I have liked baking ever since I was a little girl. Not in a career sense, or even a serious hobby sense. I just like to cook food when I'm hungry. I can't cook a lot, and I can't cook anything fancy. I can cook some pasta dishes, pies, cakes, and cookies, I'm really good at making cookies. My favorite type of cookie to make is chocolate chip. There's a certain way you have to make the cookies, that makes them taste the best.
Step one, start mixing the sugars, butter, vanilla, and eggs together with a wooden spoon. After a few minutes finish mixing them with your hands, but make sure to wash your hands first. Once that is all mixed together add the flour, baking soda and salt. Once again mix with a wooden spoon, and finish with your hands. Pinch off a tiny piece of dough, the size of your finger tip, and squish it between your fingers, if you vaguely feel the crunch of the sugar and salt then you can stop mixing. If you can't mix everything together with your hands and the spoon, then use a beater on medium.
Step two, adding the chocolate chips, preferably Hershey's chocolate chips. A 12oz bag should be emptied into the cookie dough. Then use the wooden spoon to mix the chocolate chips in with the dough. Don't use your hands because the heat of your skin, mixed with the heat from the fiction will cause the chocolate chips to start to melt. Mix the chips in with the dough with the wooden spoon, (I can't stress that enough), for about 5 minutes. You should be able to look at the mixture and see no chip-free spaces.
Step three, placing and baking. Use a small dinner spoon to make the perfect sized cookies. Scoop up enough dough onto the spoon to cover it, but not too much that it's more than a few centimeters high off the spoon. Place the lumps of dough about a half inch away from each other on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with a light layer of cookie oil. The oven should be preheated to between 350 and 400 degrees. Place the cookie sheet or sheets onto the middle rack in the oven. Check the cookies after about 15 minutes, stick a tooth pick in the middle of a cookie that is in the middle of the cookie sheet. If the tooth pick goes in easily and pulls out clean, the cookies are done. If the tooth pick comes out with anything other than just melted chocolate then leave the cookies in the oven and check them every 5 minutes until the tooth pick comes out clean.
Now that the cookies are done you can enjoy soft chocolate cookies that aren't burnt on the bottom, but aren't still raw and gooey in the center. If you happen to have any pecans, walnuts, or anything like that, you can mix those into the recipe as well. Just be sure that you only use 6oz of chocolate chips and 6oz of whatever nuts you put in. Or, if you don't happen to have any chocolate chip, and you're too lazy to go and buy some, but happen to have either peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, or m&m's, you can substitute those for the chocolate chips. Or if you can't eat chocolate, or aren't in the mood for it, the butterscotch chips taste the best.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Practice Final: Public Speaking
I've never been a fan of public speaking, but it never was a big problem until I reached high school. My first disastrous meeting with public speaking in high school was during my junior year in high school. My history teacher was pretty much obsessed with torturing every student in some way. His room soon became my personal hell as every day we were subjected to endless amounts of notes and a deep monotone voice that read them off of a power point. Our final was supposed to be a power point presentation about an organization from the Vietnam war era. I finished my power point a week before the date of presentations and wrote up a whole speech on note cards and proceeded to practice my speech every day for the whole week. By the morning of my presentation day I could pretty much read my whole speech without the cards. Our presentations had to be timed about 12 minutes, and when I had rehearsed at home, I was timed perfectly at 12 minutes. When I got up in front of my class to present, I began to sweat and shake. My whole presentation was about 10 minutes long because I talked faster than I had when practicing and I didn't read a long quote that I had put in as a way to make the presentation longer. All together my teacher had said it was a good presentation though it was shorter than he had wanted. I knew that once I got to college I would have to do a lot of public speaking, so I thought about what exactly scared me about public speaking.
The biggest thing that scares me is that someone will laugh at me. That they will find my whole presence absurd, and that they won't be able to control themselves. I know that there is only a slim chance of this happening in front of me, and if they laugh at me behind my back, it really isn't a problem. But this thought it always at the front of my mind, and I have luckily found one technique that helps me, a bit, to get over this fear. If I look at every person in the audience and focus on one thing about them that I found funny, I would feel a little better. Just knowing that I would be able to laugh at them if they laughed at me helped boost my confidence a bit. It's not a very nice way to cope, and it isn't very respectful, but I figure that if they laugh at me, they aren't being very respectful either.
The second thing that scares me, is that I'll forget a large portion of my presentation or speech. Even though I practice for hours a day, for many days before my speech, the second I get in front of people, I feel like I forget everything for a second. The facts always come back to me right after I get up there, but I often forget some points that I wanted to make. I always kick myself when I finish because I realize that a very interesting fact was left out. I know that no one will ever know this, unless I tell someone, and I know that most people really wouldn't care either. It still bother's me though, because I feel like my teacher knows so much about the topic, that they'll call me out on the few thing that I forget to mention. This has never happened, and I know that most teachers wouldn't say anything in front of other student's anyways, but it still sits their in my mind, mocking me silently.
The last thing that scares me is that I will mess up the pronunciation of words, or mix some words together. This actually happens a lot, and I am normally able to simply back track and say the word over again without it looking like I really care. But inside I'm dying of humiliation, I feel like it makes me look illiterate and not as intelligent as the other people in my class. I know that most people don't care, it happens to pretty much everyone when they speak out loud, your brain moves faster than your mouth and vocal chords. But for some reason it's a big deal to me, and it makes me feel self conscious about how I speak. I often mix up my words when I'm just talking to my friends at school, and no one cares, we laugh about it and keep talking. But when I speak publicly, it shakes me to the core.
So it's obvious that I have never been good at public speaking. Speaking to people I don't know at concerts and open houses? Not a problem, but speaking in front of large groups of people I don't know, and even large groups of people I do know, is pretty much impossible. I stutter, I clam up, and I feel bile rise up into my esophagus. I have found some ways that help make it easier, but I doubt that I will ever feel at home while publicly speaking. I will never enjoy public speaking, and I will never be able to help other people be comfortable with public speaking, But it's human nature to have one thing that makes you uncomfortable. I try not to worry about public speaking too much, and I rehearse for days before a presentation, but no matter what, I always feel nervous before and during a public speech.
The biggest thing that scares me is that someone will laugh at me. That they will find my whole presence absurd, and that they won't be able to control themselves. I know that there is only a slim chance of this happening in front of me, and if they laugh at me behind my back, it really isn't a problem. But this thought it always at the front of my mind, and I have luckily found one technique that helps me, a bit, to get over this fear. If I look at every person in the audience and focus on one thing about them that I found funny, I would feel a little better. Just knowing that I would be able to laugh at them if they laughed at me helped boost my confidence a bit. It's not a very nice way to cope, and it isn't very respectful, but I figure that if they laugh at me, they aren't being very respectful either.
The second thing that scares me, is that I'll forget a large portion of my presentation or speech. Even though I practice for hours a day, for many days before my speech, the second I get in front of people, I feel like I forget everything for a second. The facts always come back to me right after I get up there, but I often forget some points that I wanted to make. I always kick myself when I finish because I realize that a very interesting fact was left out. I know that no one will ever know this, unless I tell someone, and I know that most people really wouldn't care either. It still bother's me though, because I feel like my teacher knows so much about the topic, that they'll call me out on the few thing that I forget to mention. This has never happened, and I know that most teachers wouldn't say anything in front of other student's anyways, but it still sits their in my mind, mocking me silently.
The last thing that scares me is that I will mess up the pronunciation of words, or mix some words together. This actually happens a lot, and I am normally able to simply back track and say the word over again without it looking like I really care. But inside I'm dying of humiliation, I feel like it makes me look illiterate and not as intelligent as the other people in my class. I know that most people don't care, it happens to pretty much everyone when they speak out loud, your brain moves faster than your mouth and vocal chords. But for some reason it's a big deal to me, and it makes me feel self conscious about how I speak. I often mix up my words when I'm just talking to my friends at school, and no one cares, we laugh about it and keep talking. But when I speak publicly, it shakes me to the core.
So it's obvious that I have never been good at public speaking. Speaking to people I don't know at concerts and open houses? Not a problem, but speaking in front of large groups of people I don't know, and even large groups of people I do know, is pretty much impossible. I stutter, I clam up, and I feel bile rise up into my esophagus. I have found some ways that help make it easier, but I doubt that I will ever feel at home while publicly speaking. I will never enjoy public speaking, and I will never be able to help other people be comfortable with public speaking, But it's human nature to have one thing that makes you uncomfortable. I try not to worry about public speaking too much, and I rehearse for days before a presentation, but no matter what, I always feel nervous before and during a public speech.
Monday, April 18, 2011
ISearch Draft
The How To's:
of Writing A Hit Song
Nicole Beckwith
Eng. 101 College Comp.
April 14, 2011
John Goldfine
ii
Table of Contents
iii... Summary
1... The Background
2... Why I Am Writing This
3... Things I Know
4... Searching
5... Things I Learned
6... Sources
iii
The Background
Music is my soul now, my life, the air I breath. I can't explain to you exactly why I love music so much, or why I like country as well as pop and hard rock. I really began to immerse myself in music in 6th grade. It started when a new student arrived at my middle school Emma Malay. She was a huge Green Day fan, the biggest I had seen. Her locker, notebooks, binders, pencil boxes, and books were all completely covered with pictures of them. The closer we got the more I started listening to Green Day, and the more I enjoyed their music. After a month, I was hooked, my locker and binders soon were covered with Green Day pictures. I started listening to the radio constantly, I could never turn it off. It helped me study, sleep, wake up, it helped me do everything.
One morning while my mom was driving me to school I heard two new songs. “Dirty Little Secret” by The All-American Rejects, and “Sugar, We're Going Down” by Fall Out Boy. I instantly fell in love with the two songs and kept my radio on at all times so I would never miss them when they came on. Soon after I heard the two songs my mom brought me to Wal-Mart and told me that I could get one CD that weekend. I had planned on getting The All-American Rejects' CD, but they were all out. When I was younger I always felt like I had to spend money whenever I got it, and that I had to buy something whenever my mom said I could. So I decided that if I couldn't get The All-American Rejects CD I would get the new Fall Out Boy CD. When I got home that night I put on my new CD and laid in bed listening to it for hours. From that moment on Fall Out Boy was my favorite band, it still is today. My obsession with them led me to finding many other bands, The Academy Is, Cute Is What We Aim For, and Gym Class Heroes were just a few.
My obsession for music soon seeped into my obsession with writing. I began to write songs, they weren't very good, the chorus' were normally short poems that I had written, the rest of the song was built sloppily around that. I knew that none of them were ever going to sky rocket me into the music industry, and I was okay with that. Song writing was just something that kept me busy at night when I was procrastinating on my homework. But it did lead me to wondering about how all these
2
people could write these awesome hit songs, while I could only manage to write good chorus'.
Why I Am Writing This
I am writing this because I want to know what exactly makes a hit song. I want to know why “Tik Tok”, by Ke$ha was so big, while “Nightmare”, by Avenged Sevenfold was never played on z107. I love both songs so I don't understand why one is so much bigger than the other. Is it because “Tik Tok” is a pop song, and “Nightmare” is a hard rock song? I can sing both songs word for word, and I am a huge fan of both artists. So I really want to understand what exactly makes a “hit song”.
What we think of as a “hit song” today is a song that can reach number one on the billboard charts. A song that is constantly played on top 40 radio, and is nominated for song of the year at the MTV Video Music Awards. They're the songs that are on the radio every hour, and are lip synched on YouTube. The songs that are preformed on every morning show, talk show, and award show in the country. They are the songs that you love to hear for 24 hours straight for a week, then you want to shoot yourself in the head whenever you hear it after that week.
Things I Know
I know what people classify as a hit song, it is typically a song that has placed in the top ten in a popular, national music chart, like Billboard. I know that this time in 2010 the top ten songs on the Billboard Hot100 were, “Rude Boy”, “Nothin' On You”, “Hey Soul Sister”, “Need You Now”, “Telephone”, “Break Your Heart”, “Imma Be”, “Baby”, “In My Head” and “BedRock”. I can tell you that I could sing the chorus of 8 out of the above 10, even a year later.
I know that the top 10 songs on that chart this week are, “E.T.”, “S&M”, “Just Can't Get Enough”, “Forget You”, “Born This Way”, “Look At Me Now”, “Down On Me”, “On The Floor”, “Perfect”, and “Rolling In The Deep”. I can sing the chorus of 8 out of 10 of these songs as well. I know that of you search “how to write a hit song” on the internet, you are swarmed with tons of sites on the subject. There have been books written about writing his songs, and you can find many interviews with artists about the popularity of their song and how it has become a hit.
Searching
When I first decided on this topic for my ISearch, I sent a message to my close friends on Facebook, asking what their favorite song was, who their favorite artist/band was, what was a “hit song” out today that they loved, what they believe makes a “hit song” and why did they like that song and artist. After reading all the responses I got, I saw that pretty much everyone had said they liked a song because it was relateable and catchy.
I won't copy down what everyone's response to the first 2 questions were, because I believe that they have no real interest to the paper now. But the following were everyone's responses to the last 2 questions I had asked, what was a “hit song” out today that they loved, what they believe makes a “hit song”.
What is a hit song from today that you love?
Bethany Ward: “I love the song Super Bass by Nicki Minaj. I like it so much because it's fun to try to rap with her, and I can sing along and it's got really cute/cool lyrics.”
Kacey Beckwith: “ back to december is one of my favorite songs out right now by her, and it's a song that a lot of people can relate to. if a person can relate to a song, chances are they will like it. it's also important for there to be a hook in the song.”
Taryn Lane: “My favourite hit song right now would have to be "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga. And not just because I love absolutely anything Lady Gaga even spits on, but because those lyrics really made me realize that I am who I am, and no stupid boy is ever gonna mess with that. I love listening to it. (Oh yeah, and a background beat stolen from Madonna's "Express Yourself" also helps! Haha.)”
Melissa Trotter: “On the song "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" by Cage The Elephant it has a lot to say. How the world is cruel and people will do anything for money to get by in our cruel world. Plus it tells of people who you can't blame for the things they do to get money like a hooker and a crimmal. And these people say "I got bills to pay, I got a mouth to feed and there ain't nothing in this world for free. I can't slow down, I can't hold back. But you know I wish I could. Cause there ain't no rest for the wicked till we close our eyes for good." That lyric is my favorite because it's the truth of life that people seem to ignore and/or deny. “
A hit song from today that I like, is “Firework” by Katy Perry. I love it becaause it is really fun to dance to and it has a fast and fun tempo, but it also has a really strong and heartfelt message to it. The song is all about being yourself and not getting down just because you aren't necesarilly one of the “popular” girls, or because not every guy you see throws themselves at your feet. We're all human and we all have insecurities and problems that we have to ever come. Life isn't a simple walk in the park for people and no matter how bad things seem to be you have the power to ever come it all and show the world your spark.
What do you think makes a hit song?
Bethany Ward: “I think songs that are on the radio and become hits do so because they are relatable to every situation, are really upbeat, or are really catchy. Also if the artist does something weird or cool to go along with the new song, they usually seem to catch on and be hits more.”
Kacey Beckwith: “ the chorus or some part of the song needs to be catchy, something that will be remembered outside of the song. if a person can make a song that many people can relate to, and also make some aspect of it catchy, then chances are good that it will be a hit. “
Taryn Lane: “I believe what makes a hit song is a perfectly blended combination of a catchy rhythm, attitude, and lyrics that speak to you. You have to be able to relate to the lyrics to love the song. (Well, mostly. With a few exceptions...and just about every ke$ha song [: ) Which would lead me to why some people don't like songs: the lyrics mean nothing to them, so they can't make a connection.”
Alissa Toner: “a hit song would have good music in the background, voices that AREN’T auto-tuned, and good lyrics. A good beat helps, too. I like Lady Gaga a LOT because she doesn’t sound auto-tuned and her music makes even me want to dance and she is just amazing."
I think that a hit song, today, absolutely has to be something that a majority of people can relate to in some way. Whether it reminds them of something that happened to them, or if it is just talking about something they wish they could experiance, it has to make a connection with people. You can't just write down a few random verses and chorus' about something that few people care about, the message behind the song has to be strong. “Tik Tok” had catchy lyrics and melodies but at the same time it talked about having a good time with friends and doing whatever you wanted to do. That's something that speaks to a lot of teenagers and young adults because you are in that stage of your life where you don't wanna do things for other people.
Now that I know what I believe makes a hit song, and what some of my friends think make a hit song, I should tell you what several websites say make a hit song. The first website I came to was an article by Yogesh Bakshi, titled “How To Write A Hit Pop Song”. He split up the writing process into 5 parts, story, format, length, beat/speed, and the hook. The tips are as follow, “
Mid-up-tempo 4/4 beat
13-20 second intro, 4 odd minutes total length
A set pattern of the song
A verse that tells a story which the listener can relate to
A chorus that contains a hook which listeners will want to hum again and again”
This article dealt more with the technical aspect of writing a hot song, which is helpful if you can play an instrument well, I however, can not, so as helpful as technical aspects are, they don't do a lot of good if you don't have the lyrics down pack. So the next article I found was far more helpful for someone who wants to just focus on the lyrics for now.
Guitar Noise interviewed Keane Li, an award winning songwriter and guitarist for Festizio. He gave their readers 10 tips on how to write a “commercial friendly” hit song.
“Keep a journal, take chances, produce the song in your head, listen to “well written” songs in your genre, build your world and stick to it, add some pizzazz to chord progressions, let your words write themselves, listen to your songs as an audience member for the first time, be inspired, and practice.”
Keane said he had never tried the “journal keeping method” but that is seemed to work for many people and seemed to be a good idea. So when keeping a journal try these tips,
“Every time you have an idea for a new song or a catchy line, write it down... keep all your old songs. Keep the music and lyrics every time you decide not to use a song. You may often find a use for it later...”
Taking chances is a tip that I especially like, because I don't have a lot of technical talent, but Keane says that originality can, in many cases, make up for that. I didn't understand the “produce the song in your head” tip, probably because I have no idea what producing a song means, but one part of that tip I did understand was that the song should always build, it should never have a few high points and a few low points. Listening to well written songs seems like a given to me. If you want to be the best, you need to learn from the best. So if I wanted to be like Ke$ha, I would have to listen to every Ke$ha song I could find. If I wanted to be like Avenged Sevenfold, I would have to listen to every Avenged Sevenfold song I could find. Pretty much the easiest tip I have read.
Sticking to the world you built for the song seems the hardest, because it's so easy to get distracted. I have many times started writing a song about one incident in my life, and by the end of the song I'm talking about another. It's important to stick to one topic, and not be all over the place. And letting the words write themselves can be even more challenging. My mind has, on many occasions, wandered off as I am writing a song, and when I read over it, it seems as though I left to wonderland for the second half of the song.
Listening to your song as an audience seems to the most important to me. I am very insecure about having people criticizing my work, so many times I will write a song and stick it back into my binder. But if someone is serious about becoming a musician you can't be that insecure, especially with yourself. It's important to stand back for a moment and think objectively about your song.
The last source I found is my favorite out of the three. It relates every tip to Lady Gaga's song “Poker Face”, one of my favorites, and it is the easiest to understand.
“FIND GOOD PRODUCTION, because the first thing people usually pick up on is how a song sounds. Having solid production can turn almost any song into a media sensation. Poker Face's instrumentation is very strong, very catchy and has a lot of variation in it.
CREATE A GOOD SONG CONCEPT. Poke Face does this and more by using the concept of a poker face as a metaphor for sexuality and deception. Songs with thought behind them tend to have a lot more staying power than their competitors.
WRITE A CATCHY HOOK. This is critical to making a hit song, because the chorus, or the hook, is usually the first part of the song that people memorize. In the case of Poker Face, the hook is catchy because of the stutter-like manner in which it is delivered.
HAVE STRONG LYRICS. Strong songwriting is mostly to appease musical critics. Most pop music fans could careless about the words in the song, as long as they are catchy. Lady Gaga's lyrics in Poker Face are surprisingly strong for such a poppy record.”
I would have to agree with pretty much everything that was in this article. If a song sounds interesting or catchy in the first 15 seconds or so, I listen to the rest, if it's boring, I change it. The short attention spans of today's youth prevent many of them from liking a song that doesn't have a very catchy beginning. The concept of the song is the next thing that can throw a listener off. I know that many times, I have listened to a song that has a catchy beginning, but after hearing the lyrics and understanding the idea of the song, I get bored and never listen to it again. You could have a very catchy beginning melody to a song, but if they concept is that fried chicken is good, you probably aren't going to have many fans.
Source List
Bakshi, Yogesh. "How to Write a Hit Pop Song: Essential Ingredients of a Top 10 Pop Song!" Suite101.com: Online Magazine and Writers' Network. Suite101, 2 Apr. 2007. Web. 18 Apr. 2011..
"Top 100 Music Hits, Top 100 Music Charts, Top 100 Songs & The Hot 100 | Billboard.com." Music News, Reviews, Articles, Information, News Online & Free Music | Billboard.com. Billboard, 18 Apr. 2011. Web. 18 Apr. 2011..
Li, Keane. "Top 10 Tips: Writing a “Hit” Song - Guitar Noise." Guitar Noise - Learn How to Play Guitar. Facebook and Guitar Noise. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
Milam, Jonathan. "How to Make a Hit Single | EHow.com." EHow | How to Videos, Articles & More - Trusted Advice for the Curious Life | EHow.com. Tips From People Like You. Web. 18 Apr. 2011..
Facebook interviews
of Writing A Hit Song
Nicole Beckwith
Eng. 101 College Comp.
April 14, 2011
John Goldfine
ii
Table of Contents
iii... Summary
1... The Background
2... Why I Am Writing This
3... Things I Know
4... Searching
5... Things I Learned
6... Sources
iii
The Background
Music is my soul now, my life, the air I breath. I can't explain to you exactly why I love music so much, or why I like country as well as pop and hard rock. I really began to immerse myself in music in 6th grade. It started when a new student arrived at my middle school Emma Malay. She was a huge Green Day fan, the biggest I had seen. Her locker, notebooks, binders, pencil boxes, and books were all completely covered with pictures of them. The closer we got the more I started listening to Green Day, and the more I enjoyed their music. After a month, I was hooked, my locker and binders soon were covered with Green Day pictures. I started listening to the radio constantly, I could never turn it off. It helped me study, sleep, wake up, it helped me do everything.
One morning while my mom was driving me to school I heard two new songs. “Dirty Little Secret” by The All-American Rejects, and “Sugar, We're Going Down” by Fall Out Boy. I instantly fell in love with the two songs and kept my radio on at all times so I would never miss them when they came on. Soon after I heard the two songs my mom brought me to Wal-Mart and told me that I could get one CD that weekend. I had planned on getting The All-American Rejects' CD, but they were all out. When I was younger I always felt like I had to spend money whenever I got it, and that I had to buy something whenever my mom said I could. So I decided that if I couldn't get The All-American Rejects CD I would get the new Fall Out Boy CD. When I got home that night I put on my new CD and laid in bed listening to it for hours. From that moment on Fall Out Boy was my favorite band, it still is today. My obsession with them led me to finding many other bands, The Academy Is, Cute Is What We Aim For, and Gym Class Heroes were just a few.
My obsession for music soon seeped into my obsession with writing. I began to write songs, they weren't very good, the chorus' were normally short poems that I had written, the rest of the song was built sloppily around that. I knew that none of them were ever going to sky rocket me into the music industry, and I was okay with that. Song writing was just something that kept me busy at night when I was procrastinating on my homework. But it did lead me to wondering about how all these
2
people could write these awesome hit songs, while I could only manage to write good chorus'.
Why I Am Writing This
I am writing this because I want to know what exactly makes a hit song. I want to know why “Tik Tok”, by Ke$ha was so big, while “Nightmare”, by Avenged Sevenfold was never played on z107. I love both songs so I don't understand why one is so much bigger than the other. Is it because “Tik Tok” is a pop song, and “Nightmare” is a hard rock song? I can sing both songs word for word, and I am a huge fan of both artists. So I really want to understand what exactly makes a “hit song”.
What we think of as a “hit song” today is a song that can reach number one on the billboard charts. A song that is constantly played on top 40 radio, and is nominated for song of the year at the MTV Video Music Awards. They're the songs that are on the radio every hour, and are lip synched on YouTube. The songs that are preformed on every morning show, talk show, and award show in the country. They are the songs that you love to hear for 24 hours straight for a week, then you want to shoot yourself in the head whenever you hear it after that week.
Things I Know
I know what people classify as a hit song, it is typically a song that has placed in the top ten in a popular, national music chart, like Billboard. I know that this time in 2010 the top ten songs on the Billboard Hot100 were, “Rude Boy”, “Nothin' On You”, “Hey Soul Sister”, “Need You Now”, “Telephone”, “Break Your Heart”, “Imma Be”, “Baby”, “In My Head” and “BedRock”. I can tell you that I could sing the chorus of 8 out of the above 10, even a year later.
I know that the top 10 songs on that chart this week are, “E.T.”, “S&M”, “Just Can't Get Enough”, “Forget You”, “Born This Way”, “Look At Me Now”, “Down On Me”, “On The Floor”, “Perfect”, and “Rolling In The Deep”. I can sing the chorus of 8 out of 10 of these songs as well. I know that of you search “how to write a hit song” on the internet, you are swarmed with tons of sites on the subject. There have been books written about writing his songs, and you can find many interviews with artists about the popularity of their song and how it has become a hit.
Searching
When I first decided on this topic for my ISearch, I sent a message to my close friends on Facebook, asking what their favorite song was, who their favorite artist/band was, what was a “hit song” out today that they loved, what they believe makes a “hit song” and why did they like that song and artist. After reading all the responses I got, I saw that pretty much everyone had said they liked a song because it was relateable and catchy.
I won't copy down what everyone's response to the first 2 questions were, because I believe that they have no real interest to the paper now. But the following were everyone's responses to the last 2 questions I had asked, what was a “hit song” out today that they loved, what they believe makes a “hit song”.
What is a hit song from today that you love?
Bethany Ward: “I love the song Super Bass by Nicki Minaj. I like it so much because it's fun to try to rap with her, and I can sing along and it's got really cute/cool lyrics.”
Kacey Beckwith: “ back to december is one of my favorite songs out right now by her, and it's a song that a lot of people can relate to. if a person can relate to a song, chances are they will like it. it's also important for there to be a hook in the song.”
Taryn Lane: “My favourite hit song right now would have to be "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga. And not just because I love absolutely anything Lady Gaga even spits on, but because those lyrics really made me realize that I am who I am, and no stupid boy is ever gonna mess with that. I love listening to it. (Oh yeah, and a background beat stolen from Madonna's "Express Yourself" also helps! Haha.)”
Melissa Trotter: “On the song "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" by Cage The Elephant it has a lot to say. How the world is cruel and people will do anything for money to get by in our cruel world. Plus it tells of people who you can't blame for the things they do to get money like a hooker and a crimmal. And these people say "I got bills to pay, I got a mouth to feed and there ain't nothing in this world for free. I can't slow down, I can't hold back. But you know I wish I could. Cause there ain't no rest for the wicked till we close our eyes for good." That lyric is my favorite because it's the truth of life that people seem to ignore and/or deny. “
A hit song from today that I like, is “Firework” by Katy Perry. I love it becaause it is really fun to dance to and it has a fast and fun tempo, but it also has a really strong and heartfelt message to it. The song is all about being yourself and not getting down just because you aren't necesarilly one of the “popular” girls, or because not every guy you see throws themselves at your feet. We're all human and we all have insecurities and problems that we have to ever come. Life isn't a simple walk in the park for people and no matter how bad things seem to be you have the power to ever come it all and show the world your spark.
What do you think makes a hit song?
Bethany Ward: “I think songs that are on the radio and become hits do so because they are relatable to every situation, are really upbeat, or are really catchy. Also if the artist does something weird or cool to go along with the new song, they usually seem to catch on and be hits more.”
Kacey Beckwith: “ the chorus or some part of the song needs to be catchy, something that will be remembered outside of the song. if a person can make a song that many people can relate to, and also make some aspect of it catchy, then chances are good that it will be a hit. “
Taryn Lane: “I believe what makes a hit song is a perfectly blended combination of a catchy rhythm, attitude, and lyrics that speak to you. You have to be able to relate to the lyrics to love the song. (Well, mostly. With a few exceptions...and just about every ke$ha song [: ) Which would lead me to why some people don't like songs: the lyrics mean nothing to them, so they can't make a connection.”
Alissa Toner: “a hit song would have good music in the background, voices that AREN’T auto-tuned, and good lyrics. A good beat helps, too. I like Lady Gaga a LOT because she doesn’t sound auto-tuned and her music makes even me want to dance and she is just amazing."
I think that a hit song, today, absolutely has to be something that a majority of people can relate to in some way. Whether it reminds them of something that happened to them, or if it is just talking about something they wish they could experiance, it has to make a connection with people. You can't just write down a few random verses and chorus' about something that few people care about, the message behind the song has to be strong. “Tik Tok” had catchy lyrics and melodies but at the same time it talked about having a good time with friends and doing whatever you wanted to do. That's something that speaks to a lot of teenagers and young adults because you are in that stage of your life where you don't wanna do things for other people.
Now that I know what I believe makes a hit song, and what some of my friends think make a hit song, I should tell you what several websites say make a hit song. The first website I came to was an article by Yogesh Bakshi, titled “How To Write A Hit Pop Song”. He split up the writing process into 5 parts, story, format, length, beat/speed, and the hook. The tips are as follow, “
Mid-up-tempo 4/4 beat
13-20 second intro, 4 odd minutes total length
A set pattern of the song
A verse that tells a story which the listener can relate to
A chorus that contains a hook which listeners will want to hum again and again”
This article dealt more with the technical aspect of writing a hot song, which is helpful if you can play an instrument well, I however, can not, so as helpful as technical aspects are, they don't do a lot of good if you don't have the lyrics down pack. So the next article I found was far more helpful for someone who wants to just focus on the lyrics for now.
Guitar Noise interviewed Keane Li, an award winning songwriter and guitarist for Festizio. He gave their readers 10 tips on how to write a “commercial friendly” hit song.
“Keep a journal, take chances, produce the song in your head, listen to “well written” songs in your genre, build your world and stick to it, add some pizzazz to chord progressions, let your words write themselves, listen to your songs as an audience member for the first time, be inspired, and practice.”
Keane said he had never tried the “journal keeping method” but that is seemed to work for many people and seemed to be a good idea. So when keeping a journal try these tips,
“Every time you have an idea for a new song or a catchy line, write it down... keep all your old songs. Keep the music and lyrics every time you decide not to use a song. You may often find a use for it later...”
Taking chances is a tip that I especially like, because I don't have a lot of technical talent, but Keane says that originality can, in many cases, make up for that. I didn't understand the “produce the song in your head” tip, probably because I have no idea what producing a song means, but one part of that tip I did understand was that the song should always build, it should never have a few high points and a few low points. Listening to well written songs seems like a given to me. If you want to be the best, you need to learn from the best. So if I wanted to be like Ke$ha, I would have to listen to every Ke$ha song I could find. If I wanted to be like Avenged Sevenfold, I would have to listen to every Avenged Sevenfold song I could find. Pretty much the easiest tip I have read.
Sticking to the world you built for the song seems the hardest, because it's so easy to get distracted. I have many times started writing a song about one incident in my life, and by the end of the song I'm talking about another. It's important to stick to one topic, and not be all over the place. And letting the words write themselves can be even more challenging. My mind has, on many occasions, wandered off as I am writing a song, and when I read over it, it seems as though I left to wonderland for the second half of the song.
Listening to your song as an audience seems to the most important to me. I am very insecure about having people criticizing my work, so many times I will write a song and stick it back into my binder. But if someone is serious about becoming a musician you can't be that insecure, especially with yourself. It's important to stand back for a moment and think objectively about your song.
The last source I found is my favorite out of the three. It relates every tip to Lady Gaga's song “Poker Face”, one of my favorites, and it is the easiest to understand.
“FIND GOOD PRODUCTION, because the first thing people usually pick up on is how a song sounds. Having solid production can turn almost any song into a media sensation. Poker Face's instrumentation is very strong, very catchy and has a lot of variation in it.
CREATE A GOOD SONG CONCEPT. Poke Face does this and more by using the concept of a poker face as a metaphor for sexuality and deception. Songs with thought behind them tend to have a lot more staying power than their competitors.
WRITE A CATCHY HOOK. This is critical to making a hit song, because the chorus, or the hook, is usually the first part of the song that people memorize. In the case of Poker Face, the hook is catchy because of the stutter-like manner in which it is delivered.
HAVE STRONG LYRICS. Strong songwriting is mostly to appease musical critics. Most pop music fans could careless about the words in the song, as long as they are catchy. Lady Gaga's lyrics in Poker Face are surprisingly strong for such a poppy record.”
I would have to agree with pretty much everything that was in this article. If a song sounds interesting or catchy in the first 15 seconds or so, I listen to the rest, if it's boring, I change it. The short attention spans of today's youth prevent many of them from liking a song that doesn't have a very catchy beginning. The concept of the song is the next thing that can throw a listener off. I know that many times, I have listened to a song that has a catchy beginning, but after hearing the lyrics and understanding the idea of the song, I get bored and never listen to it again. You could have a very catchy beginning melody to a song, but if they concept is that fried chicken is good, you probably aren't going to have many fans.
Source List
Bakshi, Yogesh. "How to Write a Hit Pop Song: Essential Ingredients of a Top 10 Pop Song!" Suite101.com: Online Magazine and Writers' Network. Suite101, 2 Apr. 2007. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
"Top 100 Music Hits, Top 100 Music Charts, Top 100 Songs & The Hot 100 | Billboard.com." Music News, Reviews, Articles, Information, News Online & Free Music | Billboard.com. Billboard, 18 Apr. 2011. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
Li, Keane. "Top 10 Tips: Writing a “Hit” Song - Guitar Noise." Guitar Noise - Learn How to Play Guitar. Facebook and Guitar Noise. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
Milam, Jonathan. "How to Make a Hit Single | EHow.com." EHow | How to Videos, Articles & More - Trusted Advice for the Curious Life | EHow.com. Tips From People Like You. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
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Sunday, March 20, 2011
Add on to Intro/Backgound to ISearch
I'm learning how to play piano and guitar, and I want to learn how to play the violin soon. I've been writing for pretty much my hole life. I prefer to write poetry and fictional stories because I can make my life sound interesting in a poem, and writing about fictional thoughts in my head is far more interesting than writing about my life. I have written some "songs", they aren't very good in my opinion, but there are some verses or chorus' in them that I like. I've tried to make up guitar riffs to match the lyrics, but since I pretty much play guitar by ear, it's a little hard to do so. I would love to some day write a song and music to go with it.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Contrast Essay
My Mom's side of the family has lived in Texas their whole lives, my grandparents, and probably earlier, to my aunts and uncles. And my Dad's side of the family has lived in Maine their whole lives, again grandparents to my Dad. When my dad was 18 he joined he army and was station in Fort Worth Texas, some months later I guess he met my mom, I'm not really sure how exactly they met. The whole dating situation and falling in love thing is foggy in my memory, I'm sure my parents told me at one time but I can't remember. But they ended up getting together and when my Mom was 20 and my Dad was 22 they got married. They were moved over to Germany where my Dad was re-stationed and a few months later m sister, Kacey, was born. They lived in German for a few years before my dad was station back at Fort Hood, and a few months after that he was discharged. The question came up, where were the going to live now? My Dad was from Maine, and had no wishes to leave, and my mom was from Texas and didn't really want to move across the country, but she, of course, ended up giving in and to Maine they went. I've lived in Maine my whole life, and almost every summer my mom, sister and I travel down to Texas for 2 weeks to visit our family. Over the years I have fallen in love with the state and the people whole live their, not just my family.
First let me start with the rain storms, now it’s pretty obvious that Texas weather and Maine weather are very different. The rainstorms, I’ve noticed, seem to be the most different, well; at least to me they seem the most different. Rainstorms aren’t as frequent in Texas as they are here in Maine, and the storms that Texas does get seem almost magical. The lightening shoots down in crooked lines from the sky, never fracturing off into branches like the lightening up here. It’s an amazing sight; the thunder is so much louder too. It rumbles through the sky and shakes foundations, but it never sounds scary. I can remember nights when I would just stare out of the large sliding glass doors in the guest bedroom. Watching the sky light up with the crooked lines of lightening, feeling the house shake with the rumble of the thunder. The storms were never as violent down there as they get up here. I remember nights of hiding under my covers, struggling to push the sound of the angry thunder and the loud lashing of the daggers of rain the tried to pierce the windows. The sky turned so bright with the thousands of lightening branches sprouting all over. I’m not sure why the storms up here scared me so much, and the storms down there didn’t. Maybe it was because I felt safer there than I did back home. I never had to deal with mean people in school, or my parents fighting. For a couple weeks my life seemed perfect.
My family is also very different, my dad’s side of the family all live up here, and my mom’s side of the family all live down in TX. My Maine family is pretty mellow, and they all pretty much work outside. My dad works driving heavy equipment at Hardwood Products in Guilford; my Bumpa drove heavy equipment before he retired. My aunt went to college and teaches now, so she kind of stands out in the family. My mom works as a patient rep. in the Martin’s Point healthcare office in Bangor, and the rest of her family works at offices or are self employed. My Texas family fights a lot, there’s always someone mad at someone else. I guess you would think that this would hinder me from wanting to be around them, but it doesn’t. They always try to not let whatever’s going on at that time affect our visit. I get sick of all the drama sometimes, when it begins to feel like I’m back at school anyways. As much as I love my family that lives down south, I don’t know if I would be able to handle all of the fighting all the time. I take after my Nana, my dad’s mom, that way, I hate drama, and it wears me out. While my family up here may not always get along, and my parents may fight more often now, it’s never as prevalent as it is with my mom’s family.
The last difference is that there is so much more to do in Texas, than there is to do up here. You may be saying, ah yeah no crap, but you never really know just how much more there is to do in Texas if you’ve never been. There’s pretty much something for everyone, tons of museums on everything from cowboys and rangers, to mammoth remains. There are a bunch of different theme parks too, water parks like, and I may spell this very wrong, Schlitterbaun and Sea World, to Six Flags Fiesta. You can travel down to San Antonio and go on the River Walk and then to the Alamo, both places are, in my opinion, too beautiful for words. Or you can go down to the coast and stick your feet into the chilly yet warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. I know that I sound like one of those travel commercials, but it’s all true. I’ll admit that Maine looks beautiful with all the snow covering the ground and trees, and that the coast is too remarkable for words. I have had a lot of fun times up here, the coast is one of the most memorable things I’ve ever seen; and I love to go down to Portland for concerts. I love the York Zoo, and Shirley holds so many wonderful memories from my childhood, but I can honestly say that besides my family and very close friends, and the snow, if I were to move to Texas right now, I wouldn’t feel like I was being deprived of anything.
There have been many times when I have decided that I’ve had enough of the weather and people and scenery up here. Times when I just want to leave and never come back; never look back. Then there are times when I can never think about leaving, times when the air becomes so still and the snow seems to be floating down. Times when I can see almost every star in the sky outside of my bedroom window, something I can’t do at my grandparents house in Bellmead, Texas. Though I yearn to live in a much larger and more exciting state, that has a more controlled climate, I can’t really imagine leaving Maine, and never coming back.
First let me start with the rain storms, now it’s pretty obvious that Texas weather and Maine weather are very different. The rainstorms, I’ve noticed, seem to be the most different, well; at least to me they seem the most different. Rainstorms aren’t as frequent in Texas as they are here in Maine, and the storms that Texas does get seem almost magical. The lightening shoots down in crooked lines from the sky, never fracturing off into branches like the lightening up here. It’s an amazing sight; the thunder is so much louder too. It rumbles through the sky and shakes foundations, but it never sounds scary. I can remember nights when I would just stare out of the large sliding glass doors in the guest bedroom. Watching the sky light up with the crooked lines of lightening, feeling the house shake with the rumble of the thunder. The storms were never as violent down there as they get up here. I remember nights of hiding under my covers, struggling to push the sound of the angry thunder and the loud lashing of the daggers of rain the tried to pierce the windows. The sky turned so bright with the thousands of lightening branches sprouting all over. I’m not sure why the storms up here scared me so much, and the storms down there didn’t. Maybe it was because I felt safer there than I did back home. I never had to deal with mean people in school, or my parents fighting. For a couple weeks my life seemed perfect.
My family is also very different, my dad’s side of the family all live up here, and my mom’s side of the family all live down in TX. My Maine family is pretty mellow, and they all pretty much work outside. My dad works driving heavy equipment at Hardwood Products in Guilford; my Bumpa drove heavy equipment before he retired. My aunt went to college and teaches now, so she kind of stands out in the family. My mom works as a patient rep. in the Martin’s Point healthcare office in Bangor, and the rest of her family works at offices or are self employed. My Texas family fights a lot, there’s always someone mad at someone else. I guess you would think that this would hinder me from wanting to be around them, but it doesn’t. They always try to not let whatever’s going on at that time affect our visit. I get sick of all the drama sometimes, when it begins to feel like I’m back at school anyways. As much as I love my family that lives down south, I don’t know if I would be able to handle all of the fighting all the time. I take after my Nana, my dad’s mom, that way, I hate drama, and it wears me out. While my family up here may not always get along, and my parents may fight more often now, it’s never as prevalent as it is with my mom’s family.
The last difference is that there is so much more to do in Texas, than there is to do up here. You may be saying, ah yeah no crap, but you never really know just how much more there is to do in Texas if you’ve never been. There’s pretty much something for everyone, tons of museums on everything from cowboys and rangers, to mammoth remains. There are a bunch of different theme parks too, water parks like, and I may spell this very wrong, Schlitterbaun and Sea World, to Six Flags Fiesta. You can travel down to San Antonio and go on the River Walk and then to the Alamo, both places are, in my opinion, too beautiful for words. Or you can go down to the coast and stick your feet into the chilly yet warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. I know that I sound like one of those travel commercials, but it’s all true. I’ll admit that Maine looks beautiful with all the snow covering the ground and trees, and that the coast is too remarkable for words. I have had a lot of fun times up here, the coast is one of the most memorable things I’ve ever seen; and I love to go down to Portland for concerts. I love the York Zoo, and Shirley holds so many wonderful memories from my childhood, but I can honestly say that besides my family and very close friends, and the snow, if I were to move to Texas right now, I wouldn’t feel like I was being deprived of anything.
There have been many times when I have decided that I’ve had enough of the weather and people and scenery up here. Times when I just want to leave and never come back; never look back. Then there are times when I can never think about leaving, times when the air becomes so still and the snow seems to be floating down. Times when I can see almost every star in the sky outside of my bedroom window, something I can’t do at my grandparents house in Bellmead, Texas. Though I yearn to live in a much larger and more exciting state, that has a more controlled climate, I can’t really imagine leaving Maine, and never coming back.
Friday, March 11, 2011
ISearch Why
I decided to research hit music because music is something that has inspired my writing greatly over the past few years. I love music and writing, so whenever I can combined the two I'm in heaven. I always make up circumstances for the songs, video ideas, background information, whenever I hear a song that I really like. I've also been puzzled by the fact that some people can hate a song I adore, and vice versa. I've started to wonder over the last year, what exactly makes a hit song? Is it the beat, the lyrics, the message, the image of the band/artist, what? So I've taken my love of music, and my curiosity about people's taste in music and how hit songs are made, and somehow managed to break them down into a few question I need to ask myself to complete this assignment.
- Why do some people, like me, live for music, and to others it's just background noise?
- What makes a hit song, or a song popular?
- Why do I love Avenged Sevenfold and Fall Out Boy, and my sister lives Justin Beiber and Taylor Swift?
- Why do artists and bands use who use auto-tunes in the recording booth still get famous?
ISearch Background/Intro
Most people can remember the songs they listened to when they were very young, the nursery rhyme type songs from TV shows and stuff. Well I can't, I can remeber listening to N*SYNC, The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Christinia Aguilera. My sister and I would blast their music in her room and learn all the words and dance moves. Even at the young age of 7 or 8 I was already passionate about music. From then N*SYNC and he Backstreet Boys broke up, they were my two favorites, until Fall Out Boy released Sugar, We're Going Down and Dance Dance I really can not remeber what I listened to. I can clearly remeber the day that I first heard Sugar, We're Going Down though, because it was the same day I heard Dirty Little Secret by All American Rejects. I was sitting in the front seat of my Mom's car as she drove me to school, she had just turned onto the road that my school was on, Dirty Little Secret had just been playing for the first time, and Sugar, We're Going Down came on. At first I thought they were by the same band, oh naive little me. I learned a few days later that Dirty Little Secret, the song I was completely in love with, far more than Sugar at the time, was by All American Rejects. So that weekend on or grocery shopping trip to walmart, my sister and I went back to the electronics section to try and find their cd. As we prowled the shelves looking for the disc my sister found the All American Rejects slot, it was empty. I was heart broken at first, until she found the cd with Sugar We're Going Down, he exact words were, "Hey Nicki, this is the band that sings that other song you like so much." My mom rearely let me buy cds at that time so instead of waiting, something I was not good at even then, I bought the Fall Out Boy cd. The second I got home I popped it into my stereo and sat on by bed, reading a magazine and listening. That was all it took, I was hooked, I fell in love with them, and in turn, with pop punk and rock music. Over the last few years my tastes in music have elvolved a bit. I not listen to a bit of everything, from country to screamo. Fall Out Boy is still my favorite bad however, and I doubt that will ever change.
Contrast Intro 2
My Mom's side of the family has lived in Texas their whole lives, my grandparents, and probably earlier, to my aunts and uncles. And my Dad's side of the family has lived in Maine their whole lives, again grandparents to my Dad. When my dad was 18 he joined he army and was station in Fort Worth Texas, some months later I guess he met my mom, I'm not really sure how exactly they met. The whole dating situation and falling in love thing is foggy in my memory, I'm sure my parents told me at one time but I can't remeber. But they ended up getting together and when my Mom was 20 and my Dad was 22 they got married. They were moved over to Germany where my Dad was restationed, and a few months later m sister, KAcey, was born. They lived in German for a few years before my dad was station back at Fort Hood, and a few months after that he was discharged. The question came up, where were the going to live now? My Dad was from Maine, and had no wishes to leave, and my mom was from Texas and didn't really want to move across the country, but she, of course, ended up giving in and to Maine they went. I've lived in Maine my whole life, and almost every summer my mom, sister and I travel down to Texas for 2 weeks to visit our family. Over the years I have fallen in love with the state and the people whole live their, not just my family.
Contrast Intro 1
When deciding on what college to attend I felt sort of overwhelmed. There were two schools that were at the top of my list, and I had been accepted to both. It was obvious that I loved C-S more than USM, but I still kept USM in mind because tuition was far more cheap. I knew that if I went to USM I would be more focused on journalism, not actual creative writing like poetry and novels. C-S had a smaller campus and it was absolutely nothing like high school. It was expensive but it was private, so I would be getting a lot of financial assistance from the college itself. I knew that I would still have a lot to come up with by using outside scholarships, grants, and loans. I knew that I wanted to go to C-S much more than I wanted to go to USM. But I also didn't want to graduate college already being buried under student loans, so what was I going to do?
Category Essay
Music has pretty much always been like air to me, so I like to think that I have a pretty good taste in music, even though that can be quite abstract since not everyone likes the same music. But I’ve found that all songs can be placed into one of three categories for everyone. There’s the Beloved, then the Liked, and lastly the Hated. Everyone places songs or artist’s into one of the categories, it human nature to put labels on things so you can find them easily later. Think of the categories as really long playlists since they have every song you’ve ever heard in your life.
Beloved songs are songs that you can listen to on repeat for an hour and you never want to change the song. Songs that you will listen to at every free moment just so you can memorize the lyrics. If this category were a playlist for me it would have, Bye, Bye, Bye by N*SYNC, Dance, Dance by Fall Out Boy, Rolling in the Deep by Adele, and Fiction by Avenged Sevenfold, just to name a few. I could go on and on, for hours probably, but that would be mundane and boring, as well as pointless. For my sister her Beloved playlist would have tons of Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Justin Beiber, and Miley Cyrus. I’ve noticed that a Beloved song relates to the fan’s life in one of two ways, either is tells the story of an event the fan experienced, like a bad break up or a parent’s divorce. Or it can describe what the fan wished their life was like, I love Ke$ha’s song Tik Tok because I wish that I could go to cool clubs and parties with my best friends, but the getting wasted part probably wouldn’t happen. I also love Miley Cyrus’ At the Bottom of the Ocean because it describes one of my breakups perfectly.
The second playlist is Liked, the songs that you put on shuffle and listen to for a bit then move on from. The songs that come on the radio and you listen to and kind of hum along with. You can’t listen to them for hours, but you can listen to them a few times and then you get sick of them and have to change the song. These songs normally have beats that the fan is attracted to, the lyrics may not be ground breaking and relatable or a dream the person has, but they’re something you can move to and hum. I like the song Mine by Taylor Swift, but if I hear it more than twice in a row, I want to jump out a window. I’ll listen to it if it comes on the radio, or on shuffle, but I’ll never really purposefully listen to it unless my friends and I are talking about it.
The last playlist is Hated; these are the songs that you could not even be paid to listen to! The songs that make you turn the radio off when they come on, like Justin Beiber to who are over the age of 15. My hated playlist has Never Say Never by Beiber, Don’t Stop Believing from the Glee soundtrack, and pretty much anything from Nickelback. This list is normally the longest, well for me at least, since generally speaking, you really don’t love or like most of the songs you hear.
For me the Beloved playlist is made up of artists and a few individual songs. I can’t seem to hate or even just like any Fall Out Boy, Avenged Sevenfold, or Paramore song I hear. The liked list is pretty long because I tend to find random songs catchy, like Dynamite by Taio Cruz, I really don’t like anything else he has, but I love that song. The hated list is made up of artists, with a few songs, as well. I like Adam Lambert, but I hate two of the songs on his album so much that I can’t even remember their names. I can’t say what causes people to hate songs, except for annoyance, but I doubt anyone could tell you why a song annoys them. Just like some people might not be able to tell you why the like one song by an artist, but hate another song by that same artist. Music is hard to decipher because it’s linked to our emotions, and emotions are not an easy thing to understand.
Beloved songs are songs that you can listen to on repeat for an hour and you never want to change the song. Songs that you will listen to at every free moment just so you can memorize the lyrics. If this category were a playlist for me it would have, Bye, Bye, Bye by N*SYNC, Dance, Dance by Fall Out Boy, Rolling in the Deep by Adele, and Fiction by Avenged Sevenfold, just to name a few. I could go on and on, for hours probably, but that would be mundane and boring, as well as pointless. For my sister her Beloved playlist would have tons of Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Justin Beiber, and Miley Cyrus. I’ve noticed that a Beloved song relates to the fan’s life in one of two ways, either is tells the story of an event the fan experienced, like a bad break up or a parent’s divorce. Or it can describe what the fan wished their life was like, I love Ke$ha’s song Tik Tok because I wish that I could go to cool clubs and parties with my best friends, but the getting wasted part probably wouldn’t happen. I also love Miley Cyrus’ At the Bottom of the Ocean because it describes one of my breakups perfectly.
The second playlist is Liked, the songs that you put on shuffle and listen to for a bit then move on from. The songs that come on the radio and you listen to and kind of hum along with. You can’t listen to them for hours, but you can listen to them a few times and then you get sick of them and have to change the song. These songs normally have beats that the fan is attracted to, the lyrics may not be ground breaking and relatable or a dream the person has, but they’re something you can move to and hum. I like the song Mine by Taylor Swift, but if I hear it more than twice in a row, I want to jump out a window. I’ll listen to it if it comes on the radio, or on shuffle, but I’ll never really purposefully listen to it unless my friends and I are talking about it.
The last playlist is Hated; these are the songs that you could not even be paid to listen to! The songs that make you turn the radio off when they come on, like Justin Beiber to who are over the age of 15. My hated playlist has Never Say Never by Beiber, Don’t Stop Believing from the Glee soundtrack, and pretty much anything from Nickelback. This list is normally the longest, well for me at least, since generally speaking, you really don’t love or like most of the songs you hear.
For me the Beloved playlist is made up of artists and a few individual songs. I can’t seem to hate or even just like any Fall Out Boy, Avenged Sevenfold, or Paramore song I hear. The liked list is pretty long because I tend to find random songs catchy, like Dynamite by Taio Cruz, I really don’t like anything else he has, but I love that song. The hated list is made up of artists, with a few songs, as well. I like Adam Lambert, but I hate two of the songs on his album so much that I can’t even remember their names. I can’t say what causes people to hate songs, except for annoyance, but I doubt anyone could tell you why a song annoys them. Just like some people might not be able to tell you why the like one song by an artist, but hate another song by that same artist. Music is hard to decipher because it’s linked to our emotions, and emotions are not an easy thing to understand.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
ISearch Brainstorm
A popular song has a topic that many people can relate to whether it’s serious or not. It normally helps, in any writing, to be able to inject one’s self into the story. A good song also needs to have an ear catching melody so that people will want to stop the radio on that song and listen. It intrigues people and grabs their attention by the horns. So my search should be a song that I write about an event that has had a large impact on who I am today.
Classification Outro
I love pull over’s when I’m sick or really, really cold. And I think that half’s look really cute when you go on a date in fall to the movies, a school sport’s team game, or a burger joint. But in my opinion, which is all we’re concerned about right now, zip up’s look good and keep you warm all the time. Now this doesn’t mean that I’m about to get rid of all my pull over’s and half’s, tat would never happen. But it does mean that it shouldn’t be so surprising when 5 out of 7 days of the week, I’m wearing a zip up.
Classification Intro 2
There are three types of hoodies, zip ups, pull over’s, and half’s. The zip up’s are just like button up shirts, only they zip up, obviously. The pull over’s are just like long sleeve shirts, they just go right over your head. And the half’s have a top half that has a zipper or buttons. This will tell you why zip up hoodies are the best kind of hoodies out there. No matter if you pay 3 dollars or 30, they’re still the best.
Classification Intro 1
There are three types of girls in the world, those who are made of sugar, the ones made of spice, and then the ones made of everything nice. Just like Amanda Lockard The sugar girls are the ones who in small doses are wonderful, but if you’re around them all the time you want to strangle yourself with fishing line. The spice girls are the ones who are always ready to fight fire with fire, the ones who always have a whip at the ready of you will. And the everything nice girls are the ones who you could never get sick of not matter how much you want to because they’re just always nice. Now you must keep in mind that these are girls, which means from the age of 10 to 18, and no older. Woman are much more tricky than girls.
Meta-Graph: The Background to Dear Friend
The background story to Dear Friend is a sad one really. Me and my friend were as close as close could be, but she wasn’t very secure in herself and allowed others to influence her choices. She was talked into going on a date with a boy one of our friends had met at a party and started talking to. I knew who the boy was, one of the girls in our class had dated him when he was still in FA. I knew the type of person he was and I know the types of things he did. Though I told my friend that she could call me at any time to come and get her she never did. I got a call from her a few days later, she told me that she had lost her virginity to the boy even though they had just met, she had no intention of dating him, and she had been drunk. I was angry and upset, she wasn’t acting like herself. I tried not to act like her mother, but I figured that she needed someone to look out for her. She called me a few days after that and asked me to come and pick her up from in town because her mom was coming to get her and she was tired. As soon as I picked her up I knew that she was under the influence of something, and that it wasn’t alcohol since I couldn’t smell any. After we got to my house she told me that she had done dex with everyone at “the castle.” That was the nickname they gave the house they were staying at, if you could even call a place with little electricity and water and more fleas than fibers a house. Her choices led to a huge fight that lasted for almost a month. She eventually apologized for flipping out at me and told me that she still cared about me, but she wanted to make her own choices. I told her I respected that, but that I didn’t know who she was anymore so we couldn’t be as close as we had been before. We still talk now but things are strained since she’s always defending her new friends but never defending me.
Reaction to A Cause Essay
I kind of agree with Angele Ecks in her essay, love hasn’t been very good to me either, and it’s probably all been my fault. I think that everyone has things that they want to hide from their significant other because they’re embarrassing of something. I know that I’ve hid things from my boyfriends in the past that I think are too embarrassing to let other people know about. I also agree that selfishness can be a killer to love because it’s human nature to want attention and to be the center of it instead of sharing it with other people. As immature as her selfishness may have been, to fight with a 6 year old for attention, it’s not uncommon. I’ve become jealous of some of my best friends before because my boyfriend was paying them more attention than me after school. I think that fear can be the worst though because you can be scared of many things. You can become scared of how serious the relationship is becoming, of what other people will say, of what your parents will think of the person, etc. Fear is a basic feeling for everyone and it can be difficult to overcome it.
Cause Intro 2
Many people have asked me what goes into making a good poem, a poem that will intrigue the reader and make sense at the same time. In order to make a good poem you have to have three things, a topic, a scheme, rhyming or syllables, and a clear path. The only trick is that you have to be interested in the topic, it should be something close to your heart. Though not everyone likes the same poems, and not everyone can relate to the same things, if you can put yourself into your writing many people will notice and be attracted to the poem because of that.
Cause Intro 1
In the summer of 2010 I was nearly bucked off a horse in a field in Gatesville Texas. I was scared afterwards, but I refused to let that fear prevent me from doing something that I loved doing, which was ride a horse. After taking a few minutes to gather myself I once again hoisted my body up into the saddle, leaving my mind momentarily on the ground until I was safe and settled in the saddle. I could have said screw it, and just stayed on the ground, petting the horse and wishing I could get the courage up to try again. Though a scary experience I learned a very valuable lesson from it, fear can be crippling, but to let yourself miss out on certain experiences because of them is pointless. Now I’m not saying that a person with a phobia of snakes should go to the Amazon, phobia’s are much more dangerous and serious than just normal fears. But if you’re scared of a bird just because one pecked you in the head when you were little is ridiculous.
I Was Wrong
Ever since I started school happy people have annoyed me, now I don’t mean people who can get really happy about something, I mean people who are constantly happy. They type of people who never have a frown on their face and never get angry or sad about anything. People who are so chalked full of spirit that their faces turn purple! I never really knew why, maybe because I always had an atitude problem, maybe because I knew, even at a young age, that the world isn’t perfect with candy rainbows. Whatever the reason I could never stand to be around people who were so full of happiness and spirit that their world floated out of their mouths on cotton candy clouds. I thought that a girl in my grade, Vanessa Cousins was that type of person. I thought that she was also a stuck up and fake daddy’s girl who was spoiled by her parents constantly. I would learn, eleven years later, that outside appearances can be deceiving.
If Vanessa’s mom was the stereotypical PTA, soccer/pageant mom, then Vanessa was the equally stereotypical sport and beauty oriented daughter. The perfect blend of sugar and spice and everything nice if you will. She played field hockey in middle and high school, participated in plays as soon as she could, and took every available dance class. She was constantly voted president of my class and was involved in everything student council and key club. She was the popular girl that you saw in cheesy movies, all the girls were her friends, well almost all of them, and all the boys wanted to be her boyfriend, and again, almost all. Me and my friends hated her for so many years. We were the anti-social ones who went to school funtions to make fun of all the people who were so into it. We expected a lot from the kids in our class who in student council, but we never offered to help ourselves. My friends never knew it, but there was another reason why I hated Vanessa, besides her ultra happy appearance. Celeste, a girl in my class, and I had been friends since 1st grade, but in 5th grade she began to hang out with all the popular girls and started ditching me all the time. Vanessa became her new best friend, and I became a loser standing in the background. As we grew up I continued to hate Vanessa, as well as Celeste, and all their friends. My friends and I made fun of them for participating in so many school events, like sports and plays and homecoming. But deep down inside I knew the only reason I hated them, was because I was jealous that they were so popular.
When Spring Fling of Junior year rolled around my friends and I decided that we wanted to get involved. There was a lip synch contest on Friday, so Vanessa called a meeting for any junior who wanted to participate. My friends and I put on happy faces and worked with Vanessa that afternoon to choose a song and what we wanted to do. We decided that we would sing “We Go Together” from Grease, and that Vanesa’s mom would come in after work to teach us a dance to go along with it. We met every day after school for about and hour and a half and spent the whole time practicing and choreographing the song. As the week went on I got to know Vanessa, the real Vanessa. I learned that she wasn’t a shallow and popular girl, in fact a lot of people in school didn’t like her because of her leadership qualities, one of them being Caleste, my former best friend. I learned that her parents were divorced and that her father rarely visited her. Dancing was her favorite activity, and she worked so hard at school events because she wanted our class to have nice events and memories. She took on a lot of things because she wanted to make a name for herself. We had a lot in common, not so much facts, like favorite colors and activities, but emotions, we could relate to what the other was feeling, We were both very different from what other people thought of us. I regretted all the years that I hated and envied her, I felt guilt and remorse for all the years that we could have been good friends. We started talking more and more and became very close friends in a short amount of time. Now I can’t think of why I ever disliked her, she’s helped me through so much this year and we’ve had some of the most fun times that I’ve ever had. I love her deeply and am going to miss her terribly when we both leave for college next year, but I’m happy that we’ve become best friends. I know that no matter what happen in the years to come we’ll always be close and we’ll always be there for each other.
If Vanessa’s mom was the stereotypical PTA, soccer/pageant mom, then Vanessa was the equally stereotypical sport and beauty oriented daughter. The perfect blend of sugar and spice and everything nice if you will. She played field hockey in middle and high school, participated in plays as soon as she could, and took every available dance class. She was constantly voted president of my class and was involved in everything student council and key club. She was the popular girl that you saw in cheesy movies, all the girls were her friends, well almost all of them, and all the boys wanted to be her boyfriend, and again, almost all. Me and my friends hated her for so many years. We were the anti-social ones who went to school funtions to make fun of all the people who were so into it. We expected a lot from the kids in our class who in student council, but we never offered to help ourselves. My friends never knew it, but there was another reason why I hated Vanessa, besides her ultra happy appearance. Celeste, a girl in my class, and I had been friends since 1st grade, but in 5th grade she began to hang out with all the popular girls and started ditching me all the time. Vanessa became her new best friend, and I became a loser standing in the background. As we grew up I continued to hate Vanessa, as well as Celeste, and all their friends. My friends and I made fun of them for participating in so many school events, like sports and plays and homecoming. But deep down inside I knew the only reason I hated them, was because I was jealous that they were so popular.
When Spring Fling of Junior year rolled around my friends and I decided that we wanted to get involved. There was a lip synch contest on Friday, so Vanessa called a meeting for any junior who wanted to participate. My friends and I put on happy faces and worked with Vanessa that afternoon to choose a song and what we wanted to do. We decided that we would sing “We Go Together” from Grease, and that Vanesa’s mom would come in after work to teach us a dance to go along with it. We met every day after school for about and hour and a half and spent the whole time practicing and choreographing the song. As the week went on I got to know Vanessa, the real Vanessa. I learned that she wasn’t a shallow and popular girl, in fact a lot of people in school didn’t like her because of her leadership qualities, one of them being Caleste, my former best friend. I learned that her parents were divorced and that her father rarely visited her. Dancing was her favorite activity, and she worked so hard at school events because she wanted our class to have nice events and memories. She took on a lot of things because she wanted to make a name for herself. We had a lot in common, not so much facts, like favorite colors and activities, but emotions, we could relate to what the other was feeling, We were both very different from what other people thought of us. I regretted all the years that I hated and envied her, I felt guilt and remorse for all the years that we could have been good friends. We started talking more and more and became very close friends in a short amount of time. Now I can’t think of why I ever disliked her, she’s helped me through so much this year and we’ve had some of the most fun times that I’ve ever had. I love her deeply and am going to miss her terribly when we both leave for college next year, but I’m happy that we’ve become best friends. I know that no matter what happen in the years to come we’ll always be close and we’ll always be there for each other.
The 3 Things That Can Make a Best Friend… and The Three Things That Can Ruin a Best Friendship
I once thought that the only thing that made a best friend was a common interest, like dancing or jumping rope.. I now know that a friendship, the best kind, is very much like a large building. You have to have a solid foundation with no cracks or weak points, that would be the time you take to get to know the other person. The you slowly build the first floor, walls, ceiling, doorways. Then you move onto the second, third, fourth, etc, floors, building them the same as the first. The floors are every year you’re friends with a person, or every milestone you two overcome together, building up trust and love. When you have finally become completely trusting of the other person and care for them deeply your building is finished. You are then able to add paint, furniture, etc, that would be the little inside jokes or handshakes or whatever that you and your friend share with only each other. But you must be careful, because it can only take one tornado to bring the whole building down.
Though there are three elements to a best friends, there are also three parts to a situation that can ruin a best friendship. Chelsea and I had been friends since 6th grade, but we had only become close friends our freshman year of high school. I had many other friends and so did she, but we were always together and knew one another better than anyone else. You never had her without me, or me without her. It had seemed like our friendship was stable, safe, impossible to be brought down by anything. We seemed to know each other better than we knew ourselves, we no longer thought of ourselves as best friends, we were sisters. We had never fought and though we had different views on some things we though of ourselves as two halves of one whole person. We trusted each other more than anyone else, we knew every secret about the other person. So as you can probably tell, trust is the very first thing a best friendship needs, without trust you would never be able to let the other person really get to know you and vice versa. So it would stand to reason that trust would also be a factor in the storm that could completely destroy your best friendship. I had thought that Chelsea and I had trusted each other completely, but there are some things that we kept from one another, but I’m not really sure why. So after having though about it a bit, I think it’s because deep down we felt that something was off.
The second thing that makes a best friendship is acceptance, and the second part to the storm is denial. I’m a Baptist, I have been since I was born, my parents never forced me to attend church, it was just something I wanted to do when I was younger. As I got older I preferred to learn about the bible and Christianity from my grandparents church when we visited them for the summer, and from my family. Chelsea didn’t have any beliefs, she said that she didn’t know if there was a higher power of some sort or not so she wasn’t going to speak against or for religion. We talked about my beliefs sometimes, often just small stuff like what I believe Heaven is like and what one has to do to make it to Heaven instead of Hell. She never made fun of me for my beliefs, and always defended me to people who made fun of my lack of experience. I accepted the fact that she didn’t know what was out there and didn’t really care. But looking back on it now I can tell that in a way, we were sort of in denial about one another’s beliefs since we never discussed it. Sometimes people think that they’ve accepted something about other people so they don’t need to talk about it. But not talking about a something is the same as denying that it’s there.
So a best friendship needs trust and acceptance, and the storm needs lack of trust, and denial. That only leaves care, compassion, or love to finish building a best friendship, which means that an uncaring attitude is the finishing touch to the storm. Chelsea and I had always been shoulders to cry on. We were always there to listen to each other whenever we had problems. I cared about the things she did and if she was fighting with her mom or not. It seemed that she cared about me just as much since she was always there to offer words of encouragement whenever I was down and upset. I don’t know if it was just this year, or if she had always been this year, but at the start of our senior year she stopped caring about herself, her friends, and her future. It’s not like she had no ambition, she had been filled with excitement the year before for applying to colleges and getting out of Monson. At first it just seemed as though she no longer cared about her future, but after a while it started to become obvious that she no longer cared about herself as well. Things became tense because of her new attitude and became completely strained when she stopped caring about me and my opinions. So after having built a strong foundation and every floor of the building, it can take only a storm with three elements to collapse the whole structure.
Friendship is a building, made up of trust, acceptance, and care/compassion. The perfect storm to ruin the whole thing is made up of lack of trust, denial, and an uncaring attitude. So even though I’ve lost a very good friendship, I don’t regret having been friends with Chelsea, nor do I regret still talking to her now. We had some amazing times together, and for several years she was the very best friend I had ever had. I look forward to meeting many new people when I leave for college next. I have no doubt in my mind that I will make new friends next year who have more in common with me than Chelsea did. I will always keep our friendship in mind when I decide whether or not a person is being a good friend to me. I love her and wish her the best but after a storm as strong as ours, it’s impossible for things to go back to normal.
Though there are three elements to a best friends, there are also three parts to a situation that can ruin a best friendship. Chelsea and I had been friends since 6th grade, but we had only become close friends our freshman year of high school. I had many other friends and so did she, but we were always together and knew one another better than anyone else. You never had her without me, or me without her. It had seemed like our friendship was stable, safe, impossible to be brought down by anything. We seemed to know each other better than we knew ourselves, we no longer thought of ourselves as best friends, we were sisters. We had never fought and though we had different views on some things we though of ourselves as two halves of one whole person. We trusted each other more than anyone else, we knew every secret about the other person. So as you can probably tell, trust is the very first thing a best friendship needs, without trust you would never be able to let the other person really get to know you and vice versa. So it would stand to reason that trust would also be a factor in the storm that could completely destroy your best friendship. I had thought that Chelsea and I had trusted each other completely, but there are some things that we kept from one another, but I’m not really sure why. So after having though about it a bit, I think it’s because deep down we felt that something was off.
The second thing that makes a best friendship is acceptance, and the second part to the storm is denial. I’m a Baptist, I have been since I was born, my parents never forced me to attend church, it was just something I wanted to do when I was younger. As I got older I preferred to learn about the bible and Christianity from my grandparents church when we visited them for the summer, and from my family. Chelsea didn’t have any beliefs, she said that she didn’t know if there was a higher power of some sort or not so she wasn’t going to speak against or for religion. We talked about my beliefs sometimes, often just small stuff like what I believe Heaven is like and what one has to do to make it to Heaven instead of Hell. She never made fun of me for my beliefs, and always defended me to people who made fun of my lack of experience. I accepted the fact that she didn’t know what was out there and didn’t really care. But looking back on it now I can tell that in a way, we were sort of in denial about one another’s beliefs since we never discussed it. Sometimes people think that they’ve accepted something about other people so they don’t need to talk about it. But not talking about a something is the same as denying that it’s there.
So a best friendship needs trust and acceptance, and the storm needs lack of trust, and denial. That only leaves care, compassion, or love to finish building a best friendship, which means that an uncaring attitude is the finishing touch to the storm. Chelsea and I had always been shoulders to cry on. We were always there to listen to each other whenever we had problems. I cared about the things she did and if she was fighting with her mom or not. It seemed that she cared about me just as much since she was always there to offer words of encouragement whenever I was down and upset. I don’t know if it was just this year, or if she had always been this year, but at the start of our senior year she stopped caring about herself, her friends, and her future. It’s not like she had no ambition, she had been filled with excitement the year before for applying to colleges and getting out of Monson. At first it just seemed as though she no longer cared about her future, but after a while it started to become obvious that she no longer cared about herself as well. Things became tense because of her new attitude and became completely strained when she stopped caring about me and my opinions. So after having built a strong foundation and every floor of the building, it can take only a storm with three elements to collapse the whole structure.
Friendship is a building, made up of trust, acceptance, and care/compassion. The perfect storm to ruin the whole thing is made up of lack of trust, denial, and an uncaring attitude. So even though I’ve lost a very good friendship, I don’t regret having been friends with Chelsea, nor do I regret still talking to her now. We had some amazing times together, and for several years she was the very best friend I had ever had. I look forward to meeting many new people when I leave for college next. I have no doubt in my mind that I will make new friends next year who have more in common with me than Chelsea did. I will always keep our friendship in mind when I decide whether or not a person is being a good friend to me. I love her and wish her the best but after a storm as strong as ours, it’s impossible for things to go back to normal.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
ISearch Worksheet
What is an I-search?
An Isearch is a research paper that asks a question. It does not simply gather information for its own sake. It asks a question, and then you hunt for information that answers the question.
It is a question whose answer matters to your life in some way. It is a question you really do not know the answer to, but you would like to. It is a question which you can realistically pursue in the course of a single semester. It is a question with more legs, depth, angles, and nuance than a simple yes/no answer.
It is a research paper that puts "I"--you--at the center of things.
What do you want to write about? Hit songs
What do you want to find out about your topic? How do you make a hit song, what goes into writing the music and lyrics, and what makes it a hit song, is it the music or the lyrics?
What are your questions about the topic?
1. How long does it take to write a hit song?
2. What makes a hit song (what does it have to be about)?
3. Does the music or lyrics make the song a hit?
How does it connect to your life?
I love music, it’s my soul, but I find that what songs or artists I love other people can’t stand, and vice versa. So I want to know what makes a hit song to different people.
Give three reasons you like the topic
1. I am constantly listening to music.
2. I am learning to play violin, piano, and guitar.
3. I want to write my own music.
Give three ways your life might change if you answer your questions
1. I might get over my stage fright and be able to sing and talk in front of people.
2. I might decide to change my career goals.
3. I might get famous (very large might there but it could happen, maybe).
Do you already know the answer to your question? If the answer is sitting in a single book somewhere or if all you need do to find the answer is make some simple decision or ask one person one question, it isn't going to work out for a research paper becuase there isn't much you can research. Is it that kind of question and answer? If it is, please redo the worksheet.
Things: Graf #5
I have beat up beanie baby that I bought with my own money from Mr. Paperback in Dover-Foxcroft when I was four or five. I couldn’t pronounce the name on tag so I called him Ruffles instead of Rufus, which was the name on the tag. He was fluffy and chocolate brown and cream colored when I first bought him. Now his fur is short and scratchy and his colors have faded to brown and dirty grayish cream. I used to carry him around with me everywhere, from home to school and on field trips. I lost him at school once when I was in elementary school. My mom would drop my sister off act school then drive across the street to the back entrance of my school and drop me off. When I got out of the car he must have fallen out of my bag because when I went to get him out later that day he wasn’t in there. I slept with him every night and then would bring him downstairs with me when I woke up, so I figured that I left him on the counter or in my bed. When I got home that night I looked all over the house for him and couldn’t find him anywhere. My mom had bought another beanie baby, the same one, shortly after I bought Ruffles when she saw how attached I was to him. She gave the new one to me and I immediately hated it, it didn’t look anything like Ruffles. I was devastated and cried every night for almost a week. The following Monday after my Mom had dropped me off at school she found Ruffles half buried in snow on the side of the road. She took him home, washed and dried him, and had him sitting out for me when I got home.
Another time when I was looking for him in the morning before school I found him underneath the futon in our living room. He had been attacked by mice in the night when I had accidentally left him downstairs over night. I screamed out like someone had attacked me and picked up as much of him as I could. I ran into the bathroom where my Mom was taking a shower and started crying. My mom put him up on the counter and sprayed disinfecting spray on him, then sewed him back together when she got him from work that night.
He’s battered and matted, his colors have faded and he’s deformed, but he’s my most prized possession. He’s the one thing that I would have to save if my house was on fire. I’ve always known right where he is, and I have to take him with me whenever I go on long trips away from home. He’s my ‘safety blanket’ and I always have to have him with me whenever I’m really upset.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Unique: Graf #4
I still have all of my original baby blankets except for one. When I was little I carried my favorite blanket around with me. It had tons of holes in it and had a small hard circle on it from some drink that I spilt on it that never came out. I called it blankie and one day left it at a store and never saw it again. I was so devestated that my Nana, who made the original blankie, knit me a new one, holes and all. I still have it and bring it with me whenever I go on long trips away from home. I still have the very first Beanie Baby I ever bought as well. The name on the tag was Rufus, but I couldn't pronounce it so I named him Ruffles. I brought him everywhere with me, one day I dropped him out of my bag in the snow at school and couldn't find him. My mom had bought another Rufus as a back up, but it didn't compare. Ruffles had matted hair and was faded and meant the world to me. One day when my mom dropped me off at school she saw ruffles by the side of the road, it was a miracle, he was intact and fine, just soggy and dirty. She took him home, washed him, and had him waiting for me when I came home that day. A few years later I was looking for him in the morning while I was getting ready for school and found him underneath the futon, limbs torn off and beads everywhere. I screamed as though someone was stabbing me with a rusty knife and scooped him up then ran into the bathroom where my mom was taking a shower. She sent me to school and somehow managed to get every bead she could find back into him and sew his limbs back on. One of his legs now splits off to the side, and and ear flops freely away from his head because the stitch that had kept it attached to the head in a second spot was ripped. I think that most people would have thrown these things away, not have stayed attached to them like me because they were different from the original. I don't think I'll ever be able to throw blankie and ruffles away, they've become more than just objects from my childhood, they are parts of me. I'm unique because I don't grow attached to pictures, for me they don't hold enough of the memory. I get attached to objects because when I hold it or touch it, I can remember every time I've ever had with or around it. It's more than just, oh this was a blanket that my Nana knit me to replace one I lost, or oh this is just a nasty old beanie baby that I bought with my own money. It's this is a blanket that reminds me of one I had from when I was a baby to when I was about 5, it brings back memories from before I got it, to after, and it shows how much I mean to my Nana when she was willing to knit me a whole new blanket, same colors, same holes, same everything but the hard cirlce stain. This is a cute yet deformed beanie baby that I named with a name from my head, it was the very first thing I ever bought with my own money. It helped me get though my fear of the dark and my fear of school. Theses are things that I love like they are family members, things that I always have to know where they are. I will never give them away, not even to my own kids.
Inventory: Graph #3
- Two candels, never lit, one blue, one cream, both shimmery
- A random doll stand w/out the doll
- A stack of paper covers to some DVD cases, pictures, cd pamphlits
- A condensed air can, the kind you use to clean a keyboard or something
- A DISH channel guide
- A DVD player
- 31 DVDs precariously stacked in two piles on top of the DVD player in no order
- A random VHS case on top of the DVD player between the 2 candels, in front of the DVDs
- A 1ft and 1/4 of a ft by 1ft and 1/2 of a ft TV (about) with a built in VCR and pictures of musica artists, cut out of magazines taped onto the front by the screen
- A chord connectiong the DVD player to the TV
- All of these things sit upon a tall white dresser that has 4 drawers, some Lelo and Stitch stickers, and a few missing handels
- A violin, in it's case, leaning against the dresser
- An acoustic guitar, in it's case leaning against the violin case
She doesn't have a problem with the old, it's obvious she's had that dresser for a long time, at least 10 years. She must like music, she has a stack of the pamphlits from inside the CD covers, and magazine pictures of artists, Jesse McCartney and Joel Madden. As well as the violin and guitar. Again you can see she's diverse, she likes a pop star, and a rock band, and a classical music instrument and a guitar.
She must like to watch TV, she has the channel guide right next to the TV, it's very worn, the plastic covering is peeling away from the paper. The buttons on the TV are worn, there's dust on top of the TV, it must not get moved. She likes to keep reminders of her past, most people have their pictures in an ablum, or scrapbook, or a box, but she's left some out in the open. The condensed air can must be used for either the VCR or DVD player, why else would it be left there when there are other places, shelves and desks, in the room that she could have left it.
The candels are random, but they don't really look out of place. They're placed on top of the DVD player, one on each side, in front of the DVDs. They've never been lit though, maybe she thinks they're too pretty. The doll stand is the only thing out of place, maybe she's just lazy and hasn't felt like putting it back. Maybe she's lost the doll and is looking for it.
Worst Teacher: Graf #2
I've done all the work, I've studied for every test, I've written every essay to the best of my ability. I'm not a genius, I don't expect to be referred to as such. I don't want to be passed out of sympathy, but I don't want to be compared to anyone as well. You look at us all, appreciation filling your eyes for all the athletes, relief for those who understand everything. Your expression goes blank, 'why doesn't she understand this, why doesn't she do better.' I put all of my effort into everything I do, I spend hours studying, reading, writing. All I want, all I need is help, to you I should get this stuff on my own, I should just listen, remeber, and pour it all out on the test. I've come for help and all I get are lectures, all you do is talk and talk. I don't have the memory of an elephant, I can't remeber everything. I struggle to balance my work load, you don't seem to understand that I'm drowning under all the pressure, I'm fighting just to get a C+ in any class. I spend every studyhall reading the books, going over every note. I can't do better than this without help, I don't understand why you can't comprehend this.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Hands: Graf #1
My hands are always dry now because I do ceramics and I always have to wash to tools and wheels I use, I'm artistic and I love art even though I'm not the best. You don't have to be amazing at art to love it, you just have to be willing to admit that you aren't the best. My fingernails are jagged and short, I'm always biting them when they get a weak spot. There's no room for the weak in the world, you have to be willing to go after what you want and be a shark in the world now. My class ring is always on my right ring finger, I never take it off unless I'm working on a pottery wheel, even then it goes in my pocket. I hate my high school, I don't fit in and I don't have a lot of friends. My class ring reminds me that I'm making it though, it's proof that I worked through everything and stayed until the end. I have a perminant calous on my right middle finger because I'm always writing something. I prefer to write with pen and pencil, no matter how long the piece is, it makes me feel as though I'm connected to what I'm writing, like it's real, I'm actually writing this piece, it's original, it's mine, it's me. There's a small cut on my left hand by my pinky, I have 3 cats and they like to play rough. Or maybe it's from one day when I had to get a binder or something from inside of my locker and I had too many things shoved inside it. I'm disorganized and I would rather just throw everything into my locker instead of actually spending 5 minutes or so rearranging everything. In the light you can see every line on the inside of my hands, there are curls on my palm and swirls on my fingertips. My hands are pale, I never tan, when I go out into the sun in the summer I go from white to red, even with sunscreen. My origins are Eastern European, Scottish, Irish, and German to be exact. My fingernails are bare, I should really paint them again,but I'm too lazy to. My right pinky tilts away from my other fingers, when I curl my fingers in you can see the veins in the back of my hand. There's a crease under my fingernails on the back of my hands, on every finger but my thumbs. You can still see a small indent in my right thumb, right underneath my fingernail, in the right light from where my sister's rabbit bit me, and drew blood.Oh, there's a small white spot underneath my left pinky and middle finger nails, and my right pointer finger nail, calcium deficiency is what I think it means, that's odd, I drink at least a glass of milk every day, and I love cheese. My finger tips are sort of tough from learning how to play piano, guiter, and messing around with the violin. I love music, I'm not the best at playing instruments, I used to play trumpet in my middle school band until mid-eighth grade. My hands do so much, they typed this whole blog, they changed the song on my ipod thousands of times today. They push my glasses back up my nose and clasped eachother tightly when I got my left ear pierced. They've held at least 10 little children, they've slapped people across the face, and they've sent millions of text messages, not all of them nice. They've wiped away millions of tears and felt so many things, my hands are like two scrapbooks filled with 17 years of memories.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
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