Journalism Class - Thursday November 17

[jerusalem-s.livejournal.com]

Sitting on Spider's desk is one of these. Beside it is a small placard reading 'One hundred words on your thoughts/reactions, please. Exactly.'





((OOC: And to avoid any misunderstandings, ignore the numbers. I didn't have time to remove them from the picture.

Comments

[positive-angel.livejournal.com]

Man has the largest capacity for reason, for thought, for problem solving. He’s inventive, he’s creative and he’s driven.

He also has the capacity for cruelty unbound. The sheer evil man can perpetuate on such wide scales is boggling in its immensity.

Torture, war, bigotry, slavery, weapons of mass destruction, bringing ruin on his neighbors, friends and family - locally and globally - within his realm.

Also from these same depths comes the capacity for love and compassion, for devotion to others above self as to bring joy from the lowest to the highest.

And that is what saves Man from himself.

100 words exactly

[medusae-x.livejournal.com]

(Finally one I can do!)

Duce wanders into class and reads the note, looking at the skull. Shrugging, she pulls out her laptop and begins typing.

There's a skull sitting on my teacher's desk this morning. I'm curious where he got it; whether it's something he purchased from a medical supply store or something he personally removed from a student who failed to turn in one too many homework assignments. The skull is obviously homo erectus. I’m glad he removed any remaining bits of flesh or tissue from the skull, because with my olofactory system, if he’d subjected me to odor d’rotting flesh first thing in the moring, I would probably have shown my appreciation by expelling the contents of my stomach all over his desk.

[whitedeathpod.livejournal.com]

John starts writing.

A skull always makes me think of pirates. You know, the Jolly Roger, the skull and crossbones, the symbol synonymous with pirates everywhere. Are skulls associated with pirates because pirates like skulls or because skulls are images that will instill fear into those that pirates try to plunder?

How did a skull become associated with pirates in the first place? Did a pirate think it looked cool, slapped it on a flag and the legend grew from there? It had to come from somewhere. Skull and crossbones are creepy and pirates like skulls and crossbones therefore pirates are creepy. Right?

[chasingangela]

Professor Jerusalem has a human skull on his desk. It’s this creamy ivory color and more than a little creepy.

Of course, it makes me think about death.

I’m not afraid of being dead; if anything exists after this life, I believe it’s peaceful. But dying is another story. There are so many ways to die, and most of them hurt.

The skull also makes me think, more than is comfortable, about what happens to my body after death. It reminds me that whatever we think or feel or do or say, we’re all just bones and dust in the end.

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander frowns at the desk when he arrives, but sits down and dutifully begins to write:

I used to be able to forget that there's one of those inside everybody I know. Inside me. Or maybe not forget, but at least ignore it. I used to use the bio-lab skeleton as a ventriloquist dummy. Now, though... Maybe I've seen too many of them that used to belong to people I'd seen being people? Walking around and talking, before something ripped their head off or turned them into a puddle of slime, and all that's left is this shape that was hiding inside all along. Even vampires, when you kill them, that's the last thing to disappear.

[auroryborealis.livejournal.com]

Skulls always make me think of that play that I can’t talk about because the protagonist goes to this school our mortality. The very fact that I can see this skull? Means someone died.

Why did they die? How? Who were they? Were they a parent, a sibling, a child? They were someone’s friend or colleague - how do those left behind feel?

Did this person die just so that I can write something for my journalism class? I’d like to think that their life - my life - everyone’s lives - have more meaning than that. But I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, now.

[dbiers.livejournal.com]

Coming in from playing poker in speech, D'anna reads the placard and looks critically at the skull. She then slides into her usual seat towards the back to scribble something down before placing it upon the professor's desk along with those handed in by the rest of the class.

Her name is somewhere on the sheet of paper and her words read thusly:

A skull. A human skull. Unlike one found buried in the woods or battlefield, this is clean and whole. The color is closer to what one expects bone to be than of those seen in museums, so it's of the relatively recent dead. The teeth look healthy; therefore I assume the owner lead an affluent life and possibly had access to dental care. Bones are just bones unless we are able to attach some sort of identification to the bones, some history of whom they belonged to in life, then we have no story to tell only desensitized, dehumanized facts.

[teen-twin.livejournal.com]

Connor sits down at his desk. He contemplates the skull for a few minutes, while chewing on the end of his pencil.


Skulls are a symbol of our humanity. What remains, after we have moved from this world, is a bit of bones. The human skull is unique, unmistakably human. Archeologists and forensic scientists can identify a person’s race based upon the skull alone. Even without skin, the markings are distinct.

Looking at this skull, I think about death. The only certainty in life. Ma taught Murphy and me to handle guns when we were wee boys. I shot my first tin can when I was three. I’ve never shot a human being, but I wouldn’t hesitate, if I had no choice.

[lady-jessica-bg.livejournal.com]

Jessica writes,

“Color by Numbers” is a purely human invention, representing science, the attempt of man to categorize and compartmentalize all known information. Here, on this numbered and labeled skull, man has tried to reduce the complexity of the human mind into twenty-five different parts. In doing so, however, the masterpiece that is a brain is lessened, for the sum of twenty-five sections cannot hope to equal the whole. One wonders if the tendency to divide and classify is pure selfishness, to bring one’s own brain down to one’s level, or if it is in fact a search for meaning in division.

((I actually kinda like my topic, but I was trying to keep to the word limit.))

[marsheadtilt.livejournal.com]

Veronica blanches when she sees the skull.


She quickly writes 100 words.


[ooc: sorry - no time to actually to this...]

[suzotchka.livejournal.com]

"Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft – now quite chop-fallen. The image of a human skull is some times inseparable from the image of it being held aloft by a man in a ruff, especially when one’s former commander was given to quoting from Old Earth literature. It is a dramatic image of exceeding angst and irony. Mocking death while at the same time admiring it. A trait that anyone who works closely with death develops fairly quickly."

Ivanova appears to have caught that emo that's going around.