A Day In The Life Of A Loser

While reading this it was really obvious the the writer had an inside connection to the people that worked at the McDonald's. There would of been no way the writer would of been able to know all the personal facts about the people that worked there or the things that went on in the back of the kitchen just observing as a customer. The writing had a lot of details that made the reader really get the feeling of what they were watching. Little did we all know after we read this was that this was an observation that Mr. Barry did himself and that he actually worked there.

Three Lessons in Firesurfing

The tile of this story doesn't really make sense. Yes they did firesurf in the story, but I guess I don't know what the three lessons of firesurfing our. The story show the reader that things are always what they seem. It showed that you can't always judge people from whats on the outside. There was a lot of adjectives used in this story that didn't make sense when they were used. The story revealed how every artist is different in his or her own why and they all have different ideas about art. Take the girl who's masterpieces consisted of used tampons. That is just crazy. Who would of ever thought that.

This Trying Not To Tell The Story

The writer of the story made the reader think about the emotions of different people in different situations. It doesn't matter what country, race, or religious belief you are when a tragedies happens to them the emotions of those people are going to be the same. When September 11th happened the emotions of the people weren't different in most cases. The writer also stated that the there are two kinds of people in a tragedy. The victim and victimizer. How victims emotions and feelings are what most people think about. They hardly ever think of how the victimizer felt. I my life this is true. I think people do this because they feel more sympathy for the victim because they are the one that mostly didn't deserve what happened to them and were just an innocent by standard, but the victimizer brought the situations on himself.

My Totally Awesome Funeral

The guy wanted his funeral to be fun. To have people remember all the crazy things he did in his life. He wanted his wife and son well taken care of though. It was important that they were encouraged and comforted on that day. Part of him wanted to go back and relive all the good times he had and to do the things he was always scared to do. He didn't want to be remembered for the things he didn't get done but the things he did. The guy wanted his funeral to be a day people remembered and had fun at.

The Augustus Mackinnon Story

Augustus took his "regular moving" job to the next level. He didn't just move the furniture in the houses and let the owners deal with where they wanted to put it. He challenged himself as he did his job to try different furniture arrangements. He poet and used the methods of writing poetry in arranging furniture. I have no idea where he came up with that idea. Each house he tried to complete a new arrangement. I think that moving furniture would be a boring job. I think Augustus motivation for trying new furniture arrangements was to make the job more interesting and make a challenge for himself at first, but then became something way more. I bet that Augustus was really happy with his achievements and he was probably very bitter when the interior decorators ruined his career. In fact you can tell he was very bitter because he cut her up, which is just morbid. All because she said light fixtures weren't furniture. I can just see this crazy man going around sticking stickers that say furniture on everything.

Wedding Factory

It was kind of funny at the beginning of the story because the guy was confused about where he was at. He was so drunk that he couldn't even remember why he was suppose to be at the wedding reception. All he knew was that there was reason for him being there. Since it didn't really tell much about the guy as I kept reading I started to wonder if he was the groom or even in one of the wedding parties, but had gotten so drunk that he couldn't remember. Once the guy started talking about finding Renae's reception and how he dated her at one time in his life I began to piece it together that he was there to see his old girlfriend. The story never really tells what he had planned to do by going to the reception. I don't think he was invited either. It would of been interesting to see what would of happened if he did make it to the right reception and actually had contact with Renae. The guy was still bitter at the girl specially after he found out she ended up moving to New York. I don't blame him it probably was like a knife in the back.

Get Anyone to Take Immediate Action in Any Situation

When I read the title of this I was a little skeptical that what I was about to read could actually work. As I began to read it I realized that most of it was true. I know if in my life I tend to dwell on things longer when I have too many choices to choose from, and like it said I do doubt if I made the right choice for awhile after I've made it. Personally I like deadlines because otherwise I would never get done what I was suppose to do and I do agree that they are very important when your asking someone to do something. Deadlines push the person to get what you want them to do right away. Using the law of inertia was something I never thought about. It makes sense though people are more app to agree to do something gradually then just jumping right into it. Over the years I've learned that if you tell someone to do something and you don't really know what your talking about they most likely will take it less seriously and sometimes not do it at all. Additional incentive is probably the thing that clinches most people into doing something their asked. It is human nature for people to think about what they can get out of what they are about to agree to. All of these things really are good ways to get people do stuff you want them to do. I know I'll remember them for the next time I need to ask someone for a favor.

Nautical Nonsense

At the beginning of the story I couldn't figure out if the person buying the items at the store was a girl or guy. There was a lot of unknown facts missing as I went through the story but at the very end it all came together and I understood what happened. I thought that the cashier and the guy checking out didn't even know each other at first and that the guy was some crazy freak when he took the bat to the boyfriends truck. The story was written in a different kind of way compared to the one we read in class. The one in class you always knew who was talking before we even started to read it. In this story you had to wait until after you read what the person was saying to figure out if it was the girl or guy. Personally I thought it was really weird how when the guy got home he went straight to his closet to plan what he should buy the next day at Wal-mart. He looks really desperate. Specially if he is only going to the store to buy things so he can see his ex-girlfriend. If he really wanted to see his kid I'm sure he could put more effort in it than just stalking the babies mom and saying the suggestive things he said to her on the phone surely aren't helping him out with the situation.

The Life And Work of Alphonse Kauders

Alphonse Kauders lived a strange life. The things he said were kind of morbid. The story pretty much led me to believe that he hated life in general. It mentioned that he was locked up in a lunatic asylum for attempting to molest children, but I think he need to be there for more than that. He's whole mind set was off. Who really memorizes 50 pages of a phone book. Maybe that is why he hated life so much. He spent it doing meaningless things. Over and over he said that people shouldn't be able to talk. Which is crazy because that means he just wanted to live in silence with no interaction with the outside world. Yet he talks about his many wives and girlfriends that he had throughout the years. It seems like he just wanted to use them to satisfy his physical desires but really didn't want anything else to do with them. I still don't know if Alphonse Kauders was a real person or just made up. It was different how they just listed all the things about Alphonse Kauders. Who picked out what they thought was important or not? I still have no idea how they said this peice of work has been viewed as influential.

Lost In The Bush

This story was kind of confusing. I felt like I was reading two stories at once with Chuck's essay then all of the footnotes. It would of been better if Chuck's essay was put togther all at the beginning then to put all the footnotes together as if they were a story themself. Other than going back and forth between the essay and footnotes, half of the footnotes were information that as the reader I didn't need to know to understand what was going on in the essay. Relating to the kind of talk that went on in the kitchen in the story was eassy. I work at resturant and I am well aware of what the servers talk about specially the guys. The majority of this story was just talking about girls and sexual things which made me want to stop reading the story. It was unessary and irrellavant. The story didn't really have point to it. The essay alone didn't have point to it. Like it said in the footnotes the essay didn't follow the guidelines of the assignment at all.