My attempt at Fiddleoak-esque

I learned how to image edit in 8th grade, and it's actually come in handy many times. Considering how much of a presence we have on the Internet, being able to turn a bad photo into a good photo is super-helpful. Usually I just do beautification/"natural" image editing to make a photo look better, preferably without anyone knowing it's been edited. Recently I've gotten into more artistic effects, like the glitch-art-style edit I did to my profile picture here.

When I saw Dr. Preston's post about Fiddleoak, I was very interested because of my own experience in image editing. I was amazed and intrigued by his work, and by Fiddleoak himself-- here's a guy about as young as I was when I started image editing, and already his skills are far beyond what I'll probably ever achieve in my lifetime. I was excited at Dr. Preston's suggestion of someone contacting him to open a discussion with us online, but I've never actually tried digital compositing, which I believe is the technical term for what Fiddleoak does (although I could be wrong). I know that often when you try something for the first time, you run into problems that you never would have thought of beforehand; that's why I wanted to at least try it once, even if it turned out horribly.

Tips on memorization

For anyone who was in Mrs. Byrne's 5th period Honors English class sophomore year, you know I have lots of tricks on memorizing things. Hopefully some of these will come in handy for our memorization assignment this week.

POETRY #1

1)	The poem used by the Levi's commercial is called "The Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski.
2)	The commercial's use of the poem is ironic because it urges the audience live their own life, be independent, and think for themselves. Except the audience is actually supposed to sit there like an empty-headed consumer and do what the commercial really wants them to do, which is not think and buy Levi's.
3)	I don't think the poem reflects Bukowski's reputation. I read Bukowski's biography, and his life was difficult-- his childhood was filled with beatings and bullies, and his young adulthood was spent working menial jobs and drinking. Knowing the poem, I was expecting a happily ever after ending, something to the effect of "...and then he started writing, gave up alcohol, became wildly successful, and died a happy man, The End." However, his writing career never made him enough money to support himself, so he was forced to continue working terrible jobs, and was unable to stop drinking. The poem is about finding your way out of darkness through self-determination and bravery, but it seems that Bukowski never overcame his own darkness. Maybe the poem is his attempt at making sure no one suffers like he did.
4)	To find the poem, I Google searched "you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you" because the last line was the one I remembered most easily. I skimmed over the results and found "The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski," which I Google searched again. When the right poem came up, I knew I had the right title. Next, I searched "Charles Bukowski biography," and found/read three sources: one at Poets.org, one at Wikipedia, and one at PoetryFoundation.org. I got most of my information from the Poetry Foundation article, and used the others as supplements/double-checks.

ESSAY #1

Here is my response to essay prompt #1, concerning exile.

Big Question (plus me talking about my illness)

That's right guys, two for the price of one! This is an expanded version of the comment I posted on the main thread. I was considering making a special post to talk about my chronic illness, but when one of my Big Questions naturally led into it, I figured this is as good a time as any.

Poisonwood Bible alignment system

Depending on your interest and whether you've read my previous two posts, this will either be further explanation of my beloved alignment system using characters that you know well (or at least I hope you do... less than a week before school starts........ The Poisonwood Bible is 500+ pages.......... if you haven't started reading it then GOOD LUCK), or simply notes on the characters in The Poisonwood Bible with some slightly obscure terminology.

Alignment system part II

I promised a Poisonwood Bible alignment system post, but as I started writing it, I realized a large part of it was explaining some other additions to the original/canon alignment system. So now I'm making a dedicated post for the additions, titled "Alignment system part II"!