Napoleon Dynamite

Now, the only reason I’ve decided to review this movie because my boyfriend really wanted to re-watch it and I honestly don’t have the time to analyze an extra movie. I killed two birds with one stone by watching this movie. Without further ado, I present to you my review of Napoleon Dynamite.

I’m sure the vast majority of you have already seen Napoleon Dynamite, but it’s a sort of drama story that is filmed much like Juno and Little Miss Sunshine, but with less actual plot. This is a short plot summary taken from IMDb:

“A listless and alienated teenager decides to help his new friend win the class presidency in their small western high school, while he must deal with his bizarre family life back home.”

The thing about the official summary is that it only really deals with the last 1/3 of the movie. The greatest part of the movie is just setting things up, and even the class presidency storyline seems muddled down by all the other things that are going on in Napoleon’s life. Giving up an enticing plot for more of a slice of life story is an acquired taste, but I honestly love those types of movies. To follow someone else’s life can be somewhat interesting and I feel like I can connect better to the characters and even understand the humour more. To me, Napoleon Dynamite is so slice of life that nothing can be forced and everything is believable concerning the plot and the characters. The awkward moments are properly placed, the jokes are believable, and the cute moments are very few, but favourable.

When it comes to characters, each one of them has their own story and own ideas that isn’t improperly forced on you. All the characters in Napoleon Dynamite get a proper amount of screen time for you to understand what you need to about them. This is especially true for the grandmother. She only appears for a few scenes, but you know exactly the type of person she is through her appearances and what other characters say about her. If I were to choose a character that sticks out the most to me, it would obviously be Napoleon just because we get a completely feel for him because of how the movie follows him completely. I do feel, however, that the characters of more popular crowd are a tad stereotypical, but I think that’s the point of their characters, as they aren’t supposed to be fully developed and are just there to move the plot forward (or what there is of a plot).

The music in this movie is just plain entertaining to me. It’s just so… indie sounding, I guess. The music does fit properly in the movie and doesn’t really disturb the viewing, but enhances it. Not much else to be said about that, honestly.

The only real possible downfall to the movie is the fact that you need to be able to watch a rather slow-paced movie that unravels itself much like how events in real life do. Nothing in the movie is over-done and there is not real ‘interest’ value other than that in Napoleon’s life and the jokes that come up. I have to say, some of the character’s side plots are quite ridiculous and unfold so subtly that you need to think back as to what occurred before to cause the change in the character.

Overall, I personally like Napoleon Dynamite, but I think it’s definitely not for everyone. If you’ve seen Juno or Little Miss Sunshine and enjoyed the way it was done, then you should try out Napoleon Dynamite, if you’ve not yet seen it.

Well, that was a sufficiently boring review. Apologies. I’m better with things I feel strongly about.

Romantically Apocalyptic - Part 2: Theories

I know how much my FAITHFUL readers have been waiting for this, so I tried to finish it up and get it out there as quickly as possible. This was a really challenging post to make because I needed to research and figure out which of my theories that I wanted to talk about.  Also: I’m lazy.

This is part two of 

*SPOILERS*

For those of you here to read, I’d advise you read the comic before reading this blog post because I will be taking for granted that the reader will understand general information about the web comic.

When I decided to do the review of Romantically Apocalyptic, Adam, my boyfriend, and I spent a good few hours just talking about our theories of the comics and what might possibly be going on. This story is difficult to piece together because you need to look at not only the comic, but blog posts as well. We have narrowed it down to three things we want to discuss: the Captain’s gender, the Captain’s possible powers, and my colour theory about how certain colours in the comic tell a story and give hints to what is happening. The following is the collaborated efforts of Adam and me on these points. 

Gender Confusion

Captain himself is a large mystery, probably the largest in all of Romantically Apocalyptic. One that has stirred up the forums and fan base quite a bit is the gender of The Captain.

When I first stumbled upon Romantically Apocalyptic through my friend, Jim, I believed that Captain was male. That wasn’t difficult to mix up considering how masculine the Captain’s body is. However, there are a lot of hints that point toward The Captain being female, or at least was a female.

In one of the blog posts romanticallyapocalyptic.com/blog/a-captive-audience, the Pilot refers to Captain as being a little girl from Germany:

PILOT: “EVEN THOUGH I WASN'T BORN A "LITTLE GIRL IN A STRANGE AND FORGOTTEN COUNTRY FORMERLY KNOWN AS GERMANY", AND I CAN'T MAGICALLY TRANSCEND SPACE-TIME, SOMEDAY I WANT TO GROW UP TO BE JUST LIKE CAPTAIN...”

http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/6 Pilot refers to Captain as a female the most.

Later in the blog posts, when the voice is Engie’s, they leave Captain’s gender very unspecific, calling him “You”, “Project Seven”, or “Captain”

“Could Seven's luck actually transfer onto others?

If this is true, then Seven could be the key to my survival.

That or the super must have wanted me alive.

Oh, I will play your little game Captain.

I know not why you'd want me, but as long as I stay close to you, I might survive.”

Next : http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/86

Now, despite the fact that this is a canon fan comic, I do believe that it could be a hint towards Captain’s gender. Mind you, I think I read on Facebook that even though he wore a bra, doesn’t mean he’s a woman, but I can’t seem to find the post again.

Speaking of Facebook, I’d like to note that I follow all the characters on there and they called Captain a “he”, but I’m not sure how relevant that is as it’s a more relaxed forum. Thought it was worth mentioning, though.

It might be a bit of a stretch, but in one of Snippy’s dreams, just when they are about to go out into the danger zone, there is a woman in the background putting on a pair of purple eyes glasses.

I am personally convinced that this is the Captain, though Adam has his doubts. The only reason I believe that this is the Captain is because of the fact there has been no one else with this colour of goggles, so why randomly put someone in the background wearing a pair? It just doesn’t make much sense to me for Alexius to do that without reason. 

Doctor Captain

We are completely convinced that Captain has great powers that have something to do with time. It’s hard to talk about it completely because there are so many hints towards it. Dr. Gromov created Project Seven, which Snippy passed; Alexander was trying to experiment with bending time and stopping gravity. Dr. Gromov needed to find the luckiest person alive to do this, which is later pointed out to be Captain because Snippy called Seven a “Bumbling idiot who hands out machinery like candy”, which is what Captain did.

His flash back shows a world that looks much like our and we know the universe of ROMAC is far into the future. So, we can assume that Captain has had these powers for a long time, either coming from the future or the past, it is hard to tell.

The Pilot also explain in one of his blog posts how Captain stops time to save them from dying:

“I FLEW THE CAPTAIN ONCE ON A MISSION OF GREAT IMPORTANCE. WE HAD A SKY-ACCIDENT.
CAPTAIN SAVED MY LIFE FROM THE BURNING CARCASS OF THE FLYING COW.
CAPTAIN IS MAGIC, LIKE HARRY POTTER BUT MORE MAGIC.  
CAPTAIN CAN STOP CLOCKS, I KNOW BECAUSE I'VE SEEN IT. THE COW'S CLOCKS AND DIALS FROZE IN PLACE WHEN CAPTAIN GAVE THEM A STERN LOOK.
THE MIRACLES OF CAPTAIN ARE INFINITE AND GREAT.
CAPTAIN LIVES FOREVER. I HAVE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/8965509/Kim-Jong-il-the-life-and-times-of-North-Koreas-Dear-Leader-in-pictures.html?image=13

This picture is seriously scary because the fact that this is a REAL newspaper. It is possible that Alexius created the Captain in the image of the person in the background, but we can never be for sure. Still, I think this very post proves the existence of Captain’s time-bending powers. 

Colour Theory

[Sorry for the annoying colours below]

This theory is actually something I came up with by myself while sitting on my bed, idling watching the desktop background slideshow of ROMAC. The comic, though mostly in grey scale, has emphasis on some basic colours like red, green ,purple,  blue, and yellow. I believe this emphasis on colours is intentional in such a way that it tells us more about the story.

Through much conversation I have narrowed the colours down to what I think each of them means.

Red: This is Cancer, the one side of the invaders that want to make the Earth inhabitable for them by spreading their “taint”. (For Starcraft people: Think about Zerg’s creep)

Green: The other invaders who wish to cleanse the world to make it inhabitable for them. Red and Green are in a constant dispute over who can change the biosphere of the Earth. Currently: It seems like Red is winning.

Purple: This is the Captain’s colour. Purple is also a bit of a

mystical colour, which led me to believe that there was something different about the Captain.

Blue: Blue is the Good Inc, the people who crated ANNET and were taxing a bunch of stuff. This much is obvious by the continuing blue scenes when Snippy have “flashbacks” to his time in Good Inc. They are so important because ANNET brought about the apocalypse.

Yellow: These are the people who cling onto the humanity in the world, or the old world. Basically my only evidence of this is the cave people in the scenes after the Captain crashed the train into that building.

I’d also like to point out that all the colours are ever present in a main four characters. Let me tell you why:

Captain: Captain holds the colours of both red and purple. Though I am not sure why red, all I can guess is that there’s a possibly twist in his neutrality, the purple is his colour. Purple is also the colour in which time is most associated with in this comic and that is why I said above that I believe that Captain is some sort of time mage.

Snippy: Snippy holds the colours of blue. It is obvious that the reason for this is that he was a part of Good Inc and that he is still somewhat affiliated with them.

Pilot: Pilot holds the colour of green, and to be completely honest I have not thought of a reason for this. It may be because of his purity and childish purity. Or there is a twist later.

Engie: Engie holds the colour of yellow. My theory for his colour is that his main goal in creating ANNET was to advance humanity and make things a little simpler for them. However, he did not think it would back fire so terribly.

It sounds just about right. The only problem is the fact that Green (Invader's Union) sent out Cancer (Biomass 117), which is Red.

 Now, I'd like you to turn your attention to this: 

Notice the cogs in the background being surrounded by purple clouds, which represents the Captain in my theory. Below that is the old world, the world where the universe was fine and not shrinking. Now, it is because of this picture that I believe that Captain's spat with time has effected the size of the Universe. This both belongs in my Colour Theory and the Captain's time travel theory, but I wanted to mention it after showing the colours.

In the same comic is this picture:

I believe this picture depicts the battle between the old world, dependent on brain power (left side) and the new world, dependent on technology. Not much else to be said for these. [Comic #28]

I believe that later in the series that some of these points will become more evident, or my theories might be debunked. However, I stand firm on the idea that Alexius had this story completely planned out and everything that is done in it is very deliberate and that the silliest is supposed to distract you from finding out plot points too early.

Children's Literature: The Importance of Conflict

What issue does the character have to face in this story?

      Leo needs to face that his ears just don’t stand up the same way all the other bunny’s ears do.

How does the character’s internal conflict affect how he or she deals with this issue?

      Leo, desperate for acceptance, tried very hard to get his ears to stand up straight.

How does this character’s external conflict affect how he or she deals with this issue?

      Leo’s external conflict of the other rabbits laughing at him makes him more desperate to try and make his ears stand up completely. 

That was such a long post. I'm a productive student.

Ultimate Short Story: Galvanize

Alice asked me to post my short story on the blog, so now I am. Two blogs in one night, double whammy. For those of you looking to comment on blog posts, have a frenzy here! 


Anyway, here we go: 

Galvanize

By Larissa Darrah

“I had always considered myself to be drawn by oddities in life,” the soft, male voice echoed through the sparsely furnished room. It was only the ghost of a voice, but it caused tears to painfully twinge Roxanne’s eyes.  His voice came from the simple recording device that sat in the middle of the table in front of her, beside a stack of papers, on them written a story. It was his story, but it was also her story. 

The voice continued, “I visited a local 7/11 earlier tonight, struggling to write for a deadline. She, Roxanne, was arguing with the cashier about the price of the cigarettes.” 

That night was still so clear in her mind. It was one of the seldom nights during those times she had been sober enough to remember the events. She had gone to buy cigarettes only to find she did not have enough money to buy them, being only a few dollars short. When he, Jonathan, had walked in she had been telling the cashier that she could pay later. The cashier didn’t like that idea. Just when Roxanne was about to start shouting obscenities, Jonathan placed an energy drink on the counter and a bill that would pay for his purchase with plenty left over.

“Use the change for the cigarettes,” He had said to the cashier and then smiled at Roxanne. 

Moments later, they were outside, leaning against the building. They spoke of trivial things, small talk. Roxanne felt it was the best she could do as she puffed on the cigarette he had paid for in part. 

“Do you have a place to stay?” He had asked, almost suddenly. Roxanne was sure there was some sort of lead into the question, but that part of the conversation seemed to escape her.

“Of course I do, what do you think I am, some kind of hobo?” There has been no amusement in her voice. “I’m leaving,” She had stated plainly. 

“Uh, wait,” Jonathan stammered, “If you even need any…. Uh, y’know, help, or anything, here is my phone number.” He then handed her the piece of paper with the numbers etched on it and she left.

The voice recorder’s thoughts of the event interrupted her memory, “I knew I needed to keep her somehow. It was like her heart was calling out for help.” There was a short pause, signalling a new vocal entry, “It’s been about a week. Roxanne called me yesterday. We went for coffee.” 

Roxanne smiled. The joy in his voice brought the memory of his face when they met outside the coffee shop. He seemed surprised that she was able to look like a decently dressed woman, which was quite the change from the raggedy she had worn when they first met. The coffee meeting had been a pretty normal event. It was just two adults meeting to get to know one another better. The meeting, however, seemed much more important to Jonathan.  

“I told her everything,” the voice recorder said, “I told her my worries about writing and my dreams of becoming famous. I told her about my sister, my parents. Roxanne just sat there, listening. She told me her profession, a taboo profession. Roxanne sold her body to the men her boss gave her. She told me she had no other dreams, that it was what she wanted to do. I didn’t believe her.” 

The recordings lasted over a few months, documenting their dates and the progress of their relationship. Roxanne listened intently, hearing his voice slowly becoming more and more troubled with each entry. The more he got to know Roxanne, the more pain it caused him. She had gone down a dark path that was difficult to pull someone out of without sacrificing your own wellbeing. Roxanne hadn’t seen the pain she’d been causing him, but the breaking of his voice now caused her pain, her stomach muscles knotting. It was only now that Roxanne felt guilty for forcing Jonathan to deal with a girlfriend who sold herself and was addicted to heroin. 

 

“I have to stop her,” The voice choked out, “It may seem deranged for me to deal with this rather than walking away from it. If it were any other woman, I would have walked away. This is Roxanne though, Roxanne is not like any other woman and she needs me. She needs me to sacrifice my own life to rescue her from herself.” 

“She’s not doing well,” his broken voice could hardly be heard behind the desperate sobs of herself, muffled by a bedroom door, “She’s vomiting, but she’s not eating. She doesn’t sleep and sometimes she just lays there and stares. Watching her makes me feel as if I’m being torn limb from limb.” 

There is another pause to signal a new entry, “She’s eating again, and she even looks at me with recognition now. Roxanne and I have been through a few horrendous months, but I think she thanks me for what I’ve done.”

Once Roxanne had gotten over her withdraws, a time that she had since forgotten, she could finally see the hurt in Jonathan’s eyes. This was a man who had bitten off more than he could chew and Roxanne had felt like she was being torn limb from limb as the sparkle that once graced Jonathan’s eyes seemed to leave. 

“She’s done with that life. I know it in my heart Roxanne wants nothing more than to leave what she now believes is toxic. She’s gone back to take her things. I don’t trust them though; I don’t think they’ll let her leave that easily and I think she knows that as well. Just look at how much work they put into tearing her down. I won’t let them harm her anymore. I love Roxanne and I will tell her that with my last breath.”

The tape ends there. That was the last entry Jonathan ever made into his recorder. 

He followed her that night, to the place where her possessions and former boss were. All would have gone well, she would have been in and out without him knowing, but someone had told him she was there. Just as she was stepping back onto the sidewalk, he was coming out after her. He was larger in stature, and could definitely outrun her and use his bare hands to stop her from leaving. 

The street was empty that night, and it was cold and would have been lonely if Roxanne hadn’t of been thinking about her freedom with Jonathan. With a strong hand, she was forced to look at the boss, his face near hers and the barrel of the guns pressed to the side of her head. She could smell the alcohol on his breath as he screamed in her face. He told her she couldn’t leave, that he would kill her if she even thought of it.

“I’m willing to take that risk,” she had said, only to receive the metal of the gun into the side of her face, sending her to the ground. There was the copper taste of blood on her tongue as she looked up at her boss. 

The gun was pointed at her head and Roxanne closed her eyes. She waited for the metal to tear through the skin of her head and skull to lodge into her brain, sending her to her death. The crack the gun ripped through the night air, but death didn’t come to her. Roxanne heard a gentle thump on the sidewalk, followed by the padding of feet across the pavement. Opening her eyes, she saw the boss running, his body displaying nothing but fear as he padded up the stairs and slammed the door behind him. Her eyes fell to the body in front of her. Across the blue denim of the man’s jacket was the hastily spreading blood, as quick as the puddle that formed below him. 

She was by Jonathan’s side in an instant, his head lying in her lap. Roxanne took her sweater off and pressed against the wound, desperately attempting to stop the bleeding. She couldn’t stop the bleeding, or the tears. Roxanne felt his hand on her cheek and she looked down at him, his face a weary variation of a man she had met only months prior. Jonathan’s thumb swiped a tear from Roxanne’s cheek and gave her a comforting smile.

“I love you,” Jonathan choked out, letting out a long breath as his body fell limp.

A Passage from American Gods

I was recently chewed up and spit out by my culminating project book in the most sensual way possible. In other words, I stayed up into the late hours of the night just reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman and have yet to fix my sleeping schedule. 

 

It's almost as bad as the cruel clutch of the internet.

Over and over I have been amazed by Gaiman’s ability to create a relatable main character and, if you can’t relate to him, relatable side characters. What impressed me the most about the following passage is that this character, after 394-ish pages, has only appeared 3 different times. It was only until this tie that I realized how much I liked Sam, but I will explain that after you read the passage. No background is needed, and I’d also like to mention that there are a few mature statements in the passage, but nothing too graphic. So, without further ado, here is Sam’s monologue.

“I,” she told him, “can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.”

“Really?”

“I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe in things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe people are perfectible, that knowledge in infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on the regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline of drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that it’s better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink in the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that anti-bacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we will all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that a thousand years in a former life I was a one-armed Serbian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universal billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to go hang out with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims they know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe it’s a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” She stopped, out of breath.

Now, I’ve always considered myself not exactly a completely opinionated person, but more so a person who likes to play Devil’s Advocate. I don’t usually have real opinions of all, but you can tell when I am serious about something. The reason I like Sam so much is that her beliefs contradict in such a way that makes her seems like a very open-minded person, much like myself. I also like how Gaiman mixes serious topics with absolutely ridiculous ones to make it almost satirical and constantly entertaining to read. 

So, yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this because I really wanted to share it with you and give you a bit more of an insight on who I am. Now maybe you don’t think I’m a completely snarky, critical person. 

I also highly recommend this book for mature audiences who aren't bothered by sex, strong language, and violence. But, I mean, who wants to read anything without that? 

Discussion Questions for Coming of Age Stories

One of the coming of age stories that I really enjoy is actually a story arc in the second season of Popular.

Front (Left to Right): Brooke McQueen and Sam McPherson

Back (Left to Right): Nicole Julian, Michael 'Sugar Daddy' Bernardino, Mary Cherry, Josh Ford, Lily Esposito, Carmen Ferrara and Harrison John

***SPOILERS***

In the story arc, Harrison John get Leukemia and has to deal with the fact that he is sick, but also find hope that he will live. Something that I really like about this is that Harrison John is, for a lack of better words, an a-hole. Seriously, he’s rude to everyone when he gets sick. It just followed his character so well from other story arcs about him because whenever bad things happened, he had extreme emotions about it. I just felt like it was very believable for the character. Another thing I also liked is that, because it’s a story arc and other things are going on as this is happening, you watch the other character’s reactions to their friend having cancer. Sam McPherson, Harrison’s best friend, strikes me as one of the three most interesting characters to watch deal with this. Sam’s father had died of cancer when she was younger and it was really hard for her to have to deal with it, but it also gave her a lot more hope when Harrison finally pulled through. The second character I find most interesting in this situation is Brooke McQueen, who actually relapses back into an eating disorder because of how horrid Harrison is to her when she comes to visit. Finally, the last one I find interesting is Nicole Julian, the really mean one who believes that the friends you have is completely related to how popular they make you. What surprises me is that one Christmas, Nicole finds out she is the bone marrow match to Harrison and goes into surgery with him to give him a transplant. Probably the best things about this story arc is the addition of Clarence, Harrison’s roommate who has Leukemia and actually dies just before Christmas and comes back as an angel is training to show Harrison should value his life and not give up just because Clarence is gone. Before Clarence comes back as an angel, Harrison refuses to walk down the hall for his daily exercise because it’s a metaphor for his first step in getting better. However, after Nicole says she’s going into surgery with Harrison, he says he wants to walk and he does. I just love the metaphor used here. It would be difficult to highlight everything I enjoyed about the story arc, because it lasted about 5 episodes, each 45 minutes long, but these are the things that stuck out to me the most. 

***END SPOILERS***

The theme I will be exploring in my coming of age story is noticing the sacrifices people make for you. 

• Jonathan and Roxanne meet.
• They go out for coffee. Jonathan finds out about her prostitution.
• Jonathan finds out her drug addiction.
• Jonathan spends months trying to help her get off of them, keeping her at his place
• Roxanne decides to give up her old life.
• Roxanne goes back to her old place to try and get her stuff.
• Jonathan follows her and when “the boss” goes to shoot her, Jonathan runs out and gets shot. The guys run, afraid of the possibility of him being a person who will be missed.
• Jonathan dies. 

Roxanne’s epiphanic moment is when she decides to give up her old life. This is when she sees how much Jonathan has given up to save her from that life and she doesn’t want to just go back to what she was doing before. Sadly, the character’s life does not transform the way she thinks it will, but it does transform in a different way. She needs to find a way to life that’s respectful to the work that Jonathan did, but she also now has to do it without Jonathan.

Discussion Questions for Setting

Setting is a pretty important aspect of my writing, but I personally don’t think it’s always needed. What needs to be understood when writing is that everything must have a reason for being there. If you’re writing a detailed setting just because you believe the reader needs to know exactly what the place looks like, you’re wasting your audience’s time. Of course setting is not always the physical place, but it still applies. If those details don’t help your story, there is no reason for it. Sometimes I leave out the physical setting because all that is important is the interaction between the characters. Most of the time, I leave the setting very vague and let the reader building the setting in their own mind. This is because the reader will pull from their personal life, or from things they enjoy, thus making it more comfortable for the reader. The reason I do this is because, as a wise woman once told me, “You write what you want to read.” 

Shanty for the Arethusa 

The Decemberists

 

We set to sail on a packet full of spice, rum, and tea leaves
We've emptied out all the bars and the bowery hotels
Tell your daughters, do not walk the streets alone tonight
Tell your daughters, do not walk the streets alone tonight

To tell the tale of the Jewess and the Mandarin Chinese boy
He led her down from her gilded canopy of cloth
And through her blindfold she could make out the figures there before her
And how the air was thick with incense, cardamom, and myrrh

So goodnight, boys, goodnight
Say goodnight, boys, goodnight

We set to sail on the clipper that's bound for South Australia
The weather's warm there, the natives are dark and nubile
But if you listen, quiet, you can hear the footsteps on the cross-trees
The ghosts of sailors passed, their spectral bodies clinging to the shrouds

So goodnight, boys, goodnight
Say goodnight, boys, goodnight

To explain this would be a little difficult, as you sort of need to take the Decemberists with a bitten tongue and a grain of salt. A lot of the theories for the song is that it’s pirates raping people, or that it’s about slavery. Others are a bit broader in their theories, saying it was generally how rough the men of the sea were. Overall, you can see that it describes a group of people who may not be too kind getting their just desserts at the end. 

What struck me the most in the lyrics of this song, and which also follows some of Cheatham’s teachings, is the correct use of adjectives. A good example of this from the song would be “gilded canopy of cloth.” Rather than calling it a golden cloth, Colin Meloy uses interesting word choice to make the phrase memorable when read as well as sung. 

Another thing from Cheatham’s teachings that is also in the lyrics is how it engages the five sense. I can smell the spice, rum and tea leaves as well as the incense, cardamom, and myrrh. The fact that the latter is thick in the air makes me think of how my eyes would still slightly and how I couldn’t exactly see through, which was said in the previous line. In those two lines about the products, it also engages your taste, as most often when you can smell something you can taste it in the air. In verse three, we’re told the weather is warm in South Australia, which is touch sensory. We’re told that if we listen quietly we can hear the footsteps on the cross-tress, engaging our ears.  

There are plenty more of Cheatham’s teachings in there and I’m sure I could apply them all somewhere. I’ve only decided to mention those which stuck out to me most and/or were used the most. I’d also like to mention briefly that a lot of the Decemberists songs are able to use these teachings and definitely display strong word choice skills.