Lillian Hellman's Montserrat

English: Statue of Simon Bolivar in Washington DC, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the weekend I read a play ("an important cultural product") for my poli-sci class.  My first reaction is that Lillian Hellman's Montserrat would be really hard to watch, because it's about psychological torture.  On the other hand, I'd love to see it on stage, because just reading it gave me chills.  The story isn't original to Hellman; she adapted it from a French play back in the 1940s, but it feels like it could have been written now, especially considering all of the horrible things going on in the world.
The play is about a military officer in Venezuela who is hiding Simon Bolivar (if you don't know who he was, look it up like I did).  His superiors know that he knows where Bolivar is, and they also know that physical torture won't get him to give Bolivar away (I'm not sure that's true in real life, but you have to go with it for the sake of the plot), so they devise a diabolical plan:  they grab some innocent passersby at random and threaten to kill them if Montserrat doesn't talk.  Spoiler alert:  he doesn't talk, and they do kill them, one by one.  The suspense is terrific.  The ending is overwhelming (I'm not going to spoil that!). 
It sure beat the hell out of reading the textbook.

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More research! Will it ever end?

Image via Wikipedia

Yes, I'm doing two posts in one day again, mostly because I don't want to work on my paper right now, but if I don't do any school-related work, I'll feel guilty.  So, I'm supposed to talk about the new research I have to do for my revision. 
First, I need to find stuff about unreliable narrators.  During my conference, Dr. Toffee said something like  "discussing that would build my ethos as a serious scholar."  Really, I don't know how serious a scholar I am, but I'm sure working like I am. 
Next, I need to go through the stuff I already have about Watson, and maybe get some more.  Okay, I'm going to have to get some more.  I don't think it'll take too much time, but if it does, I guess that's the way it goes. 
Finally, I need to take a day off and think about something else, research-wise, because I've got a political science paper due in a couple of weeks.  That one is about McCarthyism (I'm going to argue that those Tea Party people are just McCarthyists -- or is it McCarthyites?-- with new outfits, and they are going to bring the Republican party down), and my instructor looked worried when I told him my topic.  After he suggested a couple of authors, he said, "I look forward to reading your paper," but he looked just as worried.  I don't care.  My aunt doesn't have health insurance, and those guys pissed me off.

Here's an article that brought home to me just how much of a slacker I am.

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