Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

This week I read Stiff. It is a non-fiction book about all of the different things that happen to people after they die, including organ donors in crash tests and decay studies, cannibalism in history and composting, the newest alternative to cremation. It also looks at how these scientists view the morals of their experiments, such as attaching a puppy's head to an adult dog.
I loved it. It was the most interesting non-fiction book I've ever read and I liked the writing style. The author had a humorous tone during parts of the book but it was delivered very well so it was never disrespectful. The descriptions were disgusting which made it very interesting. It is 303 pages, so not unbearably long. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who isn't grossed out easily.

Slice of Life #2

We left the house a 7:36, just six minutes after our goal, which is pretty impressive considering my dad was the one to drive us. The faded ink on my left hand depicted a donut in purple and black to remind me. It seemed necessary at the time, but I guess the act of drawing it on implanted it in my brain. The donut shop, a small independent one was only blocks from my house but as soon as we saw the traffic half a block away, we knew it would take more effort. It was a perfect storm of stress and chaos, with my siblings screaming, the dog pacing in the backseat and my dad leaning on the horn. He complained about people who were too old to be driving, people texting and people half-asleep at the wheel. Perhaps more people than he realized were innocent, good drivers in his position, just less assertive in their tiny cars. I just sat silently, knowing that we would make it because he wanted to beat the 'bad drivers'. He had a goal, a clear objective and he was going to win. Win the donut game.

Slice of Life

Forming words to a certain mold seems so normal now, now that I know that the molds come in different shapes and sizes. I found myself testing them again yesterday, adding and removing syllables to make the puzzle fit together. The first time I tried, the ends of the letters poked out of the mold and the little gaps in the middle reflected my lack of practice. I turned them over in my mouth because they didn't quite taste right, but the faces of my classmates proved that I was not the only one. I spat them out, grooming my inflections and my tone to quench the dissonance of the phrases. I couldn't wait to get that over with, my classmates' vision pressing into my cheeks and making them hot. I finished, I repeated my words with only a couple of stumbles and was met with the mandatory, yet irritating, snap-clapping.
The molded words are poetry and while reading my first poem was awkward, I've gotten over it. I'm better at shaping my sentences so only an end or the dot of an 'i' pokes outside the lines. After all, poetry, while maybe not a valuable life skill, will always be a part of my life at Logan, so the best I can do is to just get over it.

Limericks

Bagel Heads

There once was a man in Japan
Who had low self esteem 'cause he drove a minivan
So he filled up his head
but soon he was dead
Because he got saline from a hobo man

Winter Break

Winter break, soon set in the boredom
Numbing my cranial organ
Staring blankly, I drool
Because when resumes school
It surely will be post-mortem

Logan

There once was a student from Logan
Who was always much too outspoken
He yelled out in class
So they stunned him with gas
And finished him off with a blowgun

Tomato: My Occasional Poem

He did it, the unthinkable
completely outside the box of imaginable
it was a suicidal action, for sure
or so they thought
but without him we wouldn't know differently

Pioneers come in a lot of packages
but for a powerful package,
his action was awfully small

But he did it first
on the courthouse steps
and that means a lot
because without Colonel Johnson
I would have never
ever
eaten a tomato

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

This week I read Thirteen Reasons Why. It is about this kid who gets tapes in the mail from Hannah Baker, this girl who killed herself, and each tape has stories about people that were part of the reason why she died. He also gets this map of places where she recommends he go as he listens to the tapes, and when he's done he is supposed to pass them on. It is only 336 pages, and the way it's written makes it an easy read, but the content matter is hard.
There were parts of this book that I really did like and parts that I didn't. Hannah had a really clear voice and she was a likable character even though she died before the book took place. The author did a good job of personifying a teenage girl, which surprised me.The main character, Clay Jensen, was really boring. He didn't really do anything except for listen to the tapes and sob. A little more character development would have been nice. My other problem was that each story was really similar to the other ones, and I think towards the end the author was having a hard time coming up with more stories. The main reason I kept reading was to find out why the boring main character was on the tapes, but once I found out towards the middle, the rest of the book was a lot less interesting. I would recommend this book to pretty much anybody (especially if you don't pick a book until Thursday).

Jellyfish: My stream-of-conciousness poem

Sometimes I wish that I were a jellyfish
Enveloped in the cool, clear blue
I wouldn't be concerned with a smartphone
or politics
or the state of my toast because my toaster is broken
or how I look
Some of my tentacles would be smooth and thin, and some would be
thick and
textured like a feather duster and
twisted into a long, loose spiral that holds its shape
I'll wait until my toes turn to tentacles
and my brain numbs and melts into the gelatin of my body

Cursing the Self-checkout machines

May your creator be forced to shove spaghetti up his nose,
May you rust in the landfill
and kindle a bonfire of useless electronics.
May you relive the pain of a thousand shoppers
and the face of the perky attendant erased from the universe.