This Is The End, My Only Friend, The End

Wow, this is really my final blog. I feel like I am leaving somewhere that I have never been physical. This is like the quote Dr. Nafisi’s stole from Humbert in Lolita; we have to imagine each other because we do not exist it we don’t. Through words in blogs and Peer Draft Reviews, I have imagined you guys. It was fun, but challenging. I think if this was my only class or I had a couple of easy classes along with this one I would appreciate it more. Despite having a tough schedule, this class got a lot of my attention for the last sixteen weeks. It’s going to be different not writing one of these blogs every Friday. I guess I could keep writing them, but I probably will not.

English 103 taught me a different style of reading. Sometime you read and you just take what the writer gives you. Not in this class, it was like a treasure hunt. We where trying to figure out what the writer was trying to imply. What was the writer trying to hide? Is he bias? Is the writer bullshitting me? I think that is what made this class fun and at the same time challenging. Most of the assignments had no right or wrong answer, but you had to answer them thoughtfully and explain how you came to your conclusion. Also, unlike a couple of the classes I have taken at AVC, every book and reading assignment was interest. When I saw that a book call On Bullshit was part of our required reading, I knew this class would be different. It definitely did not disappoint.

I have never been asked how I felt about something so often. This was one of the main questions that the EL book always asks. It’s weird because I would be flying through my work it’s about 10:45 Sunday night. Then I run across a question that asks how "do I feel about something." When I first started in English 103 theses questions would take me a while to answer because it was so foreign. I would say to myself, "is this question supposed to make me feel a certain way?” It funny how such a simple question can be somewhat challenging.

This class made me a better more confident writer, through practice. I actually register to take English 299 to build off this momentum. It is actually just to continue writing because I don’t need the class. I should actually be able to concentrate more on the assignments because the only other classes I have are Photoshop and a digital photography class. I just go a Canon T1i, it is my first DSLR, I’m pumped.

Ok guys I guess this is the end we are the few that made it I guess there is something to be said about that. Well I guess I will see… oh yeah I have never seen you guys to start of with, you are parts of my imagination.

If Only I Knew Someone with Adderall

This research paper has definitely been a learning experience. Really taking the time to break down minor detail and explain them has been fun at times, when I am in a good flow, and challenging. The main issue is usually not understanding, but finding the words to explain. I recently learned, in my psychology class, that the temporal lobe is a part of the brain that is used specifically for this function. There was a man they called patient H.M that had a rare form of amnesia that could remember the procedure for doing a task, this was evident by him demonstrating, but if you asked him to explain the task in words he could not. Sometimes I feel like patient H.M.

The prompt I chose to write on was about how the women of Reading Lolita in Tehran, like Gatsby, created an illusion for themselves and how the Islamic Republic of Iran also create an illusion for them. This makes me think, am I creating myself, or am I unknowingly letting someone create an illusion for me. In America, unlike Iran, we are not forced to do things, but there is still a certain amount of influence that people have over us through popularity. I remember hearing the saying “you can catch more flies with honey.” If they eliminated the influence of American culture, which they attempt to, but at the same time make Islam sensationalized, would it work? Could you imagine if it was cool to wear a chador?

Another thing the research paper taught me is God is wrong, at least the God that inspired the writing of the Koran. The verse I used in my paper has God telling men to scourge, which means to whip, their wives (look it up for yourself chapter 4 verse 34). I think the fundamental thing wrong with religion is that it is created by men, (in both the human being and gender sense). It is just to tempting for someone that is writing something down for God to throw their own little twist in there, in an attempt to make it better. Also, it is out of date, you can’t use a manual for the old Apple computers with a floppy disk, for an iMac, come on baby we evolving. That being said I am not an atheist, neither was Darwin, if you didn’t like the evolving comment. This reminds me of a line from Angel and Demons when the priest asks Tom Hanks, “Do you believe in God? I'm not asking do you believe in what men say about God. I’m asking do you believe there is a God.” (Hopefully I do not get points off for not citing that correctly).

Well we are coming to and end. I hope your research paper stimulated as many distracting thoughts as mines did. I guess the main thing I learned from doing this paper is I may have ADHD.

I attempted to make this paper entertaining. I know this semester has been a long one for everyone including me. I hope you enjoyed my blog.

Reading Lolita in Vegas

When I go over my notes from "Reading Lolita in Tehran", and think about writing a research paper about it, I get a feeling of anxiety, partly because of the sensitive subject. This book is a look into a facet of the human struggle I am not familiar with. I knew that this was going on in Tehran, but this book gives a much more personal account. As a psychology major, I am intrigued by how they used books to cope. I hope to be able to capture this in my research paper. 

I am doing my research paper on the illusion created by Gatsby and the women in Reading Lolita in Tehran. Gatsby was actually a great book. It had drinking, smoking, partying, and sex, all the things that make for a great reality show. For some reason The Great Gatsby reminds me of the Jersey Shore. Fitzgerald never really shows them doing anything other than hanging out. It was pretty easy reading, it took me about 2 days.

I recently came up with an idea that would kill two birds with one stone. I have a 10-page paper due at the end of the semester for my Psychology 201 class. I decided to do it on depression and how people cope with it, so some of my source can be incorporated into my Reading Lolita in Tehran paper. I first thought, well they never actually say they are depressed, but there is an overall feeling of depression though it is unspoken.

Does anyone else have to give themselves peep talks throughout the day? I just keep telling myself in two more weeks it will be all over, and bribing myself with a Vegas trip after the semester. This has by far been the most challenging semester of my college experience. I chose the worse possible combination of classes. I have Statistics, and it is not the class where the professor writes the formulas on the board during the test. I also have Psychology 201 class, which is more like biology without the lab, my favorite part. And I have a black and white photo class, which I thought was going to be easy, ha.

I fear doing this paper wrong. On my first essay, I did not do it correctly at all. I wrote about the subject and did not focus on critique and analyzing the article.  Then on my synthesis paper, I did not include enough sources, on me second draft and my header font was not the same as the rest of my essay. I think I did better on my timed essay than I did on these that took me days to write. This paper has to be perfect, not great, but done perfectly.

I am going to let all the slackers, like myself, know that the five sources does not include Reading Lolita in Tehran or the other book you choose(if you are doing option 1). I already emailed Jennifer to clear that up.

In conclusion, we all have been here before. We can see the finish line, let’s make these two last weeks productive and mistake free. Then we’re going to Vegas.

What's REALLY on your mind?

Social networking captures the qualities of a persons spoken language style. Are you a chatterbox that can spend hours just shooting the breeze? Well, chances are you are one of the people that have a paragraph on your Face book status. Personally, i am not into small talk, and that is reflected in my online communicating style. If I find something interesting or funny, I post a status update about it. Leaving a status update like, “Just left the gym, I’m feeling extra hungry, about to hit up Subway”, is just not me. Status updates like this make people seem desperate for conversation.

 When I comment on someone’s status or receive a message in my inbox, my conversation is in much more detail. I know that I have the reader’s complete attention and my entire response will be read because we have a mutual interest.  Also, my responses tend to be wordier, because I do not want to be misunderstood, which seems to happen often when communicating through social networks.

My apprehension to write a long Face book status reflects a lack of faith in humanity

(I may be reading too much into it, but for the sake of conversation and the five hundred words limit let say they are related). We live in the microwave generation; everything has to achieve its purpose while taking up as little time, space, and effort as possible. This is evident in everything from the preparation of food to cell phones. I really doubt the attention span of most people can endure a couple paragraph of you ranting about something that is unimportant to them. In the rare case that they actually take the time to read your MLA formatted, double-spaced, three page Face book status update, will you really be satisfied with a comment like, “:-( Wow that’s bad.” In certain cases, a person writes a status just to get something off their chest, but most of the time you want a response that is thoughtful.

I believe that communicating through social networks and text messages has a negative impact on students writing style. We are forced to squeeze our thoughts and feelings into 140 characters, and God forbid, a person has to hit the “read more” button on Face book. In social networking, people are conditioned to compress, if they want to be heard. Now compare this to the most important dynamic of an essay, which is expanding on ideas. The essay writer is attempting to answer every possible question about a subject before it is presented. Since most students spend more time sending text messages and social networking than writing essays, they subconsciously condense, leaving out details.

Social networks are a fun way to keep in contact with friends, but are not a good vehicle for meaningful conversation. We need to take time out of our busy schedule and talk to the people we care about. At least 50 percent of communication is nonverbal, so half your conversation is lost when social networking.

Blog on Blogs

I start my blog today by saying I have in no way reached my potential as a writer. I believe that we all can relate to this statement, but English 103 with Jennifer has definitely put me on the right path. I believe that I have written in this class more than I have in all of the courses I have taken combined. What I learned is the only why to be a good writer is through repetition.

Writing can sometimes be a difficult process. The blog takes away some of the pressure of writing. The blogs that we write allow us to create without the boundaries of thesis statements or MLA formatting. This form of free writing allows you to be creative. It has enhanced my writing because it captures the flow of thoughts similar to the way they come to you. I must say that is one of the parts of the class I actually enjoy.

The ability to receive comments from your peer on your blog is awesome. I like to know that my writing is effective and captivating. When you receive a comment it lets you know that you blog sparked an interest in someone, that is much more gratifying than the professor which is paid to read your writing commenting. The feature of comment excels your righting because it makes you strive to create writing that excites the reader.

I was having a talk with one of my friends about the blogs we write, he was amazed that sometime we have to create blogs as a response to only a couple of sentence. I believe this is the most challenge, yet valuable part of the blog. It teaches you how to expand upon ideas that you would usually express in a paragraph. Expanding on these ideas makes you a better writer because you create a better understanding between you and your audience.

Thinking critically is a vital part of writing. The subjects addressed in our blogs are always force you to take a second and third look, not only at the subjects but also at your attitude towards them. One of the essays we read talked about writing not to express, but to understand how you feel about a subject. This is the essence of what blogs and this entire class allows us to do.

Blogs capture the emotion of writing. If you wanted to compare blogs to a form of speaking, it has a lot of the aspects of standing on the front porch having a conversation with friends. Blogs are where you bounce ideas, and create your attitudes about a subject. You do not have to establish your argument and stand on it throughout the entire writing. It allows an openness to waver from you feeling on a subject and explore.

Blogging is a helpful tool in becoming a better writer. I hope that some of my future classes will include a blog and allow me to express my though and feeling through this way.

Fear and Vulgarity

Today when I turned on the news there was speculation of bomb like devices found on a cargo plane. It was suspected that it was shipped from Yemen, which is a hot bed for terrorist. Next, the news warned of bed bug in hotels and dorm rooms.  To top it all off, the news cautioned that people may give your children marijuana laced treats on Halloween. Papaganda that was most like perpetuated by those against prop. 19. Everyday we are inundated with subjects that evoke fear. These subjects represent a truth of society, there is evil amongst us. Why then is vulgarity taboo? These two components of life may seem unrelated, but let's take a deeper look.
Fear is an undeniable part of life as is vulgarity. If there was a scale that measure immorality I am sure fear would rank much higher than vulgarity. An example of this is the court of law. If you threaten to hurt someone you can be charged with a terrorist threat. In comparison a person can call someone ever bad name he can think of and be charged, at the most, with disturbing the peace.
Fear lingers on a persons mind longer than feelings of offense from obscenities. Think of the last time you were offended by obscene language. The feeling usually passes within minutes. Now compare that with the false fear of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which left the nation paralyzed with terror for years. Fear is not censored, why then is vulgarity?

Vulgarity is part of the speech of everyday people. A storyteller can not create realistic stories that involve everyday people, and leave out the way they communicate. For instance, if a story about a teenage that has family issues describes how one day the character was so upset with his parents that he told them to “go f**k themselves”, how would you alter that without loosing the emotion and anger? It would be virtually impossible.

Art imitates life. We do not attempt to take away the right for people to say vulgar words or to do vulgar things. Why then do we want to censor vulgarity out of media?

I believe that censorship comes from a combination of religion and democracy. Religion created groundwork for what is thought of as moral. Any thing that does not meet these religious standards is censored because the amount of leverage religion has. Gay people’s right to marry is an example of this. Marriage is thought of as the union between a woman and a man in almost every religion. Gay marriage went against this religious standard, and since the majority of Californians are religious it was struck down. They did not take into account that there are gay people that have been together for years, which value their relationship as much as the next couple, and want to make it official.

Censorship of vulgarity is a denial of the truth. When we create a false sense of reality for our comfort we create an ultra-sensitive society.

When Keeping it Gangsta Goes Wrong

Rap music is a genre formed in the urban slums of New York and Los Angeles. It gives people that would not usually venture into these neighborhoods a sensationalized glimpse of what is occurring in these places.

The stories told in rap music became a controversial issue when the group NWA, which means niggas with attitudes, came on the scene. They started the trend, which is still prominent today, of using curse word in there music. NWA gave you a gritty account of there surrounding and the people within them.

The issue of prejudice came about when the general public began taking these over exaggerations of urban life as factual everyday occurrences. It is important that we take a step back and get a concrete definition of prejudice. Prejudice is defined simple as an opinion formed without knowledge. A large percentage of the listeners of rap had no knowledge of what was going on in Compton California. The public took NWA as musical journalist and not a group of young man seeking notoriety through shock value.

Even the people within these cities begin to glorify language that perpetuates prejudice. This language changed young black man into niggas that could not be trusted. They would rob, steal, kill, and sell drugs in their pursuit of money, hoes, and clothes, cause that is, as proclaimed by Biggie, all a nigga knows. Women became bitches that would have sex with anyone and create problems for niggas out of spite. These bitches, as Three Six Mafia warned, could be a niggas worst downfall. But Big Boi, of Outkast does admit reluctantly that niggas love these bitches or at least like them a whole lot.

Art is made to imitate life, but also to capture the attention of the observer. A movie about a character waking up, going to his classes, and eating dinner would not draw any attention from the masses. But if we exchange our character for a wizard in training and the classes for magical training sessions, we can sell millions of movie tickets. Essentially, this is what rap music does, but there embellishment shaped the perspectives of the listeners much more believably.

Most rap artists are African-American. In a culture that already has to fight a ridiculous amount of prejudice, rap music adds even more fuel to the flame. It gives the impression that if these people do not respect themselves then why should anyone else respect them.

My conclusion for this blog is more of a disclaimer. I do not believe that NWA or any other rap group has the power to create an issue that was not present before the creation of the genre. Rap may have perpetuated and glamorized the use of foul language, but they sure did not invent it. As humans we are born with the greatest ability among all the animals, critical thinking. If we allow media to shape our perspective to the point of prejudice we are just wool-less, upright walking sheep, with a lot more variations to our baahs.