short story

It was a typical morning in Ms. Rune’s math class, everyone struggling to take notes due to lack of sleep. Trying to stay awake, I tune the teacher out as I stair blankly out the window. It’s a dreary morning, light rain and no sun at all. “Joseph.... Kyle.....Bert....” I hear Ms. Rune say until I hear my name. “Yasmin”. I respond, “here” still focusing on the window and without moving. She continues to announce names, her droning voice putting everyone to sleep, until she calls his name. “Adam”. I look around the room, no surprise he isn’t here. 

“Why bother even saying his name” says Demi. “He’s never here, your just wasting time” 

Everyone gives a light snicker, trying to fight off sleep. Ms Rune ignores Demi and continues to call Adam’s name. “Adam...does anyone see Adam.”. As soon as she is about to give up and call another name, everyone is awoken by a loud thud at the door. Everyone turns sharply at the door to see it has been flung open by none other then Adam. Everyone turns back around towards their desks groaning. 

“why the fuck does he even bother going to school” whispers someone in the back of the room. 

Adam can’t hear them over the ridiculously loud rock music coming from his large headphones, originally designed for DJ’s. I watch him walk towards me, my heart still pounding form the loud booming from the door. The rain outside had made the scent of the leather on his jacket more pungent then normal, but It didn’t really bother me. I move my feet off his chair as he take his set. He immediately puts his feet up on the empty chair infront of our table, his black sneakers drip onto the wooden chair and onto the bottom of his faded denim skinny jeans. 

“Are you just getting here Adam?” Says Ms. Rune looking angrily at him.

He doesn’t respond.

“Adam?” She repeats, her tone sharper then the last time.

He just sits there bobbing his head, headphones still blasting. By this time Ms. Rune has lost her patience and gets up to approach him.  By the time she gets to our table, he still hasn’t moved or noticed her. She reaches down and rips his headphones from his ears.

“Adam Garets, where have you been for the last hour!” 

“Can you mind your business and let go of my shit?” He slaps her hand off his headphones, Ms Rune  tries to contain her anger. 

“It is my business as a teacher to know why you are late for my class, now tell me where you've been or I’ll send you to the principles office!”

“Ohhhhhh I’m so scared. Go ahead the sooner you do, the sooner I go back home.”

“May I remind you the next time you get sent to the principles office gets you a 3 day suspension...again?”

Adam’s smug expression is immediately wiped off his face. He gives Ms. Rune a frown and can only respond her threat with “pshhhh”. He takes he takes his headphones off and says “Happy now?”. Ms. Rune continues to stare at him angrily until he removes his hat. His messy black curly hair falls over his face, blocking most of his eyes. He opens his bag and looks through a mess of papers and junk for a notebook. Out drops a pack of cigarettes from his bag, leaving it there until someone notices. 

“Uh hello?” I say “You obviously dropped those”

“Oh really? My bad” He pics them up and opens then, trying to show them off. I roll my eyes and he drops them back in his mess of a backpack. He finally finds a notebook and begins to take notes for a few moments. When the teacher turns her back, he rips a piece of paper out of his notebook and tosses a paper ball at Arin. The paper ball flys through the air, hitting Arin in the back of te head. Arin turns around, frowning at Adam who is pretending to write. His notebook is brand new, nothing ever written in it except a sentence on a few pages.

“Why don’t you actually use that paper for notes?” I say, looking blankly at his weak attempt at entertainment

“Why dont you mind your business?”

“Is that your only come back? Get some new material”

“Pshhhh” He says...again. “What a small vocabulary” I say in my mind “Watching the window is more entertaining then arguing with him”. Arin continues to be pummeled with paper balls, hitting her head and arms several times. She just ignores him. 

“Adam! Cut it out!” Says Mr. Rune “I won’t tell you again”.

“I wasn’t doing anything!” says Adam. Mr. Rune roles her eyes and ignores him.

“Pshhhh, stupid bitch” he whispers under his breath. Mr. Rune turns around immediately, her face is scrunching angrily at him.

“What did you say young man!” she screeched.

“I didn’t say anything”.

“Get up”

“What the hell I didn’t.....”

“GET UP”

He got up and yelled “WHAT!?”

“Pack up your things and go to the principles office, I wont’ let him go easy on you this time ether.”

“I’m not going” laughed Adam, dropping himself back into his chair. “You can’t make me”. The class was awake now, watching the show. Ms. Rune’s pale face was bright as a tomato now, she walked slowly towards his desk clenching her fists. She got to his desk and he looked up at her with a smug look on his face. She snatched up his bag from under his chair. 

“HEY!” he yelled. 

She opened the door, everyone got up from their chairs and ran to the door including Adam, as they watched Ms. Rune take the bag to the front of the downstairs stairs.  She looked down the stairs and dropped the bag, everyone gasping and shouting as the bag went tumbling from the eight floor to the first. 

She walked over to Adam, who was giving her the most disgusting face I had ever seem.

“Why don’t you stop trying to act tuff and actually do something with your life. How many years have you been in the 11th grade. Stop trying to be col and wake up!”

Adam tried to respond, but instead his face when from angry to saddened. So did hers after releasing what she had just done. Everyone watched silently at Adam expecting some outrageous response, but instead Adam slowly walked down the stairs after his bag, with the sound of tearful sniffling of his crushed ego echoing down the corridors. 

What is Cool?

    I feel we all have different ideas on what "cool" is for example,  I feel my views on being cool are totally different from most teenagers. To me, being cool is all about creativity. I'm really interested in art so I think cool is looking unique, which is mainly seen through fashion. I would find someone that was wearing something like a corset cooler then someone wearing a floral dress from Urban Outfitters because the corset is uncommon, as the dress is not. When people follow trends too much, I just see them as a poser because their only dressing like that because thats what's "in". I feel I can connect better to someone dressed unique because their clothing reflects a lot about what they like or what they are interested in.

     However we also have similar views on what is cool. For example, going to parties and getting intoxicated is considered cool to most people, at least it is as a teenager. Such acts are probably considered cool because they are the things we have been told not to do all our lives by authority figures like our parents or the police. Parents are always telling kids that alcohol and drugs are bad. There are also many laws prohibiting "minors" from drinking and prohibiting everyone from doing drugs. Breaking these rules makes us feel free and rebellious and it helps us break away from stuff like the work we get at school.

     Something else a lot of people also consider cool are celebrities, which I think is due to the media. A lot of magazines feature which clothes are “cool” by showing them on celebrities, they even conveniently tell you where to buy them and how much they cost. Its all just for advertising trying to make people buy their merchandise. A lot of trends are influenced from celebrities clothes, tattoos, piercing, etc... For example, lots of stores will label there products that have been worn by celebrities. For example:



      This is a picture of a pair of sunglasses being sold on fredflare.com. The website also includes a picture of Lindsay Lohan wearing the sunglasses. Even if customers don’t like the item, they might buy them because a celebrity is wearing them. Celebrities are heavily admired in our society and many people will buy the things they have to be like them. Even in the book Feed, which takes place in the future, teenagers are still influenced by the media. Through out the whole book, almost everyone is constantly on their feeds getting information on what's “hot” and what's “not”. One of the big things I noticed in the book that the girls are always going off to change their hair styles based on what their feeds say is popular. It just shows that our obsession with the media and looking “cool” is so obvious now, that it is predicted to take place in the future as well.

Homework 13 Feed B

Although the story focuses on Titus and his friends, the author still find ways to sneak secret messages into the book that show that even tough Titus and his friends are happy with the feed, not everyone is. During the beginning of the book, Titus and friends are on the moon in a car and they drive past people protesting the feed, they pay them no mind. "they were protesting all these things, some of them even were protesting the feed. They were shouting, "chip in my head? I'm better off dead!chip in my head? I'm better off dead! " Loga rolled her eyes and was like, "Omigod' page 32. After this they aren't mentioned again. I like how the author includes the other side of the story by including the people who aren't conforming to the feed in the story. However, he only gives undertones of this, I think it's a nice way of showing how most of the population has already gave in and became a part of the feed now.

Another part I enjoyed was when the author shows signs of how nature is dyeing off is during the hospital scene were Titus and Violet are looking out at the dead garden. "Outside the window there was a garden....a long time ago the glass celling over the terrarium had cracked, and so everything was dead, and there was moon dust all over everything out there. Everything is gray" page 62. Titus has no reaction to the dead garden other then its beautiful. What I think the author was trying to show was that nature had been dyeing off due to the excessive technology use.  No one had even cared to replace the flowers that had once been there, They have been dead for years. Nature seems to be losing importance in the feed world.

My last argument is when Titus is looking at an older persons feed post. He writes about a time when Eagles were around and there were forests. This implies that in the feed world, there are no forests. "I remember as the last forest fell...at about that time, we would see hawks and eagles in the cities. People walked outside more, back then. The temperate usually didn't get about a hundred. There were streets in the cities, and eagles flew over them, wobbling without moving their wings.." page 94. This quote indicates many economic problems the feed world has been going through. Obesity seems to be up since it is stated that people get less excursive, global warming rising because the temperate is rising, all the forests are gone and hawks and eagles are extinct. Of cause, Titus pays this no mind and says its just an old mans rants. They do not know how bad their situation is. I think the author slipped this piece in to just the message across that the over run of technology has ruined to economy of this city.

Homework 12 Feed A

     I think the teenagers of Feed take digital addiction to a new level. Today, technology takes over a lot of younger peoples lives in many ways like through T.V, computers, cellphones, I pods, Social networking and etc... but it doesn't make up our whole lives. The kids of Feed are very similar to us but I feel their whole lives are just focused on their feeds. There is a possibility that his book my be a grim glimpse of our future. The feed provides all the things most Americans are interested in today, just in one convenient package . Tidus and his friends literally use their feeds for EVERYTHING, IMing, calling people, watching popular T.V shows, finding out the latest rends and etc...There feeds update them on the latest celebrity gossip, hairstyles, music, basically all updates in recent pop culture.

     Somethings I thought were weird were the effects the feed was having on the characters in the book. One that I found VERY weird was the fact that when Titus's dad came to visit him in the hospital, he talked just like Titus. He was using all the popular slang, he sounded just like one of the teens. "(Titus) How's mom?" "(father) She's like, whoa, she's like so stressed out. This is...dude" he said "Dude, this is some way bad shit" (page 55) I don't see many adults doing this now, my parents do sometimes and they pick it up from me and my sister. I think the result of his fathers weird speech may be from two things. The feed is ether producing so much new slang that the kids are using and now his fathers using it, or his father can go straight to the feed and learn the new slang so he can be "hip". I don't know why but when adults try and say stuff like "mad", it freaks me out which is kind of mean. They should be aloud to say it too, its just that it sounds bad enough coming from a kids mouth it just sounds worse coming from an adults.

     Another thing I noticed is that they all were going into withdrawal when they couldn't use the feed. When Titus is in the hospital, he begins to think of life before the feed and compares the feed several times to vital organs. "I miss the feed. I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and eyes. Computers were all outside our bodies. They carried them around outside them, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breath" page 47. I think it's very disturbing how Titus is comparing technology to something you need to live. He doesn't need the feed, but because it provides everything for him and its in their brains I'm assuming their all getting addicted to it. He also sounds so lazy saying we had to use our eyes and hands for our todays technology. Why would you ever want to lose ability to use one of your body parts?

     I think both of these elements are elements of tragedy. Human's rely on technology that much were they limit the activity of their EYES? Sight is a gift, I have no idea why you would want to waste it. Also it just seems like all this dependancy on technology is making people dumber. The father talks like he is some 15 year old kid which just makes him look ridiculous. How can you take someone like that seriously when they sound so dumb. Also Titus is complaining about how people had to use their hands to operate things like cellphones and such which just makes him sound so sad because they have taken technology to the next level were its becoming dangerous towards their health. I'm  not saying modern technology now isn't damaging towards health but I'm sure if we had feeds now, the obesity rate would sky rocket. For me, the feed would be something I personally wouldn't want. The feed seems meaningless to me. All the things it provides would not help me in my daily life, it would just slow me down. I could careless about celebrities lives, hair styles or the latest American Music since they have ling lost my interest.

Hw 11

Since this was the first experiment we are doing in class, I decided to take it slow. I chose to start with not using my cell phone for a full day, a task I felt would be easy but turned out to be incredibly hard. Without my phone, I couldn't go anywhere because I couldn't call anyone, not even my family. I also noticed how incredibly addicting my phone is. Once I had put it down I felt tempted to constantly read or send text messages to my friends, it was all I was thinking about. It was disappointing to see how hard the day was for me without my phone. Now that I actually couldn't use it, I felt like I NEEDED it. For me, I think the phone is a form of entertainment especially since mine has a T.V in it (which I didn't know when I bought it and personally think is stupid) and without the phone, I felt board and the day seemed longer. What I find even worse is that when I couldn't depend on my phone for entertainment, I turned to other electronics like my T.V or my computer instead of going outside and being active. Once I had noticed that, I went outside to draw for an hour or so, but unfortunately that wasn't very satisfying. The drawing in the park was very relaxing, I felt great actually going inside and gathering inspiration from actual people and not from images off my computer, but the day wasn't nearly as fun because of the parks location. The park near my house is a beautiful strip full of trees and grass, but its right in between two busy streets that are ALWAYS full of cars. Enjoying my alone time became difficult when all you can hear are the various noises of several cars like them driving, loud music blasting from them, and honking. It just felt like I was surrounded by technology again. This caused me to cut my drawing time short and I ended up back at home watching Television. What I am thinking of doing for my next experiment is a full day outside without any electronics. I want to go somewhere peaceful were I can't hear the loud noises of the city, so I am thinking an all day hike maybe in Inwood park. I really thought that giving up a piece of my technology would bring me closer to nature, which I believe my next experiment can properly provide.