Modern Day Transcendentalism

Alan Watts.

By combining western science ideals with eastern philosophy he introduces a modern eccentric branch of Poetry.

He writes about men and nature and individuality and life and death and destruction....

Tonight.

Mrs. Jones posted what she was going to do tonight, so I decided I would mimic her post.

What am I, Shannon Wright going to do tonight:
1. Die a very painful death from a rare disease called tomuchstudyingitis.
Its going to be lots of fun, NOT.
2. Try to read at least a page from my Autobiography of Anthony Kedis and a page of the journals from Kurt Cobain(aka. a genius, his reputation is close to god, I would think). I doubt this will happen though, because reading from these two great works of literature would fall under the catagory of enjoyment and unfortunately thats not allowed in your junior year.
3. Drink an average of about fifteen cups of coffee, i'll be so shaky from it, I bet i'll look like a cup of jello.( i.e. caffeine makes you shaky, is that how you spell caffeine?)
4. Sleep for thirty minutes with my chemistry book and grammer notes under my head, so I can absorb the magnificent knowledge flowing out of the page through osmosis. (its not been disproven:)
5. Stop blogging, so I can actually do the above four.

P.S. Everyone will do the most fantastic job tomorrow, so good luck:)

Midterms

Hey Guys! I just wanted to tell $th block good luck on our midterm for Mrs Jones tomorrow! Also good luck to everyone on their exams!

Midterms

Just remember everyone, don't stress.

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." - Henry Ford

So take it easy. Breathe. Its all going to be fine.

We all have the ability to do wonderfully on all our exams. Whether it be Ap Statistics, Honors United States History, Latin 1, or even Honors English three.

But don't become too egotistical because....

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." - Jane Wagner

So I found a really funny youtube video. It's a parody of The Way I Are by Timbaland. It's called Bad Grammar. I wanted to post it put I'm so dumb with computers but if someone wants to check it out and post it you definitely should.

A couple of people have expressed a posting dilemma: what do I post? Well, think English for a minute. Is there anything you hope we do/do not do? Is there a book you want to talk about here? Is there something we've read and you want to discuss/continue to discuss it? Have you come across a funny grammatical error in public? Take a pic of it and post it. Do you have a question about something we are doing? Do you have an appropriate rant? Do you want to discuss something going on locally at our school or in our community? There are plenty of things to talk about. Just give it a shot.

I know we didn't read "The Raven" in class, but I figured you might have read it before in a previous English class or at least have seen The Simpsons' rendition of it. This struck me as funny. Guess what kind of bird really does have an effect on the mood of the story.

The masque of the red death

Obviously you would have to read the text to understand the story considering all of the characters are gone but after reading the story I thought this was a cool interpretation.

bored!!!!!

hey,
i am here in class right now blogging lol, can u belive it iam listenin to Bryan C. argue with his peers about a stupid transperancy! well i was wondering what book would you all like to read next? Our next literary period that we are going to study is Dark Romantacism. Our choices are Poe , Hawthorne and Mellville but im guessing since we did Hawthore already we wont do it again. My bets are on Poe. Kadie's choice is The Mask of the Red Dead. Mrs J just told me that is our homework tonight so... yup im bored now so duces.

Someone sent these to me in an email and I thought they were hilarious. Every now and then you guys do stuff on quizzes, tests, etc. that really is share worthy. Not credit worthy but definitely worth showing others :)

Brian, you are a boss haha

Midterm Study Guide

Hey fellow students! I had nothing better do this Friday, so I created a consolidated list of what we've done so far, and what is likely to be on the midterm.

Week 6

1. Ambiguous - vague
   
2. Red Herring - a distractor
   
3. fallacy - misconception
   
4. pinnacle- peak; summit; apex
   
5. respite - postponement; a delay;
   
6. sagacious - wise
   
7. veracity - truthfulness
   
8. plausible - likely; probably;credible
   
9. stringent -strict; severe; restrictive
   
10. cognizant - aware

Week 7

1. repudiate - renounce; discard
   
2. erudite - wise
   
3. truncate - to cut short; trim; curtail
   
4. recalcitrant - stubborn; hard to deal with
   
5. soporific - sleep inducing
   
6. innocuous - harmless
   
7. querulous - full of complaints
   
8. succinct - concise, to the point
   
9. superfluous - redundant; unnecessary
   
10. prevaricate - to lie; speak misleadingly

Week 8

1. vaunt - to brag, boast
2. obsequious - fawning; submissive
3. truculent - fierce; cruel; brutally harsh
4. beguile- to deceive or trick
5. enervate - to deprive of strength; weaken
6. idiosyncratic - a characteristic or trait that's peculiar to an individual
7. exonerate - to free from guilt
8. alacrity - eagerness; cheerfulness
9. canonical - tradition
10. evocative - to evoke; remind of

Week 9

1. atrocity - cruelty; injustice; inhumane
2. malevolence - wishing evil on someone
3. sagacious - wise
4. chimera - hodgepodge; a mix of parts put together
5. docility - trainable; teachable
6. conflagration - large fire
7. odious - hateful
8. perverseness - to do something wrong deliberately
9. phantasm - ghost;

Types of Literature

1. Native American - Various authors
2. Puritan - Hawthorne
3. Revolutionary War - Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry
4. Great Awakening - Jonathan Edwards
5. Romanticism - Edgar Allen Poe
6. Transcendentalism - Thoreau, Emerson, Margaret Fuller

Pieces of Literature

1. Rip Van Winkle - Washington Irving
2. The Tide Rises the Tide Falls - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
3. Old Ironsides - Oliver Wendell Holmes
4. Native American "Myths" (When Grizzlies walked upright and the Earth on Turtle's Back)
   
5. The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano -Olaudah Equiano
6. The Devil and Tom Walker - Washington Irving
7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
8. Of Plymouth Plantation - William Bradford
9. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God - Jonathan Edwards
10. Upon the Burning of my House - Anne Bradstreet
    

Native American Literature

1. History: before the 1800s people thought Native Americans didn't have literature
   
2. passed down orally
   
3. centers around gods, creation, the meaning of life and death, and natural phenomena
   
4. focuses on nature
5. topics: greed, wisdom of elders, respect for nature
6. usually has a trickster figure (ex. grandmother, spider, cayote)
   

Romanticism (1800-1860)

1. value feelings over reason and logic
   
2. values poetry
   
3. places faith in the imagination
   
4. reflects on nature to gain spiritual wisdom
   
5. prefer innocence to sophistication
6. fights for individual's freedom and worth
7. trusts past wisdom not progress
   
8. A romantic hero is NOT good with chicks. =(
9. Romantic hero is youthful and innocent
   
10. Romantics: Edgar Allen Poe, Irving, Longfellow, and Holmes

Transcendentalism

1. self trust and confidence
2. self-reliance and simplicity
3. live close to nature because nature is the source of trust and inspiration
4. valued individuality, non-conformity, and free thought
5. Transcendentalists: Thoreau, Emerson
   

Remember to also study grammar like adverbs, and prepositions. Other than that, this is most of what we've done this nine weeks. PLEASE ADD more to the list, this is by no means a complete list of everything we've done.

To Ms. Jones: Please verify/add/remove anything as you see fit. merci

Have a great day APers. Study like a boss.

"I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come."
- Abraham Lincoln

I don’t know if this is relevant, but please do read!

Come support your dear and loving school's theater program! Honors drama's final night performance of "The Good Doctor" is on Tuesday October the 27th at 7:00 p.m. This is the play we are bringing to regionals, which we take quite seriously. We would greatly appreciate it if you would come and provide a nice and mature audience. This would be our last performance before we take it to competition. Also, you would be supporting your fellow classmates, being as most of the class is composed of Juniors. I promise you would get a few good laughs out of it!

Thanks,
Melissa

What did we do in class today???

Dear Ms Jones and fellow APers,
I was not in school today. What did we do in class? and (to Ms Jones) how can I make it up??
thank you for your time =)

Sincerly,

Kadie

Really Mrs. Jones, I'm flattered that my name was mentioned in your blog :D

and I'm afraid to misuse grammar in here because it's an AP English blog

but oh well

So I'm going to get this party started!!! What should we do here...hmmm....Well first I'll blog in the traditional sense

Tonight I intend to:

Feed my dog
Hang out with a friend
Invite Max to the blog
Clean my house (some)
Read as much as I can of my bookclub book seeing as the meeting is on Thursday and I'm on pg. 90
Admire myself in the mirror and chant about how daggone smart I am
Fine tune your midterm (meaning make is egregiously difficult)
Write a letter of recommendation for Columbia University


What are YOU getting in to...?

Rip Van Winkle?

To anyone else who has started reading the Rip Van Winkle packet that Ms. Jones gave us: Does your packet skip pages, too? Mine skips every other page. It makes no sense when I try to read it. I didn't know if it was intentional or a mistake. I'll try to answer the questions anyway in case Ms. Jones doesn't see this, but I wondered if anyone else has experienced this problem.

I also wanted to know if anyone else had heard of National Novel Writing Month. It has to be the best and worst event ever. What you have to do is write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. This is my third year doing it, and it's mad crazy. Anyone else want to be mad crazy with me and try for it? Even if you don't meet the goal, you learn a lot and it's a lot of fun (Yeah, you learn a lot, great way to motivate teens, lol). The website is http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Have a lovely weekend, APers!

HOpefully and end is in sight to my internet dilemma. I really want to get this blog up and going but without access to our good ole web, I'm out of luck. soon soon soon

I am inspired by the youtube videos below, I want that dudes library.
I hope I dont ever make bad grammatical errors on this blog.
To go along with the shakespeare type theme, here's my favorite joke:)

Said Hamlet to Ophelia, "I'll do a sketch of thee.What kind of pencil shall I use? 2B, or not 2B?"
hahah, thats a knee slapper, that one. Lame, but suprisingly funny.