Cassi’s Blog

Justification

As a child i loved poetry and it inspired me through most of my life. My aunt for my birthday one year got me two of Jack Prelutsky’s books of poems, The New Kid on the Block and It’s Raining Pigs and Noodles. That is when i started to write some of my own poetry. These poems could always make me smile and were always enjoyable to read and to find each hidden meaning behind the thoughtful rhythmic words. These poems aren’t very long but each has its purpose.

Homework! Oh, Homework!

This is one of my favorite poems. In the second grade my teacher, Mrs. Steinkraus, made us memorize it. Conveniently, i still remember it. It is a poem about how terrible homework is and it puts what i’m feeling into a cute rhyme.

Dainty Dottie Dee

I am a very neat person. I like everything to be clean and in its place. Some might think of it as an obsession, but i feel that it is a good habit to obtain. This poem is a funny hyperbole of a very cleanly person, like myself. I chose this poem to sarcastically state the way i am, and hopefully get a laugh out of it.

I’m In a Rotten Mood

Everybody has those days when they don’t want anyone to bother them and they just want to be left alone. I myself have been in a bad mood lately and i felt like this poem gives an explanation on my behavior. I chose this poem because everyone can relate to being in a bad mood.

I Am Cuter Than a Button

This was an extra poem that i decided to memorize because i thought it related to me on many levels. Most of the poems that i chose made me smile. I chose poetry as a piece of literature i would wish to keep because poetry gets me through a lot. When things start to go wrong it always seems to help me. Poems like these help make my bad days seem not so bad. Poetry can always make me smile, and i enjoy smiling, so logically i would wish to keep poems and smile forever.

Book Cover Evaluation

When i looked through all of the different versions of the Fahrenheit 451book covers i noticed some similar trends. On most of the book covers there was a man standing there in the fire. I’m sure this symbolizes the hero in the book that is probably against the burning of books. There is fire in every book cover leading me to the conclusion that this story has to do with the burning of things. Not just things, but books; in many of the other covers there was the burning of books. On the book cover that i have right now it shows burned and charred books. The reasoning behind the burning of books in the story is because it is against the law to read and when someone is caught reading a book the firemen come and burn the books in their yard. If the person caught reading the book refuses then the firemen will burn down their house.

Not reading the novel, but by knowing the basis of it, I found that the cover with the body made of book pages that is lit on fire standing triumphantly(The 50th Anniversary Edition) is the best cover for the novel. There was other book covers with a similar figure standing in that pose, but because this one was made of book pages it symbolizes the role the books played in the novel along with how the hero felt about the burning of the books. By standing with all his valor facing up towards the sky it showed how he was ready to fight for what he believed in. The burning setting around the figure is quiet self explanatory. Its odd how just one picture can help set the mood and explain the entire novel from just one glance.

How to do your hair

As a young child i had extremely long hair. It got into the toilet, it strangled me while i slept, it took hours to wash, and i loved it. My head grew to be very strong and tolerable to my mother constantly yanking on it every morning to try and brush through it before school.

We had our daily routine. I would take my bath, blow dry it for 30 minutes, brush it for 30 more minutes, and then it would be braided tightly, so to not disturb me or get in the way during the day. Sometimes mom wasn’t around to do the braiding, so dad was taught to braid and is still capable of braiding to this very day.

But i had enough with the long hair and cut it and donated to the “Locks of Love Foundation,” in the summer before third grade. Once it was cut it was much easier to tame. As a young rambunctious girl, swinging from the brightly-painted orange rings on the playground, my hair was nearly never combed. On certain occasions my mother would take out the curling iron and curl it under for the little Sherly temple look. Or the night before a big event i would sit on my bum for an hour and have my mother put sponge curlers all over my head. Sleeping on sponge curlers, very uncomfortably, for a night just to have your hair go flat the next day, probably wasn’t worth it. But it was the price i was willing to pay to look good.

As the times grew on, so did my hair. My hair grows at a rapid pace, unlike my body which has never had a grow spurt. Anyways, the styles of hair were constantly changing. In the 6th and 7th grade the style was to wear it wavy and up in a messy bun. If i dug up my 6th grade picture you could probably put it next to the word wavy in the dictionary. But the trends were what was in at the time, and i was all about being in.

Oh, the time i wasted on my hair. To achieve the perfect tight waves, you would french braid your hair as tightly as you could and wait from 4-12 hours before taking them out. If you wanted your hair curly there was a couple of approaches to this style. Starting from the least strenuous, you can put it up in a messy bun while it was wet, wait for it to dry and take it out for a loose-curl look. Or, as i have already stated, you could put sponge curls in the night before, uncomfortable but manageable. But my least favorite is when you are getting ready for your 9th grade dance and you attempt to curl your entire head. You heat up the curling iron and go to work at one strand at a time dousing each with a huge abundance of hairspray. This takes a very long time, and it mostly always ends up with tears and flat hair.

But on the other hand, straightening your hair is far worse. Not only is it the most damaging to your hair, but it takes the most time and is the most painful, not to your hair, but to your arms. The straightened hair look is very popular to our young teenage generation today. It is consequently the most time consuming. Now that my hair is shorter straightening it has become less painful. To straighten your hair you must first brush and make sure it is easy to handle. Then you separate your hair into sections. The first section is down and the second section is pulled up. Then you start to slowly take each strand and crush it against two pieces of burning hot metal and continue to slide it down that strand of hair until it is completely straight. Now if you can imagine, this takes ages. Once you are done you are satisfied, until you open the front door to see that its raining and you take one step out of your house and in one minute your one hour of hard work is down the drain.

We live in Washington so the easiest attempt at doing your hair is probably the ever-safe, non-time consuming, easy to do, pony tail. Oh, and let me tell you pony tails may be plain and easy but there are many types of them. You have your high pony tail, which cheerleaders specialize; your low pony tail for the more sophisticated look, and the in-between pony tail that is used mostly in the athletic department.

A girls hair is her castle. Every girl specializes in a certain hair-do. The bangs, the braids, the coloring, the styling, and the confidence is what makes a girl’s hair unique. Now i know that there are times when i doubt my hairstyles, like when i wake up in the morning and take random pictures of my hair. But on a day to day basis i do get up at ungodly hours of the morning to make sure my hair is perfect.

Dumpster Diving

The dumpster diving excerpt is split up into different sections. The author, Lars Eighner, does this purposely to divide the paper into easier portions for his viewers.

The first section is talking about the authors background before he became a dumpster diver. His outlook on dumpster diving became much different once he became one. By putting this in the beginning of the essay it shows the opinion most people have on dumpster diving. But little did we know, dumpster diving can be very beneficial.

The next section gives the authors definition of a scavenger. He starts to explain his strategies of dumpster diving, but not to the point so that the reader is grossed out yet. He explains the ups and downs of finding cans in the dumpster. He doesn’t lay it on too thick though, so the reader can slowly fall into his story.

He then goes into his knowledge of dumpster diving. He says what is good to eat and what is bad to eat and the cause and effects of each discovery. This goes to show the reader the author’s knowledge on the topic, and kind of make the reader question how such a well literal speaking author could have, at one point in his life, been a dumpster diver.

Then he describes how the stages of scavenging take place. How  survival slowly starts to kick in and hunger sends you to the dumpster for your food. Eighner goes into such detail about the dumpsters because readers, most-likely, don’t know about dumpster diving to this extent.

The next section he talks about how personal garbage can lead him to know alot about a person. He put this part into his essay to have the readers realize that what they throw away might get found and looked through. I know i never thought about that when i threw away my personal things. Theft and violation can be effects of throwing away too personal of information.

The last section Eighner talks about the strategic ways in which he chooses a dumpster and decides if what is in it is good. He talks about the dangers of fire ants and other various negative sides of dumpster diving. He connects how the homeless and the rich are connected because they both cant get enough and just keep taking and taking and taking. I think that was a great way to end his essay. Most people would have never made that connection.

Naps

She starts out her essay by explaining the “civilized world,” also know  as any other place other then the united states. She argues how Americans never rest and try and do everything at one time. Once Americans have done something that needs to be done they end up having to go back and do it all over again, because they didn’t take the time to take a nap and reanalyze what they were doing in the first place. Even CEO’s in major companies take naps. Americans feel like naps are unbenificial and that there is other things that we could be doing instead of relaxing and taking a nap. She explains how cats nap constantly. She argues that ,”Milton wrote Paradise Lost in bed. Winston Churchill… wrote all those large important histories in bed.”

She constructed her argument first by showing, clearly, that she is all for naps. She uses an anecdote to begin with and examples to follow. She argued on the views Americans have on naps. Then she wrapped it up with a cute story about a cat and a couple more good examples to support her argument.

I think to improve the construction of her argument she could have shown the counterargument. Maybe given more views from the other side of the subject, from people who might be for not napping.

YES!YES!YES! I’m sure your thinking, of coarse she would want to nap, she is an immature adolescent, but listen to my reasoning. When Barbara Holland spoke about how most of the time without napping people tend to do not as well of a job as they could have by taking a break and relaxing and maybe brainstorming; i know from first-hand experience that is a true phenomenon. It happens often, being an immature adolescent, i have a lot going on in my life and don’t have breaks or naps. When things slow down and i think things through, the final product is always better. Also to add to that, i just enjoy napping.

Food Fight(cartoon)

Anrhropomporphized: to ascribe human form or attributes to(animal, plant, material objects, etc.)

2. At first, humans are depicted as the initiators of the negative affect on the food, then it ties in to the humans being taken over by the food and then being served as food. The tables turned and food was then the initiator.

3. The food is anthropomorphized to human form to show the humor in the food taking over the world.

4. The commentary in the frames 1 and 4 are speaking about our government and how food is affecting us. What we do with the exports of food will negatively result in our economy…and apparently will allow food to take over the world.

6. The tone in the cartoons is a serious sarcasm. The cartoon is a joke but putting in to perspective the possibilities of food taking over the world. If there was only cartoon the cartoon would lose its point and tone. With only worlds the sarcastic tone wouldn’t be picked up. Together they put across a good cartoon.

Re-phrasing Questions 1-5

1. What did Franklin mean by acoustic environment? Explain why the environment is acoustic and how it ties in with the silence.

2. In the assertion in paragraph 4, “Defining silence as the absence of external or artificially generated sound is fine, but its a little bit shallow, because silence in many ways is very much more than the absence of sound,” explain how she supports this argument later on in her essay.

3. In paragraph 6, “in this light we understand why, as Christians, traditional Quakers found it necessary in the 17Th century, when they were surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance of the church of England, to reject it,” how does the author’s diction in this sentence show her attitude towards her argument?

4. Compare the difference silence’s that Franklin talks about throughout her essay. Explain the positive and negative aspects of each type of silence.

5. Analyze the effect of Franklin referring to the “traditional Quaker,” in paragraph 6. Does this strengthen her argument? If you agree what rhetorical move did you agree with?

Angel in the House Part 2

 ”The angel in the house is dead and no longer lives in the imaginations of either women or men.” The Angel in the House was a pure woman who was willing to sacrifice anything for anyone; she was completely selfless. The Angel in the House does not exist today. Today all that men and women of the world do is provide impurity, sacrifice nothing, and are completely selfish. When Woolf spoke of how the Angel in the House was affecting her writing and she wasn’t getting the results that she hoped for, it was because pure and happy opinions don’t sell. The crude and hateful reviews are what bring in the money. Flaws and heated opinions is what our world is made of now. One person’s tragedy is another person’s entertainment. When the angel was speaking to her as she was writing a review for a famous man she was telling her to, “never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.” So as to say that man is superior to women. This also helps prove that the Angel in the house no longer exists because that is no longer the attitude towards a man and woman’s relationship today. No one is afraid to state how they feel in our younger generation. We have grown up without Angel’s in our houses whispering in our ears the right thing to say. I wish i had an angel in my house; I would probably get in a lot less trouble.

Angel in the House

 ”Angel in the House,” is a nineteenth-century poem about a self-sacrificing heroine; for many, she represented the ideal Victorian woman. What Virginia Woolf meant when she used this in her essay was that, when referring to her writing style, she was being provoked by the Angel in the house. I think that her using this unknown example made it harder to understand how exactly she felt about her writing. She briefly explained how the Angel related to what she was saying, which cleared it up somewhat. On the other hand, by using this assertion it made her writing more unique. It made the reader look at what she was saying through a different point of view. She could have gotten her point across by simply saying that her writing was pure and unbiased, but by speaking about the Angel in the House it made her writing more enjoyable to read and tasty to the eyes. She seemed a little pathetic though. By blaming her bad writing on an Angel from a poem, it put a little of an immature twist on the essay. It wasn’t her own mind that caused her reviews to be blah and have a lack of her own opinion; it was the Angel of the house. Right? I guess I am qualifying the use of the Angel in the House assertion obtained in Woolf’s essay. Although I felt that it was an odd way to explain a writers’ block, the example gave the essay a better tone. It was a thoughtful way to explain the situation she was going through. The pathos might have been a bit much for my taste, but she tied it in nicely with a follow up later in the essay that she was no longer under her dark wing and was now writing without her whispering in her ear telling her what to say.

question’s 1-3

AH! i need help!!!!!

brain fart!!!!