Letter From Joe Serafino to Dominic Amoruso

Macallum Tepsich

September 23rd, 2001
Dominic Amoruso
Country Road 7
Northwest Territories
Canada

Dear Dom,
After listening to all of the tapes you sent me and reading all the notes, I am truly concerned for your well-being. I hope all is well wherever you are in northern Canada. I am thinking about you and the experiences we had while you were in Toronto.
Along with everyone else, I was surprised to see you vanish to the northern part of Canada. What was the reason behind you moving to the Northwest Territories? I wish you had told me, I felt as though we were good friends and I would have appreciated you saying that you were going so I could have had the opportunity to say good luck in your decision and a final good-bye.
I have been so tremendously worried about you. At first when you had left, I assumed you had just had a mental break down or something along those lines. When you had not appeared back into society I became extremely concerned about you. I searched for months and lost sleep because of my anxiety and stress. The police were involved in the searching of you; I stayed with them in search of you. We looked through countless parks and tried analyzing anything you might have left behind in Toronto. Margie has been a great help in trying to find you. She has contributed to the research. She has helped me analyze the tapes that you sent. The thing I don’t understand is why you would tell everyone else but not me. I thought we were close friends and I would be one of the first people you would have called and told.
I received tapes and notes from Wolf Cove, theses tapes have shown me so much that I need to know. I could not come realize what was happening in the tapes. I had to read the notes and listen to the videos so many times in order to understand what was going on in your life. Even after reading and listening to the tapes and notes, I still could not wrap my head around some of the things you had told me. I now know the tough adventure you have gone through.
I now know the reason behind you not playing the piano. I am so glad that you have chosen to play again. I really enjoyed the composition you wrote. Singer also loved the composition. Singer plays the composition with such passion. Why did you move to the north if you despised Glen Gould’s view of northern Canada?
I would like to ask you one more question; do you feel guilty about the death of Malachai?

Sincerely,
Joe Serafino

Graphic Novel Independent Reading Blog

1. After reading the graphic novel Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, I felt that it was a great book. I liked how Tom Sawyer was a rebel and did not do what he was told. I enjoyed reading the graphic novel because it forced me keep reading because it was very interesting to find out what Tom was going to do next. In particular, this graphic novel was nice and short with great cliff hangers that most likely got other people to keep reading, not just me. I found the graphic novel to be very adventurous. The graphic novel was adventurous because Tom did something new every day. Even though Tom ran away from his Aunt every day he still managed to do something exiting. There was only one flaw in this novel, and it was the text. I could not read some of the words because there was too much writing in some of the speech blurbs.
2. Tom Sawyer was a hero in this graphic novel. He was a mischievous boy with a lot of courage. Through out the graphic novel Tom did not give up what he was doing, even if it meant getting in trouble and getting chores from his aunt. He was a fearless young boy and did the exact opposite of what he was supposed to do. When his aunt made him paint the fence because he skipped school to swim and fish. While Tom was painting the fence, Ben came along and asked if he could paint the fence for him in exchange for and apple. Some more people walked by and he did the same thing over and over again. Tom let everybody have a turn painting while he just sat in front of the tree eating his apple that Ben gave to him. Tom and his friends Joe and Huck always wore the same clothes. Tom would always wear a brown hat with a grey top. The pants that Tom wore were green and brown; on his pants he had one suspender over his right shoulder.
3. Picture 1: I found this panel interesting because the most common thing that Tom does is he gets people to do his work for him. The colour goes very well with the mood because Tom’s mood is happy because he is getting what he wants. This panel advances the story because it is giving the reader a clue of what is going to happen next. Photo 2: I found this panel to be interesting because this is Tom’s dream. I pictured the knight to be Tom’s aunt because Tom is always running away from her and in the background is Tom’s cousin that lives with him, because he is always at home. I liked how the colours were all dark except for the knight. Photo 3: I found this panel interesting because the man still standing was sent to jail and soon after he was let out. The colours are dark except for the knife, which stands out to tell you what happened. It advances the story because Tom, Joe, and Huck go looking for the dead bodies.

Image 1Image 2Image 3

I chose to review the game Halo 3, published by Microsoft Corporation, 2007. The platform for the game Halo 3 is for X-box 360. The X-box 360 is the only system that you can get Halo 3 for. The genre of the game is first person shooter.

In the story mode of the game, Halo 3’s objective is to stop the evil empire from destroying the Halo rings. Throughout the different levels there is a different challenge that needs to be completed. The challenge for each level leads up to the big challenge on the last level; which is jumping through the halo rings to save them from being destroyed. If you have X-box live you can play online. The point of the online game play is to kill as many people as you can. In the online play the teams are 5 on 5 and in one of the games that is called Social Big Team is 10 on 10.

When I play the game of Halo 3 what really interests me is the story mode and the all around killing, which always interests teens. In the story mode there are many awards that you can get for using different weapons and killing a certain number of people. In the online game play you can get different awards and at the end of each match there is an M.V.P wich is the person that kills the most people and that gets the most number of awards. The thing that interests me the most is the number of players that you can kill with four seconds in-between each other. In Halo 3 there are many things that keep me playing the game: In the online and the story mode you can play with your friends and talk to them over X-box live. In the online play you can play with your friends and you can play against them to. I am always interested in the forge part of the game. In forge you can create your own map and play on it with your friends. If you have a forged map you can host games online for other people, not just your friends.

In my experience of playing the game Halo 3 is that if they make another game after Halo 3 O.D.S.T then there should be a wider range of weapons and vehicle. The weapons and vehicles become really old really fast because there is a vehicle on every map except for 2 or 3 maps. Obviously there are weapons on all the maps but you use them all the time so they can get very boring. I would make more maps for gamers to play on so they keep buying the games to come. In the game the story mode is really quite pointless, the whole point is to save all the halo rings from being destroyed. My suggestion is to make some of the levels a little more interesting and have more types of characters that you need to kill in the story mode.

All in all the game is really good but they need to make some changes for the future games that they are going to make.

Literature

Literature is important because it gives people an opportunity to read great work by famous authors. People read literature and learn about history, and the world. Literature also shows people how words can come together and flow to make a great novel. When people read literature they can picture an image in their minds. People should read literature every once in a while.



Macallum Tepsich
09/15/09

Alex Rider

These were some very important quotes in the novel, involving Alex.

The Quote, “You’ve already shown your self to be extraordinarily brave and resourceful.” I find this quote to be important because it describes the main character of the novel perfectly. “Yeah. All right. It doesn’t look like I’ve got very much chose.” I found this important because this is where Alex agrees to help them with the mission. This is where Alex’s life turns upside down.



Macallum Tepsich
09/15/09

Alex Rider

My favorite character in the novel was Alex Rider; He was my favorite character because he showed his bravery by joining the dangerous mission. He was not afraid of a challenge and took on more than the commanders expected. Alex seems like he is a person that everyone liked. He has an important job for a 13-year-old kid and he did not let it go to his head.


Macallum Tepsich
09/15/09