On being a writer (?)

Of course being a writer has made me look at the world differently! I am now comparing unicycles to lollipops, lollipops to model solar systems, and model solar systems to a game of marbles. What is wrong with me? I am also looking for logical fallacies and Orwellian terms in EVERY SPEECH THAT I LISTEN TO. (the pastor's sermon, the history presentation, Obama's interviews, etc.) I probably re-write things and over-think stuff way more than I used to, too.

I read differently, as well. I pay attention to parallelisms, word choice, and other rhetorical devices more than I used to.

Thoughts on Santa, Religion, and surviving the Relatives...

It's almost Christmas. Almost for most people. I had one of my Christmases this weekend. It lasted from brunch well into the night, and I was totally burned out afterwards. Being an introvert, I lose energy when I am around large groups of people. Don't get me wrong, I love my relatives, but enough is enough. I also celebrated my mom's, grandma's, and mom's-cousin's (does that make him my uncle or my something cousin?) birthdays this weekend. From my recent experiences with I-hardly-ever-see-you-and-to-be-honest-I-don't-know-your-last-names kind of relatives, I have learned a few tips and tricks. 1. Have a generic game, like ping-pong or ice skating ready. 2. If you really don't want to talk to people, or you need a break, suggest watching a movie. 3. Volunteer to help with food. It scores you major points with the moms and it gives you something to do so that you aren't just standing around. 4. Don't shoot a Nerf gun at your brother unless you plan on starting a war.

Also, if you are around younger relatives, be gentle with the Santa topic. I have never believed that Santa existed, but many young'uns do. I find it sad and somewhat heartless that parents will lie to their children. What do they mean to accomplish? Do they do it for their own pleasure, to see their kids being adorably gullible? Do they do it so that their kids will not feel "left out" when they look back? I have never felt like I was missing anything. In fact, when I was younger and more outspoken, I crusaded against Santa. To my mother's horror, I told her best friend's kids that Santa wasn't real. Don't do that. Let the parents tell their kids the truth so that the parents can take all the resulting tantrums.

Santa and religion. Religion and santa. Regardless of what some people think, the two have nothing to do with one another. Christmas is a celebration of Christ's birth, not a commercialized holiday dedicated to shopping and brainwashing little children into believing that a fat guy dressed in red gives them presents. That's so creepy. I am grateful to my family for giving me happy holidays celebrating the arrival of the Savior on Earth. To me, three wise men traveling to Bethlehem is a much more romantic picture than one sleigh pulled through the sky by mutant reindeer. 

nerdy nerd (me)

1. Even though I got over 100% on my last big math test, I made corrections to gain half of a point. The test was 50 points plus extra credit.
2. Ping pong is awesome.
3. I own (and sometimes even use) a unicycle.
4. I knit and crochet.
5. I shop online in the clearance section.
6. I have a blog.
7. I love animated movies and old TV shows.
8. Books are sweet!
9. I am pestering my parents to start a mini-library upstairs.
10. I have a well-stocked pencil pouch.
11. I get out all of my #2 pencils during a scantron test. (usually 5-7 pencils)
12. I get ticked when someone doesn't give my pencil back.
13. The longest I have gone without looking at Skyward is a week.
14. I always bring a lunch from home.
15. I have elbow-sized bandaids in my backpack.
16. I wear glasses sometimes.
17. I take AP classes mostly because I like the students in them.
18. I don't play school sports.
19. I have never been to a football game.
20. I have never sent a text.
21. I hate parties.
22. I avoid social events at all costs.
23. Dodgeball is torture.
24. Fuzzy socks rock.
25. I'm an introvert.
26. I don't have any games on my graphing calculator.
27. Several people have asked me if I am a teacher.
28. I am easily amused. I don't really get bored.
29. I used to have a pet fish. He chased a laser pointer. It was awesome.
30. I like baking cookies.

answers to Abstraction

1.description
2.cause and effect
3.narration
4.classification/division
5.example
6.comparison/contrast

Abstraction

1. When you are afraid, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Your heart beats faster, faster, faster. Every muscle in your body feels spring-loaded and ready to snap. Your mouth is dry and you cannot stare at one thing. Your glance shifts around the room relentlessly. Every sound is magnified, but the sound of your heartbeat against your eardrum is perhaps the loudest.
2. A grizzly bear stands on its hind legs not fifteen feet away, and you stop dead in your tracks, your heart pounding. Your little brother pops around the corner and yells "Rawr!", and you nearly wet your pants. Your pen stops working in the last 10 minutes of an FRQ, and you nearly fall out of your chair when reaching to snatch one off of the floor. You walk through a haunted house, and as you turn a corner a hand grabs you, so you punch the crap out of whatever creature is attached to the hand. You experience something frightening, and so you react based on fear.
3. I sat crouched near the deck, not daring to move as my enemy moved ever closer to becoming my victim. Capture the flag was played in the dead of night at my cabin, and it was a full moon. I feared that my brother, who was unwittingly crawling under the deck towards me, would see my silhouette near the overturned wheelbarrel and turn around before he crossed over onto my side. As he slowly army crawled nearer, my heart pulsed and I thought that surely he would spot me. He was well past the line now, and still I waited as the muscles in my neck tightened. He stopped, and quivered, "Kkkaitlin?". I sprung up, ran to the side of the deck, crouched down, and lauched myself underneath it. I army crawled through the dirt to my now scream-laughing brother who had curled up into a fetal position. I tagged him and he went to jail.
4. Fear is either rational or it is irrational. Rational fear can be logically explained, while irrational fear cannot. Rational fear is created when you believe that something will be dangerous, painful, or threatening. Irrational fear cannot be explained.
5. FDR once said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Fear has been feared as a sign of weakness, but it is not usually that simple. Even if David feared Goliath, he defeated the giant in the end. Surely David feared the Lord more than his mortal enemy. In this case, David's fear of the Lord was a sign of strength. Machiavelli argued that a ruler in the ideal situation would be feared and loved, but in the real world he said that it is better to be feared than loved.
6. Is it really better to be feared than to be loved? While being feared may be an advantage in some unfortunate political situations, being loved is clearly an advantage in normal day to day scenarios. Both fear and love can generate respect, but respect based on fear is much different than respect based on love. Respect based on fear can disintegrate into hatred, but respect based on love is capable of growing into loyalty.

Stories from the kids table...

Every Thanksgiving the adults in my extended family sit at the big dining room table while the kids sit at the smaller kitchen table. We don't mind. Because the adults can't see us we can pull off some awesome shenanigans. This year I asked my brother and cousins to think of a noteworthy story for this blog. We couldn't remember one that stood out from the others, so here is our list of memorable moments:

• When I was little (and evil) I would ask my brother "Hey David, wouldn't it be cool if_____?". He would then proceed to do _____, and I would get in just as much trouble as he did because I was a bad influence on him. These _____'s included my brother shooting a squirt gun up his nose and hitting a ketchup packet with a hammer.
• At my cabin, while out on a kids-only fishing trip, we were boating back home as the sun was setting, when... One of my cousins made a bet with his twin brother that he could hit a ski bouy with a sunfish as the boat was moving past it. He grabbed a little sunfish out of the live net, took aim, and sent the poor little fish flying towards its target. The fish hit the bouy, then to our surprise it bounced back towards us with alarming speed. It hit my cousin Stephanie, and she shrieked. We laughed our heads off as the fish flopped around in the bottom of the boat. We decided that it had earned its freedom, so we tossed it into the lake and it swam away very quickly.
• The night before April Fool's Day, my brother and I snuck around the house putting tape around sink faucets so that the water would spray out horizontally at an unsuspecting victim. In the morning we found out that that victim had been our mom, who had been sprayed several times at different sinks.
• My cousin's golden retriever, Sophie, was a fluffy cream colored runt when they bought her. She was so small that we dressed her up in Build-a-Bear outfits!
• At my house, hide-and-seek is a hard core game. My brother has hidden pressed against the cieling beams in the basement, I have sandwiched myself into a linnen closet, and my little cousins have found containers and cupboards that they can squeeze into. In my living room, there is a decorative chest that we keep blankets in. My brother took out the blankets, folded himself into the chest, and shut the lid, but as the lid closed the latch swung shut, trapping him inside of a ridiculously tiny space! He thought that I was sitting on top of the chest (really, David?), so he panicked and broke the latch in his escape. 

National Geographic photo

I am in love with National Geographic, and I have the entire Planet Earth series on DVD, and I have so much respect for the camera people and photographers who show perfect moments in nature to the world. This picture has a very obvious argument, but I chose it mainly because I can't get over the size of that thing's head compared to the size of the shell. The baby crocodile looks trapped and mass produced. When you see an incubation tray with eggs in it, you automatically think "chicken", but by putting a crocodile head in there instead of a fluffy yellow birdie, the photographer makes you think "That is sooo wrong! Run away and be free! Don't let the humans eat you!". The crocodile looks so wild with its teeth bared and stripes showing, but it has been put in an orderly grid. The grid itself looks dystopian, or communist, or something of that nature.
Agent: Sukree Sukplang/Reuters took the picture (I swear I'm not making up the name!)
Act: "Thou shalt not put cute reptiles into egg trays."
Agency: Photography is the medium.
Scene: The picture is on the National Geo website, for all nature lovers/people haters to see. The photo was taken at a crocodile hatching festival.
Purpose: The photo was taken to provide a visual argument against a shady zoo in Bangkok. The zoo is suspected of involvement in the illegal animal trade, and it is infamous for its treatment of animals. The zoo has over 100,000 crocodiles already.