High school part 2

I had missed my first period class, it was sometime in the spring of my junior year and I had just walked through the double doors that connect the student parking lot to the back hallways of the school. There was nobody in sight, first period was about to end and at this hour both the students and teachers were still zombified. Then came that familiar pounding, I was standing at the juncture of two hallways which met as an “ L”. The one man stampede was approaching from my right, and once he got close enough for me to hear his chains I looked up and saw Danny blasting down the hallway, full steam ahead. Now had this been anybody else in the world I would have thought something was wrong, or at least been startled. But instead I just watched Danny pass me by like a pedestrian watches traffic as he waits to cross a highway. But Danny attempted to turn the corner at much too high a speed and lost his footing. He slammed down onto his side and skid across the hallways into the lockers, rattling the entire row of them. I started to laugh uncontrollably, trying my best to stifle it with no avail. But instead of ignoring this rudeness like he was so accustomed to doing, he sprang up with tears in his eyes and screamd “FUCK YOU!” as he kept running down the hall.

I didn’t find out what had happened to Danny’s friend until after school, from my mother. Apparently the boy (who was a member of the ‘goth party’) was severely depressed and had jumped off the roof of the Holiday Inn hotel near our school, killing himself. He was 17 years old and coincidently he was one of the few black students that attended my school. This was the first time a student from my high school had died while I was attending it so I had no idea what to expect the following morning, but what actually happened had NEVER crossed my mind. Nothing.

The following day of school was perfectly normal, not many people even knew who the boy was so most of the school didn’t even know it had happened. The school did absolutely nothing to acknowledge the tragedy, no assembly, no moment of silence, not even an announcement that it had happened at all. Throughout the day I saw about 4 or 5 people, none of whom I knew, crying. There were just enough tears being shed that some people started inquiring whether or not something was up? I told a few of my friends what I had heard but no one, including myself, knew who the kid was or even what his name was.

After my lunch period I was walking down the hallway to my Spanish class when I saw about 4 or 5 of the ‘goths’ crowded around a locker, the only reason I was ever even able to put a face on the boy was because of one of those pictures. As I passed by I caught a glimpse of one picture, a close up of the boy and his girlfriend kissing. They were both covered in makeup and seemed to have powdered their faces to appear more pale, I never understood the habits of that particular group of kids. A few candles were lit under the locker and they group of kids were chuckling madly, probably exchanging funny stories about the boy as is so common after death. It made me feel a little better to see them laughing because I knew how enraged they really were over the fact that my school would not recognize the situation. All of the sudden a teacher swooped down around the corner like a hawk and came to a skidding halt in front of the locker. “Sorry folks gotta pack up and move out.” he said, with the lamest attempt to try and make light of the situation. “What do you mean the bell isn’t going to ring for another 20 minutes. Why do we have to leave now.” asked one of the girls. “What class are you supposed to be in?” he snapped. “Study Hall, but Mrs. Pirotta said it was ok if we came and decorated his locker.” The teacher seemed at a loss for words for just a moment, then he blurted “nonsense, the candles are a fire hazard and you’re only allowed to decorate lockers on holidays.” He turned on his heels and was back around the corner before any of the kids could open their mouths. I could not even fathom how he could have been so insensitive about the subject. Why was the administration acting like this? I had no idea. As two of the girls started crying, the group blew out the candles and left, but did not take the pictures down and I though, good for them. Of course it is entirely possible that the teacher had not heard of the incident yet, however unlikely that may be, yet either way he never even game them an opportunity to explain themselves. It seemed as though the school was treating the incident like a conspiracy.

high school

Connetquot high school sits in the center of Bohemia, NY tucked away in one of the remaining non-residential corners of the town. Thick green forest surrounds the school grounds on three sides, when on campus you can’t see anything over the trees except for a Holiday Inn that is about a mile north of Connetquot HS. The school is isolated from the rest of the town just as the town seems to be isolated from the rest of the world. Bohemia is a very middle sized town, with a middle sized High School filled with the children of middle class adults. I could count on two hands the number of students in my graduating class that were not white Catholics, and that’s out of 573 graduates (no, it was not a catholic HS). All the cliché groups of people were represented at Connetquot High School, the jocks, the nerds, the Goths, the drama club, the drug users, the fighters and then everybody else. I was in the latter category. I had friends from each of those clicks except the goths and the drama club, not because I held anything against them that’s just the way it worked out. Although I had a few classes with one kid named Danny who was a member of the goth group.
Danny is a character I’ll never forget. He must have weighed 270 pounds and stood about 6’ 2”, his burnt orange hair matched the hundreds of freckles on his face leaving no doubt as to his Irish ancestry, but his affinity for anime and his preferred hair style (samurai bun) told a different tale. As if that wasn’t confusing enough then his attire certainly sealed the deal. The black cut off motorcycle gloves matched the cut off black jean shorts, which matched black combat boots. The combat boots always looks bigger than they actually were, but that was just an illusion caused by the matching black tube socks which reached up to his knees. The plain black cut off tshirt anchored the ensamble while chains connected nearly all his articles of clothing as if they would fall apart if not appropriately attached to one another. A strange kid, but one I developed an odd sort of relationship with granted our constant proximity to one another.
Another strange characteristic of his was his need to sprint, and I do mean SPRINT, from each class to the next. Every day I would be at my locker talking to my neighbors when we would hear the slow pounding coming from the far end of the hallway, it would grow louder and louder until he got close enough for us to here the treble of his chains compliment the sonic boom that came with each stomp of his enormous boots. Needless to say Danny was constantly tripped and ridiculed, he was infamous. Everybody knew about the ‘goth’ group but nobody seemed to know who any of the members were besides Danny. Somehow the others just existed in the background, too obscure to even attract ridicule from the most ruthless bullies. Danny is still alive today, but I bring him up because he was the only link I had to the kid who committed suicide, Danny was close to him and was the only person I saw who grieved the loss and spoke up about the way the school treated the incident.adf

The Necessary Rebuttle

::Sigh::

Ok, where to start.

Devaluing Mendenhall because he's 'injury prone' ...you have Westbrook and Palmer, nuff said. Omg but he has a bruised knee?!...he's a Running Back in the NFL, he practiced fully, he's fine. But he only avg'd 14.5 per week! ('only' being the operative word there). Thats more than your RB's are avging per week combined, i'll take that all day Mr. Burner.

Breaston, is he a true #3? he has more yards and fantasy points than Boldin, who is constantly banged up and has yet to practice this week because of a high ankle sprain. I like Breaston better than Boldin right now in a high octane passing offense.

--INTERMISSION-- Excuse me while i sift through all the failed attempts at humor in your enormous post, i need to find more stats to poke holes in.

OK, back folks...ah yes...7 catches in 6 games, 1.16875463 RPG yada yada...but wait! i thought we agreed that in those first 3 games he barely saw the field? you trickster you, that 1.16 RPG is SKEWED!!!!..lets keep our stats in context ok?

I put some heavy research (certainly not as heavy as yours) into this groundbreaking trend you refer to as "buying low, and selling high"...after being thoroughly confused for hours i think i finally got the hang of it. But, well, frankly i don't think Slaton for Forte fits that mold, i think you just traded a good RB for a shittier one.

Now, on a more serious note. By having a less than stellar draft (throwing away 5th and 6th round picks on Cutler and LJ) i put myself in a tough spot, and made a tough decision to let Randy go for an RB who i believe has a chance of finishing in the top 10 and making my team a little more stable. So Mr. Commissioner, know that i understand your bitterness stems from being ranked 7th overall and 3rd in your division with a 3-3 record, after trying desperately to fix your situation with a whopping 31 personnel moves. And hey, combine that with a dismal track record in your own league over the past few years (according to reliable sources)... and the constant updating of your Smack Talk as if it were a Twitter account starts to make a little more sense. So seeing how i have already proven that I am the better fantasy manager (SEE AP Football 2009; Week 1), I am going to hang the gloves up for now.

And as far as my dear friend Anthony DelCioppo's facial expressions are concerned, I'm just glad I had the opportunity to put a smile there, thats what friends are for right?


P.S. I was very impressed by the statistics and specific quotations in your first rebuttle, but seeing as it was not in MLA format nor was there a Works Cited page included, I'm forced to deem those quotes and stats as unsubstantiated.

IT

Overhead shot of a newspaper on a coffee table inside a quaint middle-lower class house in Derry, Maine. Camera slowly zooms in on the paper while rotating slightly, it is a local newspaper and the front page is advertising the annual town fair. Very subtle eerie music is playing softly in the background, when the camera zooms enough so that the coffee table is taking up the whole shot, the eerie music suddenly stops and a giggling boy’s hand snatches the paper off of the table.

It’s a gray day outside and it is raining moderately, the mood is very pleasant and comfortable like a nice lazy rainy day.

The camera follows the giddy 6 year old (paper in hand) into his older brothers room (around 10 yrs old) who is bed-ridden with a nasty cough.

Bill Densbrough (Stuttering Bill)- 10year old brother, very smart, bad stuttering problem.
George Densbrough (Georgie)- 6year old brother.

Bill is showing George how to make a newspaper boat because George wants to go play with it out in the rain. The mood is very light and there needs to be a few scenes showing how close the brothers are, they exchange some laughs over some childhood jokes. The boys make the boat, and Bill tells George to go to the basement to get the tub of wax (they need it melt wax over the boat so it stays waterproof).

Camera follows George through the hallway to the basement door which is located in the kitchen.

When G arrives at the door it gets eerily silent, he is apprehensive about going down to the dark basement as all kids are. He reaches for the knob and slowly pushes the door open…

At this point the camera is directly behind george, and it is peering over his head, you would see George from behind, his shoulders and head occupying the bottom center of the shot, most of the shot is fixated on the slowly opening door. The door slowly swings open and it is complete blackness, you cant even see the stairs leading down to the basement. Still in the kitchen, it is totally silent except for the raindrops hitting a nearby window, the camera never moves.

George slowly leans into the darkness and stretches out his left arm to search for the light switch which is placed on the wall. He keeps reaching in further and further, taking a step or two down the stairs in his search for the switch.

Maybe some suspenseful building strings in the background.
The camera goes on a very slow zoom into the basement doorway where George is reaching.

At suspense climax George’s mother says off-screen “George?! What are you doing going down there?” Some dialogue here about the boat, then the mom turns on the light for George so he can go downstairs to get the wax.

On cue with the mothers voice, the camera position switches. It is now turned 90 degrees to the right, this way both the mother and George are in the shot, audience breaths a sigh of relief. The camera shows George getting the wax and bringing it back to his older brothers room.

Gore's Movie

Global Warming has been one of the most talked about issues of the past few years. There are people on the far left who scream “Armageddon”, saying humanity is single handedly facilitating the destruction of Planet Earth as we know it, and there are people on the far right who say its nothing more than a fairy tale and nothing we do affects our planet whatsoever. Then there are people who I like to refer to as “rationalists”, who try to take every fact and idea into account (even ideas from the extreme ends of the spectrum), analyze it and make logically and educated decisions. I don’t think I need to say which is the most desirable group of the three. I know that An Inconvenient Truth presents a lot of material that cannot be argued, and I agree that global warming is a problem, and I want to say first that I do agree with the overall message of this movie. I agree that to some degree we are helping to facilitate global warming, what I am skeptical about is how large of a role we actually play, and on top of that I think we are dealing with the problem in the wrong way.
I will be the first to admit that I am a skeptical and cynical person by nature. So when I see movies like this, especially ones made by politicians, I am VERY skeptical about its true intent. The facts are all there, and you cant argue with facts, however you need to keep in mind that Al Gore has a purpose, a goal in mind. He wants to scare people into action, he wants the shock value, and rightfully so. He is an intelligent man, he knows that unless someone lights a fire under our asses nobody is going to take action. So to me it was funny how all the different graphs he used had different timelines, some went back only 50 years, others went back 650,000 years. I’m not saying he was hiding something, but I can tell that some of his graphs and facts were tailored to have the hardest and most surprising impact on the viewers. For instance, he has a graph showing the fluctuation of CO2 and Temperature dating back 650,000 years. Along this graph you can see that temperature and CO2 levels rise and fall almost identically. At the end of this graph is a projection of the CO2 levels in 50 years, it is almost double of what it is today. Now, knowing that the temperature is going to follow the CO2 levels, this means he is insinuating that the average temperature of the earth will nearly double…in 50 years. Maybe this fact is true, but I just find it hard to believe that we are capable of doubling the average planet temperature in only 50 years, that means that in 2055 the average temperature of the earth will be 116 degrees. The graph proves a valid point, but something about just did not seem right.
Now all my skepticism aside, it certainly is an extremely important movie. His tactics on simplifying everything so everyone can understand it is phenomenal. And the way he uses his own life to really drive points home on a personal level is equally as admirable. Global warming is a huge problem and we are making it much worse. I do not deny the fact that our current practices are hurting our planet and that change is MUCH needed. There are loads of undeniable evidence in this movie that shows us we are in big trouble, Mt. Kilimanjaro’s snowcaps are receding and almost gone, and glaciers around the world are receding rapidly. This glacier problem is especially serious because so many people worldwide rely on glacier run-off as there drinking water. Another dangerous effect of global warming is the warming of the oceans. It is the ocean and wind currents which circulate heat around the globe, and for the ocean to do its part it relies on a balance between hot and cold currents. If the ocean is heated up too much these currents will shift in unpredictable ways. On top of that, warmer oceans give way to stronger storms, warm water is what feeds hurricanes, and not only have hurricanes become stronger, but they also are showing up in places around the globe where we thought it wasn’t possible (Coast of Brazil). According to the film we have set a tornado record in 2005, and Japan set a typhoon record in the same year. These are only a few of the side effects of global warming, so any argument against it’s presence at this point is pretty much moot. However, in the introduction I stated that I thought we were dealing with the problem the wrong way, and what I mean by that is I think its high time we start funneling funds and attention in to ways of COPING with this problem rather then preventing it.

The Road Not Taken

The third stanza deals with our coping of a decision once it’s been made. Take line 13, “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” The exclamation point is important here because it portrays excitement and an interesting optimistic approach to the situation. This line is the narrator’s way of comforting his own uneasy feeling about the situation. The narrator has made his choice, but still has no idea what the consequence of it will be, and as a comforting thought he decides that he can always come back and try the other path in the future, thereby avoiding any consequences of having to stick with an uneducated choice. Clearly this is a comparison to problems we face in decision making every day. A decision is not so hard if you know you can always come back to try the alternative, however as the narrator knows, this is not always an option. If it were always an option than life would lose its unpredictable excitement, and the narrator acknowledges this in the following lines, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” The last two lines are that little voice inside us saying “you know your stuck with this decision, better make the best of it.” By not clearly showing regret, uncertainty, or excitement Frost speaks volumes on the human psyche.

Confucionism

Zhu Xi is given credit as the man who really gave way to the widest and most important spread of Confucianism. It is obvious that Confucianism was a widespread idea before the appearance of Zhu Xi, but it’s because of his huge push to really convert the Chinese way of thought in the direction of Confucianism that gave it its common notoriety even in today’s world. He met a lot of resistance during his lifetime, but years after his death (specifically in the Yuan dynasty) his efforts led to the over-whelming acceptance and enforcement of the books of Confucius. It is said that during the Song dynasty there was a renaissance-like movement, as well as education reform in the direction of Confucian teachings. To give the Confucian movement total credit for the appearance of this renaissance is not justifiable. However I believe that it is fair to say that Confucian thought certainly fueled the presence of this renaissance.
Confucian teachings focus on attributes such as filial piety, obedience, contributions to the group, and knowing one’s role in the society. These are not qualities that usually lead to a renaissance movement. For things like economics and culture to flourish you need emphasis on the individual. Culture is defined by expression, new and original ideas in areas like art and music usually come from individual achievement, people need to be able to free there minds and explore their deepest thoughts. If one is caught up in the frenzy of filial piety, civil obedience, and doing things for the good of the group it usually comes at a cost of their individuality and sense of creativity. On the other hand, Confucianism encourages the flourishing of intellectuals, and this is such a key ingredient to the recipe of a renaissance that it overshadows all the other drawbacks Confucianism might bring. The reason why Confucianism was not linked to a renaissance in earlier times was because the Chinese were still under dictators, who controlled everything. Military force was of the utmost importance in those times, and even Confucian thinking was closely watched by the over-bearing political powers. In those times Confucianism was exploited in a way, with huge emphasis on the obedience portion of it, and less emphasis on the free-thinking portion.