Prompt subject: California, Current Events, Legislation
Prompt author: Jinx “T-Unit” Flair
Prompt cycle: October 27 – November 2 @ 23:59 GMT+0

Elections are right around the corner – are you on top of things?

November 4, 2008 marks the 58th presidential election and the first that we are legally allowed to vote in! Are you all registered to vote? Did you register in California? Are you voting absentee?

This year’s California state elections ballot includes voting in the office of President of the United States, all the seats of California’s delegation to the House of Representatives, all of the seats of the State Assembly, all of the odd-numbered seats of the State Senate, and twelve propositions.

Last time, we discussed the presidential nominees – this week, we’re focusing more on the California ballot, particularly the twelve propositions, as listed below:

1A – California High Speed Rail Bond. S.B. 1856.
2 – Treatment of Farm Animals. Statute.
3 – Children’s Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program. Statute.
4 – Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor’s Pregnancy. Constitutional Amendment. (third attempt at Proposition 73)
5 – Nonviolent Offenders. Sentencing, Parole and Rehabilitation. Statute.
6 – Criminal Penalties and Laws. Public Safety Funding. Statute.
7 – Renewable Energy. Statute.
8 – Eliminates Right of Same-sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.
9 – Criminal Justice System. Victims’ Rights. Parole. Constitutional Amendment and Statute.
10 – Bonds. Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy. Statute.
11 – Redistricting. Constitutional Amendment and Statute.
12 – Veterans’ Bond Act of 2008. S.B. 1572.

Read up more of them in the enclosed voter guide that should have come with your absentee ballot, or click here for more information.

What are your thoughts? Expand on a couple, or even all of them if you like!

(For Asuka, you can either choose to voice opinions on these, or respond to one of the other prompts if you’d rather do that)

Responses
Why ANYONE with the smallest drop of common sense and a sense of compassion one hopes still exists in all humans should vote NO on Prop 8. (Earwax)
My $0.02 (Regina)
Jinx is not really a fan of consuming sketchy animal products and coat hanger abortions. And apparently God is not a fan of gays. (Jinx)
How I voted on the propositions… (Xan)

Promptt: Presidential Election 2008
Music: none
And etc: Crunching under them (3)

As an immigrant, I cannot help but feel like my opinion on this matter should be kept to myself, seeing that it’s not my government. Whatever happens, I have no say in the matter; I’ll just pay taxes and hope that the Japanese government improves in the near future (unlikely, since it has been crappy for at least 10 years now).

That being said, amidst my busy schedule, I did watch parts of the vice-presidential and presidential debates.

My few comments:
1. Aren’t both candidates supposed to be moderates, neither too liberal nor too conservative?
2. You can’t give extra credits to third graders; that’s up to the teacher’s discretion.
3. Must you wink at the camera?
4. Please leave Joe the Plumber out of the discussion.

Prompt:Your chance to explain why you are (or will be) awesome
Music: Shostakovich No.10
And etc: Crossing streets filled with red leaves (2)

Prompt subject: Information
Prompt author: Jinx “T-Unit” Flair
Prompt cycle: October 13-19 @ 23:59 GMT+0

So you might have noticed that we’re already four days late on putting up a prompt for this week. You might also have noticed that we’re also four days late in putting up a reason why there is not a prompt for this week.

We’ve reached crisis mode again – I’ve got projects and drama galore and still trying to make time for searching for summer internships while Xan is exploding from four finals and job interviews and God Anonymous II knows what else because honestly, I can’t even keep track. All I know is that I had to call her at 2AM (East Coast time) while long boarding back to my dorm to wake her up so she could study, and that almost resulted in a fatal accident when I lost the board and almost barrel-rolled over my laptop and impaled myself in the fence. At least she woke up, I suppose. Long story short, we’re exploding like chipmunks in a microwave and this is officially a catch-up week.

Xan interjecting here… Jinx is INCORRECT — I am not taking finals. The quarter system isn’t THAT fast. Rather, I am now almost done with MIDTERMS week from hell. It sucks. I’m going back to studying now and thank you Jinx for that wake-up call.

Prompt subject: Creative Writing, Current Events
Prompt author: Xan “Chaos” Englehart
Prompt cycle: October 6 – 12 @ 23:59 GMT+0

Sometimes you’ve got a lot of really boring stuff that you need to tell a lot of apathetic people. How does a writer deal with that? Well, ask the illustrious Seth Mandel Winger.

Every week, his dorm had house meeting. And every week, no one paid attention to the house meeting notes that were sent to their inboxes. Mr. Winger decided to remedy this situation. Here is an excerpt from one rendition of his take on house meeting notes.

The desert artist leads a hard life.  While he may dream of verdant landscapes and lush ponds of water lilies, all he sees as he gazes longingly out his window is a bleak and dessicated wasteland, an expanse of sand and cacti, gila monsters and dry river beds.

Such is the case of one Filibert T. Wooseldorf, self-proclaimed desert painter extraordinaire.  We meet Mr. Wooseldorf one morning in early March, as he is deep in thought over his breakfast of runny eggs and stale coffee.  Mr. Wooseldorf has been without inspiration for several weeks now, having exhausted all the possibilities the bleak landscape of his home could provide.  His critically acclaimed set of twelve oil paintings entitled “Dirt at Different Times of Day” sits, unbought, in his garden shed, gathering dust.

“Perhaps,” sighs the pitifully lonely Mr. Wooseldorf to himself, “I should sign up for Loro’s Special Dinner on Friday May 23 from five to ten p.m. — it’s free and both is special and includes dinner.”

(to read the rest of his entry, click here)

Your task this week? Simple. Include the following lines in your own story:

• SpaceX Falcon 1 becomes the first privately-developed liquid-fueled space launch vehicle to successfully make orbit
• Fannie Mae forgives mortgage debt of 90-year-old woman who shot herself
• Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia sets a new marathon world record of two hours, three minutes, 59 seconds at the Berlin Marathon
• Man uses home-made flamethrower to set relatives on fire
• A stampede in Jodhpur, India, at the beginning of Navratri, kills 113 and injures more than 250

Good luck!

Prompt: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Music: 周杰伦 – 不能说的秘密
And etc: come Thursday, chickens (1)

I’ve been thinking about this question since I wrote it a month ago because while it was an easy prompt to write, it’s a difficult one to answer. The best part, however, was when my PDI professor told us that our first analysis essay would be on defining beauty and aesthetics from the standpoint of a designer. Therefore, it narrowed the scope so we were only defining what made an object beautiful, not art and aesthetics as a whole. I’d read parts of it before a couple years back in high school, but been reading segments of Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Judgment more since Jess mentioned it in Blaze, splendor, symmetry, so while it didn’t have to be a research essay, I included some research that I’d done on the side because I felt it applied. And so, segments of my essay (with editing by Xan and my professor) are below the cut!

A/N: There’s a lot more that I should fix based on some insight that my professor gave me, but I’ve been getting really tired of being behind on posts, so I’m putting this up for now, and maybe fixing it sometime in the near future!

More »

Prompt: Your chance to explain why you are (or will be) awesome
Music: Incubus – Dig
And etc.: Grillz (t)

First of all, to all of you who have recently (re)discovered how to post, to single-space things you press shift and enter/return. Good times!

So what is my future job? Try this job title on for size: MD/PhD and novelist. Which means for now, Biology major (specialization in Molecular and Cell Biology) with a Creative Writing (Fiction) minor.

Basically it means I’ll be doing awesome medical research — probably in genetics (and how it relates to the rest of medicine), or maybe neuroscience or stem cells — and writing cool stories on the side. And while yes, doing medical research and saving/improving millions of lives is fantastic, I might pursue the plagiarism of Count Mein’s research to get to the velociraptors first.

I know for the most part people shy away from the thought of doing an MD/PhD because of the long time spent in school, but let me make you a diagram to help you understand.

Figure 1. Graph of Awesomeness vs. Years of Schooling Finished for MDs and MD/PhDs.

Then you throw in the fact that I will be writing amazing awesome novels, and factor in the exponential for being an MD/PhD, and my awesomeness cannot be matched. And I’ll be making lots of money and hopefully telling the president (or director of the NIH) (or Charlie Rose) what’s wrong with the world and what to do about it. And also why he/she should buy my latest book.

Remember folks: your rating on the awesomeness scale follows this equation:

Where
HS = -1 if person has not graduated from high school; +1 otherwise
G = number of graduate degrees held, plus one
7 = just because
PC = pineapple constant ≈ 4.253
I = imaginativeness rating (determined by separate equation); not to be confused with the imaginary number i
NR = readership of any publications (notice that a readership of 0 means an automatic AR of 0)
e = natural number ≈ 2.718
SpD = number of people who have you on speed dial
B = badass rating (determined by separate equation)(can be negative)
Q = 1 if person does not hold an MD/PhD; 94.827 if person has an MD/PhD

Clearly you will have trouble being as awesome as I, once I get my MD/PhD. I mean look at yourself — you’re struggling as is :p

That is all.

-Xan

P.S. I love you guys and all your future vocations.
P.P.S. Flying velociraptors count in the badass rating.

Prompt: A Plight of Insanity? Surely not!

Music: Office Work- John Powell

And Etc. which tastes like metal (3)

So I kind of feel like the ship has left the dock, traveled to new and exotic places…like Oklahoma…and then on its way out to sea again somehow I jumped on board. Not that I’m not excited to be a part of this; au contraire, this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me twiddle my thumbs and be grateful once again that I’m an aspiring writer.  It’s just that all of you seem to be so established in this blog…I’ll have to work twice as hard, perhaps even stand on my tiptoes as I have to do for most daily chores, to get up to your standard. So please, in the meantime, just humor me. I’m used to it, trust me :D

But in the meantime, I have to say that unless for my summer job, I definitely would not have even heard of Wordpress until now. I know, tsk tsk, but you’re looking at someone who plays Yahtzee during her spare time. But I was lucky to be brainwashed into a human spammer for various blogs on consumer products and so I found out about the world that is Wordpress.

Okay, so the prompt…all in all, this site looks amazing. I’m still getting the hang of maneuvering around on it, but what I’ve seen so far looks pretty good. Only one thing to point out: on my bio it says my name is “Earsplitting Whipser” instead of Whisper. I have no doubts that whipsers–especially earsplitting ones–are to be admired in every way possible, but I just thought I’d point that out :P

So after that smorgasbord (thanks for exposing me to that word, Jess) of blah I think I’ll just take a seat and let you all know that I’m really excited to be a part of this!

-EW