What has happened with the world? What has happened with the readers of today? Why have English teachers suddenly left behind classics like Mark Twain to teach on tripe like "The Feed"? Why have "Eragon", "Harry Potter", and "Eragon" suddenly become required reading? Simply because they are popular? Since when did popularity become the main requirement for education? No wonder our schools are failing and teenagers are writing papers using text messaging English. We have so catered to the teenage interest level that we are producing incompetents who can`t even correctly spell "you". And yes, I blame these works of garbage.

Instead of requiring our students to read books that have been loved and adored by teenagers and children for centuries, we are having them read...or excuse me...WATCH the movie adapted versions, of pathetic and predictable books that have been in publication for less than a decade. That writers are producing one book a year, being pushed along with the help of multiple editors, agents, ghost writers, and book deals. Where authors are putting up chapters of their books on the internet, un edited, un copyrighted and then getting angry about fans spreading rumors. It used to be that someone actually had to have talent at writing to be published. Now we have a bunch of hacks who publish their second rate works under the umbra of `young adult fiction.` What is young adult fiction? The books and novels that decent publishing houses have rejected as being too pathetic. Mark Twain wasn`t published for `young adults`. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, wasn`t published for `young adults`. John White`s `Tower of Geburah` wasn`t published for `Young adults`. Two of those books were published actually for children, the other was published for an adult audience. But the true test of a good book is that an intelligent adult can pick it up and enjoy it just as much as an inexperienced fifth grader. But now you have these `young adult` books that any self respecting adult should boycott.

Take, for example the atrocity known as Eragon. Anyone with a iota of experience in watching movies in the genre of fantasy, let alone actually reading books, can pinpoint with alarming accuracy exactly what will happen in book three, without even bother to complete reading book one! The English is atrocious! One moment you have beautiful high flung phrases that sound as if they are from the Canterbury Tales, the next sentence you have highschool `dudes, like, you know` thrown in. You have sentences of description flowing from the pen of the writer that are dashed against the cliffs of idiocy. He builds up your hopes for intelligence with long, multi-syllabic words, and then destroys them with a pathetic excuse of imagery. My personal favorite being...`The sky was lit up with a glorious conflaguration of....pink and yellow.` First of all, let us examine the meaning of glorious. Glorious, generally taken to mean, full of light. Bright. Blinding. Difficult to look upon. Awe inspiring. Then let us examine conflaguration. An all consuming fire. Having to do with fire. Flame. Red, orange, blue. Fiery. Heat. Where on earth do you get pink and yellow to fit in with these two words?! That`s merely examining the meaning of the words. Now let`s take into account the fact that glorious is not generally used in everyday conversation, conflaguration even less so. Unless you are an educated person, you might have to dig out a dictionary to look it up. What are these two intelligent sounding words doing, paired up with colors that a two year old knows? You should pair up those words with colors that match the way they sound, like mauve, crimson, sepia, or something. Not pink and yellow. Not to mention the entire series is nothing more than a amalgamation of other, better, works of fantasy. Take the plot from Star Wars, the Races from J.R.R. Tolkien, the pathetic attempt at a language (shudders at the thought of anyone inventing a language, who has obviously never even taken a second language course, let alone have any sort of basis in linguistics) from an overconfidence born of ignorance, the setting from Terry Brooks. Doesn`t the boy have any imagination?
Don`t even get me started on the characters! The only one with any depth at all is Eragon, perhaps because it was written by an immature teenaged boy, he could perhaps identify. But the female characters! They`re excrutiating. Anyone with half a brain knows that females are different than males. That females are multitaskers, much more complex in their thinking processes than males. And yet the female characters of Eragon are nothing more than ego builders for the guys. They have no depth, they make pathetic little comments that are utterly self evident. You have a dragon, a member of the species that is long living, imbued with knowledge that is incomprehensible to mankind, an ability to remember things that happened before their birth, not to mention instincts that are fantastic. Then you have the same nearly allmighty creature, acting like a petulant two year old, saying that it is too much of a bother to hide herself so she is just going to walk along with them in the middle of a plain in view of anyone in the surrounding mountain range. Perhaps you would say, it was too far of a distance for her to fly, and she would just be visible in the sky anyway. Really, too far of a distance to fly. Let`s see, how fast can lets say...an albatross fly? An albatross has a wingspan of an average of 11 feet, they can travel at a maximum of 135 kilometers per hour. A dragon...with a wingspan at least twice that, and probably more like 4 times that if you are going to be able to support the weight of a human rider, would also be able to go faster with the increase in wingspan. But even if you only kept the maximum of an albatross, 135 kmh is more than fast enough to go around a plain of any size and still be waiting there for when the horses manage to get across it. Unless of course the horses are travelling at a full gallop, which is impossible, because the horses would die from over exertion. Didn`t he bother to do any research at all? Even if you have a fantasy world, if you have objects, such as a a bow and arrow, in use in your fantasy world, these objects follow the basic laws of physics and if they work than those same basic laws of physics have to carry over to the rest of the world. I mean, come on.

My apartment!!!!

in all its glory!

with pictures!

 

Allrighty! today was my first day on the job at the AC home, so I'm TIRED. And man my legs hurt. Oh well, that is what yoga is for, it makes your muscles not hurt anymore! YAY!

Anyway, so I promised a few of you that I would post my schedule so that those who like to call me can be at least a little sure that I'm home. I can only put up a Wednesday to WEdnesday schedule usually so OH well!

Tuesday 5:00 am-2:00 pm I am GONE

WEdnesday 5:00am-2:00 pm, and then 4:00-10ish I am GONE actually, Wednesday I am just GONE, cause I can guarantee that I'll be sleeping during those two hours of free time. :)

Thursday FREE!!!!, but I'll probably be at Tina's in the afternoon so plan on in the morning!

Friday 4:00 pm to 10ish I am Gone

Saturday 9am to 2pm I am gone

Sunday 10 am to 2 pm, and then 5:30-7:30 pm I am gone

Monday 4:00 to 10ish I am gone.

And then Wednesday 6:30 to 2, I am gone, same on Friday of next week,  but I don't know my schedule for Pizza hut that far in advance so this is just a temporary and unfilled schedule. Okiday, thas about it.