Train your brain, man.

Well, here’s the grand finale.

The background information. . .

             I have never read a book that I didn’t like, but I despise many magazines. They are full of trashy gossip and demeaning snippets, hold nothing of true intellectual value, and are not thoughtfully engaging to our cognitive growth.

(Despite my overall disdain of these poorly bounded pieces of “literature”, I do not think poorly of anyone who reads them. They are just not in my taste, but I also don’t presume that everyone who reads these types of magazines are trashy or uneducated.)

            After the first assignment of Seeing Sideways, it become more evident to me that I want to continuously grow as an individual—intellectually, spiritually, and abstractly. We had to incorporate who we were based off of the creation of the egg, and while it initially seemed like an odd correlation, it made more sense after the matter. With every project that we created, whether we knew it beforehand or not, aspects of our being went into the process and emitted from the outcome.

            The underlying essence of every assignment I have completed for this class shows in my Altered Book: my desire to expand cognitively and creatively; to keep an active and immersed mind; to enrich myself continuously.

The altering process…

            I will be honest, I started on this project entirely too late. Procrastination has become an unwanted and bitter ritual this semester… hopefully I can break it for the following years of my schooling. But also, rather inconveniently, I had fallen sick the couple weeks leading up to this deadline and was more focused on sleeping and trying to stay alive at work.

            I chose three pages as the main puzzles, but glued several of the pages together in order to create thicker pieces and to fully utilize the magazine into my project. Next, I poorly outlined a puzzle on the three pages and begrudgingly cut out the pieces.

           
            The First Puzzle
            Why do we have to bash butts? Yes, big butts are cool. As are small butts. All butts are beautiful—large or tiny, round or square—and you don’t have to bare two sets of balloons to be butt worthy.

            The Second Puzzle

            It worries me that people could think that Selena Gomez is now “fat”. She is still a dainty princess. But even if she feasts like a queen and puts on sixty pounds, she will still be beautiful. Also, most importantly, food is fantastic and we should enjoy ourselves.

            The Third Puzzle

            Everyone wore it best. All of those ladies look fabulous.

            Lastly, I created a cover photo for the Mason jar container in Photoshop. Mason jars are sweet as hell for whatever simplistic reason.

            And to quote my “I Got This Covered” assignment blogpost…

“Puzzles stimulate your mind to find patterns, utilizing dexterity,

spatial reasoning, and logic; it keeps your mind active in both

hemispheres of your brain, like exercising a muscle to keep it

in top shape. It’s a form of critical thinking that more people should

practice—and in more ways that just with puzzles—to keep themselves

alert and mentally healthy.”

            I changed an unengaging magazine into an interactive game. This is a stimulating use of a magazine so that the mind actually benefits from using it. I love puzzles.

            Fin.