Rapunzel's bad hair day

A story I wrote for english class. Cause why not right?

In olden times, at the edge of a big forest, a little girl lived with her mother. She had really long hair and was called Rapunzel.

One day, Rapunzel's mother gave her a basket with some cake inside and told her to walk through the forest to the castle where King Arthur lay sick in bed.

"Remember not to talk to strangers!" Rapunzel's mother said.

On the way to King Arthur’s castle, Rapunzel met Cinderella.

"Where are you going little girl?" she asked with her biggest smile.

"To King Arthur's castle on the other side of the forest," said Rapunzel who had forgotten what her mother told her.

Cinderella took a shortcut and ran ahead to King Arthur's castle. When she got there, she went inside, put a knife in King Arthur’s chest and put him in a wardrobe.

Then she put on his crown and climbed into his bed.

When Rapunzel got there, she walked right up to the bed.

"You’re Majesty! What nice shoes you have," she said.

"Gee thanks," said Cinderella.

"And what a nice dress you're wearing," she said.

"Oh you just keep complementing me," said Cinderella.

"And what a feminine look," she said.

"I now, I really do look fabulously," said Cinderella, and she jumped out of bed so Rapunzel could see her beautiful dress.

The king’s gardener, who was chopping wood in the garden, heard the girl laughing. He came inside and told Rapunzel that it was Cinderella, and not the king who she was laughing with.

Rapunzel couldn’t have it that it was a girl who looked better than her. And so she took a bat that was standing against the wardrobe very conveniently, and hit Cinderella with it.

Then Rapunzel, the gardener, and the king's cook all ate Cinderella and the king and had some tea. What a Jolly good time!

A Not So Merry Christmas

A depressing Christmas story by Wim Naudts

For me, Christmas will always be somewhat of a sad time. For a small part because I’m always alone, but mainly for what happened then, 3 years ago….

I was living in a city with a wage that could barely cover for an apartment in one of the worst buildings there. But I didn’t really care much for comfort, I had lived a rich life before, and I was certain I’d get enough chances to improve my life someday. I did have a university degree, and one day that would get me somewhere.

Next to me lived a father and son. They had a much harder time. The father didn’t even have a job, and had no degree at all. This made it so that the son didn’t even have a chance of going to school.

For 2 years, I lived next to them. Never could the father give the son anything. Except some things he found in the garbage, which was sadly the place where most of their food came from too.

I felt guilty for not giving them anything. But then again, what could I give? I was close to broke myself.

Nobody else cared about them. As it happened, across the street was a middle class building, where I knew some people from before I became poor. I knew them from my previous church group, but I kind of lost my faith. They made me remember why.

I asked if maybe they could help the poor father and son out every now and then, but they shamelessly refused. And it’s not as if they were short on finances.

I asked them why they wouldn’t do it. Was it not a very catholic thing to do? Didn’t god reward those who helped the poor? Was that not what Jesus did?

Apparently not, because they just told me to leave.

But it didn’t seem to matter anymore, because the 3d year I lived next to them, his father had a job. It was a wage even smaller as mine, but for them it meant hope. It was something. They could eat something bought from a store!

That whole year, the father saved as much of the wage as he could, sometimes even going back to eating from the garbage.

Because that Christmas, he wanted to give his kid something.

He remembered that one day, when they were still homeless, they were begging on the streets. There, another homeless person let the son try his clarinet. He loved it, since then he always talked about it. For what he could remember, everyone was also surprised at how good he was, for having played only 30 minutes in his whole live.

But when Christmas was coming closer, he still couldn’t afford one. But was he lucky, his boss promised to pay what he needed if he came to work the day of Christmas Eve. Not the whole day, just till 5pm.

Was he happy! He told his son that day, that he would be back at 5:30, and that he would bring the best present he’d ever gotten!

When he arrived at work, the boss already had the clarinet ready and wrapped up.  

The father went to work. He was working on a new apartment block. The reason his boss needed him, was because the block needed to be covered to be safe from snow. Yeah, exactly one day before the day of Christmas Eve it started snowing, but then it was already too dangerous to still cover the block. Still the boss wanted it to happen, but he couldn’t find anybody prepared to do it, except our desperate father of course…

And so the worst happened… On the 8^th floor, the father slipped over the icy floor, and fell down, down on the hard cold street… And he died…

When police forces arrived, and the boss told them what happened, they didn’t even write anything down. They knew well enough that it was his fault entirely, but they didn’t care. They just wanted to go home and celebrate Christmas Eve with their families.

Out of guilt, the boss told them to give the clarinet to the son, and handed it to them.

But oh, this was one unlucky day. The agent decided to keep it. His greedy son might enjoy it he thought. Enjoy breaking it, that is.

When they drove back the station, one of the agents asked if they didn’t have to inform the son first. The others told him that they’d send someone of child support the next day.

When at 7pm the father still wasn’t home, I couldn’t handle it any more. Even though for the first time in years I had company, I decided to invite him over for to celebrate with me. But it wasn’t a happy celebration for him, he kept asking for his dad. I told him I didn’t know where his dad was.

When at 9pm his dad still wasn’t home, he started crying, and kept crying, and crying, and crying….

Elsewhere, at the police station, the Chief of police found out about what happened. Being the good man he was, he took the clarinet from the unfair agent, and prepared to come over himself.

But when he arrived, he accidentally dropped the clarinet, and someone drove over it.

He managed to recover it, but it was already broken. It was unplayable, sadly.

When he came to the door, I saw the chief though my window, and already expected the worst.

And it was…

When the chief told the child, I couldn’t handle it anymore, nor could the child.

The look on his face when he told the child his father had passed…

The enormous pain when he saw the cause, this wonderful gift his father died for, only to please him… This gift that was now broken…

The last souvenir to his dad… Broken….

He slept in my apartment that night. And the next day, on Christmas, I had bought a new clarinet for him, and went to his room to wish him a merry Christmas.

But there he hanged…. Dead…

I realized then, he didn’t care about the present as material. I realized that this child had never been unhappy. That he had never felt poor. That he never thought of his life as the hard time I imagined he had…

For this kid knew the real reason of happiness. The real reason of Christmas. The real reason of life…

Family… Love…

Having his father with him was all he ever cared about.

He didn’t need presents.
He didn’t need comfort.

He needed only his father

.

And I told myself,

Never shall I think of my life as hard anymore.

Never shall I think of my life as sad anymore.

No, I promised myself then that every Christmas, I would tell this tale to my future family. And we would be together on Christmas. And take a few minutes of our time to think about him, and celebrate that we have a family. And that we needn’t nothing more….

That was the least respect this kid deserved...

·         Wim Naudts, 17 December 2013

Story on Youtube

!!Please not that this story is entirely fictional! None of this is true! Also, I don't have anything against christians, the reference is just a reminder of how hypocrite some people are!!

Sequel to "A martian Odyssey" by Stanly G. Weinbaum

This is a self-written sequel to the story "A martian odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum. This was for a school assignement. I hope you enjoy! Link to get the story 

"Oh my god," cried Harrison. "This is great! We have to get this back to earth!"

"Not so fast," said Jarvis. "We have to find out more about this planet. Find new life-forms, look for Tweel and his civilization, find out more about the barrel-people, and lots of other things.

Harrison screamed: "But this might be a cure for cancer! Do you realize what this would mean? We can cure thousands of people!  We have to get this back to earth immediately! It's much more important than all of these other things!"

"No it is not!," said Jarvis. "You don't even know what the crystal means for those creatures. Maybe they can't live without it! We can't just come to another planet and harm other creatures just in mankind's  favor. We need to examine these creatures, and all others on the planet, before we can make anything in this planet ours."

"Nonsense", protested Harrison. "We need to put our own problems in front of others, that's the only way we can keep ourselves safe. We need to take this back to earth.!"

But the smart Jarvis wasn't just going to let down. "It might be dangerous," he said.

"Dangerous? How do you mean?, " Harrison asked.

"We don't know enough about this planet, and what's on it yet. On here this crystal might be a cure, but you don't know what effect it would have on earth. For God's sake, we don't even know if it's safe on this planet. Who knows , maybe it has side-effects? Maybe the healthy tissue it plant isn't even so healthy, but only looks that way."

"But ... Then how will we find out?,"' muttered Harrison.

"There's only two ways to find out," Jarvis said. "And that's to wait here, and do more research. Or to wait until something happens to me. But what's certain is: we can't leave this planet yet.  At least not till we waited a bit to see the effects the crystal had on me or until we find out more about it."

"Well... Ok", said Harrison, still muttering. "We'll start researching tomorrow. Let's all go to bed for now."

English Reading Assignement

English: Reading Assignement

This is a reading assignement I had to make for english class, since I tought it was pretty good, I decided to share it on this blog

Chistmas eve – John Moat

To be honest, I had no clue on how to go search for a poem. But then I read the extra assignement, and I tought, let's look for a poem that I can easily link to a song I feel good with. So I went searching for some stuff, and I found this poem about christmas. When I read the poem, I think about a lonely man sitting is his hut at chistmas eve. Listening to to the blackbird, carolling. For some reason, I get the feeling that the man is a bit down/depressive, but that when he hears the blackbird, who is just carolling and not worrying about anything, get's happy again. I like that this poem is really unclear, there's not a real clear meaning. You have to find out what it means  yourself. Even better, you have to find out what it means to you personally. You can see something in it that another person won't see. That's what I like about poems like these.

There is one kind of rhyme in this poem.  In verse 6 and 7 we can see an end rhyme.  In verse 4 we can see an alliteration : "Surety of Spring". You also have an alliteration in verse 6: "forgetful on the fields".  There is also clearly Literary consonance. In the whole poem you can spot the letter  "r" more as 35 times.

I made this picture in a photo-editing program. I searched for some nice pictures on google. The christmas background with the package, the christmas tree and the nice text really fit the normal christmas feeling. When you get lots of presents and have a ncie shiny tree. But then I aslo added the picture of the deserted, lonely hut in the snow and added the blackbird to it.This resembles the poem. The lonely hut of the man in the woods and the carolling blackbird. Like I said, in this kind of poem everyone has to find  his own meaning. So, even tough I am not a drawer nor an artist, I tought having my own picture to resemble a poem like this, was important.

I said I started searching for poems to link a song to, so I did. For me, a song that is calm, slow and written in a minor key will fit perfectly. It will also need warm sounding instruments. And ofcourse it has to have a christmas feeling to it. Luckily I made myself a christmas song last christmas. So the song that I will link to this is my own christmas song. You can find it here : https://soundcloud.com/funkywim/christmas-song

Beware of the dog - Roald Dahl (download)

Activity A : Write a different ending to the story

I chose this activity because I like to write myself. I also don't think the ending is bad, but since this story has an open ending it seems a pretty good idea just to write an ending to the story. This means I won't be adjusting the story, I will just add an ending

Here goes:

The man in the chair said : "Well, let's get this stuff over. I'm afraid you'll have to answer a few questions so that I can fill in this combat report. Let me see now, first of all, what was your squardron?"

"I can't tell you that." , said the man in the bed.

"How do you mean you cant tell me that? You have te tell me, it's the standard procedure when a pilot gets hit."

"I haven't even seen your identification card.", said the man in the bed.

"Well, here you go", said the man in the chair. And he stood up and gave a card to the man in the bed. At that moment, the man was certain. He was in France, captured by the germans. It was all too obvious, the planes, the countryside, the sign, everything. The air ministry would never sent an ordinary RAF officer. And the uniform was old, they weren't using  those anymore since months. But the identification card made it final. It was definently fake. He had to come up with something good now, the man must believe him.

"I don't feel well, could I go to the badroom first? I'll anwer all your questions afterwards.", he said.

"Sure then", said the man in the chair. "Nurse! Could you bring this man to the toilet please!", he cried.

The nurse came in, put the man in a weelchair, and took him to the badroom. When he was in the badroom, he quickly searched for something to take out the nurse with. There was a metal trashcan. "Perfect!", he tought.

"What's taking you so long?", said the nurse.

"I'm right there" , said the man. He openend the door and knocked out the nurse with the trashcan. As quickly as he could, he put himself in the weerchair again, and raced across the halways. Luckily , the whole place was deserted. He searched, and found, the communication room. He went to the radio and quickly looked for the right transmission. He found the right transmisson and started speaking. "Peter Williamson here, please, can somebody help me!".

"Bristols military airport here, what is your situation", they answered on the other line.

"I ...." . Suddently, a gunshot was fired. The man fell down, but didn't lose his consciousness yet. The nurse walked up to him, and said : "It's a shame you figured it out, we're gonna have to get rid of you now." She shot him again, and everything turned black. On the other side of the radio, you could still here "What was that?!" .But then the nurse shot the radio too. The man tought about everything that happenend. How a litte while ago, he was still thinking that nothing was wrong and he would just land an have a good laugh. Then everything faded...