The Conclusion

Well,

Dream post

Dreams. Dreams have been here since the dawn of time. People have claimed to possess "the sight", and say they have the ability to predict the future with dreams. Many dreams have been called omens of good or bad events that are about to occur. Me? Personally, I'm on the fence. I had a dream when I was about 8, where my mom and dad got in a huge fight, and he pulled EVERYTHING (and I do mean everything) out of our old house, packed it into our old (and now deceased) and left in the middle of the night. I was standing on the porch crying my eyes out when I woke up and realized it was a warm summer morning, and everything was fine! But then my parents decided to split a few weeks later, and my dad moved to a house in Tenino. "Special Sight"? I doubt it. There had been a lot of turmoil in the past few weeks leading up to that dream, and I know that past events and subject matter can be the subject of a dream if you talk about it or remember it near bedtime; maybe I dreamt dad leaving because I had heard mom and dad fighting, and I was deathly afraid that he would leave and I would never see him again! Maybe it's because I knew how much trouble he was causing for mom, and I wanted him to leave. I don't know. But I didn't dream it by chance, there was at least ONE factor that effected the subject matter of those dreams that night.

As for the whole "ESP" business, seeing the future in dreams, etc, I can't say for sure. I know there are people in the world who can bend stainless steel spoons from across a room, and people who can levitate three feet off the ground indefenitley (as long as their concentration holds). There are people who can see through objects, such as blindfolds, human skin (good for x-ray purposes), and cheating in casinos! So is it possible that there are people who can see the future, or at least make an educated guess in their dreams? Probably. But then again, probably not! You never know, the human body is a strange, weird and wonderful place, and we all have a lot of hidden talents that few of us figure out how to use.
In the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, the characters Romeo and Mercutio are friends. In the first act, they make plans with some friends to crash the Capulet masked ball. Romeo falters, for his "mind misgives". He had a dream which foretold that going to this party will set off a chain of events, which will all eventually lead to his premature death. He goes anyways, saying that if it is his desitiny, it is his destiny! Let fate decide.
Mercutio feels very different about Romeo's dream. He says that dreams are a waste of time, for people with idle minds and worthless lives. They amount to nothing, and no good will ever come of them! Personally, I'm on the fence again. I think that dreams can go either way, and should be taken neutrally! Let them exist as something else in the body, like breathing, eating, or walking!

That is my take on dreams, both in real life and in The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (I found somewhere on the interweb that that was the full crazy name)

Keenan

I suppose this picture is a bit less specific than the blog asked, but I'm sure it still qualifies (I mean look at it! It's a hamster squatting his cage door!)

This hamster is, in many ways, like Pip! You see, in the beginning, Pip lives in the village. But not too far into the book, he is sent over to Miss Havishams house to "play". This is exactly like a hamster at the PetSmart prison! You (a hamster) live, small, insignificant, in a cage. You wake up to see the same four walls, the same water tank and sawdust pile, the same newspaper stained with fresh, steaming hot piles of presents. Then, one day, you are removed from this poverty, the hole that you inhabit, and a human holds you for a little while. If you sqeak all cute and cuddly, you dont bite them or crap on their hands, there's a good chance they might take you home! But mess it up, and back to your cage you go. And Pip must have done something wrong, because he went back to his home one day and didn't visit Miss Havisham for many many years.

Later on in the story, Pip is adopted by a wealthy family and moves out to London, only to realize that his home in London is equally bad, for different reasons, as his home in the village! The same can be true for a hamster, a family adopts one, only to neglect it or keep it locked up the whole time. You see, the hamster's situation has not improved, and neither has Pips.

On a side note, although Pip deals with many difficulties through his changing life, he always manages to survive and stay strong somehow. The same is true for the hamster: it suffers many setbacks in it's adoption, such as possible neglection and castration (or worse, a life of wearing experimental makeup and disgusting perfume), it still stays strong, and continues to life it's life to the fullest, taking in all the beautiful sights from it's dark cage and exercising daily. It also makes healthy eating choices, only consuming organic sawdust and free-range food pellets.

Keenan signing out :)

For my group essay paragraph, I am writing about the first level of dishonesty, low level or "white" lies. Examples of these are lying about the cucumber sandwiches or lying about his knowledge of Cecily (denying he knew anybody by that name). My three points are:

1. Cucumber sandwiches.
I know, very broad concrete detail. Basically what I mean is this: I am writing about the entire cucumber sandwich scene, and all the lies that go along with it.

2.Cecily Cardew
Again, a broad CD. I am writing my second point on this concrete detail, specifically about Jack lying to Algernon about his ever knowing someone named Cecily.

3. My third and final CD isn't reall a detail at all, more of a point to wrap things up. I am talking about how the white lies, although not very important standing alone, are very important to the three levels as a whole.!

Please excuse my sloppy wording. Its late right now (for me).

Keenan!

New Years Resolutions...

Well...here we are: 2010. And this year has been a long, and grueling trudge; sometimes you're flying through daisy fields in sunshine, and sometimes you're getting dragged face first across broken glass. But whatever happened, the year is over, and while an old door is shut, a new door opens! I'm looking foreward to a clean, clean, CLEAN slate.

If I could pick anything out of all the obvious ones (get good grades, be a nice person etc.), it would be to get to know my mom and my brother better. I think I've been really out of touch lateley. We see a little bit of eachother here and there, a passing remark thrown over our shoulders as we speed through our lives. Soon, my parent will grow old. She might develop dementia, cancer, or get hit by a bus on the way to the grocery store. And if the last thing I said to my mom was "...yeah, seeya, bye...", I don't think I could live with myself.

And my brother! He and I are the only people we've got in my family after my mom passes away. And if I never develop a relationship with him, and we become distant and move far away from eachother...that would be terrible. I mean, he's my brother!

It all basically works out for the better if I just take a bit more time to hang out with my family, and slow down a bit...


-Keenan

This post is late because I haven't been allowed to used the computer at all since at least three days (or more) before break started...


Commentary: Animal Farm Project

I decided to write a poem, in all honesty, because I ran out of time. I had planned to make a movie, but schedule conflictions and a resulting lack of time made it impossible to make a quality project. And here we are!

I chose the theme “Power Corrupts” for a couple reasons. Firstly, it was my…“best” theme, because I had paid more attention to it than any of the others. I started to look at all the options, and decided my best chance was with power corrupts. When writing a poem (at least for me), I find it REALLY frustrating when I’m given a creative project, but I have guidelines that leave me no room for…creativity with content, just with word choice. PC is a really open ended theme: It only has two words, a sure sign of…open ended-ness, and because of this, it’s very unspecific. It leaves most of the thinking and planning and structure to the author, and as long as your poem is built around this central idea and it all wraps up at the end, whatever you want to put down will work.
My poem starts off sounding like…any other poem, though not necessarily about power (a few people said it sounded like a poem by an ex-drug addict). It first talks about a “drug” (power), and how it can effect (or is it affect?) you. It then moves on to compare the effects in real life to those on Animal Farm, and how the pigs reacted in comparison with how a person would (theoretically) react.

The final stanza (more of a sentence) reveals what the "drug"is and what, in essence, it does to one who gets a taste of it.

Keenan

POEM BELOW

A heart, cremated in a searing fire,

And drowning in a well of sorrowful tears,

Now feel the icy tendrils of desire,

Which smother the mind in shattered dreams and fears,

And like a drug, one taste is all it takes,

To plant the seed inside your now damned soul,

And then it drives you past the breaking point,

And buries you alive in a self-dug hole,

You wear a mask of cruelty, and this drug made this true,

You notice only things that seem to make life better for you,

You sink to lower levels, to reach a higher place,

A false sense of reality, paints pictures on your face,

And like the pigs on Animal Farm, what you have is never enough,

And you will exploit any and all, to get a bit more of the stuff,

It’s clenched inside your fist now, you take it without a second thought,

You build upon what you already have,

And you thicken the sinister plot,

Of what your life has been so absorbed with since you had your first taste,

Power, it is a corrosive rust upon your heart and soul, it corrupts the morals, and kills the senses, surrounds you with one central goal: Get more.

Life Lessons

One of the most influential things anyone has ever said to me is from an old neighbor of mine when was talking about his clothes. He started to tell me about this new pair of shoes he bought (they were skate shoes), and how he didn't wan't to get them muddy or scuffed up playing football. Now, I had seen multiple people wearing these shoes before him, and they were, for lack of a better word, the "cool shoes" to wear! He wanted to look cool; at least, that's what he said. He was dressing like half of the kids at my middle school, and he was out of highschool! Now, thats not a problem. He can dress any way he wants!

Now, to clarify for you guys why this is so important to me, here's a bit of a back story. Throughout middle school, I was...well, akward. I kept to myself, and I only had a few friends untill a few weeks before the end of 8th grade (during a class trip to the San Juan islands). I was bottled up inside, because I was afraid to share who I was with other people. I too bought skate shoes and baggy jeans, and I was another face in the crowd. I still am, one person out of 1800 kids is miniscule at best. But from the time Blake told me that, I decided I was going to try my hardest to express myself, and to blazes (there were many words I could have put there, none of them school appropriate. I couldn't think of anything else to say, so I put blazes) with what anyone else thought of me! So maybe I look like a weirdo, maybe I'm a bit different ( I do my best to do this), who cares! The way I see it, if I show people what I'm really like, the right friends will come to me!

Keenan