Running From The Past

    The paragraph that spoke to me the most was number 4, It's not easy leaving your past behind. No matter how far down the beaten path you try to run, the past is never far behind, trailing you and haunting you. In either good, or bad ways. 

     The past always seems to come back at the worst of times. When you're laying in bed almost asleep, and then you remember that one awful time that you messed up a whole entire cake because you accidentally put too much flour in a cake and then gave the cake to your boss. Stuff happens and usually, it's something we'd rather forget. But, it's something that happened in the timeline of our life and we can't go back and erase it. We wish we could, but we can't run from our past. Something or someone will always be there from our past. We can try to forget it, but who wants to lose all their good memories? Our memories will be the good, the bad, and the ugly, but all have a significant meaning in the story of our lives.  It's like Gatsby, he's trying to run from his past, but it seems to keep catching up to him. And he ends up paying for it. 
   
       The one haunting memory of our past can be embarrassing, but, it's usually something that good came out of. Why try to run from something we can use to learn from our mistakes? Let's stop trying to forget our past, and start living in the present. Because the present, will soon be the past. 

Bloggin about a blog

I started following the blog http://theflocks-maximumrideblog.blogspot.com/ because its about Maximum Ride, a character from one of my favorite books. The blog is a great place to catch up with the latest news about the series.

Harrison Bergeron vs 2081

Crystal Myrum
Ms Fordahl
English 10
26 November 2013

Comparison and Contrasting

Harrison Bergeron is a short story about equality. There was also a video we watched called 2081. They were both similar but very different. They both had the same characters  and they also followed the same story line. There were a few differences though. Some, such as, the ballerina and Harrison Bergeron dancing, and kissing the ceiling, wasn't in the movie. Which was sort of saddening to me because that was my favorite part. Some other differences were there was a bomb under the studio, there was no talking of Harrison becoming an emperor and the ballerina becoming the empress, and Harrison was never killed. It was relatively the same though.

English Essay/speech

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Crystal Myrum

Ms Fordahl

English 10

19th November 2013

 

Let’s Pause And Wonder

The Plot Against People is a short story using humor to criticize these inanimate objects, such as a toaster, that break down, get lost, or simply don't work. This stuff happens all the time. ALL the time. But why? Is it the objects fault? Or our fault?

The author uses humor to get us to laugh about these frustrating annoyances. But, truth is, we aren’t laughing in reality. We are either screaming, crying, or ripping our hair out. Let’s say, you are making toast, you stick the white bread into the nice silvery toaster and are so ready for that savory buttery toast you so desire, and you’re going to get a tall glass of orange juice to go with that toast. You get your orange juice and you come back to find your kitchen is black with smoke, aaaannnnnddd the lights and everything else on that circuit is out because while you were going to get your orange juice, your toaster to short circuited everything in the room, causing you to miss a chance to meet the love of your life on your life on the subway you take to work every day, causing you to be late for work, and also causing you to miss a great raise opportunity and you didn’t get your toast! All because of a stupid toaster. Ya know? Well, maybe not this whole scenario, but something similar. Like for example, your alarm clock doesn’t go off and you end up being late to work, because, you lose your car keys, then end up running outta the house with one shoe. This stuff happens all the time! But, why?

        During this short story I was laughing. But, in real life, I wouldn’t be. But why does the author

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use humor to make us laugh? Does he have a magical power to curse these sorts of things on others? Or is it something else? Because, I would not be laughing, as stated in the story, if my car broke down in a busy downtown street intersection, I’d probably cry! It would be terrifying. And again the thought of why do these things happen and why is humor used to convey these thoughts? The question nagged at me. Why? Why? Why? The author described 3 groups of items, the objects that disappear, the objects that are broken, and the objects that simply don’t work. The author used humor to convey these three groups. But these things happen every day and why doesn’t the author use a serious tone? Why does the story seem… so at ease? Why it is that humor was used? The question kept nagging at me long after I finished this story. I kept wondering and wondering. And then, finally, I figured it out.

        Ever notice how a teachers smart board doesn’t work whenever we are about to take notes? This is totally fine I don’t mind not taking notes.  But, any who, this smart board seems to think it should work whenever we don’t need to use it. We also have the problem of laptops not working when we need them for a report. Or these laptops seem to think they should go dead when you are just about done with your report and you may or may not have pressed save recently. Another occasion, a personal one for me was, I was going to be late for work because I had to hurry up and find my work shirt. Which of course I couldn’t find, and then, I  lost my keys. I had had them literally 3 seconds ago, and then they were gone. It takes me 15 minutes to drive to where I work and it was 3:35 pm. I started work at 4. I was freaking out. And then I realized, how I was dumb and had my keys in my pocket. I ran out, and was there on time. I never did find my work shirt, till I got home. I walked into my room and there, in the middle of my floor, in plain sight, was my shirt. I couldn’t believe how dumb I had been. I was so focused on getting to work and worrying about how much I had to do in such short time,

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I wasn’t paying attention to detail. I have come to the conclusion, these things happen to us, because… OBJECTS ARE GOING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!! Well… ok... maybe that wasn’t my actual conclusion. But, I do think these things happen to us because we are careless.

        We all have a day where nothing seems to go right, we misplace things, we forget we had a test in algebra that I forgot to study for, and I lost my dog, these things happen all the time. All. The. Time. Because, we are careless. We are so focused on the big thing the next day, or too busy on our phones. example- our laptop going dead, we probably forgot to plug it in that morning in too big of a rush to post a selfie on Instagram to see how many likes we can rack up today. Or the projector not working, it’s obviously not all the time the projectors fault, sometimes it’s probably a loose wire from the poor cord being slung around all the time or being stepped on. Or losing your keys. You’re too busy on Facebook ranting about your bad day you had and you put your keys down thinking, “Oh hey, I will remember this spot!” and going on about your bad day. And then it’s time to go meet friends for supper and you can’t find your keys because you weren’t paying close enough attention the first time. We are so careless! And we never even think twice about where we place things. I don’t always remember where I put something. In fact I forget where I put my pencil half the time and it is usually behind my ear or in my hand. But I am so busy worrying about everything else. Why don’t we all get off our phones and pay attention? Oh wait…. that may not work…

        I believe the author uses humor to show these things happen, and that we can laugh about it! Because it is our fault and it is ok to laugh about it! Maybe not when you are late for work and then fired for laughing because you were so busy tweeting about your big day the next day you forgot to make sure you set your alarm for 5:30 am and not 5:30 pm. that isn’t a good time to laugh, but later,

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you can. Because it is your fault! Your phone didn’t hop into your hand and say, “Pay attention to me! I need you to tweet! I need you to now or I will die.” No, it didn’t say that! And if it did you may want to see a doctor. Because that is not normal. Life is full of screw ups, and we can laugh. Because eventually we will learn from our mistakes. Eventually. Life is full of surprises and we can either embrace them, or tweet about them. We are so careless, that is why we have those groups, we either lose things, like car keys, or break them, like dropping your iPhone, or they simply stop working because we over use them. That’s where the three groups came from. And I understand why the author used humor, because we are the fault of this. The losing things and everything else. It is all on us. Maybe we should tweet about this… no we gotta do this report first. Ugh. Just doing something like that, like refraining from tweeting or facebooking about this report we have to do, we could get it done and not forget about it and then get a bad grade. Then we wouldn’t forget to plug your laptop in, and then you wouldn’t lose your whole report. All by not tweeting, and being careless. Just that one thing is the step to something huge. In our day and age, everything is technical. Literally, everything. Maybe, if we take a break off of technology for five minutes, we wouldn’t lose things. Unless you lose your phone. Then you’re set.

        I loved the short story, The Plot Against People. It was very thought provoking and very humorous. Which is why I thought about it so long after I was done reading it. The author did an excellent job conveying his thoughts. And I think, if it were to be conveyed as a serious thought, rather than a funny one, I wouldn’t have wanted to read it. The humor made me laugh, and realize I forgot to turn my hair straightener off, because I was studying for world history and then I remembered I forgot my notes at home… wow… good thing I read the story or I wouldn’t have remembered I forgot to feed the dog. Wow. I think I need to write stuff down. Or be less careless. That was what I figured was

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the author's main point. Because, if we all were less careless, parents, teachers, kids, teens, dogs, cats, and aliens, basically everyone, then we wouldn’t lose things. At all, we’d never be late for work, we wouldn’t miss meeting the love of our lives, we would always have our toast! Our lives would be great. But maybe, we are meant to be that careless so we have these little screw ups, to make us laugh later, and worry at the time. Maybe that’s why we don’t pay attention. These little life lessons add up, to make us into something great, to be lawyers, doctors, surgeons, leaders, presidents, and everything else. These screw ups, maybe part of a larger picture we don’t see now, until we realize (by reading this story, well maybe not) why we do the things we do. Something small, like your toaster breaking, may lead you to be an engineer because I mean you really want that toast so you try to fix your toaster. That may lead you to be an engineer. Or a toaster doctor. Whichever you prefer.

        I believe these small things, will add up. When I was late for work, I actually was lucky enough to not have very much to do that day. I ended up getting to leave work early. These things do add up. Maybe that’s why we were created, to be careless and always interested in what that one girl posted on Instagram. Because we are curious creatures and careless ones. But that’s what makes us, well, us. And I feel like that is why the author used humor. to show that maybe if we believe something small like the inanimate objects are out to get us, we will stop, even just pause, and wonder, maybe that’s why you lost your favorite shirt, or that’s why your car stopped in a busy downtown street. The author fills us with that wonder, even just for a second. We wonder about it. And I feel like that’s why he used humor, to make us pause and wonder. Because, we don’t wonder as much as we used to anymore. Everything is handed to us. And if we wondered more, maybe, we would realize, that life is fun, and humorous and it’s up to us to go grab it. And grab orange juice to go with that toast.