Junk 1-4, Week 10

fair and colicky

he'd get wasted and try to drown me in a can of old Milwaukee

the bathroom is the last bastion of american security - cartman south park

onions just seem to be a defining factor in how I pick my friends, and my enemies

Free 1, Week 9

my skin hotter than blown glass

fresh out the oven

ya temper tempts me to put fist to stomach

assist sounds to plunder

take down her number

then throw out the napkin in the trash

sit back write about it and wonder

if i had picked her to be wife

could i re adjust my morals and

determine her actions rights?

In most circumstances, I wouldn't

so I dance nunez, a street boom

box rocking the block like that

july 9 am Sun; break dancing

youth station cardboard stages

at hand for tourist entertainment

rent, practice and all of the above.

The wall behind them freshly painted

over, white anti graffiti paint flaking

like BIC white out left out for an hour

too long. Sitting staunch across the

street a man with overalls rolled up

to his knee laughs, cobra hidden in a

brown bodega sack and the peach

he stole right under his wife's nose

that peachsupernova red with a pinch

of C minus red. Chunks lodged in

his back molars bite after slurping

bite.

Junk 5, Week 9

don't tell me you're one of those convenient Catholics that only goes to church every Sunday - selma hayek 30 rock

Junk 1-4, Week 9

we will let you pay with your own money because of equality – parks and recreation

it aint government work if you don't have to do it twice - parks and recreation

go buy yourselves a walkman

how much is a walkman theses days?

twenty, probably more than twenty

here's twenty-five

-ron from parks and recreations

every relationship is two people with stuff

Response 2, Week 8

David's Free Piece week 8

Funny, I whenever someone says "technology," I usually picture some guy alone in his house with all the lights off watching cat videos and laughing to himself. But what I'm watching is entirely different. Four friends sitting around a table, laughing about new stories about Taylor creeping out college girls that sound a lot like old stories about Taylor and playing games on their phones. Not just any game, Draw Something. A game that isn't about winning or losing in the sense that one person walks away a chin raised and another saying "I'll be back next time," but more like I think the Greek's intended when they established their Olympics. "Competition" meaning "seeking together." Two partners trying to keep each other finding the right answers for as long as they can, one picture at a time. It's crazy, you take out your phone - with it's large touch screen - and caress colors and lines out of the white nothing of cyberspace. After a couple of strokes, you're done. You have eagles, football, or Tina Fey. Then I imagine it changes shape into something like invisible lasers and bounces off a satellite in space to a friend's phone across the country, in a college town 2-and-a-half hours away, or right across the table. When your friend gets it, and they see the creation of yours spark to life, produced stroke by stroke until they finally offer a guess. They can either guess right or wrong. Right keeping the streak going, wrong means you have to start over from "Turn 1." But either way, technology is keeping friends in each other's lives with a "thousand words" a guess.

My Response:

There are some grammar mistakes that interrupt the text and complicate meaning but not in the way that adds to the stories layers in any significant. That out of the way reading this presented some very fresh language. When the text describes the difference between a zero sum game and this cooperative drawing games provides the specificity and visceral explanations that you look for in writing. Also the text’s understanding of technology illuminates a new age: “some guy alone in house with all the lights off watching cat videos.” Things do get muddled with the laser discussion, but that was a mechanics and execution error like I mentioned earlier. For future revisions I would like to see some more dialogue and clean up the sentences, break up the scene.

Response 1, Week 8

Osa -In Class Exercise: Reversal

I'm keeping up with the Kardashians with my notebook on my lap, one hand on the rubber of the inkjet, and the other in the crevice between the DVR remote's pause and play buttons. Lesson Number One: How to achieve success and happiness. Kim has taught a great deal since she authored her magnum opus with that Brandy's little brother who sings R&B. She took a risk, like my creative writing teacher always says, and de-familiarized the female body. I read somewhere that she drew upon the work of Judith Butler before writing the script. That made me smile.

When I was seven or eight my mom used to drag me to her AA meetings. Afterwards we would go to her friend Stacy's house, and I'd watch two re-runs of Will and Grace while they went to talk in the bedroom. Sometimes I'd pick a book from the shelf by the TV. I preferred the bell hooks and Audre Lorde books because they had nice covers and talked about women and freedom. When mom and Stacy were done talking they would always laugh at what I was reading. They didn't think I understood the big words like feminism or gender or transgression. But, I did.

My response:

The association of the infamous Kardashian sex tape as a feminist gesture against containment of the female body is an excellent reversal of how viewers usually generate thoughts about the fiasco. I think the text could play down the high theory in the beginning and let that be a part of how readers understand the character that absorbs these images as female liberation. Instead of ‘that made me smile, ‘ some language that describes the smile; in this reversal there must be a cracking of fictitious and superfluous living, smiles can be a sign of approval or feigned approval. For future revisions the text could incorporate some dialogue and expand on this scene.