Friday, June 20, 2008

On the Degeneration of the American Culture

What sounds more exciting and interesting:

1.) A group of students slacks off in class, never listens to the teacher, spits gum and skateboards in all the places there are signs saying "No Skateboards" and "No Gum." They don't study for tests, shoplift in their spare time, are straight F students, bring concealed knives to class, and, after getting expelled in the tenth grade and forcibly reenrolled by their parents, they drop out of school and become violent thieves.

2.) A group of students behaves perfectly in class, always listen carefully to the teacher, take notes, and don't even dream of bringing skateboards or gum to class. They have shelves full of books on how to study right and always manage to memorize every single thing on the test. School is more important than shopping, they're straight A students, and, after graduating with honors from an Ivy League college, get high-paying jobs like accountants, insurance agents, and university deans.

I don't know, but I bet that at least some of you are going to choose the first one as the most exciting. (Let's hope that your own plans for the future are a different story.) Our present American culture seems to be such that the first would be glorified. Quite a few of the idolized rappers I've heard of have felonies or at least misdemeanors under their belt (and speaking of belt, I think that their pants are far too baggy too).

Please allow me to change the subject abruptly to sports. I have nothing against sports--except when it interrupts normal news broadcasts that I like watching. I was particularly displeased when NBC showed hockey instead of Nightly News with Brian Williams. Why can't they just make a hockey channel instead of halting the news? I don't know about you, but I see more stories about sports victories and murders than I do about someone who works hard at school and manages to accomplish their dreams.

Oh--and another sign of the degeneration of our culture? Watch the children's cartoons and shows on stations like Disney and Nickelodeon. In the good "olden days"--or at least during World War II, I believe--kids watched newsreels. They didn't waste the daylight hours watching far-too-brightly colored animated characters speaking gibberish in shrill high-pitched voices or phony acting.

This article may sound a bit conservative. I took a poll some time ago for fun. It was a poll on how old you acted. And guess what I got? 58-72.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Another story beginning written with Lincoln School, Costa Rica

Max Gil had always wanted to climb a mountain. He said that it didn’t matter which mountain it was (although he’d prefer a pretty high mountain), as long as he got to climb a mountain.
Max would spend hours in bed just dreaming about climbing a mountain. Max had a very nice room. The walls were painted dark blue and the curtains were made of silk and lace. Max had eighty-three building blocks, five boxes full of toys, drawers and drawers of beautiful writing paper, and lots of different things to amuse himself with. Still Max was not happy. He wanted to climb a mountain.
That was why he was so excited when his father told him that they would be going to Mt. Chirripo. In fact, Max jumped up and down and nearly knocked over the breakfast table. He bumped his head on the chandelier. The chandelier ended up on the floor and the candles all fell out. Fire streaked across the hardwood floor.
“Aaaaaah!” Max shrieked as his socks burned. Max’s father was laughing so hard that he didn’t even notice. Max’s older sister, his mother, and his younger brother threw water on Max and the floor. When they put out the fire, the floor was scorched and black.
“We’ll die of smoke inhalation if we don’t get out of here soon,” Max’s father grumbled as soon as he saw what had happened.
“Let’s be off to Mt. Chirripo!” Max shouted.
“That’s a good idea,” his father said, and they skipped breakfast. They did, however, take along some hardboiled eggs and some bread. Little did they know how much they would need it.

Later that day they arrived at Mt. Chirripo. They were all rather tired from the long drive in the car.
“I can’t wait to climb a mountain, I can’t wait to climb a mountain, I can’t wait to climb a mountain,” Max chanted. His older sister slapped him on the cheek and Max stopped chanting. It was only then that Max stopped to look at the beauty of the mountain. They were very high up and the air felt different. Max stared down and found his heart plummeting. They were so high up that he was already getting nervous that he would fall off the edge.
“Careful, Max, or you’ll fall off the edge!” his father shouted. Max jumped back immediately. That had been exactly what he had been thinking, after all.
Finally, after getting all their food into bags and getting everyone organized, they began the long walk up Mt. Chirripo.

Monday, June 09, 2008

Beginning of a story written with Lincoln School, Costa Rica

On June 9th I had my first videoconference with a school in Costa Rica, the Lincoln School. I gave two presentations on Inspirations for Writing. During the second session, I showed them how you can easily start writing a story using simple inspirations. The beginning of this story was inspired by the ideas "carnivorous plant" and "monkeys." I would love it if the students of the Lincoln School wanted to continue this story, copied and pasted the beginning into the "comments" section, and gave it their own ending. Here is the beginning of the story:


...........

The town of Saitam was not known for being an exciting place. Nothing much ever happened there. It was a very small town, with two restaurants, one post office, one school, and twelve houses. The people of the town had to get their groceries from another town four miles away. Saitam was so small that it wasn’t even on the map.
But something would happen to change all that.

There were lots of monkeys in the rainforest by Saitam. They made fools of themselves by making loud noises and throwing bananas whenever people walked by. These monkeys, however, were smarter than most of the other animals in the rainforest, so nobody bothered them too much.
There was a certain plant in the rainforest, near the area that the monkeys played. The monkeys played in a small clearing where there were not as many trees but plenty of interesting plants and insects to observe. At first, the plant in question was hardly noticeable; it looked to be little more than a shrub. But within two days, it had grown to be eight feet tall. Even the monkeys kept away from it at this point, for the plant was carnivorous.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Musical Preferences

When giving presentations via videoconference I am sometimes asked what my favorite kind of music is. At those times I will usually start off by listing the types of music that I dislike. This, for me, is a great deal easier than listing the kinds that I like. I will list for you here some types of music I dislike, in order of most disliked to "I guess it's sometimes okay" position:

  1. Rap. I'm not even sure if rap can qualify as music, but anything that a majority of the United States teenage population likes probably isn't intelligent talk radio. I've taken to doing rap parodies to annoy people, namely my older sister. Whenever I come into the room she blasts Soulja Boy on, high-volume, in order to annoy me back.
  2. Pop. As in today's pop, like Avril Lavigne and the Jonas Brothers. I would describe it as "high-pitched wails, clashing vibrations of shallow idiocy, and altogether unpleasant." I know that I'm probably offending quite a few people here.
  3. Country. Country music may have been okay in the past when the subject matter actually seemed realistic to the time period, but now it's not so great.

By the way, I am aware that I'm probably offending quite a few people here, just in case you were wondering.

Upcoming Events

I'll be presenting at these upcoming events:

WHO Convention (Washington Homeschoolers Organization)
Puyallup, Washington State

NECC (National Educational Computing Conference)
San Antonio, Texas

Tikatok Company Launch (www.tikatok.com)
Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts

For more information regarding these events, or to request a presentation, feel free to contact us.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Dialogue between presidents in the White House of the "underworld"

For class I was studying some early presidents, because I was supposed to write a dialogue between them. I asked my teacher whether I could have some presidents talk with presidents who would have been dead in their time. She said sure. I got the idea to make them ghosts in the underworld.

--------

The White House was never the quietest place in the underworld, but tonight the noise was absolutely alarming. It made sense--all the dead presidents' ghosts, ghosts of staff, and ghosts of family crammed into a single building were bound to make noise. In the kitchen, where at least some of the cooks knew him, Andrew Jackson tried to get to sleep.

"Poll wants to fly! Poll wants to leave!" Jackson's parrot, Poll, squawked.

"Shut it, you scumfaced, traitorous, most--oh, thought you were...eh, someone, Poll," Jackson mumbled sleepily, groping for his pillow. "Who stole my pillow?"

"Poll wants to leave!" was Poll's only answer.

"Fine, sirrah! Get away with you, and say no more about my wife!" Jackson bellowed, apparently in the middle of a dream. Poll took this as permission to leave, and, squawking, flew off into the night.




"Well, my dear Abigail, to tell you truly, that Jackson character is getting on my nerves," John Adams sighed. Abigail Adams looked at him sympathetically. They had chosen to stay in the Oval Office for the night.

"Has he gotten into another duel?" Abigail asked. She was friends with Edith Roosevelt and Harriet Lane, who told her all about such matters.

"Yes, my darling. He infuriates me--through truly I'd never say this in public--with his wife. You know what they say--she never properly divorced from that fellow of hers she had before, and Jackson has no thought of honor."

"Yes, I know, John. Helen Taft told me--" Abigail began.

"Helen Taft? That jelly-bellied elephant of a man, Taft, is her husband. He--Taft, that is--got stuck in a bathtub when Cerberus was lurking around."

A squawk came from the windowsill.

"Och! What's that?" Adams asked, and pulled the curtains aside. But there was nothing there but one half of a parrot feather.




"Poll hear Adams," Poll squawked. "Poll hear Adams," she repeated, and nudged Jackson awake.

"God, by the battle of New Orelans I swear there never were--was--is--are--darn durn it, a nastier parrot!" Jackson shouted. "Now, whatcha got? You said Adams? What did he say, huh?"

Poll told Jackson exactly what she had heard Adams say, word for word.

"The scoundrel gossiped about Rachel, huh?" Jackson snarled, waving his pistol about. "And Taft too, hmm. Well, I don't want to break another rib in a duel. Let's see if we can drum up any support."




At dawn Taft turned on his underworld-controlled T.V. and put the channel on Onion News Network. He had only watched for two minutes when William Seward came bursting in, shouting "Murder!" and dragging Jackson along by the ear.

"What in the..." Taft muttered, hefting his huge and heavy body off of his rocking chair, which immediately collapsed.

"I didn't mean to draw my pistol, Seward! Why don't you just go off to your icebox where you belong!" Jackson roared. Seward slunk off.

"I apologize," Jackson said curtly. "I thought that Adams would be in the Executive Suite tonight."

"Nope, he switched to the Oval Office tonight," Taft said, chewing on a petrified stick of butter. All things in the underworld were petrified. "I'm Taft, by the way. I don't think we've met."

"Oh! Taft indeed, very good to meet you!" Jackson said, shaking Taft's hand vigorously.

Eight minutes later, Jackson had filled Taft in on all the infuriating things that Adams had said about Taft and Jackson's wife.

"He called me a WHAT!" and "I'd smash that hypocritical liar's face in!" were all phrases Taft used upon hearing Jackson's (much-exaggerated) tale of what Adams had said.

"Indeed, indeed," Jackson said, trying his best to sound like a gentleman.

"Well, then, Jackson, there's no way around it. We must rally our staff and confront the scoundrel Adams," Taft said, once he had cooled down.

"That sounds quite fine," Jackson said, smiling. Hist staff were fairly good at fighting.




In three hours twenty-five minutes, Jackson had rallied his kitchen staff, his wife, and Martin van Buren around him. There they joined with some sympathetic presidents and First Ladies, as well as with Taft's staff, and marched off to confront Adams in the Oval Office.




"I think that the Aeneid is not quite as good as Common Sense myself," Abigail Adams remarked over her husband's shoulder.

"Not quite as good? Now, Abby, one must be careful with the word "good," for--" John Adams said patronizingly, only to be interrupted by a loud pounding on the door.

"OPEN UP, ADAMS!" came a booming of joined voices. There were some whispers from behind the door.

"It's only me, Helen Taft," said Helen Taft, giggling to the assembled crowd behind her. "Please open up, Abigail, for your dear friend." Abigail, upon hearing this familiar voice, opened up without hesitation, then froze with fear. Jackson, Taft, and their assembled cudgel, lamp, and rope-wielding staff, burst into the Oval Office.

"GET ADAMS!" Jackson roared. Without hesitation, they surged toward Adams and grabbed him by the arms.

"Throw him in the Potomac!" one of Jackson's chefs jeered. "He likes to go skinny-dipping there."

"No I don't, you ungentlemanly monster!" Adams protested, trying to fight his captors. "That's my son, John Quincy--" But Adams got no further, for they had already trooped out of the White House and he determined it best to keep his mouth shut.

Sure enough, when they reached the shores of the Potomac, John Quincy Adams was already in the water without his clothes. He stopped, pale, when he saw the approaching crowd, and grew even paler when he saw that they were holding his father. But he had no time to do anything but watch hopelessly as the crowd shoved an indignant John Adams into the water. John Adams shouted at them as he grew wetter and wetter, until everyone tired of honor and revenge and began to race back to the White House.