Hi! My name is Luke Perry. I am from Cincinnati, Ohio and I am a huge Bengals fan. Needless to say I hate the Steelers more than any other team in the NFL and I am very upset that they felt the need to cheat and have one of their mentally incapacitated, ugly linemen take out our super star quarter back. Something funny did come of this though. On my message board outside of my door I left a note that said “Slit your throat Kimo Von Oelhoffen. No one will miss you.” Kimo is the guilty linemen. One of the RA’s in my building who is clearly confused and lacks a sense of humor took this as a death threat and decided to call the police. The police came with a bag of donuts and stood outside our door eating and deciding what to do about the message; I was out for the night. They proceeded to question the neighbors about what kind of person I was. Then they went to a room number that one of my friends left on the board to see if they could find my roommate and me, but luckily we had just left that room also and continued on our merry way. The End.

MLK letter
The letter from Birmingham Jail written by MLK truly shows his brilliance. His arguments are unified and well supported. I think his most ingenious tactic in this letter is how he convinces and persuades those in power that black people are suffering injustices. The way he does this is by appealing to the high morals and “genuine good will” of those in power. This is a compliment and a brilliant way to begin this letter because I believe it will make the reader more receptive and thoughtful. If MLK can convince the readers of this letter that they are indeed righteous and just then how could the reader do anything but agree with Dr. King?
MLK’s letter is so effective because he proves that he has done nothing wrong and has been more than patient in waiting for the moment to stage his protest. His stance of non-violence and direct action to affect change is impervious to any argument the opposition could stake. This can be seen as MLK easily defends his agenda against the weak attempts of the opposition who argue that “his action is poorly timed.” As if the racism of that time was not obvious enough, MLK gives criteria and a method to determine whether a law is unjust. MLK in this letter gives the readers of this letter all the tools and information they could need to see the injustices around them. It is left to the reader to take action.

I get a lot of funny notes from my friends on this floor. I will describe one in this journal and I will update as I get more notes. One time I bought doughnuts from good to go and that night we had a party in our room. The next morning I woke up and there was a hilarious not on my desk from one of my pals. It said, “Dear Luke, I am very sorry I ate your donuts last night. I hope we can still be friends. Love, Matt.” I doubled over and howled with laughter as I read this. There are some real characters on this floor.

I am so sick of the bland commons food. My options in east dining halls are so limited. I can eat at the commons which has daily features of dog food flavored entrees. It wasn’t nearly so bad at the beginning of the year. I think repetition is what makes this so bad. But I can go to other places like Roxy’s or Fresh, which are slightly better. But these places cost more and serve food that is not as healthy. I think I am in a lose-lose situation.

Narrative re-written
I am rewriting the personal narrative of the Flame blog because we both share an interest in music. I am actually rather comparing my musical experiences throughout life with his. I started off playing the piano in the 3rd grade. I played for about five years and stopped when I got to high school because I had too many activities all happening at once. After freshmen year I decided I wanted to learn guitar. I proceeded to teach myself chords and learn simple songs. Eventually I started to learn scales and started learning small solos. When I became decent enough me and my friends decided to start a band called the JVE. This is one of the most defining and memorable experiences for me of all of high school. When we started playing together we were terrible. But like everything with practice we improved. We wrote all our own songs and had about nine in all. In junior year we were good enough to start playing shows. It was a blast and we made about twenty bucks each for every show. I have pictures from some of our shows posted on face book. I encourage you to take a look. If you have any questions about any of this I encourage you to ask.

This weekend was awesome. My roommate and I along with three of our other friends decided to go to NYC. One of the guys lives about 20 minutes away from the city. We went to his house first and his parents bought dinner. After this we went to NYU where we met our friends who go there. We dropped some stuff there and then rode the subway to time square. It was amazing. When you get near time square there is glow of light and then you turn a corner and it is like BAM! A different world. It really was something.

The day after the first night in NYC
After the first eventful night in the city we went to see central park. I had so much fun. There are a lot of great statues there and I took a lot of good pictures with my new digital camera. Then we headed out of the city and back to my friends house. His parents gave us a really nice lunch of rather large party subs. After we ate we headed back again to school. I slept the entire way home.

USA Today snapshot

- Obesity is a big problem in America. Americans will consume 11 million lbs of potato chips during the super bowl
- Sporting events help produce record sales with snack companies
- Corn chips are becoming a more and more popular snack. 8.2 million pounds of corn chips will be consumed during the super bowl

FDR’s state of the union address
I always find it very hard to read and listen to state of the union addresses because they are so long and cover so many topics. I didn’t particularly like the history lesson that he gave at the beginning of the speech either. FDR touched upon almost every conflict the United States ha been involved in, which I thought was unnecessary. Out of the four freedoms I think that freedom from fear is the most important. Fear is a very strong natural human response that can be paralyzing. A person who is afraid of something has a primary goal of alleviating that fear. Nothing productive can be done by people who constantly in fear. However I think that the way FDR proposes to free the world of fear is ridiculous, as are many democratic notions. This world will always be plagued by tyrants and the weak will always need someone to defend them. Eliminating tools of defense is really counterintuitive. While FDR’s call is a lofty and commendable goal; it is simply not realistic.

My room mate has no rhythm. I sit here at my desk and type this journal entry and I laugh because he is totally oblivious to everything around him. He is sitting there with his headphones and bobbing his head to some unknown tune at irregular intervals. I knew that he had no rhythm before this though. I went to high school with him and he is a blast to watch at dances. He also may seem uncoordinated but is very good at skiing and wake boarding.

Universal declaration of human rights
Today all the articles of this document seem to be common decency. It is hard to imagine living in a time when bigotry and oppression laid such a heavy hand on so many people. But reading this I start to wonder where this country and the world will be in fifty or sixty years. I see so many abuses of freedom today like gay couples defiling the sacred institution of marriage, for example. I think that there is a point where countries become too free and eventually people begin to shirk their civic duties. We have seen this very thing happen with the great Roman Empire. I certainly hope that this country is not headed in such a direction but sometimes I wonder. In the midst of this I certainly still see that there are other injustices in the world and that we still have a long way to go in some areas.

Presidents Address to congress about 9/11
The language the president uses in this address is very powerful. He calls on Americans to band together in a very strong way. I think this speech itself inspires patriotism and pride. The president has a message of comfort to the American people saying that we need not be afraid and that we will serve justice to those responsible. I found this was one of Bush’s best addresses.

Terrorisim

Response to news article 2/1/06
Once again the liberals of this country are being ridiculous and are blaming bush for an act of God. Yes, the president is being blamed for hurricane Katrina. I read in the paper that, “The president had ample warning about this hurricane.” Well guess what? So did everyone else. The weather men didn’t conspire and decide to hide this hurricane from the American people. Yes this hurricane was worse than many others but what kind of foresight do you expect from the president; he is not a meteorologist. The areas that were hit the hardest were undergoing evacuation efforts. Anyone who was caught there should blame their self. However Bush has got to stop taking all this crap. He needs to stand up for himself. I am disappointed with how he is handling this criticism.

Luke Perry
Proposal for definition paper

What is a religious extremist/fundamentalist? This word has become commonplace today especially after the events of 9-11. An extremist is obviously a person with tremendous religious fervor but today has a negative connotation. Why is it that we call a Muslim car bomber an extremist but we do not apply this term to Buddhist monks other such people whose entire lives are dictated by their religion.
In this paper I will try to define more clearly what a religious extremist is and what the term means today. When I was looking for my sources on extremists words like “terrorism” and “car bomb” kept appearing. On the website www.wikipedia.org a fundamentalist is defined as someone who believes in the complete infallibility of their religious text: the Qur’an or the Bible for example. Sources on wikipedia also implied that “fundamentalist” is a morally charged term which most often has a negative connotation.
Another source from a Penn state database turned up a paper entitled “Religious Extremists: the good, the bad, and the deadly.” This suggests that not all extremists are bad and can be controlled when governments provide “basic social services and foster religious competition and private enterprise.”
From my search for sources it seems that the boundaries of the terms fundamentalist and extremist are unclear. There are contradictions in these sources as some identify fundamentalists in only a religious context and others use the term with a negative connotation. After every search for a source other related searches that appeared were things such as terrorism and bombing and other violent things. So it appears that today these terms are used mostly in a negative way.

Sources
1) www.wikipedia.org
2) A method to madness
David Washburn. Knight Rider Tribune Business News. Washington: Dec 20, 2005. p. 1
3) www.dictionary.com
4) Translating Arabic into injustice; HOME EDITION
Zachary Lockman. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: Feb 6, 2006. p. B.11
5) “Fundamentalism Defined” http://www.bidstrup.com/religion.htm
6) “Religious fundamentalism and Optimism” http://www.uvm.edu/~dhowell/StatPages/Fundamentalism/Fundamentalism.html

The winter Olympics
I love the Olympics both summer and winter. Whenever they are on my tv is tuned in 24-7. My new favorite event is curling. I don’t even know if I spelled that right. This game may appear boring to the first time viewer… and it is indeed. The reason I watch it is because it just slays me to watch foreign people yell about a sport that is so, for lack of a better word, dumb. The hosts have nothing to talk about so they talked about some Swedish guy’s knee and how he was having cartilage problems in his knee because he has to bend down and push the stone. I laughed so hard when they said that. It was like saying you have knee problems because you have to bend your knee to sit down in your favorite chair.

Comments from HereGoesNothing (Ryan Lingenfelser):
2-7-06
Hey Luke, I think your topic is a great idea that would have plenty of information to support and could provide the reader with a more objective definition. You already brought up a great point by comparing the Muslim car bomber with the Buddhist monk as both being extremists. The only suggestion I can give is that I feel you would have a great paper if you just focus on either the word extremist or fundamentalist in a religious context. I don’t think it is necessary to define both in the same paper, and I think you would be able to find enough info on each one. They are also different from each other in some fundamental ways, so I think a paper containing both would seem a bit unorganized and unnecessary. This is just my suggestion, but since you did the research I’m sure you will work it out better than I could. Good luck with the assignment.

2-7-06 Today I commented on TheJerseyan.

PonderingsOfLukePerryDefinition

2-14-06
So Valentines Day was yesterday. I had a wonderful time with my girl. I took her out for a really nice dinner in a restaurant called Gamble Mill, in Bellefonte. I left her a rose on her bed that morning and when I went to pick her up for dinner I had another bouquet and a box of chocolate truffles for her. When we went out to the car I had a small teddy bear and a card waiting in her seat. Then we went to dinner. After dinner we went rented a movie from blockbuster and came back to my place. I live on the top floor of pinchot. We parked across the street and as we were walking up to my building I stopped and looked up to the windows on floor ten and exclaimed, “Oh my God, what is that.” She looked up and saw that I had written LJP <3 KRJ in the windows with Christmas lights. She really liked it. It was a nice surprise.

Declaration of Independence 2/15/06
I think what makes the declaration of independence such an outstanding document is how clearly, concisely, powerfully, yet humbly it is written. The way Jefferson starts the declaration is very powerful. He states what he believes are the rights of all people and then lends support to the reason for separation by listing the injustices suffered by the new Americans. This is a good way to argue. The facts are irrefutable and strongly support Jefferson’s stance. Finally in the third part of the document Jefferson comes off as being humble and resolute. His words are not threatening or apologetic. It reminds of MLK’s letter from jail when Jefferson begins talking about how American people have tried time and again to avoid conflict but have just been pushed to far.

I haven’t been home for a long time now I’m getting excited to go home for break. But it kind of a bummer that most of my friends will still be at school. Luckily, some of them go to Miami of Oxford, which is very close to me so I can go up there and spend a few nights with them. I think that OAR, one of my favorite, bands will be at Miami one of the nights during break. I would love to see them but it will probably be hard to get tickets because they draw a huge crowd from Miami.

Response to rhetoric and My America 2/22/06
Wow. That is a lot of stuff in a couple short lists. As I see it rhetorical ability is the ability of a writer or speaker to clearly present and idea in a way that others will understand and be influenced by it. Because isn’t the ultimate goal of any written document to affect change. In every example link in The Art of Rhetoric one can see that the purpose of the writing is to influence the reader in some way. With and advertisement the goal is to get someone to buy something. In the case of the pathos argument about the cesium reactor the goal is to get people to see the environmental harm it can do. In response to the five fold way of rhetoric I think I have most of my problems with information flow and grammar errors. In my first paper my transitions were too abrupt and I had a lot of grammatical errors that my editors did not catch. But I think that my language is clear and that I present my view consistently

The media is making a huge deal about Cheney’s hunting accident. I think it is ridiculous and it makes the opposing political camp look like a bunch of nitpicking sissies. The liberals are saying, “Well, why didn’t you alert the media.” And they did. The group told the local reporters. Of course this made its way up the chain and when the liberal sissies in Washington heard about they came crying to the white house whining about why there wasn’t a national press conference held. This is a ridiculous question. Accidentally shooting someone is a traumatic event. I know I would not want to tell everyone in the world that I accidentally shot one of my friends. I seriously wonder if liberal nitpicking and pissing and moaning will ever end. It probably won’t, considering all the Kerry cry babies that are still hanging around.

Rwanda and Darfur response 2/27/06
Both of these are very sad situations. Why is it that terrible things are always happening in this region of the world? I think I am cynical because one consistent thing that I noticed in both articles is that the UN is totally worthless. I do not understand what purpose it serves. When they pledge troops for support, they pull out after ten casualties. That is worse than the French. And they go to investigate whether or not something is considered genocide and they realize it is not genocide, only war crimes. Well they should still not stand by and let innocent people die even though “only war crimes” are being committed. The UN has become a joke and no one takes them seriously.

PonderingsOfLukePerryProposalAndEvaluationPaper

So America completely dominates the scene in snowboarding. Sean white tore it up in the half pipe. Even the women had two on the podium. I love to watch snowboarding, especially the downhill race. That is pretty sweet. It’s like Nascar on snow, without cars of course. I was pretty surprised that Bode Miller didn’t do very well. I think he is a bit cocky.

Do you think it is possible that practice doesn’t make perfect? I think in some situation this could be. I noticed that throughout this luxuriously lazy week where I spent a lot of time playing video games that the more I played the worse I performed. Maybe it was too much of a good thing or maybe I got cocky. But there are other examples, like in the gym. If you work out sometimes you may find yourself on a plateau where you aren’t getting any stronger and can’t increase weight. I have found myself in both these situations and discovered if I take a break and come back later I am usually better off.

Political leanings 3/1/06
I am ultra conservative. I am very strong in my convictions. A few things I would like to address. Conservatives a pro-business and this is the best thing for the economy. If you notice most ambitious and successful and generally smart people tend to be conservative. This is because conservatives know that liberals tend to be lazy. Let me tell you how a liberal thinks: a liberal will place his vote with the candidate who promises them the most money. In other words liberals will simply vote themselves portions of the national treasure (in the form of the long list of aid programs that support countless fat and lazy liberals). But at whose expense is this treasure doled out: the conservatives. I want to know why the government should be allowed to take more of my earnings because I am successful. Why should I work my ass off just so I pay higher taxes to support some fat guy who would rather watch Oprah than go to work. I realize that there are those who are less fortunate and need help but I would say a vast majority of Americans on aid programs are cheating the system and leeching off society, and probably left wing.

The RA’s in this building are really cracking down. It is really a pain. It keeps me on edge when I have people over and makes it hard for me to relax. They have come to our door about three times this week. They knock and stand there as all the people in our room make a barricade so they can’t see anything and then they ask “are you drinking?”
Every time I say because I am under 21 and it is illegal for me to drink; so of course I am not drinking. These RA’s are a thorn in my side.

I just watched one of my favorite movies, Fight Club. I think the writing is brilliant and I enjoy the cynical perspective and tone of the narrator. It is funny and really offers a lot of truth and insight. I watched this movie because I got really frustrated with math and I am doing just about everything to keep from going back to it.

I have a very interesting friend named Steve. He is tall and lanky. We also went to high school together. Steve is very smart and a good guy. He has a lot of interesting sayings like “well, that’s as useless as a screen door in a submarine.” Gosh, he makes me chortle. Another thing you would notice about Steve if you met him is that he takes up a lot of space. He is skinny, but he is long. So I call him Bag O Sticks Steve. Because that is what he is like. You know what I mean if you have ever done yard work and had to bag sticks. There is not a lot of mass to the bag but the sticks take up a lot of space and poke out in weird places, kind of like Steve’s limbs.

CausalProposalAndFinalPaper

The communist manifesto is a very long document. I always thought that communists wanted to abolish private ownership of property and put it in the hands of the proletariat. But in this document it says that communist do not desire to abolish the private property of shopkeepers and tradesman but only bourgeois property. I think this shows that communism is inherently flawed. How can one decide that the man who worked hard all his life and amassed a large estate has no right to it and then allow the tradesman to keep their earnings? Furthermore, who is the one who decides what portion of property a man can keep and when property is seized how is it redistributed? These are just some questions I had while reading the manifesto.

ProposalArgumentProposalandFinal

For my final paper I have decided that it should be on the issue of immigration. There is much controversy surrounding this issue. The bush administration desires to make immigration laws tougher and to deport some of the resident illegal immigrants. I find this issue compelling because opposition is not split down the party line like many other topics. Many conservatives oppose Bush’s plan because it could have disastrous effects on our economy. I am not sure yet how I feel about this issue and need to explore the platform of both sides.

On second thought after the debate about same sex marriage in class today I think I will write my final paper on that. I have found that I have very strong feelings about this issue. I think I can write a persuasive paper with lots of convincing evidence against gay marriage.

Final Proposal

I am sitting here on Friday afternoon and have found that I am four journal entries short, including this one. Something rather interesting has happened regarding my final paper. I guess a man in Chicago was researching on the internet and came across something in one of my blogs about gay marriage. He sent me a rather argumentative e-mail about what he read. This man is a proponent of gay marriage. I am nor corresponding with him regularly and we are having a sort of e mail debate. I think I am kicking ass right now but I have to stop for a while because I must cram for finals.

Its coming time to pack up and head home. This will be a rather arduous task for me as we have built some rather permanent fixture in my room. My roommate and I are both engineers and have a knack for building things. We built a loft in the first few weeks of school and this thing is sturdy. I screwed it into the desk next to it for extra support. I hope the housing staff doesn’t mind haha. But I have wood putty to fill the holes. I am getting kind of sad though. I am leaving behind a girlfriend and a lot of good people.

I went to the LIVE concert a couple nights ago and it was one of the best I have ever been to. The band was so good and I was rather surprised. I did not think they would perform well because their music is complicated. The only bad thing about the concert was that the crowd was bad. I was disappointed with my fellow penn state students. They do no know how to have a good time at a concert. The crowd was lame.

Final English post
One thing I want to do before I die: One thing that I seriously, really, truly want to do is climb Mount Everest. There is no task more challenging and no loftier goal, literally. I hear that it costs over 60,000. I guess I will have to be rich. English class will aid me in this goal because it has developed my persuasive argument skills, which will surely come in handy when convincing my wife. Also I will be able to write a damn fine narrative about it when I am done, as I had much practice with this while bloging.

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