It's a good thing no one can read this.

I found a compositition book from G-d knows when holding writings about the differences between Americans and Vietnamese people (but mostly the similarites), why I like my paternal grandmother, a story about Monkey Juice from a witch doctor featuring my middle school friend Genrty Hale, and typos, typos, typos.
I wrote a biography that has the teacher's handiwork marked all over it in brown ink.
[Pre-first: My teacher was Ms. Hanks. I had a friend named Jonathan and other friends but I don't remember their names.] That statement was completely stricken out by Ms. Hunt, my Third and Fourth grade teacher (I know, she was a lucky sonufagun).

Now it is my daily journal with childish red marks that look like words on the cover.

Dec 16 2008
Saw Shalini at the mall.
Didn't talk, but I diverted (thought I did) attention towards my Brookstone application. Du-ooy.
[an hour later]
Now I'm doing the flying Dutchman routine. Walking here and there (in some cases INTO here and there) just to bump into Shal the Balla' again (noone calls here that...I hope noone calls her that). She ducked in a GAP, but I...hesitanted. And went on about my application errand thinking: A} it (the application) was more important (it was why I was there) B} Women spend a longer time shopping in a GAP then I do doing ANYTHING.
Great. I've now lost my mind in public. I wish I had a camera. Or a gun. Or a camera-gun for some real shopping.

In other news: Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind on XBOX has frieghten me from being abscond into inifinity. I won't play it until I'm sure I'll fall asleep while playing the thing.

80+hours of gameplay can and has fucking killed humans.

Dream I had:
Married to a 100, 000 .lbs woman who is valued at $100,000 (or so the newspaper headliner says). Her name is Pearl.
Her Momma is 40-mid 50 looking but could be older: Mona.
In the dream Walter Blackman, we took journal making class together and is responsible for me finding reasons to outburst with "RANDY MOSS" or "LIBBIN-LIVI' A LIE, LIBBIN-LIVIN' DE LIE, TIMMAY", is my twisted friend who helps me move into my new apartment with the missus. He plays vidja games (looked like GI JOE on NES) while(?) watching porn, my porn (I'm not so sure about that last part. It could easliy be the wedding night video).
Pearl's got a younger sister. I got a case of the "don't know"s on her name (THAT'S WHAT I SAID IN THE DREAM. DON'T JUDGE).

Now for something I didn't cut and paste out of boredom

But the boredom is there notheless.
Tips on how to be a good writer:
-WRITE!
-Write a whole lot of a bunch.
Then, when you are NOT writing:
-READ!
-Reading makes your writing better.
-Just better.
-Like, a whole lot...a bunch...a very big bunch of betterment...ality

Writer's block? SAY WHAAAAAA?!
-Write about that shit!
-Or read.
-No. Wait. Write! Screw "reading".
-Yeah, you better write about that shit, bitch. Or else...the hammer...

Can't use your laptop because the new Word Processor is like a NARC in the night and won't allow you to use it unless you kept "the launch codes" on the friggin' box it came in?
-Get in the line poor people have to get in to fix their problems!
-And use the Notebook Application! It takes the ease of typing on the computer and turns it into a battle of wills! No autobackup of your .doc if the power runs out!
-Exclamtion Points for everyone!!!!!!

I hope this was fun to read and not very helpful at all!
Because if it was helpful, you need pills! Bad!

A CALL TO ARMS: YOU HAVE SOMETHING OF MINE JANAUL

A former friend of mine has stolen property of mine and has had it for two quarters.

Janaul Blount, the friend in question, has his claims and disputes but this is what happened:

I had a Dreamcast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast). I carried it with me wherever I went. Causing many a turmoil but never worse for the wear. I snuck it into my college dorm hiding it from my anti-video game parents ("Is that a Game-Boy!?" "Mom, it's a cellphone" "How come there's games on it?" "Phones can have games on them." "No they can't. They are meant to call people ONLY" "SIGH...").
I would play it, not in my room as it was prestinely devoid of a tv, in a friends room (we'll call this friend: Jamil). So much so, that I ended up asking him to keep it there instead of lugging it with me whenever someone got the itch to play "Marvel Vs. Capcom 2". What surprised me, and should have been a red flag, is that he said he would allow it in his room but promised that he held to responsibilty if anything happened to my system. I balked at the idea of him allowing something to happened without telling me and proceeded to not have it with me in my room.

Next quarter, I come straight to Jamil and ask for my Dreamcast back from his room.
He resoundly says he disavows knowledge of ever keeping the Dreamcast in his room (Def Con 2). He allows me to search the room feeling sorry for me and keeps telling me that my proposition never was... propositioned.
I freak for a week.
No leads.
No witnesses.
Nothing.
(I realized I'm putting a lot of theatre into this But it means a lot to me to get this back in my hands. I won't be able to be transported back to when I was 15 by plugging in my Dreamcast if I have no Dreamcast. There is a strong feeling there and I would rather lose it through the thought of me doing something wrong to my system then someone else keeping it and thinking it's theirs when it isn't.)

Janaul has my SCAD card. I'm a big pushover when it comes to wanting to help people with their money problems and Janaul convinces me to use my card to pay for his laundry that he can't seem to afford card-wise.
It begins to get late and he isn't answering his phone or appearing where he said he would to give me back my SCAD card (I get it back but this leads to the Dreamcast so hang on). I ask around and I find his begotten room. He's in there. Why won't he answer my calls then? I see people I know in his room (there not in SCAD anymore so I don't feel the need to include their pseudonyms) so I call one of them and look in at the reaction. He/She ignores my call!
I start to become very paranoid then I see something that looks like Son Son fighting something that looks like Cyclops on Janaul's television screen. "Marvel vs Capcom 2". He has it. Why wouldn't he let me in on it if he had a console that played the game I used to play? After all, he and I were friends who mostly battled each other in fighting games such as MvC2 on my Dreamcast. What if the reason they won't pick up the call so that I can come and get my SCAD card is so that I don't come into the room? And what if they don't want me in the room playing MvC2 because they are doing it on a Dreamcast they stole from me?
I knock.
I rudely ask to come in and see what they're doing and accuse Janaul of theivery (Not the move I would have done in hindsight)
Janaul pushes the door close on my footgiving me my card back while he does.
I threaten to call security if I'm not let in, I scream.
"Go ahead" is Janaul's retort. (This puzzled me. Wouldn't he just want to avoid getting kicked off campus in favor of swallowing his pride?)
Long story short; I didn't stay by the door to keep watch of who comes out. Security comes along with two RAs and search his room and find two Dreamcast controllers that are not mine but his. I have a meltdown, having felt as if I destroyed a friendship and wondered why Janaul just didn't let me in and prove me wrong instead of going through a two and a half hour ordeal.

This happened last quarter.
I trust what I saw. That was my game in that room. Janaul kept me out so I wouldn't catch him red handed. There were Dreamcast controllers in his room for what oher purpose? Why would I keep this up if this all didn't happen?

I would like to have a meeting with Janaul and a RD moderator before Friday.
He thinks it's his I hear. Well, if he can hold up a decent argument without closing a door I may think differently. For now, the man is a cheat, a liar, and a manipulator.

Anticipation makes me write lazy

Going back to the boy who meets me at the arcade side of the recreation palace, it occurs to me that reaching out to someone of a different race (or just under the blanket of looking 'different') means your mind becoming accustomed to new reactions. What are those reactions? Irrational fear that you put away for the moment to meet with the person, an idea of what type of reaction the other subject will get from meeting you and trying to connect via some sort of commonality.
"Do you like Chris Rock?"
"I guess so..."
"Yeah, he's funny."
An honest effort, but under the pretense that all black people will respond well to other black people being referenced, or respond well to a part of their culture being shown through you.

If only I had a sociology major, I could have been more equipped to help out my white-skinned brethen.

Oh brother. Andre is going to write something philosophical.

(The Language connection to identity)
I need to define identity for myself before I start.

"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45)

"He who is ignorant of other languages is ignorant of his own." --Goethe
America does not want to learn Spanish. That is a searing fact in this present day culture.Despite what boons could come from learning a language that is a-first-language to 332 million people around the world (English is first to 322 million), many citizens do not want to learn Spanish or have it taught to children for fear that English will bumped down to second language in the coming generation. The country's fear rings of xenophobia and seems to not change if the language being offered was French, Portuguese, or Russian. Americans, for the most part, don't like change (despite what an Obama poster might try to explicitly sell you) They would much rather not worry about their way of life being altered in a way that appears to be a slippery slope.
Cherokee was America's main language at one point in time, or one of many along with Chickasaw, Choctaw, Apache, and Navajo. If France won the French and Indian War, we would certainly have been speaking French at the new millennium. History was such fickle mistress. English was a luck of the draw when you look back and see that the right king was in place to pursue North American colonies even after the first attempt yielded nothing but death and famine in what is now South Carolina. How else would we have learned English? It is not an easy language. Would everyone spontaneously decide one year, one decade, that we should change all our books and speech because English is a way past cool language that would make us complete as a people? Doubt it.


"The language of friendship is not words but meanings." --Henry David Thoreau

I lead with some quotes and make with the pontifacation

(The Language connection to identity)
I need to define identity for myself before I start.

"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45)

"He who is ignorant of other languages is ignorant of his own." --Goethe

"The language of friendship is not words but meanings." --Henry David Thoreau

Keeping Watch

I'm the Hero.
I'm keeping watch over Michael right as I type.
Hoping he'll be alright...soon.
(BARF)
DAMMIT!
I got it. I got it. I got it. Don't worry Ms. Thing (Miss Thang if you're nasty) I can deal with guys being sick. I'm a sick person by nature so the two go together like steak and potatoes.
Dammit I feel so helpless.
But I'm doing my best for right now to make him the most comfortable for now.
He's wrapped up like a cocoon.
The lady the room belongs to longs to work on her fashion paper.
I refuse to work on my if only to create mental buildup for later to expel onto the paper.
Dolce and Gabbana ideas on my right, a downtrodden mate on my left.

I will not leave him behind.
"Leave a mate behind, and you might as well leave ALL your mates behind" so says Proinsias Cassidy, from the Garth Ennis Preacher comicbooks, inside my head.
Good advice, but I don't think you followed you advice as well as ya should.


It's a cool day.
I made the world a better place. Just my piece of it, but you gotta start somewhere.

Something wicked this way C-RRRRAAAALPH!

There is two different worlds swirling about me now.
Michael Hicks is trying to describe his. And Four girls are trying to live in theirs and I am caught on the outside.
Girl shit.
Mike Hicks falling on some girls bed.
(Oh yeah we are in her room)
Girls deciding to order food.
Michael crushing his confidence building shades.

When I see the two try to communicate, there is a silent break that can be sensed in the same fashion as a snapped dry wood feels when two hands want to feel strong.

Idle chit-chat, and enabling ("Do you fancy another drank, Michael?") are bouncing off the walls.
What have we (AKA me) done to deserve this?
Oh and Usher is on the Speakers...think of that what you will.

Written all in one day. Imagine that.

I need to create something about identity and what it's relationship is to language in the next eleven minutes. What to do what to do.

NROP backwards is PORN. And the world keeps spinning

I talked with Jamaica Kincaid, a prolific writer who my teacher lUUURves, at length over at some anitbellum south mansion called Ivy Hall. I always enjoy hearing what writers that have written so much have to say, because I feel like I can through out a lame duck topic and they can turn into something of great interest (at least for me).
I felt as if I were an outsider. Everyone had seemed to be fans of her work and read some of her books. I had not. They made references to allusions in her writings and voiced opinions about the work being alluded to. I didn't and felt lesser for it. I love William Wordsworth but I failed to connect with her when it came to that reference as well, as I had not memorized 'Dandelions' a poem that persuaded her life.

I enjoyed my time there. She seemed to gravitate to talking with me (must be because I sat upfront hyuck-hyuck-hyuck) and I found it delightful that she reverberated the same lessons that college was trying to pound into my head. She dropped out of school to pursue a writing career (you don't know what you will eventually do, whether that entails your majors or your careers) and she says to write for yourself after telling us that when she first went to the New Yorker she tried to write prose that made her elder whiter peers pause in awe (eventually a writer learns to write for him/herself).
I wish more writers like her came through Atlanta to show us what fruits are in store for those that continue down path of composition.

What's the word? Bird is the word.

Andre Churchwell II Tuesday, October 21, 2008

English Nonfiction Literature

A man and his used rental skates (that aren’t really his)

Skill is involved. A sense of balance and being in touch with one’s own body. A grace of a lake-bird landing on the water bed with nary a splash.

I can’t skate worth a damn so all the descriptors usually fit for the act of skating need not apply to me.

Someone such as I would stay the hell out of Skate-parks, skate-rinks, and open roads as much as feasible. What would surprise you is to find that I love skating-rinks and will defy death to ensure they stay open.

What is the Super Bowl without fanfare and enthralling commercials? If I may answer a question with a question: What is a Skate Center without an arcade and skeet booth? Vacant, in my mind at the age of ten, was the only answer. These are the attractions. These are the teacup and rollercoaster rides. The actual skating was the walking around and buying plush dolls of animated movie character. I’m sure someone enjoys those aspects but they certainly would not be the reasons for me to come to the state fair again.

The actual skate center looked dark and ominous. The interior itself could give me enough of an explanation as to why I still scream for adult supervision when someone walks up behind me and catches me unawares.

What habits could I have, indeed, learn from such an establishment other than what I was supposed to learn, ice skating (of the land variety)? Well, this was housing many a suburbanite so I can play “My First Befriending of a Minority”. You need a partner for this. Not just any partner, you need one of these wide-eyed hopeful children of doctors/lawyers/sellers of ocean liners private school attending part of the majority. You know and upper-middle class lefty who, even though we were born and raised in the south, when Civil War class starts would often be heard saying “they” in reference to the south and “us” in reference to the north. (I found it reasonable to assume that current generations of southerners were in fact more tolerate than previous generations but ridiculous to ignore said generations and pretend there is no connection to them) The game usually involves me playing an arcade game with a new “buddy”. One who stays in the game with me longer than most would and in the process using and exorbitant amount of quarters. This can also entail following me around to the next mode of entertainment, whether it was skeet ball or Street Fighter (bonus points if he makes solely positive comments about every black character that shows up during play) Just generally going out of his way to prove to himself “I’m one of the nice ones. Anyone can see now that I CAN talk with a black person.” I need remind you, most of these encounters were not with fully form adults but with kids in lower school and middle school.

I had no interest in skates nor in skate rinks; it just happened to turned out that most of my classmates, that had birthday parties, do.

Something Vs. Something For A lot of Stuff

My room: (dorm)
- It contains many imports from other students and services (borrowed for an indeterminable amount of time)
-No sustainable amount of food but always a supply of peanut butter (soup, carbonated drinks, apple sauce, crackes, grape breakfast snacks

My other room: (in Brentwood)
-Unlimited supply of reading material (comic and otherwise, seriously I need to sell this crap "My Dog Ran For Class President"?)
-A One Way Tele-Communitory Device with Cathod Ray Attachment (TV)
-A Fan
-A stead supply of chicanery.

Lambeau Field: (Home field for the Green Bay Packers)
-Well... I had this for a similar project in high school. I don't remember all of it but I felt to not mention it would be self-blasphemy.
-I enjoy it when I see footage of the Green Bay Packers winning and such (blame NFL Films and Brett Favre)
-I'm truly the most comfortable on a football field (but this is goes across the board)

Skate Rink
-Can't skate but it's the focus point of a lot of parties I went to as a child.
-But who needs to skate when you can play the arcade games for 2 quarters?

So I lost my Dreamcast last year.

The hell is up with all this goodness?

THE HELL?!

I just finished having the best weekend ever and now I gotta finish some dumb ole' sketch for Life Drawing class?
The fuck, man.

Anywho, I twittered my ass off (but not even as much as I really should have), I played motherfuckin' football (flag football, but football nonetheless) on a battle of the sexes, I got back together with the radio team, I helped people with their issues of relationships, art queries, politics, genital issues, etc., I saw "Funny Games", "The Powerpuff Girl's Movie" and "Taxi Driver" for the first awesome times, I went out eating lobster with my mom and dad and girl who should be a friend (Krystal the Christian as I refer to her because that's her explaination for talking to me), I talk some crazy bullshit, saw Henry Rollins on Thursday and Nick Swardson on Friday.

All this and I'm not nearly done with this school year.
OH HELL NAW I AIN'T.

I found the mustard to ask Sir Swardson for an interview after a show with a made up press-pass. I wanted my school radio to have an interview or if it wasn't recorded than the school paper. I somehow kept at it and swung it. I'm waiting on the reply from his e-mail with baited breath. This has the distinct chance of not working out but hey, it was worth the shot, right?

Rollins. HOLY INTENSE SHIT.
Every subject was lobotomized by this dude.
After the show, he chastised some philanderer who missed the show but showed up to the "poetry reading" for not letting him get to his long line of autograph signées.
"I gave you my time but as you can see there are a lot of people here that I have to talk to"
"Yeah, so when are you comin' back to-"
"Did you hear what I just said, sir? Now I am trying to be pleasant but please do not let me resort to violence."
(the other guy dissolves)
"Thank you." (Goes back to writing and chattin' it up with the fans)

Got an e-mail from him too:
Drepants, thanks man. Keep filling the notebooks. Henry

I'm so fucking pleased as mothafuckin' punch.

I need sleep but THAT IS FOR THE WEAK.
Going to finish this fucking bone shit if it kills me.
Life drawing can suck a big hefty one.

OH I promised to Tyrone that I would not only make a blogger website for him but also get him an interview with my radio as well as play his songs on there. I'm obligated to help out whenever I can.

Cornpatch

Andre

My mom was a studious person in her freshman year in college. So studious in fact that she would often not leave her dorm but to go to classes. Her roommate was of the same creed and remained on their placid island of outside ignorance. Some friends of my mom disliked this attitude and would encourage other aspirations. They continued to this until one fateful day mother and her roommate

Couldn’t wait to be out at 12:00

She and her roommate stayed in the room all the first week.

Got persuaded to go to a Club called the “Cornpatch” (because it was housed in a corn field)

They were promised some incredible root beers (my mom at this age had not had the pleasure of a roootbeer maybe once before and I’m guessing her roommate was as frequent an enjoyer.

It began to get late (after 12:00) and they still didn’t have their rootbeers.

A fight started.

A woman believed the club to house “college womens” that were staelling her boyfriend away from her.

She had a knife and was parading around rather proudly with it.

My mom and her roommate hid under the table…to continue waiting for their rootbeers.

(This blog is being abused by my school at times) D:

Okay, same thing happens again (they are persuaded that that incident was a freak accident coinceedence) when they go back.

Except this time the jealous women has a gun…and they are waiting on a chicken sandwhich (explained to me always and emphatically as a “chicken sammich’” (even corrected sometimes so that the phrase is said)

My granddad and her father always said not to go out after midnight. Cause only the devil is awake at that time.

A serious post....FINALLY

It's rare that you find distilled wisdom in all it's glory being dispelled in one dynamic speech.
Yet, through those adversities I still triumphed.
I learned about this speech at Patton's website. I'm reading it right now and would like as many people to read it as they can. What need have I to give teachings when I have no lessons myself?
Listen all and be forewarned: Knowledge is power.

READING - NOT JUST FOR PEOPLE TRYING TO BETTER THEIR LIVES ANYMORE!

Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.

Hope ya'll enjoy that cause it may be the last time something cool happens on this blog.

This is a new post. You may now dance the Dance of Rebirth!

I working on a story right now.
If it will be a ALLWORDS novel/la, a comicbook mini or a small-time video complete with bad acting and jerky hand-held moments that were not supposed to be there but if brought the audience "into the moment" I'll say, "yeah...I meant that!", no one can say right now.

Especially not me.
Look at me; you think I plan anything?
I'm a methhead chasing ambulances to hospitals.
I wouldn't know what to do if I...got hold of a hypodermic needle. So to speak.

It's a D&D inspired dialouge fest. Hopefull if I get my players talking about enough stuff maybe they'll happen on something you'll like.

I really just want to start an idea and finish with a product, as a tell my child therapist Dr. Needle. At least I think her name is Doctor Needle.
Some last names should make you exempt from being a doctor.
Payne.
Hertz.
I heard from Mr. Rod, my 9th grade Physics teacher, that some girl had a dad whose a dentist named "Dr. Slaughter"


Irony really makes life worth living.

I should also get out that I want to work on a book that follows the day of a grown-kid visiting his highschool 3 years later. K-K-K-K-KRAY-ZINESS! (note to self: next time use C's, less racist that way towards myself)

"Autobiographical", you say? What, what? (there goes the [Talking like I'm british tag] AGAIN)
Difinitely autobiographical, with similar people (with changed names..sometimes), an odd main character, a compositing of 2 or 3 different people into one to save time (and energy) and all done an 3 hour period from 12:10pm to 3:17pm.
EASY.
EASY. EASY.
HAAARD.
EASY!

(note to self: call your old theater teacher Mr. G. It's the least you can do)


Oh, and I'm reading Transmetropolitan. It's a RapeFest...but in a good way. Scratch that shit, it makes me want to go outside and punch authority figures. FUCKING AWESOME is the name I have for this series now. Why isn't this posted on telephone poles in major metropolitan cities?

Edit:
http://paprpapr.blogspot.com/
Bud Ries has a magazine/blog. This little improv demon was sooo nice to me in my early high school years. I repay the favor by posting his blog on my blog that no one is watching. YOU'RE WELCOME. BUD!

Double Edit:
Vice Presidents? I don't give a shi-ooooh it's a la-daay! 20 months of being Gov. of Alaska, you say? FORMER MISS WASILLA, YOU SAY?! Well, sign me uh-oh that's right I'm voting for the historic moment in race relations for the United States rather than pleasuring myself to hot pics of the VP when she was "Sarah Barracada" on her high school basketball team.

Hawt Pix of Sarah Palin ballin'.

Biden? I'm sure there were more intellectual choices but this is a political choice so it sucks.
It'll probably help him get elected. It sucks.
It'll give him that "tough America" edge. Shit sux.
Okay, now I'm being a bastard.

Soon to be TV movie " Merv Loves Work"

(A little something I wrote in Junior Year at University School Of Nashville in my "Love Stories" class. Merv Albright, an ode to Marv of Frank Miller's SinCity fame and Marv Albert of "YESHHH!" fame is mix up in an Office Space type would that he relishes to belong to. Strange right? Why would he want that? Hmph, maybe if we read a little we'll find out for ourselves)

An
André Churchwell Production


Merv jogs to catch up to the bus to his job. He’s almost directly behind it when it charges off without him. He slaps the back window and screams, "Where’re you going? Stop! You can’t leave without ME!"
The chase begins with him standing in astonishment. He takes of cutting through a mini-mart. In the front and out the side door, with a "Hi" and a "Bye" to the cashier he swings of the door handle. Skeeting down different alleys looking for a low gate or no-gate, he finds a lower than usual high-fence. With a sigh and a lunge, Merv klangs onto the fence and bounces off the earth. With a bit more resiliency and spirit, he kicks off the wall of the building to his right to get to the top of the fence. He strains his arms to get the rest of his body over the fence until he gets a foot over it. Easy as pie from here on. All Merv has to do now get to his work place before he gets fired for being late for the 20th time this month (13 the boss knows about). He doesn’t even see the bus parked out front the lot; a sign that he maybe too late. He storms into the building, not noticing the bus just pulling into the lot as he opens the door.
He stomps up the stairs when he finds he can’t wait for the elevator. He runs ramshackle through the office space and straight to the boss’s room. The secretary tries to stop him but to no avail. "You can’t go in there!"

Merv searches around and finds the room to be empty. "Where is he?" he says. She strikes back, "Oh, I don’t but you must go."
"(Chuckles, with a snort) Hey that was cool!"
"What?"
"You just made that rhyme, what you just said, that was cool."
"It didn’t really mean to…but I guess it’s true. Anyways, it’s not really that cool."
"(Snort) Oh, I whole-heartedly disagree."

By then Mr. Pennywinkle came out of the bathroom, buttoning up his pants he says, "What the Twinkies is going on here? Merv, what are you doing here?"
Merv goes into beg-mode, "Sir, I just want you to know that those last 10 infractions on the getting-here-on-time code were misjudgements on my part and I take full responsibility of." His boss, Mr. Pennywnickle tries to chime in, "But Merv…"

"Ah, I would like…love a chance to explain myself. Now this time, this time I really wanted to be here, sir. I have this passion for not getting thrown out of my office. I trailed the morning bus that was supposed to take me after that byzantine mongrel of a bus driver who wouldn’t stay the extra three seconds needed for me to get on the b..b…bloody bus! I ran over trashcans, outrun police dogs, climb a wall, and…and a clerk tried to shoot me! Yeah, for strolling through his store on my intent to find a shorten distance to this, your, establishment. What with the bruises and burns all over my…bruised and mangled body, frankly, I’m surprised I made it here in alive and enact. What more could I do? I was a mere runner in the race, nay, the marathon, nay, the Nascar for survival! One must have a trade or one does not exist (chokes on tears). So I say to you now, by my bonds, damn my track record and damn your preconceived notions!! I am Merv Albright, and I showed up to work!!!!"

A dramatic pause ensues, then the secretary and Mr. Pennywinkle look at each other.

WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE JOKER! THE WONDERFUL...AHHHIMONFIREAHHH!!

Watchmen.
Dark Knight.
I have now found out that I'm gay (for these movies!) for Dr. Manhattan’s blue crotch.
They actually have it in the trailer!
I can't wait for the redband with photo realistic BIG BLUE PENIS LIGHT emitting from the screen.

So tomorrow's the big day and I'm going with my uncle and HIS RAPPING SON!
I was planning on watching Batman & Robin tonight to dare/compare the villain treatment "Let's kick some ICE!"
Lo and behold, I found a treasure trove of logic leaps that kinda kept me laughing lots (that was incidental, I swear).

I want to read Book of Magic and head to La-La Land so that my mind will be filled with magic and its vague machinations. Maybe I'll converse with John Constantine before the big day.
How interesting...now I want to make that story happen. An account of my meeting John Constantine in Dreamland along with various random characters (and Kirby is nowhere to be found = IRONY). I'd better rub up on my cockney accents.

Whatever, I need to write something before the big gig in the unavoidable coming fall.
School, that is.
Art school.

My RAPPING COUSIN and his friend apparently just found a place of interest that wants a 30 minute show and will pay depending on admittance. Some place in downtown south Nashville. Owned by a church (hurmmm). Called the Rocket-Somethingorother. GO! IF YOU WANT TO!

Peter Capp is Batroc ze Leaper

I was doing my Peter Capp voice when I was driving my way to the car shop (I practice voices when I drive by myself...huh...hadn't thought about the reprecussions of THAT act) and I remember Ed Brubaker (current award-winning writer for Captain America) making a comment in an interview that went to the affect of "I would love to put Batroc the Leaper in there but I can't write in a French accent accurately." This got me mad. How come Brubaker doesn't just force the accent? I want Batroc ze Leaper so badly in a Brubaker comicbook (especially after reading the Immortal Iron Fist: the Last Iron Fist Story Hardcover) cause Batroc is a nonsensical, formidable, mustachioed, madman who speaks with French phrases that sound like gibberish if translated. He's like a French Deadpool, except for the healing factor and weapons and ductape.


From his wikipedia article under Quotes:

Batroc uses many French terms which may strike even the American reader who makes up most of Marvel's audience as stereotypical; a native speaker of French may find Batroc's dialogue not only stereotypical but hilariously badly translated: "Zut alors!" (Batroc uses this term even in a totally inappropriate context) "Sacre Bleu!" (An expression spelled as one word in French.) "Alas, you are too sensitive, mon cher! But, c'est la vie!" "Nom du chien! Your insolence is insupportable-- insufferable!! For zat you shall pay un mille fois!" (Batroc should say "Nom d'un chien" and he shouldn't use the "un" for "mille fois") "Is it not très formidable!" (Andre: "It is not very tough!" Sure it makes sense here but in French to say something isn't something you have to say it with a "ne pas" around the verb. Without it the phrase "trés formidable" means: you/it are/is very tough! So it sounds like this to me: "It is not-YOU'RE VERY TOUGH!" "Ah, mon pauvre petit!" (Andre again: he basically called Captain America his daughter) Batroc inserts so much mangled French terminology into his speech, that Captain America once asked him "Who gave you your English lessons, Doctor Doom?"

Back in my car, I suddenly start cackling in the Peter Capp I-am-not-from-this-country-voice that "I AM BATROC! ZE LEEPERR!" It goes down hill from there (depending on which direction I was driving I could have easily gone uphill. Well, that joke sucked)


That is all.

BONG

And down this road, you will face your ultimate fear...living with your parents when your 30.

Today is a brand new day for me.

I'm taking the reins.
I'm bringing up baby.
I'm takin' em to Missouri.
I'm knowin' when to holddem and when to folddem, when to walk away and when to run.
It's fantastic!
I am so doing stand-up as a job this summer (along with many part-time ones, OH that reminds me to check my e-mail for UPS's response to my e-mail).
I am doing something of magnitude everyday.
I am calling the people that need to be called every week.

Starting today, no more lazy about watching shit on the internet (I've done enough to last me a lifetime back in college).
I need to write and read and work every single day.
I have a year to get myself awesome and show my 'rents that Andre Lemont Churchwell Jr. is the man that they though he was going to be when he was sired those many moons ago.
I got movie ideas that need tinkering.
Bits that need it too.
My room need s to be the cleanest of the house.
And my comic books....ooh boy...my comic books will be studied and pondered about till I can create an original idea for one myself.

They will be no stopping me.
Except you.
Not you, the happy reader.
YOU.
INTERNET.

I must salvage what I can of my will and strength and keep these brandwith demons at bay long enough to...catch up on the news of a Runaway's movie?...Wah-WHAT! And Brian K. Vaughn is writing the scrip-NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' BOUT WILLIS!

....er...

Good 'morrow.

There was a time I never read a book, no matter the cost...

Chapter three of George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four

An elaborate scheme to keep the future society of Oceania in constant internal struggle to conform , to resist, and to have their minds in constant preoccupation with punishment. In a book full of practical and impractical elaborate schemes it would be fitting that this whole system of proles and the inner-party, The Revolution, Big Brother (who we do not see), and Emmanuel Goldstein (who we also do not see) were just pawns and rooks to keep the people busy. What gets me down that line of thinking is the two major figures that represent opposite ends of the civil spectrum (Big Briother and Mr. Goldstein) could be figmental characters that perpetuate this inner war with everyone in Oceania. Does not the fact that no body sees the Wizard not grain on everyone working for them? All you need is one brave soul or a straw to break the camel's back to reveal a giant machine that sends recorded messages to both sides of this civil dispute.

And now, if a may a silly poem

Am I useful?
I don't mean to askthe question: Can I do something useful?
No.
I mean can I do something that utilizes human ingenuity and practicality as well as be interesting?
Could I perhaps drive a fork lift?
Not a small fork lift.
A huge one.
With skill of a man twice my age and a deft field of vision not applied to my other task.
Can I sing a duet?
With any old dude or gal.
And make the whole thing better with and without rehearsal,
through sheer style and choice of improvisational movement.
With if...I knew gun fu?
Something silly that I would not ordinarily consider but have seen in a great many media.
I could have exceptional taste soup that gets people ready for brain-bending sex.
I just never could bring myself to offer up the advice to a trustworthy human being.
If only I had years in a hole,
to try and fail,
to surprise myself,
to live differently thereon out.
Perhaps I make bold statements the best of all others.

No.
That sound like something Jesus told himself.
I'm not Jesus.

I am Junior.

And now back to our regularly schedule programs.

Andre Churchwell

The fact that this is a satire comes in when I read:

“It was one those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move.”

The feeling of an outlandish object meant for reality sits well for what I consider satire, but then I read the rest of the book and I have to remind myself that it was satire on the political atmosphere of the time. I kept thinking of it as a rollicking dystopian feature (thanks Matrix!) but I have come to appreciate the subtle angle this is taking.

It seems I was mistaken, signing up for this class, what a satire entails. More than jokes, less than an affidavit of what is wrong and right, this shows you a world and expects you to make connections to your own. It’s not supposed to be laugh out loud funny until you actually see what happens in the book take place in front of you and say, “My God, the fools have really done it!” I am getting my understanding of satire more of a foundation with this book.

Pulling the people away from natural conventions seems to be the way for a tyrannical society. The "no sex" rule in particular has been seen in such media as Half-Life 2 where the Big Brother for of the times was Dr. Breen, telling people how the brutish natural way is backwards and how new science will lead us forward to a Utopian form of living less dependent on the whims of genealogy.

Amazingly, not an agenda setter for english class.

What I like about 1984 George Orwell: (so far)

Trying to get out ideas for "fun" in the book

mind you, I have only jumped around the book and read snipppets plus all that stuff I find on the internet and movies.

• It got lifted off the whole genre of Looking-tragically-at-the-future-while-making-you-aware-of-the-present
  
• 
  
• Some or most of the events have happened before in human history but not with the drama.
• Incidentally made Sci-Fi mainstream (here comes the Matrix in 1999)
• Gave us great ideas for propaganda (or when it comes to the Mac ad, anti-propaganda propaganda!)
• Year for a title. You don't see that much these days.
  
• Delves into the political atmosphere of a darker world similar to ours.
• Inspired a movie with the 2nd most kill counts for a lead charater (surprised Rambo wasn't on the list).
  
• My 1984 edition of "1984" (that's right, I'm a balla') has Walter Cronkite doing the introduction.
• I'm sorry. I think I need to capitalize WALTER CRONKITE to push this point to the 13% of you who actually will scream at your computer and post on the comments section, "Can I haz copies, plez?"
  
• It's a satire? Really? Huh.
  

Fun...Fun...How can you have fun?

My 3-D art teacher gave me an ultimatum. Either I turn in all the stuff tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. I haven't yet or fail.
This presents a problem as I have not begun on my model head yet.

The cleancher here is that I have to turn in a drawing of the skeleton and a drawing of the muscular structure too...by 5:00pm today.

I'm sick. This sucks. I wish ill on my myself from two weeks ago for dickin' around and not doing JAAAAACK-DIDDLES.

Ironman on Friday. I need money.
Preferably four dollars. Possibly three since I don't know how much a ticket is at Atlantic Station ($9.50, thanks belated memory!!).

I neeed to survive the week. Survive the day. Survive this hour.
I need to get to work. NOW.




.....



Or, as soon as I can.

So....are you joking...?

Modest Proposal

Andre Churchwell

There is a problem in our dear country; one that we will no longer be able to avoid for much longer. The United States of America is going down the pipes. Once a sterling beacon of potential for national discourse and eliminator of woes for the world, we are being lobbied into self-centered, over-weight, medicated trouble makers with power inherited from a harder working generation and civil rights being rolled back that was earned by a bolder generation.

Americans have found importance where there is none with Anti-Gay Marriage Acts, Anti-Flag Burning Acts and video games/rap songs/anime shows that might influence an innocent child to violent acts.

The United States media creates this middle ground of confusion for its people where we are the best nation in the world (I agree, but now that’s like being the best dancer in a one-leg handicap hoe-down) and told not to worry, while also saying that the world is extremely hazardous and danger could strike from anywhere, at any moment.

This seems to get crazier as it goes along. The only thing that could cease it or turn this generation to a hopeful direction is for a great change that would otherwise not naturally happen. The American people usually unite and cause this everlasting type of change when an event takes place such as a great tragedy. A tragedy such as Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center, the assassination of Martin Luther King, etc. motivate the populace with fear, which turns to anger then to action (sometimes good: Joining the Allies to fight the Axis, sometimes bad: DC riots, War on Terrorism).

This nation is long past due with dealing with the issues that cripple us and keep us from un-ending liberty (the condition in which an individual has the ability to act according to his or her own will) and is long past due for a revolution from the current passive-aggressive ways of dealing with our problems.

“A little revolution now and then is a good thing; the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

-Thomas Jefferson

I will now propose my own plan of action, which I hope us brave few will not be liable to the least objection (the least of all me).

I have found, not through my own work but from the diligence of the first-rate team on the humor website Cracked.com, that scientist as well as nature it self are well on their way to creating a zombie horde who may or may not eat our brains as well as the flesh we walk in. Not only that, but horde will be imbued with the ability to transfer the zombie prognosis to whomever they choose to bite.

With the proper funds and moral support, the United States can be the first nation with a zombie invasion. In as little as two to three years, we could be engulfed and engorged with the living dead. The Second Amendment will be impractical no more. The ready, willing and able will mount a heroic precedent in history. The things that truly make America great will shine through at last. The right to arm yourselves with anything money can buy mixed with a free market have yielded guns being bought wholesale at K-Mart. This will prove beneficial and for certain would not have been useful for any other purpose.

The common threat of undead humans flooding the streets (whether they actual will devour our brains as science fiction is still uncertain and would be helpful in knowing so as to fund Anti-Zombie Helmets) will unite those of strong wills to stand up and start anew. The government will prove untrustable as they will most assuredly be blamed for the accident and the ensuing mass chaos. It has not been determined whether toxoplasmosa gondii will be the way to go (as it controls mice to the point that it tells them to be eaten by a cat so that it can control the larger mammal) with it already infecting half the human population as I write or nanotechnology run amok, but fortunately, if funded correctly all these will end up causing the zombie apocalypse we so desperately need for focus on the truly important issues: health, social welfare, and autonomy from a government gone wrong.

All these post must now be catalouging my adventures in Satire Class

All I can think of is the book “The Giver”. A utopian society, supposedly in the future, is blissfully devoid of emotion or lust all the way through life. A nondescript old-wise man deemed “The Giver” takes in one boy to be tutored in the ways of human emotion. Hilarity ensues. I mistake this book for another I had read called “A Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. Too similar too recap but I like this one more, possible cause I’m reading it the first time.
Not being able to choose you emotions is what strikes this connecting line to the “The Giver”. For some reason I hold firm that there is more of a connection there than what I initially can find. Perhaps there is a fascination with choice. Do we, in the universe and dimension we inhibit choose are emotions? It seems some of us control those pesky emotion better than most but what it if we were made the choice to choose whether we could outright decry something for a promise of a better tomorrow…if we could not choose? (I just befuddle myself. I’ll clear it up at the bottom)1
The constant parade of propaganda eerily takes a future-looking nod to the advertisements of today, especially the ones out in the street (and especially New York). I easily imagine if current-day viral marketing for a movie of Nineteen-Eighty-Four would have [WAR IS PEACE] [FREEDOM IS SLAVERY] [IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH] as banners on those tall buildings.

1 When do you think society made the choice to go down the path that was taken in Nineteen-Eighty-Four?

Does this work?

For My Modest Proposal I tried to get at the heart of what I think is wrong with society and look for a f'd up answer that is back up with indisputable facts.
WELLLL so far I got nothing. So instead I went with what is wrong with me and projected that out to society with a screwy answer like:

• Show porn every where. Flood the market and the media with hardcore porn and desensitize the commonwealth. The issue of pornography destroying our society would be put to bed wit this initiative. Sign up today!
• Men go pants-less, Women go topless. On the issue of desenisitivity, perhaps we would do better to go a few months showing what everybody wants to see. Which no longer make them taboo or so sought after that in a visual regard. Strippers would be out of a job. Remember you can make a deference, but you have to remove an article of your clothing. Pledge now!
• (Original idea heard from Stand-up comic Doug Stanhope)
  

I've got so much school work to do it gives me a boner

1. Stop going onto 4chan
2. Stop using the internet
3. Stop reading/start writing
4. Start your Cardboard head project
   
5. Oh, and finish your late box art
   
6. Oh and read Gulliver's Travels
7. Watch Gulliver's Travels
8. Read the Rape of the lock
9. Make a "Modest Proposal" with a super long title
10. Pay for late camera return so that you can use the camera in school again
11. Draw/label the entire front human musculature and the back torso portion
12. Take an hour to clean your "death trap" of a bed and your "Cthulu's Mouth" of a floor
13. STOP YOUR BITCHIN'
14. Get a catchy song stuck in your head (it helps with doing mundane work)
15. Get out of room+ do work= Work gets done
16. Get out of room -do work/due tomorrow= Vicious Cycle

Now I need to go to an open mic and waste some time with no material.
It would be awesome if someone were to help me write my stuff but it's just as well.
Now I can get ALL THE CREDIT! MWHAAAAHAHAAHA!!
(comes to realize his place in the grand scheme of things)

Biology is for people with boners for blood, bones, and bugs.
Think about it.

I wonder if Maria Lombardi knew Micheal Cypress. Not a concise thought but I just wanted My MyCy shout out.

Oh my honours and awards!

Andre Churchwell The Second English-Satire 4/15/08

What If? : Andre Decides to Read “The Rape of the Lock”?

It seems that to understand what is going on in the first Canto you have to know a great deal, not even about the incident between Arabelle Fermor and Lord Petre but the Homer-isms that are abound. The hundreds of references to Greek mythology would normally have this reader scrambling to reference websites but seeing as this is an satire class there is a need to see the text for more than just what it meant to reference and what the reader believes is referenced. For the most part, I have no clue. When a passage mentions “The silver Token, and the circled Green,” I think of how three female characters from this poem eventually get named after three moons of Uranus, Belinda, Umbriel, and Ariel. The constant reference of sky and sun perhaps got the discoverer, William Lassell, of said moons to think of this poem when he found them. The lines:

” While Peers and Dukes, and all their sweeping Train, And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear,” reminds me of Dr. Hank McCoy’s use of the phrase in all his incarnations as the mutant and mutant activist Beast from the X-Men. It struck me that he uses “My stars and garters” as an exclamation but could also tie into his love of Victorian literature, for in The Rape of the Lock the story seems to illustrate that one should not judge people on the acts they do on face-value as many machinations are at play within that one act. The act in TROTL is cutting a lock of hair while the act for Hank McCoy would probably be hatred of his kind.

He teaches a history class...while upside down...with glasses on.

Q: The Rape of the Lock is an old poem but are there any references in it that transcend it’s time period? (I named a few already)