Duhhbbuhhhdeeeeee… That’s all folks!!

Well that is it!!  I have submitted everything.  Unless I wake up at 3am with an insane amount of energy, I don’t see myself finishing the blogging a classic extra credit assignment.  My head hurts, my eyes are blurry, and I’ve been doing Criminal Justice and English work all day long.  I’m really craving a Gatorade, the orange kind to be precise.  I guess I broke a mental sweat today.  Hope everyone had a good semester in all their classes, and good luck with everything!!!

Since I don’t think I’m going to do the extra credit, I at least wanted to seriously recommend the book Lord Of The Flies.  It’s a great great story.  I really enjoyed re-reading it.  Probably has been 15 years since I read it.  I remember hating it, even though I really liked it.  I was just being a rebel and mad that I was being forced to read a book in school!  Ha ha.

– Chris

Blogging a classic

I’m planning on doing the blogging a classic extra credit assignment.  I don’t know if I’m going to have time to get it done, but I will try.  I found this really old copy of Lord of the Flies that belonged to my Mom at some point.  I made sure all the pages were there.  It seems to be in really good shape for its age.  Anyone else doing blogging a classic for extra credit??

– Chris

Pay your taxes!!

My birthday is coming up on tax day.  I’m excited, I’m going to a concert and going to this german restaurant in Newport that I’ve always wanted to check out.  It’s been a crazy busy week for me.  I was out of town for a few days.  I finished 2 of my other online classes on a whim because I really needed to get them done.  I’ve been procrastinating Essay 3.  I watched the movie again, and took some good notes.  I went to see if there was an example of essay 3 on Blackboard to get the feel for an analytical essay as opposed to a summary, and noticed the example was on the same movie I  am doing, so I didn’t read it.  I’m afraid I will be influenced too much by it and would rather have my own ideas.  Now I kinda wish I picked a different movie, but oh well.  That’s what I get for procrastinating this time.

I know nothing was required this week, but I figured I would vent a little.

– Chris

Billy The Kid

Everyone probably could have guessed that I was going to end up watching Young Guns for my western film, based on my user name for the blog.

The overall plot of the Young Guns, which came out in 1988, centers around Billy the kid, who is taking the law into his own hands to avenge the murder of John Tunstall, an educated man who took Billy and several other troubled youth in to educate them and make them better men, by going after the men responsible for Tunstall’s murder.

In the start of the movie, Billy the kid is seen running from some men chasing him, but he hides and receives help escaping the small town from Tunstall, who takes him back to his house and introduces him to the rest of the guys he has working on his ranch.  Tunstall has competition with another rancher, Lawrence Murphy, who has political ties, and is ultimately murdered outside of his ranch, in front of the “Regulators”, the name given to his farm hands, including Billy.  They speak to a lawyer who gets them titled as deputies, with the task of serving warrants for these men who murdered Tunstall, but they go the renegade route and just start killing the men responsible, instead of arresting them and bringing them in for justice to be served.  Billy, with the help from the rest of the regulators, including “Doc Scurlock”, “Jose Chavez”, and “Dick Brewer”, cause a lot of trouble and become wanted felons with high bounties on their heads from the governor.  This doesn’t seem to phase Billy, but it causes the rest of them to want to leave New Mexico, and go to New York or California and start new lives, including Scurlock, but Billy is able to persuade them to fight.  Scurlock was romantically interested in a Chinese slave woman that was kidnapped by Murphy, but she was scared to leave Murphy to be with him, and he wanted to take her away from trouble and start a new life. One of the men in his group gets married to a woman he just met, and this is when Billy is told that their attorney friend is going to be killed in his home the next day, so that is where the regulators go to try to save their friend.  Morning comes, and they become completely surrounded by many men hoping to claim the bounty on their heads, as well as the Army which was dispatched in to assist.  After many shoot outs, the house is set on fire and they are forced to escape, which they are successful, only losing a few less important men in the fight.  Chavez, portraying a Mexican/Native American type, snuck out first, and they thought he abandoned them, but he came back with horses just in the nick of time.  Billy is shot but rides away on a horse and when it seems he is long gone, he comes back into the scene and aims down range and shoots the man who ordered to have Tunstall killed in the beginning, and then he rides off into the sunset, like every good cowboy should do =).  We are then told by a narrative voice that Scurlock moves to New York City with the chinese woman, Chavez started work on a fruit farm in California, and Billy was eventually shot and killed while he was unarmed.  The tone implies that this might not have actually happened, which set it up for a sequel perfectly.

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With that said, I really love this movie, and am excited to write a paper on it.  I’m going to have to watch Young Guns 2 just for the heck of it.

Good luck everyone!!

– Chris

(The state of) Kentucky Basketball

I stand divided.  I lived in NYC for about 4 years, and as much as I couldn’t wait to move away from Kentucky, I found myself back here.  I think it’s one of the greatest states, and I think Louisville is a great city.  It’s got just about everything you could ask for.  Really cool culture, lots of great restaurants, just an all around great place.  I guess you could say I root for the cats at heart, since that’s how I was raised, but I’m just happy that the state of Kentucky has a team going to the championship game, with a really good shot at winning.  

On a side note, I just recorded some music recently, and I think I talked about that a little in one of my first blogs.  If it is mixed and finished soon enough, I’d like to post it on here just to see what you all think.

I know a blog wasn’t required this week, but I just wanted to maybe start a little discussion.  What is your favorite thing about Kentucky??

– Chris

Revision of Essay 2/Turning it in

Finally cleared the light at the end of the tunnel on this one.  It was a tough one.  I think I was the only person that was optimistic about starting Essay 2 based on what I read on everyone’s blogs.  My revision process started with me almost completely starting over, but then I decided not to.  I am always hard on myself and never think anything is as good as it could be.  That’s how I felt about the first essay, but then I got a really good grade on it, so I was happy.  On essay 2 though, I had to fix a few things in my works cited.  I completely re-did my opening thesis statement.  I looked back over my in-text citations and went over a few more tutorials that were listed.  My ending was changed a little, but not so much.  At first, I didn’t have any open-ended type questions to cause the reader to think a little bit, so I worked some of those in.  I think they are really important for a persuasive essay.  I think I followed the guidelines pretty well, so I would hope for at least a C grade!!  I know that is shooting low, but that’s usually what I think I’ll be getting.  I probably made some citing mistakes, and some formatting issues, but I think my content is good, mostly because I found the subject really interesting.  I’m now trying to talk some friends into taking a road trip out west sometime this summer to see The Alamo and other tourist type attractions.

Hope everyone else feels good about their essay!  If not, then cheer up, you get to watch a movie for the 3rd one!!

– Chris

Ooops

Well I made a mistake this week.  I uploaded the wrong RTF file to the discussion board.  Whenever I start a new document I always save it right away before typing anything.  I guess when I saved again later, I saved it as a different file name, because I’ve been told I uploaded a blank document.  I checked, and I did.  I’m out of town for a quick spring break getaway (Hello Nashville!!).  I’m going to see if my roommate can get on my computer at home and e-mail me the right document so I can post it to the discussion board anyway and try to get some feedback.  My apologies to anyone who tried to open mine only to find it blank.  I did review some of my peers essays though, and of the essays I did read, I enjoyed them and hope everyone is seeing some light at the end of the tunnel on this assignment.  It hasn’t been an easy one so far!!

– Chris

Freebie Week

I’ve been wanting to go on a trip a lot recently.  I’m sure we all have.  It seems like my vacations always end up being the super relaxing ones.  Laying on the beach, relaxing in a cabin in the mountains, just doing a whole lot of nothing.  But after starting this essay on The Alamo, I’ve decided my next vacation needs to be an educational kind.  I would absolutely love to see the Alamo in person.  Get to walk around inside of it and see what it must have been like for the soldiers standing guard.  I’ve probably spent a total of 2-3 hours getting carried away while researching and ending up on all different kinds of information about totally different major events that took place during the wild wild west.  Makes me want to take a year and just live out in the west somewhere, off the land without the Internet and other luxuries we take for granted today.  Could be fun??  I hate reality television, but if there was a show that dropped people off in a wild west type scenario, to live for a few months or even a year, I’d totally sign up!!

– Chris

Remember The Alamo!

I have decided to do my second essay on The Alamo.  Aside from being one of my favorite events in the wild west days, it was also one of my grandfathers favorites as well.  I know he has a collection of books and writings and some magazines in a box.  I’d love to get my hands on it, but can’t rely on that information until I can look through it tomorrow when I go visit the family.

But until then, my first source is going to be this book that I bought awhile back but haven’t even looked at yet.  It has just been sitting on my bookshelf collecting dust.  The “Buy with one click” feature on amazon.com causes me to buy a lot of stuff sometimes but I guess this purchase will end up being worth it.  The book is called “The Alamo” by Frank Thompson and it has really good reviews.  Here is the link with a better description.

http://www.amazon.com/Alamo-Frank-Thompson/dp/1571458409

My second source is an article from the 1996 issue of “Wild West” magazine written by Lee Paul.  It is an informative, well written piece located at

http://www.historynet.com/the-alamo-13-days-of-glory.htm

My third source is from the Smithsonian Magazine.  This article seems to correct the story, at least from America’s perspective.  Of course each country (Mexico and the US) have a different perspective of how it all went down.  I think this is important because people have to realize that there are two sides to every story.  I’d be curious as what Germany teaches in their curriculum when teaching about World War 2 and the nazi’s, etc.  This narrows that down a little bit better in terms of the two viewpoints.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/alamo.html?c=y&page=1

My fourth source is a book by William C. Davis called “Three roads to the Alamo”.  It is more informative about the more important men of the battle, such as Davie Crockett.  It is supposed to be in stock at the library but I can’t pick it up until Monday, but it also has really nice reviews.  The “main” men in this battle were very famous.  Davie Crockett was very intimidating to Mexico.  He was believed to be some sort of super hero type strength of a man.  This source also talks about Jim Bowie, which is where the name for the “Bowie” knife comes from.  He carried a very large blade with him during fights.  These little details are important to grasping this battle.

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/adp/central/books/reviews/three_roads_to_the_alamo.html

My fifth source is an internet based source that tells more about the Mexican-American War, which was the main war the battle of the Alamo was fought in.  I think it’s important to have a grasp on the entire war as well, to realize the importance of the battle of the alamo.  The Alamo was just one fight, and probably the most famous.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/grant-mexican-american-war/

I am hoping that these sources are appropriate for this essay.  It definitely is going to be much more difficult to put it all together than the first essay.

 

Yee Haw!!

– Chris

Time for the second one

It’s time for essay two.  After reading several classmate’s blogs, it seems like most people are skeptical of the persuasive piece, but I am excited about it.  I like to try to be persuasive.  Setting up a persuasive piece has very strict structural guidelines which are important to follow.  You need to have a debatable opening to set the tone and open the floor up for thought and discussion amongst readers.  This part is important because it sets your argument up.  Once you get to the meat of the essay, each paragraph will generally discuss one idea or opinion, and back it up with evidence or information on the topic.

I’m considering doing The Alamo.  It is one of my favorite events from the wild west, yet I’ve never really researched it all, other than knowing the outcome, and watching the movies that were made to portray the event.  I think I could persuade how important the bravery of the soldiers was to instill fear in their opponents, who greatly outnumbered them.

I definitely think this one is going to be tougher than the first essay, but I’m up for the challenge.

Good luck everyone!!

– Chris