One clever assignment I found was to create a bucket list of at least five things you want to do in your life. I felt like this assignment was calling me out because (recently) I have been saying all of the things I want to do, but have never taken the time to write them down. (“well, now is the time to stop messing around and actually make a bucket list.”)
There are a lot of things that I have said I wanted to do over the years, and all of them I think are reasonable, but some definitely require a lot more money than I have right now.
Hold a koala
Go to Disney World in Florida
Meet Stephen King/Do the Stephen King tour in Maine
Go skydiving
Run a half-marathon
Make a family tree
Koalas: I have dreamt of meeting a koala ever since I was a kid. I even got this cool computer game when I was little that came with a stuffed koala, a certificate of adoption for a real koala, and a game that allowed me to learn all about them. I have always loved them, and seeing the injured koalas in the Australian wildfires has just broken my heart.
Disney World: I have been to Disney twice – once when I was in fourth grade while my dad was deployed to Iraq, and once more not much later after my dad returned. I loved it when I was younger and I have always dreamed of going back. I currently have a budget on my fridge of how much money I need to save to go.
Stephen King: I am a huge SK fan. I love his books, movies, and him himself. It would be totally awesome to meet the man, but I would settle to go to Maine and do a Stephen King tour where I can see his house and the different parts of Bangor that inspired his books.
I went to the local apiary to buy a dozen bees. They gave me thirteen and said the last one was a free bee.
Skydiving: I’m terrified of heights, but have always felt the need to go skydiving. I would love to be up in the clouds and I’m sure that nothing beats the rush of free falling. My father skydived (skydove?) regularly when he was young and in the military and he always told me that he would take me when I turned 18. But what actually happened when I turned 18? He said no. Boo.
Half-marathon: I never enjoyed running, but I want to be able to easily run a few miles. In high school, field hockey allowed me to run up to 3, but never more. I think it would be super cool to be able to train and run 13 miles.
Me running a 5k in 2015. I was miserable.
Family tree: My family originates from Ireland, Poland, and Romanian gypsies. To see exactly where my family came from and who came over when would be really interesting. A family member of mine made a family tree a few years ago, but upon analysis, it was shown that there were some errors.
This assignment was pretty fun (and was 2 stars). I’m excited to have part of my list written down now because I am more inspired to get them done!
*My character is going off the archetype “Midwife: survivalist, feminist, quick-witted, perceptive”.
My name is Felicity Simone Cixous Jones. A mouthful, huh? You can just call me Flick, that’s what my friends call me. My mom had the grand idea of giving me names after feminists icons, but instead of just choosing one she chose two. Simone De Beauvoir was one of the founders of modern feminism and Helene Cixous was a novelist most well known for exploring the subconscious and bisexuality.
I think it’s kind of cool to be named after such bad-ass feminist icons, but I think my mom just gave me those names to feel better about being a single mom. She wanted a kid, but didn’t want to commit to a man, so she just got knocked up and then here I was. Not as cool of story now that I’m saying it out loud.
Any who, my childhood was pretty fun. Mom and I did everything together, she is my best friend. She homeschooled me my whole life until college which was awesome because I didn’t have to learn all of the stupid things my friends learned in public school like Trigonometry. I got to learn about political movements, take field trips to museums, and learn various life skills.
For such a feminist like my mother, you wouldn’t think she would have encouraged me to learn how to cook, clean, and garden- but she did. I was raised as a vegetarian. I’ve only ever had meat one time at a birthday party when I was mad at my mom and ate a hot dog. It made me sick so I’ve stayed far away ever since. All of the things we ate pretty much came from our garden or from the farmers market in our community. It was really fun and interesting to eat sustainably my whole life, but it made it so I was in for a very rude awakening when I decided to move to New York City for college.
My senior year of “high school”, I decided I wanted a change. Don’t get me wrong, I loved growing up in a small town and loved being friends with everyone in the community, but it got a little old after a while. So, I applied to NYU and got accepted. I left home thinking my mom had prepared me for everything I ever needed to know, but I was very wrong.
The city always has this weird odor, like garbage burning in the distance or something. There’s organic food, but only sold at food chains like Whole Foods for a huge up-charge. I tried to start a small garden outside of the window of my dorm room, but it was no use. The most I could grow was a few herbs that died off quickly in the snow.
I had become vegan 3 years before going to college, and it was easy at home. However, my NYU meal plan is hardly vegan friendly and I had to give it up. I tried to keep it up for as long as possible but it was too expensive in such a pricey city.
I’m still working out how to navigate city life and I’ve been here almost 3 years. It just doesn’t seem to come to me like it comes to everyone else. I thought about leaving, giving up on my Sociology degree and working in my hometown where I knew everything so well, but I want to challenge myself. I want to learn life from a new perspective, I want to meet all kinds of new people, I want to live in a way I just can’t at home.
Still, though, nothing beats going home to see mom. She doesn’t have a cellphone because she thinks they emit too much radiation and they’re dangerous, so we don’t talk much. We write letters, which is cool, I guess. My friends tease me about the fact that my mom is insistent on writing letters instead of buying a cellphone to call me but I think it gives our relationship character.
Yes, that’s right. It is Sara Bareilles time! For those of you who may not know (which is probably most), my favorite singer has been and probably always will be Sara. Yeah, I love her so much I like to think that we are on a first name basis. What makes her even better is that she has a song about princesses, which I feel is more like my life. Check it out, it’s called Fairytale. If she sings it, I own it. If she covers it, I have it. If she sings near me, I see it. Call it a girl crush or whatever you like, just know that I love her. So when I came across the opportunity to make a music tag assignment, I jumped right on it.
I know exactly what you are thinking “What? The princess isn’t doing something based on Disney? That seems insane!” Well don’t worry I totally made a Disney one. Actually I made my Disney one first. When I saw the assignment I was just so excited to do something similar to the riff-off from Pitch Perfect that I didn’t really focus on telling a story. When planning my Disney music tag I just focused on combining different songs from Hercules, which is my favorite movie when it comes to the music. It was really easy to access the songs because there was a YouTube video which included all of the songs, and I came across and amazing web-site that had all of the lyrics to the songs together which made catching duplicated words easy with the find feature.  And here was my final product for the Hercules Riff-Off as I like to call it.
(SoundCloud is currently processing this mp3, so I will post it as soon as I can).
After looking back at the assignment I realized that this was telling the story of Hercules, and not a story that I was creating. So I went back to the drawing board and focused on the songs that I know, Sara’s songs. (See? A first name basis.) The songs that most people know from Sara are very upbeat “screw you” type songs. So I knew that I wanted to tell the story of a break-up and what I like the call the 5 stages of breaking up. Consider it my artistic interpretation to the 7 steps of grief. So give it a listen here (but I must warn you that there are some “grown-up words” in it) and read along with the words below if you want!
Lyrics (bolded lyrics are  the transitions):
Once upon another time, somebody’s hands who felt like mine turned the key and took a drive, was free. Highway curve, the sun sank low, Buckley on the radio, cigarette was burning slow, so breathe. Just yellow lines and tire marks, and sun-kissed skin and handle bars, and where I stood was where I was to be. No enemies to call my own, no porch light on to pull me home, and where I was is beautiful because I was free. Leave me be. I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity. Here I am, and I stand so tall, just the way I’m supposed to be, but you’re onto me and all over me. You loved me cause I’m fragile, when I thought that I was strong. But you touched me for a little while, and all my fragile strength is gone. It’s clear this conversation ain’t doing a thing, cause these boys only listen to me when I sing. And I don’t feel like singing tonight all the same songs. Here in these deep city lights, girl could get lost tonight. I’m finding every reason to be gone, nothing here to hold on to. Could I hold you? The situation’s always the same, you’ve got your wolves and they’re close whispering Hollywood’s name. Stealing gold from the silver they see, but it’s not me anymore. And I’m not the girl that I intend to be. But I dare you darling, just you wait and see; but this time not for you, but just for me. I said, how am I gonna get over you? I’ll be alright, just not tonight. But someday. I wish you want me to stay. I’ll be alright, just not tonight. But like most creatures down here on the ground I’m composed of the elements moving around, and I grow and change and I shift and I switch. And it turns out I’m actually kind of a bitch, but that only happens when I get provoked by some piece of shit asshole we all sadly know. And I sit and I write while reminding you all that mean songs are still better than going postal. And that guy’s an asshole, and that girl’s a bitch. Baby it’s natural, no getting away from it. So sing it out with me, and then let it go. Fuck that guy he’s just an asshole.
So here is my analysis of it all:
I start if off with the song Once Upon Another Time because it is the beginning of the story, and it talks about what the relationship was all about. It was relaxing and she had no worries during it. But, the somber tone of the song plus the title of it being another time ago is what is causing the audience to know that this is in fact a break up. This is her reflecting on the relationship about what it was. I call this stage lamenting.
Second on the line up is probably the song that you have heard if you kind of listen to Sara, Gravity. It’s pretty simple to understand she was tired of being held down and back. She is sick of having to depend on them for everything, and breaking up just made her realize how much they pushed, and still is pushing her down. I call this stage realization.
Next up is City in which Sara talks about getting lost in the land of independence as I like to call it. I like to imagine this as she is finally ready to branch out, she has learned how to be dependent but the whole idea of actually being independent is scaring her. I call this stage self-realization (not to be confused with the realization stage).
Self-realization then turns into courage when Gonna Get Over You starts playing. We go from the sad slower songs to the more upbeat and happy song, and you finally hear that she is feeling a lot more confident and realizes that she will get over the guy that brought her down. Like I stated earlier, this is the courage stage.
Then comes the grand finale, and grand it is indeed. Sorry for those who don’t like curse words (I’m from Jersey, it’s pretty much second nature to me), but it just all fit so perfectly together. Needless to say, this is the closure stage. Do I really need to explain it? The guy is a jerk and she is over it and has no problem telling the whole entire word. You go glen coco!! The best part about this song is the title, Sweet As Whole (get it???).
How I Did This:
Since this post is super long, I’m going to write up a separate tutorial for how I did this and post it on the tutorials aspect as well. You can read it here!
This week I found another block of time through which to sprint after a number of ds106 design assignments. I had some trouble narrowing down which assignments to tackle until I began them; clearly, I do not yet have the patience or chops for some of the work, so it’s great that the ds106 community has shared so many different ideas for assignments. I hope to contribute some ideas this summer and fall as I try to implement a more ds106/MOOC feel in my middle school classroom.
Here are my basic hardware and software specs for the week: MacBook, OSX 10.6.8, 2.26 GHz Intel Core Duo 2, 2 GB of memory, Chrome, Wacom Bamboo tablet, SketchBook Pro (for drawing), Acorn (for fills and copy).
This week the work is not in any particular order. I made an animated comic book cover that looks pretty crummy next to all the awesome examples out there. I don’t yet have the animator’s patience to pull off a decent attempt, so I’ll pass on sharing for now. It was a simple snikt effect.
I’m becoming interested in how the community categorizes tasks. At times today, I definitely felt like a designer; at other times, I felt more like I was tweaking a pre-existing design for my own education (which seems more like a visual task to me), or mashing-up a number of designs. Some of the visual assignments feel like design tasks, too – like the album cover. I’d love to hear more about how contributors and organizers think of course- and task-design.
I take a ton of screenshots in Minecraft. I love discovering new sights in Minecraft, as well as new perspectives on familiar places. I ask students to take a ton of screenshots, too, so I can share their work easily through blogging. (Teaching in a multi-age classroom in a middle school, I haven’t yet solved the riddle of whole-class social media use, so I try to collect and share as many digital photos and artifacts as possible.)
For this assignment, I looked through my ds106-server screenshots, found a picture I liked, cropped it some, and then appended a snappy postcard/bumper-sticker-ready punchline in Acorn. Lastly, I mocked up a simple back for the card and let it be.
Since I wrote about how much The Road terrified me when I posted my Liminal States story-shape, and since The Road showed up as the exemplar for this assignment, I went back to Liminal States and riffed on my fake album cover assignment; with Liminal States you really can’t go wrong with a boy and his dog.
However, I wanted to use a different image this time around, so I found
“>a picture of a boy dressed as a cowboy riding a dog in The Commons on Flickr.
I brought the photo into Acorn and composed the rest of the cover there, darkening the bottom band to offer better contrast for the tagline.
The boy dressed up as a cowboy reminds me of my [privileged, white male] love for archetypes, even though many of those archetypes make horrible, horrifying decisions, like the genre-riffing characters of Liminal States. Moreover, in the book, youth – the eternal kind – is not all its cracked up to be. Considering the source material, it’s also significant that the boy and the dog clearly have different ideas about what’s going on and are, in fact, headed – or at least looking – in separate directions. The presence of grass is germane to the novel, as well.
I picked Trajan Pro for the font because it has that somber, elegiac, official feel like the title of a Tom Brokaw book.
The tag line is neither entirely true nor entirely false in its description of the book.
I’ve cartooned myself many times – some examples can be found here, here, and here. There’s even a short comic I drew about the first year of our school out there in a filing cabinet somewhere.
I find using a cartoon alter ego to be very helpful in breaking up the monopoly that text holds over my blogging, and I like to use drawings in class materials, as well. Cartooning is a good way to and bring some humor to the engrimmening proceedings of American public education.
For this assignment I wanted to draw myself differently than I normally do, so I went online and searched after
“>an image of Savoy from the comic Chew as drawn by series-artist Rob Guillory. (I have no idea why I’ve never cosplayed Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Chris Farley playing Savoy, but I know I could rock it.) I like Guillory’s style – it’s cartoony, dynamic, busy; as with Jeffery Brown’s completely different work, it makes me think I could draw a comic. It gives me hope.
I tried to capture Guillory’s sense of Savoy’s form, but left much of the interior clean, as I tend to do in larger work; paradoxically (maybe)I detail little doodles like crazy. I also colored myself for a change since I usually work in black and white.
I drew myself in SketchBook Pro using a 2.5-sized brush rather than a 4.0-sized one so that I my line would look more like Guillory’s and less like mine. I began with a blue-line drawing and then added a layer for a black-line drawing to bring into Acorn. Then I deleted the blue-line layer, switched to Acorn, and colored myself.
To make my own, I went for a popular, yet nerdy, property – The Lord of the Rings. In looking at spacesick’s use of patterns, I decided to use a ring motif to build Mount Doom and to perch Suaron’s eye atop it. I used a different color/material for each level of rings: silver for the Elves, bronze for the Dwarves, and iron for the humans. While that progression isn’t canonical, I used it to bring more color to the page and to communicate of how Middle Earth rank-orders its species. I could have made the other rings all white and left the one ring golden, but I am not at all unhappy with this design. I wonder also about linking the rings to show their interconnectedness in a chain-mail kind of way.
I used Acorn to compose the cover. I read up on spacesick’s fonts
“>here. The projector is the only element I lifted directly from any of spacesick’s covers.
Finally, I opened the image in SketchBook Pro for some final touches with textured brushes to worry the cover.
I’m really eager to see more of these designs from the ds106 community.
I’m not sure why this assignment is worth zero stars; I think it should get two.
For this task, I decided to make a children’s book cover for a hard science fiction novel – House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. I love that book. It gives me hope.
My cover, however, gives me the giggles. It’s so profanely incongruous – and yet so weirdly apt – that it delights me.
House Of Suns for kids
I drew the cover in SketchBook Pro and then colored and lettered it in Acorn.
As I hunted down stray pixels in Acorn, I discovered that it’s much easier to draw and paint in that program while zoomed in a level or two (this is both an a-ha and a duh moment). I still prefer SketchBook Pro for drawing, but it was satisfying to find a way to draw and color productively in Acorn, as well. At the default zoom, even a medium-sized brush can disappear on-screen in Acorn because its reticle isn’t persistent. That means if you’re trying to paint stray pixels in Acorn without zooming in, you lose the tip of your brush if your brush color is the same color as your background. That frustrated me greatly, but now I know that it’s easier to keep track of your brush tip while zoomed.
I hope others will jam on the idea of making children’s book covers for novels meant for adults.
Aude aliquid dignum: dare something worthy. I try to approach teaching and learning as if they were the most worthy things I could do and help others do. I think it’s important to ask kids to do worthy work. I think it’s important that teachers dare to resist the standardization of education. I think it’s important and worthy that we talk about how to subvert the status quo in our primary and secondary schools so that learning matters to kids, their families, and their communities. So here it is:
Aude aliquid dignum
I made the image in Acorn. I tried to minimalize the sans-serif text’s presence on the page without making it illegible (I probably cut too much of the “g”). Then, while trying to stay away from the Dr. Manhattan symbol, I made a little hydrogen atom to frame the words, with the “e” inside the electron. Hydrogen is a pretty minimalist element, but the proton and electron are also the building blocks of everything else. Hydrogen can exist by itself, but atoms do great and terrible things together. We humans can do the same, inside and outside Minecraft, a game about building – and/or destroying – alone and/or in a community!
I put another atomic particle in the upper right-hand corner so that the eye would be drawn there in an attempt to connect the two white spaces with one another over distance, which made me think that maybe the electron (which wants to create a bond) is also little person or organism looking to the stars and wondering how to connect with another being over a vast distance. I think connecting is worth daring.
I found a CC-licensed picture of a glorious, insanely detailed, embroidered Moss, brought it into SketchBook Pro, and traced over Moss’s hair and glasses. I used green in homage to the show’s pixelated, primitive CGI credit sequence. Then I went into Acorn to fill it in and clean-up white speckles left over in Moss’s hair and glasses.
For this piece, I searched The Commons on Flickr for propaganda. I went into my search looking for an ad or poster about building a shelter. I wanted to make a visual pun on our Minecraft work. However, when I found this picture, I switched gears. I hate Creepers. I’m playing the ds106 server on survival mode right now, and the Creepers have not been kind. If you look at my stretch of the beach on the server (behind camp), you can see how much Creeper damage I’ve had to patch. Finding a way to rally against the Creepers was just what I needed to lift my spirits.
I grabbed a CC-licensed picture of some Creeper cosplay. I took a screen shot of the head and cut out the background in Acorn. Then I brought in the propaganda poster. I used the scale and perspective transformations to size, angle, and position the Creeper heads. Then I made the heads monochromatic and color-matched them to their bodies.
Beat the Creeper
Now I’m ready to go back on the sever. I hope someone will put this poster into a ds106 texture pack for Minecraft!
#DontBlogNow starring Martha Burtis and Alan Levine. Somehow featuring the Bava, Timmmyboy, and Slaughterhouse 4. I did a lot of cutting, filling, and smudging in Acorn. I grabbed the movie poster here. I found Martha here and I found Alan here. I sepia-toned their faces, shrunk their heads, and then altered their saturation and brightness to help their faces better fit the gestalt of the photo in the poster.
#DontBlogNow
I love how different their expressions are, as if Martha has caught on to something that Alan is asking about again. “A serial killer in a red raincoat? Really? Was that a deliberate design decision? Where?” “Over-ay ere-thay, Alan-ay! Et’s-lay o-gay!”. Why someone snapped a photo of them at this moment I will never know.
I picked Don’t Look Now to avoid making a quick and easy visual pun about a movie I loved. I despise Don’t Look Now. I loathe that movie. I will never go to Venice. I refuse to look at myself passing on a boat. Forget it.
I will, however, spend hours remixing the film’s poster.
I just wish I was better at digital production – I really like the way the poster turned out, but I wanted it to be perfect, like my utter, unutterable, intangible, illogical contempt for this Don’t Look Now.
That’s it for today’s products. As I go further into the ds106 experience, I’m trying to stick with at least a few assignments per week that push me out of my comfort zone. I also want to balance the camp nature of camp with the profundity of the learning experience available to me here. I need to socialize more with my fellow campers, too.
I try to teach to what kids are doing in my classroom; in the same way, I’m learning to design what I discover instead of trying to design what I plan. It feels good.
Write the script for a conversation with your long lost friend Toska, who deals with ‘a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.’. Generate five random words from the Words with No Translation tool and make sure Toska uses one word in each of his lines, making sure his words give some shade to their meaning.
I took a few liberties with this assignment, but created a story while keeping the general idea of interacting with Toska. Hope you enjoy!
We began to suffocate on the agitated humidity in the shoddy hut. It seeped through the tree bark exterior and caught in our throats, our brains began to expand like balloons pumped full of helium. Clarity began to overlap with a dangerous paranoia, and in this state of isolation, paranoia could prove fatal.
I looked over to see Toska stretched across firmly packed dirt of the hut’s floor with his once white t-shirt wrapped around his head like a turban. “The sun isn’t exactly beating down,” I said, “your shirt may prove more useful if you wear it to ward off mosquitoes.”
“It is warding off those damn bloodsuckers. They could be sucking out my brain,” Toska scoffed as he stood to his feet. He picked up a pair of brown, size 11 Prada loafers and after a brief look of disgust, brushed their surface with his hand and put them on his feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The idiot, I hoped he was eaten by a tiger.
“I’m going to iktsuarpok, there could be natives preparing to attack any moment. It’s best to stay on guard at all times.” Toska picked up a large stick propped against the hut’s entrance, he felt its weight in one hand before resting the back portion on his shoulder. Toska donned a Mowgli worthy crouch and a look of determination- he needed a red loin cloth.
I watched him awkwardly walk out in his crouch like state and decided to take a nap. He had not changed a bit since we were kids.
After ten minutes passed, I heard strange noises coming from outside, not as much frightening as they were irritating. It sounded as though someone were calling a dog, or maybe their pet tiger. My head dropped back to the ground and I closed my eyes once more. The noise slowly grew louder and louder, closer and closer. In an instant my lips shrank into a hard prune and my eyelids retracted back into their sockets, the turquoise cardigan draped across my face took a reddish hue.
“What the hell do you want?” I growled through clenched teeth after tossing the cardigan aside. Propped on my elbows, I waited for a reply from the messy blond hair peaking inside the entrance.
“I’ve been making faamiti at you for half an hour,” Toska yelled in a whisper. “Come outside, I need you to see this, it’s important.”
The tousled blond mess disappeared and my eyes explored uncharted territory in the back of my head. My shoes were already on, but I took my time standing up.
Outside, Toska was crouched behind a cluster of bushes, the long stick lay at his feet. Without the slightest intention of being quiet, I walked to him and tapped his shoulder.
I covered my ears for protection against the deafening squeal suddenly released. On the ground was suddenly a huddled mass of grown man devoid of any dignity. I tapped my foot. After an extended moment, a set of eyes were revealed as Toska peaked from underneath his arms. With his realization, he jumped to his feet and discretely brushed a couple tears from his eyes.
“How dare you mencolek me! Those childish tricks could have gotten you killed, I was just about to attack, too,” he condemned as he brushed dirt from his butt.
“You are speaking gibberish. You sound like an idiot.”
“Gibberish? Gibberish! Let’s use biritululo to settle this once and for all, present your yams!”
“You have a damp spot on your trousers.”
“Yams, woman! Show me your yams!”
I turned around and began walking back to the hut, I decided to take a nap. The cardigan was over my face once more and I closed my eyes.
It had been nearly ten years since last seeing Toska, I had forgotten that agreeing to a camping trip with him would be a bad idea, particularly his idea of a camping trip, i.e., going to a foreign country and living off the land. We were meant to have a ranger pick us up after three days in this hut, it had been thirteen days at this point.
I heard a light cough and removed cardigan. Toska stood at the entrance looking like a child coming to his mother after having using a Sharpie to draw aliens all over the walls of his bedroom.
“Your, uh, cardigan brings out your eyes,” he said to his feet.
I heard the desperation in his voice and thought, he really is an idiot, but how does he make so much money? I left my face covered. “Toska, just… take a nap or something. We’ll be okay, promise.”
I again closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
WordDefinitions:
Iktsuarpok
“To go outside to check if anyone is coming”
Faamiti
“To make a squeaking sound by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a dog or child.”
Mencolek
“You know that old trick where you tap someone lightly on the opposite shoulder from behind to fool them? The Indonesians have a word for it.”
Biritululo
“What do you normally do when you have a dispute? Do you talk things over? Go to court? Well, in New Guinea, to settle disputes, the people rely on biritululo. Biritululo is the act of comparing yams (and I am hoping that is meant in the literal sense) to settle a dispute.”
Write the script for a conversation with your long lost friend Toska, who deals with ‘a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.’. Generate five random words from the Words with No Translation tool and make sure Toska uses one word in each of his lines, making sure his words give some shade to their meaning.
I took a few liberties with this assignment, but created a story while keeping the general idea of interacting with Toska. Hope you enjoy!
We began to suffocate on the agitated humidity in the shoddy hut. It seeped through the tree bark exterior and caught in our throats, our brains began to expand like balloons pumped full of helium. Clarity began to overlap with a dangerous paranoia, and in this state of isolation, paranoia could prove fatal.
I looked over to see Toska stretched across firmly packed dirt of the hut’s floor with his once white t-shirt wrapped around his head like a turban. “The sun isn’t exactly beating down,” I said, “your shirt may prove more useful if you wear it to ward off mosquitoes.”
“It is warding off those damn bloodsuckers. They could be sucking out my brain,” Toska scoffed as he stood to his feet. He picked up a pair of brown, size 11 Prada loafers and after a brief look of disgust, brushed their surface with his hand and put them on his feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The idiot, I hoped he was eaten by a tiger.
“I’m going to iktsuarpok, there could be natives preparing to attack any moment. It’s best to stay on guard at all times.” Toska picked up a large stick propped against the hut’s entrance, he felt its weight in one hand before resting the back portion on his shoulder. Toska donned a Mowgli worthy crouch and a look of determination- he needed a red loin cloth.
I watched him awkwardly walk out in his crouch like state and decided to take a nap. He had not changed a bit since we were kids.
After ten minutes passed, I heard strange noises coming from outside, not as much frightening as they were irritating. It sounded as though someone were calling a dog, or maybe their pet tiger. My head dropped back to the ground and I closed my eyes once more. The noise slowly grew louder and louder, closer and closer. In an instant my lips shrank into a hard prune and my eyelids retracted back into their sockets, the turquoise cardigan draped across my face took a reddish hue.
“What the hell do you want?” I growled through clenched teeth after tossing the cardigan aside. Propped on my elbows, I waited for a reply from the messy blond hair peaking inside the entrance.
“I’ve been making faamiti at you for half an hour,” Toska yelled in a whisper. “Come outside, I need you to see this, it’s important.”
The tousled blond mess disappeared and my eyes explored uncharted territory in the back of my head. My shoes were already on, but I took my time standing up.
Outside, Toska was crouched behind a cluster of bushes, the long stick lay at his feet. Without the slightest intention of being quiet, I walked to him and tapped his shoulder.
I covered my ears for protection against the deafening squeal suddenly released. On the ground was suddenly a huddled mass of grown man devoid of any dignity. I tapped my foot. After an extended moment, a set of eyes were revealed as Toska peaked from underneath his arms. With his realization, he jumped to his feet and discretely brushed a couple tears from his eyes.
“How dare you mencolek me! Those childish tricks could have gotten you killed, I was just about to attack, too,” he condemned as he brushed dirt from his butt.
“You are speaking gibberish. You sound like an idiot.”
“Gibberish? Gibberish! Let’s use biritululo to settle this once and for all, present your yams!”
“You have a damp spot on your trousers.”
“Yams, woman! Show me your yams!”
I turned around and began walking back to the hut, I decided to take a nap. The cardigan was over my face once more and I closed my eyes.
It had been nearly ten years since last seeing Toska, I had forgotten that agreeing to a camping trip with him would be a bad idea, particularly his idea of a camping trip, i.e., going to a foreign country and living off the land. We were meant to have a ranger pick us up after three days in this hut, it had been thirteen days at this point.
I heard a light cough and removed cardigan. Toska stood at the entrance looking like a child coming to his mother after having using a Sharpie to draw aliens all over the walls of his bedroom.
“Your, uh, cardigan brings out your eyes,” he said to his feet.
I heard the desperation in his voice and thought, he really is an idiot, but how does he make so much money? I left my face covered. “Toska, just… take a nap or something. We’ll be okay, promise.”
I again closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
WordDefinitions:
Iktsuarpok
“To go outside to check if anyone is coming”
Faamiti
“To make a squeaking sound by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a dog or child.”
Mencolek
“You know that old trick where you tap someone lightly on the opposite shoulder from behind to fool them? The Indonesians have a word for it.”
Biritululo
“What do you normally do when you have a dispute? Do you talk things over? Go to court? Well, in New Guinea, to settle disputes, the people rely on biritululo. Biritululo is the act of comparing yams (and I am hoping that is meant in the literal sense) to settle a dispute.”
Write the script for a conversation with your long lost friend Toska, who deals with ‘a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.’. Generate five random words from the Words with No Translation tool and make sure Toska uses one word in each of his lines, making sure his words give some shade to their meaning.
I took a few liberties with this assignment, but created a story while keeping the general idea of interacting with Toska. Hope you enjoy!
We began to suffocate on the agitated humidity in the shoddy hut. It seeped through the tree bark exterior and caught in our throats, our brains began to expand like balloons pumped full of helium. Clarity began to overlap with a dangerous paranoia, and in this state of isolation, paranoia could prove fatal.
I looked over to see Toska stretched across firmly packed dirt of the hut’s floor with his once white t-shirt wrapped around his head like a turban. “The sun isn’t exactly beating down,” I said, “your shirt may prove more useful if you wear it to ward off mosquitoes.”
“It is warding off those damn bloodsuckers. They could be sucking out my brain,” Toska scoffed as he stood to his feet. He picked up a pair of brown, size 11 Prada loafers and after a brief look of disgust, brushed their surface with his hand and put them on his feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The idiot, I hoped he was eaten by a tiger.
“I’m going to iktsuarpok, there could be natives preparing to attack any moment. It’s best to stay on guard at all times.” Toska picked up a large stick propped against the hut’s entrance, he felt its weight in one hand before resting the back portion on his shoulder. Toska donned a Mowgli worthy crouch and a look of determination- he needed a red loin cloth.
I watched him awkwardly walk out in his crouch like state and decided to take a nap. He had not changed a bit since we were kids.
After ten minutes passed, I heard strange noises coming from outside, not as much frightening as they were irritating. It sounded as though someone were calling a dog, or maybe their pet tiger. My head dropped back to the ground and I closed my eyes once more. The noise slowly grew louder and louder, closer and closer. In an instant my lips shrank into a hard prune and my eyelids retracted back into their sockets, the turquoise cardigan draped across my face took a reddish hue.
“What the hell do you want?” I growled through clenched teeth after tossing the cardigan aside. Propped on my elbows, I waited for a reply from the messy blond hair peaking inside the entrance.
“I’ve been making faamiti at you for half an hour,” Toska yelled in a whisper. “Come outside, I need you to see this, it’s important.”
The tousled blond mess disappeared and my eyes explored uncharted territory in the back of my head. My shoes were already on, but I took my time standing up.
Outside, Toska was crouched behind a cluster of bushes, the long stick lay at his feet. Without the slightest intention of being quiet, I walked to him and tapped his shoulder.
I covered my ears for protection against the deafening squeal suddenly released. On the ground was suddenly a huddled mass of grown man devoid of any dignity. I tapped my foot. After an extended moment, a set of eyes were revealed as Toska peaked from underneath his arms. With his realization, he jumped to his feet and discretely brushed a couple tears from his eyes.
“How dare you mencolek me! Those childish tricks could have gotten you killed, I was just about to attack, too,” he condemned as he brushed dirt from his butt.
“You are speaking gibberish. You sound like an idiot.”
“Gibberish? Gibberish! Let’s use biritululo to settle this once and for all, present your yams!”
“You have a damp spot on your trousers.”
“Yams, woman! Show me your yams!”
I turned around and began walking back to the hut, I decided to take a nap. The cardigan was over my face once more and I closed my eyes.
It had been nearly ten years since last seeing Toska, I had forgotten that agreeing to a camping trip with him would be a bad idea, particularly his idea of a camping trip, i.e., going to a foreign country and living off the land. We were meant to have a ranger pick us up after three days in this hut, it had been thirteen days at this point.
I heard a light cough and removed cardigan. Toska stood at the entrance looking like a child coming to his mother after having using a Sharpie to draw aliens all over the walls of his bedroom.
“Your, uh, cardigan brings out your eyes,” he said to his feet.
I heard the desperation in his voice and thought, he really is an idiot, but how does he make so much money? I left my face covered. “Toska, just… take a nap or something. We’ll be okay, promise.”
I again closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
WordDefinitions:
Iktsuarpok
“To go outside to check if anyone is coming”
Faamiti
“To make a squeaking sound by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a dog or child.”
Mencolek
“You know that old trick where you tap someone lightly on the opposite shoulder from behind to fool them? The Indonesians have a word for it.”
Biritululo
“What do you normally do when you have a dispute? Do you talk things over? Go to court? Well, in New Guinea, to settle disputes, the people rely on biritululo. Biritululo is the act of comparing yams (and I am hoping that is meant in the literal sense) to settle a dispute.”
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