WB 5

Dear English 110.01 students,


Get ready, because you're in for a stressful yet rewarding ride! I know that sci-fi might sound like a really boring topic to study, believe me, that's exactly what I was thinking too. But after I found out that I could watch a show that I actually liked (because it was considered "sci-fi") I got excited. When I found out I had to write an 8 page paper on it, I got a little less excited. When the paper was finished, I got excited again. That has to be the most stressful part of this class: the writing. Thankfully you guys will have an awesome teacher in Leslie who really helps you improve your writing, she really does everything to help keep you from writing a crappy paper!
The best part about this class has to be the blog writing that you do. For someone like me who is really shy and doesn't talk a whole lot in class, the blogs were a way that I could get my ideas out there and acknowledged by my classmates. Plus it's really cool getting feedback from everybody on what you're thinking and on what they were thinking about.
The best advice that I can give all of you is to keep up with your blogs and don't procrastinate on your papers. Trust me, these things take time to complete and if you're rushing it at the last second, they won't be nearly as good as they can be!



Good luck to all of you next quarter, you'll have a fun time in this class. :)

Farscape

Before this class, whenever I'd thought of the term "sci-fi," this show would have been the epitome of my thoughts. It has everything: aliens, space travel, robots. The only thing missing is dinosaurs. This episode, to me, was really entertaining to watch for those reasons. In this series, the "humans" (the peacekeepers, I'm not too sure if they're human or something that just looks like a human) are the heels and the aliens are the baby faces, which is a really neat idea in itself to reverse the point of view so that the audience can see what's going on from the "monster's" (the alien's) POV. The episode starts off with a human getting sucked into a wormhole (I personally think it would've been neater if it were a black hole, that way we could get someone's opinion as to what happens after being sucked into one) and he is in this alternate universe of sorts, where the aliens are odds with the peacekeepers.


In comparison to the other sci-fi episode that we watched in class, I like a dislike this series more than the others. I like it because it's more than just humans flying in space sorting out problems in their lives and the lives of everyone else on board their ship, but it's another race doing those same things and trying to coexist with different races and learning from each other. I dislike it because the plot (in this episode) didn't seem as thick as it was in the other series.' Again, switching it up so the audience sees what we might have perceived as the bad guy's point of view is something that the other shows didn't have. We always saw the good guy, what they did, and why they did it, but we never saw what had motivated the bad guys to fight back. I think that, with a better plot line, this show could have the potential to be better/ more entertaining than the other episode that we've watched.

STNG

There's one thing in this episode that stuck out, and that when the judge can't determine if Data has a soul. When they were trying to figure out whether or not Data should not be opened up and figured out, the judge stated that she cannot determine whether or not he has a soul. This goes along with Angel in both Buffy and Angel because Angel has a soul and does good things and Data, who may have a soul, does good things. Neither are killed/ examined because of this fact. even though neither are human, both are praised for being human-like.


The episode as a whole was actually pretty interesting. It was the first one I've seen of "The Next Generation" and, at first, I thought it was going to be pretty lame, but I was wrong. It was really intriguing and I wouldn't mind watching another. I actually think that way about the original Star Trek too and came really close to watching it last night. I think it's safe to say that this class has definitely given me a few more shows to watch on TV.

Star Trek

I watched “The Trouble with Tribbles.” The episode starts out with Captain Kirk getting a distress call from another ship. Once there, the capp’n finds out that nobody was in trouble, but instead there was a large shipment of grain that needed to be guarded. Meanwhile, the Harold Hill of outer space (a man named Cyrano Jones) gives a tribble (a furry furby puffball) to Uhura (the only chick on board) and, at first, the animals are cute (even to Spock!), but later they start to reproduce in large numbers and before anybody knows it, the whole ship is infested with them. Eventually, the tribbles get into the wheat (that Kirk wasn’t guarding), which started to kill them off because the wheat was laced with poison. In the end, all of the tribbles were beamed over to the Klingon ship as payback for the trouble the Klingons have given to the people on the Enterpirse.

I think that the biggest difference between the sci-fi today and the sci-fi from the Star Trek days is the plot. Nowadays people wouldn’t find a bunch of furby-like creatures infesting a ship that entertaining, compared to the other shows out there now where there are life and death battles going on in every episode. I think that the sci-fi now is more relatable because the struggles of the main characters seem more human-like than they did back then. For instance, in Buffy, the slayer has to ward off all of the evil in the world while still going to high school, dealing with the pressures of being a teenager, and dealing with the stress of a family. In Start Trek, their biggest problem is trying to keep furry animals from destroying the ship. The sci-fi now is more realistic and believable, which really makes it more entertaining to watch and more easy to relate to.

Battlestar Galactica miniseries

In the opening sequence of Battlestar Galactica’s miniseries, we see the words “The Cylons were created by Man.

They were created to make life easier on the Twelve Colonies.

And then the day came when the Cylons decided to kill their masters.”

I can’t help but to be reminded of “I, Robot,” where the robots that were created to serve and to aid the human race ended up turning on everybody and trying to kill them. No matter what technology is created and how advanced it becomes, there will always be a glitch. Nothing is perfect, nothing ever will be, even if it looks like it is, it’s not.

Here, the Cylons turned on the very people that made them in order to gain power over the humans (for reasons which I still don’t really know). In order to do this so efficiently, they (specifically, Number Six) become more human like, living the way that humans do, doing the things that humans do. Once the humanistic robots gains the trust of the real humans, that’s when they strike. For example, when Number Six asked to see the woman’s baby, she carefully holds it and cradles it like any normal person would. Once the mother knows that the “woman” means no harm and can be trusted, she turns her head and talks to her husband. In that moment, the “woman” kills the baby and disappears without anybody noticing, leaving the mother to cry out in horror when she finds her baby dead in its stroller. This goes to show all of us that the things that we trust and depend on to do the things that we need the most can betray us. Who knows, maybe someday our iPods will take over the world (Scary Movie 4 anybody?)

Poem- "My Papa's Waltz"

"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke


The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

There are two (at least) different connotations to this poem. One is that a father and son are dancing (horribly) around their kitchen, much to the mother's chagrin. The second is that the father is actually drunk and beating his son, again, much to the mother's chagrin.

When I first read this poem, I took the positive road and believed that the first scenario was true. The father, off from a hard day's work, had a little drink and decided to dance around the kitchen with his son, missing a few steps and stumbling all over the place. However, the second second scenario is, unfortunately, what I believe the poem is about now. The father is so drunk that a small boy (his son?) could get dizzy on the fumes of his breath. The mother was looking on, afraid to stop what the father was doing because there was always the chance that he would turn on her next. The father "beat time on [the son's] head, and then walked him off to bed, with the boy "still clinging to [his] shirt." Even though the boy may have just been beaten by his father, he still loves him and forgives him just as easily.

I really like this poem because it is really open to many different perceptions. It could be a pleasant family charade, or it could be some horrid event that scars the child for life, or it could mean something completely different. Not only are the perceptions different, they are polar opposite, which is something really difficult to do when writing a poem. Though I'd like to believe that the first scenario is what's happening, I can't hep but to be more convinced of the second. What do you think?

"Normal Again"

This episode of Buffy was pretty confusing, but I guess that’s how it was written to be. It’s definitely a thinker and something that we all could be experiencing without even realizing it. Could the slayer really just be a figment of Buffy’s imagination? How much of our lives is actually real and how much is what our minds perceive it to be? Did we even watch that episode, or do we just think that we did? This episode (that I'm pretty sure we watched) show us that the things that we create in our minds can sometimes get the best of us. Buffy tries to escape to a life where she isn't a slayer, or to where her life would be right now if she hadn't become the slayer, and she believes in this world so much that her mind convinces her that it's her real life. She used to have visions of past slayers and she chose to become one, so the alternate world in this episode essentially is her life as a normal human being, which--oddly enough--is actually worse without demons, vampires, and 3 nerdy boys toying with her mind.

My favorite movie!

So I’m going to let my dorky side come out here…and say that my all tine favorite movie is RENT! What’s not to like about it? For those who may not know, it’s a musical, but not one that’s all song and dance, it’s actually pretty depressing. But what I like the most about it that all of the characters, no matter how hard their lives get, are all happier than most of the people I know. Seriously, half the characters in this movie have HIV, but the constantly look on the bright side (“Times are shitty, but I’m pretty sure they can’t get worse”). The message of this movie can best be summed up by the reprise at the end of two of the main songs in the movie, “I’d die without you” and “no day but today.”

To summarize the movie (without giving too much away), almost everybody is dirt broke and has HIV. There are 3 couples: 1 lesbian, 1 man/transvestite (my personal favorite), and 1 man/woman, all of whom lean on each other for support and love (“without you the earth turns, the sun burns, but I die,” “life goes on, but I’m gone cause I’d die without you”). The lesbian couple isn’t really that exciting, the man/woman couple is amazing, and there are a lot of cool innuendos in different songs that talk about them and their past lives and whatnot, but the couple that I have to talk about is the man/transvestite couple.

They first meet when the man, Collins, gets beat up in an alley. Angel (the transvestite) says that he has to go to a life support meeting for people with AIDS, people like him, to which Collins replies “me too.” Thus their relationship begins… I could seriously drag on and on about these two, but to give you the gist of it all, they are in love. The only difference between these two characters and every other couple in every other movie that have ever been “in love” is that you actually BELIEVE that these two are in love. I don’t know how they do it. There is this one scene in particular, again not going to give it away (it’ll ruin the whole movie if I do!), that makes me ball every time I see it just because they are so convincing (sorry that sounded really vague…)

Long story short, it’s an awesome movie. The characters are so different than any other character in any other movie out there, not to mention the songs are pretty catchy. It’s one of the only movies that never fails to make me cry while watching it, and the motto to which I live my life by can be summed up perfectly by a lyric from “Finale B,”

“There’s only us, there’s only this. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other road, no other way. No but today.”

Commonplace problem

My biggest problem right now is that I’m focusing too much on BtVS itself rather than how it relates to people who aren’t in the show. In other words, I’m having trouble making my paper relevant, and maybe even compelling to people who don’t like the show. In a nutshell, I have “making decisions can alter your life drastically” and then “here is how Buffy’s decisions have altered her life.” I feel like I’ve already said as much as I can without repeating myself and making my paper boring to read. I don't want to have to change topics because I think that this is a really good one. It seems I'm in quite a conundrum, does anybody have any suggestions?

my paragraph

Everyday in out lives we have to make difficult decisions. Pressing the snooze button in the morning can drastically alter how the rest of our day goes. Just like the decisions that Buffy in BtVS makes, what we choose to do may help us or they may harm us. Pressing the snooze may make us late for work. not pressing the snooze may make us employee of the year. In Buffy's case, if she kills the wrong person (i.e. Angel, a vampire that wants to do good for the world) then she could potentially be causing the deaths of many other humans in the future. But if she doesn't kill him, then they might be able to stop all of the evil in the world (a little farfetched, I know, but it still could happen). Though in a typical day, the decision to kill somebody does not typically come up in our lives (unless you're an assassin...), so some of our decisions may not necessarily weigh as much as Buffy's do, the point is still valid. Every little thing that we do can drastically alter the future, and it is up to us to determine whether those decisions alter the future for the better or for the worse.

another problem...kinda

So I'm sitting here writing my paper and I find that I can't word things without making everything sound difficult. Here's part of a paragraph that I'm talking about and it would be great if anyone reading can tell me if it's clear enough or not.

Even though she did not get the slayer’s blood, the fact that Buffy tried to kill Faith “violates the moral stricture against taking a human life” (Marinucci 65). The “moral stricture” is what Buffy typically lives by, the fact that it is morally wrong to kill a human because, most of the time, humans are the victims and not the one causing the trouble. However, “human beings [like Faith] who become willing agents of evil are far from ordinary” humans, but are in fact “the moral equivalent of ordinary vampires” (Marinucci 65). Faith allows herself to become evil, unlike vampires who become evil unwillingly, which is not typical of a human. Humans that choose to go to the dark side change suit to become more like vampires, killing humans just for the rush. Vampires who kill for pleasure is what Buffy considers wrong, therefore she doesn’t extend “moral consideration” to them. Like vampires (excluding Angel), Faith doesn’t receive the “moral consideration” from Buffy that is usually “reserved for human beings” (Marinucci 63) and is officially pegged by Buffy and the Scooby gang as “evil.” With This logic, it would be acceptable for Buffy to kill Faith and “be no less willing to kill a human, under the relevant circumstances, than to kill a vampire” (Marinucci 65). Buffy kills the evil in the world, whether they be human or not, but she only kills humans when it becomes absolutely necessary in order for the world to stay out of danger, like she would a vampire.

It's that bold part that's really giving me troubles, the rest is really just there for context. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

My quote

Vampires essentially are humans that were unwillingly cursed to live for the rest of eternity without a soul, roaming earth and taking the lives of unsuspecting victims. Luckily for Angel, "moral consideration is directly proportionate to the humanity of the agent" (Marinucci 67), so Buffy chooses not to kill Angel because he is trying not to kill all of humanity.

My problem

The biggest problem I have (so far) is I just don't know how to start the paper. I know what I want to say, but that first paragraph that sets it up I can't figure out. I know the points that I'm trying to make, ways to string them together, and how to expand them, but the fluff at the beginning that gets people interested in actually reading the paper is the kink I can't work out just yet.

WB 3

For my topic, I decided to keep writing about Buffy (since now it, to me, IS pretty much something I think about everyday.) The two sources that I’ve decided to use are the website http://www3.sympatico.ca/jenoff/btvs321.htm#btvs321a, which is an informal review/blog site that reviewed the BtVS episode “Graduation Day, Part One,” and an article called “Feminism and the Ethics of Violence: Why Buffy Kicks Ass” by Mimi Marinucci.

The website, whose author OBVIOUSLY didn’t use spell check, makes some pretty good points and backs them up with semi good arguments, though some aren’t even true. For instance, the author tries to compare Anya (Xander’s girlfriend and former demon) and the mayor (who’s planning on turning into a demon to destroy the town) by saying that they are the “mirror image” of each other. Here, the author would have to give some pretty goods reasons because those two characters, aside from both being demons at some point, really are nothing alike. The author follows up the claim with arguments like “he is without feeling, and she is in love with Xander,” proving MY point in that they are nothing alike (the exact opposite of a mirror image) and not proving theirs. The very first sentence of this blog/review read “I am going to miss the mayor” ad then describes how interesting the character is, which makes this site considered as a pathos site. The author injects their personal opinion into the mix while giving the audience the scoop on what happened in the episode, even if it wasn’t presented in an appealing way. In the end, I’m glad that I didn’t use this as one of my sources because not much of the information is really informative or interesting.

The article, on the other hand, was amazing. It’s divided into subsections about vampires and the result of the actions they take, violence and how it’s a necessary evil, and how a vampire sucking your blood is eerily similar to getting raped. Marinucci makes great points and backs them up with quotes, episode references, cultural references, and historical references, not to mention there are way too many lines in here that are quotable for other things, such as research papers ( J ). For instance, Marinucci is talking about how Buffy is reluctant to kill Angel after he loses his soul, and she says that Buffy “finally kills him only when doing so becomes necessary for the continued existence of the world as we know it” (64). No only does she make this a pathos article by including herself with the “we,” but she gives Buffy more of a personality so that the viewer and/or reader can sympathize with the character instead of just watching her deal with her problem. This article is definitely credible because Marinucci shows that she researched everything she talked about in full and she doesn’t sound like just a writer, but a fan.

"Seize the Day" by Avenged Sevenfold

The title of the song says it all. This song tells a story of a man who is afraid of dying too young and not being able to spend the rest of his life (and beyond) with his girl. He talks about how if he doesn't seize the day today, then he will "...die regretting the time [he] lost." Already, his memories are fading and if his girl dies, he's afraid that he will not remember her the same way, so he wants to soak up every minute with her that he possibly can.

I'm a big believer in "Seiz[ing] the Day" because I know firsthand how short life can be and how often we say we'll "do this tomorrow," even though tomorrow may not be there. This song goes along with one of my favorite quotes, "Live life for today, because yesterday is over and tomorrow may never come" because life's all about living for now and preparing, but not counting on, the future. The lyric "...but I'm too young to worry" isn't an excuse for not doing something because even the youngest can lose their life without even realizing what life is. This song has an amazing message and the music video puts everything into perspective on just how unexpected life can be. I think that the message of this song is a good one to live by, and no one can go wrong with living life for today.

The Princess

If ever there were a time when I was more convinced that Buffy was a strong-willed, butt kicking female, now is the time. The article starts off pinning Buffy as the “princess,” i.e. the girl that needs to be waited on hand and foot. However, this article puts into perspective that she is that princess who is willing to fight for her county. “Instead of being the princess imprisoned in the tower, Buffy literally breaks into the tower” (Wilcox 149). Instead of running away from the problem, Buffy runs straight into it and makes its head explode. Later in the article, the author states that in “Hush,” “the fact that women are a source of humor and the Gentlemen a source of fear may reflect their relative power in this world” (Wilcox 159). This statement is either horribly wrong or simply excludes Buffy. Buffy is not only what every person doesn’t expect her to be, she is what every person WANTS to be. Everyone wants to be able to hold their own and not crack under pressure and Buffy is a symbol of what people strive to become.

Is It Art?

There’s one thing that I found interesting about this article. The author compares BtVS’s “Hush” with the Beatle’s movie The Yellow Submarine, in which a man is living in a drug induced world and crazy beings create terror, and then the Beatles save the day. In the movie, the crazy beings, called the blue meanies, and their army go around “steal[ing] the sound and color from everything and everyone” (Moeller 98), whereas in “Hush,” the Gentlemen stole only the citizen’s voices, not their color. The thing that I realized while reading this was the blue meanies and their army were the only thing the movie with color while in Buffy, the Gentlemen were the only things without color. They were the epitome of pale, decked out in black suits and seems like they hadn’t been to the dentist ever, judging by their black gums. The author was able to find all of these parallels between “Hush” and the Yellow Submarine, yet here is something that is completely opposite.

Grimm

The saying “the eyes are the window to the soul” is not more evident than in the German fairytale, Der Sandmann. When thinking of the Sandman, most associate him with dreams, and when connected with the German word for “death,” the Sandman suddenly takes on a negative connotation. The legend states that if children don’t go to bed on time, then the Sandman will come and kidnap the children, take them to the moon, and let their young feed on the children’s eyes. “It is a basic, involuntary animal instinct to protect one’s eyes” (Bridges 96) because, again, “the eyes are the window to the soul.” If one feels that they lose their eyes, then the “window” is broken, and their soul is something that anybody, especially the ravenous young, can peck at.

Buffy "Hush"

When I was younger, I used to watch Buffy every week it came on. Now, I don't remember much about the series, but The Gentlemen I do remember. I was so scarred by this episode when I was 8-ish that to this day, whenever I open my door at night I'm terrified that two bald men are going to be standing there, waiting for my heart. Every time I go to sleep and have a nightmare, one constant is that I can't scream when I need to. It's safe to say that I've been waiting for the day when I could watch the episode again and relieve my fear so that the many wounds this episode caused me when I was younger can heal. Plus, I forgot that The Gentlemen's head explode at the end, so I guess that's enough closure.



When it comes to the actual episode itself, I noticed two things. One, after everybody had lost their voices and the whole town was in "panic mode," Riley and Buffy set out (separately) to ward off evil. At this point, they don't know each other's motive for being out at night, so when they run into each other, they kiss -- which is what they'd been putting off beforehand because both were too "shy." I think that this scene proves that when people know that they don't have that much time left on Earth, they try to make up for what they didn't do yet. Buffy and Riley knew that the end might be coming, so they finally told--or really, showed-- each other how they felt. The old saying "you never know what you got till it's gone" comes to mind because all of us humans really think that time will go on forever when really, we have no idea when time will end.

The second thing that I noticed wasn't much, just something that I found interesting. The citizens of Sunnydale lose their voices and start to freak out because they don't know what to do. Yet when The Gentlemen congregate and conspire, they don't talk either. They've never talked, yet the know exactly what they need to do. Does anybody have any thoughts on this?

Free Writing 2

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there is an interesting relationship between the "evil" slayer, Faith, and her "boss," Mayor Wilkins. Initially, Faith becomes a slayer when Buffy dies briefly and another slayer, Kendra was born. Kendra died and, the universe, assuming that Buffy had stayed dead, called on Faith to be the next slayer. She had teamed with Buffy to fight off evil but after accidentally killing a human, she sided with the bad guys and had developed a relationship with the mayor. However, Faith and the mayor seemed to have more than just the typical "boss-accomplice" relationship, there were little hints in the episode "Graduation Day" that may have suggested that they actually have a "father-daughter" relationship. They have a tight, trusting bond and share vital information to bring down their number one enemy: Buffy. "The various nemeses that Buffy face often attempt to subvert or use [family loyalty] for their evil ends" (Connor 120). In other words, the people trying to take Buffy down team up in order to make a stronger anti-Buffy alliance so that when Buffy realizes what's going on, their relationship taps into her psyche so that they already have the upper hand in the mental battle and all they have left to do is win the physical one. The relationships surrounding Buffy are sometimes beneficial, but most of the time they are nothing but a hindrance.






Work cited:
Connor, James. The Sociology of Loyalty. Springer.

Free Writing 1

My research question: Can Buffy be an effective slayer while dealing with her feelings for Angel?




Some can argue that while in a relationship, girls put more into the relationship than guys do. They become so emotionally attached to the other person that if they broke up, the girl would take it harder than the guy would and it would take longer for her to get over him than vice versa. I'm one that would agree with that statement because girls are, by nature, more emotional than guys and they can really mess up more important things in their lives by not controlling their feelings.

In the case of Buffy Summers, she is a vampire killer in love with her "prey" and she now can't distinguish what is morally right and wrong. The vampire she is in love with is the only one of his kind that has a soul and is trying to make up for his past sins by taking down his brethren. Is Buffy convinced that because he's a bad guy trying to be good, he's perfecting himself, therefore making himself a more suitable companion for her? When a girl is in love with someone, they have a tendency to turn a blind eye to the negative things and stay focused on what they want to love about the person. Buffy loves that Angel is trying to change his ways. Therefore, Buffy will only see the good that Angel is doing and not think about the bad that he has already done.

Not only do girls ignore the bad, but they also have a tendency to mold themselves to the guy's liking. At first, Buffy was dead set on keeping the peace as a slayer, getting rid of evil, and, most importantly, not killing humans. But what happens when a human goes to the dark side and starts aligning themselves with evil? The pre-Angel Buffy would have found a way, no matter how difficult it was, to try to bring the "evil" human back to the good side. However, now that she is in love with Angel and will essentially do anything for him, she kills the human and brakes her premier rule as a slayer. Has her feelings for Angel gotten in the way of Buffy's true self and morals so much that she will act out of character just to make a guy happy? Is Buffy even technically on the good side anymore because she chooses to murder instead of help humans?





This free write DEFINITELY helped put a page in my paper:)

This is want I want to write about....

Something that a lot of people may not know about me is that I'm a vegetarian. I've been one for almost 4 years now and as every year passes, I find I'm more and more passionate about it. When I was younger, I'd always said that I could be a vegetarian if it weren't for chicken, I loved animals too much to eat them (except for chickens. They don't count). Then, New Years Eve 2005 rolls around and I need a resolution. Why not become a vegetarian? Let's see how many days Jackie can live this out...
Well, aside from giving into temptation once (with chicken, tasty bugger) and an unfortunate not-knowing-what-this-glop-is event at Thanksgiving, I've successfully abstained from eating meat -- including poultry and seafood-- for almost 4 years.
As the time passes, it gets easier and easier, there isn't anything that tempts me anymore and most of the time I forget that meat even exists. Living without meat has really influenced my life for the better. I eat healthier than I did before AND I start to agree with PETA on some things...some things (they're definitely extreme on a lot of issues). I've definitely become more sensitive (but also, more tough) when it comes to animal cruelty. Whenever a commercial comes on that talks about adopting animals or they're gonna die, I have to change the channel because it really upsets me that I can't adopt all of the homeless animals in the world. I guess that's just something that comes with the lifestyle.
Though I am a vegetarian, I don't do too much to endorse it because, more than anything, I believe in a person having the right to choose what they want to do with their lives. Whether someone's a diehard meat fan or a lacto-vegetarian (like me!), I don't press the issue, we are who we are:). However, the only time I really ever did do any kind of writing on vegetarianism was when I wrote my application essay for OSU on the benefits of being a vegetarian. I got into OSU, so I guess it was a pretty good essay!



If anybody wants to know more or has any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them:)



P.S. I have another song rec.
"Harder Than You Know" by Escape the Fate

WB 2

The place I decided to write about is the place where I spend more time than anywhere else: the Thompson Library. For me, being a commuter student is difficult because when I'm tired or just need to relax, there's no official place on campus that I can call "home." So, instead of driving 40 minutes back to my real home, I make the short walk to the library. This newly renovated structure is located at the head of the Oval and is quite possibly the most beautiful and technologically advanced building on campus.

When you first walk into the library, you see the old school entrance that survived the renovation. However, you're soon drowned in a sea of sleek. When you look up, you can see the many different floors that are packed with 1 million+ books. If you keep walking, you run into the Berry Cafe and the Buckeye Bar, a great place if you're having problems with your laptops.

The library, much like the rest of the campus, is a cultural stew. As I sit here in the Buckeye Bar, there are two Asian girls talking something that can best be described as not English. This just proves that the Thompson library is a place where anybody can come, for any reason. It's not a "girls only" club or something designated for certain fraternities. There are mass study group rooms and there are individual study spaces. There are even areas where people can go to prepare for presentations that they have to give.

Whether you want to buckle down and study or just want another place to chill with your friends, the library has everything, not to mention the Berry Cafe has really good hot chocolate. :)

source #2

For my second source, I used the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode called “Graduation Day: Part 2” and found many of the same themes that were in the first part. However, the “love” theme evolves into something along the lines of “not all things are meant to last.”

Though trying to keep himself at a distance from Buffy, Angel is poisoned and longing for her. He’s delusional while talking to Willow and, thinking it’s Buffy, solemnly says “I need you.” Throughout both episodes, Angel is the stronger party in the relationship and not showing his weakness without Buffy, up until now.

Shortly after, it is found out that Angel can be cured by draining the blood of a slayer, i.e.: Buffy. He drinks most of her blood in a scene that can only be described by this Ludo lyric: “Kill me, romantically.” After going to the hospital, she wakes up and tells Angel the same thing he told her after being shot with the arrow: “I heal fast, like you.” This is the only time in the two episodes where Buffy tries to relate to Angel and align themselves onto the same (emotional) side again.

After the good fight is fought and most of the graduating class survives, Buffy assumes that Angel has left without saying goodbye, like he told her he would. Suddenly, she sees Angel from far away and they stare at each other for a long time- Buffy’s eyes saying “come back” and Angel’s saying “I have to let you go now.” In the end, it was Angel who had the strength and the courage to walk away, leaving Buffy heartbroken. Faith said it best, “human weakness never goes away, even his.”

source #1

For my first primary source, I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s episode “Graduation Day: Part 1” and one thing that I noticed, aside from the abundant amount of allusions relating to high school, was that love was in the air in four different cases.

The first wasn’t exactly the same as the others. Faith, the new slayer in town, and the mayor, who aspires to destroy Sunnydale at graduation, have a ‘father-daughter’ type of love- both metaphorically and possibly literally. In one scene, the mayor calls Faith a “firecracker,” and she says that’s what her mother used to call her, and then she told a story from her childhood about jumping off of a rock and how the older kids were “too scared to do it.” The mayor responded “not you though,” not in a tone that said “I understand the story,” but rather “you were always that way.” What is the point of this relationship? The point is to not only keep the viewer on edge, but to keep Buffy on edge as well. Their joint force plans to kill the whole graduating class and to distract Buffy in the process by trying to kill Angel. Well, let’s just say Buffy was so on edge that she almost fell off a cliff.

The second case is this sort of awkward love between Wesley, Buffy’s new watcher, and Cordelia. They’re in the discovery phase, does she like me? Does he like me? I’m sending him this signal, does he get it? In this first episode, they do nothing but flirt, we find out more about this relationship in the next episode, and that is that, after kissing, they’re not meant to be.

Next up is the lovable Willow and her boyfriend, Oz. This is really nothing more than a typical high school relationship- between a witch and a werewolf. This is the only clear-cut, simple relationship on the show. He loves her, she loves him, end of story. If only everything else in high school were that simple.

Possibly the most complicated case of love to ever exist is that between Buffy and the man she was created to destroy, Angel. Though broken up, it is painstakingly (no pun intended) obvious that they were meant to be together. Buffy is so hurt by the breakup that when she sees Angel, they start talking about the mayor’s plans (the ascension) and begin fighting. Eventually, Buffy says “I just want this to be over,” something that, on the surface, seems plausible because she doesn’t want her fellow classmates to be killed, but underneath the surface, is something that can never truly end because she is too attached to Angel. Just after that, Angel is shot by the heart with a poison arrow. Buffy is upset while she’s trying to find a cure because she feels like she is wasting time. So when Wesley comes in and says that The Council (the watchers of the watchers) can’t help Angel with the cure, Buffy says “I’m watching my lover die.” However,, with all that is said between the torn lovers, it is what is not said that makes the difference. If a picture says a thousand words, then Buffy and Angel’s eyes say a million. They, I believe, can have a whole conversation just by looking at each other and not speaking and still know what they said. If their eyes say “love,” then they words don’t have to.

Our Mrs. Reynolds/ Naked

Both the article “But She Was Naked” and the episode “Our Mrs. Reynolds” have proven one theory assumed throughout the history of man: men can never think clearly when there’s a beautiful and/or naked lady in front of them. It doesn’t matter who the man is, he will always succumb to the temptation of a woman. Put a naked woman in front of Shepard Book and he’ll go probably go to the special hell, or heaven, depending on who you ask. In all seriousness, a man’s mind fogs up so much once sex enters it that he can’t think clearly or make rational decisions anymore, making “separating artifice [trickery] and sincerity virtually impossible.” Saffron is a skilled siren, along with Inara, who uses this fault to her advantage: stealing a ship from the crew. She, like Inara, is skilled at what she does, but uses it in a negative way, to harm instead of to help.

Sometimes men can be so drawn in that just the words of the siren can mean confusion and disarray. In the case of the Magistrate hiring Inara to fix his son’s “problem,” Inara understood quickly that the Magistrate had too much power over his son, so she spoke up and left the seemingly confident man speechless. This scene made the boy a man, but not in the way that the father had intended.

This flaw doesn’t always have to include men. Sometimes, women can be drawn in by the siren’s music and become victims themselves. “One cannot always be themselves in the company of men,” Inara claims to a female companion of hers. She states it in a way that may suggest that she is just as capable of having a fogged mind like men are. However, the audience sees it as a meticulously placed move in her way of life.

If there’s one thing to pick up from this article, it is that companions are not only well trained in act of “love,” they are also well versed in the spoken act of seduction. They are women that can not only lure a man in by their looks, but also by her words, whether they’re true or not. Men, by nature, assume that they are cast in the role of “most dominant human” and to think of anything else is blasphemy. When the tables turn and it is revealed that it is the woman that actually has the upper hand, there’s no time before the woman takes advantage of the man and reveals her true motive: deceit.

High School is Hell

I think "High School is Hell" was really intelligent and it made me believe that the writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are geniuses. The way that metaphors were subtly used to describe the common difficulties teenagers face in their everyday lives and how those difficulties are real life events occurring in the lives of those on the show is something that I wouldn't have even recognized if it weren't for this article. With that being said, I think someone may have been out of work when they wrote this article. To recount specific episode and events in those episodes is something someone with way too much time on their hands would do. Has anyone honestly ever found themselves bored and said, "I'm going to go write an article about how teenagers and vampire slayers are similar in completely opposite ways. Sounds fun." I find it difficult to understand how someone could write such an educated article about something and not to be convinced that they spent more time on it than they should have.



I guess what I'm really trying to say is that, though that content of the article was great, informative, and useful if you ever wanted to watch Buffy, the author could have just as easily gotten their point across in fewer pages. I don't have anything against long articles, but when it's the same point made with an abundant amount of examples, the article becomes less interesting and more stale, which is the exact opposite thing that writers try to accomplish.

Buffy- episode uno.

the scene when buffy tells giles that he doesn't understand how hard it is to be a slayer. not given the choice and having to hide it from everyone is almost as big a struggle as killing vampires. "you're standing at the mouth of hell" when buffy and angel meet for the first time. she says that she only wants to be left alone and he says no deal. "look at them flailing about, not knowing what dangers surround them." "lucky them."

I decided to watch the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Welcome to the Hellmouth." The overal episode was about Buffy, who kills vampires as a hobby, moves to a new town in California that, unbeknownst to its citizens, is overrun with vampires. There are two key scenes in this episode that I find are really helpful in finding out who Buffy was before the show started. In one scene, she meets Giles, the librarian, for a second time. He knows she's a slayer, and she knows that he knows, so she comes barging into the library telling Giles that being a slayer is not something that she signed up for. She talks about how not having the choice of whether or not she actually WANTED to be the slayer is sometimes harder to deal with than the vampires are. Later in the episode, Giles is looking at a bunch of kids at a club and says, "look at them flailing about, not knowing what dangers surround them." Buffy sullenly replies "lucky them." This idea shows that Buffy, who in everyone's eyes is the new girl who got kicked out of her old school, is really the good Samaritan of the town, even if the town doesn't know it yet, and she doesn't want to be.

The next important scene has the same message to it, but instead of Giles giving the guidance and knowledge in positive, helpful manner, it's a vampire doing the chastising. Buffy finds him him following her and tells him to leave her alone because that's all she wants in the new life she has (and because she has super-slayer powers, she can tell he's a vampire without having to see any teeth.) He says that she's the slayer and has a duty to fulfill and that he, as well as his "family" of vampires, simply cannot leave her alone until she is destroyed. These scenes have the same idea to them, people seeking out her skills-either to harm or to help the world- and her not wanting any part of it. This is a conflict that, I believe, will eventually resolve itself in time when Buffy comes to realize who she is, how important she is to the survival of the human race, and how to handle living her new life.

Jackie's really long blog about blogging

When I first found out that I had the opportunity to blog in English class, all I could think of was "are you for real?" Doing something I already enjoy doing and getting a grade for it has to be one of the biggest scams around. I, personally, think that this is a brilliant idea for one main reason: everybody today KNOWS how to blog. Whether they have a Myspace, type emails, or even know how to type, kids all around the world seem to have been genetically altered to know how to blog, which is really convenient for the modern teacher, instead of the old passe of writing a paper. Blogging is something the modern student can connect themselves to on a more personal level because it allows the student to really feel like they understand what they're typing and really feel that they have full control of what they are saying and how they are saying it instead of having to follow an outline. With that in mind, when I get the sudden urge to tell the whole world my opinion on a book I just finished reading, I gravitate more towards writing about it in my blog than my thesis paper.

Blogging is also easier than one of the things students dread doing most: public speaking. Just the idea of speaking in front of a group of peers sends people off to change their pants, so giving them the opportunity to accomplish the same basic goal, to a much broader audience, without the physical audience, is a chance most students will never pass up. I know that I am much too shy to even introduce myself to people and face-to-face contact is incredibly more intimidating than face-to-screen contact. Having 1,000 people read your blog is an easier pill to swallow than having 1,000 people staring at you while you're speaking and staring right back at them. Becoming more confident in front of a bunch of faceless names sometimes helps in preparing for the dreadful day when a blogger emerges from under their rock into the real world because they're so used to typing their mind out that when they go to speak up in person on issues, they can gather their thoughts and speak like an educated person. However, more often than not, blogging hinders a person's social skills and can actually hold them back when trying to develop confidence and vocalize their opinions. Lesson for today: just because it's easier doesn't necessarily mean that it's better.

To sum everything up: blogging is easier to do than breathing; it's fun, informal with a educational edge, and really helpful- sometimes. Blogging in place of structured papers is helpful; blogging in place of public speaking is a hindrance. All of this is just preparing us for what is to come: an age where eerything is so easily accessible that the foundation of knowledge will change more than anybody can comprehend.

Firefly: Serenity

When I first started watching, I found myself checking to see how much time was left every few minutes. But when the creepy doctor came aboard the ship, I finally gained interest...a little. Finding out he's actually a fugitive on the run, a good fugitive, is an interesting twist. I think jayne cobb (the scruffy-faced guy) was probably my favorite character just because of his rugged intolerance for things. The special effects were AMAZING. Overall I think my favorite part was the chase towards the end with the big shark-like ship pining for the tiny fish-like Serenity. Then when Dobson was holding River by gunpoint right in front of her brother (adopted?) and the captain shot him right when Dobson was trying to prove how tough he was was really funny. Also, the theme music reminds me of Walker, Texas Ranger. My least favorite part, definitely, was when the captain shot and killed Serenity's horse. I hate it when animals die, it's not entertaining. Even though there were some good parts to this episode, would I really want to continue watching the series? My answer: meh.

About me...

Hey everybody! I'm Jackie and I'm from a little town called South Vienna, which is about halfway between Springfield and London. I graduated from Northeastern High School a few months ago with honors. I'm studying journalism here at OSU hoping, someday, to write somewhere. I love writing about anything, especially when it comes to blogs and writing about whatever pops into my head! I also love listening to music, and playing it too! I play the saxophone and I'm in OSU's athletic band, which plays at the home basketball games, volleyball games, etc. When it comes to stuff I listen to, I'm all over the place. I have everything from Motley Crue to N*SYNC on my iTunes right now, and I'm ALWAYS up for checking out new music! So if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to shout 'em out! Also, I'm uber shy in person, but not on the internet. I guess that's about it for now!