Archive for August, 2007

Tip I

Alright, I was a bit tired when I wrote my last post, so I failed to reveal that I was to include tips about school life. And thus, tired again, I will do my best to write the first.

Tip I:

Don’t be too prepared.

Having recently spent a day at Walmart (among other places, thank god), I should know that preparing is hard. It can be a bit fun, fighting the crowds, sifting through the piles of stuff, squeezing into tight places to let that obnoxious person past to the checkout lane… But enough is too much. Get in, get out, and try to do it early. Later they may give you back to school prices, but they will wear you and your patience out very quickly.

After the ride home look at your items. Consider how much stuff you have. You’re not going to want more than one binder per class, so if you have too many discard or save them. Notebooks are essential for some classes but not others, find out from your teacher or maybe a friend. Pencils and maybe pens are obviously a must, but erasers are usually not necessary, the pencil ones will suffice. Your teacher may have recommended a calculator, even if this is not a requirement it is a very good idea for math classes. I suggest the TI-84, be it plus, silver, plus silver edition, or something else I have not yet heard of, it works very well for anything up to and even past college and the investment might as well be made now. Other than that accessories such as post-its and pencil sharpeners are surplus and not recommended by me, because they become clutter.

These are my main recommendations for materials for the beginning of the school year. I will take no responsibility if anyone gets in trouble their first day because of these, I am not forcing you to use these guidelines, merely suggesting. It’s rather ironic that as I type I am in my first day of high school, right before lunch, but this underlines my point that I do have experience and so am not a total dimwit when it comes to school preparation. It’s debateable as to whether this applies to blogging, but anyway… Try to enjoy or at least get through without mishap your first day at school.

School Special

After a very relaxing vacation, in which I went to many beaches and gamed a lot, I have come back with this post. Please get extremely irate at my sister who DELETED ALL THE PICTURES. What an idiot. Ah well, on to the meat of the post.

Hallway “Oh noes!” as some of my friends met online would cry. As the school year draws closer and closer we as kids have become more and more agitated, and I and my friends have even more reason to be so because we are incoming freshmen at Champlain Valley High School. I find it ironic that as soon as I begin to write this sentence the opening notes of the song “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper start to play. Despite my growing dread, I find the concept of high school fascinating. Though my freshman year will be packed; I have been taking and will take Band and Spanish; I cannot help but see the possibilities in taking classes such as “Design Tech” and other languages, maybe even Latin. Anyway, to act as a diary (so I can see how stupid, immature, and naïve I was), and also just to give any middle school readers a chill (not that there are any (*sigh*), but feel free to prove me wrong! :D) , I will be writing a weekly series on how life in high school is. This will be loosely regimented and not at all posted every week exactly; for example I may post next Tuesday (the first day) then post on Monday the next week, or perhaps Friday. Hopefully this will not be too boring.

By the way, thanks to Arthus for the idea.

Son of Patchpelt, Part Three

Reminiscent of Raven

A glittering black
reminiscent of raven
as if a flash of wings
fluttering by, blacker than night
blacker than blackest, it takes away your fear
your hunger
your desire
curiosity wells: in the tranquil gardens of your mind
a sprinkling of dew wets the green green grass
inexplicably falling to unmapped distances

Potion

Deathly cauldron
simmering whilst the witch chants
over her potion
it will not cure warts
nor a broken heart
and it doesn’t particularly seem to do anything
so the witch is disappointed
but she trudges on
through the fields of knowledge
picking a flower, once in a while
for the love of life she tries and tries again
until her ingredients, and soul, are spent.

Raindrop

The illusion of mist
a shimmering blue
walking along
staying true
to the laws of nature
that govern all
yet impossibly
the rain does not fall
touch a drop
it will implode
it’s life spent
death to you owed

Patchpelt cont.

Still gathering words and phrases…

Please comment with some of your favorite ones.

A short snippet I noticed:

The Estonian man who was caught driving a car even though he is blind has been at it again, police said on Monday, and this time he faces jail.

Remember? Oddly Enough? :D

Patchpelt Poetry

Have you ever looked at random words and put them together in a sentence? Have you ever rearranged those sets of fridge magnets to make funny sentences? Well, recently at CVU Summer Camp, I saw the last bit of a poetry class happening and was very interested. Each of the students in the class, Arthus included, had written at least 5 random poetic phrases and drawn them on the white board.

Now, this reminded me of how I write. I am an okay writer but this is only because I memorize phrases I find interesting; for example, in the book I was reading recently, Spare Change, I found a phrase I liked: “…so recently out of law school they smelled like diploma ink.” This phrase is one of many I find interesting, along with many words, such as quagmire (from Eragon), blunderbuss, and Nebakanezer.

The whole point of this: I will be doing some poetry created from random words and phrases I see wherever I go. How this will turn out, I don’t know, but hopefully it will go well.

If you feel like it, comment with some of your favorite words and or phrases.

To be continued…