Monthly Wrap-Up: June

HO DANG! June is over! Where is the year going? And the summer for that matter! Pretty soon, school will start again, and I'll have so much more work to put off! That's going to have no affect to the provocativeness of my schedule!
Sarcasm aside, let's close out the month:

• We talked about the growing land mass of dead NPC bodies
• I complained about how summer is going to be Hell next year
• I posted a paper from school
• You sat backed and watched as I freaked out over metaphors and nuances
• I questioned whether or not school was actually ending...
• ...only to be shown the very next week that school is in fact over

That's it. That's June. Bring on July, right? 

Wednesday #26 - Where's My Dead Body

Hey Dreamers! Do you realize what today is? It's the halfway mark! The year is halfway over already. Man, it feels like it was only 26 weeks ago that I decided to get back into blogging in the wee hours of the morning (there is a cat sitting on my hand as I am typing this), and now look at us: we made it to summer, we finished the school year, and we've survived to the halfway mark! It's all downhill from here (and that could mean either it's going to be progressively easier or harder as the year runs to completion...). That little piece of congratulations aside, let's talk about something this week, shall we?

Where Is My Dead Body?!?

     In role-playing video games (RPGs), it is a common practice to level up the world around the PC as they level up (i.e. when you reach level 10, the enemies that you'll fight are also level 10). In addition to the monsters, the equipment available to the PC increases in strength and value and such. For the purposes of this theory, I'll be using the game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for my examples.

Now that we know this, my question is: where are the dead bodies?

    If it takes fighting things to level up, therefore causing an increase to your knowledge in combat and your abilities characterized by a level up, it essentially takes dead bodies. And when you get to the higher levels of a game, it can take a lot of dead bodies. As one plays the game, we can see the dead bodies that the PC (player character, that's you) generates on their adventure, and we can also observe that the number of dead bodies per level up grows from level to level at an exponential rate (what once took 10 dead bodies to create now takes 100). Because we witness the creation of the dead bodies, we can easily understand how we became so strong. But, we don't ever get to see how the enemies get that way...

     According to the Elder Scrolls Wiki, "Hold Guards level with the Dragonborn until around level 50," which means that they are fighting things throughout that time, causing them to level up in accordance to the level of the main character, but for them to become that powerful, the guards would've had to have killed things to get that strong (either that, or a race of people notorious for their distrust of magic and their distaste for thieves would have to become very skilled in Lockpicking, Pick-Pocketing, Conjuration, Illusion, Alteration, and Sneaking). And this isn't just true of the guards. What about the bandits? They level with the PC until about level 28, but where are the bodies that they killed to get to be that level? The Draugr (ancient mummy Nords) are excusable, because they're from a different time, and are now raised dead,but what about the vampires? Or the Thugs that attack you? Or the Forsworn? All of these enemies level with the PC, but we never see the bodies! The only explanation that I have for this is that somewhere, of the shores of Tamriel, is a giant man-made island of dead bodies. And right next to it is the mound of weapons and armor.

     Not only do the enemies level up proportionally to the PC, but so do the available weaponry and armor. When the game begins, everyone has dinky little Iron weapons and armor, or fur armor, but by level 50, characters are toting around Elven and Dwarven and Glass and Ebony weapons! Where did they come from?!? Why didn't they have them before hand? The PC would've been dead so early on if the damn bandits used the Daedric Greatsword that was lying in their cave when the PC was level 3, instead of waiting until level 64. And where do the old weapons go? They have to go somewhere, especially if every month or so the entire population of Skyrim is upgrading (sure, it's mostly bandits, but still). 

     The only logical conclusion that we can make from this is that there is a massive mound of weapons, armor, and dead bodies polluting the oceans of Tamriel. Yep. That's gotta be it.

 Hearken now, sons of snow, to an age, long ago,
And the tale, boldly told, of the one!
Who was kin to both wyrm, and the races of man,
With a power to rival the sun!

And the voice, he did wield, on that glorious field,
When great Tamriel shuddered with war!
Mighty Thu'um, like a blade, cut through enemies all,
As the Dragonborn issued his roar!

And the Scrolls have foretold, of black wings in the cold,
That when brothers wage war come unfurled!
Alduin, Bane of Kings, ancient shadow unbound,
With a hunger to swallow the world!

But a day, shall arise, when the dark dragon's lies,
Will be silenced forever and then!
Fair Skyrim will be free from foul Alduin's maw!
Dragonborn be the savior of men!

Dragonborn, Dragonborn, by his honor is sworn,
To keep evil forever at bay!
And the fiercest foes rout when they hear triumph's shout,
Dragonborn, for your blessing we pray!

-The Song of the Dragonborn

Jeremy Soule

"Sky above, Voice within." -Arngeir, Skyrim, 2011

Summer Supplemental #3 - John Patrick

Here's a quick little report I wrote about John Patrick, a playwright! There is no justification for me to be posting this, but I figured, hey. The fellow Dreamers out there may be a bit bored with their summers, and might want a little bit of entertainment, so here you guys go:

John Patrick: A History

            John Patrick was born on the 17^th of May, in 1905, to parents that soon abandoned him, knowing so little of what their little boy would grow to do. Over the course of his 90 years of life, Patrick would write 34 plays, 26 screen plays, 2 television scripts, and publish 28 works, before his mysterious death in 1995.

            For people with an early life like Patrick’s becoming a successful writer wouldn’t have seemed to be a probable outcome. Patrick (originally John Patrick Goggan) was born in Louisville, Kentucky in mid-May in the early 20^th century, and was abandoned by his parents. This forced him to be tossed around between various childcare groups, such as foster homes, orphanages, and boarding schools. As a result of this early-onset tumult, Patrick led a young life of truancy, but was able to acquire a job as a radio announcer at KPO Radio in San Francisco, California, and at age 20, married Mildred Legaye (in 1925). In 1929, he began writing scripts for the Cecil and Sally Show on NBC, drafting over one thousand of them before he stopped in 1933, but it wasn’t until 1935, when his first play, Hell Freezes Over, made it to Broadway. The show had a short run, but it opened up a world of opportunities for Patrick, including writing scripts for Hollywood, and writing plays for Broadway.

            His next play, The Willow and I, was produced in 1942, but before it opened, Patrick had joined the war effort as a member of the American Field Service, and administered medical aid during the Second World War. In the midst of the War, Patrick found inspiration for his next play, The Hasty Heart, and had finished writing it before he returned to the U.S.. This show went on to become a movie in 1949, and a television show in 1983.

            Patrick had various other plays produced in the years after the War, but it wasn’t until 1953 that Patrick wrote his stage version of the Vern J. Sneider novel, The Teahouse of the August Moon, (the book and the play bear the same title). The Teahouse of the August Moon tells of a U.S. Naval Captain, named Capt. Fisby, who is ordered to convert a small Okinawan town called Tobiki into a democratic, capitalist, “American” community, but experiences trouble in doing this, almost facing a court martial for “not turning the villagers into Americans fast enough.” In the end, everything works out (following the grand tradition of comedies), and the audience learns that it’s important to slow down and appreciate the beauty of simplicity.

            During the post-War era, it was quite common to see shows that presented the culture clash of Pacific nations and the U.S. as comical, but unlike most of those shows (such as South Pacific), The Teahouse of the August Moon doesn’t discriminate against the Islanders, but instead reveres them in a way, saying that they are enlightened through their simplicity. While that message is still condescending, it was far kinder than “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.”

            The Teahouse of the August Moon was incredibly well received, winning a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and latter went on to be made into a film and a Broadway musical. Today, however, it is seen differently, as the characters would seem offensive to modern audiences, but that doesn’t make it any less significant. That once delinquent boy brought out an appreciation and respect of sorts for a repressed people, in a time when they were thought to be the devil-incarnate, a view that could have been developed in his truant youth, or his service in the War.

Works Cited

"John Patrick Biography." John Patrick Biography. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2014.

"The Teahouse of the August Moon." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2014.

"John Patrick (dramatist)." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2014.

See ya

Summer Supplemental #2 - Political Signs

Good God! Why do people have to put up so many campaign signs? During that all-nighter I talked about in Wednesday #25, I went on a bike ride just before dawn, and on this trip, I went by my local library. And I saw this:

Okay, I may have added the music, but still (it made the breathing much less worse... and those edits were because I needed to control my bike more than I wanted to film), I forgot to not film it in profile... but I don't necessarily want to go back and film it again...
Am I being lazy about this? Sure. I'll take that blame. BUT STILL! Why are there so many signs? Can anyone give me an answer to this question?!?

See ya

Wednesday #25 - The Summers of Hell

    Hello Dreamers! How are your summers going? Mines been fun, but involving a TON of late nights. In fact, Tuesday night was a very late night. It was my "24 hour staying awake" day, which is a thing I try and do every summer. Does it throw off my sleeping schedule? Sure. Do the other residents of my household disapprove of it? Oh yeah. Is there no rationalization for it? Nope.
     Am I still going to do it next year? Definitely. For one thing, it's a tradition, and one that I enjoy. It's kinda like the start of my summer, once I stay up to see the dawn of the new day. Until that point, summer is just kinda this thing that I'm muddling through... And that is no way to treat a summer! Well, the summer before the summer of Hell.
     What's the Summer of Hell, you ask? Excellent question.

The Summers of Hell

     There are two distinct Summers of Hell (that I am aware of), and they both occur after schooling. The first is after your senior year of high school, when your whole world is about to change, but is still situation normal. Your high school friends are still there, and your group is still hanging out, but you're all aware that this entire existence is just about to disappear, and high school innocence will soon be replaced with college responsibility. After that summer, the next time you'll be able to see all of your friends again will at the earliest be Thanksgiving, maybe Winter Break or Spring Break, but if you have anyone who will be going to school far away, then you'll most likely have to wait until the next Summer Break to see them. And both of you will have changed in that time period. You'll have made new friends, new jokes, faced new struggles and hardships, and all of these without your old high school buds. Makes you wish that high school was longer than four years, doesn't it.

     The second Summer of Hell that I can talk about (because it is the only other one that I'm aware of) is the summer after you graduate from college. Imagine how terrible that would be, leaving college. Leaving high school must be terrible, but at least you're going to another school. Once you leave college, you're out in the real world. Sure you can go to grad school, get a masters, but how are you going to pay for that? Or your food? And you'll have to be paying your own taxes. The job market becomes incredibly important to you. And all of these worries are running through your mind all throughout this summer, in a very compressed fashion, since you spent the past school year studying and trying to graduate in 4 years. Now, if you didn't go to college, and you're already working, you get to wonder about your life when all your high school friends leave college and go off to live their lives, and you're left with a considerably smaller friend pool. 

     It's a pretty sucky topic, but it's not gonna be fun.

Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
-Coleman Barks

"We are all imperfect. We cannot expect a perfect government." -William Howard Taft

Summer Supplemental #1 - Camping Metaphor

The world works in really strange ways...

     Figured I ought to establish that, before we get started, and now that that has been addressed, we can begin. This past weekend, I found myself on a camping trip with the local 4-H group (which is a co-ed youth group, organized into clubs, and governed by a set of by-laws), which I am now a member of. For those of you who are moderately acquainted with me, the news of me going camping is nothing shocking or surprising, but for those of you who aren't, it's exposition time...
     I have been a member of the Boy Scouts of America, for about 7 years now, and over that time I have gone on quite a few camping trips, ranging from the sandy shores of Assateague Island MD to the heights of Trails Peak NM. So, I do a lot of camping, and mostly with the Boy Scouts.
     The very first trip I took with my troop, when I was a new Scout, was the the (aptly named) New Scout Campout, which was held in a campsite named Poplar Grove, in a nearby park. On this camping trip, I was taught some incredibly important skills, such as basic first aid, knot tying, fire starting, knife safety, and the various ins and outs of camping.
     Skip ahead 7 years. I return to that exact same campsite... for my first camping trip... with another youth group... but that campsite has grown with me; it is no longer the run down place it once was. Before, the site had a single latrine: old, smelly, Satan's vassal. Now, it's all not smelly (or rather, not as smelly). The pavilion there was all fixed up, the tables actually fully intact, campsites designated, and equally divided. I personally seek out metaphors in life, but come on! THIS IS STARING ME IN THE FACE SAYING HELLO JD! I'M RIGHT HERE! As I have grown, matured, and become more of who I am supposed to be, so has this site, this place where I started the journey to where I am today.
     In my life there are only a handful of distinct turning points in my life: the day I manned up enough to ask out my girlfriend, my trip to Philmont, walking up the stairs of my middle school for the first time thinking "one day I'll walk down these for the last time (thank God that happened)," my uncle Jeans funeral, and that camping trip. What am I supposed to take this as?!? Is the universe trying to tell me something?
    I'm not sure why this seems so significant, but I really is to me. Anyway, there's a pretty funny music video I was shown on Youtube, and I would now like to share it with you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rId6PKlDXeU

See ya

Wednesday #24 - School's Out

Can you believe it! School is out! It's over! All those long days of studying, and working, and slaving away, of being beaten down by the man: gone.

...i miss it already...

     Kidding (kinda). In reality, I'm really exited for this summer, since I get to start applying to colleges (grumble)! And apply for a job (that I won't get because I'm too busy to actually be a smart hiring choice...)! and spending time with my girlfriend (which won't happen because she is incredibly busy, like me)! And... you know what, I'm just gonna stop listing stuff, because I starting to realize a pattern of negativity... 

    I will, however, be getting my license (driver's license) this summer, and that's exciting news. For me. For the others who will be driving the roads of lovely Frederick Maryland, it's pretty terrifying. 

     Oncoming road apocalypse aside, I've got the feeling like this summer is going to be great! There is something else that I'd like to address this week: Supplemental Posts. That's right, since I'm not currently in high school, I should be able to post more often. Now, I sometimes have trouble getting the normal posts out on time, so I can't promise any specific scheduling on this whole extra post things. (I might even have... videos...)

Now Close the Windows

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.
It will be long ere the marshes resume,
I will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.
- Robert Frost

"In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest." -President William McKinley

Wednesday #23 - School Is Almost Over, but I Don't Believe It

Hello Dreamers! How are you guys doing? I hope everything is going quite nicely for you guys, I care about each of you.
     So, today is the last Wednesday of this school year. The next time its Wednesday and a school day, summer will have passed, and I'll be a senior...
     Despite this fact, it doesn't feel like school is almost over. In fact, it feels like school will be going on for another couple weeks, but I know that pretty soon, I'll wake up on the 11th, and I won't have to go to school (maybe then I'll write one of these early enough for people to read on Wednesday, and not Thursday).
     Why is this happening? Its been almost 180 days, but I'm not getting that much of a sense of closure from school. It could be that I have a lot of work this summer, since I have to start apply to colleges, and getting scholarships, and finishing up high school affairs, but I don't think that's really it (those still kinda feel far off... even though they most certainly are not).
     I think that I'm more than a little afraid of the idea of being a senior. I have to be responsible, I have a ton of difficult classes, I have so many more extra activities added onto my schedule because of senior stuff, and I have to say good bye to all of this after this year. After next Tuesday, there is no more "I'll do that next year." That simply won't exist anymore.
     Am I afraid of change? Of course. Who isn't? Change is terrifying, because it's irreversible, and we have no idea what it is. We're constantly marching forward, not sure where it is we're heading, knowing that we can't ever turn back. There's no option to turn around and paddle upstream. And in this whole idea of change, and turning back, high school represents a massive turning point in that. After this, school actually becomes a job of sorts. The real world becomes an actual place, not something we fantasize about. But it's high time I stop being afraid.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
-William Wordsworth

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress." -Frederick Douglas