The First Half of A Christmas Carol

In 11th grade, we had to do a full report on a book, which we got to choose. I happened to have the book "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, which is a funny coincidence because it was all due around Christmas time. Anyway, I'm not sure if I was full of holiday cheer or what, but this is the result of my first draft.

Also, it is usually entirely out of practice for me to do drafts of papers. I am much more practiced at writing the paper in one go, making sure it's all spelled right, then printing and turning it in the next day (which is usually when it's due, because procrastination is for pros who like to crastinate). However, this first draft was actually going to be graded. In fact, that's probably what made the first draft so weird - I knew I'd have to go back and change it, so I figured it'd be alright to have fun with it. Sure, let's go with that. 

Money Can't Buy You Happiness (so you'll just have to rent it)

It is easy to be philanthropic when you are just talking, but when it comes down to your own personal possessions, how charitable are you really? This human nature is one of the ideas behind Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Scrooge, a miserly old codger, was once a nice, regular young man. Over time, his success and acquisitions and bitterness turned him into a greedy, self-centered old man with no friends. Such a predictable connection between money and greed is common among humans - it is burned into our sociological structure (it is the reason why Communism does not work in execution, but it sounds good in theory). Unfortunately, this results in those who deserve or even need money oftentimes end up lacking in funds, whereas the dirt bags and narcissistic loners often have money and refuse to share it. That, however, is the nature of the world - many would call it unfair, but it is how it is. You cannot fix it and it affects everybody in the world.

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol has become wildly popular over the years. It has been transformed into annual theatrical performances and popular children's character adaptations in both movie and book form. This timeless classic is a good place to turn for a lesson in the transforming power of money. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, along with 15 novels and quite a slew of short stories. One of the things Charles Dickens was most famous for is his ability to capture minor details and to give his characters.

humorous subplots in the bleak 19th-century background. Dickens himself was victim of money troubles in his early years. His family's poverty forced him out of school at age 12 to work in a shoe-polish factory, where he was ridiculed by older boys. His father spent a stint in prison for debt, and upon release Charles got a better job and started on what would become his lifetime career, writing. He submitted sketches to The Monthly Magazine and grew close to the editor and his daughter, Catherine Hogarth, whom he would later marry funded by a publication of the sketches he had submitted. The tragedies Dickens suffered in his early days would become the foundation for many of his novels, but only had an influence on some of the backgrounds of A Christmas Carol's characters. 

Among the chief social points in A Christmas Carol, evident from the beginning, is greed. Ebenezer Scrooge is billed as being the greediest, oldest, ugliest man in town. It is said that Scrooge's old friend, "Bob" Marley, tried to contest him for that title, but he died before his plan came to fruition. It is said that this twist made Scrooge all the more introverted, since he was vain enough to desire the contest, just so he could out-do Marley yet again. One day, Christmas eve in fact, Scrooge was coming home from overworking his current business partner, Cratchet - who felt sorry for Scrooge and his wealth, for he had no friends and only a nephew whom Scrooge deeply despised. This occurred in the money shop just before Scrooge chased out some charity collecting gents. Scrooge's greed has served him well throughout the years, but when the ghosts come and give him a good earful, he realizes that his money can be used to do things for those who have no money, and then the people will all love him and he can be more than just the greediest, oldest, ugliest man - he can be the nicest, oldest, ugliest man. Upon this revelation, Scrooge blossoms into a beautiful man overnight in midst of his slumber. And it is said that Scrooge's heart grew three sizes that day, for he then buys a huge turkey and gives it to Cratchet, then invites himself to their dinner. However, all is good and well, since he did, after all, buy the food and carry the cripple child upon his shoulders with his newfound strength of 10 Grinches, plus two. And it is said that Scrooge himself carved the roast beast.

You may notice that this just sort of... ends. Very suddenly. Well, that's because there's 6 pages to this first draft, and even I realize that's alot to read in leisure. So the rest of it will go up thursday, everybody.

The Mentalist Pilot

In my 12th grade Psychology class, our teacher showed us the pilot for the TV show The Mentalist. I don't really remember what his reasoning was. Afterward, he assigned us to answer a bunch of questions in paper format, and that night I went home and wrote what follows:

History: Patrick Jane is a man who is ridiculously observant and can remember things like little details really, really well. He can tell, simply from your demeanor, what type of parents you had, who in your family has died in the last year, what type of lunch you had last week, and if you've ever made it the whole way up the rope in gym class. He once used his talents to pretend he could talk to the dead and he helped the police with cases when they wanted his help (but did not keep up the charade around the cops). One day, he was on a talk show and someone asked him about the case he was helping them with (see Plot). He slandered the serial killer, "Red John" on television, which made "Red John" very mad, so he killed P.J.'s wife and child. Now Patrick is a man out for revenge. 

Plot: The serial killer, called "Red John" by the police who pursue him, has struck again. The investigators are called in to investigate, and Patty O'Jane comes along with them. Shortly after arriving on the scene, he realizes that this is not really a Red John killing. All the evidence points to Red John - a taser was used to subdue the victims, the woman was raped then stabbed to death, and a weird red face:                was drawn on the wall in "his usual fashion," but Patrico won't be fooled; he notices that it doesn't share Red John's usual showmanship because the face wasn't the first thing seen (see Evidence.)

After a while of normal, by-the-books investigation of the people close to the victims, Pat-to-the-rick manipulates his colleagues to set him up with the psychiatrist (who was investigated earlier) for an interview to get good sleeping pills. During the course of this interview, Patrick-bo-Batrick-Fe-Fi-Fo-Fatrick uses his insane observations to make the psychiatrist illegally search his late co-worker's office looking for a diary that Patio Furniture will later plant, making the psychiatrist want to take from him when he plants it (also revealing it) and thus will confirm Patrick Swayze's suspicion, which he really knew for sure since the moment he met the guy: he killed his colleague and the chick, too - it was all an elaborate scheme that our Main Man Pat followed since the second he stepped into the airport that housed the plane that would deliver him to the city they were in based on how the flight attendant didn't bring him his peanuts the first time through.

Evidence: One of the examples of Pat/Rick's insane abilities is already listed above. In fact, more than the requisite two ways are already described in the Plot section. In spite of that, I'm going to list another one: in the exposition of the story, Jane-the-main-brain uses some significantly simplistic observational skills to discover that a man had killed his daughter because she stopped letting him rape her, and framed the neighborhood kid, based on how his wife didn't want to hug on him when they addressed the cops and neighbors comprising of the search party. That's pretty intense, considering most people would just think, "dude, don't try to hug your wife; your daughter was just discovered to have been killed instead of the previously-thought missing." 

Main Character: In spite of the ways I've referred to him and his freakish, supernatural abilities of a pretty simple, non-supernatural action, my favorite character in this TV show is definately... crap, I can't think of another weird way to say "Patrick Jane". I just got one about how he actually made the "Diary of Jane" and used that to frame the psychiatrist, but that's no good here. Anyway, I like him best because of the way he can take something we all do in varying degrees (paying attention) and do it SUPER WELL. That's one of the few attainable claims to fame: either do something new, do something in a unique way, or do something better than anybody else can. Particle Beam takes the latter of those options and makes it his B-word. He totally does something better than anybody else, but he also does it better than anybody else will ever be capable of thinking about doing. Partly because it's a fictional TV series, but not even Sherlock Holmes (of whom I'm a big fan) was this good! Also, all of Holmes' things were based on hard, physical evidence - but Patrick Jane does the same matter of intense knowing based on intuition and applies it to people and their histories, their motives, their freakin' minds, man! HE'S A MINDFREAK, I'M TELLIN' YA'S! A MINDFREAK! (I'm also a big-time Criss Angel fan).

You can see where I left room to draw the face when I turned it in. I even used a red pen for attention to detail. The only comment I remember from him was "What was the main character's name again? lol" Yeah he really wrote "lol" and I really didn't ever like the guy very much. I'm not sure where I got the idea to mess with the name but it was something to keep me interested while I did the paper. I'm pretty sure I got full credit for it in the end. I thought I still had it in the file but I guess not. 

Well, I suppose that's enough for today. I realized only a short bit ago that I only write a few paragraphs per post, but with a paper included it's a ton more reading than writing. So I'll leave you all alone for a bit. uh... bye.

Quick Update

I realized today that I only have a finite number of papers, and if I update thrice a week, as was the original plan, It wouldn't last very long at all. Thus, starting tomorrow, I'll be putting up papers on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and doing small housekeeping ordeals throughout the week on the other days. Or maybe on the same days as the papers, if the mood is right. We'll see how it goes.

Also, in the same vein of not having enough papers, if you have any sort of request you'd like, just leave a comment or something and I'll likely get around to it. Again, I have to take this chance to remind everybody that this is not meant to be used for cheating or what-have-you, and you'd be foolish to do so once you see how stupid my papers tend to get. I think you all understand where I'm going with this, which is good because I really don't feel like typing out rules or anything.

Finally, I'm also trying to get some of my friends' papers that they really submitted to bolster my own arsenal. With all of our papers combined, you'd truly see what happens when smart people stop caring or trying.

So, that's enough for today, considering it's so un-fun and dry and such.
Short Version: Papers will be put up Tuesdays and Thursdays, if you want me to write about a short story or  a movie or anything, just submit it in any of the numerous ways you can find to, and I'll be back Thursday with another paper.

What this is all about:

I have decided to fill this space with papers that I really wrote and submitted during my High School years. 

I will have to ask that nobody do anything stupid, like try to submit one of these papers as their own in their own classes. Not only is that cheating, which is wrong, but you probably don't want to use these papers anyway. They're... they're pretty dumb. 

Before each paper, I will give a brief description of the assignment and after each one I will give what teacher feedback I can remember from them (some of them were graded and returned and I still have that copy, some of them I only have saved on my computer still, etc).  So, I guess I'll start out with a short one included in this post:

CHROMADOOM: 

In 10th grade Biology class, our teacher charged us with making a short story that included various vocabulary words pertaining to chromosomes (which you will see underlined). We had to use these vocabulary words as appropriately as possible, while weaving them into the creative story. I decided to base my story on the story of the popular video game, DOOM:

In the year 2046, in the organism Mars, research projects funded by the Earth Organism Military were leading huge strides in chromosome existence. Chromosomes are the dominant life force in cells in the year 2046, taking over the entire nucleus in a freak mutation. But that's a different story - the important thing is that chromosomes are made up of bundled, coiled up DNA containing genes.

The research in Mars was going smoothly in many regards. Much of the effort went towards improvements in mitosis - the process of nucleus division in cells. Mitosis is the middle step during a cell's reproduction phase, commonly called the cell cycle. There was the chromatid division project, which made the process of splitting two chromatid, or the cloned chromosomes paired for the purpose of reproduction, more simple and safe. A nucleus is the home for chromosomes, where they get all of their work done, during the G₁ phase - the phase of growth and activity for a cell. Then, in the S phase, the DNA in a nucleus replicates, and just before the Chromosomes, currently called chromatin, are cloned, interphase, the period of cell growth just before reproduction, comes to an end. During the mitosis, the 'clone-osomes' are stuck together at the centromere. The development of superior spindle fibers and centrioles led to a more efficient split of the chromatid into two independent chromosomes. 

There were, however, many tries at the development of cytokinesis, the division of a cell's cytoplasm and organelles. Think of the cell as an entire town for chromosomes. Cytokinesis is like a town splitting into two towns. There is first a division of leadership, so the new town can have a real leader - which is mitosis for chromosomes. After the leaders are picked out, the town is divided up, with fair assets for each town. The Mars scientist chromosomes were unable to make the process quicker or more efficient. There was simply nothing to improve about cytokinesis.

The only problem was when the Mars researchers developed the Inter-Cellular Teleportation System. Unwittingly, they opened up a portal to Tumor, the cell version of Hell. Just like the popular video game franchise, Doom, the researchers opening a portal to Tumor was a bad thing. Mutated chromosomes soon became rampant around Mars. Mutation is the change to a base pair in a DNA sequence. The cells that were mutated actually came straight out of Tumor. If not for the work of one Marine chromosome ridding the Mars Research station of the mutated chromosomes, it is likely that Mars Tumor would have become inoperable, and required radiation to be eradicated. 

So, the story of the chromosome researchers in Mars comes to an end. The story of Mars can be used to remind chromosomes that technology is good, but try to do too much, and all Tumor breaks loose.

This story is based on that of the popular video game Doom. Any inconsistencies would thereby be resultant from plot holes in Doom's storyline. I wrote this report in less than an hour, and did not change any words after they were written. I did not copy or paste a single word of this story. 

My teacher liked this paper so much, she kept it as an example for future classes (I know this for a fact, because in recent years she went to my cousin's school, where she taught my cousin and showed her my paper as an example). There is another story of the exact same breed about Cells that I'll put up here eventually.