I Wrote This, Too! But it's about Halloween, not my Paper

Halloween (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

continued from last post
Well, once again life interrupts.  I forgot that today is our annual witches' tea party.  My sister Rebbie (the sister formerly known as the Queen of Goth) and I do this every year for our nieces, and this might possibly be the last year for it.  They're getting kind of old (12 and 10) for tea parties, which we used to have for every holiday and even an ice cream version for back to school that we skipped this year because one was doing theater camp and the other had softball practice or games almost every day.
I'm going to miss it.  Rebbie and I made fancy hats for them when they were 5 and 3; they only fit them for a year, so we passed them on to a neighbor who had granddaughters that age.  We still have our own witch hats (red for me, black with purple maribou trim for Rebbie) and so do the girls (plain black).  We get out all our decorations, including realistic brooms and spooky lights, make breaded green beans for zombie fingers, etc.
Anyway, between getting that stuff ready and our neighborhood's scheduled trick-or-treating hours, I won't be able to get back to my continuation until tomorrow.  Not an excuse, but a reason.
Happy early Halloween!

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I Wrote This!

Sorry, Groot.  Your scene was too short.

Yeah, I'm almost finished revising my film analysis, and I didn't post on any of the prompts that would explain what I did in prewriting and drafting and why I did it and what problems I had.  Now it seems pointless to go back and respond to the prompts, so I'm going to summarize it all.
As I mentioned before, I was interested in father-son relationships in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.  That meant that my critical approach was men's studies, but the page on that in the packet we were given didn't really get into this kind of a relationship.  I talked to the prof, and she said to look at the first thing on the sheet, which was "What does this film say a man can or should be?"  Armed with that, I watched the scene I had chosen to ask that question.  
I immediately realized that I needed a new scene.
to be continued 

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note:  All the father and son articles Zemanta listed were about death!  Not what I was looking for.

What Happened to Me?

I remember this.
(Photo credit Wikipedia)

I have a good memory; I remember birthdays, phone numbers, addresses, passwords, even the Bill of Rights.  But now it seems like I can't remember to blog.  I have no excuse.  I just forgot and kept forgetting. 
I've had a bad cold the last couple of days (no excuse--the last time I posted was in September!), and I finished all of my homework except for the final revision of my film analysis, which is almost done.  I checked the course schedule to make sure I had the right due date, and I did, but there it was in the "Writing Due" column:  blog.  In fact, every week's entry ends with "blog."  It's as if my eyes just refused to read it.  What this means is that now, when I should have at least 20 posts, I have only 7.
I don't know why I'm feeling so compelled to post this, probably nobody cares.  I just don't want people thinking I decided not to post.
I'll be back in a few minutes.
I mean it.

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One from column A, one from column B

We got our new assignment, along with a 7-page handout we will need for it.  This project is a "critical analysis," which apparently means that we need a critical approach (not quite clear on this yet) to analyze a scene from a film.  So I have to decide on a film and an approach, and it looks kind of tricky.  The films are listed in six approach categories, Myth Criticism, Women's Studies, Men's Studies, Disability Studies, Shame Theory, and Genre Criticism.  I'm not sure yet, but I think I want to try Men's Studies.  I've seen most of the films listed, so I've got plenty of choice.  The one problem I see is that I need to make up my mind asap, or I'll be wasting time I might need.  Right now, I'm leaning toward Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, because 1. the plot is partly about a father-son relationship (one of the things Men's Studies is interested in), although I may not stick with that aspect of the film; and 2. I already bought the DVD and have watched it several times. 
I wanted the DVD because it's a movie that I know I'll want to watch every so often, if only to see Baby Groot's dance in the first fight scene to get a cute fix.  
That's all for now.

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"Make Me" makes me write

continued from previous post below

What made me want to write about Make Me was how it made me want to do a little research.  He writes about several things I never heard of, along with using a few words as if everybody knows what they mean, when I didn't have a clue.  I hate it when that happens.
Spoiler alert here, and I am sorry, because I think most people would enjoy the book and I hate to reveal anything about it, but I have to.  The plot involves the Deep Web.  I had heard of the Dark Web, which actually sounds more evil than the Deep Web, but is basically only stuff on the web that isn't active anymore but will never quite go away.  The Deep Web, on the other hand, is very active, despite the difficulty of searching in it.   The difficulty is caused by the site owners need to keep the sites from turning up on search engines in the first place, so that people can only get to them by referral or by a long, drawn-out process of going from one site to another.
I have to say that this is not a nice place to visit, and you sure as hell wouldn't want to live there.  What's there is stuff that is criminal.  I came across a piece on Slate that was answering the question "How do you access the Deep Web?" which laid out most of what I wanted to know and let me know that I don't ever want to access the Deep Web.
The bottom line for me is that Lee Child's book is not only compelling reading but also very firmly grounded in the real world, and that just makes the whole experience more intense.    

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I can't stand the suspense

Lee Child, British thriller
 writer accepting
 Barry Award.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You might think I've been goofing off, since I haven't posted in a while, but you would be wrong.  I turned my paper in on time (even remembered to upload it to Blackboard), but I forgot to post during that time.  Sue me.  Anyway, after my second class I asked the prof if I could write about other things I was reading, and she said that was fine, even though it probably wouldn't help with my other projects.   So that's what I'm doing today, but I'm going to split it up into several posts.  
I've been reading one of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books, Make Me, which is going really fast.  He always makes you wait to find out what's really going on, almost until you can't stand it (when I tell you that I even missed a couple of events on Marvel Puzzle Quest--without noticing!-- because I was reading, you can see how compelling it is), and I haven't been able to stop until now.  In fact, I only stopped because my hand cramped up from holding the Nook; I think I was gripping too hard, most likely from the suspense.
continued in next post

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And then I wrote . . . and wrote, and wrote . . .

Working on my draft again-- I've been putting in some time every day on it (advice from the prof).  I thought it couldn't hurt to try it, and it hasn't been hard to find 10 or 15 minutes here and there to work on it.  The story I chose to tell is about how my dad got my older sister Rebbi and me ready to go see our first Broadway show: Wicked.  Mom and Dad had already seen it, and I think they were thinking that we would be able to understand it (at ages 6 and 8) with a little help.
Anyway, I remember the preparations better than actually going to the show.  We knew The Wizard of Oz, of course, so Dad didn't have to explain that.  He made character flashcards (I think he invented these) and used them to tell the story, playing the songs from the cd as he went.  Really, he put on a show of his own, and we loved it.  
Today I'm working on my conclusion.  Telling the story went okay.  We'll see how it goes.

I Like "Dangerous Sounds"

I just read the Daniel Felsenfeld essay "Rebel Music" in The Norton Field Guide to Writing.  From the title, I thought that this would be about some kind of alternative music, and, in a way, it is, but not the kind most people think of when they say "alternative music":  it's about a moment when Felsenfeld first heard a piece of music that literally changed his life, and that piece was Beethoven's Ninth symphony.  I gotta quote him:
            "It unrolled from the small speakers, this big, gorgeous, unruly beast of a thing, contemporary, horrifying, a juggernaut that moved from the dark to unbearable brightness, soaring and spitting, malingering and dancing wildly, the Most Beautiful Thing I Ever Heard" (641).
After this, he was on the road to becoming a composer, when he had never considered that before.
Growing up, I heard all kinds of music.  My parents, especially my father, loved music, had season tickets to the Lyric Opera when they could afford them, and went to a variety of concerts to which they started bringing us as soon as we could appreciate them.  What I'm getting at is that there was never a time in my life when I wasn't used to hearing classical music, but I had my own mini-epiphany with music, too, although I am not a musician of any kind.  I was 15, I think, when I was riding in the car with my dad.  I don't know where we were going.  The radio was on, and a piece came on that I had heard before, but this time I really heard it.  It was Debussy's Clair de lune, and it remains the most beautiful thing I ever heard.  I have to admit that this wasn't in any way rebel music for me-- my parents liked it, so I wasn't rebelling against them, and I didn't care enough about what my friends thought was good music for it to be rebelling against them.
Anyway, it's part of my massive Iheartradio.com playlist, and I smile every time it comes on, once every couple of weeks or so.  I also stop whatever else I'm doing, and just listen.  Maybe that's what makes it qualify as what Felsenfeld calls "dangerous sounds":  it takes over and demands you experience it.

Hold on just a minute: No-tuition College?

English: Study of rising college costs due to cost shifting from state funding to tuition. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On my last post, two of the related articles at the bottom are about colleges waiving tuition.  If only this idea would catch on!  I want to transfer to a 4 year school once I get my associate's degree, but I really don't want to have to take out loans.  

It could happen.  Last weekend I watched an episode of "Adam Ruins Everything" where he "ruined" college.  That kind of needs an explanation:  he wasn't saying that college was unnecessary, or anything like that.  He was actually giving facts and figures on how vital it is to have a degree if you want to be employed.  And how, because of that change in our economy, we need to rethink college tuition:  public elementary and high schools are tuition-free because people needed to have that level of education in order to get jobs and become productive members of society, so there is a precedent. Anyway, he had a lawyer on who specializes in student loan issues, and she flat-out said that there shouldn't be tuition at state schools.  

You can watch the whole episode on their website above.  I think everybody should!

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Time to Get Going!

books I got from library for this semester :) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today is Saturday of the first week of the fall semester, and I am finally getting my blog ready.  I'm kind of worried about it, because the prof told us that she would be making "random progress checks."  So, I guess I better be pretty careful to keep it up to date, which means I need to do another post today about one of the readings in our textbook. 
Which brings me to my main problem:  organization.  This time, I'm going to make a schedule and stick to it (just so you know, I said this every semester throughout high school--and I usually fell apart after a few weeks).  It seems to me that publishing that statement for the entire world to read if they want to will make me feel more committed.  This and my profile are probably all anyone needs to know about me.

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Do You Like Shakespeare? This One's Kinda for You

English: William Shakespeare statue in Lincoln Park, Chicago (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Okay, I know I haven't posted since March, but it's my computer's fault.  I talked to the prof about it, and she let me do the rest of my posts on a Blackboard blog (really boring to look at, and almost no fun features whatsoever.  Can't believe my tuition pays for it).  I even did the 4 extra credit posts, so there (picture a tongue being stuck out at a disapproving reader).
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I can get to the reason I'm writing today.  Yesterday after the final, I was talking to Sabrina, who is also in the class, and I found out that when she was about 12, she started a Facebook page called Shakespeare Quotes.  Here's the amazing thing:  she has almost 60,000 followers!  
This came up because I mentioned that I have a bunch of Facebook friends through Marvel Puzzle Quest from all over the world.  There are at least 4 other alphabets used in names on my friends list, and the only reason these people are there is to get extra Iso-8 (one of the currencies in MPQ).  A few times a day you get extra rewards to share with your friends, so many players try to get on as many friend lists as they can.  Here's the sad thing:  I only have about a hundred of these players on my list, and I thought I was doing good.  Of course, I haven't been on Facebook anywhere near as long as she has, but still . . . it makes me feel like I'm somehow not doing everything I should.  Which is crazy.  I don't really want tons of people on my list; I already get plenty posts I don't want from my actual friends and family without getting ones from people I have no real knowledge of. 
I know there's no logical comparison here, since it's not her personal page.  I think maybe I felt so deflated because I'm jealous that I didn't think of doing something like that when I was a kid, too, which is just goofy. 

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More Research? Say it ain't so!

Star wars me (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been trying to get my research paper draft going, but right away I ran into a snag-- I need support for my very first point, and I can't find it in any of the sources I have.  Yup.  Back to the library.  At least I know exactly what I'm looking for this time, so it shouldn't take long.  I'll start searching as soon as I finish this post.  
I shouldn't complain.  I already wasted an hour today looking at my Facebook notifications.  Some of the Star Wars fans are objecting to my argument that Kylo Ren is immature, but I had two comments that called those fans immature.  What can you do?

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People who never grow up should never have lethal weapons

Secrets of the Jedi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Lotsa new secrets coming soon!

When I first saw Star Wars:  The Force Awakens (and from now on, I'm calling it SW:TFA), there was a moment that stayed with me, mostly because I thought it was disgusting.  It's the scene where Kylo Ren returns to the interrogation room and finds that Rey is gone.  He throws a major-league, no-holds-barred tantrum, even using his lightsaber to bust up the joint.  Saturday afternoon, my sister Rebbie came into the room and started watching with me just as the scene where Rey tries out using the Force on her guard.  It works, and she escapes.  So, when the Kylo Ren scene started, I was watching Rebs and the screen at the same time (well, actually I kept looking at one then the other).  Here's the fun thing:  when he started to erupt, she winced and made the universal disgust face (which you can see on the Tomkins Institute website).  I had to laugh, and she wanted to know what was so funny.  "You should have seen your face," I told her.  She said, "well, I forgot that was going to happen right then.  Just like that brat I babysat that time, except this guy has a deadly weapon when he goes off."

to be continued . . .  

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