QUOTE OF THE DAY #6

"Make friends with pain,
and you will never be alone"
-unknown

QUOTE OF THE DAY #5

"A story is like a moving train:
no matter where you hop onboard,
you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later."
-Khaled Hosseini

QUOTE OF THE DAY #4

"Older people sit down and ask,
what is it?
but
the boy asks
 what can i do with it?"

-Steve Jobs

CHARACTER STUDY (III)

 My character is Quatro Queatro’s hands. For some of the parts of the journey I will be narrating it. The trip starts in Los Angeles after Dan and Quatro won a football game. Throughout the journey they recruit more people on their journey to the Woodstock concert in New York City.

The first stop:

·      *Vegas

·      *Quatro Quatro and Dan Smith meet Ivy (Miranda Gomez) character.

·      *Ivy is part of a Mob family.

·     * One night she goes to the bar and is supposed to meet up with a man her parents want her to marry.

·    *  Overhears Dan and Quatro speaking of their trip to Woodstock

·    *  Escapes with them

The second stop:

·      *Texas

·     * EEEE EEE is met

·      *He stumbles upon the conservative Texas city

·      *He is persecuted and mobbed by the pure Anglo-Saxon city

·      *He gets saved by Dan and Quatro Quatro

·     * Dan pretends that Quatro is stealing his van to catch the attention of the crowd. When EEE EEE is unattended Dan takes him and manages to get him and leave with the others.

The third stop:

·   *   Kentucky

·      *We meet Izamar Diaz’s character

·     * Meet and greet still in process

The fourth stop:

·      *Woodstock (New York)

·      *Alex (Vanessa Vargas’ character)

·     * No stable home

·      *He is lost and does drugs

·     * He figures he would rather spend the night with people camping outside for the concert than have no where to sleep that night.

·      *Quatro Quatro steps on his (Alex) foot on accident

·      *A big deal is made about the accident

·      *A fight breaks between the 2

·      *Quatro calls his men to help him fight Alex

·      *EEE EEE has sympathy for Alex and decides to stop the fight.

So far this is all we have. Everything else is still in progress.

QUOTE OF THE DAY #3

Take a second and think about those who make your life worthwhile...

"Sometimes, i forget to thank the people who make my life so happy in so many ways.
Sometimes, i forget to tell them how much i really do appreciate them for being an important part of my life.
Today is just another day, nothing special going on.
So than you, all of you just for being here for me."
-unknown

CHARACTER STUDY (II)

The character I created for yesterday’s homework assignment wad the hands of a man. I explained what the hands saw, felt and did for the owner on his journey. Today during class my colleagues and I found it to be most convenient if the hands were characterized as the hands of the driver in our story. The hands will be the hands of Quatro Quatro who will be driving the van throughout the journey.

* We have hand written notes on our story line. 

QUOTE OF THE DAY #2

"You've got to have a problem that you want to solve;
a wrong that you want to right."
-Steve Jobs

Netvibes DASHBOARD

I am a person of habit when it comes to organizing what i do. I like agendas hand writing what i have to do and by when. This Netvibes dashboard is going to be a challenge, but i will try it out. I really like that it has the weather and the daily news available for me. I tried adding my blog and the course blog, but for some reason was unable to. This is too overwhelming for me. I am definitely going to need assistance on this.

CANTERBURY TALES (I),

I understood the prologue to be a long description of each character. The discussion in class and with other peers on my own time has helped me understood the idea of the prologue much better. Though i am going to have to do some reviewing in the book for further details I think I got a good grip on it now. I would like to know if the tales came from Chaucer’s own experience or from people during that time or maybe even both. What I got out of our conversation today in class was that the characters are so unique, all of different ages, personas, from diff. environments, and social classes. One thing unites them and that is the pilgrimage. The prologue also allows the author to test our expectations for other people, to really think twice about how we think someone should act if they have a certain title. The popular technique in the prologue is Irony for the same reason that the reader has certain expectations of someone and is humorously deceived. I would like to read the story of the Nun because she seems so sassy and not nun material. I feel like she would be entertaining to hear about. She has an edgy personality that could easily start conversations going. 

CHARACTER STUDY (I)

       I felt the salty sweat dripping down the neck and back of my owner. I had dried up, had been tainted with scars from the hard work at the lab. I have been with my owner for as long as he was in the womb. It was time to leave the owner now, but I did not want to. He could not do without me and I didn’t want him to loose me. He took me on a long journey to hospitals all over California. He would often look down at me with teary eyes and hold me against his face. Our first stop was at the UCLA Medical Center. I had a couple test done on me. To nobody’s surprise the test required more test to be done. Stanford’s Medical Center proceeded. He put me in his pockets as he carried himself weakly. I could feel the cool breeze even through his warm Calvin Klein jacket pockets. I brushed his hair and bearded face when he became nervous. I could not shake away the fact that everything I had done; caressed his loved ones, fed him, bathed him, and worked for him will all be gone when I was gone. There had got to be a way to save my owner. The chemicals burned and irritated me more and more each day. I knew my time was limited and I had to do something quick. I grabbed the suitcases for my owner, I was now sweaty and clammy. I needed a wash, but there was no time for that! I got wiped on my owner’s jeans and squirted with hand sanitizer. Buckled the plane seatbelt and headed to the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass. There the Doctors would decide if they would cut me off. His hands, my owner’s hands, me, his hands, cut off…

QUOTE OF THE DAY!! #1

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who will decide where to go..."
-Dr. Seuss
"Oh, the Places You'll Go!"

vocabulary #6

1.Obsequious: showing servile compliance, obedience

After countless rounds of arguing I turned from resistant to obsequious.

2.Beatitude: exalted happiness

Sarah experienced beatitude when her mom told her she would be having a baby boy.

3.bete noire: disliked person or thing

I would rather have a bête noire against something rather than a hatred against something.

4.bode: give a hint to what’s to come

My dad gave me a bode about my birthday present when asking me what kind of phone I wanted.

5.dank: moist, humid, damp

The rocks were so dank that Riley fell and hurt her ankle right away.

6.ecumenical: universal, general

Same sex marriage is an ecumenical topic.

7.fervid: enthusiastic, burning in spirit

Kyle’s has such a fervid and enjoyable personality that makes everyone want to be his friend.

8.fetid: bad odor

After exercising my body releases a fetid smell.

9.gargantuan: gigantic

Ana decided to throw a gargantuan birthday party for her 21^st birthday.

10.heyday: stage or period of high spirits

My heyday will come when I receive my first college acceptance.

11.incubus: nightmare

I had a huge incubus that I got rejected to all the colleges I applied to.

12.infrastructure: framework of a system

The architect made sure to create an infrastructure before starting to work.

13.inveigle: manipulate

Annie’s parents tried to inveigle her to marry Chris.

14.kudos: honor, props

I give kudos to all of the people who are intelligent and not cocky.

15.lagniappe: bonus, tip

The waiter got a lagniappe for commenting on his guest’s outfit.

16.prolix: long, wordy or unnecessary

Lectures are often prolix, while classroom discussions are not.

17.protégé: protection, under patronage

Nobody dared to hurt Andrew because  he was under the protégé of King Arthur.

18.prototype: model used to illustrate

Mr. VP used the skeleton as a prototype to explain the body.

19.sycophant: self-seeking flatterer

Eric the sycophant asked Pearl on a dance just because she was rich and pretty.

20.tautology: saying something twice in a different way

Dr. Preston often uses tautology in order to get his point across.

21.truckle: to submit tamely

Fluffy decided to truckle to spot by giving him the bone.

22.accolade: award, honor w/ laudatory notice

The football announcer gave an accolade about Beckham on national television.

23.acerbity: astringency in taste, bitter

The kiwi had an acerbity to it that made me sick to my stomach.

24.attrition: reduction in numbers, size or strength

Sadly, Bob and I got an attrition on our pay checks.

25.bromide: flat dull remark

He was so young and ignorant that all he came up with in arguments were bromides.

26.chauvinist: aggressively or blindly patriotic

It is good to be patriotic, but not chauvinist

27.chronic: constant, habitual

Everything makes so much sense when in chronic order.

28.expound: to explain or interpret in detail

In order for me to understand math I need it to be explained in an expound way.

29.factionalism: practice of faction (group within a larger group.)

High schools are probably the most popular users of factionalism.

30.immaculate: pure, free from spot

It is hard to believe that immaculate people exist in this world we live in today.

31.imprecation: malediction, curse

I have never really believed in imprecations.

32.ineluctable: incapable of being ignored or avoided

His bright pink suit and tie were ineluctable at the black and white prom.

33.mercurial: changeable

I am so glad that majors are mercurial in college.

34. palliate: to alleviate

Advil always palliates my back pains.

35.protocol: official procedure or system of rules

Mr. Rucker assigned us to read the protocol on the lab in order to know what was going on.

36.resplendent: shining, gleaming

Andie left the car resplendent after giving it a second wash.

37.stigmatize: to brand a stigma upon someone/something

It is a sad thing to find out about something through a stigma.

38.sub rosa: done in secret

All of my journals are in sub rosa.

39.vainglory: excessive pride in own achievements

He is the most vainglorious, stuck up, annoying person I have ever met.

40.vestige: surviving evidence of something no longer existing

My mother handed me down my grandpa’s personal journal which I consider an important vestige.

41.volition: exercising/choosing one’s will.

I left the meeting by my own volition. 

WHAT A CHARACTER

One of the characters I found the most enjoyable, humane and just plain good is Tom Joad from Steinbecks' “The Grapes Of Wrath”. Tom was a young man with such a strong persona. I picked him because he was just so human, he transformed his life from being a non caring delinquent to a protégé of people’s rights. His transformation struck me as a reader. It was so nice and refreshing to see him grow into a better man. In all honesty I cannot remember any literary techniques used in effect to Tom, but what I could say is that Tom represented a new beginning. Despite his past he drove to move on and that goes the same for his family, they had a difficult past and still managed to survive and move on forward. It teaches the human race that no matter what obstacles or social barriers there are in your life you can move forward you just need to want to move forward. 

DECLARATION OF LEARNING INDEPENDENCE

      Looking back at the past years in school I have come to the conclusion that nobody has ever taught me to think or to question the information that has been presented to me. Nobody has ever taught me how to be successful, wealthy or smart. I declare to be curious about learning, to seek more than one answer and to think beyond of what I have been taught.
      It has given us only one way to think, presented us with little sources of evidence, and given us fifty minutes to "learn". It has made us think that there is only one way to do things. It has made us feel unworthy, limited, restrained and most of all untrusted.
      I, therefore, declare to take action in my learning experience by being curious, asking questions and viewing things from multiple perspectives.

VOC. #5

1)Obsequious: obedient, dutiful

Up until high school it had been quite easy to be obsequious to all the house rules.

2)Beatitude: exalted happiness

Annie admitted that she had never experienced of beatitude.

3)bete noire: disliked person or thing

Just like I find math to be very difficult so do many others; it is bête noire in our society.

4)bode: predict, announce before hand

As a young child Paul was taught to bode what was going to happen in the novels before he read them.

5)dank: moist, humid, damp

The car was so dank that my hands became sticky with sweat after a few minutes.

6)ecumenical: general, universal

The topic of education is a ecumenical topic.

7)fervid: enthusiasm, burning in spirit

After the church retreat Andrew felt a fervid feeling in his heart.

8)fetid: bad odor, stinky

After finishing his triathlon Nick could not fetid more.

9)gargantuan: gigantic, enormous

I strongly dislike people who make a gargantuan problem out of a small situation.

10)heyday: stage or period of success, strength, high spirits

By the time the homecoming game rally was finished the football players were in a heyday.

11)Incubus: evil spirit, nightmare

When people I do not know come out in my dreams they turn out to be incubus instead of dreams.

12)infrastructure: the underlying framework of a system

The infrastructure of the building needs to be figured out before we actually start the building.

13)inveigle: to entice by flattering talk

John tried to inveigle Betty to be his girlfriend, but she rejected him.

14)kudos: honor, glory

“Kudos to you for starting you Odyssey project on the first day”, I told her.

15)lagniappe: bonus, tip

If I were to work as a waitress I would be extra nice just so I can get a lagniappe.

16)prolix: long, wordy and unnecessary

Mr. Rec prohibited the students to make their thesis prolix, but encouraged them to have straightforward and clear thesis.

17)protégé: under patronage, protection

I am under the protégé of the United States of America.

18)prototype:  model or something that is used to illustrate

The prototype in our science class is tall and bony.

19)sycophant: self-seeking flatterer

He forgot about his family and decided to become a sycophant person.

20)tautology: needless repetition of something

Even though the Mr. Dine knew the class understood the concept and did not need tautology he kept talking about it.

21)truckle: passive, willingness, submissive

I was taught to not truckle to anything without giving a fight

WHY THIS BOOK #2

 For my literature analysis number 2 i will be reading "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. I choose this book because my peers  have told me a lot of great things about it. They have praised it so much that i refuse to miss out on the fun. I actually have no knowledge of the background, but i picked it up from the library this week and have high expectations of it so i hope it won't disappoint me.

LITERATURE ANALYSIS #1)

"The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells

1. Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read according to the elements of plot you've learned in past courses (exposition, inciting incident, etc.).  Explain how the narrative fulfills the author's purpose (based on your well-informed interpretation of same).

The novel takes place in England in 1890. The exposition begins with the stranger Griffin moving to a small inn in Iping. His straightforwardness and rudeness allow the reader to quickly understand the king of character he is. The conflict is that Griffin is invisible and does not really know how to cope with his situation. Nobody understands his persona, yet he does not attempt to help anyone understand him. He goes from bad to worse. He goes from being confused for being invisible to wanting to use his invisibility for the bad. The climax is when Dr. Kemp one of Griffin’s professors in college betrayed him by calling the police on him. The resolution is when the police catch Griffin and kill him.

2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.

In my opinion the theme of the novel is fear of the unkown. Many people in our society are creatures of habit, they do not like too much change. It is quite ironic considering that change is constant. The characters and people in the novel wanted to finish Griffin because he was invisible. There are others such themes like science within humanity and corruption and/or advantage of power.

3. Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).

*Mysterious: The title itself hints the reader that the novel will be a mystery. The first sentence of the novel also creates a scene of mistery and imagery for the reader.

 “The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand.”

*Whimsical: The whole novel in general is just plain odd. I mean just think about it a man who turned himself invisible with an experiment. “Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. “Here” he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose- it was the stranger’s nose!”

*accusatory/judgmental: Like I mentioned above people tend to fear what they do not know, more likely than not they accuse and judge those who are different.  “It’s strange perhaps, but it’s not a crime. Why am I assaulted by a policeman in this fashion? “Ah! That’s a different matter,” said Jeffers. “No doubt you are difficult to see In this light, but I got a warrant and it’s all correct. What I’m after ain’t no invisibility- It’s burglary. There’s a house been broken into and money took.”

4. Describe a minimum of ten literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the author's purpose, the text's theme and/or your sense of the tone. For each, please include textual support to help illustrate the point for your readers. (Please include edition and page numbers for easy reference.) 

1. Imagery: Pg. 143 “ Kemp made three swift steps to the door, and forth-with the invisible man-his legs had vanished-sprang to his feet with a shout. Kemp flung the door open. As it opened, there came a sound of hurrying feet downstairs and voices. With a quick movement Kemp thrust the invisible man back, sprang aside, and slammed the door.”

2. Theme:  Back cover of the book. To entertain, Science and humanity, fear of the unknown etc… “My fantastic stories do not pretend to deal with possible things. They aim indeed only at the same amount of conviction as one gets in a gripping good dream.”  

3. Tone: Pg. 38 whimsical- “Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. “Here” he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose- it was the stranger’s nose!”

4. Point of view: Third person, almost like an omniscient point of view.

Pg. 45 “The eight chapter is exceedingly brief, and relates that Gibbins, the amateur naturalist of the district, while lying out on the spacious open downs without a soul within a couple of miles of him, as he thought and almost dozing, heard close to him the sound of a man coughing, sneezing, and then swearing savagely to himself…”

5. Hyperbole: The fact that the main character Griffin turned himself invisible with an experiment is ridiculous. There is no specific evidence that I could find of this in the book.

6. Characterization: Pg.3 “ It was the fact that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nose. It was bright, pink, and shiny just as it had been at first. He wore a dark-brown velvet jacket with a high, black linen-lined collar turned up about his neck. The thick black hair, escaping as it could below and between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest appearance conceivable.”

7. Foreshadowing: Pg. 141 “ You have told no one I am here?” he asked abruptly. Kemp hesitated. “That was implied,” he said.” The reader has an idea that something bad is going to happen because of the hesitation and insecurity of Kemp’s reply.

8. Personification: Pg. 32 “ –the bed-clothes gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly into a sort of peak, and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail.”

9. Dialogue: Pg. 11 “The weather” – he began. “Why don’t you finish and go?” said the rigid figure, evidently in a state of painfully suppressed rage.  “All you’ve got to do is to fix the hour-hand on its axle. You’re simply hum-bugging.”

10. Setting: Iping, England Pg. 1 “A guest to stop at Iping in the wintertime was an unheard-of piece of luck…”