Chronological Order

The story indicates a sequence of events that had happened on August 4, 2060 when humans become extinct. The main events that took place thoughout the story are: The clock called for breakfast. In the kitchen, the oven let out a heavy sigh and injected perfectly made toasts, eggs, and coffees. Than, after sensing the dinning time had past, robots cleaned up the food which had never been touched. Those robots than cleaned up the spotless house. Just around noon, the family's dog who had fortunatly or unfortuantly survived the nuclear war wailed and the house let it in. It circled the house looking for signs of life, but found none. Finally, he laid down and died. After some hours of the dog's death, the house caught on fire. Though it did everything it could to save itself, it still got burnt to the ground and exploded into ashes. There will never be such a house again, because the originators had been long gone. What a pity that it took months to build a house, perhaps years to build one as great as this one, yet only seconds to destroy it. What the author was trying to indicate is sometimes humans gets to a certain point when they thought being greedy is an ok thing . This thought costed the entire human population's lives.  Yet, humans 's inventions which had been made to obtain human uses lived on. Yet it won't last. The destruction of the house marked the complete extinction of the human kind. They simply dissapeared, forever. With no glories, no tributes, no commemeration, nothing. Nothing but a distance, sad memory.

Irony

In the story " There will come soft rains" , humans lived in an ideal life in which their every need was easily satisfied. Yet, they ended up destroying themselves in a nuclear war. What would lead people into war and destroy each other? Well, the answer is quite simple. In fact, it had been the reason that any war or battle was started in the first place. The reason is called greed. Humans have a flaw, or I guess you can say a superior trait , and that is called greed. Greed makes you felt that nothing is satisfying and you want more and more things. Once you got more and more things, you want even more things. Greed can also be a good thing though, without greed, humans would live like other animals and be perfectly contented with a full belly and a nice good sleep. Yet, too much greed will lead humans into a war that ended up as a self-destruction. I felt that the story itself was pretty ironic, since humans created technologies and a satisfying world, but ended up dying because of it. Humans created nuclear bombs, but ended up being killed by it. This kind of situation is of course applicable to our world today. Humans ended up being killed or ruined by the things they have most, or create. For example, a rich man can ended up treasuring it's money so much that it killed him to simply leave them, or spend a penny( this actually had happened before). Humans invented thousands of weapons, yet used it to kill each other. Ironic huh?

Thankful

The word thankful meant to be pleased and relieved,  and to express gratitude towards your position right now. That, is basically what the word thankful meant to me. It is to be happy with who you are and what you have been experiencing without complaint no matter how hard it might have been. I am thankful to a lot of things. I am thankful to my parents, who had raised me up and sent me to an expensive american school to receive better education. I am also thankful to certain classmates in my class who made the classes a lot more interesting than it could have been. I am thankful to my friends as well, who had helped me along the hardships I've gone through. As in for the downhill side, I am not thankful for the home works I have to do, the science test next week, and the english test tomorrow. I am not particularly thankful to our journal time music either. Others are thankful to a lot of other things. Some are thankful to friends, good, technology, sleep, and some are simply thankful towards their good luck. Many religious people are thankful towards God/Gods/Goddess/Goddesses, which is the reason that many say a prayer before they eat, sleep, or at the crack of dawn.

My invention

Ray Bradbury's story "There will come soft rains" is full of imaginary inventions of the future designed to save labor and make life more convenient for humans. Think of something that you have to do on a regular basis. (Chores, homeowrk, carrying books) that you would like to make easier and more convenient. THen design an invention that would help you do the work, or even do the work for you. Describe it in detail: what is it made of? What does it look like? What are its functions? How do you use it? What warnings go along with it?
I wouldn't describe myself as an inventor of any kind. I don't have those brilliant light bulbs that popped out from time to time the ways those brilliant scientists do. Yet, if I really have to, I guess I would deisgn a light device that can lift humans into the air. The device will be small enough to fit in your pocket, and once you clicked the start button, it will simply take you automatically into the air. It will listen to your instructions of where to, how to...etc verbally. Anyone can control it, it's simple. Maybe even simpler than stuff like walking and running. I think that would be an interesting invention. Imagining the elders and babies all drifting in the air, there will be no inconvinency due to a person's age. ELders or children wouldn't have to sit around all day waiting dor busy adults to pick them up, or get them where they're going. Instead, they can simply travel on by themselves. This invention will came out as a packet with a flygin device, a bungee jacket( designed that no one will get hurt falling to the gruond and also to keep you warm but very light0, a helmet, and a pair of sneakers that go with it ( for decoration).

New Technology

Life after a couple centuries will be a unimaginable world with many technologies people today can't even dream of. Judging from the rate of technology advances, people will have robots taking care of their everyday life. Those robots will be able to detect a person's brainwaves, and present the person's needs. People's mouths will be only used for eating, breathing, and perhaps chatting. Their bodies will be plainly used for decoration and entertainment( I mean sports, dancing, stuff like that). It will be similar to what had happened in the Disney movie Walle when humans simply lie around all day and concentrate on nothing but sleep, eat, and chatting. Ok, maybe not as bizarre, I mean there is still gravity, so it's not like we're all going to turn into giant meatballs or something. Yet, the percentage of overweight will definitely rise. Which, will cause people to have a different perspective about beauty. They might consider fat women pretty and skinny women ugly, who knows? Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. The standards changes from time to time. Finally, people will get to a point that they are so dependent on technology that they refuse to learn anything themselves. It won't be hard to imagine. If you were to brought a person two hundred years ago here, he/she would have been amazed that people don't know how to farm, raise cattle, trade with foreigns who may be from the arabian peninsula...etc. We don't have the skills they do because they are no longer needed in our everyday life. Why? Because technology had done it for us.

Setting as Character

Though not particularly common, setting can act as a character. The most common way for it to act so is by acting like an opposing force directly. The author would have to add constant details of the setting instead of simply telling how the character( not the setting) fought against it. There is also another way of expressing the setting as a character, and that would be simply writting it as if it was a real character. The story can be simply a discription of the place, like where we are. Our holt reader had an excellent example( I forgot the story title) of a story that described what during the year of 2060 will be like. Throughout the whole story, ther wasn't a single living character. Just the setting, speaking it's own story. The house, the clock, the stove...those normal settings and objects were now acting alive. Telling us that a house can function without a person/family and how. I think that the story was pretty interesting, which simply proved that settings can be characters too, whom can create fascinating stories. Using Setting as a character gives readers a fresh and detailed image of the story, but you have to be good at it to not put the readers to sleep.

Compare and Contrast Dogs

My friend had two dogs, one named Snowy and one named Smarty. Both have fur as white as snow, and dark bright eyes. Snowy and Smarty looked extremely alike and the only way to tell them from each other, is to look at their left paw. Snowy 's paw is perfect with white fur, while Smarty had a round black dot on the middle of it's left toe. The dogs were born with two seconds difference and was of course, raised together. Their personality had huge differences though, even when their appearances are similar. Snowy is quite, calm, and stable. Always acting high and noble, as if she is a princess of some sort. She is not arrogant, however, just simply quite and yeah, sometimes a little self-flattering. She is the treasure of the family due to her perfectness. Smarty, on the other hand was athletic, loud, and impatient. Always running around the house/garden, chasing after butterflies( he likes yellow butterflies in particular), knocking over chairs and barking hysterically. He also enjoyed playing small tricks on people, such as hiding their shoes ( or spit into them if you made him mad), bitting their jackets and so on. Snowy is the house favorite, and she often despise her brother. But when her brother got more positive attnetion than she did, she would scuff and toss her head as if she didn't care. Smarty wines when he wanted to get people's attention, he rolled over and shook his tail. He tried his best, unlike Snowy who was used to being the best. The two dogs have obviously different personalities even when they were raised together, infect, their personalities are almost exactly the opposite. They are the treasures of the family. Though sadly, Smarty passed away just last year during Halloween when he got sick eating a candy of some sort and died. Though Snowy acted as if she couldn't care less, we heard wines and howls during late night accessions.

Knowledge of Dogs

The human civilization is a forgetful, lazy but fast improving civilization. As humans sped up the line, inventing thousands and millions inventions that will make our lives easier. Lucrative inventions had not only benefit us, but inventors as well. They have to do the best that they could, thought of all the ways to beat their opponents and gain profit FAST. As they set in their offices counting the load of bills, and smiling broadly at their success, they forgot one thing: Some where on this world, someone was suffering, because of them( not because they succeeded, but because maybe they have cheated or something? I know this is confusing, but I really have no idea of what to write about). THAT is an example of the knowledge that we have loss while we improve, it is the quality of compassion and sympathy. They are, however, the main principle that all organisms should follow. The dogs still have these old precious knowledge,  and they can teach us. Ever seen on the news that the dogs dashed into the fire and saved their owners( Go google it if you don't believe me), at that moment they were not thinking of themselves, but their owner's life. That dog had not only saved his owner's life, but also taught the world the importance of scarification. I never actually had a pet before, so I have really never learned from an animal of any kind. Except for humans( If counting my brother), but I wouldn't say that I got some deep thoughts from them.

Describe a Place You Know

A place that I knew about very well will be the family room in my house. The room was in standard quality and warm and cozy. The floor is wooden, the color of dark wood and is relatively soft at the same time.  On top of the floor is a snow white rug the color of um...snow, which is incredibly soft and smoothing. A white sofa was located in the center of the carpet and where two pillows the color of blood red( many wondered why the color was chosen, why not something smoothing that fits the atmosphere of the room? Well, I don't know. But what I DO know is that those two pillows were often used as an object our family used to express frustration. I have no idea how this relates to the topic today,  but I figured that there might be some intelligent people out there who might figure out). There is a black digital TV with a hard texture, three computer tables with three PCs(one, sadly is out of function for a long time), and an abandoned brown stereo, which was now covered with dusts and powders. No one ever goes near it. The room often filled with the smell of roses, and lavender since out balcony is just outside the family room and my mom likes to plant over there.

The Setting of “In Trouble”

Describe the setting of the story “In Trouble”. Use as many sensory details as you can. Is setting important in this story? If so, explain why. What role does the setting play in creating tension in the plot?

As Mr. McCool had stated in class, settings are very important elements of a story. Without a setting, there would be no story. Settings does not answer only the question where, but also include the sensory details as well. Taking the story " In Trouble" for instance, the setting created a wonderful scene of coldness , snow and ice. It was described that your throat might actually bleed and your hand might turn puple than fall off. The setting itself creates suspense to make the reader want to read on. So obviously, the setting of this story is very important. The setting of this story described the place, and creates suspense which makes the reader want to read on. And of course, the setting also created a great amount of tension in the plot. Those descriptive words held absolute power, holding the us, compelling us ( anyone finding this phrase familiar? hint: The landlady. If you still have no idea of what I am talking about, go read the holt reader)to read  on and find out what had happened. The setting is one of the elements that makes stories succesful, this one in particular. And that will be the end of my entry. Thank you!

The influence of Setting

There was this one story that I had read about from our fantastic Holt Reader about Harriet Tubman, an African American who risked her own life to escort slaves to freedom. Her personality, of course, took credit for actions. However, I think one of the biggest influences, or to be more concise, what had been really responsible for her bravery will be the setting. Harriet Tubman was born during the time when slavery was legal, and slaves had little rights and can not stand up for themselves. The setting created Harriet Tubman's heroic actions, for she obviously would not have done the same one hundred year later. The setting of the story created an partial environment where freedom was out reach for slaves, which created a lot of complications. That is also the reason for Harriet Tubman risked her own life. I suppose setting played a really important role in a story, and we won't have a good story without it. Wouldn't we? Basically, this is all I have to say about the influence of setting. I guess I kind of blame Mr. McCool to give us such a challenging topic to write about. Still, this is important and it really made us think. So I guess it is a success after all.

Settings

All of a sudden, I was surrounded by the sound of silence. Figures roamed around me, all wearing an expressionless mask and had their heads held high. Deadly fear gripped my heart. That was when I broke into a deadly run. I ran as fast as I could, yet was greeted by stony faces no matter where I went. Suddenly, the solid ground suddenly arouses to greet me, and I opened my mouth into a silent scream...
That is not my story, and the reason that I bothered to write that is because I honestly have nothing to write about. And a make-believe story just sounded much more interesting than everyday life.  I am going to go ahead and give you a boring answer anyway. I guess the setting that had the most effect on me is my house, in my neighborhood. Since, that will be the place that made up who I am. It is a nice neighbor hood with white houses and a clear blue sky. You can hear birds chirping, though they don’t sound so wonderful. You can taste fresh air, and wind ( a lot of wind). There are many plants in this neighborhood, and most of them are soft precious flowers that everyone treasured.