Final Exam Journal Response

I took this class so that it could help me improve my writing skills, and I really feel like it has. I have always liked writing, and it has always been a hobby of mine, so it was nice to have a class time to focus on just that. I’ve always thought that one of my biggest weaknesses as an author has been describing details, settings, features, feelings, and other things…altogether, I’ve just always thought my biggest weakness was detail. However, I feel like my descriptions have greatly improved as I’ve worked through this class, particularly with my short story, Balloon. I knew that I wanted Balloon to be all about vibe, mood, and feeling, and after reading what I have done of it, I feel like I’ve done a good job of conveying the darkness in a hot sunny, southern, Georgia town. I come to like writing more and more the more that I do it. As a kid, I used writing to express cool ideas of action-packed stories, but as an adult, I use writing to express my inner self and my feelings. Stories I have written such as New, Balloon, and several of my blogs have been methods of complete catharsis for me. New is among one of my favorite works, and I’m sure that Balloon will be when I finish it. I really love and respect the stories that I pour my heart into because they are my thoughts and personal feelings taken out of my head and printed on paper, and it feels good to get them out. I expect to continue writing well into my future. The main things I will be writing are my own screenplays and ideas for my movies that I want to direct, as I want to write the majority, if not all, of my films. Aside from writing movie scripts, I wouldn’t mind writing a book or two in the future, and I would really like to publish short stories that I write. I would love to publish the ones I’ve written now, but they only deserve to be in things like The New Yorker and not “The Athens Mag for Kiddie Stories,” so I’ll wait until I can achieve something like that. For now, I need to finish Balloon, and next I will begin work on The Sleeping Lifeguard and the Drowning Girl.

Story continued...

After I got done watchin’ “Fabulous Life Of,” these thoughts were whirling around in my head, and I was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic, so I got up and left our trailer and walked over to the small rickety swing-set that stood off to the side of our microscopic yard. The swings were nothin’ special, just some deteriorating plastic seats attached to some rusty metal. It was one of the nicer things that my parents had managed to afford for me and my sister when we were little. Normally, our yard would be littered with old toys that we never touched along with these swings if I hadn’t decided to clean the yard one day after I heard a joke on TV about how “rednecks” have yards that are covered with their kids toys. I was no redneck, or at least I didn’t want to be, and I cleared everything out of our yard except for those two swings. I sat down in the one on my left, and there I swung for almost a half an hour as I thought about my situation. I almost always preferred being outside like that over being inside our dumpy trailer ‘cause I felt like I could breathe outside. Our house confined me within it’s thin walls and mildewed ceiling, but outside I could see all the way up to outer space and I felt like flying there was a possibility. On that day, I just stayed in that swing and let the playful wind blow through my hair. I wasn’t in the mood for doing anything. I was drownin’ in my thoughts, and I just wanted to sit there and attempt to catch my breath. Momma came home soon after that with a couple of groceries and I helped her carry them inside. And sadly enough, those were the most eventful parts of my day. I did nothing else but stay in the house, eat dinner, and then I took my nighttime shower. We had a shower with a cheap plastic interior rather than some elegant tile pattern like the people on “Fabulous Life Of,” and my whole family shared the same shower.

Entry #42. The Valet

So I’m working in a valet and it sucks… At least most of the time. Usually some rich people come to me and just toss me their car keys and two bucks so that I can go park their fancy expensive cars, and it really pisses me off. Except for when I actually get in the car. It’s then that I have fun. Usually I take their car to the parking spot, and then I go crazy. I rummage through their glove boxes and compartments and I look around in their door pockets. I’ve found everything. I look at pictures of their kids and their parents and other family members. I find notes, reminders, to-do lists stashed away in the car. Sometimes I’ll even find the occasional used condom that has been stashed away in a napkin somewhere, probably the left-over evidence of a cheating scandal. Sometimes I’ll find hairs that have been shed in the backseat, next to some scratch-marks along the fine leather interior, and perhaps some sprinkled blood-drops, dried to a brown crust that chips off of the seats. Sometimes I find other stains that I don’t want to know about. If I’m lucky, the person whose car I’m parking leaves their cell phone in the car, and I get to rummage through that. I find the best stuff in the cell phones: the nude photos in the saved pictures, the quick thirty-second clip of a one night stand or a drunk college kid yelling in the saved videos, and the text messages from the wife telling the husband to pick up the groceries, and from the husband’s mistress telling him to stop by her house on the way home. I love thinking that I could destroy anyone of these people’s lives if I want. All these people coming to eat at this five-star restaurant where I work. All these rich people who are so pretty on the outside with their glam and shimmering jewelry, but so ugly on the inside with their grimy lives and dirty secrets. But rather than destroy their lives, I usually just soak up the little bits of their lives that I can, and I allow them to go eat their unsuspectingly tainted “five-star” food.

Journal Entry 41: Mini Story

They had nothing to say to each other. It wasn’t one of those awkward silences that makes you shift around in your seat as you desperately think of the next thing to say. It was the kind of silence where no one was talking because they didn’t want to say anything, and they were completely comfortable with that. Steve and Susan just drove down the street, knowing that what they had just done would inevitably catch up with them, but at the same time, they tried not to let themselves think that. That Hispanic boy’s body was probably still anchored to the bottom of the river with the ropes and bricks they had tied to him, and they hoped that things would stay that way. Even if the water did wear the ropes away, and the body was nothing but bones, he could still be identified by dental records. They hoped that he was an illegal immigrant. That way, none of his relatives would be able to hold a court case against them and put them in jail for the rest of their lives. They had their own young daughter that they had to take care of, and they couldn’t let a simple mistake ruin her life, their lives, and the lives and reputations of their entire families. They hadn’t meant to hit the little boy. It was so dark outside, and he had no business being in the middle of the road like that. So they just rode along, and they let themselves drown in the silence of the car. They didn’t want to talk about it now, and they didn’t want to talk about it ever. They wanted to forget…something that the matted chunk of bloody hair that was stuck to the front of the car’s bumper would make very hard to do.

Story continued....

I got up from the chair and crouched down in front of the scattered VHS’s to pick one out to watch. Some of them were old Disney movies that I got when I was little, but one in particular caught my eye. It had a white sticker stuck to the front of it with the words “Fabulous Life of: Secret Lives of the Mega Rich” scribbled in pen across it. It was a taped copy of the VH1 “Fabulous Life of” show that I had recorded off TV when our cable bill was paid for. The “Fabulous Life of” series was all about celebrity livin’, like how expensive their mansions and yachts were and how much money they tended to blow in a day. Most other people who had seen the show in my town considered it a show documenting how spoiled some people were, but I considered it a show about how successful or lucky certain people were. I picked up the tape, popped it into my VHS player, and went and sat back down in my chair. And there I sat for another hour watching the fabulous life of mega rich stars, rewinding the tape at some points to catch how much a certain item cost for a celebrity or who the famous designer was that made the certain item.
I loved watchin’ shows like this because they changed my perspective on life. I would sit there and listen to the narrator of the show say “Five-hundred thousand dollars!” and “For a total sum of three point two million dollars!” and I would sit there and think about my living situation. These celebrities had done something with their lives, and they were reapin’ the benefits of it. While they took their vacations to their very own private islands, my daddy was workin’ as an employee at a local gas station that was fallin’ apart and lookin’ for small jobs around town in the meantime while my momma sat on her ass at home and occasionally went to spend his hard-earned money on cigarettes or other groceries. Sometimes she would babysit one of her friends’ kids for a small sum, but that was about the only income she made. I would watch these shows and learn about how some celebrity had worked hard as hell to live a life of luxury and occasionally feed the poor, and I would question how my parents settled for what they settled for.

Story continuation...

The thing with my parents is this: Neither one of my parents went to college, nor did they care to. They just got married so that their traditional southern grandparents wouldn’t think poorly of them for having me without being married. The main problem, and the thing that baffled me, was that my parents seemed to have no aspirations whatsoever. They hadn’t tried to go on to be actors in a movie, or wealthy owners of some fancy business corporation, or even somewhat wealthy real estate agents. Instead, they were fine with living in a po-dunk deadbeat town in the middle of nowhere with shitty jobs that mattered to no one. My dad’s job as a convenient store cashier only mattered to him and my mom because they got money and the occasional free pack of cigarettes out of it.

November 20th Free Write

So free write. I guess I’ll journal. I’m sitting in advanced writing right now, thinking about how close the Thanksgiving break is (once school lets out it starts) but all I can focus on is the fact that I have a lot of work to do for my documentary. I have to call and email tons of people in order to get them to agree to do the documentary by December 1st. Color me stressed. I want to try and get it all done this weekend so that I can have a whole week of the break not to worry about it, but people are good at taking their time getting back to me. Yesterday, Sarah and I went and fed some homeless people with Solomon and a guy who has a bi-polar disorder named Moe. We went to a new location which was next to Hardees and in the woods. There were tents all in the woods that the people lived in. It was scary because as soon as we entered the woods we heard a woman from off in the woods yelling “GET OUT OF MY WOODS!!!”. And then a guy and a woman that we gave food to were arguing and the woman was spouting off all kinds of cuss-words talking about how the guys in the woods call her a ‘prostitute’ and a ‘whore’ and other really bad things. The woman then went on to talk about how she actually had other places she good go to get out of the woods and live a successful life. I could tell that she had really lost it and probably had a bi-polar disorder of her own.

More of Story I'm Working On...

“What?” I croaked. My throat was dry with morning breath.
“I’m going in town to the market, do you wanna go with me?” Above her mom-jeans, she wore a t-shirt that was supposed to be white but was stained yellow with years of sweat and country. A faded Rebel flag was printed on the back of it. She had probably bought it from the same market she was about to go to back in the day. Usually I would be more than happy to get away from the house and go to the market with her, but I just wasn’t feeling up to it that morning.
“No thanks, mama. I wanna stay home today,”
“Alright, well I’ll be back in a little while.” She turned and left and my room and a little while later I heard the front door of the house clack shut.
I got out of the bed soon thereafter, but I didn’t take a shower, as my parents encouraged me only to take one at night to keep the water bill from getting too high. Instead, I went into the bathroom, changed into the clothes that I was going to wear for the day, and combed my hair straight. After that I went into the tiny portion of the house that would be considered the living room. I plopped down in a chair in front of our old TV and used the remote to turn it on. Once the TV crackled to life, the only thing that came up on the screen was static. Daddy hadn’t paid the cable bill again. Beneath the TV sat our VCR with video cassettes scattered on the floor all around it. Those were the only other thing I had to watch because at that point no stores sold video cassettes except for the small thrift store in town. Everybody else in the world had switched to those things called DVD players…another item we couldn’t afford.

Favorite Stories/ #34

One of my favorite books ever is the Scary Stories Trilogy by Alvin Schwartz. Technically it can count as one book because the three short books were later compiled into one big novel and sold as a single book. I love the stories so much because of their unique style and their ability to completely captivate their audiences. Schwartz writes the books with such a dark tone and vibe that the reader becomes completely engulfed in them. Schwartz’s illustrations that he puts alongside each one of his stories also help to create the awesome, brooding, drippy, spooky vibe. The stories seem almost as if they are made for kids, but their subject matter is so dark and sometimes violent and written in mature ways that they seem as if they were made for adults at the same time. My friends and I used to go pick the books up from our school library and dare each other to read them, and I still feel like I would enjoy them just as much if I read them today. I haven’t read the books since I was in, like, middle school, and some of the stories in them are still as fresh as ever in my mind. Some of them still even have the ability to creep me out today. They are short and simple and able to hold your attention. I think that the talent in simplicity that the stories display is what makes them as critically acclaimed as they are.

When I Woke Up as Barbara Streisand

All of the sudden I had the face of Barbara Streisand, my ultimate idol. I screamed in excitement and touched my face repeatedly, trying to figure out if this was real or not. When I realized that my face felt the same as it looked in the mirror, big crooked nose and all, I sprinted to the other mirrors in my house to see if there was something wrong with the mirror, only when I stepped out of my bathroom, I realized I wasn’t in my house anymore. I was in Barbara Streisand’s house. To my left was a large portrait of her that had been framed. God was it beautiful. All of the sudden a man walked out from behind the corner of the room in front of me.
“Hey Babs,” he said, “Remember when you were in Yentl?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was confused and excited and worried at the same time, so I turned and ran back to the bathroom. I looked back in the mirror and began singing,
“Memories like the corners of my mind, Misty water color memories of the way we were…”
My voice trailed off. I looked back in the mirror and saw that my face had morphed. I wasn’t beautiful anymore. I was an aged decrepit version of Barbara Streisand. My big nose sagged low with wrinkles. I started singing.
Suddenly I jolted awake in my bed. It was morning.
I sighed. ‘What a dream!’ I thought.
Then my mom walked in the room and approached my bed.
“Good morning, Barbara!” she exclaimed.
“What?!” I screamed. I got up and ran to my bathroom and looked in my mirror. Barbara Streisand stared back at me.
“What’s the matter?” my mom asked. “You did great at karaoke last night as Barbara Streisand!” It was then that I remembered I had performed Barbara Streisand’s “The Way We Were” at a karaoke bar the night before, and I was still wearing a curly Streisand wig. I looked just like her in the wig.

A Vist from Barbara and Tammy!

Cindy has just awoken from her deep anesthesia-induced sleep. An IV was still in her arm. The papery-crisp sheets of the hospital bed were wrapped around her. Her mouth was swollen shut, and her surgery was finally over. What a relief.
Suddenly she hears a knock on the door.
The nurse pokes her head inside and says, “You have visitors!”
Cindy nods her head and motions for the ‘visitors’ to be let inside.
In walk Cindy’s two friends, Tammy and Barbara. Tammy is carrying a guitar with her, and Barbara has a bouquet of flowers.
“Hey, precious!” Barbara says to Cindy as she stuffs the bouquet into a vase on Cindy’s bedside table, “How are you feeling?”
Cindy holds up her hand and waves it from side to side, motioning ‘so-so’.
“Aw, well Tammy and I have something to cheer you up!” says Barbara. Tammy nods in excitement as Cindy raises her eyebrows in curiosity, unable to speak.
“I’m gawna play a song for yoo!” Tammy exclaims in her southern accent as she slaps the front of her guitar.
Cindy tries to express interest on her face and Tammy quickly plops down and sits on Cindy’s bed on top of her foot, crunching the foot as she does so. Cindy winces in pain, and Tammy begins before she can even express her discomfort.
“A wun, and a too, and a wun, too, three, fawr!” Tammy yells at the top of her voice. Tammy’s voice explodes around the hospital bedroom…and it is awful. Her voice cracks and occasionally hits the note of a nail on a chalkboard. As she sings and jams on the out-of-tune guitar, she wiggles in place, dancing to her own music and worsening the damage already done to Cindy’s foot that she is sitting on.
Barbara smiles and nods in approval of Tammy’s lacking musical skills.
Tammy sings: “Oh I hope yoo git better, I hope yoo feel gude! I hope you smell some daysays and eat a big ole’ shude!”
What on earth was shude? Cindy thought. The pain in her foot was unbearable as Tammy wiggled and jiggled around on it. Tammy’s long hard polished fingernails strummed the guitar strings hard, and suddenly one of the strings broke, snapped back, and popped Cindy in her already swollen mouth. Tammy kept on playing.
“With a whoo whoo here, and a kick kick there!” Tammy sang, and as she did so, she swung her foot forward in a kick and hit Cindy’s oxygen machine, which came unplugged, broke, and shut down all at the same time. Neither blonde Tammy or blonde Barbara noticed, but continued with the song.
Cindy began to try and motion that she was suffering and needed urgent help. She went to press her ‘emergency’ button, but found that Tammy’s rocking had made it fall off the bed. Cindy grabbed at Tammy’s guitar-strumming arm.
“Hold own! I aint done yet!” Tammy exclaimed, and she continued to sing. Cindy began to see dots. She felt dizzy. Her vision then became blurry.
Tammy held out the long, loud, ear-shattering final note of her song, and Cindy lost consciousness.
Barbara began clapping. “So what did yoo thank of that?” Tammy asked.
Cindy did not respond.
“Ugh, ruuude!” Tammy exclaimed.
“What a jerk,” said Barbara, “Let’s leave.”
And the two women picked up their things and left Cindy alone in her hospital bedroom.

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20318542_4,00.html

I Felt a Funeral in My Brain inspired short story

After I got back from the field, I walked inside my trailer and went to my bedroom. I could hear my dad coughing in my parents’ room. He wasn’t getting up. Him and my mom would probably be in bed until lunch time. I shut the lightweight hollow door to my room and crawled back inside my bed. It wasn’t comfy. The box-spring mattress creaked underneath me. I pulled my blanket back over me, a worn, stained, scraggly little thing that began to stick to my dew-covered legs as soon as I let it settle. Tough balls of lent were permanently stuck to it. It was much brighter in my room at that moment than when I left it to go to the field. I was restless, but I laid there and stared at the ceiling until I fell asleep again.
“Carly. Carly get up.” My mother was standin’ in the doorway of my room lookin’ down at me. She was wearing her usual tight blue mom-jeans, the kind that show off her child-bearing hips. Not that she was pregnant or anything, it was just that me and my little sister had left an impression on her. I pried my eyes open and lifted my head from my pillow to look at her, a line of drool briefly stretching from my cheek to the pillow before snapping in half.
“What?” I croaked. My throat was dry with morning breath.
“I’m going in town to the market, do you wanna go with me?” Above her mom-jeans, she wore a t-shirt that was supposed to be white but was stained yellow with years of sweat and country. A faded Rebel flag was printed on the back of it. She had probably bought it from the same market she was about to go to back in the day. Usually I would be more than happy to get away from the house and go to the market with her, but I just wasn’t feeling up to it that morning.


I will continue this from here...

What Stirs Me.

The thing that easily gets me most excited and stirs me most is making movies, and not just making movies, but having a career as a movie director. Sometimes I feel trapped in my life, my school, and my town, because I am so unhappy just sitting in a high school every other day when I just want to be out in the world doing what makes me happy. For example, I have just been reduced to being forced to “serve a detention”, and honestly, how passé is that? I’m not a baby. What is serving a detention supposed to do to me? You might as well slap my wrist. Here I am, sitting trapped in this school, trapped in this class, trapped in this town, trapped in this detention, preparing to be trapped in a college, and I just want to go make movies and express myself artistically. Sometimes I wonder what the point is in man attending schools for so long. Sure, 8-10 years of school is understandable, but 16-18 years? That’s how long I’ve been alive. People are supposed to do what makes them happy and live life to the fullest, but most people are not happy in school, and how are they supposed to live life to the fullest if they spend a lifetime of it in a system that makes them unhappy and in which they can’t go out and achieve things. In case you cant tell, I am stirred. My blood is pumping. Because I just want to get out and do what I love and what makes me happy.
“No,” the system tells me, “Wait at least five more years.”

Free Write: Entry 29

I am so bored right now, and I actually just want to get done with this free write so that I can get to work on my other blog which is more interesting. And then I want to get that blog done so that I can work on my short story because I actually WANT to write in this class and get certain things done, which is my short story.
I'm also completely stressing because I want to get my college applications within the next two weeks, so I'm pushing it right now with the amount of school work I have to do. All this week has been projects and papers, and all next week is going to be tests before Thanksgiving break. Latin class just now was horrible because I couldn't stop myself from playing images from the movie "Up" in my head and I just kept daydreaming the whole time. Today is not the best day. Another problem is that I'm supposed to be taking pictures for the Sporting Youth magazine today, and of course I went and broke out with a huge pimple on my chin and my forehead aint lookin' all that hot either. Poopie doopie. I really hope that my word count is accurate right now also because I cant copy this post out of my blog to Word because this computer is dumb, and there's no word-count on this blog. Poopie doopie again. And I'm saying poopie doopie because I'm not allowed to say ****.

My Perfect World

In my perfect, people would not be lame. But basically, my perfect world would be the world that I live in now with a few minor changes, and the main change being that I am already a successful movie director and I've gone to a good college. I would basically just jump to the future. But then I would change some things, some of which I dont want to mention. But there would have to still be some bad things, because without the balance of good and bad in the world, how are we supposed to grow and learn?
Now how about that?

My First Three Memories

I think that cake was a significant part of my life because it is my first and probably my second to first memory.
The first memory of my life that I have is literally of the image of my first birthday cake on my first birthday. It was made into the shape of a caterpillar and looked like a big cuddly caterpillar. All I can remember is the image of the cake, but thanks to home-video, I can see me eating the cake, having an allergic reaction to it, my face turning red while I shout "Boo boo boo!", and then me spitting up on my cousin.
My second memory was probably on my third or second birthday. I had a Barney cake, complete with little a little figurine of Barney the purple dinosaur standing on it. It was being served to me by my family at a picnic table next to a lake in Florida. The cake was decorated with little candy fish. I was so excited to eat one. My family sang 'happy birthday' to me, and I blew out my candles, and then I prepared to grab a candy fish. Right as I was about to reach out for one, the members of my family crouded in front of me.
When they all backed away, all of the candy fish were gone off the cake. They had eaten all of them. My family then went on to go play, which included a small food fight with some of my cake. I just remained at the picnic table where I sat, sad that I did not get a candy fish.

I dont know what my third memory is, but it was probably of me sitting in my floating device that I had as a small child at the public pool of my grandparents beach condo. I just remember that the intertube was shaped like some kind of cute cuddly creature, and it had tubes that inflated with little plasitc balls that would roll around inside of them as I bobbed around inside the intertube. I remember being pulled around by family members and loving the comfort of floating device, even though I apparently flipped over and almost drowned in one when I was a baby in a memory that I dont remember.

The 3rd Message

Right as I was about to walk away from my answering machine, the third message came on which made me stop in my tracks. Winston's voice came onto the machine. He sounded frantic.
"Will! It's Winston! You've gotta come to my house quick! Or just call me back, but either way it's an extreme emergency! I just took the biggest dump known to mankind! You have to come take a look at this thing!!!!"
The message ended, and I broke out in a nervous cold sweat. Had he already flushed it? Had he taken it out of the bowl? How old was the message? I picked up my phone as fast as I could and called him back.
"Dude!" I said, "Is it still there??!!"
"Get over here now!" he replied.
I sprinted out of my house in just my shirt and my boxers (because I had been in the middle of changing out of my work clothes), I jumped in my car, and I sped off to Winston's house as fast as I could. I was doing 30 over the speed limit the whole way there.
In the midst of my driving a cop pulled me over for speeding. I was panic-stricken.
"Sir, do you realize how fast you were going?" he asked.
I quickly explained the situation to him.
"HOLY SH*T!" he responded!
"Indeed!" I exclaimed, and the cop jumped in the car with me and we drove over to Winston's.
When we got there we jumped out of the car and sprinted through the front door of Winston's house, which was already open. Gabby was sitting on the couch of the living room, shaking her head which was resting in her hands. There was a croud of men piling out of the bathroom in the back of the house. Me and the cop pushed our way through the crowd until we reached the toilet. Winston was standing next to it, smiling and nodding with pride.
"Woooow," was all that I could muster.
It was amazing.
That night, I had a better night's sleep than I had ever had in my life.

The Scariest Thing That Ever Happened To Me

One day, at my old house, when I was in middle school, while I was home alone for the day, I was out in the field next to it in a watermelon patch. I was chopping some watermelons with my favorite machete at the time. Most of the watermelons that I was chopping were rotten. As I was doing this, a big sliver pickup truck came driving down the field behind me.
I ignored it and kept doing what I was doing until a man stepped out of the truck and started yelling,
"Hey you little son of a b*tch! Get over here!" he yelled.
I was dumbfounded as to why he was yelling this at me. I hesitated at first but then started walking over to him.
"Get in my f*ckin' truck, I'm taking you to the f*ckin' sheriff's office!"
"What's the matter?" I asked him.
He then went on to tell me that he owned the "d*mn" property that I lived on, including the field, and that me chopping the watermelons was a crime. He yelled at me about them costing money, and then he continuously told me to get into his truck. He had another guy with him but the guy didnt say anything, he just watched. I knew that I wasnt supposed to get in cars with strangers. This old man who was yelling at me, his face was trembling all over. His lips quivered, and I was legitimately freaked out.
"Get in the truck! I'm takin' you to the sheriff's office!" he repeated.
"Can I at least go up to my house and call my parents to tell them where I'm going?" I asked.
"Yeah," he replied, "but you better hurry the hell up!"
I started power-walking away from him trying to be as calm as I could as he and his friend climbed back into his truck. As soon as I looked back and saw that I was out of his sight, I began sprinting full-speed back to my house as fast as I could. I ran into the house, and as soon as I got inside, I locked the back and front door, then grabbed my cell phone and ran down to my basement to make sure that the door down there was locked. I called my stepmother and sobbed hysterically into the phone about what was happening. Our connection kept breaking up until finally I lost cell phone service. I called her back and she told me to go back upstairs and get the house-phone.
I went upstairs and stayed crouched as low as I could as I crawled towards the house-phone. Suddenly, the old man began banging on the back door to my house and ringing the door bell at the same time. I grabbed the house-phone and ran back down to my basement as he continued to bang on the door and yell for me to come out.
I ended up talking my stepmom, who was speeding on her way home, and then my dad who stayed on the phone and tried to keep me calm. Suddenly, I saw some shadows moving across the basement and looked up to see that the old man and his friend were walking around me house, peering into the windows of my basement, trying to see where I was. I moved into a hidden part of the basement where they wouldn't be able to see me, and then the house-phone began to beep...it was going dead. The phone finally died and cut me off from my father and I hid in the basement, shaking all over as I waited for my stepmom to get home.
Later, I saw my stepmom pull up in the driveway, and I ran upstairs to see what was happening. She was talking to the old man outside.
Turns out that this old man was our landlord, and he was pissed because I was chopping his watermelons for recreation, and they were valuable to him. He called the sheriff and had him come to our house where he spoke to me and basically threatened me that I could go to jail for something like that where I would get beat up and raped everyday. Our landlord said that he wanted me to come do physical labor for him one day, but I never did, so he can lick it.
I didnt have to go to the "sheriff's office" and I was fine after that.
So there.

My Most Boring Day!

The other day I woke up and I was very excited because I was going to hang out with my friends. We were gonna go to a movie and then go hang out downtown and go get something to eat.
I tried to text my friends several times about our plans for that night, but they wouldn't respond. Finally, my friend Winston did, and he said that he had to cancel his plans because he was going out of town. One after the other, my remaining friends said that they couldnt hang out that night. When it turned out that I had been turned down by all of my friends, I didn't even bother to shower that morning because I had nothing to get ready for.
I thought about doing homework but was too lazy.
I layed on my floor for about 30 minutes trying to think of something to do, but I couldnt.
Then I went outside to throw the ball for my dogs, but my dad had taken them to the vet, so I wacked some trees with sticks for a little while. I almost decided to run but then decided that I didn't feel like it.
I walked back in the house and ate a peanut-butter and jelly and it tasted kind of boring. Then I went to watch TV and ended up watching 'Parental Control' for about 3 hours (even though I hate that show). Finally I got on the internet and watched YouTube videos for about 2 hours.
Then the day was over so I went to bed, but I couldn't really sleep all that good.

Computer Virus

The poor kid. He just wanted to do his paper. He just wanted to get an A, get his report card, and go out with his crush.
Not if I had anything to do about it.
This kid, this young boy, he had been crushing on the same girl since he was in the seventh grade. He was in the eleventh grade now, so that's a fairly good amount of time. She had finally started showing some interest in him, and they had planned to go hang out that weekend. The kid was sure that he would be able to kiss her and officially make her his own.
He just had to get an A on his next English paper that he had to do. If he did that, his C+ grade in the class would be bumped up to a B, his parents would be pleased, and they would allow him to go out.
So I weaved my way in and out of circuits, through a couple of hard drives, and finally through his Wi-Fi system until I was planted firmly in his computer. All he had to do was open the email...and he did.
As soon as he opened it, I brought his computer crashing down to Hell.
At this point the kid was over three-fourths of the way through his paper. That was when I completely erased it from the face of the earth.
After having the computer fixed, he found that his paper still could not be recovered. I had taken good care of it.
He attempted to write it several more times, but each time I was on top of him like white on rice. I erased each one. Even when he attempted to use a different computer, I followed him.
When the kid's English teacher became sick of his excuses, the teacher gave him the C on the report card.
The kid's parents didnt believe his excuse either. They weren't pleased, and they grounded him for a week, and he wasn't able to hang out with the love of his life.
So she went out that weekend and met another guy with whom she fell madly in love. She hooked up with that guy and never looked back at the kid. I had killed his paper, and his love life.
Mission Accomplished.

Lying: Entry # 22

It is definitely okay to lie. If you just got some socks from your grandmother for Christmas, and you absolutely hate them, you do not need to say "Grandma, I absolutely hate these socks!" Instead you should lie and say that you like them, because in that case, it is just flat-out polite to lie. If a friend were to ask you if you thought they were ugly it would be much better to lie to them if you actually do think they are ugly. If you dont you could kill their self-esteem.
So yeah, it's cool to lie. People do it all the time.

What I Stole: Entry # 21

Inventing a new character:

They were the kind of things that Santa Claus himeself would eat. Little sticks of white cotton candy that bloomed into magical flower-petals of cotton candy, or at least so the instructions said. I fled my mother's bathroom as fast as I could with the handful of them that I had grabbed. They felt smooth in my hand, wrapped in their classy flower-covered plastic wrapping. I was gonna sell them to my friends at school..to adults...maybe even to celebrities...or the president of the United States himself. People would pay big money for something like this. The delicate strings that you could hold while popping one into your mouth, where they would bloom like the delicious warm delight that they were. As I ran around the corner to my room, my mom appeared out of nowhere and stopped me. She asked what I was doing, and I lied to her face.
"You dont need those," she said, "those are things that ladies use to stay fresh."
She snatched them out of my hand and walked away. I was confused.

Free Write: Entry # 20

I've been trying to finish a short story in this class that is very important to me, but I keep getting pre-occupied with stupid blog entries that take up all my time. I really just want to work on the story, becaue I dont have time to work on it outside of school. There's so much that I need to get done now, but all of it is happening at the same time. Jeez, it gets exhausting.
Something happened that made me mad yesterday. Somebody laughed at the dreams of someone who is near and dear to me. The person was doing the laughing because they didn't think the dreams of the person would ever come true. I say, all the more power to the person who has the dreams. At least they have something that they are willing to work for. I think this person's dreams will come true, because they are good at what they dream of. The person who laughed has no right to do it because they are 44 years old and unemployed...so yeah, they're one to talk. Hah!

A Class I Would Add to Mon Don

If I could add one class to the Mon Don curriculum, it would be a home ec class because all of the seniors are about to be living on their own, and this is a class that helps people learn to do that. Students could get to learn to cook, operate a home, and have the basic manners that they should have aquired by the time they graduate high school. Most high schools have home ec classes and they are ones that can actually be fun.
So yeah, home ec.

10 Things That Annoy Me

1.) When people take out their problems on me.
2.) People in couples that are addicted to each other.
3.) People who say our president is black (he's biracial, you idiots).
4.) People who suck at driving.
5.) Drugs and Alcohol (and the people who do them).
6.) Crappy rap (thank you, Lil' Wayne).
7.) Girls who think you're jockin...when you're not.
8.) People asking me if I've heard of a song that I introduced everyone to.
9.) Styles people think are cool but are cliche (e.g. Wayfarers)
10.) Racists

When People Take Their Problems Out on Me:
I mean seriously, it just p*sses me off. I dont care if you had a bad day at work, if you had a bad day yesterday, or if you're having a bad day, dont be jerk to me for it. Some shining examples of this would be when "people" get into an argument and one of the "people" in that argument turns around and takes it out on you by getting mad or something. Sometimes the person who takes it out on you does this to appease the other person they are in the fight with.
This definitely applies to teachers also. Just because you're in a bad mood doesn't mean you need to give your students an impossible pop quiz or some stupid crap like that. Teachers also dont need to intentionally make the class unenjoyable or hard just because they're in a foul mood. Overall, I just really hate it when people do this. If you're having problems, go hit a punching bag, exercise some of that aggression off, or go hit up some drugs if you're a lame drug-doer. Dont take your crap out on me.

3 Relatives

Max. Jena. Carol.

Max has a problem. I believe that he has tourettes syndrome because he cant stop cussing. He also takes naps just about all day and we cant get him to stop from sleeping. I have to drive him to school all the time and it really cheeses me off because it is taking him forever to get his driver's lisence. Freakin poo.

Jena is my sister. I dont see her all that much because she is busy going to college at UGA. I could visit her, but I hardly ever make the time to because I am busy with school. I hope that she is doing well though. She has a dog named Ruthie who is a pain in the butt because she is really loud and she barks all of the entire freakin time all day every day twenty-four hours inside of a day.

Carol is my mammy. She takes care of me and she makes me brownies, chicken and dumplings, chicken pot pie, dorito casserol, Brunswick stew, chocolate chip cookies, and a whole bunch of other yummy stuff. Gosh I'm hungry now. My mom also has an animal buying addiction which is why we own 4 mini donkeys, 5 dogs, 2 piggies, about 10 chickens, and like 10 duckies. They are all cuddly though, and I love them very much. I like to go up and visit them because it is a lot of funny fun for me...when I do that.

This blog is so boring. Peace out!

5 Remarkable Things in My Life

I helped out some homeless people this year.
I met one of my favorite horror directors and my favorite fake serial killer.
I went on a trip to the mountains with my dad.
I got a new puppy, two goats, and some duckys.
I started my senior year of high school.

When I heard that Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 was being filmed in Georgia, I flipped my...stuff! The Halloween horror franchise has always been one of my favorite ones. Michael Myers has always been my favorite horror movie serial killer. In addition, Rob Zombie is one of my favorite horror film directors because I like the way he pushes the envelope. I then became determined to find a way to get to the set and see H2 being filmed and watch it happen.
So I skipped school for a day and drove down to Newborn, Georgia where I got to watch a big party scene for the movie being filmed. There were big set pieces, people in costumes, and naked chicks galore! I had to make three visits to Newborn before I finally met everyone I wanted to. I didn't get back from one of those visits until 3:00 AM. On my first day, I met the guy who plays Michael Myers, Tyler Mane, and Scout Taylor Compton, the girl who plays the main character, Laurie Strode. On the third day, which really was the charm, I did some lying and managed to meet 3 legends: Rob Zombie, Malcolm McDowell, and Brad Dourif. I got autographs from all these people and several pictures. After all of this, I was sad when I finally saw the movie and it sucked BIG TIME! Too bad...

Colleges

My two dream colleges that I would love to get into are NYU and UCLA because they have two of the best film schools in the country. I doubt that I will get into either one of those right off the bat from high school, so I'm hoping I get into UGA where I will go for my first two years, take my core classes, and then transfer to NYU and UCLA so that I can go to one of their film schools. If none of those things happen, then I'll cry a lot, pee a little, go to a crappy college, and work my way into the Hollywood system no matter what it takes; sex for money, killing people, bribing, hustling...it'll happen :)

Free Write: Paranormal Activity

There is a movie out called Paranormal Activity that I desperately want to see. It is only playing in a very limited amount of theaters and I desperately want to go to Atlanta to catch a showing of it. Apparently it is supposed to be the scariest movie of the year. It only shows at midnight but hopefully I will get the permission to see it. If I do, I'm TOTALLY checking out of school early on Friday to go see it!!!! So yeah, here's to hoping this works out.

Journal Entry #12: Risks

I think that life is all about taking risks. Taking risks is what makes life fun, not boring, and worth living. Everyone NEEDS to take risks at some point or another. Here are the reasons why I believe these things: People who don’t take risks will never live up to their full potential. If someone wanted to be a veterinarian, but said to themselves, ‘I don’t think I could make it through veterinary school, so I guess I’ll just work in a yarn factory instead,’ this person would not be living to their full potential because they were not taking risks.
I also think that risks are important because taking risks can sometimes lead to mistakes. Mistakes are something that I think EVERYONE needs to make in their life. Mistakes are a big part of life, and if you don’t make them, then you don’t have anything to learn from. Although mistakes may be regretful, they teach you life lessons about how you should live your life from that point. I also just think that taking risks in general just makes life more exciting. For example, I want to do things like sky-diving and bungee-jumping just because I think it makes life more exciting. I realize that if something were to go wrong in one of those situations, I could easily be killed, but I would much more prefer to die doing something cool like sky-diving than by…say… choking on a piece of steak. And if I live through the event without anything going wrong, then that’s one more thing that I can add to my list of amazing things that I’ve done before I died! So all in all, I do believe that “if you don’t risk anything you risk more”.

The Best Thing In Life Is...

The best thing in life is petting my puppy on the top of his head after he has just finished a puppy-sized bowl of puppy chow. Then we take a nap.

It is nice when we cuddle because I love my puppy and my puppy loves me. He is really man’s best friend. He is always there for me and he makes me feel happy because I dont have any friends.

When I wake up we play with the ball or I feed him some more puppy chow.
Wait…my mom just told me I don’t have a puppy.

My Weekend POV/ Goat POV

My POV
This past weekend I went up to my mother’s house in North Carolina where I spent a lot of time with our many animals. We have a barn and field complete with chickens, miniature donkeys, pigs, and two new baby goats. I went down to the barn to go play with the animals and feed them. When I let the goats out of their stall I had a lot of trouble getting them back into it. The bigger goat kept charging the donkeys and reared up at some of the donkeys and our pig, Rosie. All of the animals followed me around for food and begged until I finally gave them some snacks. Overall, they were bad.

Goat’s POV
This weekend I met a new boy named Will. He was really nice and came to play with me and my sister. He fed us yummy snacks. I cried out whenever I knew he was outside the stall for him to come play with us. When he finally let us out, I was so excited. The first things I did once I was outside of the stall was charge Rosie the pig, because she had bit my little sister earlier that week. I didn’t want to go back in the stall, and I didn’t feel obliged since Will still hasn’t even given me a name to call me by. Will left after only two days, and I miss him. I hope he comes back to visit soon.

Marla Singer

Marla Singer was born and raised in the slums of Chicago, Illinois. She suffered a terrible childhood, filled with many instances of sexual deviance and experimentation with drugs. At the age of 19, she left her family without a word and moved out to Florida where she was picked up by a local support group for drug addicts. Marla was able to kick her drugs habits (with cigarettes as the exception) and later left the support group without a word. Despite her love for the other patients there, she found that the employees were a bunch of hypocritical (insert plural expletive here) who were just joining this business as a way to make themselves feel better about their own problems by watching others suffer. Marla later moved back to Chicago at the age of 31 where she found out that her parents had passed away in a terrible accident. She took up whatever illegal hobby she could find to make money, whether it be selling drugs to underage teens around town or stealing clothes from Laundromats to sell at clothes stores. Out of sheer boredom she began attending group therapy sessions to observe people who were suffering. It was there that she ran into one of the oddest people she had ever met.

Entry #8 Good mood vs. bad mood

SAD GUY
This dreadful building was staring down at me. It seemed to conceal the sun and all light in the world behind it, casting dark brooding shadows over me. It may have been a clear sunny day outside, but there was nothing bright about this gray building. It was dull, with thick black cracks stretching across the edges of it like cobwebs. I didn’t want to enter, for fear that I would lose myself within the black hole that was the entrance, and never come out alive.

HAPPY GUY
I arrived back at the grey apartment complex, but the mood around me was so great that it seemed to shine with a white glow. The small cracks across the building appeared to be its way of smiling at me. The sunlight shining from behind the building made it seem like the building had a halo. Everything was right about the day from the bright blue sky shining above me to the giddy ants that were crawling across the sidewalk. I walked into the building with a smile on my face.

Invention Limerick

Nuclear Warheads go boom, boom, boom,
With mushroom clouds in glorious bloom,
They’re fun to set off
And we just can’t stop
Perhaps the world will end too soon.

Invention the World Would Be Better Off Without

An invention that the world would have been better off without is nuclear warheads. After considering the invention from all angles, there is really nothing good that came out of it. All it does is destroy things and people. It didn’t lead to the further development of good inventions, it was all just a bunch of crap! That’s why people even stopped producing the atomic bomb. All nuclear warheads ever do is destroy things. That’s what they were created for. And that’s why the world would be better off without them.

"Balloon" first paragraph

It was 7:13 A.M. and eighty-one degrees Fahrenheit in the field in which I was standin’, and yet I felt so cold that I was shivering. I was surrounded by one of the thickest fogs I have ever seen in my life. The only thing I could see in the field around me were the tall green and brown reeds of grass that prickled against my legs and thighs. Everything else that was more than ten feet away from me disappeared behind the fog. The promising sun was rising somewhere in the distance behind the fog, giving it the glow of a faint baby blue haze. Crickets were screamin’ in the grass all around me as loud as they could. Standing there in this cool blue dream, huggin’ my arms against my trembling body as the crickets hollered made me feel like I was losin’ my mind.
My name is Carly

(I haven't thought of her last name yet, so I'm leaving it blank for now.)

Entry #3 Short Story Brainstorm

1.) The protagonist of my story is one that I cannot name yet (because I haven't thought of the name) but she she is a teenage girl (16 years old), who wants desperately to escape from her nothing life living out in middle-of-nowhere Georgia near the town of McRae. She wants desperately to be famous, rich, and live a glamorous life, but she feels imprisoned within her town and her lifestyle. She doesn't understand why her parents have no real goals or aspirations. She can't recieve a good education from her school, her family is poor, and they live in a permanent mobile home.

2.) When the story begins, the girl hasn't taken any significant actions towards achieving her goal. She is trapped. It is the summer before school and all she does is wander around the fields near her house and spends her time dreaming of a better life. She watches really glamorous movies on her VHS player (her family still doesn't have a DVD player).

3.) The main things that ramp up the emotion of the story is the girl's emotions. The most exciting point of the story would be when she tries to escape at night in her father's truck but gets stopped by a cop. She also reveals an emotional account about the insignificant loss of her virginity.

4.) The details that help me to tell the story is the overall dark mood and tone of it, the feeling of the blazing Georgia heat and sun, and the feeling of vast emptiness and loneliness. We also follow the girl's relationship with a boy she spends a lot of her time with. A balloon plays a significant role in the story as a major symbol.

5.) The protagonist doesn't make a morally significant choice at the end of the story. The audience makes it for her. The story ends really rather bleak, and the audience can choose to interpret it as even more bleak, or hopeful.

*the included picture is the idea for the girl's family's house.

Things that happened over the summer ('09)

Here's a list of things that happened to me over the summer:

1.) I began work on a documentary to benefit the homeless
2.) I went to the beach for a week.
3.) I went to North Carolina and got stung by three bees.
4.) I made a movie about a closet monster.
5.) I worked on AP Latin Homework.
6.) I finally finished the last "Harry Potter" book and was relieved of my fear that someone might spoil it for me.
7.) I watched the entire first season of "True Blood".
8.) I went to Six Flags.
9.) I took a breathilzer test on the first day of summer (and passed.)
10.) I got grounded.


Now for more about my documentary:
I decided that I wanted to do something good for the community before I graduated from high school (in 2010), and I've always liked making movies so I decided to use my talent to help people out. I founded an organization which is made up of my crew of friends that is helping me to make the documentary. In the documentary we are going to show what some of the homeless people of my town struggle through, while at the same time documenting our attempts to complete the construction of a house for homeless children. It requires raising a lot of money though. I fed and met with a lot of homeless people, and I am currently still working on the project. I hope to show it at the small art-house theater downtown once it is completed. This blog is boring because I am bored so I'll stop right now and come back when I have something interesting to say.