The DCOM Lab

11/20/2012
Describe the place where you are sitting now. Freewrite the details you observe -- and push yourself to observe many details. Describe the people you can see, the architecture and the furnishings. Use your senses. After you've written down what you see, close your eyes and focus on sounds and smells. Now open your eyes and pull the description into a few paragraphs.

The room is like next-gen white. Everything is clean and simple. The Mac in front of me is about two inches thick and the modems are quiet as shit. Katie is typing sporadically next to me. She's on twitter, though, so it shouldn't continue for much longer. She's wearing a blue skirt-sweater with stockings and boots. The unused Macs in front of me day dream about color squibs. The lights are florescent white. The tables are finished wood. It actually looks like the inside of a genius bar at a Mac store. Random clicking can be heard around the room as if we're helping the computers communicate to each other via Morse Code.

Recurring Dream

11/29/2012
Write about a dream you’ve had again and again. When did you first have the dream? When does it recur? What do you think it signifies?

I remember dreaming about these orphans on a train a few times when I was little. I run after the train, but no matter how fast I ran, I never caught it. The orphans would just continue to stare at me. They wouldn't even help.

my psych teacher says that the train is supposed to represent penises or something. I think it's more of a fear of failure. Or failing because no one wants to help me succeed.

Something's Wrong...I Can Feel It

11/27/2012
Think of a wild coincidence that has occurred in your life. Now write three-four paragraphs and develop the incident, giving us the necessary background information and specific details.

My best friend Connor and I had been living in a small one-bedroom apartment in Jersey City for the last two months. We were both working at the same restaurant in New York City and this happened to be one of the few nights we were able to come home at the same time and relax.

A long time ago, Connor and I had gone out to get some food while both of our girlfriends were left to sit in our apartment together. They had never made an effort to hang out together, but we still liked to consider them friends. Apparently, however, the two bonded over some gossip while were gone. Now I think everything would have been fine if Connor's girlfriend, Kristen, had not broken the ever sacred girl-code of not saying anything to anyone about what was said during gossip time.

At around 11:30 I called Lexi to say goodnight and Connor proceeded to make me some drinks. Connor waited until I was incredibly drunk (he was a bar-tender so he happened to be very good at doing that) to tell me that Lexi cheated on me at the very start of our relationship. I couldn't believe it until he told me that Kristen told him after she was gossiping with Lexi. I proceeded to get belligerently drunk to the point where I started throwing up in our bathroom. It was around 5 in the morning when I received a phone call from Lexi, who was half awake somehow. She was mad at me for not calling and saying goodnight to her. Through my drunken stupor I managed to tell her that I did and that she could even check her phone.

The only thing I was left to believe that night was that Lexi and I had forged such an incredible bond over the nine months that we were together, that I was able to wake her up in the middle of the night while I was distressed about our relationship. And that could only mean that I still loved her, regardless of what was true or not.

3 Idiots

I feel like a real work of art is meant to move you to your very core. Very few artists have been able to do this for me, but I can honestly say that it has happened more than once. That being said, there is no other film in the world that has moved me like 3 Idiots did. It's a Bollywood film that runs around 3 hours long. I came upon it randomly one night at a Redbox in New York City and decided to rent it on a whim. I saw the movie, cried around 6 times, and then immediatly ran down the hall and forced one of my friends to watch it with me. That was the first time I've ever felt compelled to watch a three hour long movie back to back. A year later I happily watched it again with my parents.

The film is so incredibly well written, unbelievably creative, and well acted. If that's a word. I can't begin to endorse this movie enough. You just need to watch it all the way through. Feel free to skip through all of the weird dance numbers though.



The official trailer of the most awaited movie - 3 Idiots

HD Quality Video

Starring: Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Sharman Joshi, R. Madhavan and Boman Irani

Produced by: Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Directed by: Raju Hirani

Releasing on: 25th December, 2009

Farhan Qureshi, Raju Rastogi

Pia

'Rancho' Shamaldas Chanchad, Farhan Qureshi, Raju Rastogi

Death at a Funeral

11/8/2012
Recall a funeral you've attended and write about it. Did anything unusual happen at the event? How did you feel? Describe the situation -- who, what, when, where, why and how -- in three to four paragraphs.

I've never been to a funeral before. Well I might have, but I was probably too young to remember. I have been to a viewing though. One of my closest friends in high school recently lost his dad to a freak accident while he was water skiing.

It was one of the most surreal moments of my life. The whole day was sunny and clear, but when the viewing was about to start, it began to pour outside like I've never seen before. Inside, I saw a few familiar faces except most of them were crying profusely. We came inside and saw what looked like an auction for a dead man. A man I once knew was lying in an open coffin with his face construed in an artificial smile while his family stood before him and accepted everyone's apologies. I hugged Mike for a full minute and the only question I could bring myself to ask him was if he was there when it happened. He said no. After an awkward moment of silence, we started catching up on old times; wondering how we've been, if we've played tennis recently, how long he's going to be around for. It was hard for me, especially because I had never held a casual conversation before while a dead guy rests behind me. Plus, it was the father of the kid I was talking to!

We left and saw a few of my old classmates come in. I said hi and walked out to the car with my parents. It was still raining. On the drive home, though, it stopped immediately.

Wedding Crashers

11/6/2012
Recall a wedding you've attended and write about it. Did anything unusual happen at the event? How did you feel? Describe the situation -- who, what, when, where, why and how -- in three to four paragraphs.

Wedding Crashers was a pretty cool movie. Although I still have yet to try out Will Ferrel's method of picking up women. "I think your friend Chazz is a little crazy man...I also think he might be a genius."

The Stick Game

Write about an event from your childhood through your adult eyes.  Add perceptions that you could not have known at the time.

Back when I used to live in Virginia, my brother and I would often invent our own sports to entertain ourselves on the long summer days when playing video games were considered a shameful activity in the midst of such beautiful afternoons. I remember these games to be sporadic manifestations of our imaginations combined with our battle to overcome the monotony of daily life. Often, they would come to fruition out of our usual competitive nature with one another; even though most of the games we invented never seemed to have any real goals in the first place. Our parents were always against us seeing any ‘R’ rated movies growing up, however, violent action movies were never a problem. This was also before the era of violent video games so we had to use our imaginations to fuel our need for an aggressive output. That being said, this particular game we invented seemed to be the one to end them all. The destruction of our youth.

            I can’t exactly remember what this game was called, although I do recall what it consisted of. I imagine it arose from the type of dispute we always had over ‘who got who, first’ every time we shot at each other with our pointed fingers. That was how ‘The Shooting Game’ came to be called ‘The Stick Game.’ I’m sure you can figure out where this is going, and it pains me to think that we didn’t at the time. If you’ve ever heard your parents tell you not to do something because there was a chance someone could get their eye poked out, this was one of those situations. Nevertheless, the game consisted of throwing sticks at each other while hiding behind two adjacent trees. The object was to try and dodge the other player’s stick while trying to hit your opponent at the same time. Let’s just say my brother won after I dove out from behind my tree and connected my left eye to his stick.

            As soon as this happened, I ran inside and cried to my mother like a little girl. I was then rushed to an eye doctor to see if there had been any real damage to my retina. I could only imagine the hell my brother was going through at home with my crazy father, despite the game being his idea in the first place. According to the doctor, my vision appeared to be fine, which made me wonder why I was forced to wear an eye patch over my face for the next two weeks. Although I knew how ridiculous it made me look, I kind of liked looking like an Asian pirate baby. I suppose it made me feel like a man who now had a cool battle scar and a good story to tell his friends at the lunch table. After I came back, however, my dad pulled my brother outside by his sleeve as I walked into the house. My brother began crying after he saw the patch on my eye.

“Look at him!” he cried, “Look at what you did to your brother!” It was then that I felt something strange come over me that I had never felt before. At the time, I couldn’t exactly describe it. It wasn’t sadness or empathy. And it wasn’t even the sight of my brother breaking down over such an unforeseeable accident. It was my father. It was the first time I had actually seen him give a shit about my general well being. I mean, I knew he was doing this to teach my brother a lesson, but it was over something that he’d done to me. Something that might’ve actually caused me permanent damage for the rest of my life. It was then that I knew why I started to cry in that moment. My father might act like he hates me sometimes, but there was something in him that caused him pain at the sight of me actually getting hurt. What was this feeling? And why had I never seen it before?