Favorite Poem Project

I'm not exactly the religious type of person, but when I looked up Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Psalm of Life, I was enchanted by its talk about life's struggles, and how far we've come. Then, I listened to the video by Rev. Michael Haynes, and I felt like, in the context of the Reverend's life, the psalm made all the more sense, and all the more connected to my life. I, myself, constantly think about life, and the stories that Rev. Haynes told, and Longfellow's psalm, just made me feel that I wasn't alone when it came to a pedantic philosophizing of life and its purpose.

A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

~Roland

A freewrite on nicknames

You want to know nicknames I've been called? Do you really seek so much of my past history, as to desire what I have been called?
Well, so much for redundancy.

Well, I suppose I'll start out strong, then get increasingly worse and worse.

I'm called Ro by my sister, and my (dare I say only?) friend throughout high school. Um...I suppose that's just because their too lazy to explicate the full two syllables of my name. But, my sister and Kelcy were my two favorite people when I was younger, so Ro has become a nickname of endearment to me...sort of.

Rolly happened when i was in elementary school, by my friends Dionis and Marcielle, who were in my karate class. We enjoyed doing somersaults on the mats together, and so I acquired the name Rolly. However, when I left in third grade, people stopped calling me that.

Rolly Polly Ollie I was called by the guys in my gym class. Since I was about half the weight of the rest of the guys in high school, often in gym class during hockey, soccer, I found myself flying across the rubber floor, which, sadly, does leave carpet burn. And plus, they liked making fun of me, and such equated me to the child show's robot. Lovely. Obviously, I didn't enjoy the nickname much. Boris Taratutin is the only one allowed to call me Rolly Polly Ollie.

Lulu was a branch off of my Chinese name. I'd rather not talk about how that makes me feel.

And, there are other nicknames that I'd...rather not mention. Ro-shizzle? Honestly?

In interior speech...um...I call myself I. and me. and sometimes he. I don't think I have a special name for myself, however.

What is in a name? Endearment, sometimes, teasing, sometimes, and sometimes just a reflection of a physical description of me that happens to work with my name.

Peace,
~Roland

hehe...

I'm scared.

Workshop

I had a workshop for my manuscript on Tuesday, and, well, basically, my classmates said that my story didn't make much sense. They also said that my description was very good, but that made it really easy to pinpoint the places where the description was not very good.
The workshop overall, however, was very helpful. Just sitting there, unable to argue, allowed me to take in what everyone said, without having my own prejudices getting in the way.

Sick again

YAYYYYY......
credits to Mike Murphy.

Halloween

Well, this is a filler post, 'cuz I feel bad for not writing in a week plus change and need something to talk about.
So, Happy belated...very belated...Halloween!
So I'd originally planned to go trick-o-treating with my friends, but then they decided to go out for dinner instead. So my parents were going to pick me up from college to go trick-o-treating in thirty minutes, and I didn't want to go alone. So I go around:
"Hey, Gray, want to come with me?" "Sorry I'm busy"
"Hey, Noura, want to come?" "Sure, i'll be there in an hour." "Oh, we're leaving in half an hour." "sorry, then I can't make it." "oh well."
Then...
"Hey Chris, want to come?" "OMG I haven't gone trick since I was like seven!!!...but Pacman hasn't dried yet."
He gestured to a giant, yellow cardboard pacman lying in the grass.
"Oh well, you'll be a ninja then."
I spent the next ten minutes muzzling Chris with black shirts, creating a ninja mask.
"Wow, I look badass."
"Now, you have to put on your aviators."
When we reached our home, I realized that a ninja, jester, and plumber (my sister) would be a strange sight. So, I decided that all of us should be ninjas. Ergo, I spent the next ten minutes teaching my sister to muzzle herself with black shirts, creating a ninja mask.
However, unlike Chris and Rachel, I didn't have any long-sleeved, black shirt to go with my ninja costume. I didn't have any dark jeans, either.
So, I went in navy sweatpants and a too-small blazer. My sister was in her black karate gear. Chris was in a windbreaker and aviators. It was pretty epic. We set off to go trick-o-treating.
Some highlights:
"Who's this?"
"Rachel and Roland, with an exchange student."
"I kom from ZHAPAN" (chris with an extremely convicing japanese accent)
"Oh! Well, welcome to the US!"
Then our neighbor, an old white lady, starts talking in Japanese with chris. go figure.
Later...
"um....are you ninjas?"
"yes..."
"ok, good, I thought you were like Muslim or something"
afterwards, chris is like "I wanted to punch her, I mean, you wouldn't go around dressing like a Jew, for halloween right?"
Later...
"It's Rachel and Roland and Henry!"
"Wow, Henry, you grew so tall!"
Henry's our eight-year-old brother. We managed to convince our next-door-neighbor, without trying, that an eight-year-old was five foot ten.
Later...
"This is an exchange student from japan"
Chris waves a Japanese flag that he just happens to have in his coat pocket.

So, that was pretty much my trick-o-treating experience for the year. Full of epicness and stuff, and convincing japanese accents.
~Roland

Koyaanisqatsi

So, this is the fifth time I've watched Koyaanisqatsi (I watched it four times in a row my sophomore year in high school, as I had to sculpt a minute-by-minute analysis), and honestly, it didn't get much better.
The music sucked. There is a joke about the composer:
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Phillip Glass!
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Phillip Glass!
etc. etc, which is a pretty good representation of his music. It's supposed to be mesmerizing; I only got extremely bored and annoyed.
The scenery was adequate; there were several powerful shots, such as the garbage, and the beach next to the factory (apparently, if I remember correctly from 10th grade, the buildings represented round tombs/gravestones, symbolizing the death of nature.) I suppose the atomic bomb would be compelling too, if I didn't know from research that the shot was Photoshopped.
I think that the movie could have made the contrast clearer. I could tell that the cinematographer was trying to contrast nature with urbanity, yet it had quite beautiful, peaceful shots of the city, which confused me.
The meatpacking part was my personal favorite. The hurried frenzy of the sausages and hot dogs interposed with the busy freeways was quite comical, and was kind of disturbing, comparing cars to hunks of meat (but a good kind of disturbing).
I also liked the Hopi cultural aspect of the film. It brought a sort of ancient, mystical feel into the movie, which did contrast nicely with the urbanization of our society.
However, other than that, I found the movie dry, and not at powerful as advertised. And long. The shots were too long, and slow. I felt that if I watched the movie at 2x, I would be a lot more supportive of the movie. However, spending 10 minutes on the same shot, with the same arpeggio playing over and over again gets extremely irritating.
So, overall, there are several good parts of Koyaanisqatsi, but it is overal slow, dry, and boring.

:P

Well, I've just gotten over the THIRD FRICKIN' TIME i'm sick in a month, this time with a sore throat, fever, and headaches. First time was mono-like, with a lump in my throat and general ugggghhhness. Second was mucusal. coughing, sneezing, etc. etc.
So, hopefully it's over. Maybe I should have more vitamins in my diet. That's kinda hard, however.
~Roland

Manuscript

So, I decided on what to do with my manuscript:
I'm going to write a fictional piece, with flashbacks that underline certain important aspects of my life. The main character is a 15-year-old girl, dying from a pierced lung, subconsciously recounting on her life.
Let me know what y'all think!
~Roland

Election 2008

The short story is, all the candidates suck.
That includes VPs, too.
With the exception of Nader, of course.
DISCLAIMER: I will spend the next eh, ten minutes explicating exactly what I have wrong with them.
Let it begin.
First up, Obama. He can talk, for sure, but I always get the impression he doesn't know what he's talking about. He has no experience, and I don't trust him running the country after being in the Senate for a measly 4 years, is it?
His whole campaign is based around change. I call BS. I feel like Obama should only base his campaign around change if he really plans to make drastic changes. And since when did people want drastic change? No doubt, even McCain will bring change in the two years he'll live in office.
Plus, I find his plan on the economy sketchy, at best. When he indicates that he will cut income taxes for middle-class peoples, I will bet four years of my life that that plan also includes higher sales and property taxes, as well as the same, if not higher, taxes for lower-class Americans.
In general, his plan for the economy seems to involved mass amounts of money that seem to come from nowhere. Plus, Americans with a high salary work for that salary, so personally I don't see why they should be taxed more just because they took the time to educate themselves and receive a better job.
Next, McCain.
He supports troops in Iraq. Automatic turnoff for me. Who still supports troops in Iraq? the figures say very few. There are also a similar number of people who are not OK in the head.
Plus, he has the physique of an 80-year-old man, which would be pretty accurate considering his age.
Another topic that I personally have strong beliefs in is energy, and McCain just doesn't cut it. He supports domestic sources of oil. This means Alaska, and I would be willing to bet four years of my life on it--after all, his VP is from Alaska. Supporting domestic oil means Arctic Oil spills, animal poisoning, and possible decimation of sea otter, artic fox, and caribou species.
Also, he wants to build 45 nuclear power plants. That ticks me off. On average, a power plant produces 2.2 tons of radioactive waste every year. That radioactive waste cannot have energy extracted from it. That's 99 TONS of radioactivity a year. Where does all that go?
Nevada, of course.

VPs
Palin seems a little cooky in the head to me. She doesn't really seem to have the best memory of all, and I don't feel America is ready to have her leading in two years. Plus, she's only on the ticket because she's a woman, and she's from Alaska.
Don't get me started on Biden. I saw him in DC, debating. No further comments.

Nader
Nader is awesome. Whoever can run as a third-party candidate for--what, like five elections?--and still be alive deserves a hand of applause.

Plus, it's not like I can vote, anyways.

Flipping to the Colbert Report,
~Roland

Hoppers!

In my Design Nature class, we're supposed to design things that hop made out of limited materials (capacitors, plastic, rubber hose, tubing, wire, etc.)
I FINALLY got my trigger to work--our hopper has to relay at least .5s until it launches--but it will only fly on an inclined surface. Oh well, it finally works and it meets my goal, and I only got hit in the jaw three times and a cut on my finger :p small price to pay!
Applying NeoSporin,
~Roland
And to prove i'm NOT procrastinating, this is due in a week.
That's right, a non-procrastinating college student.
Of course, I also have a lab due in a matter of hours I haven't really looked at yet :\

Current

Current, by Stuart Dybek:

The third rail
and the electric chair

are charged with the current
that glows tonight

in the bedside lamp
illuminating your body.

I like this poem, but as the paranoid being I am, I couldn't help but read this with an overall macabre tone. I feel like Dybek is wishing the electricity that runs through the rail and the chair, both of which kill people rather gruesomely, into the bedside lamp and subsequently into the body.
While the poem contains 'happy' words such as illuminating and glowing, it still has a subtle, morbid undertone; I feel like the souls of those killed by the electricity, all glowing, come back through the current into the night, and ultimately onto his subject's body.

Checking doors and windows,
~Roland

just for kicks

And yes, all of my stories DO involve eggplants, thank you very much.

Racecar

I'm writing a fictional piece that reads both ways. Not palindrome, but half the story is just the story before read sentence by sentence backwards. Let me know what you think so far.

Chapter 1
A scream.
Linda and Harvey looked at each other.
It wasn’t the children’s.
They spied a piece of clothing on the ground.
How peculiar.
What would that be doing there? Why was it inside their home?
Harvey turned the light back on, spying a shadowed, curled-up something in the corner of his room.
“The jungle must be playing with us.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“ Why is this here?”
Harvey picked up the fungus.
“Absolutely disgusting.”
He walked over to the canvas, picked it up, and then threw it away. Then he spied something else.
“Dear god!”
Harvey walked over to the pools of techno-colored oils.
A spill.
“Damn.”
He went to work with his sponge.
Sponging oils was always fun.
He would be sponging up a storm, all on top of the brand-new material.
Linda sat there, and watched Harvey.
He picked up the sponge.
Harvey traveled to the door ajar.
He squeezed it into the sink.
He picked up the wet towel used to wash himself.
He washed himself.
Linda watched.
Time for an escape to art.
He’d just designed it.
He was incredibly proud of it.
His very own Jungle.
Chapter 2
It was his alone.
His proudest invention yet.
Linda ate an orange.
Chapter 3
He traveled to the jungle.
Time.
He was there.
They were there as well.
The random artifacts he’d found.
The children were there.
Not his.
He picked up a stray shoe.
It stunk.
He threw up.
It was purple.
He tripped over an eggplant.
He went back to the kitchen.
Damn jungle.
It's not done yet, so the backwards won't make sense, but let me know what you think of the reversal.

Lost In Translation

I was watching this movie, Lost in Translation.
Interesting stuff.
I wonder if it's true that about ten seconds of talking in Japanese really translates into about two in English.
Also, someone right next to me, whenever he saw Bob Harris, would whisper, 'pedophile' into my ear.
Well, I guess it fits.
But towards the more literary side of the movie,
it had a good realistic aspect to it, nice awkward silences.
umm...
Interesting plot, I guess?
~Roland

Facebook-more

so I was wondering...
you know how all these people are against the new Facebook, against changing it?
I wonder how many of those are Obama fans.
~Roland

Facebook

So, I just read this article. Apparently, sites like Facebook applications and music-sharing sites are incredibly easy to distribute malicious code and what-not on them.

Damn. I've got 78 different Facebook Applications. They're basically my life. I guess that means within a few months my computer will be flooded with viruses and Trojan Horses, etc.

Well, I've got a four-year warranty on my laptop :p

Downloading anti-virus software,
~Roland

Allergies

So, I'm sure many of you know, allergies suck.
Unless you're allergic to Brussels sprouts or things like that; then having allergies is pretty sweet.
But it's not fun when you can't go vacationing because of rising levels of pollen, ragweed, and grass.
It's also not fun when you can't eat any of the below:
Milk
Tomatoes
Peppers
Mangoes
Pinapples
Melons
McIntosh Apples
and Eggplants. Please no Eggplants. If you have a personal vendetta against me, go ahead and put eggplant in my salad.
So, I'm vegetarian and all that stuff, so it seriously limits my dietary choices. I like to say, I get my energy from potatoes, my nutrients from salad, and my sugar from raspberry sorbet.
It's not fun when you're a teenager, and you miss out on pizza and all that stuff.
It sucks more than anything else, that I used to love pizza, until I became unable to eat both milk and tomatoes.

That's what I thought, until my mother decided that she should take me to try to 'cure my allergies', which in her speak, as it turns out, means acupuncture.

I spent 6 hours in a car to NYC, then entered a simple-looking office with a pleasant, clean demeanor with a fishtank homing many too many fish. I heard my name called, and then a bunch of gibberish in Chinese. Given my limited Chinese skills, I only caught on to small glips, which happened to be, 'cut' and 'electrocute', which certainly calmed me much.
I ended up with six needles in my back and four in my arms, all carrying currents deadly enough to kill all of the fish in the fishtank back in the lobby. But after an hour or so, the nurse entered to tell me, in broken English, that my 'gentle relax needle cure had reach stopping.'
So I spent 6 hours driving back to NYC.
And guess what. Next week, my mom told me I had to there AGAIN to solidify the treatment a week ago.
So I spent 6 more hours driving, one hour being tortured--i mean, treated, and six hours back with, supposedly, a body 'free from allergies'.

The next week, I got allergic rhinitis, or hay fever.

So yes, allergies suck, but ever more so when your mother takes you for acupuncture in an office 300 miles away.

Destroying my computer slowly with sorbet droppings,
~Roland

First Post

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Apples and Eggplants!
Well, this is my first post. It's currently 11:05, and I'm supposed to be in a class right now. I am in class right now.
Little tidbits about me:
- I'm a college student at Olin College
- I don't swear, but when I do it's for special emphasis
- I like emoticons >:)
I will try to post at least every other day.
Thanks for reading~
Roland