A post based on a quote...

Hats, socks, shirts, pants, shoes, and coats.  What do all these items have in common?  They are all forms of clothing, which can turn a crazy nudist into a fully functioning member of society.  Nowadays, a strict unspoken dress code has been thrust upon the American public.  After outgrowing diapers, the only way anyone can have their ideas heard is by donning at least two articles of clothing.  However, throwing more complexity into the situation, certain staples must be worn.  Without the standard combo of shirts and pants - which absolutely must be on the bottom and shirts on top - or a dress, the individual in question might as well be wearing their birthday suit.  A vast majority of the notable figures in history wore clothes.  Even those who might have scorned the constraints that clothes place upon the body were forced to put on their cloth prisons daily.  Who knows if giants like Lyndon Johnson, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau, and Alexander Graham Bell - all frequent skinny-dippers - would have chosen nudity if it was allowed of them?  Mark Twain once said, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." This is a hard truth to handle.  A similar argument could be made in a land where beards designated one's social standing.  In such a world, bare-faced inhabitants would be excluded in any decision making processes.  How can something as frivolous as the hair on one's face change how society views them?   Someone who is destined for greatness may never get their chance due to their insufficient scruff.  Similarly, how can something as insignificant as the shirt on one's back determine whether they get a job, become famous, or can run for office?  For now, these clothing rules must be accepted, and a world where all states of undress are allowed is only a dream.

Risky Business

A car pulls up to the door of an abandoned warehouse and screeches to a stop.  The windshield is shattered, the engine smoking.  One man bursts from the car and limps up to the front door.  His chest is heaving and his clothes - a new black suit, tags intact - are soiled.  He pushes through into the massive whitewashed room, probably once a pristine factory, but now filled with nothing more than spiderwebs and dust.
-Hello?  Anyone?  It's Gunnar!  God dammit!
He sits down against a wall a tries to catch his breath.  He's the first one here.

Gunnar can't figure out how everything went wrong even after running it over and over in his head.  Sure he had failed before, but it shouldn't have turned out like this.  Finally the drumbeat of his heart began to slow down and he made a mental note to start working out again.  He hadn't stopped moving since earlier that day, when everything went to hell.  Maybe it was the adrenaline that kept him sprinting down the street, never pausing to catch his breath.  He had fired like a madman into the sky, a tactic that worked surprisingly well, and the crowds parted before him, this disheveled besuited man.  The case - the case!  He realizes that he should bring it inside, just to be safe - swung back and forth as he dashed over the sidewalk, threatening to throw off his balance.  He bolted across the street and directly into the hood of a car.  Getting back on his feet unfazed, Gunnar brandished his pistol, now probably out of bullets, and ran to the driver's side to pull the lady out of her seat.  Having secured a form of transportation, he could finally get to safety and meet up with the guys.
This was supposed to be a clean job: no one hurt, no police, just in and out.  Unfortunately, some punk decided to be Charles Bronson and set off the alarms.  Generally, once the alarm has been tripped, there's three minutes before the feds show.  Three minutes is a long time.  But that's why something else must have happened because not a minute and a half went by and suddenly the street outside the front door was lit up like the fourth of July.  The new guy - Eddie was his name? - just went nuts and started shooting at everything that moved, and Gunnar barely got out alive through the back door with the case. They were surrounded; the only thing left to do was run.

This post has been exaggerated a bit, but just a little bit

In my house, the TV goes relatively unused.  Other than showing the occasional family film, it's more decorative than functional.  However, in the past year and a half, I've taken on a new hobby.  Ever since my family bought Netflix, I've been absorbing TV shows like a sponge.  Fringe, Lost, White Collar, Arrested Development, Torchwood, V; if I enjoy the first episode, I'm hooked.

This brings about obvious problem.  Some days I spend hours watching episodes when I could be out frolicking in the sunlight.  I've missed outings with my friends, inside jokes, and sleep.  I've become a pale zombie.  This recession from active life isn't a complete waste, however.  My passion in life is acting; that is what I want to do for the rest of my days.  Not only do I watch these episodes, I study each character and the actor playing them.  You could say that I watch TV purely for educational benefit, but you would be lying.   I learn from the emotional scenes that I watch, but the real reason that I watch episode after episode is because of the creativity they show.  I compare watching my series with reading a bunch of books at the same time.  I can watch an episode and be completely engrossed, transported to this other world filled with intrigue and mystery, and then switch shows and look in on the crazy daily lives of the most dysfunctional family ever. 

TV provides a quick and easy escape from the real world, though it has its downsides.  The more you detach from life through TV...the more you detach from life - that should be implied.  Eventually, every new excursion into the real world becomes less and less comfortable and natural.  You find the darkness of your room, glowing with the light of the screen, more comforting than the warmth of the sun.

I should really cut down on my TV use, this is depressing.

Lost: Episode 1

The show starts with an eye.  It opens and the pupil dilates.  A man wakes up in the middle of a jungle, disoriented.  He examines his wound- a massive gash crossing his stomach like a crack in the earth- and begins to run, searching for a way out of the dense brush.  He bursts out onto a beach and into chaos.  Screams, shouts, and the sounds of machinery get louder as he stumbles forward.  The source of this noise comes into view.  People are scrambling around the beach, injured, crying.  Wreckage of a passenger plane is strewn everywhere, and the hulking mid-section of the craft is sitting at the center, one wing pointed to the sky.  The man immediately goes to work, enlisting other survivors to help him pull people from under debris.  He finds a young woman, 8 months pregnant, having contractions on the beach.  After finding someone to take her to a safe area, he moves on to a woman who is being resuscitated by a young man.  He takes over and manages to revive the woman, but immediately is interrupted by the sound of snapping cables.  Looking up, he sees that the plane's wing is poised to fall directly on the pregnant girl.  He sprints, screaming as he does, and pushes them out of the way before the wing crashes to the ground, exploding.  Finally, as everything calms down, his name is revealed to be Jack, and he is a neurosurgeon.  It seems that Jack has assumed the leader role without formal election.  The survivors are preparing shelters and settling down, when a terrible noise rips through the silence.  All look toward the jungle, where clumps of trees are falling like dominoes.  The sound is very mechanical, but impossible to define.  As the survivors gather on a hilltop overlooking the jungle, the screen goes black.  The answers to the island's mysteries will have to be left for another episode.

Sitting in the Library

Everything is so still that any noise, even one as quiet as a pencil scribbling on paper, seems to be amplified a hundred times.  Something about this reminds me a winter's day, with books rather than the snow sapping the sound from the air.  In such silent, still surroundings there is almost a comfy feeling, as if the air is a giant blanket.  The smell is subtle, but always present.  The scent of old, crackling paper emanates from the countless bookshelves.  Thumbing through my book, I feel the rough texture of the page, worn out by hundreds of hands.  There are dozens of others sprinkled throughout the library's massive space, but I feel completely alone.  I look at my book. The spine is brittle, barely holding its aged contents together.  The embossed title is juxtaposed against the white sticker below it, denoting the call number.  Inside the book's cover is a small pocket holding dozens of cards, recording the hundreds of past renters over the tome's life. Each signature is fainter than the one before it, as I scan the cards, like memories that fade over time.  I wonder if the previous owners were feeling what I feel.  I picture them alone in the library, searching for any information that will prove useful in the essay to come.  I leave the library and am struck with the contrast in environment.  The sun warms my face, and the absolutely stillness is broken by a slight breeze.  I hear people talking in the distance; it confuses me to suddenly hear so much.  Although I was perfectly at peace in my silent home, I realize how I can take for granted the pleasant breeze, the warm air, the bright colors, and the smell of growing grass outside the confines of the library.

How I write

Writing and I have a complicated relationship.  In high school, I dreaded each and every assignment, and I was constantly disappointed with my inability to get my thoughts down on the page as well as I hoped.  However, I found myself stuck with writing-centered classes my first year of college, most of which were populated primarily by upperclassmen.  Suddenly forced to produce a greater number of higher quality work, I knew I probably would have to change the way that I approached writing.  The fear of utter failure boosted my focus and I performed surprisingly well on my papers.  The method I found was to get my least favorite part of writing, starting out, out of the way.  I would hole up in a secluded corner of the library and work for hours on end, finishing a very rough draft of my paper a few days before the draft or final due date.  After this, I would feel completely confident in editing any part of the paper.  I would go into the library with a strict mindset to get work done, and I was successful at resisting any outside distractions.  I know my writing habits are not perfect yet, and hopefully I'll adapt and learn new ways to efficiently work, but so far, this "all at once" approach has worked for me.