Challenges I've Faced Over the Last 3 Months

• Writing my concert reports for music appreciation
• Driving on 85 every morning
• Waking up at 0630 so often
• Forcing myself to go to computer science club
• Coordinating my University Success final
• Convincing Nye of the importance of nutrition
• Getting A's on all of my math tests

     My brain screamed at me for the entire thirty-minute drive to turn around as I made my way to my first computer science club meeting. I worried that no one would show up and the drive wouldn't be worth it, or that I wouldn't like the people who did show up, or they wouldn't like me. I had to continuously remind myself that all of those concerns were unfounded and irrelevant. There was no reason to suspect any of that be true or even likely, and even if the meeting turned out that way then at least I would know.

     While feeling awkward upon arriving, I surprised myself with how well I overcame my anxiety to break the ice. I spend so much energy worrying about everything going wrong, but I seem to have the ability to pull confidence and competence from thin air when the time comes. Despite my nervousness, I greeted all of the strangers warmly and asked their names and majors as if I wasn't panicking inside.

     I still go through a similar test of character every week when I get the email for the next club meeting. I question the value of going each time and if I really want to. Maintaining the small social relationships I've developed so far has made the meetings worthwhile. I know if I want to keep them I need to keep going back, even though the drive kills me.

    So far I've made it to every computer science club meeting, although I have skipped out on a couple of the math club meetings. They do math games in which I feel I wouldn't competitive considering I haven't taken Calculus yet. Perhaps those fears are unfounded too. Maybe enough people don't show up that they just goof off for a couple hours, or maybe the math isn't as intensive as I think. If only I was as good at imagining things going well as I can imagine them going poorly, I'd probably enjoy more success.

     

Process Writing - German Spaghetti

     This is a unique recipe I learned from my mom growing up. Unlike regular spaghetti, the German variety is made with brown gravy instead of tomato sauce. This may sound unusual, but the gravy and spices give the dish a unique flavor and it is one of my favorite meals.
   
     First let's run through the ingredients. You'll need:

• one pound of ground beef
• 5 cups of water
• paprika
• curry powder
• ketchup
• a beef bouillon cube
• four packets of McCormick brown gravy mix 
• one packet of McCormick thick and zesty spaghetti sauce mix.
• two ounces of spaghetti per bowl you expect to eat
• pepper, cooking oil (optional)

     The first thing you'll need to do is brown your beef in a pot. Crank the heat up on one of your burners to medium high and break the beef up with some sort of cooking implement. Be sure to stir semi-frequently. Once all the beef is brown and you don't see any more redness, drain the grease in the sink. I like to do this by placing a lid on the pot and flipping it upside down. For safety, be sure to turn off any stove burners that aren't actively in use.

     Now that you've got a pot of browned beef drained of grease, it is time to add the spices. I was never given a measurable amount of paprika or curry to add, so I sprinkle on what I call a "covering." I sprinkle both spices on top of the beef until the entire surface is colored scarlet or yellow. It may take a few tries before you find the ideal amount of each for you. Unwrap and toss in the bouillon cube and then squirt in just enough ketchup to bind the powder to the beef. Stir it all together with a serving spoon.

    Grab a shaker or some sort of closeable bottle and begin mixing the gravy powder with the water. You'll want to maintain a ratio of one cup of water per packet of mix. Combine the mix and water in the bottle and shake vigorously until uniformly dissolved and add to the pot, repeating as needed until all of the packets are used. When finished, return the pot to the burner and bring to a boil. Once the pot is boiling, reduce heat and allow to simmer while you cook the spaghetti noodles. Be sure to stir the beef occasionally.

     Fill another pot with an appropriate amount of water for the amount of spaghetti you plan to cook. There should be enough water to fully submerge the uncooked noodles. I like to add a bit of pepper to the noodles in the pot for aesthetic purposes, and pouring in a very small amount of vegetable oil can help prevent the spaghetti from sticking together. Boil the noodles per the directions on the box, or until tender, stirring occasionally. When done, drain the noodles through a colander.

     Your meal is now ready to serve! Fill your bowl with whatever ratio of pasta to meat-sauce makes you happy. Although unorthodox, Parmesan cheese makes a great topping. Enjoy!

Process Writing - Basic Training

     Air Force Basic Military Training is no walk in the park, although there will certainly be an excessive amount of walking. That said, it is far from impossible. Whether you grew up with a survival instinct or grew up sheltered, you can survive BMT. If you follow these simple instructions, you'll be sitting pretty on the parade field, graduated and in your fancy dress blues before you know it.

     Your first BMT interaction awaits you as you exit the terminal at the San Antonio airport. You will give your paperwork to the airman sitting at a table and the nearby military training instructor, or MTI, will order you to stand in a nearby formation with the other arrivals. Once enough people arrive, you'll file onto a nearby bus. This is a good time to get some final text messages sent out or do some last minute goofing off on your phone because this bus ride is your last moment of freedom for a few months.

     The bus stops outside one of the many basic training dorm buildings and then the head games begin. Another MTI will step on the bus and give specific instructions about how to get off. Despite being tired and confused, you'll be given specific, detailed instructions and be expected to execute them flawlessly. This is the central theme of basic training. Starting at this moment and continuing for two months, your flight will be given detailed instructions set against a seemingly impossible timetable, and your delightful MTI's will do their best to make you feel like the world is ending if you don't succeed.

     Communicating with the MTI's is the most daunting part of basic training for most people. If you've never been yelled at before or dealt with difficult people, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Keeping a few simple ground rules in mind will help you communicate effectively. First, they cannot hurt you. No matter how loud they yell or how far they twist their face, they are not allowed to lay a finger on you. Second, their harshness is designed to teach you how to keep calm under pressure, so even if you do everything right, they will find a reason to be irritated with you. The sooner you can dissociate from your immediate emotional response, the easier you will find it to communicate with them. Third, and this is most important, know how to listen and how to ask for clarification. You may be belittled for not hearing right the first time, but you'll make the entire flight suffer if you consistently get things wrong.

     The next thing people struggle with at the beginning of BMT is realizing that your training flight is a team. All fifty or so of you have a common purpose: to learn and survive training together. Throughout your Air Force career, you'll hear the motto One Team, One Fight over and over and over again. The central idea behind this is that one's success is everyone's success, and one's failure is everyone's failure. There is no you, there is no him or her in basic training. There is only the mission and the team. One of the most difficult tasks in Basic Training involves the strict tidiness standards for the dormitory. Initially, people want to focus only on their own space to ensure they personally do not get in trouble, but this thinking is flawed for two reasons.

     One, the standards are designed around the idea that you will all need to work as a team to maintain them. Take the time early on to identify who among you is best at each task, and specialize. If you are best at rolling up socks, be a sock roller for the flight and let someone else dust your locker. Two, even if you have an impeccable wall locker, the MTI's will hold all of you responsible if one of you is below standards. Focusing entirely on yourself is counterproductive in addition to being selfish.

    You'll notice as you observe older flights that they have a solid handle on the two main concepts I've outlined here. As individuals, they've learned how to tune out their emotional response to stress and focus entirely on the instruction being given to them. Their calm demeanor allows them to communicate effectively with their MTI's and as such they are treated with more respect. As teams, they've embraced the reality that they are all in this together and need to help one another out.

     

   

     

Favorite Genre 2: Electric Boogaloo

     If you've read my first blog post you know I'm a fan of fantasy games, and one series I love passionately is Dark Souls.  All of the classic fantasy tropes are present: swords, sorcery, dragons, castles, dying kingdoms and plots to seize power and take revenge. I love the genre because of the artistic possibilities it gives creators.  When you base your world on magical elements, you are able to design and create spectacular worlds that aren't restrained by conventional logic.

     Take for example the Iron Keep in Dark Souls 2. The location is a bit silly, given that you take an elevator ride from a giant windmill in a poison swamp up to a mountain range you would think you could see as you approached the windmill.  Questionable development choices aside, the Iron Keep is made up of an ancient castle made entirely of black iron which was so heavy that it began to sink into a lake of lava. The story in Dark Souls is told passively, so there are few cut-scenes that hammer in "This is exactly what happened here and why." The developers instead choose to tell the story via the environment and descriptions of items you pick up as you travel through areas.

     Subtlety is where video games shine as a story-telling medium compared to books and movies.  With Dark Souls, players could choose to ignore the story, focus entirely on the gripping combat and get through each beautifully designed zone as quickly as possible, but if they slow down and smell the corrupted, dying roses, the game weaves an enigmatic tale of tragedy and decay. The Iron Keep was not originally built over a lake of lava: a silly design choice even for a fantasy game. The lake was created when the King of that castle sold his soul to an ancient and indescribable evil that lurked in the Earth below, generating a monumental fiery explosion that caused the castle to sink and transformed him into a giant demon not unlike the Balrog from Lord of the Rings.

     Other diverse locations in Dark Souls 2 include a haunted forest, a spider infested village, an ancient fort located in the woods, a painfully dark crypt, an underground gutter, and of course, a mountainous dragon lair. Each of these locations has its own tragic story that explores the main themes of the series: the disparity of light and dark and attempts by the powerful to escape the inevitable decay of time.

     Dark Souls would be considered dark fantasy, due to its mature, mostly humorless tone and oppressive, haunting atmosphere. World of Warcraft, another game in the fantasy genre, is quite the opposite. On top of being obscenely massive, it is dripping with humor, both clever and trite. All of the same tropes are present: the swords, the magic, the castles, the dying kingdoms etc. The approach taken, however, couldn't be more different.

     The story is told explicitly, mainly through dialogue text with non-player characters and the more thematic content through cut-scenes with voice acting.  Unlike Dark Souls, Warcraft presents its story in bombastic, almost melodramatic tones not unlike Game of Thrones or other blockbuster mainstream fantasy series. The game has been around much longer than any game has a right to be, and its writing has become more absurd over time.  Most games are made as one-and-done features, or perhaps if they're successful enough they'll have a few sequels.

     World of Warcraft has been around for almost fifteen years.  The developers are forced to up the ante for each expansion, so it's no surprise the narrative has become ludicrous.  For context, the original game has received eight expansions so far.  The previous expansion culminated in the players banishing the space devil to prevent him destroying the planet.  How could they possibly one-up that?  I don't know where the story is going to go from there, but the absurdity and humor of it all, again made possible by the outlandish high-fantasy concepts, are what I love about the game.

     When designing a fantasy world, the only limit is the creator's imagination. The endless possibilities that keep the genre fresh and interesting also keep me coming back again and again. Whether fantasy games take themselves seriously like Dark Souls or can laugh at themselves like Warcraft, they hold a special place in my heart. 

  

Thanksgiving

If last year was an accurate blueprint, then for this year I can expect the following for Thanksgiving. I will be given the expectation that my wife's parents will arrive sometime in the early morning, so that I will wake up early and clean: sweep the floors, wipe down the bathroom, take out the trash, etc. After the house is spotless we'll wait around awkwardly for several hours because I was given a gross misestimation as to when they would arrive. As my vision becomes clouded and my strength fades from hunger, they will finally show up about four to six hours later than I anticipated.

My mother-in-law, Julie, will set up shop in the kitchen, baking and baking until my table is completely covered in tiny cakes and other finger-foods. My wife and her sisters will help her make little blueberry muffins, cookies, and an odd sushi-like snack made from ham rolled around cream-cheese and a pickle. My table will be completely covered in entirely too much food for us all to eat and my kitchen will be a disaster within hours.

My father-in-law, Steven, will set up a grill on his tailgate because he refuses to use the nice propane grill we got for Independence Day for some reason. Before he starts grilling steak outside, he'll microwave some chicken breasts because that's a thing people do apparently. I'll  have a bite because I'm too polite or too stupid to refuse it, but really, who trusts raw chicken breast cooked in a microwave? The already busy table will then be covered in entirely too many steaks for us all to eat, especially considering we're already full from the baked goods.

While everyone else is cooking, I'll be sitting at my computer in the vice-like grips of anxiety feeling like I should be helping, but also feeling like I'd just be in the way. All the noise and bickering going on around me will prevent me from enjoying whatever game I'm trying to play or task I'm trying to complete, so I'll probably just run in circles on-screen and try to pretend I'm somewhere else. Julie will have gotten tired and taken a seat on the couch just before Steven arrives and I'll put on an old holiday movie for her while Steven chides her for sitting around, despite having spent hours baking before he got there.

I don't mean to be a grinch, and I know that sounds like what the kids call, "a straight-up lie." I enjoy the holidays and I love spending time with my wife's family, but the hustle, bustle and tussle wears me down. When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was a calm, quiet day where my mom would cook everything, we'd eat dinner at three in the afternoon and then that would be it. Too much commotion and chaos betrays the purpose of the holidays.   

Once Steven and Julie leave, I'll wind up cleaning the entire house again with the added chore of packing all the leftovers into tupperware, but at least this time my wife and her sisters will be awake to help me. That weekend, Stephanie and I will drive down to Florida to see my mom. She'll probably spend a bunch of money on a large dinner for the three of us even though I ask her not to, or at least to let me pay for some of it but her pride won't let me. At least it will be much quieter and calmer than Thanksgiving at my house.

After Thanksgiving is over, I can look forward to adding Christmas flavor to the Halloween decorations we never took down. We like to celebrate a variant of Halloween and Christmas called Spookmas, which starts on Halloween and ends on Christmas. The holidays are functionally normal, but we have a bunch of skulls and pumpkins wearing Santa hats everywhere for three months.

creativewritingprompts.com #27 - empty glass story

     I set my supplies on the table: the poison, the wine, and the empty glass. For too long has my country been subjected to the will of an evil and tyrannical king. His endless decrees have seen the poor torn from their homes, children torn from their mothers, fathers and brothers sent off to war to die and for what: an endlessly swelling royal treasure horde. The terrible King Dante sits atop a mountain of gold like a dragon, drunk on his own wretched power. Soon enough, he will be drunk on more than just power, more than just wine.

     I pour the wine in first. Its deep crimson is a reminder of all the innocent blood spilled by his regime: the same dark hue as the blood caked on the guillotine responsible for countless political executions. Vengeful souls laugh gleefully in the sound of rushing liquid as it fills the glass. Next, I add the poison. I need no more than a drop of the sickly green liquid, corrosive to the skin and lungs when pure, but when diluted in wine is absolutely undetectable. A quiet hiss rises from the mixture as it bubbles and settles, as if the drink itself is now laughing at the king's impending demise.

     I enter the king's bedchamber and set the tray of fruit and wine in front of him. He looks up at me briefly, his red, drunken face grimacing at sharing space with a lowly servant. Without a word he waves me from the room, and I am happy to oblige. He mutters something about executing me for forcing him to wait so long for his evening snack as I close the door and peer through the keyhole. Surely enough, before long, the tyrant begins swaying in his seat. As he sputters and falls over, his eyes glance toward the keyhole as if he sees me staring back at him. I am ashamed to admit that I have enjoyed nothing more in life than watching his eyes turn cold, and my only regret is that I could not give him the more humiliating, undignified end he has served to so many.

Kirby Ferguson Ted Talk - Remix

     Considering how many people are alive today and how many more have been alive in the past, the odds of any one idea being completely original are  astronomically low.  As obsessed as society is with the notion of originality, it doesn't seem to reward it much.  No one has an idea and is then showered with grant money simply because no one has ever heard of it before.  Ideas are rewarded when they show some sort of practical potential, either by addressing some economic concern or sending a novel artistic message.
   
     That is the line for what separates a shameless rip-off of previous ideas with a useful remix. Someone who takes the ideas of others, copies them, and slaps their own name-tag on them are not contributing anything new.  They only seek to feed on the attention that the original ideas afforded their authors. I've seen this before in all sorts of foreign bootlegged merchandise for American media properties. Rather than buy an action figure of Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, grandma might accidentally buy Barry Star-Boy: Space Wizard Maximum Fun Time.

     The video game Overwatch just released a new character called Ashe, a spaghetti-western aesthetic female bandit.  People claim she's a rip-off of a similar character from the video game League of Legends. The irony is that that character is itself derived from a character in a game called Defense of the Ancients, which in turn is based on the game Warcraft 3. Because Blizzard made both Warcraft 3 and Overwatch, should we conclude that they plagiarized themselves? Does it matter if they did?

     Many great intellectual properties are simple spins on classical stories. Super Mario is a reiteration of the knight-saves-damsel-from-dragon story, except in this case the, "valiant knight" is a short, pudgy plumber with an Italian accent.  The creator of Link, the hero from The Legend of Zelda, said he based the character design on Peter Pan. Other than the green outfit complete with silly hat, Link and Peter have very little in common. Mario is very similar to its source material and Link is mostly different, but both are unique enough to be identifiable as distinct, separate entities. They are more than shameless copies like Barry Star-Boy.

My Writing Process

     My writing processes for both the informational and narrative essays were almost identical. For each one, I spent a few minutes mentally brainstorming and then started plugging away on the page. If I don't get something on paper, I'm liable to stare at a blank screen for hours, so I find it's better to get something out there and refine it later than stress about perfection before the horses even leave the gate.

     If I am going to write effectively, I need two things: quiet and comfort. When there's too much going on around me, I get distracted. Distraction can be devastating when I'm trying to be creative because my thoughts move and change quickly. If I miss a link in the chain then I find myself completely lost and have to start over from scratch. My train of thought is also derailed if I am 'too' anything. If I'm too hot, too cold, too hungry, too full, too tired, too energetic, that's all I can think about. For these reasons, the best places for me to write are at the library and at home, in that order.

     When I'm in the library, I know I'll have a quiet, calm place to work free of interruption. Occasionally someone nearby will be rude and noisy, but then I can simply move. Unfortunately, I can't control the temperature in the library but that's usually not a problem anyway. My home is usually quiet, especially before my wife and sisters get back, but when they do distractions abound. They want to talk about their days which I typically enjoy, but when I need to get work done I may as well give up for that night. Another problem about being at home is that the privacy and comfort enable me to procrastinate more easily. When I'm at the library I don't want people to see what I watch on YouTube and don't have the temptations of video games and the rest of the internet nagging at me. At least at home, however, I can control the temperature, and easily get food if I start feeling hungry.

     Once I've finished writing something, I like to transcribe it into a text-to-speech app and let it read my paper back to me. This is handy for catching accidentally omitted words that won't always show up on Word's error catcher. After that, I'll wait a few days before I read it again so that I can read my sentences with fresh eyes and come up with better ways to phrase things and evaluate what needs more explanation and what can be more concise.
    

Ken Robinson Ted Talk - Is creativity as important as literacy?

     Growing up, I was always talented academically. I learned to read a little early and was placed into accelerated learning programs for both reading and math. While I was in school, I enjoyed creative writing, but my focus steadily shifted from creative subjects to concrete subjects like math and science. Aside from a handful of music classes in which I was successful mostly because they were notoriously easy, I didn't take many art classes. I stopped taking art class in middle school and started taking advanced math classes for my grade level, starting with Algebra 1 in seventh grade. Ultimately, I graduated 20th in my class, barely scraping into the top 20 thanks to some last-second AP classes I took senior year just to say I did.

     What did all of that academic success get me? So far, not a thing. After graduation, a veil was lifted from my eyes and I saw that I had no idea what I was doing or going to do. There wasn't and still isn't anything I'm particularly passionate about. I know a lot, sure, but I don't know what to do with any of my knowledge. I feel like I'm an incredibly smart person  held back by my own lack of passion and creativity. I'm all literate and no creative, stumbling through college hoping that eventually I'll find something to make me think, "This is what it's all been about."
 

      I used to be into creative writing and still dabble in poetry from time to time, but my artistic efforts all share a common theme. I'll start writing or playing or drawing, become frustrated that my technical skill isn't developed enough to produce what's in my mind, and give up. Like Ken Robinson said in his TED talk, I've developed a phobia of being wrong. My main source of self-esteem in school was my grades. I thought that even if I'm not the most popular or the most artistic, at least I have strong grades, which most of my peers didn't. Knowing as much as I could and proving it by never being wrong was the single most important thing to me.
 

      So now, as an adult, I am afraid to pursue anything new. I play the same old video games, watch the same shows, and exploit the familiar rather than explore the novel because I'm terrified of failing. I don't want to draw because I know it will look bad, and that is unacceptable. I'm afraid to write music because it won't sound exactly the way it does in my head, and even if it does, what if other people think it's awful? Unacceptable. I need to put in effort to start learning code, but I'm afraid of the difficulty and so I waste all of my time playing the same video games I've played a million times before, chasing that small but guaranteed dopamine release of success.
 

      This phobia of being wrong probably plays a role in my social phobias as well. I hesitate to strike up conversations with strangers because I'm afraid I'll put them off or otherwise embarrass myself, and that's a risk my ego can't take. I've been in college for a little over two months, but I haven't made any friends. Just like high school, I relate more to my teachers than to my peers. Perhaps this is because I'm in early classes and so most of my peers are significantly younger than me, so I feel like I'm on an entirely different level developmentally.
 

      Emphasizing literacy and not doing enough to foster creativity leads one to become like me, all intellectual bark and no bite. Literacy is certainly important, but without the creativity needed to apply it, literacy is borderline useless. Now that I've realized all of this, I can make an effort to change, but I've lost the seven years I spent wandering in limbo between high school graduation and now. Had I been more specifically encouraged as a child to engage in creative pursuits instead of just thinking of them as a diversion from the more important academic studies, then maybe I wouldn't have felt so lost for so long. 

     

creativewritingprompts.com 30 & 46

30.) Write an excuse for not working today

I was unable to come into work today for a few reasons. First, I've been coughing violently, sickened by my children and the disease factory we call pre-school. Second, the roads were packed to capacity, an endless stream of smog and steel clogged the highway, stopping and going, braking and slowing, people blaring their horns endlessly as though that would make things move faster. Third, I really, really hate my boss. His fat, stupid face fills me with rage in a primal sort of way. Whenever I see him I just want to run screaming out of an open window, bounce off the street below like a superhero, and deliver a striking uppercut hard enough to send him into space. If I had to go into work sick and fight through all that traffic, just to see his microwaved marshmallow body, I may literally explode.

46.) Describe a hot day

I awoke in an ocean of sweat, the radio weatherman talking over my alarm saying, "It's gonna be a scorcher today, folks!" After getting up and eating breakfast, I stepped outside my house and into my car. It had been baking in the sun; the heat trapped inside by the glass windows turned my tiny Chevy Sonic into a luxury sauna. As I drove, I could see typical hot-day staples. Children played with sprinklers in their front yard. Older people sat on rocking chairs on their porches, watching the kids. Cats and dogs stretched out in the sparse shade of buildings and trees, trying desperately to find some relief from the sun. Teenagers rode by on bikes on the sidewalk, sucking down iced soft drinks they bought at the gas station. The parking lots near the waterpark were packed. Around the block, patrons stood waiting in all manner of swimsuits, moms rubbing sunblock on their bratty children, dads carrying entirely too many pool accessories.

If I Won the Lottery

If I won the lottery, the first thing I would do is pay off my mortgage. Then I'd give my mom a fat check so she can get a sweet beach house in Florida. Half of my winnings would be put it in investments to make sure I keep making money. After that, I would go out and find a super sweet party mansion somewhere near Montgomery and buy it. Once I was all moved in, I'd go on Amazon and just buy stuff.

I'd have a room each dedicated to eras of retro gaming, and a little conveyor belt to take me between them. For my wife, I'd make sure to have a massive workshop with all sorts of tools and raw materials so she can make whatever she wants. I would build a couple art studios for my wife's sisters, one for each of them so they don't have to be finicky about privacy anymore. I would build a massive bar to store all of my fancy liquors and then pay a famous personal trainer to tell me not to drink any of it.

After establishing my home base, I would want to go traveling. I'd grab my mom and my wife and her sisters and we'd go all over Europe. In addition to visiting my brother in Germany, I'd want to check out all of the regional cultures in all of the countries. We'd go bar hopping and explore restaurants and all the castles and other landmarks. If we felt like it, we could stop by Japan too.

When I'm done having fun, I'd probably spend a lot of time going back to college just to see how many degrees I could get. I would want to have all of the bachelor's degrees in a college's catalog.

Another thing I'd like to do is fund a movie studio for the sole purpose of paying A-list celebrities to take tiny background roles in student art-house films. Imagine something like the Blair Witch Project but Dwayne Johnson is in the background of a single scene for no reason.

Sentence Exercises

Parallelism

When I found out the McRib had returned, I dived into my car and was off: horn blaring, gas pedal on the floor, several injured pedestrians in my wake.

Waves gently lapping at the shore, gulls crying overhead, boats listing lazily in the distance, the beach is such a tranquil place.

I thought the zoo would be fun, but when we arrived it was a nightmarish cacophony of elephants trumpeting, lions roaring, and apes shrieking among a million other ear-splitting noises.

The treasure hunter collected himself after falling down the trap door and looked upon a mountain of treasure like he had never seen: gold and jewels and paintings and sculptures from wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, ripe for the taking!

The bicyclist was adamant; despite his sweat blinding his eyes, his spandex tights chafing his thighs, his helmet flopping loosely on his head, he pushed on.

My sisters found him repulsive, bought I felt he had a goofy sort of charm: the way he spat a little when he talked, the way his eyes twitched, his myriad speech impediments, oh, what is a man anyway?

Congeries

When leaving the theater, please ensure you have all your belongings: your phone, wallet and all its cards, car keys, and the self-respect your spouses stole from you all those years ago.

Far beneath the ocean waves lies an alien world: creatures unlike anything you've ever seen, some familiar but with too many appendages, others completely see-through, and yet more capable of bioluminescence.

I was lost in a blizzard of schoolwork: essays left unwritten, math exercises waiting impatiently for my input, classmates eagerly awaiting responses to their discussion posts, their hearts beating out of their chests in anticipation of my opinion, a pot of ramen boiling over: forgotten on the stove, and me: passed out on the couch, remote in one hand, chips in the other, once again.

A fast-food drive-thru is a sacred sort of social gathering: starving drivers honk their horns, employees mutter indecipherably through the speakers, the smells of salt and heart disease waft through the air, impossible numbers of children pour out of mini-vans, their parents swallow their disgust and follow behind, dead-eyed and soul-broken.

I tossed and turned all night, sleep an impossible dream: the indecisive heater kicking off and on as it willed, trains in the distance blaring horns all through the night, my wife's icy feet kicking my legs in their covetous slumber, their nails sharp and digging into my flesh, and just as my eyes finally fell heavy, my own alarm betrayed me.

Present Participles

Wandering lost through the dark, a maddening scratching sound stalked my mind as a droning hum grew in volume until I could no longer think.

Its innumerable eyes gazing, the creature in my dreams pierced my soul, accusing me--knowingly--of my many sins.

Stirring beneath the ocean waves, ancient creatures beyond mortal comprehension prepare to rain doom upon the nations of men.

Chattering endlessly, the rats in the walls chewed through the foundation of my sanity.

Buzzing happily, a million bees swarmed the garden, but they were probably eldritch abominations too. So was the garden.

Bleeding uncontrollably, the magician grabbed his stump with his prosthetic hand and cried out, "Not again!" as the children screamed and ran inside.

The body count rising, Roger realized that perhaps his pet bear wasn't quite ready to drive.

Raising his hand eagerly, Jimmy couldn't wait to rat my friends and me out. Nerd.

Crying inconsolably, the child refused to acknowledge that his precious lost toy was in his other hand.

Past Participles

The marathon runner collapsed after crossing the finish line, exhausted from his ordeal.

The smoker's lungs were colored a muddy black, polluted by years of abuse.

Two frogs in the pond dance strangely, engaged in a mating ritual.

The buried treasure lay buried somewhere on the island, hidden ages ago by infamous pirates who, for understandable reasons, couldn't use a bank to store their wealth.

Little Scotty ran screaming from my driveway, frightened by the fantastic Halloween decorations painstakingly designed to terrify him, specifically.

A Tour of Stormwind City - Observational Essay

                After the fall of the northern human kingdoms of Lordaeron, Gilneas and Stromgarde, the southern kingdom of Stormwind is the last bastion of human power on the planet Azeroth.  Its capital, Stormwind City, is nestled against a mountain range just north of the temperate, verdant Elwynn Forest. As one leaves the nearby village of Goldshire heading northwest, they find that the loose cobblestone road ends at the mighty outer gate, which is made of several layers of light-colored wood and reinforced with steel.  The protective gate serves as a symbol of safety to its wards, and a stern warning of strength to its enemies.

                Travelling through the gate, one finds the Valley of Heroes.  A grand bridge made of the same shining white stone found throughout Stormwind extends over a lake leading to the inner gate.  Many oil-burning street-lamps illuminate the bridge and highlight the four awe-inspiring, colossal white and gold statues commemorating The Alliance’s greatest champions.  General Hammond Clay stands sentinel at the inner end of the bridge beneath a fifth colossal statue commemorating General Turalyon, who is presumed deceased after leading the invasion of the orcish home-world of Draenor. The tranquil valley serves as a reminder of the peace these heroes fought and died for, and as a perfect memorial to their many sacrifices.

                The path splits at the end of the bridge into two identical paths, both leading to the inner gate: a massive, T-shaped stone tunnel lit by torches and bearing the blue and gold banners of The Alliance.  Four steel portcullises provide a final layer of protection for the citizens.

                As one emerges from the inner gate, they find themselves in the trade district, one of five conveniently color-coded districts of the city.  The cobblestone streets wind around the numerous shops selling all manners of goods and services. The buildings are a mish-mash of wood and stone, and they are capped by royal-blue shingled roofs. Auctioneers can be heard barking as citizens hawk their wares. Children chase one another along the brick sidewalks, weaving through older citizens who mutter curses about kids these days as they bump past. The hustle and bustle of the heart of Alliance commerce can be energizing, but it can also become exhausting.

                Separating the districts of Stormwind are the canals, featuring miscellaneous stores selling odd goods from wines to wands. The roads border each district and arched bridges connect one district to another. Small rowboats ferry passengers around the city, and fishermen take up posts on the many docks. The sound of quietly running water would be calming, if not for the fishermen’s angry outbursts over their escaped quarry. This area also houses two massive prison towers, which host both domestic criminals and prisoners of war.

                To the west of the trade district lies the peaceful mage quarter.  The buildings of this hilly area have violet shingled roofs, and the streets are more grass than cobblestone. The many trees and multi-colored wildflowers make it feel more like a park than a campus for students of magic and provide a relaxing atmosphere to contrast with that of the busy trade district. At the heart of the mage quarter lies the Wizard’s Sanctum, the center for magical study of The Alliance.

                 Traveling north from the mage quarter would place one on a terrace overlooking Stormwind harbor. From atop this perch the might of the Alliance navy can be seen in the form of its many battleships. The salty smell of the ocean breeze is rivaled only by the salty smell of the many sailors hauling cargo onto their ships for delivery to locations all over the world. Their incredibly diverse and foreign cultures provide a glimpse into the world beyond and inspire a yearn for adventure. Farther out into the sea, the Stormwind lighthouse sits atop an outcropping where it serves to protect incoming vessels from the rocky shore.

                Circling back to the east, one comes across Cathedral Square. This yellow-roofed district is dominated by the wondrous Cathedral of the Light, home to practitioners of the philosophy of the Holy Light. It is rectangular, has one pointed spire on each corner, one in the center of both long sides, and one massive spire in the center. The bell atop the center spire rings out each hour for the convenience of the citizens. Within its hallowed halls, one can hear the prayers of priests and the meditations of paladins. Children abound in this district as well, as this is the location of the city’s orphanage.

                Yet farther to the east lies the dwarven district. It is unclear whether the roofs of this district were always a muddy brown, or if they were made that way by an ever-present layer of smog resulting from the heavy local industry. Rather than oil-burning street lamps like the rest of the city, this district is illuminated by charcoal braziers which contribute to the dense, burning carbon smell emanating from the many metal-smelting furnaces. The noise of hammers hitting anvils is rivaled only by the noise of blacksmithing masters berating their lazy apprentices.

                South of the dwarven district lies the seedy, scarlet-roofed old town. Passing citizens eye one another warily, thinking either of stealing or being stolen from. Rats scurry freely through the streets, darting between crates and barrels left on the sidewalk. The streets feature many stores selling weapons and armor, but if one manages to find a way into the back alleys, they can find stores selling poisons and fences trying to offload their stolen goods. At the extreme south end of old town are the headquarters of SI:7, the Stormwind military intelligence agency.

                Finally, between old town and the dwarven district and across a drawbridge one can find Stormwind Keep, home to King Anduin Wrynn. The outer courtyard in front of the keep entrance proper features a hundred-foot-tall, round fountain adorned with a statue commemorating King Anduin’s father, King Varian Wrynn.  Further within the keep itself is the throne room. This domed room is supported by beautiful cerulean columns placed regularly around the circumference. The throne sits atop four lions made of solid gold, stands fifty feet tall and bears the insignia of The Alliance in a stained-glass motif at the top. The impregnable Stormwind Keep serves as a powerful symbol of strength for its people.

creativewritingprompts.com #335: Beauty crowds me till I die

Beauty crowds me till I die.
The suffocating lovers lie.
Their flattery deceptive dance.
The fault their own or circumstance?

creativewritingprompts.com #55: Margarot Mallory

            My name is Margaret Mallory, and I’m a stone cold vixen with all the fixins. I’m seventy-six years young, and in all my years I haven’t met a man who’s man enough to tame me. My hobbies include patchwork quilts, collecting cat memorabilia (I’m ALLERGIC), and kickboxing. I hold the record in my sewing circle for most boxes of cat quilts kicked.

            If you want to make a pass at this lass you need to be three things: tall, rich, and incredibly mean to children. I’ve never been able to have children and boy do I want them to know I’m bitter about it! My dream is to go to an orphanage with my rich husband, act like we’re going to adopt a child and then never pick them up! Oh, the tears in my eyes! What fun. Imagine the look on their stupid little face when they realize they aren’t actually wanted!

            You should message me if you think you can handle an old, mean fighting machine with more sass than sassafrass!

Satisfaction

What narrow halls I've wandered, I have wandered all I can
What mirrored walls stand tall, I've seen myself as all I am
What shadows cast and shine on me and show me what I want to see
But oh, they've never helped me understand

If only I could ever find an exit from these halls
Will I stumble lost forever in these endless winding walls
They obscure me and assure me, they are stable and serene
But oh, they just don't speak to me at all

What foggy dreams I've had, they've never offered me a clue
Only catching glimpses, where to go and what to do
The hope for satisfaction is what pushes me to action
But oh, it's never shown itself to me
No it's never shown itself to me

Boring Day

After completing basic military training (BMT) and arriving at technical school for vocational training, you may think that the long, dense briefings about dry material are over. Let me assuage your fears my friends: your career of incredibly informative, helpful and not-at-all-redundant briefings has only just begun. Within their first few days, all of the new arrivals are corralled into one giant room and forced to enjoy watching presentation after presentation on all of the things they just learned about at BMT.

Was the thought of personal freedom and practical education too exciting for you? Well how about not one, not two, but three days of briefings on such interesting and relaxed subjects as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, sexual assault prevention, drug use and base safety? Each one is delivered via power point presentation with a speaker who clearly does this every single time and loves it.

The sarcastically enjoyable presentations are sprinkled with legitimately enjoyable videos that compliment the material. One example that I will remember long after I've forgotten the names of my children is the one about drug use. In the video, four airmen wearing the previous generation of uniform, a testament to the video's age, are passing a joint back and forth. The memorable part is that they do this outdoors, in uniform, and don't try to hide it at all.

First Toy

One of my earliest memories is playing on the swing set in my backyard in Michigan. The metal bars were a deep blue and the plastic and rubber parts were yellow. There were two traditional swings, one swing that two people would sit on like a horse back-to-back, and a slide. The chains that connected the swings to the mounting bar were silver, but covered in a smooth, blue plastic material that prevented the chains from rusting and felt better to the touch. The fondness I have for blue and yellow to this day probably stems from that swing set.

I remember the way the swings would creak when they were pushed to their limit, or at least to the extent that my tiny child body could push. On summer days I would suddenly get attacked by wasps that likely took up residence in the metal bars, which inspired my lifelong hatred and phobia of the winged demons. In winter, the snow would accumulate high enough to bury the swings, leaving only the blue bars exposed. While my child self was sad that I couldn’t play on them, my adult self finds joy in the thought of frozen, dead wasps.  

Object Description

The sofa in my living room is sandy-brown, about eight feed wide and three feet tall. It is made of fabric rather than leather, and came with three throw pillows. Two of them are square, with one side the same texture as the couch and the other a muddy-green with an ornate design. The back of the couch is made up of three large pillows that are aesthetically the same as the throws. The two large pillows on the left and right have arms that extend over the couch arms.

My wife is not a fan of the color and style of the couch, so she got a soft, light-grey cover. At first it didn't like to stay in place, and would peel back and bunch up when people sat on it. We screwed fifty upholstery pins around the base of the couch to try and hold the cover in place. All along the bottom perimeter of the couch are subtle, clear headed pins. We had put them around the backs of the cushions as well, but there weren't enough, so people would stretch the fabric and pull them out by mistake just by sitting.

Observation Paper topics

Dungeon review

Describe in detail the narrative experience of running through a dungeon. For example, Waycrest Manor could be in exercise in describing a haunted house setting. I could describe the unnatural darkness, the ghosts, ghouls and goblins running around, the smell or rotten meat coming from the kitchen, etc. I could also describe the narrative, specifically the relationship between my ally Lady Waycrest and her now-undead parents.


Arena tournament

There are many archived arena tournaments online. I've never been into them, but that means I can observe with fresh, impartial eyes. I could describe the room, the players, the commentators and the crowd. I can illustrate the passion and excitement as tension builds until it climaxes as one team comes out on top. I could describe team composition by talking about class structure. Each class presents itself uniquely by the kind of armor it wears and the weapons it uses. I could describe the aesthetics of the in-game arenas.


Moving on to a new questing zone

Contrast the tranquil, verdant Elwynn Forest to the dying farmland of Westfall. Take the time to describe the settings of both areas to drive home how depressing Westfall is. Run through the plot of the zone, starting with the murder investigations and culminating in the reveal of the party responsible: notorious slain bandit Edwin VanCleef's daughter, Vanessa VanCleef. In addition to the yellow farmland and dilapidated villages, I can describe the bandits of the Defias Syndicate and their allies.


Zone description

Rather than focus on a zone with a questing narrative, examine one with only backstory. Establish the history of the Mage's class hall: The Hall of the Guardian. Compare it to a library if it were owned by Mickey Mouse's master from Fantasia. Discuss the sights, sounds and sensations associated with mages practicing magic: the blue, icy shattering of frost, crackling and explosive fire, and the powerful, ethereal blasts of arcane magic. Describe the clothes worn by mages and the weapons they wield. Paint the scene by describing things like enchanted books flying overhead as magical scholars share their research with one another.

Another zone worth discussing is the human capital of Stormwind. It draws inspiration from medieval European cities so there is ample material for comparison. Talk about the conveniently color-coded districts and the sorts of things you can expect to sense in each one. Talk about the massive gate and the bridge of heroes with its massive statues commemorating champions of the past. Talk about the massive castle and cathedral and their associated wings. Describe the throne room of King Anduin Wrynn, and the king himself.


Blizzcon Announcement

Find footage of a Blizzcon announcement where they first reveal the premise of a new expansion or something to that effect. Describe the video they show and what the presenter talks about. Describe the presenter and the crowd. Observe how the crowd reacts: positive, negative, uninterested?