Response th Stanley's post

Whilst on Google reader I came across Stanley’s blog. He was talking about drama at school which is a large topic this year he said:

I just don't see why some people find it beneficial to start rumors if they know it could get messy. Especially at this school, we came here to learn, we did the application and everything, not once did it say "There will be copious amounts of drama." I think that no one should even get involved with drama; it’s a waste of time and emotions. Starting rumors behind peoples backs hurts feelings, I think you shouldn't start rumors about anyone, or "talk S***" as they say, but if you are definitely going to do this then at least do it to their face, so that you can recognize that you guys don't like each other, leave each other alone and get it over with.

I couldn’t agree with what he said more. For instance here was drama earlier this year between one girl, let’s call he D, and another girl, W. This one boy like D but W was in love with this boy. W said some pretty mean things that were just as some people say ‘out of pocket’. It wasn’t D’s fault that the boy like her, he just did. One thing Stan said was he came here to get rid of the drama and get a good education, as did I but it doesn’t seem to be working out. It is just sad that some people still haven’t grown up and got away from stuff like that.

Some things I do to stay away from these problems are just tell the person to stop it when it starts, just remove yourself from the situation or just befriend people who stay away. If you follow these you will be just fine.

Book Response

Book Response

This section of the story was more surprising than anything else. For one you found out who killed Wellington on page one hundred twenty. I was very surprised when Father tells Christopher that he killed the dog, but it made sense. I remember in the begging of the story he angrily tell Christopher to just stay out of the whole investigation. When he found out, Christopher wondered what else his dad had lied about. What happened next was another major event in the story. When searching his father’s room while he was at work he found a box full of letters from his mother who had supposedly died years before. He started reading them and discovered that she was indeed alive and was living in London. He decided to get away from his dog- murdering father and visit her. The story leaves of right there after the second paperclip, so I wonder what will happen after that. I predict that he will want to stay with her for the rest of the story.

I figured out that Christopher’s dad was probably an alcoholic because whenever they got in a fight he would say, “I need a god damn drink”. I think he is provoked to drink because he is a single parent raising an autistic child, which I imagine would be stressful. He also might drink because he is just having a hard life working a dead end job. I can relate to this because I have met people who drink for similar reasons. One thing I found very interesting is Christopher’s whole lying thing. At the beginning of the story Christopher says he cannot tell a lie or tell a joke, but later on he explains that he tells white lies which are truth, but not the whole truth. Is that still a lie? I’m not sure, but he also tells a joke. Maybe everything Christopher does is a lie. I’m just very confused, and I hope the book reveals more in the end. Christopher is a very interesting character and so far the story is great.

Response to the curious incident of the dog at night time

So far while reading this story by Mark Haddon I have been very questioning about it. There have been couple moments where I just wondered. For instance when Christopher says he never tells lies. I had a couple of questions about it. My first one was ‘Can he not lie because of his autism?’ I know that autism has certain things that happen where like a person thinks a certain color is bad, or they are not able to tell certain emotions, so this might be another one of those things. My second question was is he not able to tell a lie because he just isn’t a liar. I also think that this idea could be possible because some people just can’t lie. It relates to how I can’t fall asleep without a light on or without socks. It just bothers me. So far from reading the story I would say it is probably because he just doesn’t like lying. I just developed this through the actions that he has done so far.

My second was why is the father so angry all of the time? Some theories I came up were maybe he was mad because his wife cheated on him, his wife died, or it is just raising an autistic child as a single parent. Sometimes when people find out their spouse is cheating on them they cannot control themselves. There seems to be some fire burning deep down inside. I have seen this happen before and it was just crazy. When somebody very close to you dies you will always feel like it was your fault and you could have done something to stop it. When they were fighting it seems plausible that it could have been around the time that his wife died. This would obviously cause stress. The final theory of him being a single parent is probably the most logical answer. Raising a child as a single parent must be very challenging because you have to balance bills with food and tons of other variables. I think the thing that would make it even harder is having a child with some sort of development problem.

Si far I am really enjoying this book and all of its crazy antics. I look forward to keep on reading it and asking more questions.

Central Conflict

The central conflict in Of Mice And Men is character vs. society because Lennie is constantly conflicted by everyone he meets. I have many quotes that show this, so I will be proving it. Lennie is just a gentle giant and he doesn't want to hurt anybody. However it seems that it doesn't matter where he goes. First in weed they are constantly chased, and then at the farm.

My first quote that shows this conflict is from page 97, and it is between Curley and Carlson.

“You take it, Carlson. When you see 'um don't give 'im no chance. Shoot for his guts.That'll double 'im over.”

In this quote Curley is telling Carlson to shoot Lennie on first sight. This shows Curley's pure hatred for poor Lennie. The only reason he wants Lennie dead is because he is easy to pick on. I don't even think that Curley loved his wife. He just wanted an excuse to kill him. I can relate this to those recent suicides. It is sort of the same thing because people bully each other to the breaking point. Lennie's death was sort of a suicide because he kept telling George that he wanted to go to 'that place'. I think by that place he meant heaven, and so he got what he wanted. Another quotes involving Curlie talks about how bad he wants to kill him and how he is going to do it.

“I'm gonna shoot the guts outta that big bastard myself, even in I only got one hand. I'm gonna get 'im . Slim turned to Candy. You better stay with her than , Candy. The rest of us better get goin'.”

Curley is just a cold hearted bastard who is quick to snap on anybody. As you can see there is a very strong conflict between Lennie and Curley.

My second quote that proves my point is on page 106, said by the narrator.

“The hand shook violently, but his face set and his head steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and ran down again.”

This is the scene where George is saving Lennie from a world of hurt from Curley. George knew that if he hadn't killed Lennie then he would have had a painful death and would have be tortured. This is obviously another conflict for Lennie because George shoots him in the back of the head. The conflict would have been much greater if Curley had gotten to him first. So far this is two people who were in a conflict with Lennie.

My final quote is when Lennie and George are being chased by a whole town on page 11.

“She yells and we got to hide in a irrigation ditch all day with guys lookin for us, and we gotta sneak out in the dark and get outta the country”

In this part of the story they had just escaped and gone to the new farm. This shows that so many people hated him just because he touched a girls dress. They all saw it as sexual harassment and took it the wrong way. What they didnt know was that he had a mental illness that made him kind of scared of most things. Why people don't take the time to look for this kind of thing I do not know, but I thought it would be pretty obvious.

When someone has a problem and they can't escape it they shouldn't be punished for it. As you can see the central conflict of the story is person vs. society. It seems like wherever he goes he just can't do anything Right. I think that in the end this was probably the best thing that could have happened. At least when he gets to heaven nobody will 'give him hell' and he will live in constant peace.

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Response to Aleah"s post About Racism

I was reading blogs when i noticed something particullully fishy with Aleah's post. There seemed to be some sort of debate going on about whether certain people should be able to say the N word. Aleah said that white people cant say that word because it is degrading. She saays that it is Okay for black people to say it because i is like saying whats up dude. i do not completely understand wwhy this is okay because i dont think it should be alowwed for anyone to say it. I was also there during their discussionn and Aleah said hat a certain person couldnt say it because he was white. I think that in itslef is racist because of the color of skin he isnt allowed to say a word. i also understand where Aleah is coming from. She says that the word is a racial slur and it should not be said by white people.

In my opinion I don't think that anyone should be able to say it because for so long all it was used for was to put people down. using put downs are wrong because the can seriously hurt a person. I have had to deal with many put downs in my life and they are not easy.

I was reading other people's blogs when I came across Annie Young's post:

One incident that sticks out is this: A good friend of mine (Let's call her Abby) had been best friends with a separate girl (Let's call her Sophie). But Sophie had turned incredibly clingy, and would get very upset if Abby was friends with anyone else. So, Abby, out of options broke off the friendship, realizing that it was hurting her. Sophie was devastated, hurt and angry. She began commenting on all of Abby's Facebook statues with rude comments on anything that was posted. (Which, was a form of bullying in itself). I defended Abby, and for about a week, my best friend and I would stand a few feet away from Sophie before school, sending glares her way, occasionally saying rude things loudly.

We never directly spoke to her, or threatened her. But if we ever saw her, maybe in the halls, maybe in the library, maybe on the blacktop, we would glare, and if we were close enough her name was possibly said, "Sooooophie." The single word would be whispered, the implications of what we could do to her would be left hanging in the air. I don't think Sophie realized that in reality, we were two 5'5 girls, who couldn't possibly manage to do anything to anybody, half the time we struggled carrying our own backpacks. But she didn't know that.

This post stuck out to me because I thought that the way she wrote her essay pretty much covered everything that needed saying. One thing I liked that she did was use anonymous names for the people. It reminds me of that activity we were doing in class the other day about masking your identity. The second thing I liked was that she even said that they were 'just two 5'5 girls who had a hard time even carrying their backpacks'. The reason I like this part is because of the way she described it. The final thing I like about this is that it is from a different side of the story. It is sort of like at first Sophie was the bully, but then Abby and Annie got in her head. I think that was a good strategy to use in that position. I think that Annie's Post was over all my favorite because of the care and thought she put into it.

This relates to the ASTI constitution in four main ways. The first way was by resolving the conflict peacefully. The way she did this was by not threatening her, but just sort of ignoring her. That was one of the steps that i wrote in my essay. The second thing Annie did was think before she acted. She had to think about if she should step in on her friend's problem and help, or just stay out of it and let it resolve by itself. If I was in her situation I would have stepped in too because it is good to help your friends with their problems. Next she spoke up for one of her class mates by help her with the problem because it is the right thing to do. This one relates a lot to the last one because it talks about how Annie helped Abby,and what she had to do to help. Finally the last thing that relates to the constitution is building mutual trust for others. When Annie allied herself with Abby she began to build mutual trust for her. Building mutual trust with someone is important because if you are ever in a bad situation the person you trust can return the favor by helping out of your hard times. In this quote Annie talks about a hard time in her life, but I think because of that it made it easier for her to talk about

‘Just Kidding’ and ‘Ganging Up’

I remember one time when a group of kids went around the whole school picking on smaller kids. At that time I was one of the smaller kids. They would do things like make fun of their clothes and how they looked. I know that that was wrong because kids couldn’t change how they looked, or how their clothes looked because the kid’s parents might not have had money to get them the name brand clothing. Whenever a kid would try to do something like confront the group they would just get humiliated. If the kids tried to go to the teacher they would simply exclaim they were just kidding. That really made me angry.

Some of my options were to try to tell a teacher, get in a fight, get a group of your friends to confront them with myself, or simply just ignore them. Trying to tell the teacher didn’t work because like I said, they would be ‘just kidding’. Getting in a fight didn’t make sense either because violence wasn’t the answer to this problem. Getting a group of my friends together made sense at first so I talked to a couple of them and we decided to do that. Later that day I realized that that would probably lead to violence to, so that choice was out. The last choice was to ignore them. That always works the best in a situation like that, but it is hard to do for me. I always just wanted to say something back, and a lot of the times I did. But I realized that it wouldn’t. Soon everybody else started to ignore them and they stopped. I think the reason that they stopped was because they always had someone react to it. Once they saw that everyone just ignored them they just felt stupid. I think that was the best ways to make anything like that stop.

I think the two main reasons that kids bully each other is because they either have been bullied themselves, or they have problems at home. If a kid is made fun of for a really long time they start to do it to other people because they think it is okay, or they need some way to let out their anger. If they have problems at home like abusive parents or their parents argue a lot they seem to do the same thing because that is how they were raised. Even if one of those two things I happening to you it is still not okay to tease people, or hurt them. And they reason that they do it to other kids is because they can’t do it to adults. If they tried to do that to an adult the adult would get them in trouble because they have more authority.

If you are being bullied by someone the best way to solve is by ignoring them. Remember this for the future.