The Mustachioed Man

"Hello," I say

The big man with the mustache laughs

“Why?” I ask

We huddle closer together as he thumbs

the brass and wooden

trigger

“I am invincible!” he says,

swinging at us with the bayonet.

“Are you sure?” I ask

 

“I leave a wake of death and

destruction in my path,”

he roars, “Headstones are laid

wherever I walk!”

“Is that not power? Foolish boy!”

One man smiles, and collapses as

a bullet pierces his head.

“Are you sure?” I ask

 

“I Fight for king and Country!”

the man bellows over the explosions

As the dirt rains down, the others seem

to swell with

pride.

Maybe fighting is right.

I stare

“Are you sure?”

 

The mustachioed man grows quiet

his vigorous rantings dead

The color drains from his face

and his hands claw at my wrists

“All I see is death,” he whispers

His now dark and empty eyes

search my own

 

“I don’t believe in goodbyes,”

says the big man with the mustache

He leaps up, over the top…

and his body tumbles back down

“Hello,” I say

Feedback 12-16 The Millitary and YOU

I currently hold a U.S passport. In U.S, it isn't mandatory to fight in the millitary. It's an intresting delima, giving yourself and your experties over to a country. It requires ultimately supporting your country no matter what. Personally, I don't think I could commit my life to something else, especially, in this case, if it invovled killing other humans. The current age for the draft is 18-25. Lets consider this for a second, 18-25 years. Thats incredibly young, and sending 18 year olds to the war is like throwing our future into the fire. That would be a complete waste of whatever gifts and ideas I and anyone else could share with the world. We are given life, and life is ment to LIVE, to create and to prosper. How can I or anyone else achieve that if were fighting and killing in the name of someone else's mistake. I wouldn't join the army to fight a war, period.
If the draft was ever ressurected, I would probably flee to Canada. Fighting for a cause I don't believe in is worse then fighting to die.

Political Cartoon Evaluation

This interesting cartoon pretains to the first world war. The main visual elements are the different military commanders representing their country. Each one of them, except for the lady on the left, are interconnected via rolled up parchments. I think that the parchments represent treaties or deals made between the millitary commaders of WW1. Therefore, this cartoon is about the numerous treaties, ceasefires, trade deals, and other "receipts" for behind the back deals that all the countries in WWI enacted. The main divide down the middle, where Germany and Austo-Hungary meet, forms the two "alliances" from WW1. However, if you examine the picture closely, you can see that all the countries, Turkey, Russia, Italy, America, and Brittan, are actually connected. This means there was no war , because in the end, the enimies are signing deals with the allies. Thats what I think the Author's oppinion on this issue is that there was no WWI. The one other piece of evidence that supports this is how the Swiss representative has been cut out off the treaties. The reason behind this is that Switzerland maintained neutrality throughout the war, refusing to join either of the "alliances."

I think that if the cartoonist wanted have a bigger impact, he should of done two things. First was he should have added a caption, and second, make it a little clearer which countries were which.

This cartoon relates to the great powers game in many ways. The first and most prominent is that we all represented great powers like Russia or Germany. Also, just like the cartoon, in our attempts to gain power, we ended up being allies with every single person in the game. The example of our trade deals and war plans were two alliances, the "axis," and the "allies." *cough*
However, if you traced some of the deals and treaties, it turned out there was no "axis and Allies," it was just one massive grouping of people tied together. We had all inadvertedly ended up supporting the opposing side. This tangle of failed treaties eventually led to the collapse into chaos and war. So really, this cartoon represents more then our game or ww1. It represents basic human nature to secure power, and fail miserably doing so.

Quarter 3 Goals.

This quarter was tough but fun, and this made my goals from last quarter harder to achive. However, I think that I managed to cover all three of them. My first goal was to turn in all my assignments on time. Almost all my assignments were turned in on time. One or two were late, or unsatisfactory. Thats why I'm keeping this goal as one to work on for the upcoming quarter. My second goal was to study harder for tests and quizzes, and review along the way. I think that I accomplished this goal partially because I actually did put more time aside to study, and also because my overall test grade was increased. My third gaol was to finish AR on time, becuase last time I did AR I had to rush to complete it. This quarter I finished AR with a few weeks to spare, and it was also above sixteen points. Overall, I did a pretty good job on accomplishing my goals. Two out of three isn't that bad.

This quarter I wan't to keep one of the above goals since it's a long term goal. I wan't to turn in ALL my assignments on time. The second goal I wan't to accomplish is finish my blog a little earlier before the blog evaluation. Last time, I waited untill twenty four hours before the blog evalutiton to update my blog. My third goal is to prepare for the upcoming socratic seminars, and back up all my info.