I have owned an American Pit Bull Terrier for thirteen of my sixteen year long life. My dog’s name is Sweetie. She hasn’t ever deliberately bit me. The closest thing to viciousness that has ever come out of her was when she used to nock me onto my back, so that she could lick my face. Sweetie is annoyingly loving. When a family member is sick, and has fallen asleep on the couch, they are usually woken by Sweetie licking their face. Every night she runs from one family member to the next, wanting to lick them, and be petted.
American Pit Bull Terriers are a loving breed that wants nothing more than to please their owner. It’s the owner’s responsibility to give them a good goal.

Week Ten Independent Reading

This week I read more from Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. I thought it was interesting how the terrorist have planned "accidents" that they use to notify each other of things without blowing their covers. For instance, in this portion of the book a man named Denis Cooley who is a terrorist, who's cover is being a book sales man, discovers that his office is being watched. He then calls one of his partners, at his cover job and asks if he is a man that works on the floor above. This alerts the fellow terrorist that Cooley's cover is blown.

Week Nine Independent Reading

This week I read more from Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. In the portion that I read this week, the gun that was used against Mrs. Ryan and the state trooper was recovered. It was found in a quarry by a boy who was fishing. When the gun was brought to the FBI, they cleaned it and fired it. They then compaired the bullets they fired with the bullet that killed the state trooper, and were able to find that the gun was the one used in the attack.

Short Story Project Two

I decided to do this project on a chapter of Tim O’Brien’s The Things
They Carried. This book was made from the author’s memories of his time served in the Vietnam War. In this chapter Tim kills a man in battle. Tim and his squad had come upon him in the jungle, fully armed, and ready to attack. The only reason this man died instead of Tim, was the vigilance of his entire squad. The only Reason Tim had killed him instead of one of his squad mates, was because Tim happened to pull his trigger first.

Tim has a lot of trouble coming to terms with what had happened. He sits
in silence, ignoring everything and everyone, except the carcass that lies mere yards away from him. Because of his refusal to talk, or even listen to what his squad mates have to say about what happened, his imagination starts to make things worse as it would with anyone in a similar position. He starts to make up scenarios about what this man was like, and where he was from.

I think that when people do something that is so rare for them and as unchangeable as killing someone, even when it is in self-defense, their own minds try to make them believe that it was wrong. Even though this person was trying to kill Tim, he felt guilt for killing him. Life is the most important thing to a person, whether they realize it or not. Once you’ve lost you life, there isn’t much more you can lose. I think when you aren’t prepared; the thought of having taken the life of another, for the reason that they wanted to take yours can be very overwhelming. Not only are you dealing with the thought of having taken a life, but you are also trying to come to terms with the fact that you almost lost your own life.

I think that the author was trying to prepare future soldiers for the
psychological trials that come with the battlefield. I think that he wanted them to know that they need to be able to keep moving after instances like this, and put it behind them. I think that he wanted them to know that they must let what is done be done, and not let it affect what they will do next.

I think that he wanted people to see what can happen when you are in a
situation like this and aren’t prepared. I think he wanted them to know that when you don’t move on, you have to carry the weight of not only your own near-death experience, but also the death of someone else. Everyone knows that life isn’t easy. I think that the author knows that it is a lot harder when you carry the death of someone else.

There is a very common phrase that many people have said and thought.
That phrase is, “I wish I had known them, what I know now.” Another phrase is, “history repeats itself.” Many of us will have to experience things that have happened to people before us. By reading about the experiences that others have had in their lives, we can apply the knowledge that they recovered to our own lives, therefore allowing us to prepare ourselves for similar experiences.

Short Story Project One: Harrison Bergeron

For my first short story project I read Kurt Vonnegut’s short story Harrison
Bergeron. The story takes place in the year two-thousand-eighty-one. In the story, every person is made completely equal. Not a single person is allowed to superior in any aspect. The way that the government keeps everyone equal is by handicapping those are superior in certain ways. For instance, people who are stronger than others have to wear weight bags on there bodies to make them weaker. Smarter people have to wear earpiece that will produce a random and startling sound to make them lose their train of thought. Good looking people had to wear cosmetics that make them look ugly.

At the beginning of the story the agents of the woman who enforces the handicaps, known as the Handicapper General, arrests Harrison, the son of George and Hazel Bergeron. Hazel and George were very sad, but weren’t able to be so for long. Hazel was a person of “perfectly average intelligence”, who could only think for a very short amount of time. George on the other hand was very intelligent was handicapped with one of the earpieces.

I thought that this story was very interesting. What I thought it showed was
what complete socialism would be like. What it would be like if a government tried to make everyone equal in every aspect of life. What it would be like if we were denied the natural gifts God gave us, simply because there were others who didn’t have them. Those who were gifted were forced to be burdened.

I thought it was interesting how being disabled was glorified, while being
able was discouraged. Being skilled was also discouraged. Ballerinas who were more graceful than the others, had to wear extra weights to make them less graceful. People who were gifted speakers were not allowed to be public speakers. Instead people with speech impediments were public speakers.

I thought that the events that took place after Harrison’s escape was
interesting. When he escaped, he first proclaimed himself Emperor, and then took his handicaps of himself. He then chose an Empress, who he freed from her handicaps. After being tormented by the handicaps for four years, he hadn’t any interest to free anyone but himself and his empress. After living under complete control of someone else, he demanded that everyone do as he says, instead of freeing them as well

I think that the character Harrison, was made to be exactly the opposite of
what the government in the story wants people to be. They say that, “he is a genius, and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous”. It is also stated that “he is exactly seven feet tall”, and good looking. He could not be restrained by handicaps, and the one he had were more extreme than the ones worn by anyone else. Other people’s handicaps were orderly, while his were hanging all over him.

The author tells us some of the aspects of Harrison, while his actions tell the
others. The author states that “he is exactly seven feet tall” and that, “to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber-ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggletooth random”. One thing that his actions tell are his athleticism, where it says that, “Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played”. Also his being under-handicapped is demonstrated when, “Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper”.

One allusion that I saw was when Harrison was stripping himself of his
handicaps. It says that, “He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder”. Thor is god from Norse mythology. I also saw a metaphor. When referring to one of the ballerinas it reads: “Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen” she said in a grackle squawk.




Simile: Figure of speech that makes a comparison between things, using a words such as like, as, resemble, or than.

Metaphor: Figure of speech that makes a comparison between things, in which ne thing becomes another thing without the use of words such as like, as, than, or resembles.

Personification: Special kind of metaphor where something nonhuman is talked about as if it was human.

Allusion: A reference made to another piece of literature, or to pop culture.

Hyperbole: An exaggeration made to give emphasis.

Irony: Something that is oxymoronic, something that is the opposite of what is expected.

Week Eight Independent Reading

This week I read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. One thing that I found interesting was how the C.I.A. use satellites for reconnaissance. For instance, in the book there are suspected terrorist camps in Africa. to find out if they actually are, the C.I.A. would have the satellites take pictures of the camps as they passed over. Some of the groups who had very good intelligence, knew when the Satellites passed over and would go indoors.

What Communities in Schools has Done for Me

I was home schooled and liked being so for the most part. I was home schooled for many reasons. One of which was that I’ve always been a bit of a late bloomer. I was also pretty shy, and the thought of many students and screaming teachers trying to control them scared me to death. I have a July birthday, which meant my parents had to make the choice of whether they would have me doing the work of older kids, or of younger kids. I have two older brothers and I always wanted to be exactly like them. They were doing fourth and sixth grade, but I was just going to do kindergarten, which they told me wasn’t real school. So when my parents asked me what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to start first grade!
First grade was great. I was the champion of addition. As long as the final answer didn’t exceed twelve, I was fine. Once it got to thirteen things got hairy, but in first grade it never went any further. Second, third, and fourth grade went just as well. Fifth grade didn’t go quite so well. My arithmetic struggled while my reading level came to a stand still. I also wrote at a horribly slow pace. Part of the reason is that I would subconsciously write the letters to words out of order, even when I knew how to spell them. After a few years and a comprehension class I started to regain the ground I had lost in my schooling, although I still wrote just as slow.
Not too long ago I realized that one of the reasons for my difficulty with writing was that I had hereditary hand tremors. It amazed me that I hadn’t ever noticed it before, but when I thought back, I realized that it had always been there. I always had to bear down extremely hard to keep my hand from shaking. Around this same time I found out that my problem with not being able to write the letters of words in the correct order had a name: Dysgraphia. I didn’t have any idea that my little problem was both common and known. I thought I just had a weird habit that I couldn’t break.
A few months ago I was hoping I would be able to start my junior year of
high school. Both of my brothers had started going to schools by the time they had reached their junior years, and my mom was unsure if she would be able to teach me. I was unsure if I would be able to take notes during lectures, or if I would even learn anything in a classroom of forty-five kids, with one teacher trying to control them all. Every option we looked into didn’t fit, or we couldn’t afford.
One day my mom told me about a school called Classic City Performance Learning Center, which had been started by a group called Communities in Schools. She told me about how all of the schools started by Communities in Schools, had a fifteen student per classroom rule. She also told me about how almost all of the work is done on computers, and therefore not much note taking. The last thing she told me about was how it is self paced. It sounded like we might have found what I was looking for.
On August seventh two-thousand-eight, I started going to Classic City Performance Learning Center, a Communities in Schools, school. I quickly found out that small number of students, the work being mostly on computer, and the self paced nature was exactly what I needed. I was able to keep up, and even get ahead in some in one class. I have now completed that class and moved on to another, which I’ll be finishing at the time the first class was intended to end. Communities in Schools is not only helping me catch up, but also giving me the chance to get ahead. I am very thankful for Communities in Schools, because I haven’t any idea what I would be doing now if not for them.

Week Seven Independent Reading

This week I read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. In the portion I read, the terrorists made an attempt to get revenge on Jack and the rest of the Ryan family. It was a very well planned attack that happened at two different locations at the same time. They had followed the Ryans for a good while, learning their routines and habits so that they could practically predict where they would be at any given time.

Independent Reading week Six

This week I read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. In what I read this week, Jack Ryan goes back to do some work for the CIA. it was interesting how the CIA headquarters are described. It is described as very plain, a bit ugly and kind of messy. they have a kiosk in the lobby that sells soft drinks and cigarettes. The kiosk is worked by blind people, because they are less of a security threat.

Mom's Old Minivan

When I was a little kid, my mom had an old Plymouth minivan. It was
junky in just about every way possible. For starters it looked bad. The model was not too good looking, while this one also had faded paint that in some places ceased to exist. The whole hood and most of the roof had absolutely no paint, and left behind the light gray primer. If you are a person who is easily entertained, you would have a lot of fun with the hood, because you could easily pick off the leftover paint. It was completely box shaped. It was almost all right angles. Anything aerodynamic, had nothing to do with this van. For some strange reason, the interior designer decided to make the seats a conversion of leather and cloth. The back of the seats and the armrest were leather, while the actual seat cushions were cloth. The van as a whole was visually painful.
With a car that ugly you would hope that it was comfortable, but, it
wasn’t. Most of the time the air-conditioning didn’t work, and with the Georgia summer heat, riding in that van could be pretty nauseating. Those leather armrests also split on a bunch of spots, so then they would scratch you if you put any weight on them. Being that we spilled drinks on the armrests as well, that made them uncomfortably sticky. In fact we had spilled things on just about the entire inside of the car, which made most of it pretty sticky. The seat cushions were so smashed that they were no longer anywhere near comfortable. In the back seats you could feel metal bars beneath the cushions. Sitting on the carpet in the trunk was actually more comfortable than the back seats, and yes on a few occasions I snuck into the trunk as my mom was driving. Then there was the sliding door. Boy was that thing fun. Before closing that door you should have had to sign a form stating that, “all damage done to your shoulder is your own fault.” I wasn’t able to close that door for myself until I was seven years old.
The thing didn’t sound too great either. First of all it was a bit too loud for
a minivan. Then, the sounds that it did produce were bad ones. It sounded like someone had dumped gravel into all of the important parts. The muffler didn’t work too well. This gave it the sound of a continuous belch. The seats made a lot of noise too. They creaked every time anyone moved. Then there was that sliding door again. If you were able to close it, it could diffidently wake neighbors. It was the loud sound of scraping metal that was not very kind to ears.
After all of those unfortunate factors, strangely enough, it didn’t smell that
bad. The smell was an interesting collaboration of the burgers, fries, burritos, and all other drive-through foods that we had eaten in that van, mixed with all of the soft drinks we had spilled on the floor and seats. There was a bad side to the way it smelled though. We had lost a lot of crayons into and beneath the seats, and crayons happen to be one of my least favorite smells. Something about them just makes me gag. I was a colored pencils only kid. Most of the time, you could focus on the drive-through smell instead of the crayon smell. This made the van smell very unique. It was the kind of smell that made you feel comfortable, but also the kind of smell that made you think that you might get clogged arteries or have a heart attack just from breathing the drive-through air pollution.
My dad always had a rule for our family, “don’t get a new car until the one you have breaks”. Thank God, it finally did break. My mom did get a new van, and although new vehicles do cost money, having a replacement for the old one was an overall relief. It’s been about seven years since them. We gave it to a guy who takes cars and sells their pieces. Now people all over northeast Georgia gets to experience my mom’s van, one piece at a time.

Week Five Independent Reading

This week I read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. It was interesting how it showed how when transferring high priority prisoners, police go to great extents to make sure that there is no interference. Going as far as to transfer the prisoner at four A.M. on Christmas mourning. during the transfer three identical armoured vans drove in seperated directions. All of them taking only back roads.

Week Four Independent Reading

This week I read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot games. In the portion that I read Jack and his family go back to America on a Concorde jet. I thought that the scientific things about the plane were pretty interesting. when at it's cruising speed of thirteen hundred fifty-five miles per hour, at an altitude of fifty-nine thousand feet, the air outside was negative sixty degrees Celsius while the aircraft skin was one hundred degrees Celsius. because of all of these factors the plane becomes eleven inches longer than it is on ground.

A Small Portion of My Life

When you’re seven, it doesn’t take much to scare you. When you’re seven,
small things look big.
When I was seven, I decide to go for a bike ride. I did this pretty much
every day. First, I would come down my driveway as fast as I could. I liked doing this because my driveway was both long and steep. By the time I’d get to the bottom, I’d be going so fast, that sometimes I would have a hard time staying on the bike when it hit the curb! I always loved a good adrenaline rush from a very young age. So this day’s ride started just like any other day’s. I came down the driveway as usual and made the sharp left turn that would send me racing down towards the cul-de-sac. All of the kids in my neighborhood loved doing this. We would race each other (or when alone, some imaginary competitor), peddling as fast as we could, all the way to the cul-de-sac. Whoever finished in last place would usually get taunted the whole ride home. I was the youngest and smallest kid on my street, so yes, ordinarily I’d receive most of the taunts. (This had a large part in my liking of riding alone)
On this day I was riding alone. I had no idea what lay ahead for me. In
fact, I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of there being anything out of the ordinary down at the end of the street. I had no idea that there was something down there that later that day I would think had changed my life forever! When I entered the cul-de-sac, I slowed down a little to make the wide swooping turn. As I reached the halfway point, out of the corner of my right eye I saw something take a great leap. Then, I turned my head and saw a beast! A Jack Russell Terrier! It stood at an astounding thirteen inches tall! With epinephrine rushing through my veins, I turned and peddled as hard as I could. I was going uphill now, and my bike was a one gear bike. I didn’t have the option of dropping into the lowest gear to make things easier. My bike was completely old fashioned.
I peddled harder than I thought possible. My thighs and calves throbbed in
pain. I looked back to see this great beast gaining ground on me. His muscles rippled as he ran. He was eighteen pounds of pure power, and I was no match. My fear started to overwhelm me, when all of the sudden… he stopped. He walked into the grass and started to urinate. “Finally! A break!” I thought. I knew that this might be my one and only chance of an escape. So I kept peddling. He stopped urinating.
The chase resumed. As he started to regain ground, I wished for my luck to
repeat itself. And it did. For a second time, he stopped to urinate. “Yes!” I thought to myself. I quickly regained the ground I had lost. And he finished relieving himself.
Finally, I reached the hill’s peak! I knew that since it was downhill from
here I could easily outrun him. So, after peddling for a few more moments I stopped. I took in as much oxygen as I could in one breath. Then I turned my head towards the thing which I had fled from. I wanted one last look at this dog. I looked and I saw him stop, walk into the grass, and urinate, one last time. He then turned and went home.
When I thought about my bike ride later that day, I thought I had had a
near death experience. When I think about it now, I don’t think a Jack Russell Terrier could kill a person. I doubt it could truly injure one, even a person as small as I was at that time. I guess it goes to show, “When you’re seven, it doesn’t take much to scare you. When you’re seven, small things look big.”

Week Three Independent Reading

This week i again read more of Patriot Games, by Tom Clancy. In this part of the story a trial is taking place for the terrorist Sean Miller.it was interesting how the prosecutor and all of the media decided to not call him a terrorist, and instead call him a criminal. They decided to charge him with first degree murder instead of terrorism so as to not inspire another attack.

Week Two Independent Reading

This week i read more of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. This week i also saw the movie adaption of this book and so i decided to compare. In the book the character Jack Ryan is in a hospital for four and a half chapters, which is over fifty pages. In the movie however he is in the hospital for two sceens, which takes about two minutes of time. Also in the book the terrorist attack was on the Prince of Wales, his wife and their child. In the movie the attack was on Lord William Holmes, British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and a distant member of the British Royal Family.

Week One Independent Reading

This week I read a portion of the book Patriot Games, by Tom Clancy. This book is about Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst, who by sheer chance, stops a terrorist attack on British royalty. It was interesting how the book shows, that trained men do what they are trained to do, instinctively. It was also interesting how it showed how not all terrorist are just mindless trigger pullers, but that some are very educated and very strategic. I also found it funny how it showed how people under high dosages of pain-killers, tend to say things that they usually wouldn't.