Daily Journal-- 3/14/11

"My Journey on a Pirate Ship"

It was my first time on a cruise ship. Given my fear of the ocean, it took a lot of convincing from my parents that a cruise would be extremely safe, and nothing bad could happen. She was so wrong.

The trip started out great. I was worried that I would get motion sickness, but the rocking of the waves actually played into my advantage, as it lulled me to sleep most nights. There was food galore, with various assortments of pizza places, ice cream parlors, and burger joints. On the outside of the ship, there were three salt water pools on top of the boat, a rocking climbing wall in the front, and a basketball court in the back. I was in heaven for the first two days. However, on the third day it was a whole different story.

I woke up abruptly in the morning, and went to the tiny bathroom in the wall to wash my face. It was until about ten minutes of sitting in bed that I realized we weren't moving anymore. I grabbed my iPod off of the counter to check the time. It was 4 o'clock. My brother and sister were still asleep on the bunk bed to the left of me. I wanted to figure out what was going on, so I woke up Evan from the top bunk, and told him to come check out the ship with me. He grunted a little bit, but then slipped on his shoes and headed out of the cabin with me. We strolled past my parents room, and kept going towards the center of the boat. We climbed all the way to the 11th floor, which was where the pool resided. As I looked out to my left, I was in awe. There was a black flag with a skull imprinted on it waving about 100 yards away from our boat. Between our cruise ship, and the ship next to us, there was a long rope that seemed to work like a zipline. I saw one masked man after another floating across the night air, from the small ship to our ship. I had to slap myself a couple of times to realize I wasn't dreaming. I felt a gun on my spine, and turned around to see a masked pool of blackness.

"You're coming with me," he said.

Evan and I were taken over to the side of the cruise ship, that was adjacent to the rope that the pirates used to get aboard our ship. My hands were cuffed with a silver chain, which i had to use to lock around the ropem and zipline over to the other ship. Those 10 seconds that I was suspended in the air over the dark sea, were the scariest 10 seconds of my life. If I wasn't so deathly afraid of sharks and whales, I may have decided to jump, and succumb to my inevitable fate of death. However, I stayed on the rope.

Daily Journal-- 3/10/11

"I caught a big one!"

I looked over to see Dave holding what looked to be a fifty-pound rabbit. He was so ecstatic about his catch that I hated to bring him down by telling him we were supposed to be hunting for deer. Apparently Dave had wandered off when we were hiking of Peak Point, and found a rabbit's burrow behind a patch of oak trees. Dave said that there were approximately one hundred rabbits nestled together in that burrow, but he only picked up his favorite one. This rabbit was the equivalence of about ten rabbits combined. It's ears alone were about two feet each in height. I had never eaten rabbit before, but consuming this animal would be more like eating a product from a cow. We packed up our materials, with each of the ten men who came on the trip bringing an animal home. The eight other men, and I proudly housted a deer carcus on our back. Dave carried his rabbit by the fur on the back.

The funniest part was that Dave hadn't even killed the animal. He claimed that killing a rabbit of this size, would be like killing Big Foot. I couldn't argue with that. He also told us of his plan; Dave didn't plan on consuming this animal. He wanted to make it a domesticated pet. When we got back to the city, Dave showed everyone of his great feat. Some applauded, some dropped their jaws in shock, but everyone was amazed by the size of this gigantic forest creature. When Dave brought the rabbit home, his wife was not impressed. She said that if Dave wanted to keep the rabbit (now named "Notorious B.I.G Fuzzy"), then he would have to sleep outside with BIG. Dave didn't argue with that. Dave and BIG became great friends. BIG was there to console Dave when Dave's wife divorced him, and Dave was there to teach BIG how to speak english. The largest rabbit in the city's history had also became the first rabbit to ever talk. Dave won a Nobel Peace Prize five years later for house-training, and teaching english to BIG. BIG was even going to Kindergarten and learning how to function as a social being.

Daily Journal-- 3/9/11

It was a typical Friday at work for Spongebob. Mr. Krabs was being his usual self, and the ordering line was way too long for Squidward to handle, himself. That left Spongebob with two tasks: preparing food, and helping Squidward at the checkout line. Spongebob was flipping patties on the stove, when Squidward yelled for his attention.

"Spongebob! Help me out up here!"

Spongebob went dashing over to the counter and started taking orders of the impatient customers. He must have been up there for about ten minutes before being allowed to go back to the kitchen to flip more burgers. When he did go back, though, it was awful. His jaw dropped, his legs started shaking, and his eyes cringed. His beloved spatula was gone.

"I know I left you right on the counter, where could you be!"

Spongebob frantically searched under every crevase in the counter top, on the floor, under the stall of the bathroom, in every drawer, and through every cubbie near the cooking station. Nothing. The orders kept piling up, however, and he was forced to take action quick. Spongebob looked around the kitchen for something else that could help him flip the burgers that he needed to cook. No shiny utensils were in sight, so he looked down at his hand. "You'll have to do," he said.

He quickly slid his hand under the first burger, by wedging his five fingers into a parallel sheet that could fit between the burger and the stove. He pushed up on the burger, which sent the meat flying in the air, only to land back down on the other, uncooked side. It was genius. Spongebob continued this motion for the other thirty burgers on top of the stove, and he was making great time! Krabby patty after krabby patty were being served to the customers, who claimed that the burgers they consumed were by far "the best burger I've ever eaten." Apparently the hint of hand sweat was the perfect seasoning to a Krabby Patty.

Daily Journal-- 3/8/11

"Oh, F***."

I had seen this shredder before. It was probably about a month ago when I saw this shredder, and I knew what was about to happen. The quick sharp sensation of being split in millions of little pieces, followed by a dumping into the recycling bin. I don't remember how long we sat in that recycling bin last time, but it seemed like about four whole days. I was starving for ink, and covered in various pieces of garbage that I didn't think belonged in the recycling bin in the first place. After the fourth day of hunger and exhaustion, we were picked up and taken out of the office building. We were dumped into a larger recycling bin, filled with even more pieces of shredded paper and garbage items. Our new home was on the street, but we were only there for a night. I was forced to wake up the next morning, due to the loud buzzing that stung my ears. It sounded like an elephant was blowing its trunk right on the side of the road that we were near by. A man opened the lid of the recycling bin, looked in at me, smiled, then picked up the bin. He threw us into the largest pit of recycled items I had ever seen before. It was about a ten foot fall from where the man dumped us to where we landed in the bottom of the pit. The fall knocked me unconscious, but when I woke up I was on a conveyer belt in a large factory. The factory smelled of burnt tree (and not the good kind). I was reunited with my friend paper slices on this conveyer belt, and within 5 seconds we were re-applied together, and were one, whole piece again. We were bound together by a package with about 100 other pieces of paper, and brought back to the office we were in a week prior. It's been only three days since I was brought back to the office I called home, and once again it looked like they were sending me away. All I could do now is pray that my fate was as good as it was before, and that I would somehow end up home again.

Writing Project Outline

I will write a short story about a small town team (North Dakota State) that made the March Madness tournament and got all the way down to the final four (obviously fictional). I will use the website "Penzu," which my friend has used before so I was interested in checking it out.

Daily Journal-- 3/7/11

Marian Bartsch and Joey Catsalgi met on his first day of work. Marian was wearing her bright red skirt, that Joey would come to crave over the next couple of years. Joey approached Marian with his hand out, to properly introduce himself as the newest member of Crane, Inc. Marian smiled, said "nice to meet you," and kept walking. Within their three seconds of interaction, Joey had already grasped a whirlwind of variables about Marian. She wore a flower headband, with her long, brown hair swooping down to her shoulders. When she smiled she had two dimples on her right cheek, but only one on her left cheek. Her teeth were pearly white, and she wore very faint-colored lipstick. The one thing Joey was still mesmorized by, however, were Marian's eyes. He had never in his life seen such vibrant, green eyes, and he was compelled to look at them again. Joey, confined to his own household for the majority of his childhood, had only seen brown eyes before and so he naturally believed that every human had brown eyes. His father wasn't around for most of his growing-up, and his mother had battled with a cocaine addiction which kept Joey locked in his room, sometimes for days at a time. That being said, it's obvious to understand how he was so attracted to Marian's eyes. It's very possible that Joey had never seen anything so bright in his life, besides the sun. After Marian walked by, Joey waited a couple of seconds before turning to look back at her. He stared for at least four additional seconds, waiting to see if she would turn around to look back at him. Their eyes could meet and he could feel the sense of fascination he had just felt a couple seconds prior. Marian kept walking though. Joey turned his head in shame and walked the other way. At that moment, Marian briefly glanced over her shoulder, and watched her new co-worker walk down the hall, introducing himself to more people. Her faint smile faded, her green eyes contracted, and she turned her head back around.

Final Poem Assignment

My mind's tired from writing too much poetry,
I'm ready for its death, like I poisoned up its ovaries.
Killed the fetus, before it was even near its blossom,
I put it in the ground, like the burrow of a possom.
It tried to rise up, I shoved it back into its coffin,
Regurgitated dust from the poem's mouth when it was coughin'.
I hacked it with a sledgehammer, now it's down for ever,
Then I put myself in the coffin, too, so we can go together.