Yellow

The last of the mindbenders...

Yellow is a color. It is a primary color to painters and a secondary color to anyone working with light. It includes shades and tints ranging from buff to goldenrod and can be used to establish a variety of emotions. Depending on the context and subject, yellow can create the feeling of a sunny glow or of a festering wound.

Many people associate the color yellow with Van Gogh's sunflower still lives. These paintings are in a palette of cheery yellows. The earlier paintings are pleasant, with newly picked flowers. A later one, the most famous, is done in warm yellow tones and shows flowers with less petals. Sunny yellow warmth is in both paintings, but the second also utilizes darker yellows in the dying stems.

Shakespeare, too, uses yellow's decaying connotations. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet describes "dead men's rattling bones, with reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls." I found that quote by using "find" on the entire text of Romeo and Juliet, searching for the word yellow. These rotting skulls contrast Van Gogh's sunny flowers.

This essay is so bad, I cannot believe that I passed sophomore English. I mean, this is my rewrite of it today, which is still pretty bad, but, well, the actual thing sucks balls, basically.

Not that I would ever dream of using such inappropriate language.

I would talk about the sweatpants...

but they've been talked to death. Instead, I will share the bajillion compliments about the writing on my english paper, and we can all pretend that the compliments are about us and feel happy. Because, truly, I believe that simply reading nice words can improve our self-concept. Or, well, something to that effect.

-nice use of polysyndeton

-nice us of concrete details

-so much that's conceptually interesting here

-(He was 16 (maybe? less showy anyway))

-well-put

-unneeded?

-too clichéd?

-you might play with asyndeton here

-good sentence length variation

-was

-or just "couldn't sleep"

-I'm a little confused

-good use of great litotes.

-this is great

-(is this needed?)

-same question

-I love this repetition

-great

-beautiful description

-good

-good use of polysyndeton

-good

-good

-love the evanescence

-i love this

-great

-then

-great close

Me? Self-indulgent? Never (insert shifty eyes here)

Those (shifty eyes that unfortunately break my html block) are called shifty eyes. I learned them from Andy, whose name I can't figure out how to pronounce but I suppose I'll have to learn eventually.

And, to finish this off, I'm going to add another mindbender. The dwellings one is just never going to end, unfortunately. I'm sure you're *very* disappointed.

"We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are, and what are relationship is to life and death, what is essential, and what,despite the arbitrariness of falling beams, will not burn." -Madeline L'Engle

I must say, great use of polysyndeton. Oh, yeah, it's saying we learn from art. Books help us discover who we are, what we fear, and just help us understand stuff, like, in general. Remind me to practice these intro things for the ACTs.

New Moon, by Midori Snyder, is an awesome book in which Jobber succeeds only by understanding herself. I would go into detain about the climax of the book, but I wouldn't want to spoil it, so I won't. The theme of the story is that the tools to save others already reside inside us; all that remains is to find them. This explains how we truly are and makes the art meaningful.

Stories also allow those of us still in the plane of the living to comprehend death. The Christian bible uses Jesus, the Greek myths se Hades' realm, and, weirdly, my saved version of the mindbender ends here, with the sentence "The better people are allowed to drift freely, floating like browned leaves, while the more nefarious are given painful punishments that will last an eternity."

How decidedly odd.

We're Going Back To Mindbenders

Because Tea goes to the doctor's office doesn't sound like very much fun.

I mean, the loud disco music was kind of fun, but mostly weird. And beyond that, it wasn't all that interesting. Although, I did see Krystal, and she, rather uncharacteristically, gave a very intelligent overview of neurology to my mother. I really do think that she's hiding some relatively serious brains.

We shape our dwellings, and, afterwards, our dwellings shape us.

We build houses, but when living in them, we are affected by them. For instance, Thoreau lived in a cabin to make his thinking more cabin-like. This was documented in Walden, which I read last summer and am going to reference in every single mindbender I write this year.

My daddy is a builder. I know people build houses. One of my earliest memories is of sitting in my father's pickup truck, looking out the window at the big, rotating cement truck and the masons pouring thick liquid stone into the foundation of a house. I was brought along to more realtor's open houses than I care to count. From all of this, it's been made clear that people build houses different ways for different reasons.

There are the cookie-cutter homes of standard suburbia, each built identically to match the people within them who have followed their cookie-cutter paths towards the American Dream. Houses for the wealthy, however, are grander and more unique. They are designed to allow the rich to easily demonstrate their wealth and prestige to their neighbors. They are often gaudy, with expensive fixtures and extensive floor plans. The houses are shaped by a compendium of workers, and they eventually attract a rich buyer, who eventually moves in.

Guess what? I'm going to go watch American Idol, so I'm leaving you with a cliff hanger. I'm sure you're really, really riveted.

Something that Weirded Me Out Today

... was changing into my PJs while Eccentrius and Jeff were disseminating Paperclip High trivia on a video from High School Jeopardy's homepage. I realize that Eccetrius and Jeff could not actually see into my room through the Youtube video, but I still have this feeling that I accidentally let them see my underwear.

Speaking of which, the photos up there are ridiculous. Julie, you are easily the most amazing looking person I've seen up there. You make getting swabbed with makeup pads look glamourous rather than awkward. Also, the degree of intensity is such that I'm actually surprised that lasers didn't spontaneously shoot our of Team Paperclip's eyes.

And now, another mindbender:

Is an English sentence a house?

It's not. Because, obviously, a house is a tangible thingamahoozy, and a sentence is a grammatical concept. But, because that is a very short paper, we're going to take the metaphorical route.

Houses and sentences are driven by context. People do not just have homes, they live in villages, in beloved towns, and we often grow our own roots. We love the earth, and our homes would not be the same if transplanted to the other end of the earth. In Esperanza Rising, one of my all time favorite books when I was younger, a father and daughter bond over the love of their farmland. Their farmhouse would be useless if it stood in the arctic, or even in the coniferous forests of northern New England. Similarly, the previous sentence would make little sense if it were in the midst of a scientific paper or a Japanese novel. Location matters.

Then is the foundation. Concrete blocks in a big dirt hole, or a single capital letter. These are the beginnings. Then is the structure. Walls, pipes, and everything else between floor and roof. This is the part that requires the most effort. Today, it entails a seemingly endless stream of framers and carpenters and plumbers and electricians and excavators and engineers and masons and welders and many more. Note the mindboggling polysyntedon. A good while ago, in the 1800s, Thoreau completed just as many tasks in the construction of his own humble abode. He devoted a full page to the steps of his efforts. Sentences, too, have a lot of junk floating about their interiors. Subject and predicate can be expanded and warped to a multitude of grammatical organizations, just as houses have limitless modifications.

Then is punctuation, your period or your roof. There are question marks, simple roofs sloping in sharp angles before rounding into gutters at the edges. There are exclamation points, angled and steep in every way, bringing a sharp end to a sentence or a clean edge to a contemporary house. There are periods, rounded domes bringing a softer, more aesthetically simple closing to a sentence, a home, or, in the case of the period at the end of this sentence, an essay.

No Matter Where You Go You Stay Where You Are

As some of my older readers know, when I am not in the mood to generate a current post, I reach into the past. For today, I'll go back to an old English mindbender, written on September 11th, 2008.

The Mindbender is: No matter how far you go, you stay where you are.

A Summary:

People are boring, and constant, and never ever change, and I think that whole concept is obnoxious. My introduction is only two sentences long because I am lazy. Also, I'm using the first person, because I'm cool like that.

The Palace Thief is a book. It involves a big Roman history competition and togas, but all anybody cares about is that Patrick Dempsey is in the movie. I suppose that I can let Cammie keep her weird George Clooney thing if I can have Dempsey. Anyways, the cheating boy in the competition grows up to be a cheating, good for nothing grown up. He stays where he is. Isn't that a great example?

I think the cheating boy is a dickwad. I'm going to try to pretend that he's an isolated dickwad.

Oh, darn, Sarah Bareilles says that people don't change either. Since it's set to music, she must be right. Wait- Sarah's actually talking about moving around in the literal sense. But it's a song, so we'll pretend that it's figurative.

People are always trying to change, so the mindbender is wrong. I know that it's actually right, but I am going to be an optimistic for as long as I possibly can.

The End

Interestingly, even though the mindbender was written on September 11th, I make no mention of September 11th, despite the fact that it is a somewhat important date. To see if I even thought about the historical significance (twin towers! ahhh!), I went through my old journals to find something. Below is my September 11th entry:

Still Crampy. Still bleeding profusely from my vagina. It is muy disgusto.

Mom's going to the hospital tomorrow to have her uterus scraped out. She has to be anesthesized and shit. It's kinda annoying, but standard procedure. Intellectually, I'm sure she'll be fine, but I can't shake this odd foreboding feeling.

Though that could be more related to my audition tomorrow. Turns out there'll probably be only one piano, so that guaranteed spot- basically unattainable. Not that I won't try, but I'm somewhat lacking, confidence wise.

But it's alright. Worst case, I'll apologize to the set painters for my illness and join up. I'll go once or twice a week and paint out my sorrows, then try not to cry when everyone walks out and they're having fun and Ryan is being sexy and wahhhh!!!!

Well, that did not help.

I need to go to sleep I'll try to dream of D (I think?) from music theory, and hope that Mario turns out to be wonderful (and takes the train).

See, better already.

As I'm sure you noticed, this, too, contains no mention of terrorists. My aversion to discussion of world disasters seems to have been present for at least a year.

Interestingly, the mindbender is saved as 5.doc, but is titled mindbender 4.

How very peculiar.

Day 1

Well, I guess I have myself a blog. I suppose I should write something...

Book-wise, I read A Company of Swans, by Eva Ibbotson

and hey- does this do pictures? lets see, there's a little thingy on the toolbar and yay! there it is. Classic romance novel, blabity blah blah, but good. No throbbing loins or anything particularly racy, sadly, but still, nice to read.

I feel somewhat ridiculous writing a blog that no one will ever read, but why not?

I should get back to my homework assignment though (I'm a highschooler in a high level english class...it happens)

I have to use literary references to explain the statement:

"No matter how far you go, you stay where you are."

well, in Remembering Hearts, by Patricia Clawbury, Annette ran from Gustav and St. Petersburg to France, but she could escape from her constant love of Gustav. Even though she traveled great distances, St. Petersburg and her heart remained with her, keeping her where she was. After much pain and suffering, she returns to Gustav, and the two make mad, passionate love. The reader assumes the book is over, but then- an epilogue! Annette has six kids but is still happy and making eyes at Gustav, showing that her love for him remains after travel and time, just like the statement, which isn't really related...

whatever