Anthology

Theme: Hunting and the outdoors
Poems: Fishing by A.E. Stallings
The Bear Hunt By Abraham Lincoln
The Dying Hunter to His Dog by Susanna Moodie
The Book of the Deer, The Bear and the Elk by Henry Carlile
Good Fish by Derek Sheffield
Hunting the Cotaco Creek by Emily Dickinson
Video: The Bear Hunt by Abraham Lincoln

Fight Club Pgs 1-40

I just started a new book called "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk. So far, I love this book. I can't believe I am already breaking the first rule of fight club, don't talk about fight club. Fight Club opens up with the two main characters, the unnamed main character and Tyler Durden. They are standing on top of the Parker-Morris Building with Tyler shoving a gun in the narrator's mouth. The unnamed narrator goes on to explain how they got there and the explanation of the plastic explosives posistioned underneath the building. The plan is to blow up the building and topple the true target, The national museum. The book then flashes back to before the plan was every evena thought, before Tyler and the narrator ever met. The unnamed narrator works as a Product Recall Specialist for an unnamed car company, responsible for determining if product recalls of defective models meet cost-benefit analysis. The stress of his job combined with his frequent business trips leads to jet lag. He comes to recognize that his identity is imposed on him by his job and by his possessions and that he is not in control of his life. The narrator seeks treatment for insomnia, and at his doctor's recommendation, attends a support group for men suffering from testicular cancer, to "see what real suffering is like". He finds that crying and listening to the problems of others cures his insomnia. This treatment works until he meets Marla Singer. The possibly disturbed Marla reflects the narrator's "tourism", reminding him that he is a faker and does not belong there. He begins to hate Marla for keeping him from crying, and, therefore, from sleeping. After a confrontation, they agree to attend separate support group meetings to avoid each other. The truce is uneasy, however, and the narrator's insomnia returns

I absolutely love this book so far! Its just the book I have been looking for to get me ethusiastic about doing my reading logs. I already feel bad though, I already broke the first rule of Fight Club... Dont talk about fight club. But oh well, I think that the narrator is a lonely pittiful man who needs to find something or someone in his life to heal himself. The faking thing isnt a good way to go.

Awesome Things in Life

The Blog "1000 Awesome Things" is a very interesting and cool blog. I was reading through a couple of them and found a bunch that relate to everybody. I related to a lot of them and had a ton of favorites. My favorites were #333 The day your cafeteria serves their best lunch, #329 Twisting the lid off the jar after nobody else could, and my absolute favorite: #331 When someone already highlighted your textbook.
Finding answers in your textbook is the most ultimate win for me, it saves you so much unneeded time to have to go and search every line in a paragraph for the specific phrase of sentence.

2.28 Diction Exercise

Words: Cozy, wobbly, slamming, isn't, graceful, warming, clumping, aching

Elements: Diction- elementary, comprehensible
Connotation-apparent, veracious
Sound- soft, absolute
Concreteness- very concrete

Claim: The poem "Ice" by Gail Mazur uses a elementary diction and soft veracious connotation to depict a peaceful and iconic small wholesome town.

2.23 Diction Exercise

Words: Lousy, Crap, Stuff, Hell, Madman, Crumby, Damn, Dough, Run-down

Elements: Elevation- simpleminded, monotonous
Connotation- unerring, veritable
Sound- cacophonous, sharp
Concreteness- tangible, explicit

Claim: The monotonous veritable diction of "The Catcher in The Rye" eludes to the mundane bleak childhood life of Holden.

Hole In My Life Pgs. 41-99

As Jack goes onto try to find his inspiration for his writings and to jump start his career, he devises a plan to criss-cross the Florida peninsula from coast to coast. He would do this for two weeks. Jack will go from the Gulf coast to the Atlantic coast traveling back and forth to all the great landmarks in great American Literature that he can find in Florida. First, he has to move out of the welfare hotel he was staying in and sell all the unnecessary items he does not need. Also on the way, an old friend named Tim Scanlon visited him from Florida State and introduced him to the chronic. While they were visiting and smoking pot, Tim introduced Jack to a while new theory to how the way the human body works through genetics being a look to our past lives. Also Tim goes on about the way behavior is all chemical and encouraged him to take some time to read into science. This got Jack into thinking and Tim and Jack decided to make some quick cash by selling pot. This turned out to be a bad idea because as Tim “sampled” some of the lab grown pot when they got to the campus, he was in a daze wandering around the school until the security guards caught him and confiscated the pot. This left Jack back in the hotel with nothing to do and no clue where his friend was. After a couple days, Jack made a beeline for the Keys to get to Earnest Hemmingway’s house to see it before his trip to St. Croix. Jack spent two days in Key West, Florida writing in the side yard of Earnest Hemmingway’s mansion sitting in a tattered old lawn chair. After Jack writing and pot smoking escapade, he made it to St. Croix to help out with the family business. But, what jack ignored was the rising tension in St. Croix between the black indigenous people and the white tourists and business owners. This turned Jack’s Dads construction company into a crate building company to help ship crates of people’s belongings out of St. Croix. As Jack beings to work for his father for very cheap, just enough to get him gas and a place to stay, he meets a man named Rik. Rik gives off wrong vibes for Jack which should alarm Jack right there. Rik wants Jack to make him a crate with a false bottom in it, Jack doesn’t know for what purpose he is using the crate for and doesn’t really care. As Jack completes the job, Rik pays him in hash, which should have been an indicator that something was up. A couple days later, Rik found Jack again to offer up a job for Jack. The job is smuggling a ton of brick hash into the United States through New York City. Rik will fly up to New York and Jack will accompany a strange British sailor named Hamilton. Jack is uneasy about Hamilton until they get to the secret island with the hash and load it on the boat, from there on Jack knows it’s all business now that they have the hash. As the journey continued Jack found the ship’s captain log and uses it as a journal and writing doodle pad to jot down his thoughts on books and his quest to become a writer. The team of two then sailed all the way up the eastern coast until they got to Cape May, the United States Coast Guard academy. The team then entered in military waters and almost foiled the whole plot. The coast guard ended up escorting the ship to public waters and they continued their voyage up the Atlantic coast.

Jack seems to be an interesting character because he wants a calling in life but does not seem to be dedicated to it because he keeps getting side tracked by stupid little tasks and adventures. I feel that Jack should just sit back, relax and write. I also don’t get why he would accept such a risky job from a complete stranger. Rik could be an undercover cop or dea agent trying to bust little punks trying make a few bucks. I guess it just shows how desperate Jack is to get off the tumultuous island.

LAX SEASON!

Its official, as of last night the lacrosse season has started and im so pumped up for it. I have been waiting since last may for this time of the year to get here. I can tell lacrosse is starting up because all around you can see the charcoaled, black snow coming from all the dirt and debris collected in the snow and is now falling down the snow banks as it melts. It is always nice to have lacrosse start because you know in no time at all the snow will be gone and it will be spring and the weather will be perfect. This year should be a great season, we have alot of varsity starters coming back. Me and Kevin Georhing are coming back on defense while we have a new junior goalie, Christian Belote. Our midfield this year will be our weakness because we lost alot of good middies. Eric Gaff and Kyle Georhing will probaly be our go to guys this year, it seems like theynever runs out of energy. The offensive end of the field will be stacked and set. We have all three starters returning to put up big numbers this year. I can't wait for our first game and show the whole state that Homestead Lacrosse is here and ready to play.