Entries by Daboo

I don't know about you guys, but this seems like a poorly conceived idea to me...I dunno. Maybe I'm just not adventuresome enough. I definitely think Radar should buy it so that he can move far away to Australia! XD

My students are practicing description. Specifically, we’re learning about sensory words, similes, and metaphors. I asked them to describe their mothers. And let me just say, these were all written in complete seriousness. Here are my top 10 favorites (each of these is by a different child):

10: Her eyes are as blue as the water in the toilet.

9: She has dark brown hair like a little puppy sitting on her head.

8: Her hair is just like a polluted cloud.

7: When she gets mad she makes weird faces like a clown.

6: Her brown glistening eyes seem as if they are poisonous cockroaches coming after you in the dark.

5: Her eyes are as brown as a bear covered in chocolate.

4: She looks like a nice, extravagant witch.

3: She is short, like a pumpkin.

2: She looks like a frog but with whiter, less warty skin.

And finally, 1:

When she starts screaming she is like a more pissed-off version of you. (no offense.)




oh, and I have to add an honorable mention. This was written by a boy:

She cute. She even cuter than Brad Pitt.

Our sister-in-law, who is an amazing belly dancer, started belly-dancing many years ago and taught the two of us for a while. We performed one time, and then abandoned her--and she went on to form Dragomi, a completely new take on belly-dancing. This is one of their performances. The one in the sort-of-middle is our sister-in-law. She's amazing. (by the way, she choreographed this as well as dancing in it.)

This is NSFW.

DRAGOMI

When she burst through the screen door into the yellow light of the kitchen, she was immediately overwhelmed by a wave of happy sound. There were so many relatives crowded into the room that she could only wend her way through by brushing up against more softly plump rumps and bosoms than she could keep track of. From these soft and round bodies came a cacophony of gossip, greetings, and questions which she deflected by smiling and nodding up at any face turned her way. Midway through the room, her grandmother forcibly stopped her and squashed her in a pillowy hug. “How’s my birthday girl?” she cried, her doughy arms viselike.

“Hecca?” It was her father’s voice, cutting through the female chatter. “Where have you been, kiddo?”

“Out—” replied the girl, but her grandmother interrupted her.

“Look how much you’ve grown! Look at those knees. I tell you, you’ll be the tallest Whitbloom ever—”

“She’s a Moore,” said Hecca’s father lamely. Hecca shot him a sympathetic glance; her grandmother was always “forgetting” the fact that her granddaughters bore their father’s last name, and he was too polite to really correct her once and for all. He caught her look and answered her grimace, then smiled broadly as she vaulted into his arms.

“Daddy!” she crowed, “what did you get me for my birthday?”

He laughed. “I got you some garbage bags! Isn’t that exciting? You can put garbage in them, and use them to make waterproof clothes…”

She groaned. “Stop it, you know you’re not funny,” she said. He grinned and swung her around, which caused a chorus of “ack” and “oomph” sounds from the crowded room, but didn’t dim the general cheery feeling.

Hecca saw her mother appear in the living room doorway. Her eyes, anxious and sharp, met Hecca’s, and there was a very clear and urgent question in them. Hecca gave her mother a thumbs-up sign behind her father’s back. Her mother’s eyebrows raised and her forehead furrowed into little ridges, which obviously meant something along the lines of “are you sure?” Hecca rolled her eyes and nodded. Her father caught this motion and turned to look. “Oh, Cyn,” he called, “do we need to move some of the cars off the street?” Continue reading "Birthday Guests"

It was early evening, and the sky had shrugged off the violent blue of the day, assuming instead a bleached, purplish color which made the evening star seem too bright and too large. Down the middle of the street, in an erratic pattern, came a young girl. Anyone observing her would find her progress strange, as she walked in unpredictable, sideways jolts, and sometimes came to a complete stop before choosing a new path. At one point she stopped, sighed loudly, and looked upward at the dimming sky, which held no sources of light except the bright star that blazed at her like a shrewd eye, and the dim remaining glow of the vanished sun. She then studied the ground for a moment, and purposefully stepped forward in a diagonal direction. There she stopped, studied the ground again, and again stepped forward in a not-quite-straight direction. In this manner she wove her way slowly forward, and the pattern that emerged was that while she never left the middle of the road, she also never stepped on any crack in the worn and battered asphalt.

Finally, she came to a stop in the center of the street. Or, more accurately, the streets. She had come to a place where the road forked in a Y-shape, and come to a stop in the exact center of the three streets that yawned away into the growing dusk. There was no traffic here, no cars driven by men eager to get home to the picture-perfect dinners prepared by their housewives, no young women with baby strollers casually walking, and no children playing. The girl tossed her blunt-cut, shoulder length blond hair back from her face and removed her backpack. Her eyes flickered uneasily toward the grassy area directly in front of her, and then darted away. She didn’t let herself look too long at the gravestones there; they always looked like teeth to her, almost glowing in the fading light.

From her backpack, she pulled a piece of white chalk. Bending down, she drew a quavering circle between herself and the left-hand fork of the Y-intersection. She filled it with two dots and a wobbly line, and the result was an upside-down, squashed-looking face. It seemed to peer dimly down the road. Turning, the girl then drew exactly the same thing again, but this time facing the right-hand fork. And lastly, she turned completely around and drew a third face, this one facing down the long road she had come down.

Next, she carefully pulled three foot-long branches of coniferous leaves out of her pack. Each branch was speckled with bright red berries. She carefully set them down above her white faces, each branch looking like a hat.

And last, she pulled from her backpack a rustly plastic bag which said “Farnsworth’s Food and Drug” on the side in pink letters. Inside, dripping with blood, was a freshly cut rump roast. This she set down in the center of the three faces, so that it was in the exact center of the three roads.

This done, she stood up and squared her scrawny shoulders. “At the meeting of the two worlds, this I offer, Trivia,” she said into the still evening air, “Queen of Ghosts, with favor look upon me.”

She stood for a moment, her mouth set in a grimly satisfied line, and then she turned back the way she had come. This time the light was much dimmer, and she had a difficult time getting over to the sidewalk, where she breathed a sigh of relief. Here, the cracks were much more manageable. She started forward at a jog, her eyes on the sidewalk, and when she had gotten about 100 yards away from the crossroads she yelled, still running, “And HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”

She did not notice, because she never turned around, the long and lean black shape that followed her home.

An Open Invitation:

You are all invited to take part in an open, collaborative writing effort. The idea behind this project is to have a group story in which each writer contributes a unique storyline, but also tries to build on the ideas of the others who have already written. No one "owns" this idea, and you should NOT feel shy about introducing your own ideas, heroes, conflicts, villians, etc. This story will belong to all writers. However, we do have a basic premise we would like to start from; there are enough inhabitants of our basic world that you should have no trouble finding a faction, family, or character to start with. You can start your character connected to someone else's in some way (some collaboration on this would, of course, be necessary) or you can start your own mini-storyline with characters who don't seem to be tied in to the other storylines, and can meet/interact with other people's characters later, if you choose. You have complete freedom, so long as you stay within the basic world parameters, which are as follows:

For most of the citizens of Birdwood, NE, life in their small town is normal--it's a railroad town that never really entered the information age, and which is, like many small towns, sleepily preoccupied with its local gossip and dimly existing from one day to the next. However, there is far more to Birdwood than most of the inhabitants know. Located at an extremely potent meeting of ley lines, this town is a haven for several different factions of witches. Operating without the knowledge of their own families, these witches present a smiling front to the town, but in secret they have their own triumphs, ambitions, and of course, problems. In addition, because of Birdwood's powerful energies and its fairly central location, some of its witches participate in a very old underground railroad program, moving and protecting witches whose secret has been discovered and who need to migrate to new locations. Thus there is quite a bit of new blood in town at any given point, though whether they stay long or short varies from case to case.

In terms of magic, our desire is to let you be as creative as you would like, but we are going to hold to the Rule of Three for all our witch characters. This ancient rule basically states that, when using magic, whatever you do to someone else will come back upon you threefold, whether good or bad. This is a good reason to be nice to people, and also a good reason to limit your evil...however, dark witches use familiars, which are animals (any animal) whose soul has been linked to the witch's. One of the most important uses of a familiar is that when the Rule of Three comes for you, its evil can be reflected, to some extent, upon the hapless animal instead of the witch. Other real/traditional witchcraft rules such as the power of names, as well as a person's hair or belongings, to control people, can be used. If you can come up with a real aspect of witchcraft you'd like to use, you're welcome to incorporate it. We'd like to stick to "real" rules of witchcraft as much as possible, but there is some room for flexibility here.

The witchcraft has to stay low-key, but there are also the standard ways in which it is exposed to society-at-large: love potions; faith healings; hexes, curses and bindings; the rule of three, as well as a strong tendency towards addiction, keep most of the casual magic users in check.

And lastly, The ley line and the heavy use of magic has also drawn other magical creatures to the area, but friendly and not.

So there it is. Pick a faction, pick a character, pick a conflict, and jump in!

So I don't know if I've made this clear to all of you, but my overall view of the human race is that we suck. We pretty much ruin everything we touch. I mean, throw 50 people into a place where there is goodness and beauty, and if one person doesn't ruin it all another person will. Pretty much because of selfishness, nearsightedness, and pure stupidity.

But every once in a while, I realize that along with all that suckiness, we have the potential to be really good. And that realization usually comes as a result of seeing someone, somewhere, doing something that is purely good.

So yesterday, it was pouring rain as I was driving home from work. I was taking the back streets, and I saw this woman sitting in the road. (This was 9th East, so a very busy road.) She was by the corner of an intersection, but definitely IN the road. She had this fierce, protective look to her, and was not moving even though cars were coming really close to her. It was kind of an usual sight, so I watched her trying to figure out what was going on. I eventually realized she was sitting by an open storm drain which was flooding with water.

On the sidewalk near her were three big mechanic guys. They had clearly come over from the car repair shop on the corner. They were fussing over a cardboard box.

As I watched, one of the guys pointed over to the grass--where there was a duck. Not just a duck, but a panicking, quacking female duck.

I said to my car, "Are there DUCKLINGS in that box?"

And right as I said it, one of the guys reached into the box and lifted out a little yellow fuzzy duckling, which started peeping for all he was worth. He rushed to his mother, who was rushing toward him.

I have to say, seeing those people so concerned for those little ducklings made me remember how good we all can be. I wanted to write this as a salute to those people, and the kind of people who will stop what they are doing to protect baby ducks in the middle of a downpour. Good job.

I work with adolescent kids every day, some of whom are emotionally unstable, mentally disabled, uncontrolled train wrecks. But no child I have ever worked with seemed to be completely and utterly evil. I can see motive behind most of their bad behavior--it's the first step in refusing to be manipulated. In so doing, I can assess the situation to a point where I am almost always calm, in control, and even compassionate. I don't have huge discipline problems--I learned all my lessons last year, during my first year of teaching. Sure, sometimes I have to mentally step back and allow a student to fail--which is actually quite hard, but it is their right to do so--but again, there is always a motive, or something wrong, that prompts a kid to do stupid things. And by "stupid," sometimes I mean "bad."

Also, I am a religious person. I believe that every human being on this planet is a soul who chose to come to this earth. Sure, some are "brighter" (in many senses) than others, but they all have the potential to be wonderful, and to do good things and learn how to love each other. I do not believe that any person is inherently evil, although I am fully and depressingly convinced of our free will to choose evil should we wish to do so. But my philosophy here kind of points to evil as something that would HAVE to come with some time and experience in the human condition--i.e., the older a child gets, the more likely he is to become evil, because of his experiences and subsequent choices. That would mean that a child raised lovingly would be unlikely to become evil. Of course, it's possible, but it's very unlikely.

But lastly, I am also a little chaotic in nature (<.<) and I believe in the protection of society through reasonable necessary means, even when those means don't necessarily fall within the limits of what we understand as social law. If there is a person who is evil, that person must be eliminated somehow. Nothing else would be logical.

With all that in mind, I read this email, written (allegedly) by the stepmom of one of the monstrous, amoral kids who killed a homeless man. She paints him as 1. Socially deviant and emotionally unstable to an insane degree, 2. Inherently evil, and 3. A danger to every living thing in proximity. Clearly, from her account, this kid should be chemically lobotomized (er...that's my chaotic protection of society side speaking.)

I'm not sure what opinion to form here. Is she telling the truth? If so, WHAT WOULD YOU DO? If you were in her shoes, what could you do to protect the hapless victims surrounding this kid? Is she misleading us? Possibly...I have no way of knowing. But the person she portrayed in that email is someone who not only doesn't deserve saving--he is BEYOND it. He is utterly bad. Didn't she have a responsibility to...I don't know, accidentally "lose" him in the middle of the Atlantic? Do we HAVE a moral responsibility to protect the potential victims of people we know are capable of violent murder--nay, not just capable, but LIKELY TO COMMIT?

First of all,

and secondly...

You people need to get up off your lazy butts and find amusing videos. I'm the only one who ever does it! I DO NOT WORK AT A COMPUTER ALL DAY! This is an outrage, and it's gone on long enough!!!!

While I'm waiting for you to appease me, I'll be watching this stopmotion video.

This is mostly for Wren. Bah ha ha. It's catchy!

Canon in D has never sounded quite like this before.

First of all, check out this cool quest reward in the BC. Obviously only available to the Horde...it's creepy and cool.

Second of all, while we're talking about books, you MUST READ THIS BOOK! It starts out a little slow, but once it gets rolling it's one of the best books I've read. It's by Sandman author Neil Geiman, so you know it's going to be something different, and it's awesome! If you have ever heard any Anansi stories, he is the spider trickster of African legends. All trickster legends from Africa originate with Anansi, even those that have been later (erroneously) given to such imposters as Brer Rabbit.

http://www2.warnerbros.com/happyfeet/videoplay.html?id=HarryPotter&type=windows&speed=500000

Awesome little animation...

and it only gets weirder