... :D

HIP HOORAY A FILLER POST!

THIS IS ALMOST AS GOOD AS TOAST!

-BlackFox (Yeeeah.... I can't justify this one as part of class. Also, this is an inside joke. You don't want to know. Trust me.)

(36)

Looking Ahead

So lately I have been hearing a lot of people complain about school work as being unnecessary and boring and, this one is my personal favorite, completely unrelated to their future job. They also talk about their future as if it will just fall into place for them. Normally I ignore this, but I have heard it so much lately that it is starting to get on my nerves. For those who would say this, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you how real life works.

First off all, when considering your studies, those skills you learn do in fact travel over to real life. For instance, virtually every job on the planet involves math in some form. Construction for example, uses geometry heavily for scaling and calculations. It is highly unlikely that you will find a job that does not require math in at least some form or fashion, and an inability to perform means you are seriously handicapped in that area. Language arts, another supposedly useless class, is also important. In the real world, people judge you on your ability to spell and speak. When you hand in a resume or a report, if it does not look and sound professional it can really hurt your stature in most fields. Also, for those of you who want to be singers and want to write your own lyrics, the knowledge of poetry your teachers are trying to impart on you will be invaluable. Even you dislike poetry, it is still important to have that knowledge. Almost every single class you can take will useful to you in the real world, thus school is not something you can just blow off.

And speaking of the real world, it is important to have a plan for what you will do after school. You can not get your living for nothing. People are not going to pay you to breathe. You need something that is marketable to make any real money. Chances are, you will not start out making the kind of the money your parents made. They most likely worked up to where they are, and you will almost assuredly need to also. This is not a guaranteed thing either. You need skills that will allow you to move up the ladder in your own field. It is not simply going to happen. You also need to find a skill that will be viable in the long run. The odds of becoming a world famous singer or a star foot ball player in the NFL or a model for Cover Girl are extremely low. If this your dream, then more power to you, shoot for it. You are not automatically going to fail by any means, but you should have a backup plan in case that dream does not pan out. And you should also be aware that these careers tend to be very short lived. The bottom line is having a plan is essential for life, and is not something you should just wing.

-BlackFox

(508)

The Grave

1 Look to the grave, that sits over yonder,

2 a young man who lived a long life.

3 And next to the stone, stands a young daughter,

4 her mother no longer a wife.

5 Now if we listen, we may hear her calling,

6 "Oh daddy, how can it be true?"

7 "Lazarus rose, when he had fallen,

8 so please daddy, please why not you?"

9 Embittered tears, leave flesh raw and scaled,

10 they wont cleanse her sorrow her pain.

11 Broken and lonely, she finds the world faulted,

12 and embittered tears fall like rain.

13 Oh cruel life, malicious and mocking,

14 where is thy comfort I pray?

15 When a young man lives, in an old mans home,

16 and a widow has hair not of gray?

17 As the young mother leads, her child to the car,

18 and looks to the future in fear.

19 I find myself thinking, that death is not far,

20 and in fact is especially near.

21 All must wither, that which will grow,

22 no matter how strong or how tall.

23 For a gravestone leaves a dark shadow,

24 and that shadow it shadows us all.

(Some of the) Devices used:

Line one contains an instance of archaic diction. "Yonder" is a largely dead word. Yet, words like these often give a feel of wisdom and age. It gives the poem a feel as if it were a parable, or a story from olden days meant to impart a life lesson, which is useful considering that is the goal of this piece.

Line two is an example of a paradox. A young man does not live a long life. However, because death is associated closely with old age, having "lived a long life" is one of the most common phrases heard in a eulogy. The apparent contradiction catches the attention of the reader (listener), and emphasizes the fact the man died, shall we say, before his time. This is important since the reality of death for all of us, regardless of age, is the focus of the poem.

Line seven is an allusion. Lazarus is a biblical figure that was raised from the dead as miracle. The daughter is, in essence asking again for a like miracle to occur with her father. However, we know this will not happen, thus emphasizing the finality of her fathers death.

Line thirteen is personification, as I am imparting the human traits of cruelty, maliciousness, and the act of mocking unto the concept of life. This emphasizes the uncaring nature of the world and life in general. Emphasizing that life does not concern itself with our hardships, nor does it take into account factors such as age and family. If you die, you die. "Life" will not spare you because you are young.

Lines thirteen through fourteen contain an apostrophe, as I am speaking to the abstract entity of life. This serves a similar purpose as the personification. By addressing life as cruel, and demanding of it comfort in a situation where none will be given, it emphasizes the implication that life offers no consolation for death, even the death of one that is young.

Line fifteen is a metaphor. Here, the phrase "old man's home" is used in reference to a grave. This is because we often associate death with old age, and do not often consider a young man occupying what would normally house the elderly. By combining this metaphor with the idea of a young man occupying it, it emphasizes the disparity between what we expect death to be, and what it is. This is also an example of irony, when considering the concept of "living" in a grave.

Line twenty four is also an example of homophone, because the word "shadow" is used as both a noun and a verb. The word shadow has connotations with it that make it apt here. We associate it with the unknown, dishonesty, mystery, sinister, and other like words. By using it twice, I not only associate death with something that looks sinister, but something that acts sinister as well. The shadow itself symbolizes death, in that it is the dark figure that follows us all. These devices emphasize the idea of death as a dark lurking force that is indiscriminate in its victims.

-BlackFox

(742)












(Ha! This is not just me being lazy! This one was assigned! Whoo hoo!)

Onward

Step by step,

we forward go.

Life does not make,

it optional.

We shall go on,

indeed we must.

Though cities fall,

and turn to dust.

Onward, onward,

through wind and rain.

Despite the cold,

despite the pain.

For if we stop,

the shadows creep.

They smother us,

and make us sleep.

We hide in them,

and we pretend.

That nothing matters,

nothing ends.

But end it shall,

as end it must.

And every morning,

follows dusk.

For shadows hide,

but not for long.

And our pretend,

is proven wrong.

Though burdens come,

and paths are crossed.

We must go on,

lest we be lost.

-BlackFox (Whose laziness has become strangely addicting.)

(113)

Calvin... and Hobbes?

Well reader, once again I am going to indulge myself in a random post. Today, we are going to talk about one of the greatest comic strips ever, Calvin and Hobbes.

*WARNING* If you like Calvin and Hobbes, and are sensitive to darker or more serious issues, please refrain from reading further as it may distress you. This blog not responsible for any ruined childhoods or emotional trauma cause by its content. Thank you.

I do not know how many of you have read, or even know about this dynamic duo, so allow me to give you a brief description. Calvin is a little boy trying to get through life despite his temper and a somewhat twisted sense of humor and morality. His companion (and conscience in a way) is his stuffed tiger Hobbes, who is brought to life by Calvin's limitless imagination. Together, they go on adventures in the world around them.

I was remembering some of the old strips I used to read, and one of them stuck out in my mind. It was one of those philosophical discussion the two tended to have. Calvin and Hobbes are sitting beneath a tree on a fall afternoon. Calvin begins discussing friendships, and how we interact with others. His logic was this: If you get most people to leave you alone, then you are doing pretty well in life. If you can somehow find someone who you can tolerate, that means you are lucky. This is especially true if they tolerate you in return. When Hobbes asks him what it means to have a friend who you can talk with and eat apples with on a fall afternoon, Calvin replies “Yeah well... I guess there's no sense in getting greedy is there?”

Now obviously this made me laugh when I first read it. After all, that is literally what they are doing. But after a minute, I realized that Calvin really was alone. Hobbes is a creation of Calvin, he is born from imagination. He is not really there. Calvin does not have a friend to sit with on a fall afternoon. He in fact, has no friends in the cannon of the story beyond Hobbes, who is alive only in his imagination. This really made me think about the strip in a different way. It is not so much about Calvin and his best friend Hobbes, as it about Calvin and Calvin's world. Calvin creates persona's that he can experience adventure and new worlds with. Spaceman Spiff for example, is a space explorer that travels the universe. Calvin often sees the world though his imagination in the strip, and that experience he has becomes the content of the story. It becomes the story of a weird little boy, too different to be accepted. His own personality and interests turn off the people around him, leaving him without friends because he refuses to alter them. In the end, he is left with only his own world, that has become safer than the real tangible one around him. The story becomes very altered in this light, and we begin to see Calvin differently than when it was merely himself and his best friend.

When I thought about the strip like this, it made me realize why I liked it so much. That underlying story appealed to me in a way I did not even realize I saw. I wont go into that here, but it made me wonder something. How often do we go through life and miss the story behind the story? How often do we over look the more powerful, or the more serious themes that become buried beneath the surface? What about other similar stories, like Winnie the Pooh? Can we see other hidden elements in these as well? I guess what I want to say is, sometimes it pays to look deeper than the surface. Sometimes we find things we never knew existed.

-BlackFox

(658)

Dead and Gone

Recently, I accompanied my parents to the funeral of a man whom I believe was my second cousin once removed. I did not know him, and felt largely out of place there. The service consisted mainly of people recounting how wonderful he was and the memories they had of him. I felt like an intruder sitting so high up in the pews meant for family, while close friends sat in the back or in overflow seating. Afterwords, my dad took me home a little early to work on a research paper, and we spent most of the time talking about funerals. Some of it got pretty interesting, and I thought I would share the highlights with you.

Funerals are not meant for the dead, they are meant for the living. Most people take this as a way to say goodbye to the person, to remember them or talk about their life. But this is actually not the purpose of a funeral. The purpose of a funeral is to confront our own mortality, and what happens to us after we die. This is especially important today, when modern medicine pushes death farther and farther away to the edges of our lives. In the past, people died young. They lost children and parents and siblings. Death was a reality, it was there, it was a close and deeply personal thing. It was not such an alien experience as it is today. Funerals were a way of confronting the reality of death and sin, and the reality of the cross. The service did not focus on the greatness of the life of the individual, it focused on the finality of the death and on the importance of the gospel and the afterlife. Today however, that focus has drastically changed. The hard painful subjects are avoided and pushed neatly aside in favor of the person themselves. So often the message of the funeral can be boiled down to, “Be like John Smith, and you will be ok.” Spiritual connections tend to be tacked on or superficial. And as much as we want it to be this way, it is simply ignoring reality. Sin is real, death is real, and we are no more untouched by them than that man is in his grave. We can not run away from this forever. Funerals should make us stop and contemplate that reality. They are meant to make us look upward to God, not backward to the past. By making it solely about the memories of the person, it can make the funeral empty and without spiritual substance. It becomes a bunch of meaningless stories that hold no real content, especially for those who can not share them. It also tends to separate anyone under 60 from this future. Death becomes something that happens when you are old and have lived your life. But the honest truth is, it is not just something that you face when your hair begins to gray. It is something that waits beside you and can strike at any moment. This relative of mine that passed away was forty six. He had just gotten through a serious bought of illness, and had believe he was recovering when an infection took his life away. He left behind a daughter who was only three years younger than me. The image of that young girl standing in front of her fathers casket is very, very impacting, and a funeral is there to make you look at it. It there to say, “You are mortal. You are going to die. This could just as easily be you. This is reality. This is why you need God.” It is not there to give an empty speech, it is there to remind you of what is to come, and what will be.

-BlackFox

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Everyone's A Winner

Everyone's a winner,

they say to you and me.

Everyone's a winner,

just look around and see.

Everyone's a winner,

and no one ever fails.

No one really feels a loss,

or the pain that it entails.

Everyone's a winner,

be it silver bronze or gold.

Everyone's a winner,

no one's left out in the cold.

Everyone's a winner,

even those way down the line.

They may get no recognition,

but they did their best this time.

Everyone's a winner,

no matter where they place.

Everyone's a winner,

after all, they ran a race.

Everyone's a winner,

when they've done the best they could.

They may not have a trophy,

but some paper's just as good.

Everyone's a winner,

that's what I hear them say.

Everyone's a winner,

at the end of the day.

Everyone's a winner,

sometimes is hard to hear.

When only three stand up above,

and the rest stand way down here.

Everyone's a winner,

persistently they cry.

Everyone's a winner,

as long as they just try.

Everyone's a winner,

can sound of bitter pain.

When you're the one who fell behind,

and never held a gain.

Yes, everyone's a winner,
they shout it loud and fast.

Everyone's a winner,

but the guy who came in last.

-BlackFox (who was feeling cynical today with her short post).

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