Remember Poetry Wednesdays?

Well, I have a new one for you!
(And there will be a poem called "In (Living) Memory of River" coming as soon as I finish revising it.)



A Faithful Companion

We were both test subjects.
I had a gun and you couldn’t speak,
yet I was thoroughly assured that
you would never threaten to stab me.

In the event you did speak, she urged me to “disregard your advice.”

You were a faithful companion,
obeying orders and protecting me
from fiery death while I used you
as a not-quite-human shield.

You were “most likely incapable of feeling much pain.”

You were there to help me
complete a mission that was impossible
for one, but manageable for us,
and together we would beat the odds.

She told me to “please take care of you.”

The task complete, we learned that
you could no longer accompany me
on the rest of my journey, but
also could not be left behind.

There was an “Emergency Intelligence Incinerator.”

You still couldn’t speak, but I knew that
you would say to go on without you,
that you would rather die in a fire
than become a burden to me.

“You euthanized your faithful companion more quickly than any test subject on record. Congratulations.”











I would love any feedback you have. I'm doing these poems for a poetry class, but we don't have very good critiques* and I'm dying to hear what other writers have to say. Suggestions? My teacher thought it might be interesting to try writing it in present tense, which I liked. I was also thinking about changing the POV to GLaDOS** and seeing how that goes. I'll play around with it one of these days and post my alternate versions. I would REALLY love your input, though.




*it's mostly "This is really good!" even when it's clearly not



**Yes, this is a poem about Portal. Don't know about Portal? It's a puzzle-based video game in which you play a test subject going through a series of tasks run by an (evil) intelligent computer known as GLaDOS. Look up "Weighted Companion Cube" if you want to know the back story for this poem. Though I don't think that's NECESSARY. It's supposed to work as a poem even if you don't know about Portal.

Poetry Wednesdays: Back to School

I've decided to start doing Poetry Wednesdays on here, because I'm taking Intro to Creative Writing: Poetry on Wednesday nights and I'd like to share what I write each week :) This is my first one. I read it in class today and it was a hit, so I'm kind of proud of it :D

Back to School

As the scarlet train whistles
I take in the endless trees
that look so inviting and
finally I believe that
I made it to my dream school.

Soon I will be in a dorm
that I share with three others
looking forward to the time
we will spend walking through the
corridors, laughing as we
throw on our blue and bronze scarves.

The image is picturesque
and for a moment I feel
more excited than I have
ever felt for a school year.

But the train whistles again.
I blink and am forced to see
heartbreaking reality:

This isn’t Hogwarts.



(Inspired by Hank Green's "This Isn't Hogwarts")

In Defense of Nerdfighters (A Discussion about People, Groups, and "Posers")

Okay, folks! Here's the dealio. A friend of mine on Twitter said that he thought these "Nerdfighters" that have been going around the web were just hipster "nerds". I, being a Nerdfighter, decided to rally to our defense! It was actually a really interesting conversation and I came to some interesting conclusions about people and about myself.

1. A single group of people is complex, even if they are united by a common characteristic: in this case, "nerds".  There are many people who identify as nerds, and each person has their own definition of what it means to BE a nerd. I, for example, consider myself more of a language nerd, though I enjoy other classically "nerdy" things like video games and puzzles. There are other nerds out there, though, who are math nerds. Vihart is an excellent example of this. Now, I don't know if Vihart considers herself a Nerdfighter, but I do think she considers herself a nerd, which puts us both into the same group. And yet we are SO DIFFERENT. The cool thing is, though, I can respect and even enjoy her nerdiness, despite the fact that my love is language rather than math. So not only do we need to see individual people complexly, but we also need to see groups complexly.

2. Who cares WHY other people do what they do or claim to be who they claim to be? That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if someone claims to love Harry Potter because all the cool kids love Harry Potter. That's THEIR decision. Just because I love Harry Potter for the sake of loving it doesn't mean that I should judge other people because I think they're just Potter POSERS. If I think that Harry Potter has lost its value because other people like it for reasons I deem NON-LEGITIMATE, then I'm just as bad as people who say they like something just because it's the cool thing to like. I don't care what other people think about Harry Potter, I LOVE Harry Potter and that will never be affected by what other people think about it. Ceasing to like something because other people like it for its "coolness" is just as bad as liking something only because it is "cool."

3. I had a third point, but I can't remember what it was going to be. So, yeah. Lol.


Anyway, I just thought this was a really interesting discussion. If you'd like to see our whole conversation, I've transcribed it for you! (I did tweak a few grammatical things, fyi. Didn't change any content, just added an apostrophe here and there and elongated things like "b/c" that are necessary on Twitter. Also, color coded for your enjoyment.)

FRIEND (original tweet that sparked the discussion): Maybe it’s just me but this "nerdfighter" stuff that I see going around the net seems like just a bunch of hipster "nerds".

ME: Nerdfighters come in all shapes and sizes (and incidentally have been "going around the net" since 2007).

ME:  Not sure how you're defining "hipster," but I'm sure there are hipster Nerdfighters. I don't really consider MYSELF a hipster, though.

FRIEND:  Yah but their interest in things that are part of nerd culture seems shallow. More to be cool than geeking out over stuff

ME:  Hmm. Would you consider my interest in Harry Potter to be more "cool" than "geeking out"? Because it's definitely not.

FRIEND: Again, just impressions but these aren’t the people I think of when I think nerds (being one myself and around them)

ME: Honestly? There probably are Nerdfighters who call themselves that to be cool. But you'll get that with any group.

FRIEND:  I mean hipster as in being interested because it’s different from the mainstream, rather than legitimately being invested

ME:  I just think it's dangerous to generalize a group of very diverse people. I'd say many Nerdfigthers ARE interested in mainstream.

FRIEND:  Nah, you're legitimately nerdy about HP haha. But I’m talking people who throw out a portal joke and prolly never played it

ME:  Yeah, well that IS annoying. But, again, probably not the majority of Nerdfighters.

ME: The other thing, often jokes from specific things like video games become in-jokes between Nerdfighters who haven't played them. Like, I could say "the cake is a lie" and I get the background of the joke, but to me it's funny because other people who HAVE used it in a context that was funny and it caught on. That's true in popular culture, too, though. Lots of allusions are made to literature or sports in everyday speech by people who don't even KNOW what they're alluding to.

FRIEND: Understandable, but as someone who is personally invested in it, it can be rather annoying to see people act that way

ME:  I totally get that. Really. I would never say "the cake is a lie" because I've only heard it second hand. But you can understand why I take your hipster "nerds" comment as frustrating because I am personally invested in Nerdfighteria and am sincere about it

FRIEND:  For an example relevant to you - Imagine someone wearing some "Dumbledore's Army" shirt, but who’s never read Harry Potter

ME: See, I don't know. That might bother me initially, but when I thought about it I'd be excited to see how far a reach my beloved Harry Potter has had. I would definitely encourage them to actually READ the books, though.

FRIEND: True, but a lot of these people won’t. They just want to be part of the in crowd. When we're not doing it to be cool, but because we're legitimately interested. It kinda diminishes it imo

ME:  See, that's where I disagree. Nothing can diminish your love for something other than your own feelings. By saying that other people liking it for the sake of being "cool" diminishes the value of that thing, then you are just as bad as those who you would call hipsters who liked the thing for it's "value" (non-mainstreamness) in the first place.

FRIEND: I mean diminishes in that people like it for superficial reasons, not pertaining to its actual quality. So the average person sees it not for its actual qualities, but the superficiality that’s most readily seen

ME:  But I don't think that diminishes it. Who cares why people like it? It doesn't matter if it's superficially diminished. Screw them. Lol. Seriously, though. It might even help some people discover its awesomeness if they find it because it's "cool."

FRIEND: I just think people should enjoy things for their actual quality, not for example, because other people enjoy them

ME:  I agree with you, but since we can't change WHY other people do things, I'm not gonna let it bother me :)

FRIEND:  I get what you're saying about discovery which is a valid point. Maybe its worth having "posers" (for lack of a better term) if the one person out of 1000 actually ends up liking it because its good, not to follow the crowd

ME  Yup, that's what I'm sayin'. Take Buffy for example. Never would've watched it if it weren't popular, but I LOVE it now. And honestly? A good chunk of the reason I watched it was because other people talked about it and I wanted in on the jokes.

FRIEND:  This discussion went in a pretty different direction haha. Part of my worry is when a group caters too much to the mainstream, and by extension, loses what made it so good in the first place. Which happens a lot in consumer media

ME: It did, lol! Good discussion, though! And yeah, that is totally understandable. But people gotta make money, and mainstream is a LOT more lucrative than relative obscurity.

FRIEND: And by the end of this discussion, I'm the one thats (kinda) looking like a hipster. That’s irony haha.

ME:  SUCKAH!!! Lol :)

Let's Make Some Goals

I just read Alan Lastufka's 2011 To-Do List, and I thought it was a cool idea.  I'm not one for making New Year's Resolutions, but having a list of goals for 2011 seems a lot more acceptable to me. So, here goes:

-Graduate college
-Re-write NaNo novel from 2008
-Upload 100 videos
-Read 50 books (maybe try a nonfiction or two? maybe...)
-Exercise regularly
-Watch Dr. Who (all the recent seasons)
-Start a weekly (eventually bi- or even tri- weekly?) vlog with my roomie, J-Funk <3
-Fall in nerdfighterlike*

I think that's a pretty good list.  Some of these are more important than others, but they're all things I want to do and they're all feasible in 2011. Some of them will probably overlap, too. I'll probably count my roomie-vlogs toward my 100 videos. And I'm taking four literature classes next semester, so some of those 50 books will go towards me graduating college. And, you know, maybe if I upload lots of videos I'll get to know some awesome nerdfighter guy and fall in nerdfighterlike! You never know! :D

Anyway, I know I haven't blogged much lately... that whole blog-every-week thing kinda fell through, lol. But I did really well with uploading videos! And I'm going to continue doing that. Blogging will be kind of secondary to making videos, but I'll blog somewhat regularly, because some things are just more easily communicated through the written word.

And since I'm kind of tired and the written word isn't really coming to me in an eloquent form right now, I'm going to cut this blog short. I'll revisit my list around this same time next year and see how I did!


*hey, it worked for Alan! :)

Hello, blog!

Well!  I decided it was high time I got myself a normal blog.  I have a blog dedicated to my semester in Mexico, but rather that go back to using that one I thought it might be nice to have an everyday blog.  So, here it is!  And just in time, too!

You see, BEDA is coming up soon.  (Blog Every Day in April.  Don't know what I'm talking about?  Check this out.  It's a crazy thing that the awesome author Maureen Johnson came up with last year, and I am very excited for this year!)  And I really want to get into the habit of blogging again.  I did pretty well last year, but I haven't really blogged since then.  And I like to blog.  It's fun.  It's like writing in a journal, except you're displaying that journal to anyone with internet access.

Not that I really expect people to read my blog.  Maybe my friends.  Maybe my mom.  And that's only if they're really bored and have nothing better to do.

HOWEVER.  On the off chance that somebody new really is reading this... well, hello!  Nice to meet you!  Let me introduce myself:

I'm Allison!  I'm a college student in northern Arizona and I love to read and write.  Also, I'm a Nerdfighter.  Don't know what that is?  That's okay!  Check out this INFORMATIONAL VIDEO!  (It's hilarious, and it will help you understand some of the random things I talk about.)



I like to participate in crazy internet things.  Which is why you will hear from me every day in April, and come November I'll probably blog very rarely and only about the novel I'm furiously writing*.  I love Twitter.  I love YouTube (for the community of awesome people, not the illegally uploaded episodes of The Office).  I love Facebook and DailyBooth and Formspring and any other social networking site you can think of.

But there is something I love even more than the internet: BOOKS.  I love to read.  I read often and when I am reading something I am DEDICATED.  I usually finish a book in two or three days, depending on the length of the book and the amount of time I spend doing important things like eating or going to class.

I'm majoring in English Education (because I LOVE English), but if I can make my dreams come true, I'll be a published author.  Of a real-live book.  ASAP.

And that, my friends, is my life in a nutshell.  Hope I'm not too boring!  If you're so inclined, please leave a comment.  Comments are love, and it's always nice to make new friends!


*See NaNoWriMo

Song Stuck In My Head: Prince Ali (Aladdin)
Most Recent Book: Rampant by Diana Peterfruend
Days Until New Moon on DVD: 31