Bowling League Awards

For several years while I lived in Calhan, Colorado, I was a member of the White Trash Wednesday Bowling League at the Calhan Bowling Center (now closed thanks to the economy). At the end of the season, we had a pot-luck awards banquet where everyone drank way too much, prizes for bowling accomplishments were awarded, and everyone who deserved one received a Very Special Certificate. This is the one I received! With the Certificate came a very special Ribbon:

On a more serious note, I did achieve several legitimate bowling accomplishments, and received the badges and pins pictured below.

Here's the funny thing about these achievements: My average was 103. I hit 75 pins over average AND my first 400 on the same night - a night I was notoriously and most uncharacteristically drunk. I mean falling-down, pass-out drunk. I had a bad day, was pissed at the world, and although I rarely drank, decided to have "just one" Long Island Ice Tea. Which became two. Then three... still not entirely sure if I had a fourth or fifth... but I do know I was completely incapable of walking the three blocks back home. Thankfully my friends got me home safely!

The post date of 5/1/2004 for this is an estimate - this definitely occurred in the late Spring of 2004, but I don't remember the exact date.  The above was written 26th December, 2011.

Flat-Rate Tax Flies

There are various different flat-rate income tax plans floating around, in the form of bills, candidate platforms, and public interest group stances, amongst others. The plans vary from a “strict” flat-rate income tax on all earned income - both personal and business - to plans that have flat rates for businesses but varying rates on earned income. There are also proposals for replacing all income tax with a consumption tax (also known as a national sales tax). The most common and feasible proposal is changing the current multi-tiered income tax system of increasing tax rates tied to increasing income (known as a progressive tax rate system) to one tax rate for all individuals, regardless of income.

Questions

"What happened?"

"Kashley, don't be rude!" her father says, scolding.

"It's OK, Trey." I look into her six-year-old eyes, this little blond beauty I have loved for four incredible years. She is not my daughter, but, like her father, she is my closest friend. The friendship between us confuses outsiders, but has a closer-than-family feeling to us.

I realize with surprise that neither she, nor her father, ever asked me about the scars on my face before. But Kashley is six now, with more than the usual amount of curiosity that comes with this age. I should have known that she, like many before her, would eventually ask.

"When I was four years old, I did something very stupid and hurt myself."

Tennyson’s Ulysses

Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses” is a lyrical continuation of the quest and life of Homer’s Odysseus. Starting shortly after Ulysses (Odysseus) returns home, “Ulysses” relates the difficulties experienced in adjusting to domestic life, his sheer boredom with the duties of being king, and his hunger for more travel and adventure. “Ulysses” explores the concept of the quest and the meaning of a life worth living, especially a life worth living for a man who had already lived life beyond the norm. Through “Ulysses,” Tennyson demonstrates that the quest is more than just an adventure: it is living life fully.

It’s All Wet

In “The Flow of the River,” Loren Eiseley takes the reader on a symbolic adventure exploring man and nature. Eiseley relates two of his experiences in the outdoors: floating down the Platte River on his back and his short relationship with a talking catfish found frozen in the river. As Eiseley floats down the Platte, he ponders the natural beauty around him and the connection of the natural world and humans that water creates. A frozen catfish, assumed dead, becomes Eiseley’s ultimate metaphor for the correlation of man and nature. Through these experiences with elements of water, Eiseley explores the character of man and nature. Eiseley’s use of symbolism demonstrates that through water, man and nature are the same.

Phi Theta Kappa Certificate

Surviving the Test of Time

In just fourteen short lines, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” eloquently captures a moment in time and history. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, was born into wealth, educated at Eton and Oxford, traveled widely throughout Europe, wrote extensively, and died regrettably young in a boating accident (Wikipedia.org). “Ozymandias”, written in 1818, is believed to have been written “in competition with his friend Horace Smith, as Smith published a sonnet a month after Shelley's which takes the same subject and makes the same moral point” (Wikipedia.org). “Ozymandias” is not considered Shelley’s best work by experts, but has become his most well-known as it has been his most anthologized (Sparknotes.com). The obvious moral of “Ozymandias” is simple: the mighty and powerful are subject to, and victims of, the inevitable forgetfulness of time and history. Less obvious but far more profound is the idea that the work of the artistsans is what gains the respect and honor of history. Through use of theme, structure and word choice, Shelley’s “Ozymandias” shows that it is not the work of the mighty and powerful that stands the test of time, but the work of the artists.