My Abridged Short Story (late post, augh!)

Hello, my friends.  As you may have noticed, I have a general routine of weekly Monday posts with Vital Vocab, and then an assignment post every other Friday.  But now...a weekend post?  What's this?

Yeah, I didn't do my assignment post last night.  I knew I was supposed to, but I was really sick yesterday and just sort of...went to sleep.  Now normally, district policy would say that because I was sick, I have an extra day to turn it in, but I technically had a week to do this.  So that's fun.  Anyway, even though I won't actually get any credit, I feel sort of obligated to Rousseaux itself to post, even if it's a bit late.  So here it is.

Remember that one guy I write, Anthony?  Well when I was first creating him, I gave him kind of a jam-packed backstory (I mean seriously, it probably shouldn't be so complex).  A couple weeks ago in H. English, we had a short story assignment and I thought that would be a pretty good opportunity to write it out.  However, I do call this an abridged account, because I was on a bit of a deadline and had to cut a few details out of the end (like how Anthony ran away and stuff).  Also, because ah, I'm silly, and still couldn't cut it down enough, it's like seven pages.  (Maybe eight?)  This is why, instead of copy/pasting it into my post like a normal person, I'm gonna be an Allie and link you to Google Drive.  Here!

Another thing I left out was a description of Anthony.  Here's a picture I stole from a puzzle game on Gaia Online (and edited slightly for colors, back when I had a vague idea of how Photoshop works).

Don't ask me about the onions.  I have no idea.

-Allie

Vital Vocab 8

Hello!

Sorry for the late upload, guys.  This wasn't actually due until tonight this week (for whatever reason), which I totally took advantage of because last night I had to finish The Book Thief for English and study for a map test for geography, which took a while.  But so, happy Tuesday, and my upload will be better (and more punctual) next week.  I promise.

Prompt: --
Vocab (underlined): cursory, cogent, chronological, cerebral, complacent
Grammar Focus: its/it's, colon

Isaac Bade-
     When I got up to my room, I did a cursory think-through of my to do list and collapsed into bed, fully clothed.  It was Friday, and whatever homework still needed doing could be done over the weekend.  As complacent as I knew I could be with that, I turned out the light and faced the wall.
     When I fall asleep, it usually happens over the course of several minutes, like any other person.  But sometimes, it happens so quickly that it startles me.  Whenever I get sucked into a dream like this, there's always something else slightly off: instead of a regular dream, it's always a slightly warped memory.  These dreams, if more emotionally-driven than cerebrally, always seem to have events come and go in chronological order.  It doesn't take an expert to know that my brain's a bit messed up, but often when I wake, it's so cogent that I wonder if its stories were true.

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Vital Vocab 7

It's hard to bring yourself to write a vital vocab when your mind is swimming with ideas for a short story (ahh, something else for class, which I'll post later).  It's especially hard when your blog is named after that short story's main character.  But this is an assignment too, and I rather like Isaac so...let's get to it.

Prompt: --
Vocab (underlined): concise, construe, cumulative, coalesce, caustic (adj.)
Grammar Focus: to/too/two, properly use a colon

Isaac Bade-
     That night at dinner, I picked at my food while Aunt Gaile went on about this, that and the other thing, mostly news pieces she'd found vaguely interesting and stories she'd already told.  She was many things, but she wasn't concise.
     "Anyway," she said for perhaps the two-millionth time, "it all just seemed sort of silly to me."  She fell silent for a moment and watched as I quietly prodded my peas.  "Too many?" she asked.  I shook my head and we were quiet.
     "Oh Isaac," she murmured, and I glanced up.  "What I wouldn't give..."  I rubbed my neck uncomfortably, avoiding her eyes.  Give to what? I wondered.  To see my notebook?  To bring them back?  God, if you could just finish your sentences for once...  I cut myself short, before my thoughts got too caustic.  I couldn't afford to be mad at my aunt Gaile.  Besides, she didn't deserve it; the woman wouldn't hurt a fly.
     I spread out my peas, then had them coalesce in the center of my plate, forming a cumulative pile.  Status: stereotypical ten-year-old.  Finally, I started to scoop up and eat them; Aunt Gaile clearly wasn't in the cheeriest mood, and though I hated to leave her, I had to escape the room before she started talking about how she worried about me.  To her, it probably would be construed as fleeing, but there wasn't much I could do about that, really.  When I had to go, I had to go.  ((01/08/14 EDIT: Oh god, I only just realized what a mistake that sentence was.  I am so sorry.))
     She folded her hands in front of her and watched as I gathered my dishes to deposit them in the kitchen sink.
     "Goodnight, Isaac."
     I nodded.

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The Beginnings of a Beautiful Art Portfolio

Hey, guys.  I know I've been posting a lot of vital vocab lately (it actually makes up the vast majority of this blog), and it occurred to me that this isn't just a vital vocab blog.  It's a reading, writing, and art blog.  So why not make an art portfolio, eh?  Now, on Tumblr I'm SeptemberNinth92, and I was going to do this there, but in reality, I don't really go on Tumblr.  (Sorry guys, I know I should.)  So I decided I'll do it on here.  An put a photo gallery on the bottom of the home page, if I can.  Yup.

Unfortunately, none of the pieces here are very recent.  I'll add more pieces later under the label/tag "my art."  (Old pieces and new ones.)

One last thing: sorry for the horrible photo quality.  If I had a pro scanner, or even just a handheld camera available, I would use that instead of my sucky MacBook's cam.  (Sorry, Roy. - Yes, its name is Roy.)  In the future, I'll try to find a better way to upload pictures.  But so anyway.

Medium: Sharpie

An umbrella.  (I like umbrellas.)

Medium: Sharpie

A "Spiraling Square" we did in Op and Pop art last year.

Medium: Mechanical Pencil

I constantly, constantly draw eyes.  Usually just in black pen, but also in other colors when I have them.  This is in mechanical pencil, and also blue mechanical pencil (don't ask me where it came from).  And I usually draw just the right eye, but this time I went ahead to draw the other one and a nose.  Farthest I've ever gotten on those faces, I think.

Medium: Ballpoint Pen

Unfortunately, this isn't signed or dated, probably because you can see I never quite finished it.  I can tell you however, judging my the spiral that it was in, that it's probably from sometime last year.  And I bet I have a photo reference of the shoe on my old phone.

Medium: Number 2 Pencil

This one actually has nothing to do with my small obsession of drawing eyes.  It's an idea from a book I was/am kinda writing.  You can't tell, but it's dated 2/6/12, and the title is "Window," basing on the concept that the eyes are the window to the soul.  (Wow, my signature was tall back then.)

Thanks for reading (and looking)!

-Allie

Vital Vocab 6

Prompt: --
Vocab (underlined): compelling, criteria, coherent, concede, contradict
Grammar Focus: to/too/two, properly use a colon

Eliza Benjamin-
     A few days later, I caught myself staring out the window again.  This was a habit of mine, and I mean, no big deal, right?  Just staring, no harm there.  The problem was, I didn't always realize I was doing it, and often enough, it happened just when I had something else to do.  Like, my mom would call me to dinner, and I'd be just about to go when I noticed something interesting out the window.  Next thing I knew, two or fifteen or twenty minutes had passed, I had no idea where they'd gone to, and my meal was cold.  And I couldn't even remember any coherent thoughts I'd had while zoned out.  They were all little fragments of things that seemed to contradict each other, then later concede.  It was confusing, like a dream that got fainter and fainter the longer you stayed awake.
     So, when I caught myself this time, I wanted to know what was so compelling to my subconscious to make everything in my head just stop like that.  I looked out my bedroom window to see what was there.  Criteria for my bedroom view:

1. a long-ish, slightly windy driveway
2. a thin, too-gravelly street
3. a lot of old trees
4. a tall kid with white-blond hair, looking out the neighbor's window (optional)

     I looked at the kid, wondering who he was.  I'd seen him a couple other times, but never really.  He wasn't in any of my classes at school.  I didn't know why I cared really, I just...wanted to know his name.  Just a name.

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