"The Bag of Winds" or "Why did those fools do that!?"

Continuing after Odysseus' dooming act of hubris, he went to the island of Aeolus. Aeolus liked Odysseus and wanted him to return home, so he gave Odysseus the winds. He was somehow able to make uneven heating all over the world into matter and sealed it into a bag large enough to hold a lot of gold at the most. Anyway, he let out a little of the West wind so Odysseus would be able to get home to Ithaca and gave him the rest of the winds.

Unfortunately, his group members started to wonder what was in that bag that Odysseus had by him for the last week or so, he made pretty nice time without the other winds interfering. The crewmembers thought it was gold and Odysseus wouldn’t tell them what was in it, so a crewmember opened up the bag and wind all of a sudden came blasting out and they were blown way off course.

What were those fools doing!? Ithaca was in sight and they open up some suspicious leather bag after there was good wind for a long time. They should have at least asked Odysseus before opening it! Then again, if Odysseus told them what was really in it, their might be mixed reactions. There was never a ban on telling them as far as I know. They really should have talked about it. It’s their fault!

I think Odysseus might have done some ship switching after that, in case anything bad might have happened. However, I somewhat doubt this. Anyway, what happened next really made some people wish they hadn’t opened the bag.

Imagine this. You slowly sail for the island of the Laestrygonians. Your captain asks you to go ashore. You spot a tall girl and ask her where the palace is she points the way to a very large palace. You go inside and see the queen, but she is a giant, scale-wise. Then, she rushes out to get her husband the king. Suddenly, he rushes in and immediately hoists up and devours one of your friends. You quickly run away back to your ship. You try and sail away, but you notice that all the other Laestrygonians are tossing rocks at the ships. One goes down. Another sinks into the abyss. You look up, see a rock headed right at you, and all is dark.

Only one ship survived those gigantic cannibals. You guessed it, Odysseus’ ship. What kind of story would it be if they killed off the main character like that? Anyway, wouldn’t it be kind of weird if you found out that a ghost was telling you a story…

"Houdini Magic"

It's time for another Survivor post. I am still in shock that no one has realized Russell's true nature. Then again, somehow people like him always seem to get on the jury. However, it looks like the merge is happening next episode. By the way, Russell was so quotable that all odd episodes, and the one that is coming up, all come from quotes by Russell. When that happens they need to vote him out ASAP. I hope they find out his secrets and break free of his control unless he fools them into taking him to the final 2 (or 3, I'm not sure). Once his seeds take root, it may be hard to break free.

Anyway, the challenge was a game of concentration. They could choose to take the point or the item they just matched. Everyone took the points except for one thing. Galu took the fire starting kit. This may not seem like a good idea, but it was. It came with a tarp; this could help if there is ever rain again. However, they could have done well with some of the matched items. You don't absolutely need eating utensils, but it would be a good idea to think about taking the spear-fishing kit. Their original one doesn't work anymore due to Shambo's folly. An even better idea would have been the mosquito net. It just rained a lot. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in water. These eggs will hatch into hungry babies. Mother mosquitoes feed their babies with blood. Mosquitoes could have malaria, and bug bites are annoying regardless. It makes sense, one of them better not be taken out due to malaria. I also really doubt that they will be able to convince them to feed their young nectar instead of blood.

This episode, I began to dislike the male members of Galu. They have formed an alliance and are planning on manipulating Shambo by making her leader and hoping that she’ll be so caught up in power that she won’t realize their true intentions. I knew Dave was bad and I think I didn’t like Eric. As for Brett and John, I don’t know much about Brett. But, I do know John somewhat, he didn’t seem this manipulative. I just hope that this is all Dave’s doing.

In Tribal Council, it was a choice between Liz and Jaison. I don’t know why they chose those two; they are both really good members. Anyway, wouldn’t they be thinking about the merge? Wouldn’t it be best to get rid of physically strong, manipulative player, who lies a lot and speaks with a slight accent? Apparently, Russell still has hold of the tribe and struck down Liz. Don’t get me wrong, I like Jaison, it’s that venomous Russell that I don’t like. I hope he forgets his hidden immunity idol when they go for the merge. Better yet, he should just give it to Ben, so he won’t have to lie anymore about having it.

As it is clear, my festering dislike for Russell still persists. I really hope he gets voted out soon.

P.S. Yes, I know I talk about Russell too much.

Animal Farm Movie

As I said last week, I will be discussing the Animal Farm Movie. It may come as a surprise to some book lovers, but a movie can be better than a book. They tend to each have their advantages. Sometimes make detail issues when adapting the book; however this one met is purpose, in my opinion.

I find one real change that was bad, but it didn’t affect my opinion of the movie much. Mollie did not run off with a different human in this one. In the book, as stated, she grew disappointed at the lack of benefits that used to be around when humans were there, so she ran off. In this, they minimized her character and she only said that she liked bows, not much else happened.

Now, there’s Moses. Moses is a tame raven kept by Jones, the farmer. He is supposed to represent Orwell’s view of the church. He seems far more irritating in the movie; he was just there in the book. He also seemed to ally himself with Napoleon more visibly here. I know that ravens should be smarter than that. Eventually, Napoleon gets tired of him and sticks him on the flagpole to show his true maniacal nature.

I will also talk about the humans. They seem to be somewhat important. I think that Jones is portrayed similarly, but slightly more sympathetically. In the movie he has a wife. She didn’t seem to do anything wrong, but was still forced out along with her husband. Now, Frederickson is bad, in the movie anyway. Once he discovered that the pigs could talk, he started trading with them and gave them whiskey. When he brought his wife over, it seemed to me like she was flirting with Napoleon.

Now, my favorite change was definitely the better characterization of Jessie. Earlier, she was just the dog who gave birth to the puppies that Napoleon took. Now, she is the only main character that is not a pig, excluding Boxer. I think making the dog a more important character increases the emotional nature of this. In the novel, it is bad when Napoleon takes the puppies and “educates” them. Now, imagine that those were your puppies that it happened to. You would feel desperation as your puppies were his servants and no longer recognized you as a parent.

Also, the modernization of the story was helpful. With cars, Boxer’s fate seems more plausible. In the book, he is taken away by horse carriage. If you ask me, I find it hard to believe that the horses wouldn’t hear the animals yelling, or they had become so used to it that they just sadly went forward. In addition, the addition of “the box where humans watch humans,” aka television, seemed to increase Napoleon’s rule as they became transfixed on the screen.

The final good change was the ending. It is nice to know that Napoleon’s reign was brought to an end, but it was even nicer when there were new owners. It changes the meaning of the movie to a slightly more optimistic view. The book seems to say that humans were the enemy in general and that utopian societies can not exist due to sin. This new ending seems to say, “Humans weren’t the enemy at all, the problem was who was in charge.”

This is the Man Test

I would never have thought that it could be possible. Russell’s heart failed him during a challenge and he was removed. This is not Bad Russell, this is Good Russell. If this happened to Bad Russell, it would be bittersweet. Sweet because he would be out of the game, but I still wouldn’t want anything really bad to befall him. With Good Russell, it is all sour.

I still can not believe that Russell’s heart failed, his blood pressure was even lower than Mike’s. In case you need a refresher, Mike also had heart problems and needed to be taken from the game to go to the hospital. Russell tried his best and gave his all, but his body couldn’t take it. After he was done pushing the ball, he staggered over in the wrong direction and had to be guided over to the pinball maze. When he got there, he seemed to slump down, his head was on the board and people were telling him to get his head off. Eventually, he fell down and would have completely fell flat had his shirt not snagged on the game board. Immediately, Jeff yelled for everyone to stop and brought in Medical. Russell insisted that he was fine and that he should get back in the challenge. However, Jeff eventually said that the challenge was over, no one won the reward and that, as stated before, both teams were going to Tribal Council. When they were at Tribal people discussed like they were going to vote someone out, but Jeff said that because the challenge wasn’t completed, no one would be voted out. But, in a way, with Russell being removed for medical reasons, it kind of was like Galu lost someone. The preview I saw last week showed that someone had heart problems, but I did not know who. I said, “What if it’s Russell?” with Bad Russell in mind. It turns out my guess was correct, but not in the way I meant it.

The scariest thing by far that I saw happen with Russell was when they had given him some time and they tried to get him to sit up. He sat up and they measured a 99 heart rate. Suddenly, the life flashed away from his eyes, he fell down with a stare, eyes blank, staring directly in the center, and dilated. I was actually worried that Russell had died. However, his eyes changed direction, I was relieved and his heart rate was a 68. At that point, if he can’t even sit up, he has to be taken to medical. I saw him let out a tear when he heard this.

There is nothing more to say. I do not want to divert from this because nothing else really important happened. I will say goodbye until the next post.

The Odyssey (Odysseus' Journey Part 1)

I would like to start the post off with this statement, "I know that the Odyssey did not start out as a book, but instead was passed on by oral tradition, well, it would have been a book if they made books in that time, which is why I am classifying it as one." However, I have changed this to "Greek Mythology" so it doesn’t matter anyway. Continuing, this will be talking about the story that Odysseus told Nausicaa, from when he left Troy until he washed up on Calypso's island. This is the best part of the book and it is shocking how he was able to survive all this. Too bad everyone else died in the process.


First on the trip came the Lotus Eaters. Odysseus stayed on an island for a little while with a group of lethargic people. They left soon after some of the crew members became lethargic like the others and forget all about going home. This happened because of a lotus. When I originally read this, I thought nothing of it, but a lot of sites tend to describe the lotus in a drug-like manner. I thought of it just as something they were not supposed to eat because it wiped their memory until they were far enough away from it. The drug context does make sense, but I still prefer to think of it my way. In the end, Odysseus locks them in the ship and sails away so that they can not stay.

Next is the Cyclops, Polyphemus. When his crew first got there, he went ashore with them and was trapped by Polyphemus and two of the twelve crew members were eaten. Odysseus thinks of a plan to escape as four more of his crew members are eaten as he goes. He makes the Cyclops drunk and says that his name is "no man." When Polyphemus falls asleep, the crew pokes his eye out with a large flaming club. Immediately, he awoke screaming in rage "He blinded me! He blinded me! No man has blinded me!" I bet you know what the other giants thought of this. Anyway, the next day when Polyphemus let out the sheep, Polyphemus felt them to make sure that the men were not riding on top of them. Instead, they were riding under them. In the end, Odysseus, showing his true hubris, said that he was the one who blinded Polyphemus. Polyphemus is Poseidon’s Son. Poseidon is already angry with him. That wasn’t the best idea.

In a world where the forces of nature are sentient beings, you do not want to get them angry. Odysseus’ act of hubris virtually guaranteed rough sailing.

At this point, I will draw this part of the adventure to a close and begin again later. As for why I am doing this, it can carry on for a while, and these were distinct events in the Odyssey.

Anyway, I am sorry that this was more of a summary, but I will try and do better next time.

Animal Farm

If you have never read this book before, read the book before you read the post. I mean the book, not the movie, that is a separate matter. If you have read the book as part of a class assignment, don't flee in horror, read this post first.

Anyway, Animal Farm was written by George Orwell, the same person who wrote 1984. I haven't read the book, but I know enough about it that Big Brother wouldn't want me to read it.
Jokes aside, I will not compare this to 1984, but instead to "Lord of the Flies," another name that might cause people to run. I will not spend this entire post comparing them, instead I will summarize the main point. The point of these is that while sin exists, any utopian project will fail. Both groups are given a fresh start, and they end up even worse, than before. These books are pessimistic, but the general things are true, while there is sin, every system will have its flaw. I am sure you can think of at least one example, so I don't need to delve into that much.

However, I don't like to think of this as just symbolism. I like to bond (and anti-bond) *snicker* with the characters and if you view it as merely symbolism or satire, you lose the sense that they are supposed to be something to focus on instead of just "being there." As so, I will talk more about the individual characters instead of just focusing on symbolism.

First, I will talk of Old Major. He is the old, wise pig who first spread Animalism, where animals govern themselves and are not supposed to adopt human vices. He seems to have good intentions, but he seems to be old and quite content, as a prizewinning boar, he doesn't have to worry about these things. Other than this, he is wise and respected, and dies 3 days after giving this speech. He is not accidentally shot in the rear like the movie. The movie is a side issue that will be brought up next week, Jessie will not be referenced until then as well. I will tell you the diferrences when necessary so you don't have to watch the movie.

Anyway, on to Snowball :), as evidenced by the emoticon, I like Snowball. He tries to help the animals learn, has good character, and is braver than the other pig. Some may ask why I like him, while it is true he has his faults, he ate the apples and drank the milk along with the other pigs. Everyone has faults, but he wanted to improve life for the other animals in the long run. SparkNotes has said this about Snowball,"For example, Snowball basically accepts the superiority of the pigs over the rest of the animals. Moreover, his fervent, single-minded enthusiasm for grand projects such as the windmill might have erupted into full-blown megalomaniac despotism had he not been chased from Animal Farm." Orwell did say that power corrupts, so that is the problem. Snowball was somewhat corrupted by power, but other than that he is pretty nice. As for the "single-mindedness," he does show enthusiasm, but I don't think that would happen. I will explain my reasoning for this later.

Next, Napoleon. He is pure badness!!!! He is a puppy snatcher! He really did, he took them and made them obey him! He didn't want to lead Animal Farm for the others' benefit, it is for the benefit of him and the other pigs. The other pigs willingly went on with Napoleon, he knew that Snowball would never let that happen, so he got rid of him and called him a traitor to remove suspect. Eventually, he changed all of the laws one by one and eventually, it was hard to tell him and the humans apart. He went to complete pig superiority and none of the other animals had much food. He even said that it shouldn't be called "Animal Farm" anymore. Now, onto why Snowball wouldn't become a megalomaniac, he was devoted to the projects in mind of the other animals, not his own gain, this could lead to him doing these amazing projects without the consent of others. However, Napoleon would debate with him enough that his projects would not go unchallenged. But, thinking about it, Napoleon somewhat did Snowball an unintentional service. When Snowball is out of power, he would have more time to reflect on the milk and apples and other mistakes he may have made when he was in power.

Next, Boxer. He wanted to do a good job and be a hard worker, but did not understand what was really going on. When he received a greivous injury, he was shipped off to the glue factory and the other animals were told that he was taken to a hospital. I would like to imagine that he somehow escaped. Many would say it was hopeless and that it is the harsh fact of reality. Well, do you read fiction for reality? No. I like happy endings, and they never described Boxer being turned into glue, so I can assume that he by some miracle escaped all I want to.

Now that my rant is over, Squealer is next. You would probably assume that I am going to vicously rant about how bad Squealer is. You would be correct. He twists his words to make others believe that Napoleon did this for a good reason and "edits" the laws so that he and Napoleon aren't breaking any and even convinces people that Napoleom bravely fought when Snowball was either hiding or on the other side, when Napoleon really hid.

Benjamin is an elderly donkey. He is cynical and could very well challenge the pigs if he wanted to, but he doesn't. He probably does this because he doesn't want to, he has a feeling things would become worse, or he knows very well what will happen if he goes against them. Personally, I think the last choice is the most likely.

The last character I will talk about is Mollie. She liked the ribbons that she could wear and the sugar that was given to her as Farmer Jones' carriage horse. She did not like not being in contact with humans and eventually left to pull the carriage of another person. After this, she was never mentioned again.

Moses did not have much of a role. He will be discussed in the movie with Jessie, where their roles are increased. For that, you will have to wait till next week.

One final comment, this whole post is over 1,100 words, hopefully it makes up for my other 2 bad posts.

"Walking on Thin Ice"

Not much happened during this episode, but people are starting to suspect Russell, the bad one. A side note, I discovered that the person who voted for each other person is known, so people change their votes so they won't be labeled as the outcast.

Russell's strategy didn't work this time because of a torrential downpour. No one would leave the shelter. When everyone is in the shelter, they hear you strategizing. It was a wild vote, either Ashley or Liz. Ashley was thought to be the physically weakest, so she was voted out. This has a lot to do with the food challenge. She was picked to eat the grossest thing of all, sea slug guts. On top of it, this was blended with water so yyou could see it, was quite chunky. When Galu's member was done, her team mates were cheering her on, the other team was sying she was going to throw up, it tasted horrible, it looked disgusting, she had drunk almost all of it, but then gave up, said she couldn't drink it, and threw up in a nearby bush. After all that pressure, they blame her for not doing it and she even thinks that it's her own fault. Do you really think that you could do that if all that pressure was placed on you? If you think yes, I'd like to see you try it.

I am confident that people are starting to discover "Bad Russell"'s true badness. Shambo pointed out where she knew the other immunity idol was, looked for it, and determined that someone in the tribe had it, because the only other person was Yasmin, she was voted out, and she only had one clue. Russell said that he didn't have it, Liz said that she knew he had it to him. He responded by saying that Liz was "walking on thin ice" and that she was a "mind player" as well. She just said that she didn't completely trust him, what does that have to do with anything?

One final comment, during the rainstorm, the Galu Tribe wished that they had chosen function over comfort on a reward challenge either 2 or 3 weeks before, episode time not real time.

Colloquialisms

Those of you who have read my past posts, you probably think I am going to complain about slang. The title is "colloquialisms", not slang. I am okay with colloquialisms, Slang is okay, just use correct grammar, unless if you are drawing attention to bad grammar as a joke. Instead, I will talk about origins of colloquialisms. For those of you who are complaining, read the posts with the "Random" tag at your own risk.

Anyway, colloquialisms are "expressions not used in formal speech, writing or paralinguistics." Some of you may wonder how this is different from slang. I have found a response by linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "slang refers to informal (and often transient) lexical items used by a specific social group, for instance teenagers, soldiers, prisoners, or thieves. Slang is not considered the same as colloquial (speech), which is informal, relaxed speech used on occasion by any speaker; this might include contractions such as you’re, as well as colloquialisms. A colloquialism is a lexical item used in informal speech; whilst the broadest sense of the term ‘colloquialism’ might include slangism, its narrow sense does not. Slangisms are often used in colloquial speech but not all colloquialisms are slangisms. One method of distinguishing between a slangism and a colloquialism is to ask whether most native speakers know the word (and use it); if they do, it is a colloquialism. However, the problem is that this is not a discrete, quantized system but a continuum. Although the majority of slangisms are ephemeral and often supplanted by new ones, some gain non-slang colloquial status (e.g. English silly – cf. German selig ‘blessed’, Middle High German sælde ‘bliss, luck’ and Zelda, a Jewish female first name) and even formal status (e.g. English mob)."
There's your answer. Anyway, Colloquialisms form when somebody says a phrase, other people like it and start peppering their language with it. Depending on whether it is used by a certain group or most speakers, it is considered either colloquial or slang.

Unfortunately, that is all for this post. I know I used a lot of words to express a two sentence idea and will probably do more in my more meaningful posts, but I couldn't think of a better topic. I will try and do better next time.

P.S. An example of using this to make fun of grammar is the phrase, "Ich bin ein Berliner." You may know this quote, but it is grammatically incorrect for the intended message. If you know enough German, you understand why one word completely messes it up.

Of Random Posts

It may not be apparent yet, but I have troubles thinking up topics. I have an idea for some of my posts, but I am afraid what will happen when I run out of topics. You may notice that other people have other posts while I have the bare minimum. This is why. However, I will not try to drag my ideas into other posts. If you see any random posts, this is probably why. I will try and think up as many good topics as I can, but sorry if you have a random post.

Two side notes, I have this in German and "bold" font is called "fett". Also, I will try to add tags to my other posts.

Hungry for a Win

Well, Foa Foa finally won an immunity challenge, breaking their losing streak. Strangely afterwards, it started raining on the Galu tribe right after Foa Foa left. That's enough talk about ironic coincedences. In this entry, I do not have much to talk about, I will talk about Yasmin and chickens, galliformes, not cowards.

Yasmin was voted out. I originally went from liking her to not liking her very much. Now, I think I like her again. The main thing that made me not like her at first was when she said that she would help Foa Foa so it didn't seem too easy. From then, we have realized that we like her. We usually bond more with Survivor characters we relate to and mom relates to Yasmin. The reason Yasmin was voted out was because she didn't participate much around camp. While this is true, she did a great job of defending herself. She said that she did well in challenges because she was competitive, which was the reason some people wanted to get rid of Monica. About one random comment Yasmin made which she did have a point with. Yasmin said she didn't do anything around camp because she was afraid she would do something wrong. She does have a point, if you do something wrong on Survivor, you not only get harped upon by the other tribe members, because Survivor is on national television, you get harped upon by random blogs, too. Speaking of doing something wrong, Shambo did something again.

I like Shambo. She knows when to be practical, helped that one guy find a hidden immunity idol, I don't know his name, she does mess up sometimes, but it adds to her character somewhat. Anyway, Galu got three chickens for winning a challenge. Shambo took it upon herself to try and bond with the chickens in an attempt to increase the amount of eggs produced. The strange thing is, when she thought she was just supposed to grab the chickens, she was holding one by the neck. Anyway, she found an egg at one point, but when she went to get it, one of the chickens escaped. People started chasing after the chicken and someone tripped over something. When Shambo thought she had caught the chicken but it flew away, she said that she didn't think that the chicken would fly away and someone complained. In her defense, chickens are genetically similar to turkeys and pheasants, they mostly just fly to escape. Shambo tried to imitate chicken sounds to coax the chicken out of the tree. Eventually, she gave up and said that a chicken was gone, but she produced an egg. Someone said in response, "You didn't produce an egg! The chicken produced the egg!"

Anyway, that's all I can say, but it was a good episode.

"Swimming" isn't right

Swimmers who are reading this, I like swimming and I am talking about the grammar of the word, not the sport itself, so don't send angry comments about me not liking swimming.













While I was checking for comments on the post "Beast" is not "Beast" , I noticed this comment: "Just to add a point. English words can often be used as not only adjectives and nouns, but also verbs without a change.

1.) I am swimming (swimming is the action or verb)

2.) He was a swimming champion (swimming, the adjective, describes champion, the noun)

3.) She is good at swimming (swimming, in this case, is an noun as it is being acted upon by the verb "is")

boom, roasted beast."



Commenter, you do have a point, some things can change parts of speech without modification, but the case you gave doesn't really work in the way I think you think it does.



The first example you gave is wrong. "Swimming" is not a verb, it is a gerund. Gerunds are used by placing "-ing" at the end of verbs to make them nouns. For some reason the English language decided that the plain form of the verb wasn't good enough for it and use a form of the verb "be" instead. So, "am" is the verb, not "swimming" and if it was, it would be "am swimming." If you want to get it in its pure form, you would say "I swim" and all of the examples I gave are modifications.

The second example is really hard to prove wrong. I will have to delve into German to prove you wrong. German and English are both of the Germanic branch and have similar grammar. You may object to me using German to justify a point about the English language, but all's fair in love, war, and grammar-related debates. By the way, if you're going to provide a counter-point, get your points from the Germanic Branch, not the Romance Branch or anything else. In German, you could say this two different ways. The first is with an adjective. Er war schwimmenden Meister. This could work as an adjective, even though it requires rewording in the German version, but this is not what you mean to say. This implies that the champion is currently swimming. You can argue against me, but this is what it seems like. You probably want the second way, making it a compound word. Er war Schwimmenmeister. This is what you want it to mean, but it makes it part of the word, it is a compound word, not an adjective. You can debate me all you want on this, but I think it is confusing, and potentially incorrect grammar. It would be best to say "He was a champion at swimming." That's another gerund, so you only have one case so far.

I have no reason to debate you on the third case. It seems grammatically correct and uses the gerund as a noun. So far you have proven that it can be used in one way, as a noun. So, if you are still not convinced that you should modify slang words to turn them into other parts of speech, I hope this helps.

By the way, if you are a native speaker of German, feel free to correct me. I am learning and don't know how to make compound words.

P.S. Sorry if you thought I was being rude, I became competitive.



Photo from here

A couple comments. First, I said German and English had similar grammar, not the same. Second, I will recant my claim on it not being an adjective, that would get into stuff that I'm not quite as well versed in. Third, Your adjective examples only have them placed in front of nouns, can you think of cases where they don't need a noun directly after them. Fourth, can you think of any adverbs that follow this rule. Finally, I said that most words need modification to change, there may be some exceptions, but I meant like "slow" to "slowly," "good" to "goodness," "boy" to "boyish". I'm not sure if your examples are as clear-cut as that. Anyway, do you really think that slang doesn't have to follow these rules? That was the original debate. Slang words are as much a part of the language as common words, whether people like it or not, they have to follow the rules too.

Fear of the Dark

If you search for "Fear of the Dark" on Google, you will find a song by the group "Iron Maiden." Type in "Nyctophobia" instead and you will find two wikipedia pages. First is "Nyctophobia" the other is "Fear of the dark," not the song, the actual fear. Some might be asking what the difference is. If you haven't followed the links, don't bother, I will tell you the difference.

The main difference is that when people use the word "phobia," it is pathological, while fear of the dark is natural. Phobias are a common way to describe general fears, but clinically, this is not so. According to the Wikipedia entry: The different possible conventional symptoms many of the phobias have in correlation include “dyspnea (“air hunger”), palpitation (rapid beating of the heart), chest pain or discomfort, choking or smothering sensations, dizziness or vertigo, feelings of unreality, paresthesia (tingling in the hands and feet), hot or cold flashes, sweating, faintness, trembling or shaking, and a fear of dying, going crazy, or doing something uncontrollable.” You may have the fear, but it probably isn't classified as a phobia.





Anyway, back to the fear. This is not fear of absence of light, but about imagination, about fears of what could happe in the dark. It is completely natural and chances are that you have had it at one point, so don't try and fool yourself into thinking otherwise. In addition, some may not want to believe it, but you still have this fear to some degree. Some may be thinking that they have outgrown this stage in their life, but you haven't. While it may be true you don't take special precautions to invade the imagined monsters that wish to devour you, I ask you this: Have you ever been in the woods or the inner city at night and had absolutely no fear that something was going to happen to you? If the answer is yes, then you are afraid of the dark in one way, if the answer is no, you have either been to neither of the aforementioned places, which I doubt, you are in denial, or you have completely eliminated your fear of the dark.

If you actually have eliminated your fear of the dark, don't be happy for having done it. While fear is not something you should be proud of, it is necessary. Fear is just an emotional reaction to a potential threat. When you are afraid, your senses pick up more around you, making you more aware of changing conditions. It's a basic survival instinct. Some of you may not understand what this has to do with fear of the dark, I'll tell you. You agree that our vision is good for seeing shapes and recognizing figures, but is not the best for detecting general movement. You agree that the less light there is, the harder it is to see. You agree that if vision is obscured enough, you don't know what could be in that obscured area. This is where imagination kicks in. If you receive stimuli in cases like this, your mind imagines what it could be, and if you are afraid, you often assume the worst. If you assume the worst when there is an actual situation, doing that would help you deal with any situation.

While it is not likely that what your imagination could contrive is what you just heard while walking at night, a little vigilance never hurt anyone if something bad did happen.

It's Called a Russell Seed

As you know from the title, "Bad Russell" was at it again. After his handywork got Marisa and Betsy voted out, he wants to keep Ben in the game for physical challenges. Why would he want to keep that lizard-eating bartender who is a general nuisance around camp and says that the women shouldn't use the iPhone-like flint because he's afraid they'll waste it. Both of those statments are completely true by the way, he has caught 2 small lizards and roasted them like marshmallows, and yes, the flint did look like the side of an iPhone the way it was angled. He does do some things in the challenges, but how are you going to participate if you're kicked out? (That didn't happen to him this time, by the way.) We'll get back to him later, on to Shambo.
Shambo is very practical, so she was complaining when "the 90201 clique," 4 members of the Galu tribe, was doing yoga first thing in the morning when there was work to be done. While she does have a point, she could be less crabby about it, but it is early morning, some people just may not be morning people. Shambo was chosen to observe Foa Foa this time and found that she liked them more because they were closer to her age and did not do yoga first thing in the morning. Shambo was looking for the hidden immunity idol which Russell took. She was looking in the right spot and was really searching. Imagine someone halfway in the hole of a tree, nothing showing above this person's hip , and everyone else pays that person no mind, just like they weren't there.

Now that Shambo's story has been told, back to Russell. I will start referring to "Bad Russell" as Russell because Russell was not brought up as much, but he went into another rant about how he's so great, how it's so easy to win the game, and how it's so easy to manipulate everyone. Have you ever heard of character flaws, well here's Russell's:

Hubris (hu⋅bris) 
–noun
excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.

There's someone else who had hubris, Odysseus. Well, Russell, you are not like Odysseus. You may be strong, and you may have sheep to hide under when the cyclops comes to eat you, the hidden immunity idol, but you don't have Circe to tell you what awaits on your journey. Oh, when the time comes, you will be swallowed up by Scylla. You may have your immunity, but you have to know when to play it. You will be so overconfident you won't know when the votes are coming.
Russell tried to get Ashley voted out, but Ben got himself voted out. WOOHOO!!! Anyway, something Ben said earlier came back to bite him. Jaison took offense at Ben's comment about Yasmin and wanted to vote him out. Jaison even said that if Ben wouldn't be going home that night, he, Jaison, would. Jaison and Ben bickered a few times during tribal council and that eventually swayed the others. They were too busy focusing on Ben to think about Ashley. Everyone voted for Ben, even Russell. Ben said that he wished that everyone would have a bad night except for Russell, he thought that Russell wouldn't have been one of the people to vote for him, but he did.

"Beast" is not "Beast"

I bet most of you know what the word "beast" means. I am not talking about an animal other than a human, but the new slang definition. For those of you who don't know, I'm not exactly sure of the exact definition, but I have heard it and know that it's supposed to be good. I do not like this expression and you can debate me to death on it, but you have to prove my points wrong before you convince me.
It has to do mostly with "The Lord of The Flies." I read this book for LA class and finished my first reading of it in one day. I forgot some of the details and read it again in two days. If you have read this book before, you may know where I am going with this. Otherwise, I will tell you. These British boys are trapped on an island and have to form a society to survive. My reasoning for not liking the word "beast" in this connotation, the other connotation is just fine, is because of what happens on that island. It all started when the younger kids, the “littluns” were having nightmares about a strange creature that was somewhat like a snake. Then, another beast came from water and the older kids were starting to believe it was real. They really believed the beast was real when Sam and Eric thought they saw a beast from air and Jack tried to appease it with a pig’s head on a stick.
Simon found out two things. The first is that the beast Samneric, Sam and Eric, thought they saw was just a dead parachutist. The other was that the real beast would have no power if they knew what it truly was. Unfortunately, the kids became frenzied and killed Simon, thinking that he was the beast. If you remember reading this book, you know who the beast really was. It was Beelzebub, der Teufel. I hope that you can guess what I mean by these, because I’m not saying it in English. I’m using to saying the name in German and you can look it up here: http://www.dict.cc/. I have a feeling someone is going to challenge me on this. If you wish to debate me, leave a comment and I will respond as another comment. Regardless of what you say, I doubt you will sway my opinion, I dare you to try.
Added on 10/03/09:
Okay, my post is poorly written... I don't provide enough evidence and this isn't completely directed at beast, it is more about slang words that, in general, have connatations that were originally bad, now have a meaning that is good that has nothing to do with the original connatation. "Sick" is an example of this.
Another grammatically related thing, I'm pretty sure "beast" in its slang version has been used as an adjective and a noun. Pick one and assign appropriate endings to change it to the other part of speech.
One last comment, Mikey J did sway my opinion, but not in the way I was intending. I don't watch sports that much so







Anyway, I don't watch sports much, if at all, so I had no idea where this slang term came from. Mikey J, your description made sense, but in some ways. "Beast"'s connatation is something like "a wild animal." For sports and physical challenges, this analogy could work well. I know that sports require strategy, wild animals have to be cunning, this could work too. As for purely mental things, did you ever see wolves learning advanced math? Wild animals need to stay in shape or they'll starve. These things arise from not having to do as much physical work, which wild animals do plenty of. I can understand physical and mental combined, but if you gave a random wolf your trig test, it wouldn't know what to do with it. So, if you were a "beast" in Friday's game, you did well, but if you were a "beast" on the test, you flunked it. That's how I seem to intepret it. Mikey J, feel free to challenge this one if you wish.

Photo from here