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kreiasbetrayal · 5 years

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My characters? introducing them? more likely than you think.

part one

Soft gladiator man ~ rastus (razz- tuss, goes by ras)

• Toxic masculinity? He's met him and he's trying to unmeet him

• He's trying to train himself to be open with crying

• He knows of all local creeps, literally stalks bars like bane so he can break the fuckers back

• Really good at keeping folks warm

• When he gets over his fear of hurting folks, hes a really good cuddler

• Bakes, kinda bashful about it but as soon as you make fun of someones baking he will fucking break your teeth

• Awkward around kids, likes to bake with them if they want, don't diss the kids cooking, choke that burnt ass cinnamon bun down or he's forcing it down

• Bring him home and your family loves him more than you. Might also fight them, depends on the family

• Help him, he is incredibly awkward around them but he's very well conducted.

• Bakes for them and nearly shits himself when they hug him

• Not friendly but he is polite so theres that

• Weird complex of trying to help people at any point

• He uses that to try and combat his guilt for the atrocities he commited in the arena

• Guilty and sad

• He thinks he's not worthy of love too much, he loves you so much please don't think he hates you

• please don't let him think hes unworthy of you for so long

• High key gay for delta

Sea man ~ delta

• Genuinly loves kids

• Like this man sees the most annoying kid in the world and loves them

• Deformed to fuck from not only birth but being a big daddy

• No one showed him love as a kid so he tries and shows love that he didn't get

• Still flinches at yelling and slight emotion shifts

• Loves the ocean because it's the one place he feels accepted because he's finally as ugly as most of the things in there

• Tries to find beauty in every one

• Sometimes overly cynical or overly naive

• Tries really hard to be the best he can

• But it's hard as fuck in rapture

• Really cute noises escape from him when hes doing things

• And then theres the times when his kids get threatened

• And hell hath no fury like a good man forged from it

• Tries reeeeeeaaaaaaalllly hard not to yell, mostly succeeds at this

• sweetie is friends with literally everyone and they all love him as much as he loves them

viking son ~ claymore

• Giant son

• Literally a dog

• Happy for the most part

• Always subject to change though

• Wonderful cook,

• Ras taught him how and clay feeds him and everyone else

• Bad with a bow and arrow but hes cute so it's fine

• Please help him though

• Likes camping and he works in the really cool historical reenactment centre they have

• Literally the most intimidating person with a mace but hes a crier

• doesnt like swords to much though, loves the swing of axes and such

• Lovely son, good son

• Literally hated by his family but he found another one who loves him

• kinda stupid at times but hes honestly trying, apart of the confused as shit squad

• Ras looks to him for emotional guidence and security in himself and others

• Emotionally a genius

• Big heart and warm hands

• Very clumsy and big so he's a bull in a china shop

• Breaks alot of things on accident

• Strong and soft as fuck

• Plays the drums on his tummy

• Will laugh at any joke even if its not funny

• Validating is his middle name

Cowboy (yeehaw man) ~ kent veres

• Y’all

• “Horses are my friend” he says as he's bitten by a horse

• Scared of birds

• Ducks are evil okay, he got bitten within 20 seconds of being here

• Good aim

• Bad ass thats just bad at everything

• Misses his boyfriends

• Loves dogs

• Hilarious

• But also really sad and angry

• Had a lot of problems as a kid with drinking to deal with his other problems

• Travels in a pack

• *Tips cowboy hat* Partner

• Says howdy in middle of a conversation and when you leave, but never as hello

• Sometimes he just asks you to deck him

• Please do it, maybe dont, sometimes he deserves it, othertimes he's depressed

• Likes meat but not animal cruelty

“ yee, and i cannot stress this enough partner,

HAW”

• Big, angry, texan nerd

• Arthur Morgan but a meme and covers his emotions

(basically McCree but im not a coward so he's gay)

A/n: These are my folks i have in a rough concept. Remember that they are subject to change but this is not only a fun blurb to get to know them but also a refrence of how to write them!

Let me know what you think! Stay safe, warm and alive okay friends! Part two is coming shortly after! Let me know if you wanna be tagged or anything at all okay!

Im always here to talk and my heart is open and ready to love you!

#rastus #claymore #subject delta #kent veres #creative writing #for masterlist #toasted letters #toaster #toasties #i love my kids so fucking much #please love them too #if i missed anything im screaming

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theandreafox · 4 years

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One of the challenges as you have an aging fur baby is dealing with DIMENTIA. My good old boy, Rastus is in the earlier stages of dimentia. He is over 15 which is totally understandable! He has his good days and his bad days. He forgets where he is sometimes. He gets stuck behind the couch And can’t remember how to turn around or walk backwards. He walks into doors. He trips over. He poops in weird places... There’s been plenty of laughing moments with his crazy antics, but at the same time, it makes me sad. I’m sad beacuse my old boy is not quite the same anymore. It’s hard to see him confused. He sure as hell remembers what walkie time and dinner time is that’s for sure! And he does love to cuddle and get snuggles with his mumma. Who else has a pensioner dog or a fur baby with dimentia? . . . . #furbaby #dimentia #aging https://www.instagram.com/p/B_j5JeZnBRO/?igshid=79se1cykt34j

#furbaby #dimentia #aging

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technato · 6 years

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Elektro the Moto-Man Had the Biggest Brain at the 1939 World’s Fair

This voice-controlled robot could walk, talk, and smoke, and it captivated crowds

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Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be very glad to tell my story. I am a smart fellow as I have a very fine brain of 48 electrical relays.” This is how Elektro the robot introduced itself to crowds at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Standing 2.1 meters tall and weighing 118 kilograms, Elektro performed 26 different tricks, including walking, talking, counting, and singing. It had a vocabulary of approximately 700 words, although its responses were all prerecorded and played back from 33⅓-rpm records. One of Elektro’s pet lines was, “My brain is bigger than yours.” At 25 kg, it certainly was.

Elektro was one of a family of robots that evolved out of Westinghouse’s switchgear business. By the early 1920s, the company had succeeded in developing fully automatic electrical substations, and its engineers were looking for ways to improve them. One operator requested a way to call the substation system remotely and initiate a change in the normal operating routine. Thus was born Televox, a set of control units that started Westinghouse down the path to developing robots.

Roy J. Wensley designed Televox to change switches in a substation in response to sounds it detected. One half of the Televox unit sat on the desk of a dispatcher at a central power station and the other at the substation. The Televox at the central station used tuning-fork oscillators to create different frequencies, which formed a code that the receiving Televox could interpret. The operator would send the code to the substation over an existing phone line. The receiver unit had to raise the telephone receiver, process the incoming codes, and then respond with the appropriate action, such as opening or closing a particular switch.

Wensley saw plenty of potential uses for the device in the public utility field. He asked the advertising department to help with publicity but was turned down. He did, however, have enough in his discretionary project budget to build a portable demonstration model of the Televox. A 1928 advertisement promoted the Televox as “a new instrument which is to become the servant of the future.” But Wensley had the intuition of a salesman and knew his box of relays and wires wouldn’t appeal to nontechnical audiences, and so he decided to dress it up a bit.

On 21 February 1928, Herbert Televox made its debut at the Level Club in New York City. This “robot” was simply a crude humanoid form (head, articulated arms, and legs) made out of wallboard with the Televox control unit forming the body. Herbert Televox’s great trick: unveiling a portrait of George Washington in honor of Washington’s Birthday. Giving a name, face, and personality to a control unit turned out to be a stroke of genius, capturing the popular imagination for the possibilities of robotics.

Photo: Mansfield Memorial Museum

Robot Family: Herbert Televox [left] was Westinghouse’s first human-form robot. The more famous member of the Westinghouse robot family was Elektro; a copy is shown in the middle, while the original is on the right.

Enthusiastic reporters exaggerated Herbert’s skills, claiming it could manage an entire home by remote control. Wensley spent a great deal of effort correcting the record about Televox’s actual abilities. Nevertheless, the publicity spurred further research. The U.S. military, for instance, investigated using Televox to fire guns remotely. Rural airports that didn’t maintain staff around the clock considered using it to automatically light up runways when planes approached at night.

In 1929, Wensley was serendipitously assigned to coordinate the engineering and marketing of refrigerators. This led him to the Westinghouse Appliance Division, in Mansfield, Ohio, where he met several likeminded engineers. They soon rolled out Katrina van Televox, Rastus, and a few other robots. With each iteration, the engineers worked to refine the machines’ movement, sound, control, and skill set.

Elektro was their ultimate creation. Built by J.M. Barnett, Jack Weeks Sr., Harold Gorsuch, and other engineers at the Mansfield plant, the robot had a torso, arms, and legs made from aluminum sheeting. Its head and hands were cast aluminum. Other parts were pilfered from the factory—power cords from irons, coffee pots, and waffle makers, wheels from vacuum cleaners.

Elektro wowed audiences, first at the World’s Fair and then on tour across the country, and it hawked appliances for Westinghouse. But you’d be wrong to dismiss it as simply a publicity stunt. The engineers who developed Elektro were pioneers, attempting to turn science fiction into reality by developing a voice-activated robot.

Everybody Loves Robots

Gif: IEEE Spectrum

Robots continue to captivate crowds, but they have changed a lot since Elektro. Check out the latest, most advanced designs in our new Robots website.

An operator gave voice commands to Elektro through a microphone, but the robot didn’t actually understand the words. According to an article in the August 1939 issue of Radio-Craft magazine, the voice commands were carefully timed syllabic codes, which were turned into electrical pulses by a grid-glow tube [PDF]. The pulse opened a shutter in front of a lightbulb, sending a flash signal across the room to a photoelectric tube in the robot’s control unit, located offstage. This “electric eye” translated the signal into an electric current and transmitted it through telephone relays to start Elektro’s gears whirring.

According to C. Bruce Hardy, who toured with Elektro in 1942–43, all of the commands that started or ended a trick followed a 3-1-2 syllable pattern, with pauses between the phrasing. For example, “Will you come / down / front please?” would start Elektro moving forward. “You have come / far / enough” would make the robot stop. Operators could vary the wording as long as they kept to the pattern. “Tell us how / old / you are” and “Count your age / with / fingers” both could trigger the same trick. But operators stuck to an orchestrated script; they didn’t jump around in the program.

Although walking was one of Elektro’s trumpeted tricks, the robot didn’t really walk. Its left knee bent, with the right leg dragging behind, as it moved on wheels along a track in the stage.

Like the other Westinghouse humanoids, Elektro smoked cigarettes. An assistant would helpfully place a cigarette in a hole in the robot’s upper lip and light it. Elektro would take a few drags, exhaling the smoke in short puffs before the assistant extinguished it. After each performance, operators had to clean the tar out of the smoking mechanism’s tubing. Cigarette-smoking robots still exist today, but instead of casually lighting up, they puff away in laboratories to aid research on lung disease.

Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

Robot’s Best Friend: Westinghouse introduced Sparko the dog as a companion for Elektro.

In 1941 a second hole was added to Elektro’s upper lip, but this one was for a more innocuous party trick. Elektro liked to challenge audience members to balloon-blowing competitions, seeing who could burst the balloon first. Equipped with an air hose and compressor, the robot almost always won.

Elektro’s dog, Sparko, was added to the World’s Fair show in 1940. Sparko could move forward and back, sit down, turn its head, wag its tail, and bark. Don Lee Hadley designed Sparko based on his own Scottish terrier, Bonnie. Westinghouse commissioned three dogs (the prototype plus a companion each for Elektro and another Westinghouse robot, Willie Vocalite), but none are known to survive today.

Recently, I created a biography page for Elektro on IMDb, where it now joins other robot movie stars like Alexa, Siri, and Robby the Robot. Elektro starred in The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair, a 1939 film produced by Westinghouse to help promote the company’s appliances.

https://spectrum.ieee.org//www.youtube.com/embed/Q6TQEoDS-fQ

It also appeared on the television show You Asked for It hosted by Art Baker in 1951, returning the following year as a finalist for the most popular episode of the previous year. And for several years after the World’s Fair and again after World War II, Elektro toured the country doing live performances, mostly in the housewares sections of department stores.

In 1958, a talent agent spotted the aging robot in a Westinghouse exhibit at Pacific Ocean Park, near Los Angeles, where it was playing second fiddle to a one-third-scale model of the nuclear-powered Nautilus submarine. That sighting earned Elektro a role as S.A.M. Thinko in 1960’s Sex Kittens Go to College. The Sequential Auxiliary Modulator blew a few fuses when confronted by the brilliant mind of Mamie van Doren’s Dr. Mathilda West, or possibly it was some of her other features. I suppose there’s humor in the blatant sexism of this B movie, if only the reality didn’t exist to this day in so many academic settings.

After its brief time in Hollywood, Elektro was packed into crates, sent back to its birthplace, and all but forgotten. The robot managed to survive the scrap heap and found a home at the Mansfield Memorial Museum, in Ohio, where it is now on permanent display. The museum’s director, Scott Schaut, has accumulated a tremendous archive of material related to the development of robotics at Westinghouse. He’s always on the lookout for more, although he says it saddens him to know how much history has already been destroyed. “Every day, historical artifacts are discarded or thrown in the trash without any regard to their significance to the community and the posterity of history,” Schaut writes in his book Robots of Westinghouse, 1924–Today, which reproduces numerous photos and promotional materials documenting Elektro’s history.

The book concludes with an intriguing scenario: What if Elektro had a female companion? Schaut knows of six sketches of women robots, created by Westinghouse’s robot team. They have some of Elektro’s features, such as the circular light in the chest, but they differ in hairstyle, facial expression, and bust and hip measurements. Plus, all of the lady robots are wearing dresses. Sadly, an Elektra never seems to have been built.

An abridged version of this article appears in the October 2018 print issue as “Elektro the Moto-Man.”

Part of a continuing series looking at photographs of historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.

About the Author

Allison Marsh is an associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina and codirector of the university’s Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology & Society.

Elektro the Moto-Man Had the Biggest Brain at the 1939 World’s Fair syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

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lhight1-mtsac-eng67-tues-thurs · 7 years

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HOMEWORK (DUE 10/26):

Please read “Youth in Asia” by David Sedaris, which is posted below, and answer the questions on the study guide (also posted below).

Youth in Asia

An autobiographical essay by David Sedaris

In the early sixties, during what my mother referred to as the “tail end of the Lassie years,” my parents were given two collies they named Rastus and Duchess. We were living in upstate New York, out in the country, and the dogs were free to race through the forest. They napped in meadows and stood knee-deep in frigid streams, costars in their own private dog-food commercial. According to our father, anyone could tell that the two of them were in love.

Late one evening, while lying on a blanket in the garage, Duchess gave birth to a litter of slick, potato-sized puppies. When it looked as though one of them had died, our mother placed the creature in a casserole dish and popped it into the oven, like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”

“Oh, keep your shirts on,” she said. “It’s only set on 200. I’m not baking anyone; this is just to keep him warm.”

The heat revived the sick puppy and left us believing our mother was capable of resurrecting the dead.

Faced with the responsibilities of fatherhood, Rastus took off. The puppies were given away, and we moved south, where the heat and humidity worked against a collie’s best interests. Duchess’s once beautiful coat now hung in ragged patches. Age set in and she limped about the house, clearing rooms with her suffocating farts. When finally, full of worms, she collapsed in the ravine beside our house, we reevaluated our mother’s healing powers. The entire animal kingdom was beyond her scope; apparently, she could resurrect only the cute dead.

The oven trick was performed on half a dozen peakish hamsters but failed to work on my first guinea pig, who died after eating a couple of cigarettes and an entire pack of matches.

“Don’t take it too hard,” my mother said, removing her oven mitts. “The world is full of guinea pigs. You can get another one tomorrow.”

Eulogies always tended to be brief, our motto being “Another day, another collar.”

A short time after Duchess died, our father came home with a German shepherd puppy. For reasons that were never explained, the privilege of naming the dog went to a friend of my older sister’s, a fourteen-year-old girl named Cindy. She was studying German at the time, and after carefully examining the puppy and weighing it with her hands, she announced it would be called Madchen, which apparently meant “girl” to the Volks back in the Vaterland. We weren’t wild about the name but considered ourselves lucky that Cindy wasn’t studying one of the harder-to-pronounce Asian languages.

When she was six, Madchen was killed by a car. Her food was still in the bowl when our father brought home an identical German shepherd, whom the same Cindy thoughtfully christened Madchen Two. This tag-team progression was disconcerting, especially for the new dog, who was expected to possess both the knowledge and the personality of her predecessor.

“Madchen One would never have wet the floor like that,” my father would scold, and the dog would sigh, knowing she was the canine equivalent of a rebound.

Madchen Two never accompanied us to the beach and rarely posed in any of the family photographs. Once her puppyhood was spent, we more or less lost interest. “We ought to get a dog,” we’d sometimes say, completely forgetting that we already had one. She came inside to eat, but most of her time was spent out in the pen, slumped in the A-frame doghouse my father had designed and crafted from scrap pieces of redwood.

“Hey,” he’d ask, “how many dogs can say they live in a redwood house?” This always led to my mother’s exhausted “Oh, Lou, how many dogs can say that they don’t live in a goddamned redwood house?”

Throughout the collie and shepherd years, we had a succession of drowsy, secretive cats who seemed to share a unique bond with our mother. “It’s because I open their cans,” she said, though we all knew it ran deeper than that. What they had in common was their claws. That and a deep-seated need to destroy my father’s golf bag.

The first cat ran away, and the second was hit by a car. The third passed into a disagreeable old age and died hissing at the kitten who had prematurely arrived to replace her. When, at the age of seven, the fourth cat was diagnosed with feline leukemia, my mother was devastated.

“I’m going to have Sadie put to sleep,” she said. “It’s for her own good, and I don’t want to hear a word about it from any of you. This is hard enough as it is.

The cat was put down, and then came the anonymous postcards and crank phone calls orchestrated by my sisters and me. The cards announced a miraculous new cure for feline leukemia, while the callers identified themselves as representatives of Cat Fancy magazine. “We’d like to use Sadie as our cover story and were hoping to schedule a photo shoot. Can you have her ready by tomorrow?”

We thought a kitten might lift our mother’s spirits, but she declined all offers. “That’s it,” she said. “My cat days are over.”

When Madchen Two developed splenic tumors, our father dropped everything and ran to her side. Evenings were spent at the animal hospital, lying on a mat outside of her cage and adjusting her IV. He’d never afforded her much attention, but her impending death alerted in him a great sense of duty. He was holding her paw when she died, and he spent the next several weeks asking us how many dogs could say they’d lived in a redwood house.

Our mother, in turn, frequently paused beside my father’s tattered, urine-stained golf bag and relived memories of her own.

After spending a petless year with only one child still living at home, my parents visited a breeder and returned with a Great Dane they named Melina. They loved this dog in proportion to her size, and soon their hearts had no room for anyone else. The house was given over to the dog, rooms redecorated to suit her fancy. Enter your former bedroom and you’d be told, “You’d better not let Melina catch you in here,” or, “This is where we come to pee-pee when there’s nobody home to let us outside, right, girl?”

The dog was my parents’ first true common interest, and they loved her equally, each in their own way. My mother’s love tended toward the horizontal, a pet being little more than a napping companion, something she could look at and say, “That looks like a good idea. Scoot over, why don’t you.” A stranger peeking through the window might think that the two of them had entered a suicide pact. She and the dog sprawled like corpses, their limbs arranged into an eternal embrace. “God, that felt good,” my mom would say, the two of them waking for a brief stretch. “Now let’s go try it on the living-room floor.”

My father loved the Great Dane for her size, and frequently took her on long, aimless drives during which she’d stick her heavy, anvil-sized head out the window and leak great quantities of foamy saliva. Other drivers pointed and stared, rolling down their windows to shout, “Hey, you got a saddle for that thing?” When they went out for a walk, there was the inevitable “Are you walking her, or is it the other way around?”

“Ha, ha,” our father always laughed, as if it were the first time he’d heard it. The attention was addictive, and he enjoyed a pride of accomplishment he’d never felt with any of his children. It was as if he were somehow responsible for her size and stature, as if he’d personally designed her spots and trained her to grow to the size of a pony.

When out with the dog, he carried a leash in one hand and a shovel in the other. “Just in case,” he said.

“Just in case what? She dies of a heart attack and you need to bury her?” I didn’t get it.

“No,” he’d say. “It’s for her, you know, her … business.”

My father was retired, but the dog had business.

I was living in Chicago when they first got Melina, and every time I came home, the animal was bigger. Every time there were more Marmaduke cartoons on the refrigerator, and every time my voice grew louder as I asked myself, “Who are these people?”

“Down, girl,” my parents would chuckle as the dog jumped up, panting for my attention. Her great padded paws reached my waist, then my chest and shoulders, until eventually, her arms wrapped around my neck and her head towering above my own, she came to resemble a dance partner scouting the room for a better offer.

“That’s just her way of saying hello,” my mother would say, handing me a towel to wipe off the dog’s bubbling seepage. “Here, you missed a spot on the back of your head.”

Among us children, Melina’s diploma from obedience school was seen as the biggest joke since our brother’s graduation from Sanderson High School. “So she’s not book smart,” our mother said. “Big deal. I can fetch my own goddamned newspaper.”

The dog’s growth was monitored on a daily basis, and every small accomplishment was captured on film. One could find few pictures of my sister Tiffany, while Melina had entire albums devoted to her terrible twos.

“Hit me,” my mother said on one of my return visits from Chicago. “No, wait, let me get my camera.” She left the room and returned a few moments later. “Okay,” she said. “Now hit me. Better yet, why don’t you just pretend to hit me?”

I raised my hand and my mother cried out in pain. “Ow!” she yelled. “Somebody help me! This stranger is trying to hurt me, and I don’t know why.”

I caught an advancing blur moving in from the left, and the next thing I knew, I was down on the ground, the Great Dane ripping holes in the neck of my sweater. The camera flashed, and my mother roared, “God, I love that trick.”

I rolled over to protect my face. “It’s not a trick.”

She snapped another picture. “Oh, don’t be so critical. It’s close enough.”

With us grown and out of the house, my sisters and I reasonably expected our parents’ lives to stand still. Their assignment was to stagnate and live in the past. We were supposed to be the center of their lives, but instead they constructed a new family, consisting of Melina and the founding members of her fan club. Someone who obviously didn’t know her too well had given my mother a cheerful stuffed bear with a calico heart stitched onto its chest. According to the manufacturer, the bear’s name was Mumbles, and all it needed in order to thrive was two double-A batteries and a regular diet of hugs.

“Where Mumbles?” my mother would ask, and the dog would jump up and snatch the bear from its hiding place on top of the refrigerator, yanking its body this way and that in hopes of breaking its neck. Occasionally, her teeth would press the on switch and the doomed thing would flail its arms, whispering one of its five messages of goodwill

“That’s my girl,” my mother would say. “We don’t like Mumbles, do we?

“We?”

During the final years of Madchen Two and the first half of the Melina epoch, I lived with a female cat named Neil who’d been abandoned by a scary alcoholic with long fingernails and a large collection of kimonos. He was a hateful man, and after he moved, the cat was taken in and renamed by my sister Gretchen, who later passed the animal on to me. My mother looked after the cat when I moved from Raleigh, and she flew her to Chicago once I’d found a place and settled in. I’d taken the cheapest apartment I could find, and it showed. Though they were nice, my new neighbors could see no connection between their personal habits and the armies of pests aggressively occupying the building.

Neil caught fourteen mice, and scores of others escaped with missing limbs and tails. In Raleigh, she’d just lain around the house doing nothing, but now she had a real job to do.

Her interests broadened, and she listened intently to the radio, captivated by the political and financial stories that failed to interest me. “One more word about the Iran-contra hearings and you’ll be sleeping next door with the aliens,” I’d say, though we both knew that I didn’t really mean it.

Neil was old when she moved to Chicago, and then she got older. The Oliver North testimony now behind her, she started leaving teeth in her bowl and developed the sort of breath that could remove paint. She stopped cleaning herself, and I took to bathing her in the sink. When she was soaking wet, I could see just how thin and brittle she really was. Her kidneys shrank to the size of raisins, and while I wanted what was best for her, I naturally assumed the vet was joking when he suggested dialysis.

In addition to being old, toothless, and incontinent, it seemed that for the cost of a few thousand dollars, she could also spend three days a week hooked up to a machine. “Sounds awfully tempting,” I said. “Just give us a few days to think it over.” I took her for a second opinion. Vet number two tested her blood and phoned me a few days later suggesting I consider euthanasia.

I hadn’t heard that word since childhood, and immediately recalled a mismatched pair of Japanese schoolboys standing alone in a deserted schoolyard. One of the boys, grossly obese, was attempting to climb the flagpole that towered high above him. Silhouetted against the darkening sky, he hoisted himself a few feet off the ground and clung there, trembling and out of breath. “I can’t do it,” he said. “This is too hard for me.”

His friend, a gaunt and serious boy named Komatsu, stood below him, offering encouragement. “Oh, but you can do it. You must,” he said. “It is required.”

This was a scene I had long forgotten, and thinking of it made me unbearably sad. The boys were characters from Fatty and Skinny, a Japanese movie regularly presented on The CBS Children’s Film Festival, a weekly TV series hosted by two puppets and a very patient woman who pretended to laugh at their jokes. My sisters and I watched the program every Saturday afternoon, our gasbag of a collie imposing frequent intermissions.

Having shimmied a few more inches up the pole, Fatty lost his grip and fell down. As he brushed himself off, Skinny ran down the mountain toward the fragile, papery house he shared with his family. This had been Fatty’s last chance to prove himself. He’d thought his friend’s patience was unlimited, but now he knew that he was wrong. “Komatsuuuuuuuu!” he yelled. “Komatsu, please give me one more chance.”

The doctor’s voice called me back from the Japanese schoolyard. “So. The euthanasia,” he said. “Are you giving it some thought?”

“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

In the end, I returned to the animal hospital and had her put to sleep. When the vet injected the sodium pentobarbital, Neil fluttered her eyes, assumed a nap position, and died. My then-boyfriend stayed to make arrangements, and I ran outside to blubber beside the parked and, unfortunately, locked car. Neil had gotten into the car believing she would live to experience the return trip, and that tore me up. Someone had finally been naive enough to trust me, and I’d rewarded her with death. Racked by guilt, the Youth in Asia sat at their desks and wept bitter tears.

A week after putting her to sleep, I received Neil’s ashes in a forest-green can. She’d never expressed any great interest in the outdoors, so I scattered her remains on the carpet and then vacuumed them up. The cat’s death struck me as the end of an era. The end of my safe college life, the last of my thirty-inch waist, my faltering relationship with my first real boyfriend–I cried for it all and spent the next several months wondering why so few songs were written about cats.

My mother sent a consoling letter along with a check to cover the cost of the cremation. In the lower-left corner, on the line marked memo, she’d written, “Pet burning.” I had it coming.

When my mother died and was cremated herself, we worried that, acting on instinct, our father might run out and immediately replace her. Returning from the funeral, my brother, sisters, and I half expected to find Sharon Two standing at the kitchen counter, working the puzzle from TV Guide. “Sharon One would have gotten five-across,” our father would have scolded. “Come on, baby, get with it!”

With my mother gone, my father and Melina had each other all to themselves. Though she now occupied the side of the bed left vacant by her former mistress, the dog knew she could never pass as a viable replacement. Her love was too fierce and simple, and she had no talent for argument. Yet she and my father honored their pledge to adore and protect each other. They celebrated anniversaries, regularly renewed their vows, and growled when challenged by outside forces.

“You want me to go where?” When invited to visit one of his children, my father would beg off, saying, “I can’t leave town. Who’d take care of Melina?”

Due to their size, Great Danes generally don’t live very long. There are cheeses that last longer. At the age of eleven, gray-bearded and teetering, Melina was a wonder of science. My father massaged her arthritic legs, carried her up the stairs, and lifted her in and out of bed. He treated her the way men in movies treat their ailing wives, the way he might have treated my mother had she allowed such naked displays of helplessness and affection. Melina’s era had spanned the final ten years of his married life. The dog had ridden in the family’s last station wagon. She’d attended my father’s retirement party, lived through my sister’s wedding, and celebrated the election of two Republican presidents. She grew weaker and lost her appetite, but against all advice, my father simply could not bear to let go.

The Youth in Asia begged him to end her life.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “This is too hard for me.”

“Oh, but you must do it,” said Komatsu. “It is required.

A month after Melina was put to sleep, my father returned to the breeder and came home with another Great Dane. A female like Melina, gray spots like Melina, only this one is named Sophie. He tries to love her but readily admits that he may have made a mistake. She’s a nice enough dog, but the timing is off.

When walking Sophie through the neighborhood, my father feels not unlike a newly married senior citizen stumbling behind his apathetic young bride. The puppy’s stamina embarrasses him, as does her blatant interest in younger men. Passing drivers slow to a stop and roll down their windows. "Hey,” they yell. “Are you walking her, or is it the other way around?”

Their words remind him of a more gracious era, of milder forces straining against the well-worn leash. He still gets the attention, but now, in response, he just lifts his shovel and continues on his way.

WORK CITED

Sedaris, David. Me Talk Pretty One Day. New York: Little, Brown, 2000. Print

ENG 67

Hight

STUDY GUIDE FOR “YOUTH IN ASIA” BY DAVID SEDARIS

Please answer the following questions (on a separate piece of paper), and please remember that I am the dumbest person. I will not understand short and vague answers.

1. How does David’s, the narrator’s, mother interact with the pets? For example, what sort of relationship does she have with Sadie, the cat, or with Melina, the Great Dane? What does her attitude towards the various animals say about her as a person?

2. How does David’s father interact with the pets? For example, what sort of relationship does he have with Madchen Two, the German Shepard or with Sophie, the Great Dane? What does his attitude towards the various animals say about him as a person?

3. What sort of relationship does David have with his cat, Neil? How much does he love his cat, and how can you tell? What does his mother do when David has to put Neil down? Why do you think she has done this?

4. Do you think David is jealous of Melina, or is it true that his parents prefer Melina over their own son? What do you think and why?

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applejacks11099-blog · 7 years

Text

Goodbye, Mojo ❤️

My boyfriend is putting his oldest dog down today. Her name was Mojo, named after the Austin Powers movies. I haven't known her for very long, but she is the sweetest old girl I have ever met. My boyfriend's stepfather bought her from a farm 16 years ago. She would have been 17 in February. Goodbye, Mojo Rastus Fritz. I love you and will miss you oh so much. ❤️💛💚💙💜

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are-scared-of-revolution · 7 years

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Official Nigger Owner's Manual

Congratulations on your purchase of a brand new nigger! If handled properly, your apeman will give years of valuable, if reluctant, service.

INSTALL YOUR NIGGER.

You should install your nigger differently according to whether you have purchased the field or house model. Field niggers work best in a serial configuration, i.e. chained together. Chain your nigger to another nigger immediately after unpacking it, and don't even think about taking that chain off, ever. Many niggers start singing as soon as you put a chain on them. This habit can usually be thrashed out of them if nipped in the bud. House niggers work best as standalone units, but should be hobbled or hamstrung to prevent attempts at escape. At this stage, your nigger can also be given a name. Most owners use the same names over and over, since niggers become confused by too much data. Rufus, Rastus, Remus, Toby, Carslisle, Carlton, Hey-You!-Yes-you!, Yeller, Blackstar, and Sambo are all effective names for your new buck nigger. If your nigger is a ho, it should be called Latrelle, L'Tanya, or Jemima. Some owners call their nigger hoes Latrine for a joke. Pearl, Blossom, and Ivory are also righteous names for nigger hoes. These names go straight over your nigger's head, by the way.

CONFIGURE YOUR NIGGER

Owing to a design error, your nigger comes equipped with a tongue and vocal chords. Most niggers can master only a few basic human phrases with this apparatus - "muh dick" being the most popular. However, others make barking, yelping, yapping noises and appear to be in some pain, so you should probably call a vet and have him remove your nigger's tongue. Once de-tongued your nigger will be a lot happier - at least, you won't hear it complaining anywhere near as much. Niggers have nothing interesting to say, anyway. Many owners also castrate their niggers for health reasons (yours, mine, and that of women, not the nigger's). This is strongly recommended, and frankly, it's a mystery why this is not done on the boat.

HOUSE YOUR NIGGER.

Your nigger can be accommodated in cages with stout iron bars. Make sure, however, that the bars are wide enough to push pieces of nigger food through. The rule of thumb is, four niggers per square yard of cage. So a fifteen foot by thirty foot nigger cage can accommodate two hundred niggers. You can site a nigger cage anywhere, even on soft ground. Don't worry about your nigger fashioning makeshift shovels out of odd pieces of wood and digging an escape tunnel under the bars of the cage. Niggers never invented the shovel before and they're not about to now. In any case, your nigger is certainly too lazy to attempt escape. As long as the free food holds out, your nigger is living better than it did in Africa, so it will stay put. Buck niggers and hoe niggers can be safely accommodated in the same cage, as bucks never attempt sex with black hoes.

FEED YOUR NIGGER.

Your Nigger likes fried chicken, corn bread, and watermelon. You should therefore give it none of these things because its lazy ass almost certainly doesn't deserve it. Instead, feed it on porridge with salt, and creek water. Your nigger will supplement its diet with whatever it finds in the fields, other niggers, etc. Experienced nigger owners sometimes push watermelon slices through the bars of the nigger cage at the end of the day as a treat, but only if all niggers have worked well and nothing has been stolen that day. Mike of the Old Ranch Plantation reports that this last one is a killer, since all niggers steal something almost every single day of their lives. He reports he doesn't have to spend much on free watermelon for his niggers as a result. You should never allow your nigger meal breaks while at work, since if it stops work for more than ten minutes it will need to be retrained. You would be surprised how long it takes to teach a nigger to pick cotton. You really would. Coffee beans? Don't ask. You have no idea.

MAKE YOUR NIGGER WORK.

Niggers are very, very averse to work of any kind. The nigger's most prominent anatomical feature, after all, its oversized buttocks, which have evolved to make it more comfortable for your nigger to sit around all day doing nothing for its entire life. Niggers are often good runners, too, to enable them to sprint quickly in the opposite direction if they see work heading their way. The solution to this is to *dupe* your nigger into working. After installation, encourage it towards the cotton field with blows of a wooden club, fence post, baseball bat, etc., and then tell it that all that cotton belongs to a white man, who won't be back until tomorrow. Your nigger will then frantically compete with the other field niggers to steal as much of that cotton as it can before the white man returns. At the end of the day, return your nigger to its cage and laugh at its stupidity, then repeat the same trick every day indefinitely. Your nigger comes equipped with the standard nigger IQ of 75 and a memory to match, so it will forget this trick overnight. Niggers can start work at around 5am. You should then return to bed and come back at around 10am. Your niggers can then work through until around 10pm or whenever the light fades.

ENTERTAIN YOUR NIGGER.

Your nigger enjoys play, like most animals, so you should play with it regularly. A happy smiling nigger works best. Games niggers enjoy include: 1) A good thrashing: every few days, take your nigger's pants down, hang it up by its heels, and have some of your other niggers thrash it with a club or whip. Your nigger will signal its intense enjoyment by shrieking and sobbing. 2) Lynch the nigger: niggers are cheap and there are millions more where yours came from. So every now and then, push the boat out a bit and lynch a nigger.

Lynchings are best done with a rope over the branch of a tree, and niggers just love to be lynched. It makes them feel special. Make your other niggers watch. They'll be so grateful, they'll work harder for a day or two (and then you can lynch another one). 3) Nigger dragging: Tie your nigger by one wrist to the tow bar on the back of suitable vehicle, then drive away at approximately 50mph. Your nigger's shrieks of enjoyment will be heard for miles. It will shriek until it falls apart. To prolong the fun for the nigger, do *NOT* drag him by his feet, as his head comes off too soon. This is painless for the nigger, but spoils the fun. Always wear a seatbelt and never exceed the speed limit. 4) Playing on the PNL: a variation on (2), except you can lynch your nigger out in the fields, thus saving work time. Niggers enjoy this game best if the PNL is operated by a man in a tall white hood. 5) Hunt the nigger: a variation of Hunt the Slipper, but played outdoors, with Dobermans. WARNING: do not let your Dobermans bite a nigger, as they are highly toxic.

DISPOSAL OF DEAD NIGGERS.

Niggers die on average at around 40, which some might say is 40 years too late, but there you go. Most people prefer their niggers dead, in fact. When yours dies, report the license number of the car that did the drive-by shooting of your nigger. The police will collect the nigger and dispose of it for you.

COMMON PROBLEMS WITH NIGGERS:

MY NIGGER IS VERY AGGRESIVE

Have it put down, for god's sake. Who needs an uppity nigger? What are we, short of niggers or something?

MY NIGGER KEEPS RAPING WHITE WOMEN

They all do this. Shorten your nigger's chain so it can't reach any white women, and arm heavily any white women who might go near it.

WILL MY NIGGER ATTACK ME?

Not unless it outnumbers you 20 to 1, and even then, it's not likely. If niggers successfully overthrew their owners, they'd have to sort out their own food. This is probably why nigger uprisings were nonexistent (until some fool gave them rights).

MY NIGGER BITCHES ABOUT ITS "RIGHTS" AND "RACISM".

Yeah, well, it would. Tell it to shut the fuck up.

MY NIGGER'S HIDE IS A FUNNY COLOR. WHAT IS THE CORRECT SHADE FOR A NIGGER? A nigger's skin is actually more or less transparent. That brown color you can see is the shit your nigger is full of. This is why some models of nigger are sold as "The Shitskin".

MY NIGGER ACTS LIKE A NIGGER, BUT IS WHITE.

What you have there is a "wigger". Rough crowd.

IS THAT LIKE AN ALBINO? ARE THEY RARE?

They're as common as dog shit and about as valuable. In fact, one of them was President between 1992 and 2000. Put your wigger in a cage with a few hundred genuine niggers and you'll soon find it stops acting like a nigger. However, leave it in the cage and let the niggers dispose of it. The best thing for any wigger is a dose of TNB.

MY NIGGER SMELLS REALLY BAD

And you were expecting what?

WHERE SHOULD I STORE MY DEAD NIGGER?

When you came in here, did you see a sign that said " Dead nigger storage"? That's because there ain't no goddamn sign.

** This manual is for entertainment purposes only. Don't do any of this shit and then blame me.**

http://tightrope.cc/nigger-owners-manual.htm

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hightlm-eng21-pierce-thurs · 7 years

Text

HOMEWORK (DUE 3/16):

Please read the essay below and answer the questions on the study guide.

Youth in Asia By David Sedaris

“Oh, keep your shirts on,” she said. “It’s only set on 200. I’m not baking anyone; this is just to keep him warm.”

The heat revived the sick puppy and left us believing our mother was capable of resurrecting the dead.

The oven trick was performed on half a dozen peakish hamsters but failed to work on my first guinea pig, who died after eating a couple of cigarettes and an entire pack of matches.

“Don’t take it too hard,” my mother said, removing her oven mitts. “The world is full of guinea pigs. You can get another one tomorrow.”

Eulogies always tended to be brief, our motto being “Another day, another collar.”

“Madchen One would never have wet the floor like that,” my father would scold, and the dog would sigh, knowing she was the canine equivalent of a rebound.

“I’m going to have Sadie put to sleep,” she said. “It’s for her own good, and I don’t want to hear a word about it from any of you. This is hard enough as it is.”

We thought a kitten might lift our mother’s spirits, but she declined all offers. “That’s it,” she said. “My cat days are over.”

Our mother, in turn, frequently paused beside my father’s tattered, urine-stained golf bag and relived memories of her own.

When out with the dog, he carried a leash in one hand and a shovel in the other. “Just in case,” he said.

“Just in case what? She dies of a heart attack and you need to bury her?” I didn’t get it.

“No,” he’d say. “It’s for her, you know, her … business.”

My father was retired, but the dog had business.

“That’s just her way of saying hello,” my mother would say, handing me a towel to wipe off the dog’s bubbling seepage. “Here, you missed a spot on the back of your head.”

I raised my hand and my mother cried out in pain. “Ow!” she yelled. “Somebody help me! This stranger is trying to hurt me, and I don’t know why.”

I rolled over to protect my face. “It’s not a trick.”

She snapped another picture. “Oh, don’t be so critical. It’s close enough.”

“That’s my girl,” my mother would say. “We don’t like Mumbles, do we?”

“We?”

Neil caught fourteen mice, and scores of others escaped with missing limbs and tails. In Raleigh, she’d just lain around the house doing nothing, but now she had a real job to do.

His friend, a gaunt and serious boy named Komatsu, stood below him, offering encouragement. “Oh, but you can do it. You must,” he said. “It is required.”

The doctor’s voice called me back from the Japanese schoolyard. “So. The euthanasia,” he said. “Are you giving it some thought?”

“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

My mother sent a consoling letter along with a check to cover the cost of the cremation. In the lower-left corner, on the line marked memo, she’d written, “Pet burning.” I had it coming.

“You want me to go where?” When invited to visit one of his children, my father would beg off, saying, “I can’t leave town. Who’d take care of Melina?”

The Youth in Asia begged him to end her life.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “This is too hard for me.”

“Oh, but you must do it,” said Komatsu. “It is required.

WORK CITED

Sedaris, David. Me Talk Pretty One Day. New York: Little, Brown, 2000. Print

ENG 21

Hight

STUDY GUIDE FOR “YOUTH IN ASIA” BY DAVID SEDARIS

Please answer the following questions (on a separate piece of paper), and please remember that I am the dumbest person. I will not understand short and vague answers.

How does David’s, the narrator’s, mother interact with the pets? For example, what sort of relationship does she have with Sadie, the cat, or with Melina, the Great Dane? What does her attitude towards the various animals say about her as a person?

How does David’s father interact with the pets? For example, what sort of relationship does he have with Madchen Two, the German Shepard or with Sophie, the Great Dane? What does his attitude towards the various animals say about him as a person?

What sort of relationship does David have with his cat, Neil? How much does he love his cat, and how can you tell? What does his mother do when David has to put Neil down? Why do you think she has done this?

Do you think David is jealous of Melina, or is it true that his parents prefer Melina over their own son? What do you think and why?

0 notes