What's Happening To Us?

So, today in English we had a Christmas party! The teacher wanted us to play games that either were Christmas or English related. That meant that we could play Apples to Apples or dreidel. Dreidel is a Jewish Hanukkah (Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that falls around the same time as Christmas) gambling game played with a four-sided dice. I didn't play that. I played Apples to Apples, which is a game where you have some red cards and one green card. The green cards are descriptive words (adjectives) and the red cards are people, places, or things (nouns). The whole point of the game is that a green card is pulled out and placed face up. Then, everyone looks at their cards and tries to pick the card that matches the adjective best. Then someone looks at the red cards and picks the best match. Anyway, that's the game we were playing, and about halfway through a green card entitled famous (or something to that extent) was pulled out. Well, what wasn't really odd was that Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the red cards that was put down. What was odd was that nobody knew who Napoleon was, except me and the person who put him down! (For those of you who don't know but should, Napoleon was a very famous, short French leader who had a dream of taking over Europe!) And then, there are all the people who know nothing and/or care nothing about math, science, writing. These subjects have been the core of society for a very long time! People may not like the way they are taught to us (*cough public cough school cough system cough*) but that doesn't degrade any of these subjects!

Seriously, what is the world coming to? Is it any big surprise that other nations are starting to catch up with us? Why can't we, the so called "new" generation, learn what our fathers and our fathers' fathers knew? Is it that we're becoming dumber, or do we just not care? And if we just don't care, WHY don't we? I hate to leave unanswered questions at the end of a blog but, for almost the first time ever, I don't have an answer.

Read My Blogs! (Unless You Don't Want To)

I, being the genius that I am, noticed that some days I"ll write small blogs and other times I'll write long blogs. I also noticed that when I write a long blog, not as many people comment; and when I write a short blog, people do. Who else has noticed this? Or is it just me and people just don't want to take the time to read mine because, unfortunately, you don't know me as well as you know others. If that's it, then it's your loss because you don't get to be as enlightened. OK, fine, you'd be just as enlightened, just not in the same way.

I Ask For Your Opinion!

This is the letter I sent to that Letters for Literature contest. I was wondering what you guys (and girls) thought of it? Don't worry...I'm open to constructive critcism!

Dear Mr. Christopher Paolini,

I first read Eragon in the fifth grade. Now, about four years later, I, Moe Joe, have read this book at least 25 times! Eragon is one of my favorite books. It is a very good thing for me to see a book that is extremely well written and with an intense plot, that was written by someone only a little bit older than I am. This knowledge, I know, has given many other people who were previously scared to write stories (even though they had talent) the drive and confidence to express themselves through their writing.
Even better, I think you would be delighted to know that Eragon has had a very big influence on me. For example, when I was in fifth grade, I used to play pretend games where I had a dragon named Saphira and was blasting Urgals to bits left and right using magic. Reading Eragon changed my youth by inspiring my childhood creativity and interest in fantasy. I can only imagine what it must feel like to you knowing that being the author of such a popular book, you have literally changed the lives of many people. To me, that would be more than I could comprehend.
Another thing that I thought was very good about Eragon was that I read about how much effort you put into the writing, editing, publishing, and promoting of your book. Some people, such as myself, might have given up long ago. I probably wouldn’t have lasted a month. Your dedication shows up in your writing, too. All throughout your book are the constant reminders showing the importance of hard work. The character, Eragon, faces dangerous mountains looking for food for his family. Being in our world where machines are constantly making our load much easier, some of us tend to forget that we need to know how to do things ourselves. We’re becoming a lazier society with video games and TV. Eragon taught me that hard work is important no matter how much you dislike it. I think it was good for our society to finally get an extremely popular fantasy book with a good moral about working hard.
One of my favorite characters from Eragon was Roran. I know that he wasn’t a very well developed character in Eragon, but he actually had one of the largest impacts on me. He always seemed to be looking into the future and trying to decide what was the best course of action. After a while, reading about him kind of awakened me to how I thought I should be acting. I’m not saying that I was a bad kid; it’s just that at that particular point in time I wasn’t acting as well as I should be. I wasn’t planning at all or looking ahead. Roran was a kind of kick in the pants that I didn’t really notice was kicking me until I read the book for about the millionth time. He was one of the many factors that made MY life better.
My only wish for Eragon was that you could have been a little more involved with the movie Eragon. With a book of that caliber, it was a pity that it had to be shown in theaters with almost none of the original plot. I’m not saying that it was a really bad movie, because it was very well done as far as special effects and acting are concerned, but my friends and I were still extremely disappointed with how it turned out.
Finally, I would like you to continue to touch the lives of others with your writing because it makes a difference. I have enjoyed Eldest as well and I’m looking forward to your third book. As I’m sure you know by now, writers have a big impact on society and with an ever-changing world, we need plenty of good influences.

Sincerely,



Moe Joe

CALVIN AND HOBBES 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Under this blog is a strip of Calvin and Hobbes comics. They are really funny and I would like everyone to see them.

So, as you may have noticed, my comics weren't exactly one hundred percent there. For those of you who didn't see, they were chopped off at the seventy-five percent mark. This made them really hard to appreciate because you couldn't read any of the punchlines. So today, I decided to have a little bit of fun and try to fix them. I learned two things: 1-After resizing, it's still hard to read the words, even though you can now. 2-You can't resize all the pictures at the same time. What I mean by that is that in order to resize the photos you have to resize one, publish the post, hit edit, resize the next one, publish, etc. That's a lot of work! Doesn't that kinda make you wonder why that is the case? Is it just my computer? Is it a glitched computer system? Oh well, I can't do anything about it.

CALVIN AND HOBBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm really sorry that the pictures are cut off from the post but I honestly can't fix it. Trust me, I tried!

OK, so these are really funny comics. They are Calvin and Hobbs comics, which are the best I think. Anyone familiar with them? When I was emailed these I was in a laughing fit for about ten minutes.

Also, if you have a feeble mind and a weak heart and an easy to upset stomach, PLEASE don't read any of these extremely cool photos of snowmen getting mutilated. THERE IS NO GORE (fortunately)!

Theater, Stagefright and Me

While trying my best to come up with a topic that someone would actually read (instead of skim through and not get a thing out of it), I remembered that some time ago I went to the dinner theater matinee. Yes, I know that I'm a little late in posting about this, but seeing as I enlighten people with my ingenious ideas, why not?

First off, I'd like to publicly announce that the dinner theater was awesome. Normally I would say, Nothing is as good as doing something yourself. I proved myself wrong. It was much better to watch these Shakespeare scenes. (Although I can't really say that because I wasn't in it). Everyone was really amazing and almost the whole thing was hilarious. By the way, if you didn't go, go next year because it was really good and you missed out. My congratulations to everyone who participated.

Now, I address those people who think, Oh, I could never do something like that. Two things for ya: 1-You have stage fright, 2-So do I. My stagefright makes me believe that if I had been in the theater, no one would come back the next year (or the year after). I wish I could do acting, but if I did I'd faint.

But there is Good news: I'm working on it and trying to get better. Here's the Bad news: It's not helping. Here's the Worse news: I'm opinionated and being opinionated and also having stage fright is really bad because you need to share your opinions with other people. That's kinda hard if you are scared of talking to them. But I'm trying to get better.

Actually, I kind of cursed myself. When I was little, I would have done almost anything on stage. It didn't phase me. I did several performing things. But when I was in fourth grade, I somehow managed to convince myself that I had stage fright. How weird is that? I convinced myself that I was scared of attention so much that I actually got it. I also convinced myself of a bunch of other really stupid things but I won't get into that can of worms right now. But, oh well. So the bottom line is Don't convince yourself that you're scared of being on stage. You'll regret it. I know I do.

Winter Wonderland

So by now you've probably noticed the snow on the ground. If you haven't then you should get out a little more often. We had 7 1/2" of snow at our house. That's a lot of snow! I absolutely LOVE snow, until I have to shovel it, so I was kinda excited. With that information you can probably infer what I got to do next. I had to shovel. I had been happily contemplating the many possibilities of fun and excitement I might have when all of a sudden, out of the blue, my dad tells me that the reason I got up at 8:30 in the morning was to shovel! Great way to start the day, huh? I just need to remember to be optimistic.