The Villainous Cat?

A dog is obedient, dependent, loyal, and an attention hog.  The cat, on the other hand, is the exact opposite.  I used to own cats, and they always gave me the cold shoulder when I gave them too much attention.  A cat is cold, calculating, and strive for self preservation and excellence in aesthetics.  Even when the fall, they fall with grace (always landing back on their feet later on).  When they fall asleep, they always make sure that everything is geometrically aligned to their liking.  Cats can be playful, but are descendants of predators.  They are even weary of their ancestors whose genes tend to seep out from a cat's many array of abilities.  

Need I praise the feline more?   

Taking all those traits into mind, would an author be able to make a cat into a hero.  When we think of hero, we always go back to images such as Beowulf or Hercules.  They are all brave, strong, and willing to fight a dragon head on.  If we were to invent a similar hero and make him/her into a cat, would the reader still believe this.  Depending on the plot, setting, theme, and all the other good stuff, then perhaps.  But perhaps the reader will still tend to think that the cat hero is "phony" or fake because a cat doesn't have the guts to take on a dragon or other dangerous tasks head on.  They have the intelligence though, but if they used their own "street smarts" wouldn't it contrast the bold hero who wants to prove his/her strength against impossible odds?  

Puss n' Boots is a great example of a hero who is a cat.  Although he does posses many heroic traits, he is still portrayed as this cool "renaissance" outlaw and hero hybrid.  We praise his image because it is reasonably real.  He is more of a modern hero who survives on wits.  I have yet to see a cat in fiction being portrayed as this muscular giant trying to solve all the problem's of the world.

Memory Poem

Nostalgic Spice

How a smell of cinnamon can be so

Tantalizing

Especially if that smell coaxes you

To madness
And above all else

Can construct a memorial in the hippocampus

I journeyed to a place where very few

Have not seen already  

A megalithic bazaar  

My transportation blasting me with

Undisputed music of its time while heading there  

My guardian and I enter the great bazaar

Through a darkening underground hall

Where manufactured orange lighting soon illuminated everything

The same color

Even manifesting our skin

The dark hall was polluted

With dangerous toxic fumes and sickening poisons

And how I detested the markets

We would spent a great time lurking about

From one proprietor to the next

Walking started to become something

Meant for the gods

Yet my guardian refused to leave

Being pulled by the strong magnetic force

Of marketing   

Hunger consumed my sanity

Imagining the caramel color floor as if it were

Chocolate cake

But the requiem for my sanity was rescheduled  

When I smelled the aromatic smell

That penetrated the nose

And quelled the restless hunger

I went for the core of the cinnabon

Its sugary cream and cinnamon bread

Disintegrating in my mouth in a blink of an eye   

The Second Person

Using the words cascade, excavate, relish, drip, and dragging into this poem I was able to pull this out of thin air inspired by the verbs mentioned.  Even words can inspire.  What I really wanted to do was experiment with the second person, which is something that poets and writers rarely use.  Should the reader feel eerie?  Does the reader turn into the narrator?  The results of my experiment: 

 Going Down

Your stocks have cascaded

As have you

Yet you relish in the moment

Of it all

Excavating deeper into your wealth

Living the day recently

As if it were your last

With not an inch of worry

About the future 

You should just liquefy your assets

Live behind a warm tavern

Follow the demoralizing rigid rules of strangers

Accept being dragged

Back to school

Back to square one

Down into to that cold cave

Of innocence and ignorance

Water drips

Down your spine

Loosening your bike’s chain

Penetrating your shoes

Moving downward without hesitation

As if escaping

The judgmental eye

In the clouds

Where everyone looks up

Where everyone starts   

Pantoum Poem: World Walker

Free style can be easy to write for the author, but sometimes difficult for the reader to interpret.  When applying rules to a poem on the other hand, will it make the reader fall into the rhythm of the poem easier?  A Pantoum poem works with the second and fourth line becoming the first and third line of the next stanza.  Sometimes redundancies help create meaning (or double meaning) in a poem.  Restrictions do apply, so here are the results:  

World Walker

Walking in a muddy river

A never-ending road to dissent

We stumble over a rock

Falling at a constant speed

A never-ending road to dissent

Going downward like a slope

Falling at a constant speed

Humanity’s tower is falling

Going downward like a slope

Stocks fall down

Humanity’s tower is falling

But People are too busy fighting to notice

Stocks fall down

People lose their jobs

But People are too busy fighting to notice

And the leaders live in their last ultimate luxury

People lose their jobs

The Wilderness becomes an option

And the leaders live in their last ultimate luxury

They enlighten themselves with their rare living

The Wilderness becomes an option

The Crimson forests becomes their homes

They enlighten themselves with their rare living

The now ruined cities are coated with ash

The crimson forests becomes their homes

Becoming a confederacy of survivors

The now ruined cities are coated with ash

With their monuments looking off into the distance

Becoming a confederacy of survivors

They start all over from the beginning

With their monuments looking off into the distance

They walk to find food for their new world

Final Fantasy 10 Hymn of Faiths

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h03yRFpbsk0 Just listening to this song is enough to spark up ideas for a novel, even an epic.

The Fact Poem

I hate poetry, but that doesn't mean I hate utilizing poetic language into my writing.  My writing is infested with flowery language.  For this piece, I used the "Fact Poem" style in which I gather three different random kinds of facts and incorporated them into this poem. The results:

                                                                                    

Winning the Lottery

What were the chances that Slidell would wake up
To see angels dancing with devils
His living room turned into a godly Hollywood party
His TV changed into a live Broadway show
And his endangered rare dog serving him coffee

He was listening to the buzzing radio at his way to work
The mediocre broadcaster yelled
“You have a one-in-six-million chance of dying in a terrorist attack but you have a one-in-three-million chance of dying from a Coke machine falling on top of you”
After a brief interruption, the broadcaster was quickly replaced
Followed by the pledge of allegiance, brought to you by McDonalds and GMC

Slidell’s boss came up to him during his work
He told Slidell to take a vacation
Slidell thought the Bahamas or Hawaii, that relaxing sun of Cancun
He was scared of sharks though
He read in a bruised, crumbled up brochure that
“You’re also 30 times more likely to be killed by lightning and three times more likely to drown at the beach than die from a shark attack”.
 He still didn't want to risk it 

He headed home before the boss came to bother him again

Slidell seeded at 75 mph in a crowded highway in his economic Kia
Everyone from expensive Convertibles to giant pickup Silverados were laughing 

at the thing 
Speeding in a maze of cars, he turned the radio all the way up
The new broadcaster was as crazy as Slidell was
He yelled blasphemy, and other gibberish  
Such as  
“one out of every four people will be in a car accident in their lifetime. Your chances of dying in a car accident are 1 out of every 140 people.”
Slidell’s car crashed, but Slidell crashed a long time ago
He took off running in his uncomfortable dress shoes
While his body laid motionless in the car

Bucket List

My first post will be my bucket list.  This is me...

1.      Shake hands with a dictator

2.      Wash hands

3.      Make a book that criticizes most new rap music 

4.      Make a book that makes fun of the romance genre   

5.      Become a professional chair thrower

6.      Write a book, about squirrels, for my dog

7.      Participate in the Tour de France while blindfolded

8.      Run the marathon, starting at Marathon all the way to Athens  

9.      Spend a Tuesday with a professor of sociology in order to criticize life  

10. Go parachuting and land on the beaches of Normandy to see how it feels

11. Make an abstract painting

12. Be the second best guitar player in the world in my head/mind

13. Own a yacht/casino and say its not mine

14. Be a grandmaster in writing

15. Sell out

16. Make evil and boring experiments, but without breaking ethical science guidelines.

17. Make a theory, and name it in a way that is impossible to memorize for science majors

18. Box a kangaroo, in order to visit Australia

19. Read Plato’s Republic (the whole book) to a 2^nd grade class in order for them to learn something for the day

20. Never say never

21. Get a 30 on my ACT so I could say “I got a 30 on my ACT” to my co-workers

22. Climb the highest mountain, and not yodel

23. Read, at least try, all of Shakespeare’s works just so I wouldn’t see the plays

24. Learn Latin to get in touch with the people who speak it

25. Read history textbooks from other countries to see what they have to say about America

26. Ask a pirate what his/her average income is and if they are insured

27. Put all writing to shame

28. To have a dream

29. Dance with wolves in order to build my teamwork skills

30. Become a Disco magician in order to be “cool”

31. Go to Cuba  

32. Go to a tundra and poke a dying Polar bear

33. Go 20,000 Leagues under the Sea in a yellow Submarine

34. Have dinner with the president

35. Become a premium member in my own company

36. Name my next dog after a corporation

37. Learn how to be a Samurai, in order to learn how to do Haikus

38. Get a handlebar moustache so I could answer every question with a life story  

39. Become a professional Belly dancer in order to keep my options in life open

40. Sell my soul (nothing important) to Hollywood.

41. Surpass my kindergarten teacher

42. Use the White House washroom

43. Be inside a Shard Tank so I could learn how to swim (swimming is my worst fear)

44. Give CPR to a dying fish out of water (first check if the scene is safe)

45. Wake up, and NOT SMELL ANY COFFEE

46. Buy my own Cinema, and not use it (just like my DVDs)

47. Built my own library, and use my outdoor voice in it

48. Get my Facebook status to overpopulated

49. Buy a haunted house, and rent it out

50. Collect all Pokemon Cards in order to catch them all

51. Reminisce over Pokemon by watching season 1

52. Sleep in a graveyard

53. Become a professional Retailer to provide professional help (as in ignoring everyone who comes) 

54. Watch Nascar without falling asleep.

55. Become a professional Bull rider so I could wear a cowboy hat.

56. Cross the Great Wall of China, with a handful of Mongolians

57. Read a book in Mars, so I can concentrate more.

58.  Check out all the books in the library at the same time. 

59. Instead of putting 200 oz of flour to make a cake, I’m just going to put 198.85 oz in order to not follow recommendations

60. Catch someone cheating off my test, and tell the security guards on them

61. Not shave for 5 years

62. Become a monk

63.  Go to a museum and stay there for the night to see what happens.

64. Visit a Narnia fan club and make fun of everyone.

65. Ask a famous person for $5

66. Have a Huckleberry summer adventure

67.  Make a book cover

68. Cross the Sahara blindfolded 

69.  Actually cross a black cat’s path so that I wouldn’t have to take the other long path

70. Rule the World of Warcraft just so I can say I have a Wow account.

71.  Go to Japan and watch anime there

72. Play tag with a Panda so I could burn 146.73 calories.  Exercise is important

73. Become the Mundumugu so I could know everything and say “I am the Mundumugu”

74. Sneeze and cough at the same time, and say I kind of did it

75. Go inside a black hole and see what is inside. 

76. Go to the Amazon and try to find El Dorado

77. Order 100 buckets, and then return them to the bucket manufacturer and say they are deficient

78.  Start a gladiator animal death match and place bets 

79. Get a DeLorean, and go 88 mph

80. Live in a cave for 40 days to see how it affects my life

81. Become a world history guru, and impress or annoy people with my knowledge

82. Visit New Orleans during Mardi Gras in order to pick up some French

83. Become famous and then hide from society

84. Learn about basketball and have a fantasy basketball team

85. Make a movie with little to no drama in it

86. Make a documentary, and get it as a “must see” in high school

87. Make a book and have it reach “requirement status” in high school

88. Watch all The Twilight Zone Episodes

89. Become the ultimate Philosopher

90. Read all the classical books

91. Go to one of Chicago’s bad neighborhood, and spend one night there

92.  See a volcano erupt, and draw a picture about it

93. Become a journalist and journalize a wall

94. Make life miserable for a U.S history High School teacher again

95. Domesticate a gorilla, and keep him in my backyard

96. Visit all the seven wonder of the world while doing a complicated crossroad puzzle

97. Buy a horse and train him to be a champion race horse

98. Buy and raise chickens, and then cook them

99. Capture a pack of wolves, and try to make a new breed of dog

100.                     Go on  a world trip while doing Sudoku