Atheism and Boners in Church

I am currently working on the first chapter of a Young Adult Novel for Engl 325, so the following is my attempt at progress toward its completion. BE WARNED: Adult language and sexual innuendos are prominent in this excerpt.

                                                                                                                                                Drip.

                                                                                                                Drip.

                                                                Drip.

Blackness.

No, consciousness.

                                                                                Drip.

                                                                                                Drip.

Head throbbing. Liquid.

                                                                                                                                Drip.

Blood? Sweat? It is hot.

Or am I cold?

                                                                Drip.

                                                                                                                Drip.

                                                                                                Drip.

I don’t know.

                                                Drip.

                                                                                Drip.

Fading…falling…No!

Stay awake!

Scream for help. Yell, shout, do SOMETHING!

                                Drip.

Move.

                                                Drip.

                                                                Drip.

Fade…

                                                                                Drip.

                                                                                                                Drip.

                                                                                                                                                           Drop.

Blackness.

₪

                It’s Sunday. My favorite day of the week. The day my mother dresses me in her idea of my Sunday best and escorts me through the threshold of a building that should burn me alive—SAVING GRACE CHURCH. I don’t believe in God anymore. It was swell when I was a child, but the swelling’s gone down. Now when she drags me toward the pulpit, I can feel the laser beams emanating from the eyes of Jesus Christ himself, blaring down on the top of my head in an attempt to ensure the safety of my immortal—and eternally damned—soul.

                My obvious lack of belief in something imaginary scares the shit out of my mother, ALTHOUGH she’d never use that sort of derogatory smut to define fecal matter herself. She’d be more likely to just give me that look (Yeah. Exactly.) and tell me that all good people go to church so God can tell us what to do with our lives. I mean, who wouldn't want to have some imaginary “whatever” planning out every aspect of your life?

                Right.

                As we make our way through the lobby filled with other sheep, I see her, THAT BEAUTIFUL GODDESS MEGHAN LARSON, and think of how much hotter she’d be if she didn't have the mental disability of believing in God. Seriously. WHEN YOU’RE GRACED WITH LONG LEGS, A PERFECT SMILE, AND A MAGNIFICENT ASS, IT’S HARD TO UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WOULD WANT TO FUCK UP YOUR LIFE BY BELIEVING IN A STORY WRITTEN BY A BUNCH OF DRUNKEN HIPPIES. We pass her and the smell is intoxicating: FRESH STRAWBERRIES MIXED WITH A HINT OF RAINFALL. It has become the only thing I look forward to during the week. I am invisible to her the other six days, but Sunday she always makes it a point to smile at me as my senses overload causing the half chub in my pants to become hard to hide. God damn khakis.

                Standing next to her is Jason (A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DOUCHE) WHO manages to help confirm my theory that all worshipers of Christ are bat-shit crazy. He’s the kind of person that is born again around adults and the son of Satan when he thinks no one’s looking, WHOSE breath and eyes should be a dead giveaway, but his parents always seem to look the other way—turn the other cheek, if you really want to be a jack ass about it. Ha.

(This next sentence is more of an afterthought for a paragraph or two later.)

The rest of the service becomes a blur, AS it is invaded by the scent of freshness tinted with citrus.

Dear Commenter,

The sentence that starts out "Standing next to her is Jason" is giving me a bit of trouble. I can't decide whether I should put a comma after the parenthetical or leave it as is. What do you think? Otherwise, comment on whatever you want! =)

FANBOYS...Not just for female pop groups anymore.

Once again I am faced with the question of what I have learned, BUT I would rather speak about what I've attempted to learn. I am still struggling with parts of sentences, but I feel that my knowledge has grown. BECAUSE Barbara highlighted the verbs within the sentences we had created on Tuesday, everything seems a little clearer for me now. It is easier for me to recognize a linking verb now because I finally understand that what comes after it is directly related to describing the subject. ALTHOUGH intransitive verbs have always come a little more easily for me, given they have the capability to complete the sentence without the use of an object or clause, I didn't know their actual name. I guess that's something else I've been attempting to learn this week--keeping track of all the vocabulary associated with the parts of a sentence. Some things I still have trouble remembering on a regular basis are adverbs (those scare me), particles, prepositions, and prepositional phrases. I hope to one day successfully have those down and to never ever EVER forget them!

I lied. I do want to talk about what I've learned. Haha.

I had never really thought about what young children go through while learning to write, OR the impact one person (their teacher) could have on their progress. Since we started reading the article on Dora, I've thought a lot about what Dora must have been feeling herself. What could possibly be working its way through the mind of a 5-7 year old as they move from one stage to the next in the writing process? How receptive are they to verbal and visual tools and cues given to them during this transitioning period? Does anyone ever really stop improving their writing? These questions kept popping into my mind while reading, causing me to think about the learning process from the other side. I don't remember my own learning process, BUT just thinking outside of the box could help me understand what future students are going through. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've learned that thinking outside of the box can be a great thing when your goal in life is to teach others.

One last thing I learned this week that more or less left me giggling is that acronyms can be hilarious. FANBOYS and AAAWWUBBIS is probably one of the funniest things I've come across this semester in any of my classes, AND I'm reading both Beowolf and The Iliad. There's comic gold in both of those works. I don't expect to remember the words associated with AAAWWUBBIS, BUT I will always remember that it creates a subordinate clause (and then giggle at how funny it sounds).

Drawing the Short Straw

Once again, there are a couple things that have been learned this past week, even though I, MYSELF, was not present for half of our class-week. Completely separate from things learned in class, I realize once again that:

I believe that meme is befitting of how I felt for the majority of the week (and some of the week before).

Moving on, I've also come to realize that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing when it comes to parts of a sentence. BETWEEN YOU AND ME, it's something that, if I managed to learn the parts in the past, I don't remember now. During class on Thursday I couldn't even get through the first page of the newspaper when we were set free to work on our own. That's just sad. Seriously.

I'm hoping to improve my knowledge and be able to distinguish the different parts of a sentence some day. It's something that I will need to focus on and work toward over the next few years as I come closer to becoming a teacher. I want to be able to recognize where students are going wrong and explain to them why. That's very important: being able to explain why. It's easy to point out mistakes to someone, especially mistakes in their writing, but it's often hard to tell them why it's wrong. It's hard to be able to tell them how to fix it and why that way is correct while the other one is wrong. I want to have that knowledge so I can have a stockpile of ways to explain things to future students. Only saying something is wrong doesn't help them.

I'll admit that it's hard to come up with new things to say that weren't said in my blog last week. That being the case, I'm going to leave you with an excerpt from something I had read for my English 370 class that still seeps into my mind. I don't find it beautiful for it's mood, but rather it's ownership.

"Full of grief, I make this poem about myself, my own fate. I have the right to say what miseries I have endured since I grew up, new or old--never greater than now. Endlessly I have suffered the wretchedness of exile." -The Wife's Lament

Handy-Capable: What I've Learned and Possibly Un-Learned

Learning has always been something that I’ve enjoyed, so it’s not far-fetched to say that I’ve gained a significant amount of knowledge within the short 3 weeks we’ve been in class. I’ll admit that some of it has been a refresher of concepts and ideas that I’ve already come in contact with, but there are still things that I’ve picked up.

Most recently, I’ve discovered that if the subject is right I enjoy academic reading. Our article on Dora is something that I’ve enjoyed picking apart as I’ve gone through it. ITS CONTENTS HAVE GRASPED MY MIND IN A WAY THAT I HAVEN’T EXPERIENCED PREVIOUSLY WHILE READING A NON-FICTIONAL TEXT. Usually I find myself dozing off while reading text book type literature because it just couldn’t hold my interest. I’m glad to have learned that grammar actually captures my attention and causes me to want to read more.

I HAD NEVER KNOWN THE PROCESS YOUNG CHILDREN (AND SOME ADULTS) GO THROUGH WHILE LEARNING TO WRITE; TAKING ON A GRUELING PROCESS THAT WILL ONE DAY, AFTER MANY ATTEMPTS, FAILURES, AND SUCCESSES, BECOME THEIRS. I HAD NEVER READ ABOUT A CHILD WHOSE EXPERIENCE DREW ME IN, REGARDLESS OF BEING A FICTIONAL STUDENT BROUGHT TO LIFE THROUGH THE CONGLOMERATION OF MANY DIFFERENT CHILDREN, AND HELP ME THINK IN MANY NEW AND DIFFERENT WAYS ABOUT TEACHING AND THE LEARNING PROCESS. I don’t personally remember my own learning process when discovering the function of periods and word separation, but I’m hopeful that my own teacher was as helpful as the one Dora had the pleasure of studying under.

I’VE COME TO REALIZE THAT MY OWN INTERPRETATION OF TEXT AND HOW IT SHOULD BE PUNCTUATED CAN BE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN YOURS. Thanks to Cordeiro, I can feel better about the freedom I have with my writing because “effective punctuation, like effective writing, is the result of good judgment, not of one’s ability to follow so-called rules of good punctuation or writing” (111-112). AS A STUDENT, I’VE ALWAYS BEEN FAIRLY LIBERAL WITH MY PUNCTUATION, USUALLY GOING BY GUT INSTINCT FOR PLACEMENT INSTEAD OF WHERE A RULE DICTATES I SHOULD PLACE A COMMA OR PERIOD; AS A TEACHER, I WILL BE ABLE TO ALLOW MY STUDENTS THE SAME PRIVILEGE. They’ll be able to explore and develop their own knowledge and writing style, and feel good about their progress knowing they’re allowed to make mistakes or take creative liberties.

I am hopeful that I will continue to build knowledge in this class, developing a solid approach to handling grammatical situations with my future students, and learn more about the process of development in writing. I also hope that eventually it won’t take me hours on end to figure out a way to incorporate our patterns of the week. Writers block certainly set in this time. Haha.

COMMENTER: What are your thoughts on punctuation? Do you usually try to follow the rules or your instincts? Do you typically like a lot of punctuation or as little as possible? Are you scared of lengthy sentences with multiple clauses? Feel free to answer any, all, or none of these. Just figured I’d give you a good topic to comment about. =)