Your Next Post

Today I would like to guide the next post on your blog. Our last post was all about anger. This post will be all about love. Before you start to groan, I will state for the record that you are not going to create a post of a lovely memory, or a memory that describes how you fell in love, or how much you just love your parents. We think about our own love way too much already. "I love Fridays." "I love that skirt." "I love skateboarding." We concentrate so much of our lives on the ways in which we love things. This post is going to be of a moment in which someone else showed love to you. However, this moment cannot be ruled by any other emotion. Your moment cannot be of your parents mixing worry with their love when they told you not to stay out too late and it cannot be about both pride/envy and love when your friends helped to win a game or they set you up with a friend. This moment should be of pure love from one other person to you. You may have a lot of trouble coming up with this moment (I was able to find it by brainstorming a list of all of my best friends throughout my life and then thinking about things they had given me or important moments that we have shared), but when you do find it, I want you to describe the loving person's face in detail within your memory. Their face is the key to understanding this moment and figuring out why you still remember and cherish it. Post this description of pure love to your blog. Mine goes like this:

We pulled up, as we often did, to the park that no one knew about. It was far away from the normal crowd of town rats that waited for nighttime to bite them before they could come alive. Chris and I slowly crept into a parking space long forgotten by other cars. Straight ahead of us were thick woods that held the many mysteries of these moments. Chris reached into his backpack and brought out a CD, cradling it in his hands. He said it would change my life. And it did. As the harmonies started to stack in my ears, I saw Chris making sure I heard each distinctly. His fingers tapped gently on the dashboard, and every few songs he would pause the CD, hoping that I had understood the importance of how those notes and words played with each other. Then he would press play again and let his eyes dance along with the infectious beats. I can still see this moment, with Chris' hair long and unwashed, with his cheeks dotted with imperfections, with his inviting smile that said "I just couldn't keep this to myself." Although Chris and I have lost touch, I know that he would remember what he gave me that night. I know he would remember as the dusk faded in and we listened to the 13-minute track about loneliness, that with his eyebrows lifted in anticipation, he had shown me love.

Question #7

Are we all truly created equal?

Question #6

Are we "chosen" for all of the diseases we get throughout our lives?

Question #5

How can we stop living in the shadows of others?
During our lifetime, how do we make a name for ourselves?

Question #4

Why do we worry about what others think of us?
How do we stop worrying about what others think of us?

Question #3

How should we deal with the rude/annoying people in our lives?

Question #2

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Question #1

Why do we become frustrated over current events?

And the winners are:

For The Angriest Rant:
I Love Love

For The Funniest Rant:
PrettyPonies1

For The Rant That Everyone Should Read (The Most Important Rant):
QueenOfCorn

Finding The Big Ideas

These rants (hopefully) have been rather therapeutic. They have let you scream in your writing and get out all of your anger in a fairly harmless way. They have also let you react to things that you don't normally get a chance to. But, I had a grander scheme in mind when I asked you to start writing these rants. I wanted you to start thinking about the many injustices (unfair things in your life) you have had to go through as teenagers. As comments on this post, I would like to have an online discussion about the many things that are unfair or just plain wrong that happen to you in the course of growing up. So, look back at your rant and at the rants of your classmates and come up with a few of the most important or most horrific things that you face on a yearly/daily basis. If this paragraph didn't make any sense to you, think about it like this:

From reading these rants, what are the worst things that you have deal with every day?

Answer this question as a comment to this post.

The Wilkoff Rant Awards

After all blog posting assignments we will have a short awards post. You will be able to nominate your favorite post for this particular assignment in a few different categories. In order to nominate a post/blog you will need to comment to the awards post on our main page. You will write the blogger's user name and why you think that their post (a rant in this case) is the best one for this particular category. Your nomination will not count unless it is accompanied by a good explanation for why the post that you have chosen should win.

The categories for Rants are:

1. The Angriest Rant
2. The Funniest Rant
3. The Rant That Everyone Should Read (The Most Important Rant)

Welcome

You are about to create one of the first communities of memories that deals completely with universal ideas and events. This is the central page on which you will find exact assignments for digging up and writing down Universal Memories. This page will also be linked to all of your individual Blogs, so that we can comment on each Universal Memory as it is posted. Your main goal for this project is to reach deep into your past and pull out relevent stories told with honesty that can cast new light upon your modern day personality and life. You will learn how to write with an eye for sensory details to support your stories. You will comment on each others' experiences in such a way that it create truth for all to see. You will not settle for talking about "your favorite summer vacation" or "the person you hate most." You will see through these moments and try to find the reason for the desisions you have made. Together we will form a true community of writers, who encourage and prolong each others' craft. Each one of you will chisel out his or her own place on the internet, and because of this you will own your writing. You will reveal things, but keep them close to you. You will become concious of the things you try to hide. This is only the place to start from, where you go from here is entirely up to you.
-Mr. Wilkoff