Post Script

As a p.s. to my stumble post, a site that might pop up a lot (or not at all. who knows) is called 8tracks.com. This is just a recommendation, because it's really cool. Basically if you have a playlist on itunes or grooveshark and you think it's really cool you can put it on 8tracks.com and share it with other people. they can comment on it and listen to it, but there's a limit on how many times you skip songs per hour, like on pandora.

Shed A Little Light On The Subject

So you might have seen that I "Stumble" a lot, and you may be asking yourself "What exactly is Stumbling?" To answer your subliminal thoughts, Stumble is the most amazing site I've ever encountered and, as I may have said before, I've spent many an afternoon on Stumble, not doing much of anything. Anyway what it is is this: you're basically wandering about the internet aimlessly, but it's not boring. You simply go to stumbleupon.com and click the yellow Stumble button. It takes you to random pages on the world wide web you might never have encountered otherwise. I've found some pretty interesting, bizarre, gross, funny, silly, beautiful things on Stumble. And, if you want to specify the types of pages you'd like to stumble upon, you can chose a category at the top of the page. I really enjoy choosing Clothing just because I'm always looking for cute styles I can try and adapt in my own way. Plus, I think I might be addicted to online shopping. I might need to see someone about that...

A Song In The Front Yard

A SONG IN THE FRONT YARD

BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace

And strut down the streets with paint on my face

In "A Song in the Front Yard" Gwendolyn Brooks captures the rebellious feelings many children and teenagers possess. That want of freedom, the feeling that you can do whatever you want to do. The lines "I want a peek at the back" hint at a playful, whispered conversation, the need to keep her voice down because she knows her mother won't approve. Things that are "bad" or "wrong" (as dictated by parents) are made all the more tempting by parental disapproval. In other words, we all want what we can't have. It's ironic, though, that Brooks talks of playing "where the charity children play" because, even with the idea that we all want what we can't have, who aspires to be with people who are "lower" than them, have less than them? I agree with her underlying theme, but the examples she employs ("wear the brave stockings of night-black lace and strut down the streets with paint on my face") possess connotations that are almost too rebellious, too risque. I'd like to stay out late, break my curfew, but I'm not sure if "I'd like to be a bad woman, too."

Atonement, Parts Two and Three

While part one of Atonement sets up the story and the crime Briony Tallis commits, part two follows Robbie after the crime has been committed and part three follows Briony as a parallel story line.

So the crime? Well, Briony turns out to be a lot worse than I expected. After the twins ran away, and Lola vanishes into the night, the search party breaks up, Cecilia with Leon and, supposedly, Paul Marshall. Briony watches as Robbie walks away by himself. She's extremely wary of him after witnessing certain events in the library, and who could blame her, really? For a thirteen year old, that's a pretty confusing event. Anyway, Briony decides to head off on her own in search of Pierrot and Jackson, but what she happens upon is more sinister than two boys lurking in the dark. Wandering around, Briony wonders if perhaps the boys were hiding in her favorite spot down by the bridge. She hears and sees no one in the darkness, assuming Cecilia and Leon had already passed over the bridge. She also assumed Cecilia would be telling Leon of Robbie's assault on her (as Briony sees it). Boy, was she off. Anyway, she heads down to the copse beneath the bridge, but instead of encountering Jackson and Pierrot, she finds Lola and a man, who rises off of Lola and slips away before he can be found out. In the dark, Briony could not see his face, but assumes that it was Robbie. This part is rather sad, seeing as Lola has been shamed and violated. Briony feels this occurrence has brought them closer together and comforts her cousin. Long story short, Briony and Lola return home, Briony gives an account of what has happened, blames Robbie (who's still no where to be found) and the police are called. Cecilia and Leon return, and then Paul Marshall (suspiciously alone..?*). Briony then has a "brilliant" idea, rushing up to Cecilia's room to steal the note Robbie wrote to her. She wants to show it as evidence of his maniacal thoughts and, therefore, actions. Of course, this makes Cecilia furious, saying its an invasion of her privacy, that the note was meant only for her.

Someone reports seeing Robbie approaching the house, and the policemen, Emily, Briony and Leon wait outside for him. What's described as a seven foot man approaches but as time passes, they realize it is Robbie, carrying one of the twins on his shoulders, the other holding his hand and stumbling behind him. The worst part is that after this kind, heroic act, the police still arrest Robbie, even though the only testament they have to his crime is Briony, who couldn't see his face, and Lola, who claims to not know who it was that assaulted her. Briony kept saying "I know it was him" thinking she is protecting Cecilia and Lola. So Robbie's being loaded into the police car when Briony sees Cecilia rush out to him and they exchange words. Briony can't tell what's being said, but assumes Cecilia is accusing Robbie of his crimes, and then forgiving him. Part one ends with Grace Turner, Robbie's mother, attacking the hood of the police car with an umbrella, and shouting "Liars! Liars!" many times over.

Part two is basically just following Robbie, five years later. He's out of jail, but only because he agreed to join the military (World War II is happening at this moment in the story). This part is really rather gruesome and somewhat boring, accepting parts where mysteries are revealed. Robbie and Cecilia have been in touch. What Cecilia actually said to Robbie that night he was arrested was not an accusation but a confession of love. It is also disclosed that when she was ten, Briony confessed to Robbie that she loved him, rendering her an untrustworthy narrator. It now looks as if every word from her point of view was a lie, forged through her jealousy, although she claimed it was fear for her sister's life. Robbie hears from Cecilia that she has cut ties with her family and now Briony (who's working as a nurse, like Cecilia) wants to clear Robbie's name.

I've just started part three which shows Briony's point of view as a probationer (nurse trainee) in a particularly tough hospital ward. They're cleaning and clearing the ward for the influx of wounded soldiers coming in from France.

The thing that keeps me reading when parts get exceptionally boring (Robbie's war parts) is Robbie and Cecilia's relationship. What can I say, I'm a hopeless romantic. I'm afraid they won't end up together, that some unforeseeable force will keep them apart, something I desperately don't want to happen.

I've never actually ever hated a fictional character before, but Briony has me seeing red. Because of her, Robbie and Cecilia aren't together, Cecilia cuts herself off from her family, Robbie went to jail and has to face one of the most horrific wars in history. Other than my disdain for one of the main characters, I'm enthralled by this book. I can't wait to see what happens at the end, and then I can see the movie! (Keira Knightley and James McAvoy? Such a promising cast).

*I'm extremely suspicious of Paul Marshall, and am almost positive he was the person that attacked Lola, not Robbie.

Everythings Right

      

I Moustache You A Question, I'll Shave It For Later

Atonement by Ian McEwan is an exceptionally enthralling novel, not due to any particular excitement that has happened thus far but because of the interesting conundrum of what Briony, the quiet thirteen year-old author/playwright, is going to do next. I already know she's going to "commit a crime" because McEwan says so in chapter thirteen, but I'm still confused as to what that particular crime will be. Maybe I should just start from the beginning.

Atonement is set in England during the summer of 1935. It follows the Tallis family: Cecilia, Briony, and their mother, Emily Tallis. Some chapters are also from the view of Robbie Turner, the laundress's son. Basically what its about is Briony has been writing a play because her cousins are coming to stay with them and she wants them to perform it. Well, Lola and the twins, Pierrot and Jackson, manage to screw that up (Lola, seemingly, on purpose) so the play never really gets off the ground. But its not about The Trials of Arabella, its about the, pardon me, sexual tension Briony witnesses between Cecilia and Robbie. Being only thirteen, she really doesn't understand whats going on and seems to think Robbie's a maniac who has some weird hold over Cecilia. Needless to say, she doesn't get it. Robbie has mad passionate love for Cecilia and writes some weird stuff on his typewriter about her. Deciding sending her that "weird stuff" would be, well, inappropriate, he drafts a handwritten letter. But, as these things do happen, the letters got switched (shocking, isn't it?) so now Cecilia gets the really kinda gross letter from Robbie. The worst part is that he asks Briony to deliver it and being the annoying little twit that she is, she reads it. Briony misunderstands the letter and starts to repeatedly call Robbie a "maniac." Of course, she also witnesses some naughty things in the library so its not really all in her head, she just has a wild imagination and no "grasp of adult motives" as McEwan puts it. Amid all this chaos, Cecilia and Robbie admitting their love to each other and Briony freaking out about protecting Cecilia, something weird is happening between cousin Lola and older brother Leon Tallis's friend Paul Marshall. There's a scene where he gives her some chocolate and is nice to her, but the next you hear of them Lola has a scratch and bruises on her arm and Paul has a scratch on his unfortunately smushed-looking face. And as if the book couldn't get any more mysterious/weird, the twins run away and are nowhere to be found. I will stop here because that's the farthest I've gotten.

I really am enjoying this book. It's got some great lines, especially a paragraph where McEwan describes what a story really is: "A story was direct and simple, allowing nothing to come between herself and her reader - no intermediaries with their private ambitions of incompetence, no pressures of time, no limits on resources. In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same things; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled. you saw the word castle, and it was there, seen from some distance, with woods in high summer spread before it, the air bluish and soft with smoke rising from the blacksmith's forge, and a cobbled road twisting away into the green shade..." I find I really connect with this paragraph because it exactly describes what I think of when I think of reading a novel or a book. How losing yourself in a good story can seemingly transport you to that time and place, make the story your story, the things happening things that actually happened to you. Reading is an escape and it makes anything possible.

I definitely recommend this book to you, but if your mother would perhaps not appreciate her son/daughter reading some rather crude material I suggest you put it down and walk away.

P.S. Is it weird to have a slight obsession with moustaches?

P.P.S. What's your favorite joke/silly saying?

Questions I Must Ask

Oh, All the Pretty Horses, how you discombobulate me.

1) I have to ask: Why the heck does Cormac McCarthy ignore elementary english rules and spurn quotation marks?

2) And how does it impact the flow of the story?

3) Why does John Grady want to keep the run down ranch even when selling it means more money?

4) And if it's so important to him, why doesn't he try harder instead of running away?

5) Pg 27 "If God wanted me to be born I'd be born." Does Rawlins and JG's conversation make you think about how things would have been different if your parents hadn't met, if they'd married other people, had other children? Would you still have been born?

6) How could JG just up and leave his family?

7) Could you abandon your own family?

8) What drives Rawlins to leave with JG?

9) When Rawlins sings on pg 37, do you think he's having doubts about leaving with JG?

10) Why did Blevins abandon his home?

11) What makes it okay for Blevins to join up with JG and Rawlins without knowing anything about them and vice versa?

12) Why is being able to shoot a gun impressive? Pg 48

13) Where are JG, Rawlins and Blevins headed?

14) Why doesn't McCarthy make the story more clear?

15) Is this to add to the story or did he just want to make it more frustrating? Thoughts?

16) Pg 76. Why does the man ask to buy Blevins?

17) Pg 91. "You think you can believe in a heaven if you dont believe in hell?" Can you?

18) Do you think JG and Rawlins are going to try to find Blevins?

19) "You reckon his name is Jimmy Blevins sure enough?" Or do you think he used a psuedonym?

20) Is religion an undercurrent in the story? (parallels to Jesus (JGC) and questions about heaven/hell/religion)

21) How is it going to affect the rest of the story?

Food for thought:

"You think God looks out for people? said Rawlins.

Yeah. I guess He does. You?

Yeah. I do. Way the world is. Somebody can wake up and sneeze somewhere in Arkansas or some damn place and before you're done there's wars and ruination and all hell. You dont know what's goin to happen. I'd say He's just about got to. I dont believe we'd make it a day otherwise." What's your favorite passage in the book so far?

You know, I think this book might be growing on me. Who knew?

Psychic? I think so.

Okay! Just found something really cool (THANK YOU, STUMBLE). So I'm really having trouble finding new books to read. You know how you read this really awesome book and you want to read something just like it thats as good but there's really no such thing unless there is a sequel (of course, with my luck, the writer drops off the map and there never is a sequel or its not set up to be a recurring series). Anyway, I'm struggling when all of a sudden StumbleUpon.com has done it again. I find this website called The Book Seer www.bookseer.com. It comes up with this picture of a gentleman with a word bubble above his head. All you have to do is type in the name of book you recently read/loved/obsessed over (maybe its twilight, maybe its Homer's the Odyssey. Whatever your preference, he will not judge) and the name of the author in the supplied blanks. Press enter and VOILA! recommendations based on your chosen book appear, thanks to Amazon.com and LibraryThing. MAGIC! and great for Etymology students struggling to keep up with the 100/150 page requirements each week. The Book Seer (a.k.a the website that will save your Ety grade) You can thank me later ;)

Valentine

For some reason, I've been thinking a lot about Valentine's Day lately. Maybe because I realized this guy I liked is a complete (expletive) and I'm realizing I will once again be alone on that day. OR it might be because my favorite song at the moment is titled Valentine and I just happened to watch the movie Valentine's Day the other day while on the elliptical. Plus I just saw Tangled again and love stories (animated or real) make me sad/happy at the same time. I don't know, could be all three. But the song is amazing and you should really listen to it. (Valentine by Kina Grannis) I love the way her voice sounds and I'm thinking about singing it in our schools variety show. Not sure yet, but food for thought!

  

Stumbling

It's actually been almost a whole week since i've posted. It's kinda weirding me out. I don't like it. So anyway, the week was pretty normal, with a glorious snow day Wednesday. Thank you, Mother Nature! Besides that, it being a pretty normal week, I have nothing much to report. Although tonight I played a rather interesting game of Liar's Dice and Scattergories with my mates. I have good and bad news. Bad news - I'm almost as bad at Liar's Dice as I am at Apples to Apples. Good news - I beat all of my friends at Scattergories! Over all, good night, except for the part where my friend said "dark" was a color and used it to describe people. That was when I found out that if I laugh too hard, I start to snort. Not attractive. Tonight reminded me of a site I Stumbled upon not too long ago. It just had a list of thoughts, each one starting with I Believe... It's called Shoot First, Eat Later. What I saw was "I Believe... That my best friend and I can do anything, or nothing and have the best time." We spent the first half of our night together, watching TV, eating dinner with my family, and talking to my dad about his trip. (my dad came home from Hong Kong! He brought me a panda bookmark! *celebratory dance with hip shaking and arm waving*) The other was spent in hilarity as aforementioned. Ah, I love my friends. Oh by the way, Stumbling - if you don't know what it is go to www.stumbleupon.com. I've spent many a weekend on that website and can honestly say I don't feel like any time was wasted. In fact, I am Stumbling as I type. It's an addiction.

A Multitudinous Post

I Stumbled upon this video the other day and was in complete raptures with it. I wish my doodles were as well done as this person's. I also concur with their thoughts on math and how ridiculously boring it can be (and always is). The only difference between the two of us (other than their doodlings are vastly superior than mine) is that they know infinitely more about math than I do. I'm much more of an English persons: I'm better with words than functions and unit circles. As people would say, I'm a right brained, over left-brained, person. Anyway onto the multitudinous of this post.

Friday was one of my best friend's seventeenth birthday and last night all of our friends got together for a little party. What was mainly a fun night also consisted of depressing factors, like figuring out I'm total rubbish at Apples to Apples. I didn't win a single green card, while some people had three or four. To top it all off my beloved Colts lost a close game to the New York Jets. They were SO CLOSE!! Besides those two upsetting events the party was a hit: good food, good movies, good company and a ton of karaoke sung by two friends who couldn't carry a tune to save their lives (still love you guys!). 

So. All The Pretty Horses is about a sixteen year old boy in San Angelo, Texas. When we meet John Grady Cole, his grandfather has just died and he is attending the funeral. It is further revealed that his parents are estranged and that his mother plans to sell his grandfather's ranch, the place John Grady has lived since he was born. John Grady tries to reason with his mother and persuade her not to sell the ranch, that he could run it, despite his young age, but his mother wants to sell it and chase after her dream of being an actress. John Grady goes to the family lawyer to see if there is anything more he can do to salvage the ranch, but he is turned down cold. There's nothing more he can do. To top it all off, he learns of the finalization of his parents divorce. He then hitchhikes to San Antonio to see a play his mom is starring in. 

John Grady and his father go riding for the last time in San Angelo. We then learn that John Grady and his friend Rawlins plan to run away from home. Then John Grady's talking to his ex-girlfriend (she dumped him) downtown. After that Rawlins and John Grady slip quietly away during the night, riding out on their horses. 

Okay if my description of this first 30 pages of this book seem a little lackluster, that's because I find this book to be as dull as one of those old movies my older sister likes to watch that are all in French and she can only read subtitles (no offense, Cormac McCarthy; Cait, those movies suck). The style of the novel is so ambiguous it confuses me. I never know who's talking and who they are addressing, or where they are. You don't even find out the main characters name till page 7. The narrator is pretty ambiguous too. We talked about it in class, but I'm just going to repeat that there are some narrators who will describe everything and give you every detail. The narrator of All The Pretty Horses isn't going to give away anyway. When I play it in my head I imagine the narrator is a bored teenager in AP Lit (like there's ever such a thing, right guys?) reading monotonously out loud to the class. Sorry if you like this book, it's just my opinion.

2009 vs. 2010

While I may pride myself on mainly listening to artists that my peers aren't obsessed with and might not know very well (Adele, Florence + The Machine, Eliza Doolittle, A Fine Frenzy, etc.), I, like every other teenager I know, enjoy my fair share of popular music: Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Lady GaGa, etc. So when I happened upon DJ  Earworm's annual mashup of the years top 100 songs for 2009 I was excited to see my favorite catchy pop tunes. I thought the video was very well done and liked it so much I put it on my iPod (though if you want to do the same, it only comes as a podcast on iTunes). Of course I was excited for 2011 to come just so I could see the mashup of the hit songs from 2010. I must say, however, I was sadly disappointed. I enjoyed the 2009 video much more than I did the 2010. Maybe the 2009 one just felt more upbeat and 2010 has gone a little soft on the "rave" type music. I don't know.

Here is the 2009 mashup, Blame It On the Pop (my favorite):

I'm not going to post the 2010 one but it's called Don't Stop the Pop so if you want to look it up on Youtube just type in 2010 DJ Earworm Don't Stop the Pop. Please enjoy this attack of popular teenage music.

Water For Elephants

When I think of the circus, I always remember the commercial that plays in my town whenever the circus visits. The kids yelling "come on, everyone, let's go to the circus," the theme song and then the little ditty at the end, "three rings of fun!" In the novel Water For Elephants, you're introduced to the behind-the-scenes of The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show On Earth, a traveling circus set amid the Great Depression. The novel centers on Jacob Jankowski, and switches from his life as a ninety-three year old man living in a nursing home to his perspective as the twenty-three year old veterinarian for this sub-par circus (despite its name as the "Most Spectacular Show On Earth" the circus is "probably not even the fiftieth most spectacular show on earth,"). The novel is actually really interesting and while some parts may be a little inappropriate for a teenager of my age, so far I've really enjoyed it. The part that I like the most is that before some of the chapters are pictures from actual traveling circuses that existed during the Great Depression. My favorite picture so far is from the Tegge Circus Archives of an elephant getting off of a train car. I've never really appreciated what gargantuan creatures elephants are until I saw this photograph. I'd show you the exact photo in the novel, but sadly I cannot find it online. So instead here's a picture of another elephant I find just as intriguing. 

So anyway as I said, the novel centers around Jacob Jankowski, a veterinary student studying at Cornell. He's only a day away from taking his final and being able to graduate when he hears his parents have been killed in a car accident. He's left with nothing because his father, who was a veterinarian (Jacob was going to join his practice), was so in debt from taking on patients for free, working for goods instead of money, and taking a mortgage on the house to pay for Jacob's Ivy League education, everything left belonged to the bank. Jacob doesn't take his exam but instead walks out in the middle of it and unknowingly jumps a traveling circus train, The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show On Earth. He meets a really old guy named Camel who decides he could get Jacob a job with the circus. When they learn he's a vet (or close to being one, seeing as he didn't graduate) the brutal ringleader, Uncle Al, takes him on to work in the menagerie, with all the animals. Through his job he meets the man in charge of all of the animals, the paranoid schizophrenic August Rosenbluth (August is described as being able to be charming at times and brutal at others) and his lovely performer wife, Marlena, on whom Jacob harbors a crush. There are many bumps along to line: Jacob sharing a room with a performing dwarf named Kinko (Walter, to his friends) and his dog Queenie, August being vicious and unfeeling towards everyone, having to put down Marlena's favorite horse, and continually running out of food for the animals because neither August nor Uncle Al really care about them other than they make money. It's obvious Jacob continues to develop feelings for Marlena, and the feelings may be reciprocated. Alas, I've only read to page 145, so I've yet to find out. More on the romance later.

So far, I've enjoyed this novel and can't wait to see the movie adaptation that comes out in April, starring Robert Pattinson as Jacob, Reese Witherspoon as Marlena Rosenbluth and Christoph Waltz as her husband, August (Waltz always plays such a good villain, in my opinion). It'll be interesting to see how close they've stuck to the novel. I always hate it when movies stray from the novel they're adapting. So fingers crossed for a good movie worth the 8 dollars!

Hot Kool Aid

  

I think now would be the appropriate time to explain the name of my blog, seeing as its the very first post, but I'd rather leave that up to Mr. Julian Smith. You may not think it funny, or you may think its the most hilarious thing you've ever seen. It makes absolutely no sense so it really doesn't matter what you think of it. For now, you all may enjoy a fresh pot of Hot Kool Aid.