Please post here the equivalent of four pages of freewriting for your chapbook. It can be for the introduction or the body of your text. Aslo, please save in a word document in rich text format.
My chapbook is a touchy subject that many people are scarred of for one reason or another. There wet, slippery, slimy body isn’t the sight of pleasure to most people. They are killers and will do anything for a meal, and are only out to hurt humans and will bite you whenever they get the chance. This is the common misconception about snakes to someone who has never had an up close encounter with one. Snakes are beautiful creatures that can make an amazing pet. The thought that they are slimy is not true at all; they can appear to be wet and slimy because after they shed (get rid of the top layer of skin) they are shiny and bright and when the light hits them makes them look like they are slimy. Think about this snakes live in the desert, forest, mountains, underground, and many other places that has loose powder, dust, and grass. If they were slimy all that stuff would stick to them. They wouldn’t be able to move as fast, it would be hard for them to climb trees, and even catch prey. As for human contact they would much rather hide under something dark. Even the King Cobra, which is known as the smartest snake and the largest venomous snake, will do what it can to stay away from humans (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-cobra.html).
Many snakes live in dark places like one of my favorite types of snake the Ball Python. They enjoy hiding out in a burrow made by another mammal or something underground. Any rock or fallen tree will do just fine though (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_python). A Ball Python is one of the most common types of snake that is held in captivity because of its dormant attitude and its ability to adapt well. Ball Pythons are relatively small compared to their relatives the Black Headed Python, African Rock Python and many others that get significantly larger than the Ball. What makes snakes beautiful are there colors and patterns, which can be changed when you breed one patterned snake to a different patterned snake, much like you would a dog, or cat. When you do this it is known as a “morph” and depending on what you come out with varies the price of the snake. Take a regular Ball Python for example, which is normally sold around $40. If you take the same type of snake, but with a different pattern
you can sell it for hundreds of dollars; like the Spider Ball Python.
I am a firm believer that certain events in ones’ life define who they are. Some say perseverance and practice creates champions, while others believe champions are born. Some people spend their life in search of greatness, while others give up before they start. Who decides who becomes great and whose left sitting the bench? You often hear stories of “everyday people” doing something great and are called heroes for a while. Who decides if that is the only great thing that person has or will ever do? Have we given society the right to define us and create our heroes for us? Why are we only “great” when someone else says we are? In my life, I’ll admit it; I’ve done a lot of stupid things. I could make a list, and I am certain if you called my parents they could add a few hundred more things to the list. For the last few years I have felt misplaced and have stumbled through life one mistake at a time. But after assessing my life and its many transgressions I have come to realize that after every mistake I have learned to pick myself up and try again and only recently have I had to do this solely on my own. When I was a child I was considered rambunctious to say that lease, now a day it would be considered A.D.D. My parents were patient, but slowly going crazy. Their solution, enroll me in soccer. This single act helped set up the rest of my life, as well as teach me focus, determination, and teamwork. I spent all my time practicing and preparing for the game, I wanted to be the best; slowly my A.D.D went out the window. I straightened up and began to get noticed for it. My teams were good, really good. We played tournaments in Boston, New York, and New Jersey, always bringing home the trophies. I felt a part of something, something bigger than myself and I thrived on it. But a year after my transformation my parents broke me the news, we were moving. Not to a different suburb or town but to Bunker, Missouri, the exact middle of nowhere! Worst of all no soccer! To say the least, this was the worst thing to happen in my 10 year old existence. I was going to run away, live on my own and play soccer. Against my will my parents drug me along to the middle of the Midwest. Bunker Missouri is where all five of my mothers’ brothers and sisters lived, my parents wanted to retire and live near family and have a farm. Why, I only recently realized, but to a 10 year old city girl, this was a nightmare. I had decided to not like Bunker or anyone in it. What was I supposed to do now that soccer, the only thing that I understood, was gone? So I sulked, all day, every day. At least until school started. This is the second event in which my life was turned upside down and now looking back I am better for it! I walked into my new fifth grade class ready to hate everyone. I found my assigned seat next to a few girls who looked nice enough. Suddenly they turned to me, “hey your Jenna right? Yeah, your cousins told us all about you, we heard you play soccer, do you play basketball? Wanna hang out at recess?” Who were these girls? What did they want with me? I agreed, reluctantly, and remained quiet. But that recess changed my life. I met the friends that would stick with me all my life thus far. They didn’t care who or what I was, instead just wanted to be friends and hear stories of living in Boston. We then became inseparable. They had let me into their group, their lives, and their hearts, and although it took me a little longer to do so, I eventually came around and dove in. When basketball came around that year I was scared to sign up. What if I sucked, what if I kicked the ball instead? But the first day of practice came around and I was considered a “natural”. I loved it! As like soccer, basketball became my life, alongside my friends. I began to get noticed for playing basketball and was asked to start playing volleyball also, in junior high, again, a natural. I felt a part of something, a part of the community and the town. Older people were recognizing me and my family would show up to watch me play. I felt needed and a carried a responsibility to win for the school. These could have been the best days of my life, then. I was unstoppable. The more responsibility they gave the more I took. I received city, district, and even state awards. It seemed everyone knew my name. I was cocky, to an extent, but more, I was thankful. I had learned how to become a leader, to except responsibility, and most of all I learned to have fun. I firmly believe those years set my up to what I have become in life and what I am capable of. My senior year of high school I received several scholarships to play volleyball and basketball at junior colleges. But I had had several injuries along the way and was scared of more permanent damage, along with the idea that as a college athlete, I would have to adhere to curfews, tutoring, weekend practices, and other such things I considered torture back then. So I chocked, decided against sports and instead attended a huge college a couple hours away. Looking back, my feelings are mixed, do I wish I would have played in college, yes. I would have stayed in shape, felt the feeling of a team, felt commitment and need, and my life might have skipped a few bumps along the way. But still, I would have missed out on some of the greatest moments of my life. I would not have met the friends in college that I now consider to be sisters. Entering college I knew no one. I was one of a million, it felt like and only a number to the university. I was scared and felt inferior. Half the people I had met in my dorm were there on academic scholarship. I was just a ball player. I was friendly and waved, made small talk, and even talked about teachers, but I secretly wanted to be anywhere else. I had been under the impression that college was supposed to be the best years of your life. I felt like mine were all behind me. That was all until the third week in, when sitting at my desk pretending to study, I heard giggling, uncontrollable and loud. I cautiously poked my head out to see five girls on my floor sitting in the hall having the time of their life. I remember wishing and hoping to join them, to sit in the hard floor, lean on those ugly grey walls, and talk with these girls. I made my way to the water fountain, wondering what, if anything, could I say, that would make these girls want to hang out with me. Just then Beth, a girl who had always been friendly, yelled, “Hey, Jenna, right?” I replied, “Uh, yeah” (like I didn’t even know my own name) Beth replied, “Did you see the skater guy try to skate down the stairwell handle? We think he’s stoned, were gonna call him High Mike.” I was thrilled, no I had not seen him, but it didn’t matter that was an “in”. I stood there asking all the details, prolonging my visit, finally in silence I turned to go, when the rest of the girls started asking me to sit and stay. I was nervous, what do I say, can I be me? But as it turned out two of the girls played basketball, one even tried out to play in Colorado. Two were dancers, who missed it like crazy, and the other, although considered a brainiac, was madly in love with Brad Pitt, to the point of obsession. We sat there all night talking, laughing, judging, and reflecting back on what we all considered “the good ole days”. From that moment on I felt safe; we ate together, shopped together, and even had most classes together. We could tell each other everything, regardless of the fact that we had only known each other for weeks. We staged water fights in the dorm and went to midnight movies downtown. We each had our own routines and lives, but we shared them with each other. My freshman year of college was a dream, maybe not academically, but I made up for it in memories. We laughed, we cried, and we talked about things we could never had with our high school friends. These girls had saved me from myself. I have never quit anything in my life, I don’t consider it an option, but college and being alone came close for me. I was scared, it was a situation that I could not control, it wasn’t a basketball court where I knew the rules and I knew what it took to win, I was out of my element.
David Morra August 14, 2008 Dr. Hofheimer ENG120 My ChapBook If there is anything in my life that I most dear to my heart today it has got to be my goals that I have set out for myself to accomplish and hopefully surpass. Without my goals I don’t know what I would be doing right now because without goals how do I know if I am going into the right direction that is good for me and my lifestyle. Goals are a great thing to plan out especially in my situation. I’m young and going to college, still living with my parents which I don’t see as a bad thing because I’m only 20 and I love my parents. To be where I am in life I feel it necessary to plot my goals in a rough overview to make sure that I stay on course through the years because without goals what am I doing in college in the first place; passing time and hoping something good happens after college?
My Goals Final Goal: To Find My Dream Job Completion Date: 2010-2012 Midterm Goal 1: AS Network and Security Management Date: Graduation Step 1: Go to and pass Classes that will satisfy my Associates Degree in Network and Security Management Step 2: Work with my Advisor to ensure that I am taking the appropriate classes to satisfy my Degree program. Step 3: Complete all class work assignments. Show up to class daily prepared and on time
Short term Goal 1: To be Net+ certified Completion Date: 6 months Step 1: Enroll in appropriate networking classes Step 2: Sign up and pass Certification test
Short term Goal 2: To be Security+ certified Completion Date: 9-12 months Step 1: Enroll and pass appropriate Security + preparation classes Step 2: Sign up and pass Certification test
Short term Goal 3: Obtain CCNA certification Completion Date 12 months Step 1: Obtain Net + certification Step 2: Learn about classes that are required to take the CCNA certification exam Step 3: Sign up and pass the CCNA Test Short term Goal 4: To be fluent in Programming and obtain Certification in a Programming language. Completion Date: Graduation Step 1: Take Programming Classes Step 2: Complete class work assignments and show up to class on time Step 3: Study and make own programs that work Step 4: Practice programming regularly
Short term Goal 5: Secure employment within the computer network security field Completion Date: 6-12 Months Step 1: Meet with ECPI Employment services Step 2: Complete a resume Step 3: Research and apply for jobs
Midterm Goal 2: BS Network and Security Management Date: 2011 Step 1: Complete Midterm Goal 1 Step 2: Meet with Advisor and enroll in classes required to obtain a BS in Network and Security Management. Step 3: Go to and pass Classes that will satisfy my Associates Degree in Network and Security Management
Midterm Goal 3: Obtain LPT Certification Date: 2017 Short term Goal 1: To be ECSA & CEH Step 1: Go to EC-Council School Step 2: Go to and pass Classes Step 3: Complete class work assignments and show up to class on time Step 4: Study for ECSA & CEH Certifications and take/pass Step 5: Take and Pass LPT Certification Exam
My chapbook is about changing the world through my family’s business.
As a family, we have a vision to touch the whole world. It all started when my father decided to leave IBM and start our family business. He believes that God wanted him to start a business, that each one of his kids will own at least one company under an enterprise name T-Snow Enterprise. My parents taught me and my siblings to put our priorities in order. First salvation in God, then make sure you get an education. So with our faith and education, we have a goal, dream, and vision to help our fellowman around the world.
I have five younger brothers and one baby sister in the family. We have different talents and dreams to accomplish this vision. I believe when we put all our talents and abilities together, we can help the world become a better place. Later in the chapbook, I will tell you our different talents we are using in our business
My life in and with Cinema By: Lou Dommer The Beginning Cinema is a friend, a best friend, I made a long time ago. It is my passion, my hobby, and my art form. This love swept me off my feet and into a creative vortex that took my mind by storm. There are no human words that describe my feeling towards this art. The best I can I do is describe what it has done, not just for me, but for all of us. My passion for cinema started at around the time I moved to Virginia Beach. I was about 8 years old at the time and my only real hobby was skateboarding. I skated day and night like a machine churning out new tricks, ideas, and anything I could do to keep me interested. Then one day my father came home with an interesting little machine. A machine I could use to document my progression as a skateboarder. This machine was a video camera. I was enthralled by the amazing effects and zooms it could pull off by just a single swipe of my finger. The possibilities seemed to be endless. So, the more I skated the more I could film and to me those were the only two things that mattered. As time went on I started skating less and taping my friends and family more. Creating magnificent angles and great points of view was becoming more than just a hobby… it was becoming my life. A few years into it I started to notice something that had not crossed my mind before. “ How do I make all of this raw footage into a watchable movie?” I asked myself. Well, needless to say, I started doing some research on the magic that is video editing. When I came to my final conclusion I knew exactly what I wanted that Christmas. It was not the usual thing on a 11 year olds wish list, but geez I wanted it more than anything. That something was Pinnacle Video Studio 8. This would become the start of my life-long endeavor of being a cinema enthusiast. After Video studio 8, and about three years with it I got into actual movie making. By this time i had created dozens of skate videos and I had started to take an interest in writing. I would write story after story everything from horror to action was covered. I started to get confident after a while, not in my punctuation and spelling but the interest my stories filled me with. I felt as if my stories had taken a life of their own and started to flow into my life in some way or another. Then the day came. I had wrote a fifty page story entitled The Blood Drunk fiend a sort of tribute to the 70’s exploitation horror/ splat movies of my favorite era (Mind you this was before the movie Grindhouse). After I finished this short story I loved it! It was unlike anything I had ever read or seen before in any form of media. The premise (which you will read later in my Chapbook) was so unique and so twisted that I fell head over heels for it. I then thought to myself “How could I give this story more life?” Thus, th birth of my first script was born. The Idea came to me after the thought in the above paragraph. I hadn’t filmed in a while and hadn’t thought about it. But when I thought about breathing life into my story my mind just felt a movie would be the only way. I then proceeded to re write my “Masterpiece” into, what I thought at the time, was script format. I wrestled for months on how I was going to due certain stunts and FX with zero for budget. I ultimately had to cut out of the story a few parts for reasons beyond me…until a piece of literature that would change my thought process on how to go about making a movie. Rebel Without A Crew by Robert Rodriguez ( In my opinion one of the great film makers of our time) was the book and it utterly inspired me. What that book taught me was that you do not need money to make a great movie all you need to do is think outside of the box and get creative. So I thought and thought about how I could get creative without money and make things work for me. I ended up putting those few parts I had to cut out back in my script because of that book. After the script was finished I was ready to make a movie. I had it all the camera, the script, the ideas, and the attitude but I was missing something…people. I thought long and hard about who could and would pull this movie off for me. Lucky for me my brothers girlfriend was a drama actress and my girlfriend could just act her ass off ( that’s not a biased opinion either, she really could, even more so than the “drama queen”.) So I got those two and my brother to play the bad guy. Joey (my brother) couldn’t act but there wasn’t much acting involved in his part just a lot of grunting and stunts; he was digging that and got into character. After all the confusion and preparatory stuff we were ready for this adventure just the three of us ready to roll…
My life started on a small island in the Pacific. My father was stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I was born in a big pink hospital that sits on the side of a small mountain. Mom said I came out with the cord wrapped around my face. Dad said I looked like an alien and that once they unwound it, I had funny creases on my face. I wish I had pictures, because it just sounds like a sight to see. Nothing all that special happened for the first few years. I lived on an island but was terrified of the ocean. I had an insatiable love for all things chocolate, especially Junior Mints. I formed a friendship with a sailor who supported that addiction, much to the chagrin of my folks. Apparently, chocolate mints did not agree with me and the outcome was not pretty. That’s the joy of other peoples’ children; you can fill them up with explosive sweets and give them back before the fuse reaches the payload. I had an unconditional trust in everyone. I would leap from high places and trust in the fact that the closest person would catch me. Thankfully, there was always someone there; at least that’s what they tell me anyway. Most of my early birthdays were gathered around a character shaped cake that my mother skillfully baked and decorated. These I actually do have pictures of. I’ll try to get a hold of the albums and scan some in for this chapbook. That should be interesting and embarrassing. Everything up to this point is what I have been told by family or showed in pictures. I believe them. The next place we lived was New York. I formed some of my first memories there. We lived in a split level house; a raised ranch as my mother just corrected me. We had a Siamese cat named Saimin. I let him out the front door one day and we never saw him again. We did receive word that he was fine and decided that he would be better off with his new family. He wasn’t really all that nice anyway. We also had two Dalmatian puppies, Heidi and Topper. We lost Topper early, but I remember that he could jump really high. Mom kept a garden in the back yard. I liked to help her pick the veggies. I would make a pouch out of my shirt and fill it will beans and carrots and radishes. I never quite made it back to the house with many though. I ate them on the way. Hey, it was a long walk from the garden for my short little legs and all that picking sure works up a hunger. Mom knew that she couldn’t count my pickings in with the rest, but I think she didn’t mind cause she was happy that I was eating veggies. I started kindergarten while we lived there. I don’t remember my teacher’s name, but I do remember sitting around her singing songs while she played a piano. I followed my older brother around a lot. He didn’t seem to mind it, yet. Eventually, he would. I learned to read earlier than most because my big brother would teach me his homework. I really should thank him for that. We moved into a rental before the next transfer. I really don’t remember much about that house, except that it had a pool table. Figures, I was five or so and couldn’t really play. Back to Hawaii we went. This time I can recall things from my own memories. I got a baby brother while we were there. He was born in the same pink hospital I was, just a few rooms down the hall. We lived in the same housing complex, but that’s not unusual when you are a military brat. I went to Iroquoi Point Elementary School. I could walk there from my house. It sure felt like a long walk one I was that small. I went back as an adult and found out it wasn’t so far. It’s amazing the perspective change that takes place as you grow. I mean, it really felt like it took forever to get there. You had to walk all the way to the end of the street (a couple of houses down). Then you had to cross a long grass/dirt field (maybe one sports field). Again I remember singing songs in class. This time, some of them were in Hawaiian. There were kids who came to school without shoes, and that was okay. I had my first boyfriend there. A little cutie named Gregory. He used to get so protective of me when I’d spin around it my twirly skirt (you could see my undies, oops!). Our neighbor Jenny was more of an adopted cousin. She spent more time at our house than hers. Thinking back on things now, I’m glad that we were there for her. She didn’t have it so great, but that’s not my story to tell. Our car was a lemon yellow Mazda 626. Her name was Gerty. I remember that sitting in the back got tight when my little brother came along. The carseat went in the middle and my older brother and I sat on either side, kinda squished. I guess that’s why my parents decided to buy the minivan. Man, I thought that thing was cool. All that space. No more crowding. Folks got a great deal on it. Another sailor transferring had to unload it, and fast. One of my favorite pastimes was pouring salt on slugs. That is as far as my childhood torture story goes. I think that’s more of a ‘boy’ thing to do. I was still following my brother around, but he didn’t care for it much anymore. I got the hand-me-down things he didn’t want anymore; the hot wheels trike that had a rock stuck in one wheel. It went ca-chunk ca-chunk as I rode it down the street. I learned to ride a two wheeler without training wheels on that street. Dad wiped out on a skateboard while eating a bowl of chilli. That was too funny to watch. Dad has always been a silly one. We made a lot of great friends there. Amber was my favorite. She had almost white hair, bleached by the sun. I had the best tan while we lived there. I don’t remember spending a whole lot of time indoors. Ah, the good ole days. I liked the beach a lot better this time around. We would cut through the school to get there, and we’d stop by Baskin Robins on the way back. I don’t remember wearing shoes much either, now that I think about it. We had a great going away party when we left this time, but I’ll save that story for later. I may even try to get the video converted so I can share.
Introduction: Music is everywhere. Think about it. Something as simple as getting put on hold while on the phone can bring you music. Riding in the elevator to get to work, can put music in your ears. It has been around for a long time, and has evolved into an industry that you cant even imagine what is worth. This chapbook is going to bring you the earliest stages of music, right up to the latest and greatest that is out there today. Works from great composers like Mozart and Beethoven will be included. We will take a look at the great Rock-and-Roll era of the '50s and '60s. The '70s brought about some great disco music and also a lot of one-hit wonders. There is gonna be a special section for them. You can never forget the bands from the '80s, and boy were there alot of them. Great vocalists and memorable songs came from the '80s, and who can forget the Boy Bands and Pop explosion in the '90s. You cant forget Country music either. It made a huge explosion in the '90's with artists like Shania, Faith Hill, and Tim McGraw. All sorts of rappers came onto the scene in the early 2000's, which gave us people like hometown female rapper Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg, and another hometown producer/artist Timbaland. Todays's music is a mixture of all these put together. People are very diverse when it comes to what they listen to. I know i can go from listening to hip-hop one minute, and five minutes later, i am listening to hard rock. This is really going to be an experience and i cant wait to share my passion for music with the rest of you.
Life can be so challenging especially with so many obstacles in the way. There are only 24 hours in a day and it just doesn’t seem long enough. Sometimes I feel that life is too short and there is just so little time to be able to do every possible thing in this world there is to do. So what does a person do in this situation? I know what I do. I value every single minute of each day and make all seconds in my life worth my time. I tend to keep myself very busy with activities so I really don’t have time to rest. My motivation is what drives me to strive for greatness, and my perseverance allows me to accomplish anything and everything possible. But how can I accomplish so many things in such a very short day? I use a simple strategy I like to call my Time Management System. Every single day I have a set schedule of what I am going to do at certain times of the day. From school to work, to other extra-curricular activities I have going on in my life, it may seem very stressful to deal with so much work. They way I live my life, my busy schedule is like a walk in the park. So come stroll along with me as I take you through a day in the life.
THE LIFE OF WILLIAM DOCKERY On April 6, 1972, during the many showers of April, a baby named William Terrell Dockery was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. My parents are William Dockery and Merland Dockery both out of North Carolina. My mother was raised by her father because her mother passed away when she was just a child. She would tell me some stories about her mother. She would tell me how my grandmother was a mean person with a very short temper. I really don’t know that much about my father’s side. All I know is his parents passed away while he was young. While my mother gave birth to me, I was born with pneumonia because she had the flu at the time of giving birth. I was a very fortunate and blessed baby because while I was sleeping in my crib one night, a bullet came through the window of the very room I was in. Lets just say, the Lord was watching over me even then. When I was old enough to walk, I would take my diaper off outside and run around naked. Our next-door neighbor would always let my mother know what I was doing at all times. There was a dog in the neighborhood that would lie around and sleep by people’s cars. So one day, I took it upon myself to lie next to the dog and we both were asleep under someone’s car. The driver was about to start the car and put it in gear to drive when he noticed the dog and I under the car. So he immediately informed my mother and she gave me spanking and to this day, we would laugh about it. Growing up in a house and being the youngest of seven children had its good points and bad ones. Especially, if your older siblings are all girls, that is definitely something to deal with. There was never a dull moment in my household. There was always someone in the bathroom. We had only one bathroom and to share it with six sisters was very hectic. Now the upside to having older sisters, I always had a place to go because they would take me with them. I had to walk to school everyday, but the good thing was my school was located behind my neighborhood. So it didn’t take long to get to school. Once I started kindergarten, it was a very fun place to be. I truly enjoyed snack time and playtime. We would have learning games or songs that our teacher would go over with us. The would allow us arts and crafts time to make necklaces, cup holders, and do drawings. Every child had their own cubby with his or her belongings in the cubby. After lunch, we would have or nap time, which was for about an hour or so. Then our teacher would wake us and continue with the rest of the school day. Then the bell would ring to release the students for the day. My mother is in an abusive marriage also. My father would leave for work and come home drunk to my mom on a regular basis. He would start by asking where’s his food and why it wasn’t prepared a certain way. The two of them would start arguing and then it would get physical at times. There were a lot of times where my father would hit my mom and she would fight back. Also, my sisters would join in to help my mother by picking up whatever they can to hit my father with. They mainly used pots and pans to hit my father to keep him away from my mother. All of these events took place while I was still a baby. Some of my older sisters were at the age where they could move out on their own if they liked. A few of them were married at a young age also. They really didn’t have the proper role model in their lives at the time, so they made a lot of mistakes in the process. My mother was a strong person to go through the struggles she had to endure. She had distanced herself from my father because she didn’t want me to continue to grow up in that type of environment any longer. So at age six, my mother, my youngest sister, and me moved into a low income neighborhood or public housing if you will. Being new to any environment is something to get used to, but in the projects is where your survival begins. I literally had to go through fights almost everyday to prove myself worthy of being in this particular neighborhood. Survival of the fittest truly kicked in because now I finally understood what it meant to be poor. I grew up getting food stamps and government cheese every month. I also didn’t have many opportunities to enjoy some of the cereals and milks that we have today. Instead of eating Frosted Flakes, Honey Smacks, Fruit Loops, etc. I would have puffed wheat in a bag and corn flakes on a white box in bold black letters that would be the only thing on the box. A lot of times we used powdered milk or the carnation milk to put in the cereal. For sugar, we would use sweet and low or equal. All this would take place after our food stamps were done for the month. Then we would have to wait until the first of the next month. Now months have gone by and I was starting to make more friends. It didn’t seem so bad because everyone was in the same situation as I was in. The majority of neighborhood consisted of single mothers with children or the elderly. My mother had me at the age of thirty-seven, so by the time I was ten or eleven, the other kids mothers were in their late twenties or early thirties. My mother was in her late forties and some kids at school would think she was my grandmother. My mother and father stopped going to school at very early ages; therefore, they didn’t graduate from high school like most. A few years later, mother started taking night classes where she received her GED. That was one of the proudest days of my life because before then she could not really help me with my work. I had always wondered why I had many wrong answers on my work. That’s when I found out she didn’t complete high school, but she did the best she could with what she knew. As a child, I was in church constantly. When I say I had to go all the time, I mean all the time. It was to the point where I didn’t like going anymore. My mother and father had reconciled their differences and we were a family again. One Sunday, I pretended to be sick just so I can stay home and be with my dad. I had succeeded by lying to my mother and she let me stay home. As soon as she left for church, I suddenly started feeling better and my father let me go outside and play with my friends. I was ten years old at the time when all this happened. My friends and I were playing basketball at the basketball court. We played until we got bored of playing and someone suggested we go throw rocks at cars. There was some woods located near the basketball court. My friends and I gathered some rocks and waited in the woods for cars to drive by. As the cars would go by, we would throw rocks at them and hide. After about twenty minutes of doing that, we walked by this house that had rabbits in it. Just behind that house was a couple of mobile homes and beside the mobile homes was an air conditioning company. The company had a lot of marble cut rocks in front of it. There was a barbed-wire fence between the air conditioning company and the woods we were hiding in earlier. We gathered those rocks and started throwing them at the mobile homes. We broke a lot of windows and also caused hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of damage to the different properties. There were cars driving by as we were throwing the rocks and one car pulled over yelling. The driver said, “Hey you kids, what are you doing?” So I immediately dropped the rest of my rocks and ran. All of us were able to jump the fence except one and he was caught. The rest of us were hiding out in the woods as the police showed up. The boy rode with the police taking them to everyone’s house and telling their parents. By this time, my mother was home from church and she was very upset with me.
Alright. So everyone knows that I’m doing my “cartoon” thing, so I guess I’ll just write whatever comes to mind. Truthfully, I changed my mind after hearing a few others speak before me. I figured I could for once, write about something I know, rather something I think I know, or how I feel. But why cartoons as the “something I know”? I think it’s because I’ve been told so many times that I resemble a cartoon character. Okay, I’m kidding (but people really do say that). I mean, they’re fun! Cartoons are just overall, fun! The colors! The lines! The sounds, the characters, the soundtracks, all equal to be amazing! I want to explain the history, the evolution, different animation styles, the physic laws and common clichés of cartoons. I might even go into Flash computer animation a little bit, but I have no experience with Flash cartoons other than watching them. If we end up doing a presentation, I would like to show a few favorites of mine, and explain why they’re my favorites other than “I just like to watch it”. The next time you watch your favorite cartoon, really watch it and you’ll instantly find yourself interested. I won’t go into Disney that much other than their movies made by Pixar (Toy Story, Monster’s Inc., The Incredibles, etc.), but I am going to research some of the more popular animation studios of channels that are notorious for showing cartoons (Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, MTV). I’m really going to get deep into voice acting, my favorite aspect of the cartoon world next to the animation itself. Any idiot can make facial and body movements to “act”, but how much personality is in your voice? How much emotion can you convey (without necessarily truly being angry or sad), with just your voice? How interesting does your voice sound? I’m not only going to explain the voice-acting process, but of course, list the most popular voices, list my favorite (and least favorite) actors, and the greatest (and worst) occurrences of celebrity voice acting. I suppose I could give an example now. One of my favorite voice actors is Pamela Segall-Adlon (from Grease II), whose nasal voice is perfect for that of an annoying child character (Bobby Hill from King of the Hill, Ashley Spinelli from Recess). Why? I really enjoy her work in King of the Hill, because along with her voice comes a pseudo-southern accent that was made especially for the character she voices. My least favorite voice actor is Cree Summer (from A Different World). I think her voice, while it does suit the characters she’s assigned to, is very annoying. She’s a great voice actress, but I don’t like her voice. One of my top favorite occurrences of celebrity voice acting is talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres who voiced Dory in Disney Pixar’s Finding Nemo. I also really liked John Leguizamo and Ray Romano in Ice Age and John Witherspoon in The Boondocks. On the other side of the spectrum, a rather disgusting, for lack of a better word, occurrence of celebrity voice acting, I think was Ben Stiller who voiced Alex the lion in Madagascar (and Halle Berry wasn’t that much better, either). Ben Stiller is a great actor, but his voice is not interesting enough for a cartoon character. But then again, the movie itself was a disappointment. See? I really pay attention to the voice acting in animation. I’d also really like to explain cartoon physics, which is in a nutshell, just the violation of actual physics laws. Actually, that is something that can’t be explained, but more so acknowledged. Most of today’s cartoons still adhere to the most common cartoon physics laws such as the constant enlargement of body parts (i.e. larger eyes to exaggerate shock, body parts swelling in redness, increasing many times their size when struck, to indicate pain, etc.), and my favorite, how the laws of gravity only apply “sometimes”. This section will be written mostly off my observation, and not from Wikipedia. ☺ My third favorite part of watching cartoons, is just pointing out mistakes. These mistakes are usually very minimal and are hardly noticed by a first glance (i.e., incorrect coloring of characters), but some shows have these mistakes that occur so frequently that it annoys me. For example, Spongebob Squarepants’ Plankton is an extremely small character, and he is constantly drawn incorrectly to scale. In some screens he is about as big as a thumb, but in other’s he stands almost knee high next to significantly larger characters! Also in The Fairly Oddparents, when Cosmo and Wanda are off in the corner of a screen, disguised as animals or ordinary objects, they are often colored incorrectly (as each other). It’s pretty easy to spot these things if you look hard enough! But before all of this mentioned, I will still explain the boring parts (the animation process as a whole, the history, etc.). I can’t wait to share this with everyone and hear how everyone else watches cartoons and how they feel about them! I know this is a school of technology, but I hope this will loosen everyone up a little!
My passion for photography started when I was around 8 years old. I fell in love with the idea of capturing a moment in time. At first just the image was what appealed to me; but I came to realize that I was capturing more than a representation of light and shadows. In my photos and in almost all photos is emotion, a feeling that can be dynamic and open to interpretation or very intentional and undeniable. For myself, each photo is a memory chosen to outlast all impermanent and easily warped mental memories, an expression, a taken piece of something beautiful to me, and an attempt to convey how incredible my love of light makes me feel.
Throughout my childhood I tinkered a lot with things like appliances and electronics; I even took a few cameras apart to try to figure out how they worked. Most of the cameras I had owned at this point were non-focusing, cheap plastic, compact film cameras; none of which have survived. I had lots of unofficial hobbies to keep me busy and photography was something I seldom took part in. When I did take pictures I remember not being very good and getting pretty discouraged. As a mostly impatient person, it was and is really difficult for me to wait for my photos to be developed and printed. I want to see what I got right after I take a picture, not days later. My involvement with photography subsided and lay dormant until I was 16 when I purchased my first digital camera; a Sony Cyber Shot with 5mega pixels, 3 metering modes, a nearly useless 1.3-inch screen, macro focus, and a noisy top ISO of 400. It was a hasty buy and, had I done my research or even known what I was looking at, I could have probably had a much nicer camera for a slightly higher price. These days 400 dollars will buy you a mid to high-level point and shoot digital camera. Advanced or not, I still had no clue about this camera but it wasn’t long before I knew how to use it to its fullest capabilities. The wonderful world of instant gratification had me hooked but I had outgrown my low quality digital camera. I was probably 17 when I got my first SLR. It was 35mm(film), Canon EOS Rebel GII, not digital but that didn’t matter because I was able to develop my own silver halide negatives in my photography class. This way, after I finished a roll of film I only had to wait a weekend at most to develop the roll and see my results.
The beauty of an SLR is being able to look into the viewfinder and see through the lens. Seeing through the lens adds a whole level of control in that I can see my depth of field and compose my shot, as it will most likely look after it’s taken. Also, there is something awesome bout dialing in the manual settings for even more control. These are the main reasons that I had to switch to an SLR. However, soon the charm of black and white film had faded and I was back to where I started with a point and shoot digital. It wasn’t long though, before I saw a Digital SLR for the first time; it was love at first sight. a DSLR is truly the best of both worlds, the control of an SLR with the instant gratification and ease of editing with digital. Trouble was, and still is, digital SLR’s are expensive; even entry level DSLR’s are pricy to a high school student with no job. Eventually after some saving and Christmas money, I was able to purchase my first DSLR. It was a 900-dollar, black plastic bodied, 6.3 MP, Canon EOS Digital Rebel with an equally plastic kit f3.5-5.6, 18-55mm lens and a ridiculous camera startup time of 3 seconds. I used that camera almost every day for years until I eventually sold it to a friend for 500 dollars. I then replaced that camera with a much smaller and more advanced digital SLR, the Digital Rebel XT. It was about 1,200 dollars and it came with the same kit lens as the Digital Rebel. It was a nice camera but too small for my hands. Two weeks later I returned the Rebel XT and bought my Canon EOS 20d, which I’ve used for the last 3 years. It is a much more professional camera next to the Digital Rebel line, with a magnesium alloy body, 5 frames per second continuous shooting, custom functions, studio flash sync, and much more that I needed after I had outgrown my Digital Rebel. Today I shoot with my 20d and an assortment of lenses, flashes, and other equipment.
When I take pictures for fun, it’s mostly what would be considered ”fine art,” things like landscapes, portraits, abstract, and so on. When I take pictures for work, it’s usually during events like shows and bands, but that can still be fun. Lately, I’ve also been delving into the magical world of Polaroids. I have two Polaroid land cameras, one a high-end SLR style SX-70 from 1971 and the other, a not so high-end point-and-shoot style One Step from the 1980’s.
One thing that keeps me constantly inspired is the beauty in light and the idea that I can see something new every day and take a picture every day that no one has ever taken.
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My chapbook is a touchy subject that many people are scarred of for one reason or another. There wet, slippery, slimy body isn’t the sight of pleasure to most people. They are killers and will do anything for a meal, and are only out to hurt humans and will bite you whenever they get the chance. This is the common misconception about snakes to someone who has never had an up close encounter with one. Snakes are beautiful creatures that can make an amazing pet.
The thought that they are slimy is not true at all; they can appear to be wet and slimy because after they shed (get rid of the top layer of skin) they are shiny and bright and when the light hits them makes them look like they are slimy. Think about this snakes live in the desert, forest, mountains, underground, and many other places that has loose powder, dust, and grass. If they were slimy all that stuff would stick to them. They wouldn’t be able to move as fast, it would be hard for them to climb trees, and even catch prey. As for human contact they would much rather hide under something dark. Even the King Cobra, which is known as the smartest snake and the largest venomous snake, will do what it can to stay away from humans (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-cobra.html).
Many snakes live in dark places like one of my favorite
types of snake the Ball Python. They enjoy hiding out in a burrow made by another mammal or something underground. Any rock or fallen tree will do just fine though (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_python). A Ball Python is one of the most common types of snake that is held in captivity because of its dormant attitude and its ability to adapt well. Ball Pythons are relatively small compared to their relatives the Black Headed Python, African Rock Python and many others that get significantly larger than the Ball.
What makes snakes beautiful are there colors and patterns, which can be changed when you breed one patterned snake to a different patterned snake, much like you would a dog, or cat. When you do this it is known as a “morph” and depending on what you come out with varies the price of the snake. Take a regular Ball Python for example, which is normally sold around $40. If you take
the same type of snake, but with a different pattern
you can sell it for hundreds of dollars; like the Spider Ball Python.
I am a firm believer that certain events in ones’ life define who they are. Some say perseverance and practice creates champions, while others believe champions are born. Some people spend their life in search of greatness, while others give up before they start. Who decides who becomes great and whose left sitting the bench? You often hear stories of “everyday people” doing something great and are called heroes for a while. Who decides if that is the only great thing that person has or will ever do? Have we given society the right to define us and create our heroes for us? Why are we only “great” when someone else says we are?
In my life, I’ll admit it; I’ve done a lot of stupid things. I could make a list, and I am certain if you called my parents they could add a few hundred more things to the list. For the last few years I have felt misplaced and have stumbled through life one mistake at a time. But after assessing my life and its many transgressions I have come to realize that after every mistake I have learned to pick myself up and try again and only recently have I had to do this solely on my own.
When I was a child I was considered rambunctious to say that lease, now a day it would be considered A.D.D. My parents were patient, but slowly going crazy. Their solution, enroll me in soccer. This single act helped set up the rest of my life, as well as teach me focus, determination, and teamwork. I spent all my time practicing and preparing for the game, I wanted to be the best; slowly my A.D.D went out the window. I straightened up and began to get noticed for it. My teams were good, really good. We played tournaments in Boston, New York, and New Jersey, always bringing home the trophies. I felt a part of something, something bigger than myself and I thrived on it.
But a year after my transformation my parents broke me the news, we were moving. Not to a different suburb or town but to Bunker, Missouri, the exact middle of nowhere! Worst of all no soccer! To say the least, this was the worst thing to happen in my 10 year old existence. I was going to run away, live on my own and play soccer. Against my will my parents drug me along to the middle of the Midwest.
Bunker Missouri is where all five of my mothers’ brothers and sisters lived, my parents wanted to retire and live near family and have a farm. Why, I only recently realized, but to a 10 year old city girl, this was a nightmare. I had decided to not like Bunker or anyone in it. What was I supposed to do now that soccer, the only thing that I understood, was gone? So I sulked, all day, every day. At least until school started. This is the second event in which my life was turned upside down and now looking back I am better for it!
I walked into my new fifth grade class ready to hate everyone. I found my assigned seat next to a few girls who looked nice enough. Suddenly they turned to me, “hey your Jenna right? Yeah, your cousins told us all about you, we heard you play soccer, do you play basketball? Wanna hang out at recess?” Who were these girls? What did they want with me? I agreed, reluctantly, and remained quiet. But that recess changed my life. I met the friends that would stick with me all my life thus far. They didn’t care who or what I was, instead just wanted to be friends and hear stories of living in Boston. We then became inseparable. They had let me into their group, their lives, and their hearts, and although it took me a little longer to do so, I eventually came around and dove in.
When basketball came around that year I was scared to sign up. What if I sucked, what if I kicked the ball instead? But the first day of practice came around and I was considered a “natural”. I loved it! As like soccer, basketball became my life, alongside my friends. I began to get noticed for playing basketball and was asked to start playing volleyball also, in junior high, again, a natural. I felt a part of something, a part of the community and the town. Older people were recognizing me and my family would show up to watch me play. I felt needed and a carried a responsibility to win for the school. These could have been the best days of my life, then. I was unstoppable. The more responsibility they gave the more I took. I received city, district, and even state awards. It seemed everyone knew my name. I was cocky, to an extent, but more, I was thankful. I had learned how to become a leader, to except responsibility, and most of all I learned to have fun. I firmly believe those years set my up to what I have become in life and what I am capable of.
My senior year of high school I received several scholarships to play volleyball and basketball at junior colleges. But I had had several injuries along the way and was scared of more permanent damage, along with the idea that as a college athlete, I would have to adhere to curfews, tutoring, weekend practices, and other such things I considered torture back then. So I chocked, decided against sports and instead attended a huge college a couple hours away. Looking back, my feelings are mixed, do I wish I would have played in college, yes. I would have stayed in shape, felt the feeling of a team, felt commitment and need, and my life might have skipped a few bumps along the way. But still, I would have missed out on some of the greatest moments of my life. I would not have met the friends in college that I now consider to be sisters.
Entering college I knew no one. I was one of a million, it felt like and only a number to the university. I was scared and felt inferior. Half the people I had met in my dorm were there on academic scholarship. I was just a ball player. I was friendly and waved, made small talk, and even talked about teachers, but I secretly wanted to be anywhere else. I had been under the impression that college was supposed to be the best years of your life. I felt like mine were all behind me. That was all until the third week in, when sitting at my desk pretending to study, I heard giggling, uncontrollable and loud. I cautiously poked my head out to see five girls on my floor sitting in the hall having the time of their life. I remember wishing and hoping to join them, to sit in the hard floor, lean on those ugly grey walls, and talk with these girls. I made my way to the water fountain, wondering what, if anything, could I say, that would make these girls want to hang out with me. Just then Beth, a girl who had always been friendly, yelled, “Hey, Jenna, right?” I replied, “Uh, yeah” (like I didn’t even know my own name) Beth replied, “Did you see the skater guy try to skate down the stairwell handle? We think he’s stoned, were gonna call him High Mike.” I was thrilled, no I had not seen him, but it didn’t matter that was an “in”. I stood there asking all the details, prolonging my visit, finally in silence I turned to go, when the rest of the girls started asking me to sit and stay. I was nervous, what do I say, can I be me? But as it turned out two of the girls played basketball, one even tried out to play in Colorado. Two were dancers, who missed it like crazy, and the other, although considered a brainiac, was madly in love with Brad Pitt, to the point of obsession. We sat there all night talking, laughing, judging, and reflecting back on what we all considered “the good ole days”.
From that moment on I felt safe; we ate together, shopped together, and even had most classes together. We could tell each other everything, regardless of the fact that we had only known each other for weeks. We staged water fights in the dorm and went to midnight movies downtown. We each had our own routines and lives, but we shared them with each other. My freshman year of college was a dream, maybe not academically, but I made up for it in memories. We laughed, we cried, and we talked about things we could never had with our high school friends.
These girls had saved me from myself. I have never quit anything in my life, I don’t consider it an option, but college and being alone came close for me. I was scared, it was a situation that I could not control, it wasn’t a basketball court where I knew the rules and I knew what it took to win, I was out of my element.
David Morra
August 14, 2008
Dr. Hofheimer
ENG120
My ChapBook
If there is anything in my life that I most dear to my heart today it has got to be my goals that I have set out for myself to accomplish and hopefully surpass. Without my goals I don’t know what I would be doing right now because without goals how do I know if I am going into the right direction that is good for me and my lifestyle. Goals are a great thing to plan out especially in my situation. I’m young and going to college, still living with my parents which I don’t see as a bad thing because I’m only 20 and I love my parents. To be where I am in life I feel it necessary to plot my goals in a rough overview to make sure that I stay on course through the years because without goals what am I doing in college in the first place; passing time and hoping something good happens after college?
My Goals
Final Goal: To Find My Dream Job Completion Date: 2010-2012
Midterm Goal 1: AS Network and Security Management Date: Graduation
Step 1: Go to and pass Classes that will satisfy my Associates Degree in Network and Security Management
Step 2: Work with my Advisor to ensure that I am taking the appropriate classes to satisfy my Degree program.
Step 3: Complete all class work assignments. Show up to class daily prepared and on time
Short term Goal 1: To be Net+ certified Completion Date: 6 months
Step 1: Enroll in appropriate networking classes
Step 2: Sign up and pass Certification test
Short term Goal 2: To be Security+ certified Completion Date: 9-12 months
Step 1: Enroll and pass appropriate Security + preparation classes
Step 2: Sign up and pass Certification test
Short term Goal 3: Obtain CCNA certification Completion Date 12 months
Step 1: Obtain Net + certification
Step 2: Learn about classes that are required to take the CCNA certification exam
Step 3: Sign up and pass the CCNA Test
Short term Goal 4: To be fluent in Programming and obtain Certification in a Programming language. Completion Date: Graduation
Step 1: Take Programming Classes
Step 2: Complete class work assignments and show up to class on time
Step 3: Study and make own programs that work
Step 4: Practice programming regularly
Short term Goal 5: Secure employment within the computer network security field Completion Date: 6-12 Months
Step 1: Meet with ECPI Employment services
Step 2: Complete a resume
Step 3: Research and apply for jobs
Midterm Goal 2: BS Network and Security Management Date: 2011
Step 1: Complete Midterm Goal 1
Step 2: Meet with Advisor and enroll in classes required to obtain a BS in Network and Security Management.
Step 3: Go to and pass Classes that will satisfy my Associates Degree in Network and Security Management
Midterm Goal 3: Obtain LPT Certification Date: 2017
Short term Goal 1: To be ECSA & CEH
Step 1: Go to EC-Council School
Step 2: Go to and pass Classes
Step 3: Complete class work assignments and show up to class on time
Step 4: Study for ECSA & CEH Certifications and take/pass
Step 5: Take and Pass LPT Certification Exam
A short introduction of my chapbook
My chapbook is about changing the world through my family’s business.
As a family, we have a vision to touch the whole world. It all started when my father decided to leave IBM and start our family business. He believes that God wanted him to start a business, that each one of his kids will own at least one company under an enterprise name T-Snow Enterprise. My parents taught me and my siblings to put our priorities in order. First salvation in God, then make sure you get an education. So with our faith and education, we have a goal, dream, and vision to help our fellowman around the world.
I have five younger brothers and one baby sister in the family. We have different talents and dreams to accomplish this vision. I believe when we put all our talents and abilities together, we can help the world become a better place. Later in the chapbook, I will tell you our different talents we are using in our business
My life in and with Cinema
By: Lou Dommer
The Beginning
Cinema is a friend, a best friend, I made a long time ago. It is my passion, my hobby, and my art form. This love swept me off my feet and into a creative vortex that took my mind by storm. There are no human words that describe my feeling towards this art. The best I can I do is describe what it has done, not just for me, but for all of us.
My passion for cinema started at around the time I moved to Virginia Beach. I was about 8 years old at the time and my only real hobby was skateboarding. I skated day and night like a machine churning out new tricks, ideas, and anything I could do to keep me interested. Then one day my father came home with an interesting little machine. A machine I could use to document my progression as a skateboarder. This machine was a video camera.
I was enthralled by the amazing effects and zooms it could pull off by just a single swipe of my finger. The possibilities seemed to be endless. So, the more I skated the more I could film and to me those were the only two things that mattered. As time went on I started skating less and taping my friends and family more. Creating magnificent angles and great points of view was becoming more than just a hobby… it was becoming my life.
A few years into it I started to notice something that had not crossed my mind before. “ How do I make all of this raw footage into a watchable movie?” I asked myself. Well, needless to say, I started doing some research on the magic that is video editing. When I came to my final conclusion I knew exactly what I wanted that Christmas. It was not the usual thing on a 11 year olds wish list, but geez I wanted it more than anything. That something was Pinnacle Video Studio 8. This would become the start of my life-long endeavor of being a cinema enthusiast.
After Video studio 8, and about three years with it I got into actual movie making. By this time i had created dozens of skate videos and I had started to take an interest in writing. I would write story after story everything from horror to action was covered. I started to get confident after a while, not in my punctuation and spelling but the interest my stories filled me with. I felt as if my stories had taken a life of their own and started to flow into my life in some way or another.
Then the day came. I had wrote a fifty page story entitled The Blood Drunk fiend a sort of tribute to the 70’s exploitation horror/ splat movies of my favorite era (Mind you this was before the movie Grindhouse). After I finished this short story I loved it! It was unlike anything I had ever read or seen before in any form of media. The premise (which you will read later in my Chapbook) was so unique and so twisted that I fell head over heels for it. I then thought to myself “How could I give this story more life?” Thus, th birth of my first script was born.
The Idea came to me after the thought in the above paragraph. I hadn’t filmed in a while and hadn’t thought about it. But when I thought about breathing life into my story my mind just felt a movie would be the only way. I then proceeded to re write my “Masterpiece” into, what I thought at the time, was script format. I wrestled for months on how I was going to due certain stunts and FX with zero for budget. I ultimately had to cut out of the story a few parts for reasons beyond me…until a piece of literature that would change my thought process on how to go about making a movie.
Rebel Without A Crew by Robert Rodriguez ( In my opinion one of the great film makers of our time) was the book and it utterly inspired me. What that book taught me was that you do not need money to make a great movie all you need to do is think outside of the box and get creative. So I thought and thought about how I could get creative without money and make things work for me. I ended up putting those few parts I had to cut out back in my script because of that book.
After the script was finished I was ready to make a movie. I had it all the camera, the script, the ideas, and the attitude but I was missing something…people. I thought long and hard about who could and would pull this movie off for me. Lucky for me my brothers girlfriend was a drama actress and my girlfriend could just act her ass off ( that’s not a biased opinion either, she really could, even more so than the “drama queen”.) So I got those two and my brother to play the bad guy. Joey (my brother) couldn’t act but there wasn’t much acting involved in his part just a lot of grunting and stunts; he was digging that and got into character. After all the confusion and preparatory stuff we were ready for this adventure just the three of us ready to roll…
The Beginning
My life started on a small island in the Pacific. My father was stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I was born in a big pink hospital that sits on the side of a small mountain. Mom said I came out with the cord wrapped around my face. Dad said I looked like an alien and that once they unwound it, I had funny creases on my face. I wish I had pictures, because it just sounds like a sight to see. Nothing all that special happened for the first few years. I lived on an island but was terrified of the ocean. I had an insatiable love for all things chocolate, especially Junior Mints. I formed a friendship with a sailor who supported that addiction, much to the chagrin of my folks. Apparently, chocolate mints did not agree with me and the outcome was not pretty. That’s the joy of other peoples’ children; you can fill them up with explosive sweets and give them back before the fuse reaches the payload. I had an unconditional trust in everyone. I would leap from high places and trust in the fact that the closest person would catch me. Thankfully, there was always someone there; at least that’s what they tell me anyway. Most of my early birthdays were gathered around a character shaped cake that my mother skillfully baked and decorated. These I actually do have pictures of. I’ll try to get a hold of the albums and scan some in for this chapbook. That should be interesting and embarrassing. Everything up to this point is what I have been told by family or showed in pictures. I believe them.
The next place we lived was New York. I formed some of my first memories there. We lived in a split level house; a raised ranch as my mother just corrected me. We had a Siamese cat named Saimin. I let him out the front door one day and we never saw him again. We did receive word that he was fine and decided that he would be better off with his new family. He wasn’t really all that nice anyway. We also had two Dalmatian puppies, Heidi and Topper. We lost Topper early, but I remember that he could jump really high. Mom kept a garden in the back yard. I liked to help her pick the veggies. I would make a pouch out of my shirt and fill it will beans and carrots and radishes. I never quite made it back to the house with many though. I ate them on the way. Hey, it was a long walk from the garden for my short little legs and all that picking sure works up a hunger. Mom knew that she couldn’t count my pickings in with the rest, but I think she didn’t mind cause she was happy that I was eating veggies. I started kindergarten while we lived there. I don’t remember my teacher’s name, but I do remember sitting around her singing songs while she played a piano. I followed my older brother around a lot. He didn’t seem to mind it, yet. Eventually, he would. I learned to read earlier than most because my big brother would teach me his homework. I really should thank him for that. We moved into a rental before the next transfer. I really don’t remember much about that house, except that it had a pool table. Figures, I was five or so and couldn’t really play.
Back to Hawaii we went. This time I can recall things from my own memories. I got a baby brother while we were there. He was born in the same pink hospital I was, just a few rooms down the hall. We lived in the same housing complex, but that’s not unusual when you are a military brat. I went to Iroquoi Point Elementary School. I could walk there from my house. It sure felt like a long walk one I was that small. I went back as an adult and found out it wasn’t so far. It’s amazing the perspective change that takes place as you grow. I mean, it really felt like it took forever to get there. You had to walk all the way to the end of the street (a couple of houses down). Then you had to cross a long grass/dirt field (maybe one sports field). Again I remember singing songs in class. This time, some of them were in Hawaiian. There were kids who came to school without shoes, and that was okay. I had my first boyfriend there. A little cutie named Gregory. He used to get so protective of me when I’d spin around it my twirly skirt (you could see my undies, oops!). Our neighbor Jenny was more of an adopted cousin. She spent more time at our house than hers. Thinking back on things now, I’m glad that we were there for her. She didn’t have it so great, but that’s not my story to tell. Our car was a lemon yellow Mazda 626. Her name was Gerty. I remember that sitting in the back got tight when my little brother came along. The carseat went in the middle and my older brother and I sat on either side, kinda squished. I guess that’s why my parents decided to buy the minivan. Man, I thought that thing was cool. All that space. No more crowding. Folks got a great deal on it. Another sailor transferring had to unload it, and fast. One of my favorite pastimes was pouring salt on slugs. That is as far as my childhood torture story goes. I think that’s more of a ‘boy’ thing to do. I was still following my brother around, but he didn’t care for it much anymore. I got the hand-me-down things he didn’t want anymore; the hot wheels trike that had a rock stuck in one wheel. It went ca-chunk ca-chunk as I rode it down the street. I learned to ride a two wheeler without training wheels on that street. Dad wiped out on a skateboard while eating a bowl of chilli. That was too funny to watch. Dad has always been a silly one. We made a lot of great friends there. Amber was my favorite. She had almost white hair, bleached by the sun. I had the best tan while we lived there. I don’t remember spending a whole lot of time indoors. Ah, the good ole days. I liked the beach a lot better this time around. We would cut through the school to get there, and we’d stop by Baskin Robins on the way back. I don’t remember wearing shoes much either, now that I think about it. We had a great going away party when we left this time, but I’ll save that story for later. I may even try to get the video converted so I can share.
Introduction:
Music is everywhere. Think about it. Something as simple as getting put on hold while on the phone can bring you music. Riding in the elevator to get to work, can put music in your ears. It has been around for a long time, and has evolved into an industry that you cant even imagine what is worth. This chapbook is going to bring you the earliest stages of music, right up to the latest and greatest that is out there today. Works from great composers like Mozart and Beethoven will be included. We will take a look at the great Rock-and-Roll era of the '50s and '60s. The '70s brought about some great disco music and also a lot of one-hit wonders. There is gonna be a special section for them. You can never forget the bands from the '80s, and boy were there alot of them. Great vocalists and memorable songs came from the '80s, and who can forget the Boy Bands and Pop explosion in the '90s. You cant forget Country music either. It made a huge explosion in the '90's with artists like Shania, Faith Hill, and Tim McGraw. All sorts of rappers came onto the scene in the early 2000's, which gave us people like hometown female rapper Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg, and another hometown producer/artist Timbaland. Todays's music is a mixture of all these put together. People are very diverse when it comes to what they listen to. I know i can go from listening to hip-hop one minute, and five minutes later, i am listening to hard rock.
This is really going to be an experience and i cant wait to share my passion for music with the rest of you.
Life can be so challenging especially with so many obstacles in the way. There are only 24 hours in a day and it just doesn’t seem long enough. Sometimes I feel that life is too short and there is just so little time to be able to do every possible thing in this world there is to do. So what does a person do in this situation? I know what I do. I value every single minute of each day and make all seconds in my life worth my time. I tend to keep myself very busy with activities so I really don’t have time to rest. My motivation is what drives me to strive for greatness, and my perseverance allows me to accomplish anything and everything possible. But how can I accomplish so many things in such a very short day? I use a simple strategy I like to call my Time Management System. Every single day I have a set schedule of what I am going to do at certain times of the day. From school to work, to other extra-curricular activities I have going on in my life, it may seem very stressful to deal with so much work. They way I live my life, my busy schedule is like a walk in the park. So come stroll along with me as I take you through a day in the life.
THE LIFE OF WILLIAM DOCKERY
On April 6, 1972, during the many showers of April, a baby named William Terrell Dockery was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. My parents are William Dockery and Merland Dockery both out of North Carolina. My mother was raised by her father because her mother passed away when she was just a child. She would tell me some stories about her mother. She would tell me how my grandmother was a mean person with a very short temper. I really don’t know that much about my father’s side. All I know is his parents passed away while he was young.
While my mother gave birth to me, I was born with pneumonia because she had the flu at the time of giving birth. I was a very fortunate and blessed baby because while I was sleeping in my crib one night, a bullet came through the window of the very room I was in. Lets just say, the Lord was watching over me even then. When I was old enough to walk, I would take my diaper off outside and run around naked. Our next-door neighbor would always let my mother know what I was doing at all times. There was a dog in the neighborhood that would lie around and sleep by people’s cars. So one day, I took it upon myself to lie next to the dog and we both were asleep under someone’s car. The driver was about to start the car and put it in gear to drive when he noticed the dog and I under the car. So he immediately informed my mother and she gave me spanking and to this day, we would laugh about it.
Growing up in a house and being the youngest of seven children had its good points and bad ones. Especially, if your older siblings are all girls, that is definitely something to deal with. There was never a dull moment in my household. There was always someone in the bathroom. We had only one bathroom and to share it with six sisters was very hectic. Now the upside to having older sisters, I always had a place to go because they would take me with them. I had to walk to school everyday, but the good thing was my school was located behind my neighborhood. So it didn’t take long to get to school. Once I started kindergarten, it was a very fun place to be. I truly enjoyed snack time and playtime. We would have learning games or songs that our teacher would go over with us. The would allow us arts and crafts time to make necklaces, cup holders, and do drawings. Every child had their own cubby with his or her belongings in the cubby. After lunch, we would have or nap time, which was for about an hour or so. Then our teacher would wake us and continue with the rest of the school day. Then the bell would ring to release the students for the day.
My mother is in an abusive marriage also. My father would leave for work and come home drunk to my mom on a regular basis. He would start by asking where’s his food and why it wasn’t prepared a certain way. The two of them would start arguing and then it would get physical at times. There were a lot of times where my father would hit my mom and she would fight back. Also, my sisters would join in to help my mother by picking up whatever they can to hit my father with. They mainly used pots and pans to hit my father to keep him away from my mother. All of these events took place while I was still a baby. Some of my older sisters were at the age where they could move out on their own if they liked. A few of them were married at a young age also. They really didn’t have the proper role model in their lives at the time, so they made a lot of mistakes in the process. My mother was a strong person to go through the struggles she had to endure. She had distanced herself from my father because she didn’t want me to continue to grow up in that type of environment any longer. So at age six, my mother, my youngest sister, and me moved into a low income neighborhood or public housing if you will.
Being new to any environment is something to get used to, but in the projects is where your survival begins. I literally had to go through fights almost everyday to prove myself worthy of being in this particular neighborhood. Survival of the fittest truly kicked in because now I finally understood what it meant to be poor. I grew up getting food stamps and government cheese every month. I also didn’t have many opportunities to enjoy some of the cereals and milks that we have today. Instead of eating Frosted Flakes, Honey Smacks, Fruit Loops, etc. I would have puffed wheat in a bag and corn flakes on a white box in bold black letters that would be the only thing on the box. A lot of times we used powdered milk or the carnation milk to put in the cereal. For sugar, we would use sweet and low or equal. All this would take place after our food stamps were done for the month. Then we would have to wait until the first of the next month.
Now months have gone by and I was starting to make more friends. It didn’t seem so bad because everyone was in the same situation as I was in. The majority of neighborhood consisted of single mothers with children or the elderly. My mother had me at the age of thirty-seven, so by the time I was ten or eleven, the other kids mothers were in their late twenties or early thirties. My mother was in her late forties and some kids at school would think she was my grandmother. My mother and father stopped going to school at very early ages; therefore, they didn’t graduate from high school like most. A few years later, mother started taking night classes where she received her GED. That was one of the proudest days of my life because before then she could not really help me with my work. I had always wondered why I had many wrong answers on my work. That’s when I found out she didn’t complete high school, but she did the best she could with what she knew. As a child, I was in church constantly. When I say I had to go all the time, I mean all the time. It was to the point where I didn’t like going anymore.
My mother and father had reconciled their differences and we were a family again. One Sunday, I pretended to be sick just so I can stay home and be with my dad. I had succeeded by lying to my mother and she let me stay home. As soon as she left for church, I suddenly started feeling better and my father let me go outside and play with my friends. I was ten years old at the time when all this happened. My friends and I were playing basketball at the basketball court. We played until we got bored of playing and someone suggested we go throw rocks at cars. There was some woods located near the basketball court. My friends and I gathered some rocks and waited in the woods for cars to drive by. As the cars would go by, we would throw rocks at them and hide. After about twenty minutes of doing that, we walked by this house that had rabbits in it. Just behind that house was a couple of mobile homes and beside the mobile homes was an air conditioning company. The company had a lot of marble cut rocks in front of it. There was a barbed-wire fence between the air conditioning company and the woods we were hiding in earlier.
We gathered those rocks and started throwing them at the mobile homes. We broke a lot of windows and also caused hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of damage to the different properties. There were cars driving by as we were throwing the rocks and one car pulled over yelling. The driver said, “Hey you kids, what are you doing?” So I immediately dropped the rest of my rocks and ran. All of us were able to jump the fence except one and he was caught. The rest of us were hiding out in the woods as the police showed up. The boy rode with the police taking them to everyone’s house and telling their parents. By this time, my mother was home from church and she was very upset with me.
Alright. So everyone knows that I’m doing my “cartoon” thing, so I guess I’ll just write whatever comes to mind. Truthfully, I changed my mind after hearing a few others speak before me. I figured I could for once, write about something I know, rather something I think I know, or how I feel. But why cartoons as the “something I know”? I think it’s because I’ve been told so many times that I resemble a cartoon character. Okay, I’m kidding (but people really do say that). I mean, they’re fun! Cartoons are just overall, fun! The colors! The lines! The sounds, the characters, the soundtracks, all equal to be amazing!
I want to explain the history, the evolution, different animation styles, the physic laws and common clichés of cartoons. I might even go into Flash computer animation a little bit, but I have no experience with Flash cartoons other than watching them. If we end up doing a presentation, I would like to show a few favorites of mine, and explain why they’re my favorites other than “I just like to watch it”. The next time you watch your favorite cartoon, really watch it and you’ll instantly find yourself interested. I won’t go into Disney that much other than their movies made by Pixar (Toy Story, Monster’s Inc., The Incredibles, etc.), but I am going to research some of the more popular animation studios of channels that are notorious for showing cartoons (Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, MTV).
I’m really going to get deep into voice acting, my favorite aspect of the cartoon world next to the animation itself. Any idiot can make facial and body movements to “act”, but how much personality is in your voice? How much emotion can you convey (without necessarily truly being angry or sad), with just your voice? How interesting does your voice sound? I’m not only going to explain the voice-acting process, but of course, list the most popular voices, list my favorite (and least favorite) actors, and the greatest (and worst) occurrences of celebrity voice acting. I suppose I could give an example now. One of my favorite voice actors is Pamela Segall-Adlon (from Grease II), whose nasal voice is perfect for that of an annoying child character (Bobby Hill from King of the Hill, Ashley Spinelli from Recess). Why? I really enjoy her work in King of the Hill, because along with her voice comes a pseudo-southern accent that was made especially for the character she voices.
My least favorite voice actor is Cree Summer (from A Different World). I think her voice, while it does suit the characters she’s assigned to, is very annoying. She’s a great voice actress, but I don’t like her voice. One of my top favorite occurrences of celebrity voice acting is talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres who voiced Dory in Disney Pixar’s Finding Nemo. I also really liked John Leguizamo and Ray Romano in Ice Age and John Witherspoon in The Boondocks. On the other side of the spectrum, a rather disgusting, for lack of a better word, occurrence of celebrity voice acting, I think was Ben Stiller who voiced Alex the lion in Madagascar (and Halle Berry wasn’t that much better, either). Ben Stiller is a great actor, but his voice is not interesting enough for a cartoon character. But then again, the movie itself was a disappointment. See? I really pay attention to the voice acting in animation.
I’d also really like to explain cartoon physics, which is in a nutshell, just the violation of actual physics laws. Actually, that is something that can’t be explained, but more so acknowledged. Most of today’s cartoons still adhere to the most common cartoon physics laws such as the constant enlargement of body parts (i.e. larger eyes to exaggerate shock, body parts swelling in redness, increasing many times their size when struck, to indicate pain, etc.), and my favorite, how the laws of gravity only apply “sometimes”. This section will be written mostly off my observation, and not from Wikipedia. ☺
My third favorite part of watching cartoons, is just pointing out mistakes. These mistakes are usually very minimal and are hardly noticed by a first glance (i.e., incorrect coloring of characters), but some shows have these mistakes that occur so frequently that it annoys me. For example, Spongebob Squarepants’ Plankton is an extremely small character, and he is constantly drawn incorrectly to scale. In some screens he is about as big as a thumb, but in other’s he stands almost knee high next to significantly larger characters! Also in The Fairly Oddparents, when Cosmo and Wanda are off in the corner of a screen, disguised as animals or ordinary objects, they are often colored incorrectly (as each other). It’s pretty easy to spot these things if you look hard enough!
But before all of this mentioned, I will still explain the boring parts (the animation process as a whole, the history, etc.). I can’t wait to share this with everyone and hear how everyone else watches cartoons and how they feel about them! I know this is a school of technology, but I hope this will loosen everyone up a little!
^____^
My passion for photography started when I was around 8 years old. I fell in love with the idea of capturing a moment in time. At first just the image was what appealed to me; but I came to realize that I was capturing more than a representation of light and shadows. In my photos and in almost all photos is emotion, a feeling that can be dynamic and open to interpretation or very intentional and undeniable. For myself, each photo is a memory chosen to outlast all impermanent and easily warped mental memories, an expression, a taken piece of something beautiful to me, and an attempt to convey how incredible my love of light makes me feel.
Throughout my childhood I tinkered a lot with things like appliances and electronics; I even took a few cameras apart to try to figure out how they worked. Most of the cameras I had owned at this point were non-focusing, cheap plastic, compact film cameras; none of which have survived. I had lots of unofficial hobbies to keep me busy and photography was something I seldom took part in. When I did take pictures I remember not being very good and getting pretty discouraged. As a mostly impatient person, it was and is really difficult for me to wait for my photos to be developed and printed. I want to see what I got right after I take a picture, not days later. My involvement with photography subsided and lay dormant until I was 16 when I purchased my first digital camera; a Sony Cyber Shot with 5mega pixels, 3 metering modes, a nearly useless 1.3-inch screen, macro focus, and a noisy top ISO of 400. It was a hasty buy and, had I done my research or even known what I was looking at, I could have probably had a much nicer camera for a slightly higher price. These days 400 dollars will buy you a mid to high-level point and shoot digital camera. Advanced or not, I still had no clue about this camera but it wasn’t long before I knew how to use it to its fullest capabilities. The wonderful world of instant gratification had me hooked but I had outgrown my low quality digital camera. I was probably 17 when I got my first SLR. It was 35mm(film), Canon EOS Rebel GII, not digital but that didn’t matter because I was able to develop my own silver halide negatives in my photography class. This way, after I finished a roll of film I only had to wait a weekend at most to develop the roll and see my results.
The beauty of an SLR is being able to look into the viewfinder and see through the lens. Seeing through the lens adds a whole level of control in that I can see my depth of field and compose my shot, as it will most likely look after it’s taken. Also, there is something awesome bout dialing in the manual settings for even more control. These are the main reasons that I had to switch to an SLR. However, soon the charm of black and white film had faded and I was back to where I started with a point and shoot digital. It wasn’t long though, before I saw a Digital SLR for the first time; it was love at first sight. a DSLR is truly the best of both worlds, the control of an SLR with the instant gratification and ease of editing with digital. Trouble was, and still is, digital SLR’s are expensive; even entry level DSLR’s are pricy to a high school student with no job. Eventually after some saving and Christmas money, I was able to purchase my first DSLR. It was a 900-dollar, black plastic bodied, 6.3 MP, Canon EOS Digital Rebel with an equally plastic kit f3.5-5.6, 18-55mm lens and a ridiculous camera startup time of 3 seconds. I used that camera almost every day for years until I eventually sold it to a friend for 500 dollars. I then replaced that camera with a much smaller and more advanced digital SLR, the Digital Rebel XT. It was about 1,200 dollars and it came with the same kit lens as the Digital Rebel. It was a nice camera but too small for my hands. Two weeks later I returned the Rebel XT and bought my Canon EOS 20d, which I’ve used for the last 3 years. It is a much more professional camera next to the Digital Rebel line, with a magnesium alloy body, 5 frames per second continuous shooting, custom functions, studio flash sync, and much more that I needed after I had outgrown my Digital Rebel. Today I shoot with my 20d and an assortment of lenses, flashes, and other equipment.
When I take pictures for fun, it’s mostly what would be considered ”fine art,” things like landscapes, portraits, abstract, and so on. When I take pictures for work, it’s usually during events like shows and bands, but that can still be fun. Lately, I’ve also been delving into the magical world of Polaroids. I have two Polaroid land cameras, one a high-end SLR style SX-70 from 1971 and the other, a not so high-end point-and-shoot style One Step from the 1980’s.
One thing that keeps me constantly inspired is the beauty in light and the idea that I can see something new every day and take a picture every day that no one has ever taken.
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