The story of a king and his double

In the beginning of Gilgamesh they explain to the reader that there is an ox king named Gilgamesh. He rules Uruk “the keeping place of Anu and Ishtar.”(pg.3) and has complete power over everything. An old man was not happy with the way he had no say in anything so he complained to the gods that he was to powerful. He called the goddess Aruru to create a double of Gilgamesh. He was born from the earth and lived in the forest. A hunter later complained to Gilgamesh saying that a hairy body man was unset his traps and he is not able to hunt. Gilgamesh said he will send a lady to charm him. After seven days together Enkiru the hairy bodied man goes into Uruk. Enkiru guarded the flocks of the Sheppard’s so they can sleep peacefully. On e day a man comes and sais he is going to a wedding and said “Before the husband Gilgamesh, will lie in pleasure with the bride in the marital chamber.”(pg. 14) This upsets Enkiru so he goes stops Gilgamesh. They have a big fight but make up and kiss. Enkiru tells Gilgamesh about Huwawa who is very powerful and was sent by Enlil to guard the Cedar Forest. They decide to go fight with Huwawa and after a discussion of who will go first they decide to go together. Rimat-Ninsun Gilgamesh’s mother decides to adopt Enkiru because he has no parents. You can really notice that this book is from Mesopotamia due to how they are polytheist and the repetition of the points. I was not expecting the story to be this good due to the time it was written in but it is still a good story.

Sentence Fragment Exercises

f____ 1. Then I attended Morris Junior High. A junior high that was a bad experience.
_f___ 2. The scene was filled with beauty. Such as the sun sending its brilliant rays to the earth and the leaves of various shades of red, yellow, and brown moving slowly in the wind.
__c__ 3. He talked for fifty minutes without taking his eyes off his notes. Like other teachers in that department, he did not encourage students' questions.
___f_ 4. Within each group, a wide range of features to choose from. It was difficult to distinguish between them.
____c 5. A few of the less serious fellows would go into a bar for a steak dinner and a few glasses of beer. After this meal, they were ready for anything.
__f__ 6. It can be really embarrassing to be so emotional. Especially when you are on your first date, you feel that you should be in control.
___f_ 7. The magazine has a reputation for a sophisticated, prestigious, and elite group of readers. Although that is a value judgment and in circumstances not a true premise.
__f__ 8. In the seventh grade every young boy goes out for football. To prove to himself and his parents that he is a man.
___f_ 9. She opened the door and let us into her home. Not realizing at the time that we would never enter that door in her home again.
__c__10. As Christmas grows near, I find myself looking back into my childhood days at fun-filled times of snowball fights. To think about this makes me happy.
___f_11. Making up his mind quickly. Jim ordered two dozen red roses for his wife. Hoping she would accept his apology.
___f_12. They were all having a good time. Until one of Joe's oldest and best friends had a little too much to drink.
___f_13. Although it only attained a speed of about twelve miles an hour. My old rowboat with its three-horsepower motor seemed like a high-speed job to me.
___c_14. With my brother standing by my side, I reached for the pot handle. Tilting the pot way too much caused the boiling water to spill.
___f_15. The small, one-story houses are all the same size and style. With no difference except the color.
___f_16. Being a friend of mine like he was when we first joined the soccer team. Together we learned a lot.

The Last Task

Chapter 13 is a very short chapter which really doesn’t explain much. It is just a conclusion from which you can deduce all of the teachings Ishmael passed on to the pupil. In a way you are the pupil of the narrator trying to pass on his knowledge. The narrator comes up with a very bad plan to rescue Ishmael from the carnival in which he withdraws all of his savings and rents a van. He is trying to return something to Ishmael for all of his teaching he has given him. He arrives at the carnival and goes to where Ishmael was kept. Here he can only find his belongings and receives very bad news. On page 260 they tell him “It was the pneumonia that got him – your friend the ape.” At this point I realized that the book was in a way trying to give out its last teaching which was for the pupil to pass on the knowledge he had received. The narrator takes most of Ishmaels belongings except the blankets and drives back home. When he is framing Ishmael’s poster he realizes that it has a message on the back “With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla? With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man? (pg. 263) These are the last word that appear in the book and with them comes the last task, for the narrator to pass on his knowledge. He has the task to save humanity, to inform it of the path it is taking and of where it is going.

Not as important as we think we are

This is a very important chapter in the book because it concludes the teachings and shows the reader the relationship that has grown between teacher and student. It is nice to see how their relationship has gone beyond the teachings and Ishmael now considers the narrator a friend and the narrator now considers Ishmael a friend. In this chapter they come up with some very important conclusions like, on page 237 "Man became man by living in the hands of god." and on page 238 “According to the Taker story, creation came to an end with man.". These quote made me think of the conclusions that they were going after and what they were trying to find. Throughout the book I have liked what Ishmael thinks of the takers and the leavers and I realized what the biggest problem with takers was. Takers think they are the best and that they cannot get any better. They believe that creation reached an end with man and by thinking like that they won’t be able to evolve and advance.
A quote that made me start thinking of what I was doing was on page 243 the pupil states “In other words, the world doesn’t need to belong to man-but it does need man to belong to it.” This impressed me because the whole book they have been talking of how the world was made for man and here they state that man doesn’t have to rule the word but the world needs man to be part of it. Ishmael now decides to conclude his session by telling the narrator that he has passed on his knowledge to him and that he must now pass it on to everyone else. At the end of the chapter I kept thinking of the quote on page 243 and what it meant. After a while I realized something very important which is, that I have to change my mentality and stop thinking that takers are the center off the world and that we are not as important as we think we are.

Michelle Obama's Speech

By The Associated Press – 1 day agoPrepared remarks of Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, for her address to the Democratic National Convention. On Monday night in Denver as released by the Obama campaign:OBAMA, As you might imagine, for Barack running for president is nothing compared to that first game of basketball with my brother Craig.I can't tell you how much it means to have Craig and my mom here tonight. Like Craig, I can feel my dad looking down on us, just as I've felt his presence in every grace-filled moment of my life.At six-foot-six, I've often felt like Craig was looking down on me too - literally. But the truth is, both when we were kids and today, he wasn't looking down on me — he was watching over me.And he's been there for me every step of the way since that clear February day 19 months ago, when — with little more than our faith in each other and a hunger for change — we joined my husband, Barack Obama, on the improbable journey that's brought us to this moment.But each of us also comes here tonight by way of our own improbable journey.I come here, tonight, as a sister blessed with a brother who is my mentor, my protector and my lifelong friend.I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president.I come here as a Mom whose girls are the heart of my heart and the center of my world — they're the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night. Their future — and all our children's future — is my stake in this election.And I come here as a daughter — raised on the south side of Chicago by a father who was a blue collar city worker, and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me. My mother's love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, and her intelligence reflected in my own daughters.My Dad was our rock. Although he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his early thirties, he was our provider, our champion, our hero. As he got sicker, it got harder for him to walk, it took him longer to get dressed in the morning. But if he was in pain, he never let on. He never stopped smiling and laughing — even while struggling to button his shirt, even while using two canes to get himself across the room to give my mom a kiss. He just woke up a little earlier, and worked a little harder.He and my mom poured, everything they had into me and Craig. It was the greatest gift a child can receive: never doubting for a single minute that you're loved, and cherished and have a place in this world. And thanks to their faith and hard work we both were able to go on to college. So I know firsthand from their lives — and mine — that the American dream endures.And you know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he'd grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. Like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities they never had themselves. And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them and even if you don't agree with them.And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.And as our friendship grew, and I learned more about Barack, he introduced me to the work he'd done when he first moved to Chicago after college. Instead of heading to wall street, Barack had gone to work in neighborhoods devastated when steel plants shut down, and jobs dried up. And he'd been invited back to speak to people from those neighborhoods about how to rebuild their community.The people gathered together that day were ordinary folks doing the best they could to build a good life. They were parents living paycheck to paycheck; grandparents trying to get by on a fixed income; men frustrated that they couldn't support their families after their jobs disappeared. Those folks weren't asking for a handout or a shortcut. They were ready to work — they wanted to contribute. They believed — like you and I believe — that America should be a place where you can make it if you try.Barack stood up that day, and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about "The world as it is" and "The world as it should be." And he said that all too often, we accept the distance between the two, and settle for the world as it is — even when it doesn't reflect our values and aspirations. But he reminded us, that we know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. And he urged us to believe in ourselves — to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be. And isn't that the great American story?It's the story of men and women gathered in churches and union halls in town squares and high school gyms — people who stood up and marched and risked everything they had — refusing to settle, determined to mold our future into the shape of our ideals.It is because of their will and determination that this week, we celebrate two anniversaries: the 88th anniversary of women winning the right to vote, and the 45th anniversary of that hot summer day when Dr. King lifted our sights and our hearts with his dream for our nation.

A State of Mind

Everywhere I go I see the type of culture and life to which I am accustomed to. I am a taker and something mother culture has always told me that that is the correct way. What I hear is that the takers are better off than the leavers but what this chapter brought me to wonder is if it really is better. In my world of the takers people have a very set routine in which we work earn money spend it and do it all over again. We takers live in a world where we have satisfied our needs and are going for the wants. The problem with this is that we will always want more if we get more. Wants are not like needs which you can satisfy but they are never enough. This chapter talks about the agricultural revolution and what a turning point it was in our history. We also learn several of the leaver’s points of view.
The takers are trading what they want for happiness and this is what made me think about being a taker. Am I trading stress, anger and many other symptoms for my wants. We takers have already satisfied our needs and the search for the wants is what is deteriorating us. We takers have a fear for the leaver’s life style. Since we decided that we did not want that life style a long time ago we are now afraid to go back. Our needs have been so well sufficed that obesity and other food bourn diseases are a great problem today. Ishmael and the narrator have their differences in this chapter and something that Ishmael said on page 212 caught my attention, he said “I know you don’t, and that’s what irks me. You’ve become a passive listener here, turning your brain off when you sit down and turning it when you get up to leave.” This caught my attention since it made me wonder if I sometimes do that. My final conclusion was to where we were headed. Where are we were going to end up? We have reached the top and are now starting to go down. Our resources are ending and we believe that our needs are increasing. What can we do to stop this state of mind?

The end as we know it

Thought the book Ishmael has basically been teaching the narrator a series of laws that we are breaking. We are divided into two group’s leavers and takers, the leavers are the people from the farm side that have not been exposed to the amnesia of society. The takers have forgotten all about the laws and are not obeying them. Animals only kill with a purpose which is for food or protection but humans are exterminating the competition in order for it to be easier to get what we need. Not only have we gotten what we need but we have gotten to the point where we take things for pleasure. All of this has ruined the food chain because if we kill the smallest insect which is eating our crops we are killing the animal that feeds of it and by him dying the animal that eats him will die to. This process will keep on repeating ad repeating itself and if we don’t do anything about it we are slowly moving towards our end.
Leavers have a different way of life in which they only take what they need to survive and not what they want. This has been passed on to them by their ancestors and not as takers have forgotten the laws the work on them. A perfect example is a tiger, he will kill a gazelle and protect the food he has got for himself to survive but he will not protect the whole herd. In this way another animal can come and feed itself of the same herd with ought having to worry about the other tiger. The main difference is that they accept competition and as long as they have their most basic needs they will not eliminate their competition. This fits in perfectly in the food chain because they are in total harmony eating what they need and if everyone does this everyone will get fed.
On page 72 Mother culture states that “the world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.” Man has taken this very seriously and thinks that since the world was made for him then he can do anything he wants with it. This is the mistake we chose to enjoy the world without thinking of what might happen later and when we are confronted with the reality we don’t know how to change. We have forgotten the rules and this is like a deadline for mankind since it is believes that it is slowly replenishing its supplies. A change is needed but if we don’t know how we will fall and we will take leavers with us.

Ishmael: A way of life

Ishmael is a great book which not only tells a great story but it goes deeper into the understanding of the way we live. It talks about a teacher an a pupil and how a teacher wanted to teach and not that the pupil wanted to learn. When I read this I realized that it whent against the normal order of things where the pupil asks the teacher for lessons and not the teacher asking the pupil if he can give him his lessons. Since the begining of the book when you realize that the teacher is a gorlila you know that this is not going to be a normal book.



For me this book is realy showing you a way of life and not just enterntainment. It is showing the people who read it that humans are the ones who dont know how to live and humans are the ones who cant live in harmony with the world. The auther makes the teacher a gorrila to show people that what they do is not always right and to convince people of the animals way of life. You ate learning everything through a story of the gorrlilas life and how through observing humans he realized how bad our way of life and society is. There are many quotes in this book that I payd alot of atention to but one of them made start thinking of how I live my life. It sais “You’re captives of a civilization system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.” and I read it on page 25. Imediately after reading this I realized how dependant of the society I was and how the gorrila is totaly right. We cant live at peace with the world and we are constanly destroyng it.



I thought about this quote for a while and realized that if do not make a drastik change in the way we live then we will slowly destroy the very own environment we live of. Humanity needs to change in order for us to survive. The problem is not a lack of awareness but a lack of courage to change. We are traped by the society we live in and and nobody is strong enough to go againt it and comunicate the message. People know that what they are doing is wrong but if someone stands up to society the will critisese him until he falls. They are afraid that the same they are doing to other people which they know is wrong will happen to them. The question this book made me ask myself is if one day humanity as a whole will be strong enought to go against society.

Answers August 21

A. The difference between a blog and a book would be that a blog can be constantly updated while a book cant. Depending on how reliable the blog is and what type of information you are looking for a blog can be a much easier way of finding information.

B. Blogs have changed a lot recently. The largest changes are not only that you can now personalize your blog allot more but you can also make one fast and easy. Blogs have become more popular over the years and are constantly improving

C. Many people read blogs because they show several points of view over a topic and you can comment on what you read. Blogs are also free while books are not and you can find a blog where ever there is Internet while a book can only be found at a library or if you have it with you.

D. Not all blogs can be trusted and many of them have false information. Each time you look at a blog you have to check its sources before using it. If you don't do this you might have false information and do badly on the work. Anything can be posted on the Internet and you have to be very careful of what you believe.

E. If I were to keep a blog for my self I would title it TWO Blog since those are my initials.