Smooth Talk

I really dislike how movies change stories around so much! In Joyce Carol Oates' story, Arnold Friend is portrayed as super creepy and scary. When he came to Connie's house in the movie, he was sly, and somewhat attractive. He didn't walk funny like in the story, and he just didn't seem as creepy at first. Connie seemed to be flattered by him, actually. But in the story, I got the feeling that from the moment Arnold came to Connie's house, she was creeped out and frightened by him. Another thing about the movie I didn't like was how it ended. I think it would of been better if they had ended the movie like the story ended. But, in most cases the book or story is always better than the movie because you can use your own imagination.

In Just & Because I could not stop for death poems

I read these poems over the weekend and I had a lot of difficulty trying to figure out their interpretations. The first one by E.E. Cummings made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. He makes up his own words, such as mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. He also uses the word wee several times, mostly saying far and wee. This confused me a lot because I thought wee meant little, or harmless. But in this poem, he makes it sound like it means wide, such as far and wide. So, needless to say, I really did not enjoy this poem at all.

The other one by Emily Dickinson was a little better to read. She uses a lot of dashes at the end of her lines, which I found to be pretty cool. It chops up the poem, but I think it gives it a pretty good rhythm.

her name was connie...

I found this story to be really interesting, especially because it is based off a real event. When I was reading it, I couldn't help but think about what I would do if I were in Connie's position when Arnold Friend came to her house. I kept telling myself that I would of done things differently, but how do you really know what your going to do until you are personally thrown into that situation? There's no way to really tell...

So afterwards I read Don Moser's "The Pied Piper of Tucson" and that is when I really got creeped out. It's so eerie because this kind of person could easily be walking around among us. The way he won the hearts of younger girls makes it so easy for people to believe he was nothing but a kid who didn't want to grow up and move on, so he just hung around town. In fact, I could think of a handful of guys like this in my hometown.

It's easy to see how this is just a retelling of another story because situations like this happen a lot. Maybe not to the extent of the real Pied Piper, but more often than we like to think, young girls are attracted to a very dangerous predator and it ends badly.

"How do I know what I think before I see what I say?" When I first heard this quote, I had difficulty figuring out what it meant. I really had to think about it for a while, and I even asked a couple of my friends what they thought it meant. I finally came to the conclusion that it means you don't know what you think until you hear it come out of your mouth. Sometimes when there is a lot on your mind, you don't really know what to think. However, when you talk about it with someone else, you begin to believe what comes out of your mouth.

We were also asked to eavesdrop on people around campus. I found that most people are either talking about their classes, or what they did over the weekend. I wasn't really expecting to hear much of anything else because school is such a major part of the lives of students, it practically rules our lives. So, I wasn't really surprised when I didn't hear much talk besides school.