Memory

A week after this school year started I was at DePauw helping my brother move into his new dorm with some friends of ours. This mainly consisted of the parents moving things in and setting up beds and dressers while we screwed around doing nothing, sometimes going out onto the campus. In the beginning, when I walked around by myself a little, so many people started asking if I had found my dorm yet I got tired of giving the long winded response which consisted “I’m not going to DePauw, I’m still in high school, but my brother is going here,” and instead took to just saying “yes.” Eventually, while unpacking some of Phil’s things, we found a nerf side by side break action shotgun he had shown us that he had gotten from Walgreens for five dollars. This served to bring us back down to the maturity of eight year olds as we ran through the dorm grabbing the gun from each other and shooting each other, to the ire of our parents, who eventually told us to put it down. This led to us walking around the dorm pointing out all the dirty spots and speculating to why they were there or who would have to clean them (such as the “AIDs spot”- a black splotch in the bath tub that Phil was assigned to clean). Eventually our parents kicked us out and sent us over to the Union to pick up books and computer information for Ian and our friends, which managed to entertain us for awhile as we poked fun at the selection of books they had or various other entertaining things. Though it was a simple day, it was one of the most fun i’d had in awhile.

Random Blog

After each reading within this class, we always have a class discussion, just to make sure everyone understood the reading as they were supposed to. This is a very helpful idea because, without it, I wouldn’t have understood nearly as much about these readings as I do. For instance, I would not have been able to draw the connection between “The Great Gatsby” and “The Great Death,” because, although I could have recognized the meaning of Gat, I would not have been able to see that was the aim of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Another benefit is some of the ideas we are told, such as the idea that the chair is only the chair, in so much as we ascribe the word chair to mean the four legged object which we usually sit on.
These in class discussions prove very helpful to the classes understanding of the literature that we read, which is why I enjoy this class, and the books we read, a lot more than the books I read in seventh grade.

Changing Language

Often time language constantly evolves whether it’s an individual’s dialect or a community’s vernacular. It is constantly changing due to the introduction of new ideas which lead to new words or the introduction of a new group of people, such as when the people who spoke Spanish mixed with those speaking English to form the Chicanos.
On a personal level, I have seen my language continually change, as I grow older. This was mainly due to the way that slang constantly changes. When I was in second grade, the word tight seemed foreign to me, but by the beginning of third grade I was constantly using it to describe things that I liked. Throughout my life these kinds of slang words have been coming at me and have slowly been becoming part of my vocabulary. This is even more evident in society when these kinds of slang words become prevalent among many different people. These changes can be seen in current music where many of the words are pure slang.
Language continually changes over time, and has been changing ever since the first language came about. It is still and will continue to change as long as humans have an actual language to communicate with.

Red Sky in the Morning Blog

The author of “Red Sky in the Morning,” witnessed a relatively innocent event, which led to a profound realization on her part. There are many people who have had such moments within their lives, though they may not realize it. Though my realization was a fairly basic one, it still changed my life permanently.
My realization began in first grade, when I came home one day from school and found my first dog, Lucy, lying on her doggie bed. At first my brother and I went to pet her but soon realized she was unnaturally cold, which is when my mother came down and led us away until my dad came home. It was then that we realized Lucy had left us. Though this has happened to many people, it was this moment when I finally realized what death truly meant. Because I was only in first grade I had not yet watched much of the news, or read the newspaper or even had a relative die so I did not know what it truly meant. It took Lucy’s death to show to me what death truly was.
Though many people have shared my moment, and there are undoubtedly some people who came to the same realization under the same conditions, it still changed my life profoundly. Since then, several dogs and several family members have passed on too, one of which affected me more deeply than Lucy’s death, but it is her death that I will always remember because of the great truth it revealed to my young mind.

Lines 81 to 119, act I scene I of Hamlet

Marcellus: Whoever knows, sit and tell me
Why does this watch
who watches over the land
And why are cannons made
And foreign weapons bought
Why do shipwrights whose hard task
Does not give them Sunday off
Why does this sweaty haste
Join the night and day laborers
Who can inform me

Horatio: I can explain it
The rumor is: our last king
Who you just saw
Was, as you all know, picked to fight
By Fortinbras of Norway
Challenged to combat, when our valiant Hamlet
As this side of the world knew him
Killed Fortinbras, who, by agreement
Which was made true by law and heraldry
Did give up, along with his life, all his lands
Which he controlled, to the winner
Hamlet had an agreement, that to be returned were
the lands of Fortinbras
Had Fortinbras won, by the same agreement
And by the terms of which the agreement was designed
His land went to Hamlet. Now, young Fortinbras
Of hot anger
Did in the skirts of Norway
Enlist a group of ruffians
Paid in food, to engage in an activity
That’s purpose is to
As it appears to us
Recover the lands lost by war
And those compulsatory agreements, with regards to those same lands
That his father lost. And I believe that this,
Is the main motive of our preparation
The source of this watch
The source of our watch and chief reason
Of this speed and commotion

Feed Blog

I found Feed to be a very interesting novel, but it also seemed very bleak and pessimistic about our future. Everyone seemed to lack emotions, or rather, had very few emotions. Things that had been intimate were now casual things to which no thought was given. Many people expressed indignation, surprise and even anger at the fact that Titus left Violet. While I was fairly surprised at this turn of events, I was not “mad” at Titus for what he did, for I feel that any other person from that time would have done the same thing. They grew up in a society where they were taught to never be attached to someone. Their parents weren’t even together when the kids were first conceived. Sex was viewed as something purely for pleasure and never symbolized anything permanent. With most people in that society, her going into this recession of health would have symbolized the end of that relationship, and they would have moved on. Since will was a part of that group that would move on, he did as he was programmed to do, he moved on to find the next source of pleasure and fun. Violet thought everything should have meaning and that they would be together forever. Even in today’s culture that would be considered rushing, considering they had only been going out for a few months. In this time and day people often go out for a year or more before they decide to even be engaged, but Violet was only with Titus for a few months before she decided that they should be together. This kind of pressure and clinginess is what drove Titus away, he couldn’t stand being with her anymore because everything had to have a second layer of meaning, everything had to relate to them being together forever. She drove him away with her clinginess, so I believe that Titus should not be criticized for leaving her. I also believe that during this whole novel M.T. Anderson scorned free markets and covertly attacked corporations for what they do to the people. I found this to be absurd for the companies have done no true wrong. They’ve done what every person does, they have acted in their own self-interest by marketing to everyone they can. If those people are too weak to deny themselves what the company offers then it is their fault. The company merely provides the goods, it is the people who are too weak and give in and buy whatever the company says. I feel that this also relates back to the housing crisis, in that everyone has criticized the bank for giving out their loans, but have taken none of the blame on themselves or the government. How about criticizing the government for forcing through the CRA in the 1970s? Or the government for revising it in the 1990s to practically force banks to give loans to “disadvantaged people.” More so than the government, however, it is the people’s fault. Those who took mortgages (adjustable rate mortgages normally), failed to pay them, had their house foreclosed then proceeded to claim, “Oh the big mean bank took advantage of me!” No, you were gullible enough to take mortgage you couldn’t afford, just like in the book many people blame the companies without looking at themselves.

Black In America

Throughout the film statistics were constantly thrown at us showing how African Americans are more likely to go to jail or flunk out of high school or college. These are very sad statistics to hear, but I believe that a lot of these problems are self-inflicted problems. As it even said in the film, many African Americans do not do well in school because it is not considered black to get good grades when many of them are capable of achieving those good grades. Fixing errors in ideology such as this would lead to more African Americans graduating and being able to get better jobs instead of leaving high school and turning to a life of crime for money.
I am not saying that it is purely due to this ideology that African Americans seem more disadvantages, for I realize that there is still racism around today, but that small remainder of racism seems to be fading fast, as shown by the election of Barack Obama and the appointment of several other African Americans to high ranking positions within the government. To me, it seems to be not so much racism that holds African Americans back, but rather several mentalities, which have became ingrained within their culture. If these cycles were to be broken I believe that many of the startling statistics presented within the film would drop to much lower levels. Another of these problems is the amount of kids who grow up without father figures because the fathers don’t marry the mother before having the kid. A lot of the time this causes the dad to be distant and not have an influence on his sons’ life, which, though maybe not consciously influences the son who acts the way his dad did.
Finally, though many may disagree, I believe that affirmative action also has a negative effect upon the African American community because young students who might not be qualified for a certain college still get in. Not only does this mean that the college may be too hard and that they may fail where they would succeed at another college but it also would implant a doubt in their mind and in others minds. As the many who worked for a music company said, even if you do a good job, in the back of people’s mind will always lurk the suspicion that, “oh, he got the job because he is black,” so that a persons work may never be totally validated.
I realize that some of my opinions may come across to some people the wrong way and that I can never truly understand what African Americans in this country go through, but I still believe that many of the problems today are not due to racism, but rather due to flaws that became ingrained within the culture.