Kayah's Comp Blog

A poor young couple lived in a dilapidated house on a run down farm with hardly any food to eat or wood to warm their fire. The two young lovers worked tirelessly but struggled so much that they feared if something didn't change that they would soon die. The young woman walked into the woods and begged a witch for help. The witch agreed to provide them wealth and security in exchange for the woman's first born child. The desperate woman agreed and ran home. Meanwhile, the young man walked up into the mountains and found another witch to ask for help. He begged for food and money to provide for his loved one and keep the both of them safe. The witch agreed to provide for the same price - the man's first born child. Without realizing the promise his love had made, the man accepted the offer. Suddenly, the ground became incredibly fertile and the couple had more food, money and wealth than they knew what to do with. They spread it around their village and provided aid to...

There is a large portion of conflict between adults and children in The Ocean at the End of the Lane due to the fact that adults and children, especially the unnamed boy narrator, seem to exist in different worlds. While the narrator is very aware of magic and the sinister forces at work, the adults seem oblivious to the bad things happening around them. There is also apparently no way to get through to them when they are under the spell of Ursula Monkton, leaving our narrator alone without any adult support except from the Hempstocks. The adults are also used as a barrier in the story to keep the narrator from reaching his goals, like Ursula intercepting him when he tries to escape or his father actually trying to drown  him as punishment for disrespecting Ursula. Adults are of no help to the boy and he instead has to navigate around them during his adventure. The conflict is never truly resolved since the narrator's story ends while he is still young and his adult self reflecting...

I think the statement that border walls divide is more true. I think that borders and the division between people that they create tend to foster an unhealthy "us vs them" mentality and further push people away from other groups and communities. Closing yourself off with borders can also create an echo chamber and remove outside influences, perspectives, critique and analysis that may be beneficial to the society or group. However, I do think that borders and dividing walls have their uses.  I think they are most beneficial for certain groups of people. Border walls can be used to protect vulnerable groups, like marginalized races and identities, closed religions and groups heavily harmed by colonization. Creating a safe, divided space where harmful influences are kept out can allow damaged communities and people to grow and recover.

The three parts of the triple goddess are the maiden, the mother and the crone. The different phases are aligned with the phases of the moon - the maiden for the waxing moon, the mother for the full moon, and the crone for the waning moon - and the phases of life. The maiden represents youth and excitement. Lettie is a young girl and she takes the narrator on an exciting and terrifying adventure. The maiden is also associated with qualities like intelligence and independence which Lettie possesses. Exploration is another aspect of the maiden, usually referring to self-exploration and introspection but we could apply it here to the exploration of the world and the magical, unseen forces around the narrator's home. The mother is older and a little wiser and, as her name suggests, maternal. Mrs. Hempstock shows this in her love for her daughter as well as how she cares for the narrator and keeps him safe, providing him with food and shelter. The crone is wise from her old age an...

In this short, two people board the world's longest elevator. After a short period, the woman pulls out her phone and begins playing music over her speakers. In response, the old man pulls out his phone and plays classical music. They take turns increasing the volume to try and drown each other out, until another woman boards. After a moment the new woman pulls out her phone and begins playing electronic music. The screen fades to black and we see the elevator crowded with people, all playing music on their various devices loudly. The elevator stops again to let on a man with a large boombox on his shoulder. Everyone puts their music away, assuming he's going to blast music and drown them all out. Instead, he puts in a tape and then plugs in his headphones to listen respectfully to his music. The girl smiles at the old man and the short ends. I have experienced people playing their music out loud in public, which strikes me as incredibly rude and strange. While it was rude fo...

1999 Wildfire by Brockhampton - I really love this band, and listening to it reminds me of my friend who introduced me to them. This song, in particular, is one of my favorites because Joba's verse is ridiculous - he just raps about being a wizard in the shire and eating cheese. Pumpkin Party in Sea Hitler's Water Apocalypse from Homestuck Vol. 9 - I was a big fan of the webcomic Homestuck when I was younger. Homestuck ran from April 13th 2009 until April 13th 2016 and is over 800,000 words, but it also contains flash animation, flash games and lots of excellent music. This song is one of the best from the comic. Also, there's the obvious joke here that I'm stuck at home. Out of Control by Oingo Boingo - This is my favorite song by one of my favorite bands from one of my favorite albums. Basically, Oingo Boingo's entire discography could be on this playlist, but I narrowed it down to just one. Fake Your Death by My Chemical Romance - One of my favorite songs f...

When I was reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the line "You don't pass or fail at being a person." stood out to me. I remember agreeing with it instantly, and I still feel the same way after having had time to reflect more on the novel. I believe that all human beings have inherent worth and dignity simply by being alive. Human beings do bad things. There are people who may be inherently "bad", perhaps because they were born that way or perhaps due to their environment and circumstances. Even still, a person has worth. All people have the capability to do good. All people experience what it is to be human: to feel, to think, to love, to experience pain. The human experience is shared by all of us in some capacity, even people with personality disorders that we may consider "inhuman". Dehumanizing can be so incredibly painful because we are human. Black individuals have been dehumanized as part of the long history of colonization, slavery, and ra...

Pokemon types are usually quite obvious based on the creature's appearance. Butterfree, which obviously takes the form of a butterfly, is a bug type. The spoon-wielding Uri Geller inspired Alakazam is a psychic type. The flopping fish known as Magikarp is a water type. Sudowoodo was, of course, a grass type Pokemon. It's a tree for God's sake. It has to be a grass type. In my ongoing quest to catch 'em all and complete my Pokedex in Pokemon Shield, I needed to somehow acquire a Sudowoodo. Luckily, Sudowoodo evolves from Bonsly, another tree-shaped creature. I'd recently completed a max raid battle and been rewarded with a powerful Bonsly which made it the perfect candidate for evolution. To allow you to most effectively prepare for these often challenging battles, the game shows you the silhouette of the Pokemon as well as their type or types before the max raid battle begins. Puzzlingly, Bonsly was listed as a rock type. I thought nothing of it. Pokemon often ...

Hjortshoj defines predatory reading as "reading from the top of the food chain", a term that is purposefully aggressive to convey the attitude and approach needed to successfully handle large volumes of academic reading. Part of this style of reading is to read with intention and strategy. It is important to use this style of reading to fully understand and remember the text. It will also allow the reader to better answer questions about the reading and form their own interpretations and arguments about what was read. College can involve a lot of reading, and the text assigned can be dense. It's difficult to study for a test or find evidence for a paper when there is a lot of source material to cover. A good portion of the information in the assigned reading may not even be relevant to what a student is doing. It is essential that students know how to decide what to read, what the reading says, and be able to understand the reading in order to effectively use the informat...

The Budweiser commercial begins after the end of prohibition and continues through joyful times in the following decades. After prohibition, you see the excitement surrounding the end of the war with Japan in the 40's. Next, a scene showcasing the greaser style of the '60s followed by a crowd huddled around a tiny television to watch the moon landing, of course drinking Budweiser beer. We pan around a disco club in the '70s, up to a go-go dancer in a cage. Vignettes of the '80s and 90 come next - hip hop and street style, ecstatic fans cheering for Team USA in the 84' Olympics held in Los Angeles, a packed grunge show in a bar - before ending with a modern scenario as people dance in the street as a DJ plays on a rooftop above. Each scene clearly depicts the decade, with the distinct fashion and decor choices that go along with the style of the time. While people of many ages can enjoy this commercial, I think it specifically targets older generations like Baby Boom...

For me, the transition to college was fairly easy. I grew up in an unstable household with a literally absent parent, leaving me to do everything on my own (or not). I did online classes for most of my freshman year and my entire sophmore year, and I barely did any coursework which meant I failed most of my classes. I eventually attended a physical classroom at my local high school dedicated to students taking online courses where I had more structure and an authority figure looming over me if I didn't do my work. It took me five years to finish high school, but in my final year I was back at home doing coursework online totally self directed. My high school GPA overall was in the low 2's, but based on my final two years alone I had a 3.8. After high school I took several years off before finally enrolling in college. I'm paying for my school on my own, which makes me feel extra motivated to do well. If I fail a class, I don't have parents to pay for me to take it again...

When I finally came to, lying on my stomach on a paper-thin mattress, I groggily reached for whatever object underneath me had been stabbing me all night long. I rolled over onto my back and looked at the colorful, round object in my hand: a gashapon capsule with a tiny smiling mascot inside. I remembered a sea of the little plastic orbs rolling in unison across the floor and a blinking gashapon machine lying on its side to my right. I sat up and felt some sort of jostling in the pocket of my sweatshirt, which was considerably less surprising than the fact I had found myself in a single concrete cell. I carried lots of junk with me on a day that I wasn't mysteriously awakened in a jail cell, so I delved back into the pocket and pulled out a rolled-up, slightly sticky napkin with a phone number on it. A cute person sitting at the bar next to me in the restaurant - the same one soon to be overtaken by plastic balls - had given me the number after I made a really, really bad joke. Som...