Why can't they get his nose right?

This isn't really my writing, but I thought you might get a kick out of it.  Everyone who knows me knows I'm basically obsessed with Disney's latest movie Tangled.  Directly after seeing it I drew Flynn on the dry erase board at my house with the caption "Why can't they get his nose right?!!"  Ever since then his nose has been continually erased and redrawn (mostly by me, but some other people too).  Here are some photos:

Magical Realism Again

Oh my God, I actually have comments!  Thank you!  They buoyed my spirits so much I found another piece to post.  It's from that same magical realism assignment that inspired Dinner Special.  You see, when the class brought in their assignments, apparently a lot of them didn't quite grasp what "magical realism" was because half of them brought in short stories about witches and ogres and stuff.  I guess a lot of them thought they were just supposed to write fantasy.
So anyway, our teacher made us redo the assignment.  She said we could either write a completely new piece or fix up our other piece.  I didn't particularly feel like fixing up Dinner Special (after all, it was already magical realism).  So instead I wrote a new piece.  This is it.

 

A Day in and above Mrs. Gleisner’s Classroom

            Timmy was not happy when Mrs. Gleisner, his third grade teacher so old she coughed up dust, told them to write a short story.

            “About anything you want,” she said when Priscilla Martin primly raised her hand and asked what the topic should be.  “Let inspiration come to you.”

            The class knew what this meant: Mrs. Gleisner had lost the day’s lesson plan again.  That was the sixth day that month.

            It’s not that Timmy didn’t like to write, but there were only so many times for inspiration to hit a third grader, and Timmy was afraid he had already used his up.  He’d written about tribal civilizations living in the hair of Jordan Wakowski, who sat in front of him.  He’d written about the adventures of Patty the goldfish, who occupied the aquarium at the back of the room under the model of the planets.  He’d written about globes, digestive systems, the Pledge of Allegiance, the state capitals, and just about everything else of which the room reminded him.  Timmy was out of ideas and the room was no longer giving him any.

            There was only one thing left to do.

            Timmy, observing that Mrs. Gleisner was deeply submerged in the latest issue of Astrology Tomorrow and thus unlikely to resurface any time soon, cautiously retrieved a crowbar from under his desk.

            No one had noticed him.  So far so good.

            He faintly tapped the bar on the linoleum floor and inserted it in the seam.  After surveying the room once more, Timmy popped the tile up to reveal packed dirt.

            By now Timmy had attracted the attention of Matthew Bailey, who silently mouthed, “Don’t do it.”  But Timmy was determined to have his inspiration.

            He reached inside his jacket for a single seed and planted it in the earth.  A plant needed water, so he swiped Catherine Bryant’s water bottle and poured it on the dirt.  Now the entire class was watching his every move in shades of amusement and disapproval.  Priscilla, her delicate blue eyes looking wholeheartedly scandalized, waved her hand frantically to get Mrs. Gleisner’s attention, but Mrs. Gleisner, probably looking up her lucky numbers for the day, was the only one not watching the in-class gardening, and Priscilla—ever so proper—would never thinking of speaking out of turn.

            Now all Timmy had to do was wait.

            At first it was just a little green “pop.”  Then it grew to the size of a popsicle stick.  Next a single leaf sprouted and the entire plant drooped under this unexpected weight.

            Then it burst up.  Higher and higher.  There was a “wrrch” as the plant fought against the linoleum tiles before finally sending them to all corners of the room.  Leaves shot out.  An offshoot entwined itself with Billy Gordon’s desk, causing Billy to crash into a hyperventilating Cindy Wagner.  The students screamed, the teacher looked up from her horoscope, and Timmy jumped onto the plant.

            They erupted through the upstairs 5^th grade classroom, scattering science projects in their wake and on they went, higher and higher.  Another crash of plaster and there they were, Timmy and his plant, in the beautiful blue sky.  He could see the 2^nd graders playing foursquare down on the blacktop and—no, not any more.  They were too small.

            Timmy stroked his plant firmly and it stopped growing.  From this vantage point he could make out all of Milford, from the post office to the train station.  He could see everything.  Everything, that is, except the people.  That wouldn’t do.

            He slid a little bit down the trunk, the leaves instinctively pressing against him to ensure he didn’t fall.  That was better.  Now he could make out people.

            Mrs. Greene was sunning herself in her backyard.  Timmy didn’t think that would be appropriate to write about.  The mailman was talking to Ms. Schmidt.  That wasn’t very interesting.  All the two of them ever talked about were their hip problems.

            That was better!  Mr. Wilkinson was fishing in the Milford pond.  That was something Timmy could write about!

            Timmy slid down the remainder of the plant, past baking soda volcanoes, electric potatoes, and cheering 5^th graders, who were evidently happy that their science presentations had been interrupted, and back into Mrs. Gleisner’s classroom.  Mrs. Gleisner had settled back into her astrology magazine so Timmy was free to return to his writing assignment.  Pretty soon, at least according to Timmy, Mr. Wilkinson had snagged a lost narwhale, which reacted to hook with such frenzy that it pulled poor Mr. Wilkinson straight to Barbados, wherever that was.

            The next day Timmy received an A for the assignment and a bill for the damage he’d caused.

Jimmy the Pea

The following is a children's book that should not be a children's book I wrote when given the writing prompt "nonconformity."  I'm currently working on a writing project about the Princess and the Pea, and keep on being reminded of this.

Jimmy the Pea

                Prue, Peter, Penelope, Pat, and Pomona were just what peas ought to be.  They were ball-shaped, an essential quality for all peas.  Their round edges allowed them to nestle together easily.

                Jimmy, on the other hand, was spiky so he more often than not pricked one of his sisters who would invariably yell, “Ouch!  Jimmy, why can’t you be round like the rest of us?”

                Prue, Peter, Penelope, Pat, and Pomona were also all small—a useful quality for peas.  Their tiny size allowed the peapod to snap shut easily.

                Jimmy, on the other hand, was twice the size of his siblings so each night the peapod had a lot of trouble forcing itself shut and it would invariably yell, “Argh!  Jimmy, why can’t you be like all the other peas?”

                Prue, Peter, Penelope, Pat, and Pomona were all green—an advisably quality for a pea.  They matched all the other parts of the green bean plant.

                Jimmy, on the other hand, was bright blue so he stood out from everyone else.  Every day the other plants would invariably say “Look!  Why isn’t Jimmy green like all of the other peas?”

                Jimmy wasn’t happy.

                Every night he would will himself to be round, to be small, and to be green.  But each day he would wake up spiky, big, and blue.

                One day the peas heard a loud thumping noise and became silent, Prue quieting herself in the middle of her “Ouch!” at having been accidently stabbed by Jimmy.

                The thumping continued and pretty soon the peas could see two giant moving blue trunks through the cranny the peapod had been unable to close.

                The thumping stopped.

                There was a deafening CRACK!

                Suddenly the air was filled with horrible screams, “Everyone hide!  He’s eating peapods!” they heard.

                But peapods can’t move all that much so Prue, Peter, Penelope, Pat, Pomona, and Jimmy were forced to wait in terror.  There was another CRACK and their own peapod was being lifted high—high up and tilted so Prue was thrown once again on Jimmy’s spikes.

                “Hmmm…what’s this?” came rumbling from the two big trunks and the top of the peapod was ripped off.

                A man was looking at them and then he stared, shocked, at Jimmy.

                “Why what’s this?” he cried.  “All of you peas look round, tiny, green, and scrumptious, but this one here looks pointy, big, blue, and I think that if I ate it, I’d get sick.”

                With that the man threw Jimmy down on the ground, where he landed on nice, soft dirt.  Jimmy then watched in horror as Prue, Peter, Penelope, Pat, and Pomona were eaten up by the scary monster.

                Which just goes to show that being different has its benefits.

Moonspinners

 A while ago a friend and I read an awesome mystery novel entitled "The Moonspinners" and we instantly realized what an awesome adventure/mystery computer game it would make.  So we sent a proposal to our favorite gaming company, Her Interactive (the creators of the Nancy Drew series of computer games).  In response to our unbelievably awesome, purple-inked letter, we got a form letter saying that they don't accept unsolicited game submissions.  Psh.  Whatever.
Our submission still makes me smile when I read it.  We thought we were so hilariously clever when we wrote it.  We were totally right.  Here it is, along with the summary of the book we made for them. 

Dear Her Interactive,

We the population of your 19 year old fanbase have a “rockin’ cool idea” for you! Do you want fame, glory and eternal salvation? You probably answered yes. We hope you have, in any case. And no, we’re not selling Bibles. We’re selling inspiration! And it’s FREE (we are very bad business people, a skill not gained from playing your games). Anyway, the point is that we have the next biggest gaming idea for you! Are you ready? Good.

MOONSPINNERS.

A weird looking collection of letters, n’est-ce pas? Well, it is. But those few letters spell a little something more than just “moonspinners.” They spell GENIUS. With a capital G that rhymes with C that stands for cool! Sorry, please don’t stop reading. We do have a legitimate point, we swear. And we are going to other companies about this, by the way, but we like you best so you get to be first (honestly, we don’t say that to everybody).

Right, yes, the point. We believe that there is enough merit to the book The Moonspinners, by Mary Stewart, to make a smashing computer game based on it. First, the basics:

The Moonspinners was written in 1962, by Mary Stewart. It’s a rip-roaring read, containing among other things, a high speed boat chase, a murder-mystery, a lot of plant life, a very independent heroine, the exotic locale of Crete, a charmingly English romantic interest, and plenty of comic relief (sheep). We categorize the sheep as comedy because they fit into no other category and they are definitely worthy of mention.

We suspect that it might be in your interest to branch out from the Nancy Drew games (which we love) and are happy to provide you with the most tricked out vehicle. The vehicle being The Moonspinners; sorry if we confused you, there. The book contains puh-lenty of material to base a game on. Even plenty of minigames (which we know you LOOOVE). We’ll throw in a plot summary! We have enclosed it in this envelope, with the idea proposal (this; sorry, once again, if we confused you. Please bear with us).

We should mention, by the way, that we want nothing out of this. We just really want to play it. And we’ll totally buy it at full price. Because it would be so seriously awesome. And we just love you that much.

As completely weird and insane as we might sound, we are serious as stone about this idea. I mean, think about what your fanbase loves. An intrepid heroine? Check. High adventure? Check. Fascinating foreign lands? Chu-yeck! Good old-fashioned sleuthing? Check! Suspense? Check. Colorful characters? Several times a check! A love interest that’ll set your fanbase a-swooning? You bet your bottom dollar! It’s perfect! It’s brilliant! It’s you!

It’s The Moonspinners: Coming 2010 by Her Interactive!

You’re welcome

Summary

So there’s this girl. She’s like 21 years old and works in Athens. She’s English (and proud of it (but not obnoxiously overly proud)). Anyway. So, she goes to the town Agios Georgios in Crete for a vacation, intending to meet up with her 40 year-old, chain-smoking, botanist cousin named Frances (who is a girl, by the by). So, Nicola (the main character, sorry) is traipsing about in the hills, heading to Agios Georgios, when she is accosted by a swarthy man. His name is Lambis. We grew to love him. A frenzied Lambis assaults our perky heroine, but thankfully (for the future of the book) she is saved by a disembodied voice. This disembodied voice belongs to one feeble 23 year-old Englishman named MARK LANGLEY. Memorize this name, you will come to cherish it as we do.

So, let’s give you the lowdown on this Mark guy. Mark and his 15 year old brother, Colin, were having fun in the sun in Agios Georgios, when they happened upon a dastardly murder! Since Colin and Mark were witnesses, the perpetrators kidnapped Colin and tried to kill Mark, but Mark made good his escape. Mostly – he did get shot. At which point he collapsed, it started raining, and he contracted a fever. When it rains, it pours, and Mark gets sick (tagline? I think so!).

This is the point where the main character comes in. Lambis, a friend of Mark (who found him passed out on the hillside) thought that little old Nicola was one of the heinous brigands after Mark’s life. Don’t worry! Lambis, Mark and Nicola all soon end this Three’s Company-esque misunderstanding and become best of buddies. So, anyway, for the remainder of the novel, Nicola takes the investigation into her own hands, tracking down Colin, discovering the malicious plot which resulted in the original murder, meddling in everybody’s lives and generally saving the day by a piece of well-timed culprit-trippage. So, that’s basically the plot. We highly recommend you read the book.

The Dana Thomas House

It's funny how sometimes the assignments you're not at all enthused about end up being the assignments you really love.  I took a modernism class (big mistake!  We had to read James Joyce.  Ugh) and for one of our papers we had to see some work of modernism and write about it.  I went to Springfield, Illinois and toured Frank Lloyd Wright's Dana-Thomas House, which was amazing.  I've toured my fair share of Wright houses, but this one has to be my favorite.  Anyway, I really like the paper I ended up writing about it.  I hope you do too.  If nothing else, at least read the first two paragraphs, which I particularly like.
And if you're ever in Springfield, tour this house.  Seriously.  It's amazing.

Dana-Thomas House:  Movement and Function

            Imagine a 19^th century parlor.  The walls are burgundy and they seem to soak up what weak light the windows allow, leaving you in the dark.  Against one wall a fireplace looms, a mixture of black metal and brown brick with two miniature columns holding up the gray granite mantle.  Your feet pass over the musty, oxblood red carpet on your way to a corner where a dusty porcelain tea set sits atop a dark, wooden table.  To the side of the table is a chair.  Perhaps its upholstering was once scarlet, but over the years it has faded into a dusted rose color.  A piece of rope lies across it, warning you, whatever you do, not to sit down.  This room is strictly “look but don’t touch.”  It is because of this policy that you fear to raise your arms.  Though you are not especially tall, you suspect that should you lift your arms over your head, they would hit the low ceiling, drawing reprimands from the tour guide.  The tour guide draws your attention to the butterfly design on the smoky fireplace cover, a motif he says is carried on throughout the house.  As more and more members of the guided tour enter and ogle at the cast iron butterflies, the small parlor becomes crowded, like too many people on an elevator.  Claustrophobia itches beneath your fingernails and when the tour guide at last announces it is time to move onto the next room, you race to the door with a sigh of relief.  The sigh is nearly immediately overcome by a gasp when the door opens and light floods in. 

The room in which you now find yourself is a world of movement—no dust could collect here.  A ceiling vaults to the sky instead of looming overhead.  The previous room’s heavy browns and cold blacks become warm honeys and creamy whites.  Different floors and ceilings dip into each other, a graceful confusion rather like MC Escher’s Relativity.  Geometric butterflies—creations of green triangles and rectangles—are flitting in the stained glass windows.  A fountain gurgles and a fireplace shoots you a wide grin.  The tour guide informs you that this is the same room though which you entered the house—and you recognize the statue of the woman bursting from the earth, so he must be correct, but all the same it seems incredible to you.  The room—is it one whole room or innumerable fractions of different rooms sweeping into each other—is not the same at this angle.  Perhaps while you were gone it rearranged itself.  If there was ever a room capable of such a feat, this room would seem to be it.

In the above situation, you were [I removed my name for purposes of anonymity].  The tour guide was Larry and the house was Frank Lloyd Wright’s Dana-Thomas House, located in Springfield, Illinois.  When Susan Lawrence Dana hired Frank Lloyd Wright to renovate her Victorian home, she had one important condition:  her old parlor must be preserved.  Wright honored this stipulation.  As the project went on, the house became unrecognizable.  It was not so much a renovation as building an entirely new house, to which Wright lent his very modern perspective.  Within this example of modern architecture, however, the past lived on in the form of the Victorian parlor, a vestigial pocket of times gone by.  When I walked from the Victorian box to the openness of the Wright’s ‘entry way/staircase/living room/there is no easy way to categorize a room in a Wright house’-room, the tenets of modernism became all the clearer because they existed in such stark contrast to the room I had just occupied.  Dark-light.  Closed-open.  Stagnant-moving.

Modernist architecture stresses function over form.  In a modernist building, form follows function.  As someone who lives in a pre-modern, Victorian house, I can attest that Victorian buildings were often not built with function in mind.  Rooms are so small and cut off from each other that during a crowded party moving from point A to point B can be near impossible, especially if you’re carrying a tray of pita and hummus.  Keeping our house cooled and heated is extremely expensive; during winter we mostly just walk around wearing several blankets and trading off who gets to carry the cat.  Our house is, in many respects, functionally deficient, yet it does have rather ostentatious design elements: a fireplace with ionic columns, egg-and-dart molding, and, I kid you not, a bust of Satan on the roof.  The Victorian parlor described above is in much the same vein.  Design elements do not contribute to function, and function is often neglected.  Wright’s part of the house is, of course, not.  It is dazzlingly simple, in fact.  Large expanses of plain wood and white wall.  There is no molding and whenever a statue is present, attention is drawn to it, whereas in a Victorian house decorative pieces are set up somewhat like a treasure hunt.

In Dana House, Wright focused on creating a house that was as functional as possible for a specific client.  Most Victorian houses were not designed with a specific person in mind, but Dana’s needs are omnipresent in her home.  As a socialite living in the state capital in the early 1900s, for her, entertainment was key.  She needed a house designed for small get-togethers and extravagant dinner parties as well.  The design of the house reflects this dual need.  Wright designed his rooms so they could be easily altered.  Dana needed a large dining room so Wright built her one, but she also needed a little breakfast nook so he installed a curtain.  All Dana needed to do was draw the curtain and voila, a breakfast nook was partitioned from the main dining room.  The same method is used in many areas of the home because, technically speaking, the home is only comprised of a few very large rooms.  The house is very open at its base, but the curtains allowed Dana to change how open she wanted it to be.  Other elements of function may be easily spotted.  Wright built in a storage area under the bedrooms.  A walk way over the dining room allows an entire string quartet to sit there playing music, unseen by the guests below.  One room features massive, built-in tables intended for displaying art which could be easily folded up when the room was altered into an auditorium.  The most striking example of function, however, is in the main entry way I described before, where the guests would first enter the house.  The room is set up with staircases all around it, allowing Dana to make a dramatic entrance, moving from one staircase to the next before she finally descended to meet her guests, having now established herself as their queen.  Dana House was her dream home, built to her every need and specification.  For Dana, it was the most functional house imaginable. 

There are innumerable reasons for which the Dana-Thomas House is modernist.  As I write this paper, they trip from my fingers, raising their hands and begging “pick me!”  The extra long bricks Wright uses emphasize the horizontal lines often found in modernist architecture.  Wright used unconventional materials and methods, as evidenced by his cantilevered benches, similar to Wright’s Fallingwater.  Wright also installed several examples of functional new technology, like an intercom system, and electric stove, and a gray water system.  But the two most key elements of Dana House which most clearly cement it as a work of modernism are, in my opinion, movement and function.  This is a house that moves, both in regards to the alterations possible and through the structure itself: the transitional levels and the flowing lines. When it was built, before it was surrounded by uniform houses, it must have appeared to have grown from the landscape, a natural extension of grass and dirt.  The Dana-Thomas House changes from every angle, making it into a living being itself.  As far as functionality goes, the Dana-Thomas House was as functional as possible for the person who would live there.

The Dana-Thomas House is inseparable from Dana herself; her life is the true historical context of the house.  It was built with the profits of silver mines in the Rocky Mountains.  Widowed, Dana made it her life’s goal to rule the Springfield social scene, her independence and considerable wealth giving her more freedom to chase this dream than nearly any other woman of the times would have had.  Dana was always on the forefront, embracing new ideas.  When her neighbors had traditional organs, Dana had Wright install an electric organ.  Dana’s deep desire to be on the edge of progress, ahead of the rest of Springfield aristocracy, makes her house a true work of modernism, a house of progress which moves forward and forward and never stops changing.