Athletes Take Over

There is nothing more important in today's conventional schools system than sports. If there was no sports in our school, there would be no reason to go to school. Teachers have a much more central role in the school than just teaching-they are coaches. Some people are complaining that we place too much importance on today's sports-playing youth.
I disagree entirely.
Without sports, students today would not have nearly as much of the teamwork and intelligence that they have, because nothing helps grades like being hit in the head with a basketball. Watching a group of athletes perform is like watching a National Geographic special on monarch butterflies- the sheer grace and beauty with which they move is astounding. And we all know that it takes an extreme amount of talent to do well in any sports. Those arts kids, the ones that play instruments, sing, or paint, they have it so easy. No talent is required to do anything even remotely artistic. Furthermore, the school board should continue sucking the budgets of said arts programmes dry, and siphon all of those funds into new uniforms, new buses, better equipment for our athletes. Those band kids can use the tubas and trumpets from 50 years ago. As if those band geeks can actually tell the difference between used and new. All scholarships and awards should also continue to go to those students who are involved in sports. If it comes down to two kids, one who plays sports and one who is in an arts program, choose the athlete. Chances are they will be the one landing the CEO job for some big company, that arts kid will spend the rest of their lives selling pencils on street corners. Athletes should be the elite, the most revered membes of the social pyramid. Everyone else is just an audience to appreciate them.

Frosty form of Prejudice?

"Well how about Christmas carols? Can we write on those?"
" I don't see why not, as long as don't write on something silly, like Frosty the Snowman."

What do you have against Frosty the Snowman?

You told the class that songs are a form of poetry, right? I don't see why the tale of a cheery snowman written by Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins isn't considered poetry. That's akin to telling Dr. Seuss that the Cat in the Hat isn't poetry, but rather just an ordinary children's story. Do most songs and poems not have a good solid rhyme scheme? Yes. As for Frosty? I see a clear A-B-A-C rhyme scheme. Further proving my case is that the entire song is one cohesive story, also known as a narrative poem, written in similar fashion to The Cremation of Sam McGee, a classic Canadian poem. Some alliteration is also present in Frosty the Snowman, perhaps not quite to to the extent of Betty Botter by Mother Goose, but "heard him holler stop" certainly qualifies as the poetic device . Onomatopoeia, the use of words as noises, is also used throughout the song in much the same way that Edgar Allen Poe uses the device in The Bells. Would you deny that Poe's masterful piece of writing is a poem? No. So why is Frosty's "thumpity thump"-ing any different? Personification is giving human characteristics to non-human things. Things like dogs and dishes and trains and snowmen. Sure Frosty had some magic in him, but he was still a snowman, and snowmen are not actually men. So him "danc[ing] around" would then be considered personification, right? Maybe is isn't as well-written and interesting like Emily Dickinson's The Train, but the same basic idea is there. Also, Frosty the Snowman, without a doubt has irony, more specifically dramatic irony. Most of the listeners realizes that Frosty isn't going to last forever, unlike the sweet-tempered but dim-witted children in the song. Frosty's untimely death comes as no great surprise to the listeners. Frosty also has a clear theme for the children, that patience is a virtue. These children realizethat they will have to wait an entire year to see the icy snowman again. So yes, Frosty the Snowman is a poem, perhaps not one good enough to win the Nobel prize, but that is why you don't read War and Peace before Curious George.

The Patient

Upon opening up the patient's door, I saw the most remarkable face. His face could only be described as one of character. His face had the wisdom of the ages, it appeared as though he had been through a lot of tragedy. Mottled, wrinkled, a weathered, his face was a piece of aged parchment, a thousand years old. The potpourri a nurse had placed on the patient's table didn't really do much to combat the stench of cigarette smoke. Eyes veridian in colour stared at me without really seeing me, sending deep chills through my bones. Resting underneath a muddy brown pageboy cap was a white, tangled nest of candy-floss hair. He gestured me to take a seat, and I glanced down at his hands. They were easily the most aged part of his body. The withered and lined hands were similar to those of an ancient Egyptian mummy. Just looking at his hand, calloused and tabacco-stained, one would think that they were those of a dead man. Staring quizically at me for a moment, he poses the question, "Who are you, and why are you here?"
My eyes sparkling like a prism in the sun, welling up with tears, I answer him, "It's me Grandpa. Don't you remember?"

To be or not to be? No, I am!

I am a leader in my community. I can often be seen juggling chainsaws, saving kittens from vicious dogs and writing novels in Swahili. People see me as the girl reading the entire set of encyclopedias and planting trees. I recycle everything. Occasionally I swim the English Channel in 3 hours. I impress people with my doctoral skills (I was an emergency surgeon at the age of 10), and my astounding ability to make the bagpipes sound beautiful. My soufflés never collapse. Using only my voice, I single-handedly saved the entire Amazon rainforest. Oprah comes to me for advice. I speak Latin fluently, read daily, and have actually watched all of War and Peace, without falling asleep. In my spare time, I build replicas of World War II tanks using only macaroni and a glue stick. The FBI and the KGB trust me. I jump, I spin, I create, and I win. Writing haikus with only 14 syllables isn’t difficult.
I’m a big deal
You see me and are impressed
Math is fun
I breed prize-winning labradoodles. I know the time from the position of the sun, what direction I’m facing from the stars and why the Earth is round. I have spoken to Leonardo da Vinci. Years ago I invented a time machine, but forgot to get it patented. I only write in purple ink. I have won pumpkin-carving contents in Salem, writing contests in Spain, and geography bees in Somalia. On my eleventh birthday, I got a letter from Hogwarts, but couldn’t make it to Platform 9 3/4 on time. I have read Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Yes, I have done all of those things, with ease, but I have yet
To find a college who will believe me.

It Ain't Over Until the Fat Lady Sings....

If looks could kill, I would be dead. But I stood my ground. The wind whistled, the sun blared overhead and the tumbleweed blew. But I had nothing to fear but fear itself. We stared at each other, eye to eye, man to man.

"Where'd he go?" Curley growled, " I got a bone to pick with that two-faced murderer

I just played dumb as a post, "Well, I dunno, you sure played him for a fool, didn' ya?"

He didn't like that so much. His face turned redder than a tomato. He lunged at me quick as a fox, but I was faster than a speeding bullet, and his face met the cold, hard dirt. He got up, pride shaken and looked at me with a murderous gleam in his eye. I, clearly, was barking up the wrong tree, since Curley thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. Curley ran at me again, but this time I didn't get away fast enough. He knocked me out cold.

When I finally woke up, it was like waking up for the first time. My world seemed shiny like a new dime. Until I saw Curley's ugly as sin face, then it was a whole new ball game. My hands were tied, and Curley had a gun, and my life, in his hand.

"That Lennie's a bald-faced liar, bad to the bone, cold-blooded killer. And you can bet your bottom-dollar that I will blow his brains out!" he screamed at me. He mounted his noble steed, leaving me in the dust.

I escaped my prison, and ran like the wind. I knew I had to find Lennie before Curley did.

Yes,Dear

"Everyday all you do is read that silly paper! All you care about is all the tragedy in the world! Why don't you start paying some attention to me, your wife? Why don't you ask me how my day went, for once?" snarled Jane.
Hugo lowered his glasses and glanced at his furious wife. "Alright," he replied in soothing tones, "how did your day go today dear?"
Jane took a deep breath and released a torrent of words, "Just plain awful! My roses won't grow, my lilacs are drooping, the neighbours were giving me strange looks, and, and..."
"This, this is why I don't ask you how your day went," muttered Hugo.
"Are you even listening to me?"
"Of course, dear."
"No, of course you're not, only a husband who even remotely cares whould listen!" Jane screeched, getting more and more angry by the minute.
Hugo raised his hands in a gesture of innocence, and suggested, "Perhaps, if you did something more interesting, something worth noticing, I would pay more attention to you."
"Like everything you do is so interesting," Jane sneered, cackling with fury, "you're an accountant! You really think I like listening to all your supposedly witty stories about numbers that all your office drones laugh at? You could be the most boring person on the face of this planet!"
"Now Jane, just calm down..."
"I'm perfectly calm," Jane claimed. "I won't bring up the subject again, I promise." "But, by the way," Jane smiled sweetly, "we're getting a divorce."
Hugo's face went as gray as the newsprint he was still holding. "What?" he stammered. Jane continued smiling for a moment, then rolled over and went to sleep.

A year later, Hugo opened up the paper, like he did every evening, and gasped at what he saw on the second page. The headline of the London Tribunal read, "Jane Goodall Saves Chimps From Extinction", with a blown-up picture of a woman and the chimps she just saved. The woman? Hugo's ex-wife.

And so the Men Step on the Mice...

Beatrice Strait won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1976 for the movie Network . Her screen time? Just five minutes and 40 seconds. Is it really plausible for a person to completely develop an entire character in just 5 minutes? Furthermore, is it plausible to completely develop an entire theme of a movie in just 5 minutes? In the 1992 version of Of Mice and Men, Joe Morton, the actor who plays Crooks, has to do just that. While not a huge component of the novel of the same name, Crooks symbolizes the discriminated in John Steinbeck's microcosm of society. To boil down that entire symbol, the entire theme of what loneliness can do to a person, to just over five minutes of a two hour movie simply isn't good screen writing. What Morton did with those few lines is pure gold though. He combined the meanness George was supposed to have had, with the desperation of a man downtrodden, into a character Steinbeck himself would have been proud of. However, one thing that should have perhaps been included was Crooks asking George and Lennie if he could become a part of their ranch, that would further explore the power that dreams can hold on a person. The way Crooks was portrayed and written is arguably one of the best elements in the entire film, and certainly the best element transferred fro text to screen. Crooks' character is definitely as fantastic in the movie as he was under-looked by the ranch hands in the novel.