Tales From This Side

Student : Joyce, James – Sophomore class Offense : Plagiarism Remarks : Having just turned in his cumulative piece of creative fiction for the term, I was immediately struck by the similarities between James’ work and a novel we read earlier in the term. His work, which he titles Ulysses , seems markedly similar in thematic form and structure to Homer’s The Odyssey , which we finished reading several weeks ago. Upon deeper investigation, I uncovered a multitude of thematic ideas, apparently lifted, wholesale, from Homer’s work. After reviewing several chapters of James’ lengthy piece I had already accumulated enough evidence to find him guilty of plagiarism. Such evidence includes the use of names and chapter titles identical to those that Homer uses. Nowhere is this content cited as Homer’s own. Furthermore, the tale finds James’ characters on quests virtually identical to those that Homer sends his characters on, such as Stephen Dedalus, a character that James seems to parall...

What a terrible power is bestowed upon he who can, and does, smash a smile that is untethered by the foolish concerns of a stringent society. It is a power derived from the self-righteous inspiration of self-discipline, so sharp in contrast to the airy smile whose only discipline is desire. The jealousy of such an undisciplined freedom is that which drives the hard word and the judgmental gaze. Cruel ironies rise from the attacker's seething surface when he realizes that the very thing that his self-imposed rigidity had hoped to cultivate was that which was, instead, banished from his presence. There's a sunny bench in front of a convenience store that holds a girl in a light dress, barely covering her legs, that is, yet, heavier than the spirit it contains. Just heavy enough to keep her from floating off on the breeze in a laugh. The bounce with which she moves reveals her ethereal composition and the resulting, airy frame is so free of sharp angles that nothing undesired...

I have friends who have friends who watch movies, and sometimes those movies land in my P.O. Box. Me And You And Everyone We Know is one of these. The movie as a whole, encompassing the different, intertwining plot lines that make it up, endeavors to remedy the psychological and physical isolation that is pervasive for all of the characters. It is a purely sentimental movie, however, failing to address the modern, social causes of this isolation, even if it does expose them in the art museum which showcases representations of human interaction in the "digital age." The beauty of the art show is that it mirrors the relationships that exist throughout the majority of the film that are, in fact, merely representations of real interactions. Two people strolling down a sidewalk, for instance, create a scene that is, via their conversation, symbolic of the phases of a real relationship that may, or may not, come to pass. The happy ending, of course, is that it does come toget...

Continued from Part II Taking a cue from my former mouse-friend, I settle my back into the deeply chiseled bark of a cottonwood tree. Having begun its downward slide, the sun seems now to take on a rapid pace, dismissing the long hours it had tenuously held to its blazing pinnacle in the sky. With the change in location, the brilliance of the sun begins to diminish and pitiless, white light gives way to a burnt, orange tone that seeps into the air and landscape. All things take on a softer feeling and scenery once outshined by the sheer strength of the sun now becomes highlighted, almost glowing in this moment of lighted revelry. Facing the sun across the Missouri, my eyes begin to crease and half close as I watch the river. From my perspective it flows in bands, some moving swiftly, some moving slowly, aqueous layer stacked upon layer from shore to shore. Pockets of tanish bubbles float in the separate streams, along with various other flotsam, revealing the different paces a...

Continued from Part I Lazy hours ticked away on an invisible clock, I having long ago shed my watch, without further rodent-related incidents, and the settled torpor brought me back to my summer reading. As the stage silently reset itself, however, a new player, like the previous, entered from stage up . A crashing sound in the canopy above, protracted and increasing in volume, as the sound of a boulder tumbling through underbrush towards us, roused Doug and I from our second bout of river-induced malaise. As suddenly as it had started, it ceased, and we caught each other staring idly at the ground in the space between us, empty as it had been before the ruckus. This, of course, led our gazes upward. Perhaps ten feet off the ground, the lowest hanging collection of light cottonwood branches was swaying rhythmically in a broad, two foot arc, entirely at odds with the lack of prevailing breeze. At first glance it seemed a simple anomaly, but between the twirling, serrated fringed...

Though Montana is the setting for rivers that run through it , the Blackfoot is not the only waterway of note winding through the vast plains of the northern mid-west. The Missouri is famous for hosting Lewis and Clark’s transcontinental voyage, for overwhelming its banks and wreaking havoc on homesteaders, and, more recently, for driving me mad with its muddy, sinkhole-dotted shorelines and the biting insects that love them. There is something greater than my history or theirs’, though, at work on this river. Gazing down the river from its center, it appears to run into infinity as the banks move progressively closer and closer together. Turning around, the same view greets the eyes and one realizes that looking backward is really the same as looking forward on this river, filled with activity that registers only on the small scale, seemingly begging you to look into the water rather than past it. Lewis and Clark were on a mission to find the headwaters of the Missouri, a conclu...

...or Its Raining And I'm Stuck In My Tent And My Foot Hurts Prickly Pear Oh Prickly Pear, Why do you pop up everywhere Upon this river wide and fair? Prickly Pear Cactus out there, Despite my long and gazing stare Your camouflage did bring to bear Your thorn inside my foot. Prickly Pear Oh Prickly Pear, Why did you prick without a care My sandaled foot all pink and bare? Prickly Pear Cactus out there, How river travelers must beware Your angry thorns that bite and tear The hiker’s wayward boot. Prickly Pear OH PRICKLY PEAR! I long to shout and give you scare Enough to make you quit your lair! But I laugh, with glee within, When instead you do prick Jim .

No, not THAT kind! Whether it is frustration-fueled tirades from a year ago or contemplation of health-related considerations today, it seems food is often on my mind. It was with some surprise, then, that the Delancyplace daily email that I got today was so tuned into what I was thinking about. Delancyplace is a daily email service that sends out thoughtful and intriguing quotations from different literary sources each day. Usually they are historically oriented, with the piece's respective authors whining about some historical nonsense, who did what wrong and when, in the vain hope of inciting some sort of social change that, in 4000 years of human history, has utterly failed to materialize. The entry I came upon, though, ran much deeper than the usual fare, though the implications of what was being said was well beyond the author's own realization. He was writing about the first human technology ever, fire, and its immediate impact on food. J.M. Roberts , in his ...

So, I actually wrote the following post many months ago, when I was still a San Diego resident. It was probably incited by some lack of sexual activity on my part, and I quickly decided to let it sit on my electronic desktop rather than risk posting such anti-social material. Now I'm in Montana, once again afflicted with a lack of sexual activity. That, however, only parallels the real reasons I'm posting it now: A) I actually think its kind of funny; and B) Women in Montana are almost invariably larger than me. Maybe it is the fact that the staple diet here is 75% cattle products (the last store I was in had more than 30 varieties of beef jerky in bulk container "fill a bag to your heart's (stomach's?) content" style. Also, I have never seen produce aisles so devoid of real produce. Since when does a wall of bagged spinach count as produce? Forgive the pre-rant and please sit back and enjoy the full one... Circa early 2006 Time to piss everyone off...

Regarding the alleged impact of global warming, I recently read the following statement: "'Current crops are adapted to the current climate. Start changing that and you change everything,' Fowler said. 'Plant breeders will have to be designing totally new varieties.'" This, in a nutshell, is the crux of the problem with humanity. Not the statement itself, but the philosophy that drives it. This statement reveals that the speaker, like most people, places himself on a pedestal that is outside the reach of the rest of the natural world and universe. The statement assumes that if climate changes, the natural world will not adapt with it. It assumes that only by the hand of human intervention will the world continue to move along its course. It posits man as God, subjugating the lesser forms about Him to His righteous and proper will. It displays the great falsity in human understanding of the universe: that humanity must and will exist forever. A state...

An occasional perusal of news sites can relay a lot of information to the reader about the state of affairs in the U.S. and beyond, but sometimes I think the most revealing information lies in tidbits that don’t get the benefit of headlines. For instance, White House press secretary Tony Snow recently spoke to the media regarding the massive troop increase President Bush has slated for Iraq, despite large scale public and government disapproval of the action. Snow said “"The president will not shape policy according to public opinion, but he does understand that it's important to bring the public back to this war, and restore public confidence and support for the mission." Interesting. Let’s break this one down a bit, shall we? So, according to the public relations officer for the executive branch of the U.S. government, the President of the United States is no longer willing to perform actions that are desired by the people that he was assigned to work for. Further...

Sometimes, things just seem to fall together correctly. Chance? Maybe, but maybe not. My day began, as usual, with a laundry list of things to get done. The first order of business was to pick up a few items at the grocery store so that I wouldn’t go hungry, food acquirement being one of the prime directives in my life. The store is close and I own a bicycle, so off I go, backpack strapped on. I’m about 40 feet from my front door, getting ready to leave the sidewalk and become a fearless member of the Pacific Beach driving community, when a curled up twenty dollar bill catches my eye. Needless to say, I stopped. I picked it up and quickly realized that it was actually three bills, all twenties, folded up together. The bills were crisp and clean. Clearly they had only recently fallen there. I looked around to see if anyone was walking away from the spot. Regardless of whether I am believed or not, if I had seen someone who might have dropped them I would have gone and asked ...