Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale is the first novel in the James Bond series. Writen in the mid 50’s, Flemming manages to turn some of the Cold War drama into an interesting spy drama. The main character, James Bond, is a man’s man; the ideal male figure of the time: Handsome, bold, athletic, smart, and dutiful. Whats more, he lives the ideal existence: boldly serving his government, trumping huge threats to his people and the world, driving amazing cars, using interesting gadgets, and most importantly, bedding gorgeous women. To any other man, James Bond would seem like a godly character that they could only strive to, but such characters are not created to cause envy, rather they are used to escape.
Men of the 50’s had a certain stigma attached to them; Almost all were expected to be hard working pillars of the home, dedicated to serving their respective countries, and serve as well rounded members of society. Such expectations surely lead to mundane and uneventful lives. James Bond, however, was nowhere near this. Bond spent his days gambling in casinos, fraternizing with lovely women, and taking down threats to his people. By reading James Bond, modern British and American men could fantasize about being that ideal man, living an exciting life rather than their average everyday life. Reading about Bond put men in his position of power, able to do anything he pleased so long as he gets the job done in the end. Romantically, both Bond and ordinary men view women in the same light: Irrational nuisances who only get in the way when it comes to work. Women are viewed only as objects of desire.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Screenplay - Boogie Nights
Ashley Lacour
October 4, 2010
The film Boogie Nights takes place in Torrance, California in the late 1970’s. The plot of the film, in a nutshell, follows Eddie Adams, AKA Dirk Diggler, A high school dropout and male prostitute turned highly successful porn star. With the help of his mentor, Jack Horner, and leading lady, Amber Waves, he rises to fame quickly, but as the times change, he and his friends discover that their seemingly decadent and desirable lifestyle choices may have been a good idea at the time, but are slowly ruining their lives. The dangers and temptations of the celebrity life is the obvious lesson to be taken from the story, but I would like the focus of the film to be less on the morale of the story as a whole, but specifically on the individual problems of each character. Each character has a very distinct personality and a very deep set of problems. I would like each actor and actress to play their character with only their problems in mind; Do not think of your characters as a part of a story, but as a story on their own. The audience should be able to see the hidden suffering behind all the lavish Hollywood partying.
Eddie Adams, Dirk Diggler - Jared Padalecki
We start out with struggling high school dropout Eddie Adams. As soon as he is drafted into the porno industry, we see the complete abandonment of his original identity as Eddie and a full-on adaptation of his alter ego Dirk. He immediately abandons his past life of prostitution and a broken home life and embraces the glamorous and dangerous life of porn, drugs, parties, and women. In the beginning we see, through a fight with his mother, his desire to make something of himself. He has a deep desire for success and that desire manifests itself through his work. Even as his involvement in drugs and prostitution worsens, he still holds tight to his principles of dedication and drive that he first started out with in the film.
Amber Waves – Ali Larter
Amber may seem like a glamorous porn star living a charmed life, but underneath it all her maternal instincts make up a majority of her personality. She engages in a custody battle with her ex-husband after losing her child due to her drug use and criminal past. Her maternal instincts are what leads her to care for Eddie early on. Her helps him transition into the world of porno and the two of them soon develop a relationship. Her drug use should be seen as a means of coping with the loss of her child rather.
Jack Horner – Aaron Eckhart
Jack, the legendary porn producer, stands alone in his principles. While he has produced some of the best porn in the business, the times are changing and he faces the dilemma of either conforming to the changes and compromising his vision or remaining the same and losing business. He sticks to his principles throughout the entire film however. His drives for excellence and dedication to his artistic vision are the main things that connect he and Eddy.
Rollergirl - Gillian Jacobs
We meet the young Rollergirl in the club, living a crazy life of all night parties and prostitution. While she may seem like just a girl in the party/porno crowd, she is actually still a high school student. Unlike Eddie, shes chosen to stay in high school for the most part, despite being teased and harassed by classmates over her sexual deviance. She still holds on to her youthful ways throughout all the drama, having fun in her roller skates and snapping Polaroid picures everywhere, but underneath that, there is a hurt, attention starved little girl yearning to get out.
Maurice Rodriguez – Rick Gonzalez
Maurice is the owner of a popular club that the porn stars frequent. He is a well-known, friendly figure in this circle of friends, yet he is somewhat of an outsider. He has no role in the production of these pornos, despite being around them. He has a desire to be as famous as his friends and let his family back home know that hes a success. He tries multiple times to land a role in one of Jack’s films, but to no avail. He begs Rollergirl to take a nude photo with him, but said photo doesn’t come out right. He has a strong desire to impress his friends and cousins by sending them these pictures and videos so that they think he has a glamorous life.
October 4, 2010
The film Boogie Nights takes place in Torrance, California in the late 1970’s. The plot of the film, in a nutshell, follows Eddie Adams, AKA Dirk Diggler, A high school dropout and male prostitute turned highly successful porn star. With the help of his mentor, Jack Horner, and leading lady, Amber Waves, he rises to fame quickly, but as the times change, he and his friends discover that their seemingly decadent and desirable lifestyle choices may have been a good idea at the time, but are slowly ruining their lives. The dangers and temptations of the celebrity life is the obvious lesson to be taken from the story, but I would like the focus of the film to be less on the morale of the story as a whole, but specifically on the individual problems of each character. Each character has a very distinct personality and a very deep set of problems. I would like each actor and actress to play their character with only their problems in mind; Do not think of your characters as a part of a story, but as a story on their own. The audience should be able to see the hidden suffering behind all the lavish Hollywood partying.
Eddie Adams, Dirk Diggler - Jared Padalecki
We start out with struggling high school dropout Eddie Adams. As soon as he is drafted into the porno industry, we see the complete abandonment of his original identity as Eddie and a full-on adaptation of his alter ego Dirk. He immediately abandons his past life of prostitution and a broken home life and embraces the glamorous and dangerous life of porn, drugs, parties, and women. In the beginning we see, through a fight with his mother, his desire to make something of himself. He has a deep desire for success and that desire manifests itself through his work. Even as his involvement in drugs and prostitution worsens, he still holds tight to his principles of dedication and drive that he first started out with in the film.
Amber Waves – Ali Larter
Amber may seem like a glamorous porn star living a charmed life, but underneath it all her maternal instincts make up a majority of her personality. She engages in a custody battle with her ex-husband after losing her child due to her drug use and criminal past. Her maternal instincts are what leads her to care for Eddie early on. Her helps him transition into the world of porno and the two of them soon develop a relationship. Her drug use should be seen as a means of coping with the loss of her child rather.
Jack Horner – Aaron Eckhart
Jack, the legendary porn producer, stands alone in his principles. While he has produced some of the best porn in the business, the times are changing and he faces the dilemma of either conforming to the changes and compromising his vision or remaining the same and losing business. He sticks to his principles throughout the entire film however. His drives for excellence and dedication to his artistic vision are the main things that connect he and Eddy.
Rollergirl - Gillian Jacobs
We meet the young Rollergirl in the club, living a crazy life of all night parties and prostitution. While she may seem like just a girl in the party/porno crowd, she is actually still a high school student. Unlike Eddie, shes chosen to stay in high school for the most part, despite being teased and harassed by classmates over her sexual deviance. She still holds on to her youthful ways throughout all the drama, having fun in her roller skates and snapping Polaroid picures everywhere, but underneath that, there is a hurt, attention starved little girl yearning to get out.
Maurice Rodriguez – Rick Gonzalez
Maurice is the owner of a popular club that the porn stars frequent. He is a well-known, friendly figure in this circle of friends, yet he is somewhat of an outsider. He has no role in the production of these pornos, despite being around them. He has a desire to be as famous as his friends and let his family back home know that hes a success. He tries multiple times to land a role in one of Jack’s films, but to no avail. He begs Rollergirl to take a nude photo with him, but said photo doesn’t come out right. He has a strong desire to impress his friends and cousins by sending them these pictures and videos so that they think he has a glamorous life.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Lolita
The novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is the ripping story of Humbert Humbert, a man completely asphyxiated by the beauty and charms of prepubescent girls, especially those of his new daughter, Lolita. Humbert narrates his own story, going into great detail about these girls that he has become smitten with and the lengths he went to stay with Lolita. Humbert, as a narrator, is quite captivating; He makes short work of drawing the reader in with beautiful descriptions of his young love interests and long, enchanting rants about the nature of his love for Lolita. Such beautiful language and imagery almost makes one forget that what he speaks of is pedophilia and rape. One almost feels sorry for this old man and wants to see him find happiness with this little girl. If one ever finds themselves identifying with the struggle of this man, feel that he is truly in love with these girls, or hope that he can get away with the terrible things he is doing for the sake of the story, you have probably been taken advantage of by an unreliable narrator.
Humbert reassures the reader that “under no circumstance would he have interfered with the innocence if there was the least risk of a row,” (19); He avoids any kind of physical contact in order to preserve their innocence and going to extreme lengths to avoid any kind of trouble with the law, exaggerating that he could face “ten years in jail if you only show her you are looking at her.” (20). He insists upon all of these things, all the while attempting to work his daughter into a sense of comfort so that he may indeed get his sexual kicks with the nymphets of his dreams. We realize now that his content in just observing these girls has been a straight uo lie. Only when he is sure that there are no consequences for having intercourse with his daughter, that no one will find out and that her innocence has long since been taken from her, Humbert goes in for the kill, so to speak, and forces sex with this girl using narcotics. Even as their affair continues across the country, he still insists that he loves Lolita and would never do anything to hurt her, and yet he plays to her good side, buying her gifts and taking her places, in order to win a little caress or some kissing. In that right, this man has turned his daughter into his own private prostitute, shattering all illusions we may have had of his pure hearted love in the beginning of the story. His unreliable narration gets taken a step further when he realizes that his daughter once cried while observing her friends interacting with their parents. He finally sees that he truly had ruined her life and robbed her of her childhood, the very thing he insisted he would never do to any young girl. In the end, he manages to regain the reader’s respect by having himself arrested for rape. Nabokov truly tests his readers with Humbert’s seesaw of morality, a truly gripping and thought provoking strategy.
Humbert reassures the reader that “under no circumstance would he have interfered with the innocence if there was the least risk of a row,” (19); He avoids any kind of physical contact in order to preserve their innocence and going to extreme lengths to avoid any kind of trouble with the law, exaggerating that he could face “ten years in jail if you only show her you are looking at her.” (20). He insists upon all of these things, all the while attempting to work his daughter into a sense of comfort so that he may indeed get his sexual kicks with the nymphets of his dreams. We realize now that his content in just observing these girls has been a straight uo lie. Only when he is sure that there are no consequences for having intercourse with his daughter, that no one will find out and that her innocence has long since been taken from her, Humbert goes in for the kill, so to speak, and forces sex with this girl using narcotics. Even as their affair continues across the country, he still insists that he loves Lolita and would never do anything to hurt her, and yet he plays to her good side, buying her gifts and taking her places, in order to win a little caress or some kissing. In that right, this man has turned his daughter into his own private prostitute, shattering all illusions we may have had of his pure hearted love in the beginning of the story. His unreliable narration gets taken a step further when he realizes that his daughter once cried while observing her friends interacting with their parents. He finally sees that he truly had ruined her life and robbed her of her childhood, the very thing he insisted he would never do to any young girl. In the end, he manages to regain the reader’s respect by having himself arrested for rape. Nabokov truly tests his readers with Humbert’s seesaw of morality, a truly gripping and thought provoking strategy.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Fairy Tale - Pixie's Doom
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Luanne who lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Her family was a happy, healthy family, with two twin brothers, her mama, papa, grandma, and Luanne living in a small house in a field. While Luanne was happy and grateful for her lovely family, she was easily bored and often caused problems around her home while looking for something to do. When she was four years old, she destroyed a ceiling fan by tying sheets to the blades and trying to climb them. Her father locked her in her room for three days, all the while yelling at her every time he passed her door. When she was five, she made a game of bringing buckets of water into the house and pouring them down the stairs to create a waterfall. When her mother found her, she nearly fainted from shock and frustration at her daughter’s antics. Luanne was not allowed dinner for two nights after that. At the age of seven, her games became far more devious as Luanne matured. She would constantly lie to her grandmother and brothers in an attempt to trick them. One day, she convinced her little brothers that eating grass would cause them to produce milk like a cow. Her brothers, Dale and Carl both age 4, naturally believed her and spend the afternoon on the lawn eating grass. They then spent the next two days throwing up said grass. Luanne’s father nearly sent her away to boarding school for that trick. Her grandmother intervened, however, calming her father down. “This child has a pixie spirit.” Grandma began. “One can not deal with a rotten child with punishment or she will continue to punish those around her in return. No, what a child like Luanne needs is an outlet for her mischief and mayhem. Such a distraction will keep her mind mischief free.”
The nest day, Luanne’s father visited a pet shop in the city. He picked out a small mixed-breed puppy and brought it home to Luanne. “Luanne,” he began, “This puppy belong to you now. Weather you want it or not, he is your responsibility now. If anything happens to him you’ll be in big trouble. But other than that, the two of you can play together. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun.” Luanne scowled at the puppy at first. “This must be some kind of mind trick,” she thought. “Well, a puppy can’t be worse than boarding school.” So Luanne did as her father told her and within a week, she and the puppy were the best of friends. Luanne let all her aggression out by chasing the puppy around the yard and throwing a tennis ball as hard as she could for the puppy to chase. Weeks went by and Luanne remained relatively trouble-free, but unbeknownst to her parents, one of her usual storms was brewing on the inside. The puppy could only provide her with so much entertainment. She soon found herself searching for her usual means of entertainment; Mixing up every drink in the refrigerator and feeding it to her brothers, hiding her father’s shoes about the house, and doodling on family photos became her new favorite pastimes. One day, Luanne’s mother caught her rearranging all the furniture in the living room. Her mother forced her to put the furniture back in its place, all the while scolding her. “You need to grow up, young lady! My floors are all scuffed up! What if your Grandmother walked in here, huh? You know her sight is going bad! She could have tripped over something and seriously hurt herself! You need to think about someone other than yourself for once!” Luanne, barred in her room, sulked to her puppy. “I don’t care about any of them! I hate it here! I wish my entire family was dead!” She began to calculate even worse ways of messing with her family. She had daydreams of starting fires in the garage and watching the entire house burn down. She drew pictures in her notebook of her mother breaking her leg or her father cutting his arm off with a chainsaw. She finally drifted off into a bitter sleep, dreaming only of her puppy and an empty house.
Luanne awoke the next morning to a sharp, piercing scream. She bolted upright and dashed out of her room and down the hall to find her mother and father standing in the hall around a puddle of blood. “Luanne!” her father cried. As he stood staring at her, his face held an expression of both disbelief and rage. “Luanne. Your grandmother is dead,” he stammered, trying to keep his voice calm. “She tripped over a trunk… the trunk from your room.” Luanne hesitantly peaked around her father. Indeed, the large cream-colored trunk that usually sat at the foot of her bed had been placed in the middle of the hallway and was now surrounded by a pool of blood. All the color drained from Luanne’s face; She knew immediately she was in huge trouble. “My trunk… How did my trunk get down here…” Her mother sobbed as she hid the twin’s faces from the horrible sight. Luanne began to wonder if this mishap really was her doing. She had been so mad the night before, in fact she wanted something like this to happen, but she knew she didn’t do anything. “Luanne,” her father began, taking her by the shoulders, “ This isn’t your fault. I know you like to cause problems but this isn’t your fault.”
Luanne’s Grandmother was buried five days latter in a cemetery on the outskirts of town. The funeral was small and quick and within a week, everything seemed to click right back into place. The family had fallen back into their normal routine, going about their business like nothing had changed. But Luanne knew something was different. She had never managed to figure out how her trunk made it’s way out into the hallway. Not only that, but she was sure her parents were treating her differently. Her mother stared at her own and on, and her father did nothing but smile at her. She knew that her parents suspected her of having something to do with her Grandmother’s death, but refused to admit it to themselves. Luanne spent her days locked in her room, thinking only of seeing her grandmother’s dead, bleeding form, and the terrible things she thought of doing. She was sure she had caused this incident with her evil thoughts. Little did Luanne know that everything was about to get much worse.
One day, Luanne’s mother peaked into her room. Luanne had left the house to walk her puppy, the only time she’d left the house in days. Her mother looked frantically around her room for proof that her daughter had indeed committed murder, but found nothing, as Luanne kept her notebook of evil drawings with her at all times. Giving up with and sad sob, her mother collapsed onto the floor and stayed there for minutes. After gathering herself, mother tidied up Luanne’s room and gathered her dirty laundry. “My daughter couldn’t be a murderer,” she concluded, walking down the hall towards the stairs. “Sure she has her moments, but shes not that evil.” Luanne’s mother took a step towards the stairs, but felt something catch her foot. She tried to catch herself, but fell anyway, down, down, down the entire stairwell and slammed onto the floor with a loud crack.
Luanne stood in an empty lot, a lighter in one had and her evil drawings in the other. “I have to get rid of these terrible things.” She thought, “Mom and dad think I’m evil. Maybe I am. But if they find these, I’m doomed.” She burned the drawings to ashes, with her puppy barking at her side. As the crayon sketches curled in the flames, Luanne could feel a wave of relief washing over her; the evil was gone for good and she’d begin to work on being a better person as soon as she got home. “I may not have killed Grandma, but it was a good wake-up call. I’ve got to do better.” Luanne enjoyed the walk home with her beloved puppy, climbing happily up the porch steps into the kitchen. There, she saw her mother, legs twisted about, lying face down in a pool of her own blood.
Luanne’s father burst through the door in a panic. Luanne could hear him yelling in anguish from her closet. It had been fifteen minutes since she called her dad in a wild panic and had spent the rest of that time crying in her closet. Her mother was dead, just like her grandmother, in a gruesome accident. She had no idea how such a thing had happened, but feared her father would immediately blame her. She herd her bedroom door burst open, and her father storm in. “LUANNE!” he called out, “Luanne! Where are you?!” She timidly peaked out from her closet at her father’s flushed, tear-streaked face. Her puppy ran towards her, barking sharply. Her father turned to her, breathing heavily. “Luanne…. You…. You did this…..” “NO! No, no, no! It wasn’t me! I was out in the field all afternoon! I just found her like that!” “DON’T LIE TO ME, YOU LITTLE MONSTER!” He yelled. “YOUR MOTHER WAS MURDERED! YOU TRIPPED HER USING YOUR BLANKET! ITS TIED TO THE BANISTER! YOU TOUGHT I WOULDN’T NOTICE?!!” “NO!!” Luanne cried, tears streaming furiously down her face, “IT WASN’T ME!! I’M NOT A MONSTER!! I’M NOT EVIL!! STOP YELLING AT ME! MOM IS DEAD!!” She fell into a ball on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Her father left the room, yelling obscenities the whole time. “I’m not a bad girl, I’m not a bad girl…….” She cooed to herself, rocking back and forth. She was so distraught she failed to notice the looming shadow enclosing the room. She felt something hot and wet on the back of her neck. “GO AWAY!!!” she screamed, swatting at what she thought was her puppy. Instead, her hand hit something hard and furry. She slowly lifted her head up, eyes wide with fear and tears. She found herself face to face with a giant snarling wolf beast with fur of auburn, teeth gnashed and eyes hungry. Luanne opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Soon, everything for her went black and quiet.
Luanne’s father hung up the phone. The police would be there in about five minutes he was reassured. He stepped over the corpse of his wife, covered with a bloodstained sheet. He knew he would surely regret telling the cops that his daughter was a murderer, but he was too distraught to care. He bound the stairs to keep an eye on his daughter, whom he was sure would try to escape, and surely enough, she wasn’t in her room. Only her puppy sat with a piece of paper in his mouth. The tiny auburn puppy that he’d bought his daughter months ago trotted his way over to the man and dropped the piece of paper at his feet. The man smoothed out the paper and saw upon it a sketch of a woman labeled mom falling down a flight of stairs. As soon as the police arrived, the man showed them the drawing and the search for his daughter began. They turned the house upside down and fanned out across the town looking for Luanne, but she was nowhere to be found. Flyers were put up across all of the surrounding towns and on the local news, but no word was herd of Luanne. Indeed, she was never seen again. Eventually her puppy was found abandoned on the side of the road, waiting to be adopted by another ill behaved child.
The nest day, Luanne’s father visited a pet shop in the city. He picked out a small mixed-breed puppy and brought it home to Luanne. “Luanne,” he began, “This puppy belong to you now. Weather you want it or not, he is your responsibility now. If anything happens to him you’ll be in big trouble. But other than that, the two of you can play together. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun.” Luanne scowled at the puppy at first. “This must be some kind of mind trick,” she thought. “Well, a puppy can’t be worse than boarding school.” So Luanne did as her father told her and within a week, she and the puppy were the best of friends. Luanne let all her aggression out by chasing the puppy around the yard and throwing a tennis ball as hard as she could for the puppy to chase. Weeks went by and Luanne remained relatively trouble-free, but unbeknownst to her parents, one of her usual storms was brewing on the inside. The puppy could only provide her with so much entertainment. She soon found herself searching for her usual means of entertainment; Mixing up every drink in the refrigerator and feeding it to her brothers, hiding her father’s shoes about the house, and doodling on family photos became her new favorite pastimes. One day, Luanne’s mother caught her rearranging all the furniture in the living room. Her mother forced her to put the furniture back in its place, all the while scolding her. “You need to grow up, young lady! My floors are all scuffed up! What if your Grandmother walked in here, huh? You know her sight is going bad! She could have tripped over something and seriously hurt herself! You need to think about someone other than yourself for once!” Luanne, barred in her room, sulked to her puppy. “I don’t care about any of them! I hate it here! I wish my entire family was dead!” She began to calculate even worse ways of messing with her family. She had daydreams of starting fires in the garage and watching the entire house burn down. She drew pictures in her notebook of her mother breaking her leg or her father cutting his arm off with a chainsaw. She finally drifted off into a bitter sleep, dreaming only of her puppy and an empty house.
Luanne awoke the next morning to a sharp, piercing scream. She bolted upright and dashed out of her room and down the hall to find her mother and father standing in the hall around a puddle of blood. “Luanne!” her father cried. As he stood staring at her, his face held an expression of both disbelief and rage. “Luanne. Your grandmother is dead,” he stammered, trying to keep his voice calm. “She tripped over a trunk… the trunk from your room.” Luanne hesitantly peaked around her father. Indeed, the large cream-colored trunk that usually sat at the foot of her bed had been placed in the middle of the hallway and was now surrounded by a pool of blood. All the color drained from Luanne’s face; She knew immediately she was in huge trouble. “My trunk… How did my trunk get down here…” Her mother sobbed as she hid the twin’s faces from the horrible sight. Luanne began to wonder if this mishap really was her doing. She had been so mad the night before, in fact she wanted something like this to happen, but she knew she didn’t do anything. “Luanne,” her father began, taking her by the shoulders, “ This isn’t your fault. I know you like to cause problems but this isn’t your fault.”
Luanne’s Grandmother was buried five days latter in a cemetery on the outskirts of town. The funeral was small and quick and within a week, everything seemed to click right back into place. The family had fallen back into their normal routine, going about their business like nothing had changed. But Luanne knew something was different. She had never managed to figure out how her trunk made it’s way out into the hallway. Not only that, but she was sure her parents were treating her differently. Her mother stared at her own and on, and her father did nothing but smile at her. She knew that her parents suspected her of having something to do with her Grandmother’s death, but refused to admit it to themselves. Luanne spent her days locked in her room, thinking only of seeing her grandmother’s dead, bleeding form, and the terrible things she thought of doing. She was sure she had caused this incident with her evil thoughts. Little did Luanne know that everything was about to get much worse.
One day, Luanne’s mother peaked into her room. Luanne had left the house to walk her puppy, the only time she’d left the house in days. Her mother looked frantically around her room for proof that her daughter had indeed committed murder, but found nothing, as Luanne kept her notebook of evil drawings with her at all times. Giving up with and sad sob, her mother collapsed onto the floor and stayed there for minutes. After gathering herself, mother tidied up Luanne’s room and gathered her dirty laundry. “My daughter couldn’t be a murderer,” she concluded, walking down the hall towards the stairs. “Sure she has her moments, but shes not that evil.” Luanne’s mother took a step towards the stairs, but felt something catch her foot. She tried to catch herself, but fell anyway, down, down, down the entire stairwell and slammed onto the floor with a loud crack.
Luanne stood in an empty lot, a lighter in one had and her evil drawings in the other. “I have to get rid of these terrible things.” She thought, “Mom and dad think I’m evil. Maybe I am. But if they find these, I’m doomed.” She burned the drawings to ashes, with her puppy barking at her side. As the crayon sketches curled in the flames, Luanne could feel a wave of relief washing over her; the evil was gone for good and she’d begin to work on being a better person as soon as she got home. “I may not have killed Grandma, but it was a good wake-up call. I’ve got to do better.” Luanne enjoyed the walk home with her beloved puppy, climbing happily up the porch steps into the kitchen. There, she saw her mother, legs twisted about, lying face down in a pool of her own blood.
Luanne’s father burst through the door in a panic. Luanne could hear him yelling in anguish from her closet. It had been fifteen minutes since she called her dad in a wild panic and had spent the rest of that time crying in her closet. Her mother was dead, just like her grandmother, in a gruesome accident. She had no idea how such a thing had happened, but feared her father would immediately blame her. She herd her bedroom door burst open, and her father storm in. “LUANNE!” he called out, “Luanne! Where are you?!” She timidly peaked out from her closet at her father’s flushed, tear-streaked face. Her puppy ran towards her, barking sharply. Her father turned to her, breathing heavily. “Luanne…. You…. You did this…..” “NO! No, no, no! It wasn’t me! I was out in the field all afternoon! I just found her like that!” “DON’T LIE TO ME, YOU LITTLE MONSTER!” He yelled. “YOUR MOTHER WAS MURDERED! YOU TRIPPED HER USING YOUR BLANKET! ITS TIED TO THE BANISTER! YOU TOUGHT I WOULDN’T NOTICE?!!” “NO!!” Luanne cried, tears streaming furiously down her face, “IT WASN’T ME!! I’M NOT A MONSTER!! I’M NOT EVIL!! STOP YELLING AT ME! MOM IS DEAD!!” She fell into a ball on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Her father left the room, yelling obscenities the whole time. “I’m not a bad girl, I’m not a bad girl…….” She cooed to herself, rocking back and forth. She was so distraught she failed to notice the looming shadow enclosing the room. She felt something hot and wet on the back of her neck. “GO AWAY!!!” she screamed, swatting at what she thought was her puppy. Instead, her hand hit something hard and furry. She slowly lifted her head up, eyes wide with fear and tears. She found herself face to face with a giant snarling wolf beast with fur of auburn, teeth gnashed and eyes hungry. Luanne opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Soon, everything for her went black and quiet.
Luanne’s father hung up the phone. The police would be there in about five minutes he was reassured. He stepped over the corpse of his wife, covered with a bloodstained sheet. He knew he would surely regret telling the cops that his daughter was a murderer, but he was too distraught to care. He bound the stairs to keep an eye on his daughter, whom he was sure would try to escape, and surely enough, she wasn’t in her room. Only her puppy sat with a piece of paper in his mouth. The tiny auburn puppy that he’d bought his daughter months ago trotted his way over to the man and dropped the piece of paper at his feet. The man smoothed out the paper and saw upon it a sketch of a woman labeled mom falling down a flight of stairs. As soon as the police arrived, the man showed them the drawing and the search for his daughter began. They turned the house upside down and fanned out across the town looking for Luanne, but she was nowhere to be found. Flyers were put up across all of the surrounding towns and on the local news, but no word was herd of Luanne. Indeed, she was never seen again. Eventually her puppy was found abandoned on the side of the road, waiting to be adopted by another ill behaved child.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Dialog project - 8/28/10
Heres my dialog about media! Enjoy (hope its not a total rant......)!
A: I’m so upset!
K: Why’s that?
A: My favorite magazine of all time has gone out of print and is now released exclusively on the internet. That’s such a drag!
K: Well it makes sense, don’t you think? It was a manga anthology. That’s over two hundred pages printed a month. It makes far more sense to just put them right on the internet.
A: You’ve got a point, but honestly it takes away from the traditional value of manga. The traditional style was made with ink, pen nibs, and plain old paper and bound with several other series in a phonebook-sized magazine. That’s how I believe it should be read.
K: Well, times are changing. Illegal downloading isn’t just for music anymore. Most kids don’t buy manga; they read it online. That is just how times are these days.
A: Well call me old fashioned, but I just can’t click and scroll for hours on end. Staring at a screen is nothing like holding a graphic novel in your hand and flipping through it. I don’t think I could ever use an E-reader and still enjoy reading as much as I do.
K: Have you ever used an E-reader?
A: ……No.
K: Well you’ll never know until you try. Not only is it convenient to have thousands of books at your disposal at any time, but they’re slightly cheaper and not a hassle to carry around.
A: I understand all that, but is it really any better? Everything since the beginning of time has evolved substantially: science, medicine, technology, and surely the way books are written, printed, and bound. But the basic principle has remained the same; You read written words printed with ink on paper or hide. That is how its been since the beginning of time. Why is it changing all of a sudden? Why now of all times? Do books really need improving or is it just our selfish 21st century obsession with convenience?
K: I don’t know. Is it?
A: ……… I have no idea. I just believe that “The farther technology advances, the lower we fall”
K: That’s so closed-minded. E-readers and the internet aren’t just convenient ways to force-feed media to the world. They’re apart of technology, tools made to improve our daily lives. Just think about it; a book-addict college student in a tiny apartment can have all the books he or she wants at a low price while taking up no space. People can read newspapers or novels on 16-hour plane rides without having to pack the books. One can access any given newspaper from any given country whenever they want. Internet devices are bringing us closer to the world around us.
A: Well, I suppose its good to have news and global communication, but how far can the internet go before people realize that books are superior?
K: That’s totally subjective! Maybe people prefer the E-readers and such to books!
A: I just can’t picture a world where libraries are merely computers filled with downloadable files. Part of the joys of reading are holding the book in your hands, feeling the texture of the page as you flip through the volume, and sticking your nose in the spine of a book to smell that warm scent. That could never be duplicated by pixels on a screen.
K: I don’t think society will go that far. Technology is the backbone of modern society, but some people still find themselves computer illiterate.
A: That’s one of the big differences between today’s youth culture and the culture of our parents: We grew up with computers and internet to some extent. We were taught to use these things early in school, unlike our parents. Our kids will be better versed in the ways of technology than we are. Technology is always moving forward, but I believe that books will always remain the same and that’s something that all of society can count on. I know I’ll always buy paperback novels and manga for my children.
K: Nothing beats a good comic book, right?
A: Damn right.
[The end!]
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