Radio Play Assignment Matt Steel
Jack: Did they give you guys ketchup?
Ormr: Man, you didn’t even get fries.
Jack: Yeah dude, but the lady serving me didn’t bag it, why didn’t I get ketchup?
Ormr: Does it matter? You still don’t have fries to put ketchup on, stop whining.
Jack: Stingy old bag.
Steve: Hey, pass that ball bro. Who’s down on some Bump?
Ormr: Shot second.
Jack: Third for sure, I’ll be back real quick.
Ormr: Smoke before he gets back?
Steve: Yeah for sure, five says you’re going to bum one
Ormr: you know it, the five’s you know where.
Steve: Lucky we’re in the smoke pit ‘else I’d beat it out of you.
Ormr: Keep that up and we’ll have a deja vu of last week, scrub.
Steve: Man, I had my cast on.
Ormr: Jokes.
Ormr: You know where Jack ran off to?
Steve: He’s inside somewhere, maybe he’s grabbing food in the caff or using the washroom or something.
Ormr: Bump’s trash with two’s, how ‘bout that butt?
Steve: Yeah man, you got a spark?
*Nearby shouting*
Ormr: You heard that too, right?
Steve: Yeah man, something’s going down in the smoke pit. Let’s go find Jack and check it out.
Jack: What's wrong with you guys?
Ormr: Nothing's wrong, hurry up dude. Everyone’s watching something in the pit, we gotta' go check it out.
Jack: Watching what?
Ormr: I don't know dude, looks like everyone’s circled around a fight. Look.
Jack: There's no fight, people are throwing shit at someone.
Ormr: It looked like one, not everyone can be a giant.
Jack: I'm not a giant, you're just a gnome.
Ormr: Yeah alright Godzilla, let's push through these juniors and see what's happening. 'Scuse me guys.
*Laughing, shouting*
Steve: Why's that old broad picking up that change? She looks decrepit.
Dylan: The crazy bitch is up three fifty!
Jack: What are you sayin' dude, really throwing change at that hurtin' lady?
Dylan: She's nuts and I've only got another two quarter's left so chill, watch when I toss it at her, she’ll go crazy and run for it.
Jack: This is ridiculous, tell your scrub friends to cut the shit before I do.
Steve: You kids are brutal.
Dylan: You're jokes buddy, huge kid's all talk.
Jack: Call me huge again you goof and see what happens.
Dylan: I don't want to fight you dude, you need to chill.
Ormr: Dude called you a goof and you say he's all talk, do something about it.
Dylan: I'm not fighting you dude. I've got to go to class early, no beef.
Jack: That really puts me off man, kid's a joke. Honestly, who throws shit at poor people.
Steve: It's good, he looked like he was going to pass out when you called him a goof.
*Bell*
Jack: I've gotta' get to horticulture, someone hit me up after school.
Steve: Will do. Oms, skip third and grab some subway?
Ormr: I've skipped science three times since Monday, I've gotta' go at least once.
Steve: I'll buy your broke self a subway melt.
Ormr: And a drink?
Steve: Stingy goof.
Ormr: Alright, sounds like a plan dude - But I'm drivin'.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Journal 5
Journal 5 Matt Steel
Education in North America has become a standardized mandate, education is monitored on federal, provincial, and municipal levels. We’ve actually made it illegal for people under X age to -not- go to school, and for the most part we try to make it easier for kids who have trouble making it. School isn’t thought of as an option or a privilege anymore, but as a chore. The way our lives are set up as children in Canada make it hard not to hate going to school. When you’re a kid you’re not at work or out labouring in a field, you’re in a house with parents to pay for and take care of everything. All there is to do is run around and have some good times doing as we please, the only interruption is a six and a half hour school break. As soon as we’re old enough to go to school we learn to hate it. It’s not as if school is that bad to begin with. You go to a room filled with kids your age and learn about everything under the sun, for free.
Unfortunately, people love to hate, and when you’re a kid you don’t know anything really worth hating so you fall back on the only thing we do know to complain about - school, parents, etc. In other areas of the world where it’s not normal to be pampered and have whatever you want, it’s a lot easier to appreciate the luxury of a well managed school system. Even if one were to drop out of school and pick up a life doing whatevers in wherevers in our society, their life would be much more relaxed than someone who needs to look at school as an eventual aspiration and not a pain in the ass.
Education in North America has become a standardized mandate, education is monitored on federal, provincial, and municipal levels. We’ve actually made it illegal for people under X age to -not- go to school, and for the most part we try to make it easier for kids who have trouble making it. School isn’t thought of as an option or a privilege anymore, but as a chore. The way our lives are set up as children in Canada make it hard not to hate going to school. When you’re a kid you’re not at work or out labouring in a field, you’re in a house with parents to pay for and take care of everything. All there is to do is run around and have some good times doing as we please, the only interruption is a six and a half hour school break. As soon as we’re old enough to go to school we learn to hate it. It’s not as if school is that bad to begin with. You go to a room filled with kids your age and learn about everything under the sun, for free.
Unfortunately, people love to hate, and when you’re a kid you don’t know anything really worth hating so you fall back on the only thing we do know to complain about - school, parents, etc. In other areas of the world where it’s not normal to be pampered and have whatever you want, it’s a lot easier to appreciate the luxury of a well managed school system. Even if one were to drop out of school and pick up a life doing whatevers in wherevers in our society, their life would be much more relaxed than someone who needs to look at school as an eventual aspiration and not a pain in the ass.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Journal 4
Journal #4 Matt Steel
Twelve plus years of education teaching me the intricacies of our language, and it's still a stretch to "Free write" on the spot. One could write pages upon pages about anything if it's a conscience destination. If this journal had been to write about my opinion on instant coffee or recycling or something we've become accustomed to throwing out on demand, a page journal would've been chopped in twenty minutes. Writing about a given topic is simply a matter of time and skill, but this free writing business is what starts to build up that mental block. What to write about? The idea of free writing on a computer is overwhelming to me, I've got the option to choose anything I'd like and the tools to provide me information on anything the human race has ever known, while simultaneously deciding to write about how I had some pseudo-profane thought I had or some stupid thing. So here I sit at an embarrassing time trying to grind out a page of something passable and be done with these journals, and the best I can throw down is an explanation for the lack of quality in said assignment. Looking at it like that is a bit ambitious I guess, it's not as if every highschool writer's craft assignment needs to be built up in to some dazzling piece of art based off of an innovative topic. Hey, maybe my bunk journal entry won't be so trashy after all.
When I'm just sifting through my mind for another reason to write I feel almost as if someone has robbed me of my proper thought process. How does one describe the subtleties of their brain processing? Perhaps one day down the road we'll have a machine to let us look in to the minds of each other and learn from the way we see their brain doing its' work, but until then I'm stuck in the blank room upstairs, looking out and wondering what would be a suitable topic to write about, and how to write about said topic. If one had the power of mind reading, I think they would find it to be a double-edged burden. We stay happy and secure in our ignorance, if that were dissolved in the all knowledge of mind reading it would result in a quite unhappy superman. Most of those superpowers we daydream about would probably end up being a drag. Breathing under water would be a blast until you notice you’re the only one in the ocean, invisibility would get you hit by a car, and far-sight would probably result in psychosis or suicide. I’m content with my five senses of mediocrity.
Journal 3
Journal #3 Matt Steel
When it comes to my writing, I usually end up spewing about people. How people think, act, whatever. I usually have some trouble writing anything if I’m not in a particular writing groove, my self absorbed mind always seems to drift around someone or something that’s happening to someone and such. From experiences usually related to school, I find that writing can be an extremely useful tool for debates or conflicts. If I’m looking to prove a point about something that holds any amount of importance, it’s extremely helpful to have a pre-written set of points, or something more thorough like an essay. When you’re having an argument or a debate with someone about a topic, people love to talk out of their ass and pull out some false "fact". This will usually go back and forth until someone decides to drop it, resulting in little progress. I don’t know why, but having some concrete facts on paper usually garners a certain amount of respect from the opposite side and results in a little more open-mindedness.
Changing anything usually brings some complications, but as long as the ends outweigh the means, changes are almost always worth being made. Most changes are better described as improvements, and those that aren’t are the ones not worth making.
When it comes to my writing, I usually end up spewing about people. How people think, act, whatever. I usually have some trouble writing anything if I’m not in a particular writing groove, my self absorbed mind always seems to drift around someone or something that’s happening to someone and such. From experiences usually related to school, I find that writing can be an extremely useful tool for debates or conflicts. If I’m looking to prove a point about something that holds any amount of importance, it’s extremely helpful to have a pre-written set of points, or something more thorough like an essay. When you’re having an argument or a debate with someone about a topic, people love to talk out of their ass and pull out some false "fact". This will usually go back and forth until someone decides to drop it, resulting in little progress. I don’t know why, but having some concrete facts on paper usually garners a certain amount of respect from the opposite side and results in a little more open-mindedness.
Changing anything usually brings some complications, but as long as the ends outweigh the means, changes are almost always worth being made. Most changes are better described as improvements, and those that aren’t are the ones not worth making.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Journal 2
Journal #2 Matt Steel
I’ve been putting some thought in to this question a lot recently, and my idea of a legacy has come to be pretty average. There’s quite a few people who want to leave a mark to be remembered by, to be the next Shaq or Davinci. I’d like to say I don’t care what people remember me by, but that would be some arrogant and a solid lie.
People come, people go, and there’s not a whole lot of people that stick around through the whole ride. There’s been a lot of people I associate myself with by calling them friends and family that I know won’t be here in ten or fifteen. These are the kind of people that aren’t on my brain when it comes to how I’d like to be remembered. People are going to remember me for a whole lot more than one single event that decides the outcome of how they think about me, and I can’t help that. At the same time, how people remember you doesn’t decide how you did live your life, so to hell with them. On another level, those people that I know I can call my real friends or people down the road that become those real friends, those are the people that I’d hope remembered me in a good light.
My reason for being is to have some good times with people who want to have some good times with me. This is the question I guess I’m supposed to raise some half baked pseudo-intellectual enlightened reason behind my being but I don’t have one, and I think there probably isn’t one. I don’t plan to be mad wealthy or cure cancer, and I could care less if I was in some textbook fifty years from now about how I conquered South America, but if I had the opportunity to live a decent life in a dope country, and if the people that stayed true the whole way through thought I was a good guy, than I think I’d die a happy dude.
I’ve been putting some thought in to this question a lot recently, and my idea of a legacy has come to be pretty average. There’s quite a few people who want to leave a mark to be remembered by, to be the next Shaq or Davinci. I’d like to say I don’t care what people remember me by, but that would be some arrogant and a solid lie.
People come, people go, and there’s not a whole lot of people that stick around through the whole ride. There’s been a lot of people I associate myself with by calling them friends and family that I know won’t be here in ten or fifteen. These are the kind of people that aren’t on my brain when it comes to how I’d like to be remembered. People are going to remember me for a whole lot more than one single event that decides the outcome of how they think about me, and I can’t help that. At the same time, how people remember you doesn’t decide how you did live your life, so to hell with them. On another level, those people that I know I can call my real friends or people down the road that become those real friends, those are the people that I’d hope remembered me in a good light.
My reason for being is to have some good times with people who want to have some good times with me. This is the question I guess I’m supposed to raise some half baked pseudo-intellectual enlightened reason behind my being but I don’t have one, and I think there probably isn’t one. I don’t plan to be mad wealthy or cure cancer, and I could care less if I was in some textbook fifty years from now about how I conquered South America, but if I had the opportunity to live a decent life in a dope country, and if the people that stayed true the whole way through thought I was a good guy, than I think I’d die a happy dude.
Journal 1
Journal #1 Matt Steel
As a seventeen year old Canadian, there’s a reasonable boundary to "What I know". There’s probably also a conflict between what I think I know about and what I actually do. I’d say I’m pretty ignorant to writing about most topics in general. Going through school you learn the basics of how to write, but that’s quite different from writing. That being said, there’s not a whole lot of settings, topics, issues etc. that I’d be "uncomfortable" writing about. Anything I’m being serious about writing merits a bit of beforehand research. The things that make me a little edgy to write about are things that I might have a misperception on. When people write stories about someone with Autism or a single mother living in the ghetto, they themselves have a responsibility not to send out an image through their writing that would warp the minds of the readers. Not only is the writer giving people a false picture of something foreign to them, but is making an ass of himself as people will presumably be reading the piece of writing and noticing the ignorance. After writing this piece I’ve got half the mind to say I’d like to stay away from as much non fiction as possible, as fiction is almost a ‘safe zone’ to write in and around.
As a seventeen year old Canadian, there’s a reasonable boundary to "What I know". There’s probably also a conflict between what I think I know about and what I actually do. I’d say I’m pretty ignorant to writing about most topics in general. Going through school you learn the basics of how to write, but that’s quite different from writing. That being said, there’s not a whole lot of settings, topics, issues etc. that I’d be "uncomfortable" writing about. Anything I’m being serious about writing merits a bit of beforehand research. The things that make me a little edgy to write about are things that I might have a misperception on. When people write stories about someone with Autism or a single mother living in the ghetto, they themselves have a responsibility not to send out an image through their writing that would warp the minds of the readers. Not only is the writer giving people a false picture of something foreign to them, but is making an ass of himself as people will presumably be reading the piece of writing and noticing the ignorance. After writing this piece I’ve got half the mind to say I’d like to stay away from as much non fiction as possible, as fiction is almost a ‘safe zone’ to write in and around.
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