Mel Tackles Literature

Migration

2011-03-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

If anyone still checks up on me or is interested to know where I am writing these days...please check out my new blog:

Melancholy Parades

Thanks much! :)

Don't Call Me Lazy

2010-02-26T00:45:00.000-08:00

For a while now, I haven't had the same enthusiasm for school as I used to have. It's not that I'm not interested in the material or that I don't care, because I truly do, but I'm still not sure how I can exactly explain myself.

I do find it difficult to focus on the intensive reading and writing that grad school brings. Ironically, I lack the willpower to write a sentence. Papers that have been handed back to me are marked with critiques over the simplest things--punctuation, grammar (things I have always been exceptional with) and word choice is often confusing in my creative works. The simplest things are now the most problematic.

I wonder what has brought about this lack of motivation. While researching something to pinpoint my feelings, the search engines often pointed to depression or a depressive episode but that is far from it, at least at this present time. On the whole, I'm in a good place.

As a student, I'd always needed a little push to study because I relied too much on my natural instinct and existing intelligence. I was "lazy," but don't call me lazy. I skated by on this quite frequently. It didn't work too well in high school, when I actually had to study and put some real effort into my schoolwork and it was clear that my grades suffered because of it. It is only in recent years that I began working hard again, with diligence, with care, with attention. I remember there was a point in 2007-2008 when I was a full-time student and spent entire days at school, studying, reading, yet never felt drained.

Somewhere between Fall 2009 and now, that care and that willpower escaped me.

Should I point fingers and is it even beneficial to do so? At the corporate job that slashed at my soul and toyed with my spirit for three months? At the continuous plow of schoolwork that urged me on everyday (in a good way)? I'd like to pinpoint the source of this inner conflict...

In recent school-related news, CSUN has removed the master's program's thesis in the English department. This will eventually affect the entire campus and possibly the entire CSU system by next fall semester. All independent studies are gone as well. The reason for the removal of the master's thesis is simply this: a money issue and a lawsuit. An unwillingness to compensate the thesis committee for the hours they put in as advisors and readers. That's the long story short. I wasn't sure how to feel about this at first. I was obviously very eager to write a thesis when I first entered the program, but with my recent disillusionment with grad school, this put many things into perspective.

I know this probably happens to many [grad] students and that I have to simply plow on, no matter how mentally difficult. Yes, I realize I bitch a lot when things don't always 100% emotionally-mentally gel for me. But it sure does feel good to write about it. :D

Restrospection on the Year 2009

2010-01-04T00:23:00.000-08:00

I haven't done much writing in a while; at least the type of writing that inspires me or makes me think. After the harrowing experience of my temp job from August-November, my brain needed a rest. It had turned to mush and it was tired of thinking. Even when I forced it to think, to read, to work on homework, it would not comply. Like a paralysis but one of only the mind. I didn't want to believe that I had lost my drive to write or that I had lost my motivation for everything. I am usually quite motivated despite my general laziness.

But it was burn out. I used to believe the term "burn out," used to describe the mental and physical breakdown of the body after a period of extreme stress, was a cop out for laziness. A mental roadblock to convince oneself that "I have been procrastinating because I am burned out," but this was a real and true condition. The temporary paralysis of my brain: I would force it to move for me. Listen to me, brain, you are going nowhere!

Since after leaving West Hollywood, I have indulged myself in brainlessness. I've lost passion for many of the things I strove for and believed in. I used to stare out at the fantasy and wonder of the world, conjecturing about people and their stories, hoping to collect the pieces of information for the next writing project. Not now, no. I find comfort in the recluse of my bedroom. It is only recently that I feel compelled to take control of myself again and remember who it is that I am and what I believe in.

Selling portions of your soul to corporate goons really messes up what's left of it.

I found myself emotionless for some time, unwilling to do much beyond indulging in self-detrimental behavior. I reacted this way because I thought I was violating my sense of self, but in reality, I still hadn't truly formed who I was as a person, who my character was, for lack of a better term. I suppose I'm still in the process of figuring all of that out, and sorting out all of my sordid complexities and contradictions.

Despite all of the self-grappling and external issues (concerning school, family, home life, finances, other personal matters) thrown at me, I had an amazing year 2009: co-head editor for The Northridge Review, graduation, getting published in Tayo Literary Magazine, being employed after college with a job pertaining to my degree, seeing my two closest friends move away (an act of separation, which, will only each of us as individuals to grow as a butterfly emerges from its cocoon), and oh...finding a nice boy to spend some time with (a story for elaboration later).

I welcome the highs of the year because they were wonderful...and I also welcome the lows because those are tests of my strength. I can take something away from each experience and that, my friends, builds character.

I'm Lucky, Maybe

2009-10-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

I'm lucky...maybe.

I'm lucky to have lived my entire life differently, with a lot of difficulty, knowing pain and the reality of life at a young age. A life filled with turmoil, disturbances. I'm lucky, maybe.

Someone weaker than me would have collapsed by now, but no, I plow through. I leave the house when it's dark. I come home when it's dark, and in the time between, I hope to see the sunlight through haze of an unclean bus window or through the blinds of a frozen corporate office.

Too much abstraction? I know. I tend to do that.

In plain language...(This is a bit of an exercise in creative non-fiction, as well. My brilliant professor has always stated that every occasion is an occasion for writing, so I might as well run with it)

Feelings I had felt three months ago when I started my new job and grad school have not taken a positive turn. Dad had been dropping me off to work and school, but he began to be physically worn down from doing all of that. Plus, all the trips he was taking, to and from work and school, were getting expensive. I was tired of paying for the astronomical gas. In the last two weeks of my job contract, I resolved to take the bus, which is more or less, a 2-hour ride from home to work. I leave the house when it's dark and I come home when it's dark. I'm exhausted at work. Today, in fact, I was so tired that I felt like vomiting.

I'm tired of people telling me, "suck it up," and the like because no matter how much I can explain, words will never be sufficient enough to sum up the sum of my experiences. What I don't understand is why I can be fine one minute, and then completely shut down the next. There are times when I don't even feel present. It's a strange feeling. There is my physical body, there is myself, but it is detached. I see nothing directly in front of me. I hear nothing. I snap to again, only because there is a bump on the road and it jolts me awake.

Then there are my fits of high energy and I feel ambitious. I type at astronomical speeds and spit witty phrases on AIM. I do my work quickly. I am invincible. I am a star! Yet soon, the detached confusion sets in again and I shut down. For reasons I cannot explain.

On the weekends, I indulge in my vices. The drink, mainly. I spend money that I should be saving and I have nothing to show for it. There are sexual curiosities. I feel bolder than usual and I wonder why men find me more attractive at this lowest of lowest points in my life than when I was on top of the world from January-July.

2009--this was supposed to be the best year of my life and it had begun that way. I lost control of my life somewhere and I think about that cliche phrase "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Why? Is it because I sometimes say mean things, that I talk back to my father, that I've got a snappy tongue, that I'm not grateful for even having a job, that I'm not the shining person I once was, only the lifeless shell of me encasing inside, a rotted soul that deserves intermittent months of misfortune?

I arrived home at 7 pm. Reconstituted ramen noodles for dinner. Tonight, I think I'll masturbate to the remembrance of memories of times past to help me sleep, since I've been having great trouble falling asleep. Goodnight.

Remember November 6. This is the date of my salvation.

I don't like the coinage of 'FML'.

2009-09-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

When people add 'FML' to their complaints, I don't doubt that they are going through a difficult time. They are obviously voicing that for a reason. Yet I cannot begin to believe that a life is truly "fucked" unless one is in a serious hole that he or she can't seem to dig out of.

I have been to the moon and back of ups and downs in my life, many downs, and ups that have been rewarding. I thought of this year as one of the most rewarding years of my life. I put together an amazing senior portfolio for my final semester. I was the co-head editor of the Northridge Review. I graduated college. I got into grad school. I got a short story published in a Filipino-American literary magazine. I got my first real job three months from graduation.

And that is what brings me here. Somehow, these upward trends in the graph of my life only suppress the things that makes me fall to the floor and brings me to tears. One wrong move, and my depression comes running back to me, always present, always with me, like a ghostly reminder that something is never going to be right...unless I fix it.

So I thought things like that I had listed above would fix me, but it only made things worse.

Am I that spoiled, that I'm never satisfied, that I always want something more? That I should be grateful to even have a job during these times? I swear I'm grateful, but to wake up every morning to tossed aside like sludge on a sidewalk, while I write profiles for septic tanks and air conditioners is not my idea of an experience where I can learn and grow at work. I have learned a great number of things while at work, however, concerning office culture. And the job has taught me a lot about other towns, and I've even got a few places in mind that I might want to visit someday.

But it's so hard to feel motivated in such a limiting environment.

For the past two years, I've been in the cocoon of CSUN's English program, where the world was far and wide, and we were free to roam, imagine, think, play. We were encouraged to push boundaries--no--kick them down and trample over to the untouched side. I thrived in that environment, I did so well. I was free.

And then...I sold my soul because I thought it was the right thing to do. I sit at a desk in a room with fake air, hoping for someone to talk to me, and wondering if gouging my eyes felt better than torture of complete lack of brain stimulation. Do you wonder about caged animals? The lions at the zoo, pacing back and forth? They're bored. They are not in the world they belong. And that's what I am.

My life at home has suffered. I get into fights with my dad, and my brother, when I don't mean to. I shouldn't push the people away who have done their best to help me even with all the bullshit. My car is broken, in case I forgot to mention, and it has been broken for over a month. I'm terribly lonely and I miss all my friends, yet I push people away, time and time again, especially when I'm depressed. No one wants to talk to a pessimist.

Soon, my contract will end, and I can go back to the life I want to lead. I've had the taste of the commute, the corporate atmosphere, the office politics, and I don't want any of it. Never, ever, ever again.

It's the same old emo shit out of me, isn't it? I'm sorry. I have nowhere else to turn.

Found My First Book (Novel Attempt?)

2009-09-11T22:57:00.001-07:00

I just found the first novel/book I wrote that I wrote around the ages of 9 to 12, perhaps. It's called The Triple D Mortuary and Graveyard. HA! Emo much? I read a lot of R.L. Stine at that age... :/

And in this story, a 10-year-old boy named Tim who is fascinated with graveyards receives a ghostly visitor. In the cemetery by his home, he finds the grave of his father. He never knew much about his father, barely knew his name. His mother never explained much, and she was a coarse lady, not very nice to Tim.

Late one night, when he's visiting the cemetery, a ghostly spirit appears to him and then later appears in his home. This frightens Tim terribly, and he's afraid that he's disrupted the status quo of the cemetary, for whatever reason.

Along the way, he meets his sidekick while visiting the cemetery at night. The sidekick turns out to be Clint Eastwood, who becomes a father figure to Tim. He also helps Tim figure out how to shake the white demons that follow him.

Somewhere along the way, the story twists and Tim and Clint become separated. This is when the writing gets particularly hazy (I might have been 11 or 12 at this point). He steps into a house, where, in an almost Nabokovian (though I didn't know it was Nabokovian at the time!), Lolita-esque way, a young girl coaxes him to have sex with her. She's being coy, she's being cute.

And then the story ends because I was probably either too shy to write sex or develop the story further. It's kinda odd, random. And goes to show that even kids at that age think about sex. It's unsettling, perhaps. Maybe a little disturbing, too...LOL But ya know, we writers are disturbed people. Edgar Allan Poe, ya know?

That is all. LOL. Thought it was interesting.

Red Sun Morning: The Last Week in Retrospect

2009-08-30T19:56:00.001-07:00

A sun-themed blog today...

I pretty much stuck to the schedule (from "Persevere, Clare") but there was one hitch in the entire ordeal and that was that my car broke down. On Tuesday night, I was driving home from CSUN and somewhere in Sun Valley (an area I'm not familiar with, and very shady-looking), the smell of something funky began surrounding me. I wondered if it was my car, but deep down, I knew it was my car.

I had made it home, at least the exit of the freeway near my place, and that's when the car shut down. It shut down like a Windows platform. I was burning pure oil in that car.

The combination of the terrible triangle of a commute, the hot weather, and the fact that that car has been giving me problems since the beginning of time caused the, quite literal, burnout. I wasn't even in a foul mood when it happened. I was just tired. I wanted to sleep.

Thank goodness for weekends, though, as they give one the time to recuperate. Although, this weekend started off just as stressful, what with Jen Ni and Mi Ra Flo leaving (that's Jenny and Myra, lol) and Saturday being an overall bad day. I won't go into that.

Oh yeah, didja hear about the fires? There are evacuations going on right now in the Glendale-Tujunga-La Crescenta-Pasadena area, because of the brush fire in the Angeles Crest that firefighters are having difficulty containing. It's very serious.

I remember a year ago when I posted some diddies about the fires in the valley. Man, it happens every year. Oddly enough, even though I'm close by these fires, I haven't smelled much smoke or ash. The overall heat doesn't help much, either.

Through the smoke in the early morning, the sun is a tiny red dot worshiped by the smoke clouds. It is something awe-inspiring but only occurs in times of disaster. The red sun is altogether beautiful and ugly, frightening and gorgeous, a symbol of how relentless and unforgiving nature can be, but so utterly pure that one cannot help but be stunned by the rare treasure in the sky.

:|

Free Write: Monkey

2009-08-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

I want to move to fucking Montana, or someplace like that. Away from the fucking high-rises and the gas leaks of these crowded streets. I tire of the talk of insipid wisdom that means nothing, except laughing and soaking in the awesomeness that you have created, that you will pat yourself on the back for. Why is it the main priority is to make cash, cash, cash at any expense?

"Let us produce. Let us be metropolis," the high rises will say. "We will give you the luxuries you seek, but while you do so, please hold this wrench, my monkey, my tiny cog in the conglomerate machine."

In 2009, smiles are bought in the form of bubble-wrapped packages masquerading as mementos. Make your pay, have it taken away, and the rocking uncertainty evens out while you hope to find something worthwhile in the wreckage.

I keep fucking up left and right because I'm a softie pushover. I am the cog with a slight deformity, forced into the gears, teetering between "certainly sure" and "out of my mind."

"Hold this wrench, monkey," high-rises say, and I oblige.

I oblige so that I can buy books.

"Persevere, Clare."

2009-08-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

The title of today's post comes from the novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. It comes at a point where, the protagonist, Henry DeTamble (the time traveler) and Claire Abshire (the wife) are going through a stressful time in their marriage. Here is the excerpt from said piece (don't worry, I won't give anything away):

"How are you?" I ask.

"Terrible," she says softly. "Tired." I remember. Stayed in bed for weeks. "Henry, I quit." She watches me, trying to gauge my reaction to this, weighing her intention against my knowledge. "I give up. It isn't going to happen."

Is there anything to stop me from giving her what she needs? I can't think of a single reason not to tell her. I stand and rack my brain for anything that would preclude Clare knowing. All I remember is her certainty, which I am about to create.

"Persevere, Clare."

"What?"

"Hang in there..."

And then he goes on to explain why she should stop worrying, and that all her pain and frustration will soon become worthwhile, turn into something beautiful.

Now, I don't have a Henry DeTamble to tell me that everything will be okay. I'm a solo act, and have been for a while, which I don't mind as I'm quite comfortable. But I am at that point in my life where I have a slight bit of uncertainty, frustration, stress, and worry.

I started a new job two weeks ago. I work full-time in West Hollywood. What? English majors can get jobs, really? This must be a milestone. No, in all seriousness...I started a full-time job that I'm not particularly fond of. I'm not going to complain or vent about it, because it's going to be hard to explain why. I'm aware that in this economy, I can't afford to be so picky and spoiled. I'll ignore that ill feeling in my stomach when I think about my job and my commute because I need to remember that it could be worse. It really could be worse.

Romeo said to Juliet, "All these woes shall serve for sweet discourses in our times to come."

Meaning that right now, I'm frightfully unhappy (well, was never 100% to begin with, anyway. Not yet at least.) and I feel ill when I think about going to my job, but I'm going to suck it up. I'm going to try.

Because, if you recall, I am also starting grad school. I am taking two classes:
ENGL 457 International Literature
T 7:00-9:45 pm

ENGL 652 Creative Writing Studies
Thurs 4:00-6:45 pm
This week is the first week of school, in fact. I'm going to devise a plan for organization and will post it here so I will have a written document of what I will be doing. Hopefully, if it's in writing, I will stick to it.

I work in West Hollywood. I go to school in Northridge. I live in Eagle Rock.

Now, in any other town, these distances aren't so bad. It would take me 20 minutes to drive to each destination, easy. However, this is Los Angeles we are talking about and I have drivento all three in one day, during the times I need to be at any given location and I will be traveling at peak times. I will need to be released from work early on Thursdays to be in Northridge before 4. My boss is aware of this, but has not worked out how I can make up the hours. So I will hypothesize what I might do.

Here is what I propose for this coming week 08/23-8/30, as well as a sample outline of what I will attempt to accomplish through 11/10 (when my contract at my job ends):

Sun, 08/23
8:00 pm - have clothes laid out, ironed, lunch packed, gym clothes packed, water canister filled, complete 400-level course approval form
9:00 pm - finish reading for ENGL 457 (syllabus was online, so I could start reading right away)
9:30 pm- attempt to sleep

Mon, 08/24
5:00 am - wake up
5:05 am - snooze
5:30 am - really wake up, shower
6:00 am - breakfast, coffee, get ready
7:00 am - leave for work. 2 South, 101 North, exit Sunset, until I hit West Hollywood
7:45 am - work. I will try to write 3 pieces of content for websites an hour, for a total of 15 a day.
12:30-1:30 pm - lunch
4:45 pm - release
5:15 pm - drive to Northridge. Sunset, left on Laurel, right on Hollywood, left on Highland, 101 North, 170 North, exit Roscoe Blvd, west on Roscoe until Reseda Blvd, R on Reseda towards CSUN
sometime between 6-7 pm - EAT
7:00-9:00 pm - grad program orientation
9:30 - Glendale, gym
10:45 - home, then collapse

Tues, 08/25
Much the same as Monday, substitute grad program orientation with ENGL 457IL

Wed, 08/26
Day is much the same. No class.
6:00 pm- Hollywood, gym
7:00 pm- dinner, homework, reading
8:00 - sleep in early

Thurs, 08/27
Day is the same.
2:00 pm - end work. drive to Northridge.
4-7 pm - ENGL 652
7:45 pm - Glendale, gym
9:00 pm - home, collapse

Friday, 08/28
Day is the same.
5:00 pm - end work, go home, get ready for my Friday night when I will say goodbye to Jenny and Myra, and celebrate Lainey's birthday

Saturday, 08/29
Happy birthday, Lainey!
Some time in the afternoon, drive to Northridge for Northridge Review business.
Make up the lost 3 hours from work...somewhere?
Homework, reading.
Evening: open to festivity

Sunday, 08/29
Sleep in.
12:00 pm - personal training session
1:00 pm-? Northridge Review business
Homework, reading.
9:00 - sleep

Rinse and repeat roughly the same way, minus the extra drive to Northridge on Monday.

Does anyone have advice for me to plan this better or...words of wisdom? Any help would be useful. :) Somehow, none of this could even compare to moving across the world to Korea, though, like two (and soon a third) of my friends will soon be doing. :)

Musings, Updates, and the Unclear Future

2009-07-18T22:12:00.000-07:00

On a whim, I applied to CSUN's MA program. I had much encouragement from my professors and classmates. One--because I truly think that these people believed that I could succeed in grad school. Two--I still felt I had much to learn about my writing: the art, the literary value, and the theoretical approaches of it. I know many people think it's crazy, to go the same undergrad for grad, but I have only been at CSUN for two years and only spent about half the time truly concentrating on creative writing.

For me, this is simply a continuation. I will continue to grow as a writer in this time. Grad school will be a challenge, but I feel that it would be more on my level. I enjoy a challenge myself. I'm ambitious. In undergrad, I always liked to go the extra mile just so I could not only test my boundaries, but also so that I could set myself apart and show that I have merit. Something beyond the workshop story, but an actual literary and artistic piece that may be perhaps be a cut above, or a potential contender for greatness.

With that said, I am accepted as a conditionally classified student. I am enrolled in one class, but it's a 400-level undergrad creative writing class. O.o I haven't been able to register in any grad classes because (and here's why I mentioned I applied on a whim) I applied so late, so last minute that by the time I was able to register, all the classes were full. Now it is time to do the sit-in, beg, plead, and hope for an open spot somewhere.

In other news, I have had a short story accepted for publication. Tayo Literary Magazine is up-and-coming and is geared towards Filipino-American youth empowerment. I think it's great that this magazine coming up. It's great to read literature, see photos and artwork by Fil-Am youth. Somehow, I think that Filipinos in the arts are rarely highlighted. We exist. We are there. This magazine, though it is still fledgling, is a novel (no pun intended :P) idea because it showscases Filipinos in a way, that perhaps prior, we haven't been seen before. I'm proud of the beliefs of the editors of the magazine, what it stands for, what it is doing for the community.

In other editorial news, perhaps I've not mentioned this, but I am the co-head editor of CSUN's literary magazine, The Northridge Review for the Fall 2009 issue. We are nearly complete with the magazine, and are expecting to have a release early in the upcoming semester. :D

Now for the future. I'm not sure what will happen within these next two months. Two friends of mine have thrown a curveball into my life. They are going to Korea to teach English, as part of a special program. I'm excited for them and I want them to succeed, especially because not only is an excellent opportunity to travel, immerse into another culture, and on a humanitarian note, to teach children...but it's also a great alternative to being thrust into the capitalist real world that we call an economically faltering America. I won't lie and say to myself that I applied to grad school so that I could postpone diving into the real world because I couldn't find a job. (However, this is a topic I will further elaborate on, in terms of my longer-term future goals) I can't even get hired at Barnes & Noble, for crying out loud, despite the fact that my resume is looking pretty good now.

In any case, Myra and Jenny, are off to Korea within the next two months, and they will fulfill a year's contract to teach. They are two of my closest friends and I will miss them terribly.

And so they are persuading me to go to Korea and teach as well. -_-

Now this is going to be tricky. Stay tuned...

I'm Finished

2009-05-23T22:57:00.000-07:00

Aha! My snobbery has faltered in these last few weeks, as I hadn't bothered to keep up the blog. This is mostly because last semester was immensely more exciting than this spring 2009 semester. Honestly, last semester I chased an unrequited crush, understood the importance and connection between literary theory and film, and wrote some of the best pieces of fiction that I had ever written in my entire life (up until that point, anyway).

The time has come to announce that I have finally graduated from college. I have that elusive baccalaureate degree (technically, in about four to six weeks, I'll have it!). The question that comes to pass is: "now what?" Shall I decorate my cardboard box to live in? A true artist would do so to stand out from all the other boxed artists lined up in our makeshift Hoovervilles bred from doe-eyed dream-chasing.

I chose to follow my passion. In these bleak contemporary mindset, which is quite often, mocking and cynical, some would question a student's sanity for even daring to go towards a direction that had no guarantees. What I see from that, rather, is character. If someone even has the gall to dare, then I applaud that person. This is a person who believes in passion, wants to shape him/herself into being well-rounded, one who yearns for artistic and/or intellectual pursuits, and wishes to experience the best of what life has to offer. Whether that be travel, helping and teaching others, entertaining, or to be daring for daring's sake, then that's beautiful.

Let us begin quickly with a short journey and what I have/have not accomplished. I am writing this mainly to humor myself, and so that I will have something to look back upon when I think of my last two years of college.

My first creative workshop at CSUN, which was approximately one year ago during a summer session, I had been grappling with the ideas and concepts of creative writing and the literary theory behind it. I didn't realize there were terms that writers needed to be conscious of. I just wrote and mimicked what I had read in books. I also visualized what I wanted to write, playing it through my mind like a scene in a movie that I would try to regurgitate in words. I hadn't realized that creative writing was much more than copying what authors wrote in books or trying to describe the movie in my mind. That, like anything, I had to break it down with fundamentals.

The professor said to us on the first day of class, "I want to unsettle you."

One of our first exercises was to write one sentence--only one--and begin building on it. It was called Burrowing. From the prof's assignment:

I had become a sentence-thinker, my whole process of writing transformed from a hard, weird struggle to describe a set of fixed ideas floating somewhere, as it seemed, inside my head, to one in which the ideas grew out of the writing in the moment of its coming into being. Charged by their own imperative and grace, they seemed to unfold as if out of the sentences themselves. This is not some literary mysticism. It is how language works, what it is.

WTF right? I was definitely un-freaking-settled the entire time in that class. She said the exact same thing I had written above (except more academic-y). This way of thinking about writing felt unconventional (yet seemingly natural and 100% conventional at the same time!). If you think about it, we do not have premeditated conversations planned in our head. When we interact with one another, or even when we think, we jump from one sentence or thought to the next. It's spontaneous.

So take one sentence. Here, I'll write one right now: She liked roses best, but only in the coldness of winter.

What should come next? Anything! And this lesson taught me how to truly write. When the words fall freely on the page, one after the other, in a completely mellifluous way, there is such rhythm and cadence that gives the writing a natural flow. Nothing will seem forced or contrived. If I never remembered another creative writing exercise, I will still always remember this one because it has shaped my writing for good.

Next sentence: The winter concealed her with its gray shadows.

Now the writer has raised all these questions. Why only roses? What's the significance of the gray shadows? Who's "she," and does she have a name? Thus, a story unfolds, easily placing layers and complexity into the narrative naturally, without trying too hard or forcing it.

So...what was the point in all of this? Well...basically, I was trying to brainstorm ideas for writing my Statement of Purpose for grad school, and it turned into this half-teaching, half-reminiscing session about one of the most awesome lessons ever learned while at CSUN. LOL. :)

Humanities Must Justify Their Worth?

2009-02-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth

In this article from the New York Times, it is basically saying that because of today's economy, studies in humanities is seen as impractical because it concentrates on personal development, intellectualism, and forward-thinking. It doesn't prepare one for an actual job, like say engineering or medicine would.

At the end, the article says that humanities studies will soon be like it once was at the beginning of the 20th century: something only the wealthy priveleged will study.

This article is horrendously bleak. True: humanities studies do not prepare an individual specifically for an actual job in our society--a capitalist-based society where production and profit are valued. True: humanities is art--which never equals money in the pocket. True: humanities studies has no guarantees.

I call bullshit on the conclusion of the article: that only the wealthy priveleged will be the ones studying humanities. First of all, because of the huge surge in the middle class, and the blurring of the class divisions, we have, in America, rags-to-riches stories. Anyone can work from the bottom to the top if they so desire. Someone who has a degree in humanities, if they push themselves hard enough can become successful. It's the individual's responsibility to align themselves with success--if they so desire. Maybe some humanities students wouldn't mind living in a tool shed, surrounded by their philosophies, candles, and a crusty loaf of bread, so long as they have their books. You can't speak for every individual.

Secondly, even if (and this article smacks of dystopia for me) the humanities and liberal arts education were abolished and kept only for the rich--what kind of world do you envision? Something like in the film, Metropolis--workers, workers, and more workers? Orwellian dystopia? Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 where books are burned? No creativity? No imagination? Stifled words. Our current president is an individualist, free-thinking, forward-thinking man.

I am simply saying that the outcome of humanities studies will not just be for the wealthy. It's not entirely impractical, but you will learn more about yourself and you will craft an identity through your knowledge. Everyone is a humanist at heart, anyhow. We are not unfeeling robots. I do not fear the death of humanities.

Which Wife of Henry VIII Are You? I am Anne!

2009-02-06T23:39:00.000-08:00

Which wife of Henry the Eighth are you? Your Result: Anne Boleyn You are Anne Boleyn, second, and most famous, wife of Henry. You are firey, smart, confident, and witty. Though not notorious for your beauty, you have a prescense that sticks out in people's minds. You will stop at nothing to get what you want. Keep in mind, though, when you get it, you have to know how to keep it.
Katherine of Aragon
Kathrine Howard
Jane Seymour
Catherine Parr
Anne of Cleves
Which wife of Henry the Eighth are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I am obsessed with anything Tudor. And Anne Boleyn happens to be my favorite Henry VII wife. I think everyone gets her, though, on these quizzes...

What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?

2009-01-19T10:58:00.001-08:00

Sing along! From the musical, Avenue Q.

What do you do with a B.A. in English,
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge,
Have earned me this useless degree.

I can't pay the bills yet,
'Cause I have no skills yet,
The world is a big scary place.

But somehow I can't shake,
The feeling I might make,
A difference,
To the human race.

Morning, Brian.

Hi, Kate Monster.

How's life?

Disappointing.

What's the matter?

The catering company laid me off.

Heavenly shades of night are falling, it's TWILIGHT time...

2008-12-18T20:45:00.000-08:00

It's time to talk about...

...Twilight.

Now, I will try to phrase my words as diplomatically as possible. I will try to put my own personal prejudices aside, (remember, I like Gone With The Wind so that should reduce my credibility just a tad), and I will not give away plot to those who are in the middle of reading, or are planning to read it.

I realize that the Twilight craze is a little "so last month," with the release of the movie that did not meet its hyped expectations. It took me about a month, since I had school and what not, but I read all four books in this series. I wanted to get in on that craze and I wanted to find out for myself, "what's the big deal?"

My praises for Stephenie Meyer's series is that she is able to project the crystal-clear picture of a hormonal, post-adolescent girl grappling with normal teenage stuff and the rise of womanhood. This is why so many young girls can relate with the novel's main character, Bella Swan. The writing is convincing enough that you do go through the motions right along with Bella.

(Bella, played by Kristen Stewart in the film)

Meyer also works well with suspense, stringing the reader along with intrigue. No matter how boring her prose can become, something wills you to continue. Perhaps it is the seductiveness of vampires? :P

Oh, I slipped. Yes, I said it. Her prose is boring. Most of the four novels have been written predominantly with dialogue advancing the storyline, alongside Bella's inner reflections. This is not a bad thing, per se, but when we do go into Bella's narration and her reflections, the scene is static and unmoving. I often zone out, drift, even fall asleep when this happens. Not to mention, the content--what Bella is saying is usually some sort of insecure drivel, which goes back to my earlier point about Meyer's convincing handle of teenage feelings. Bella's thinking about this, feeing insecure about that, dreaming about Edward Cullen this...

(played by Cedric Diggory, I mean, Robert Pattinson in the film)

Bella is obsessed with Edward--no question about that. She constantly describes how beautiful he is, how his icy cold skin turns her on, how he smells like honey and lilac, and even his breath is the sweetest, most wondrous thing in the world...

That's fine, but we get it the first time, Bells. He's hot, you want him. Understood.

The relationship between Bella and Edward isn't that developed, though. It seems rather shallow and superficial, based on feelings, looks, and yes, hormones. Bella's freak-nasty. Her relationship with Jacob Black, her eventual best friend, is much more developed through the beginning of the series. I want to know why she's spouting out that she loves Edward so much, so early in the first book.

(Kind of a hot image, actually...)

Meyer's writing is definitely long-winded. Twilight is 500 pages long, and yet I still yearn for a stronger emotional attachment between Bella and Edward, that I'm just not getting. But anyway, I too, am long-winded, unfortunately. So if this post has done nothing but sallivate your thirst to read the series, watch the film, or made you very angry...great! Let's talk Twilight.

(to be continued...)

My Semester is Finir!

2008-12-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I dropped off the map on here for a while...but for good reason. The last couple of weeks of the semester were pretty labor-intensive. But I'm finished now! I have only one semester left of college.

Next semester, I'll be in ENGL 412, which helps to produce the Northridge Review, a literary magazine, and ENGL 490, the senior seminar in narrative writing. I'm glad for the break--but there is that lingering thought in my mind that I want to go back to school, too. I somehow enjoy the work. :P

The Happiest Place on Earth - Extended Final Draft

2008-12-14T18:39:00.001-08:00

As technology and the means of production increase and evolve, modern society now has greater access to everything. From pornography to exclusive art galleries, grape juice to vintage wine and everything in between is available at our disposal. Directly due to the advancement in quicker communication and discoveries in scientific research, mass production enables us to have all the commodities we need. Does all this easy access come at a price? In exploring the novel, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, and other texts and films, it is apparent that having things quickly and easily affect the way people feel, act, and think.

First, how and when did the western world become so heavily based on the assembly line process and mass production? Henry Ford revolutionized this means of production for his line of automobiles in the early twentieth century (Batchelor). Ever since then, we have utilized this in America to produce the majority of our goods. Nowadays, we outsource many of the factory jobs to other countries. Generally, this cheap means of labor means that we, as consumers, pay less and are happy with a bargain. However, on the other side, the worker suffers. Unfair wages or long work days contribute to a worker’s overall dissatisfaction. An early example of this would be the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory incident, where the working women were locked in the building, and a large majority died tragically.

A stunning example in film of the effect that this type of labor has on people is seen in Fritz Lang’s masterpiece, Metropolis. In a clip from the film, we see the workers carrying on with their jobs—making repetitive movements and are almost robotic. Perhaps what Lang is trying to criticize here is the near-tyranny of capitalism and how greed can affect the average person. Also in this clip, the robotic and unchanging movements serve to show how this type of environment and lifestyle can deplete a sense of self, or a sense of humanity. These people have become shells; just human bodies that simply function.

In Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, we see exactly this—people are shallow shells that function only on a surface level. They have no substance, no drive, no ambition, no yearning. Intellectual pursuits are forbidden, even. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a firefighter, whose job is to burn all the books that he and his fellow firefighters find (58). This is what firefighters do in the world of Fahrenheit 451. They are not the heroes people usually associate them as, but as mediators of the so-called peace and sanctity of the culture. Montag then meets people that change his mind about the life he’s living and the world around him. He starts questioning everything. He is having a personal quest to find the truth. It is interesting that he finds dissatisfaction with his life. Chief Beatty is Montag’s superior at the fire station, and he says bluntly:

People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these. (59)

Essentially, Beatty means that the fireman’s job is mass production. Burn the books, abolish philosophy, complicated thought, and reason because it doesn’t make people happy. If one person knows more than the other, they are not on equal playing ground, which is discouraging for the lesser.

Mass production, in this case loosely defined as making something rapidly and efficiently for all to consume. Philosopher Theodor Adorno, comments about mass production in relation to art: “The stunting of the mass-media consumer’s powers of imagination and spontaneity does not have to be traced back to any psychological mechanisms; he must ascribe the loss of those attributes to the objective nature of the products themselves.” If we are given poor quality entertainment or taught with a lack of substance or intelligence, then our imagination and creativity suffer. In Fahrenheit 451, the mass production of happiness and equality tries to permeate in all aspects of life. People now want instant gratification. This comes in the form of abbreviated television shows, movies, known as “parlor” television or family (Bradbury 82) and pills for sleeping, waking up, and every ailment in between (Bradbury 43).

There is a memorable scene in the film version of Fahrenheit 451 where Montag’s wife, Linda (Mildred in the novel), overdoses on her pills. Montag is distressed and tries to call for emergency help. The emergency line answers nonchalantly, asking him what color the pills are. They come in simple colors like white, blue, and yellow. Then two technicians come to Montag’s house and pump her blood with a machine, which will revive her and they simply shrug it off as routine procedure. What is interesting is how simple the pills are—basic colors—and a doctor does not come to check on Linda. The technology is simultaneously advanced and primitive. Everything is done at a fast pace. Interestingly, why does Linda feel compelled to take so many pills if everyone’s lives are meant to be happy? This is far from a picture of happiness.

Book-burning is the cornerstone of Bradbury’s novel. To burn books is to burn thought, ideas, imagination, creativity, inequality, and suppress revolution. Beatty says that books encourage inequality because, “Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico” (Bradbury 57). This is all in hope that equality will mean contentment for all. However, the scene where Montag and the firemen burn a woman with her books is an example of how much they affect people. She is so attached to her books; she is willing to die with them. She strikes the match herself and the entire house ignites around her. (Bradbury 36-40) The old woman finds her happiness, not in the parlor television screens, or in simple entertainment, but from her books. She rejects her own society. This is echoed here: “The culture industry did away with yesterday’s rubbish by its own perfection, and by forbidding and domesticating the amateurish, although it constantly allows gross blunders without which the standard of the exalted style cannot be perceived” (Adorno & Horkheimer). Therefore mass production borrows from its former elements and churns out low-quality results for all to consume. This explains the old woman’s attachment to her books, her need for something deeper and meaningful, and Montag’s disillusionment with society.

Something I have increasingly noticed in our society, when I observe my family and friends is that there is such a reliance on technology. We are a culture that feasts on gadgets that help to make our lives easier, for example the iPhone or the Blackberry. Time and time again, I have heard people say “what I wouldn’t give to have one of those iPhones right now…I’m so bored!” It makes me wonder, a little nostalgically, what did people do before iPhones and Blackberries? Why do people camp out overnight to buy the newest video game console? Why do people get trampled to death in Wal-Mart because of this overzealous fascination with material things? Is it the “stuff” that makes a person this way, or are we, as people, truly this greedy and lustful? Where does this drive to want more and more things come from--ourselves or what the media portrays? Companies produce to make money, as evidenced in the assembly line formation: fast, efficient, cost-effective. It is an interesting dynamic between producer and consumer, a continuing cycle.

Today, mass production is meant to deliver the things used every day to people in the fastest way possible. The assembly line and the quick communication are optimal for saving time and money. However, it is apparent that mass production of happiness or art, things that are abstract or ambiguous suffer from the exchange. Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, gives a glimpse into a society where everything is instant and devoid of thought and imagination. The philosophies of this world have good intentions: to create equality for all. However, equality does not automatically translate to happiness or satisfaction. Rather, the people are vapid, find nothing meaningful, and in the case of Montag, are on a search for fulfillment but never seems satisfied. One cannot produce results or happiness with the flick of a switch or by popping a pill. It comes from within—from a functioning mind.

WORKS CITED

Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1994. CSUN WebCT.

Batchelor, Ray. Henry Ford, Mass Production, Modernism, and Design. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1953.

Fahrenheit 451. Dir. François Truffaut. Perfs. Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack. Universal Pictures, 1966.

Metropolis. Dir. Fritz Lang. Perfs. Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Gustav Frölich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge. Paramount Pictures, 1927.

Sarah Palin Interview & Slaughtered Turkeys

2008-11-23T10:22:00.000-08:00

In her home state of Alaska, a pardon was passed for the turkeys this Thanksgiving and Gov. Sarah Palin was stopped for an interview, gleaming brightly with a Burberry scarf wrapped around her neck.

You know, I love all things Palin (sense the tone) and this is just so irresistibly ironic, I had to share. :-|

I Ate Vegan

2008-11-22T22:50:00.000-08:00

I am prepared to take the verbal hits and blows that may come my way when I say that I ate and enjoyed vegan food. This is what happened. (copied from my review on Yelp!)

My brother and I happened upon this place while strolling through the neighborhood after a run at the Silverlake Farmer's Market. He's a newfound vegetarian, for health reasons, and I am not. Though, I could be if I wanted to...but...well, I am a human who surrenders to temptation, guilty as charged.

I was a little reluctant to eat here, because the word "vegan" struck fear and horror in me. I envisioned frou-frou tofu atop raw pieces of dough and bland tomato sauce. You know, because I was an ignorant fool. However, I pride myself in being open-minded and I was willing to take the plunge. Besides, my poor brother finally found a restaurant that catered to his very strict diet and I felt obligated to compromise.

We came in for brunch and he had the breakfast burrito with a side of fruit. I had the buckwheat blueberry bliss pancakes with a side of breakfast potatoes. My pancakes certainly were bliss. They had an interesting texture--crispy around the edges, but the center was as fluffy as any old American flapjack, with a few walnuts tucked into the cake. The blueberry topping tasted fresh. I was given a small ramekin of soy butter, which I kid you not, tasted and melted as real butter. I didn't miss cow butter at all! They didn't give me a ton of syrup, but for some reason, I didn't feel compelled to drown my pancakes in the syrup, as one normally would. I wanted the pancakes to speak for themselves, and they certainly did.

Everything here is natural, free of chemicals and artificial sugars. The food tastes so good, that any non-vegan can waltz in here and seamlessly enjoy a meal without missing a single beat of their own daily fare. I definitely recommend!

And take a home a chocolate cupcake. Oh, it was divine!

--------------
Yes. This is a good vegan place. Vegan food isn't just plain raw veggies and dip. I didn't realize that I could have my cake and eat it, too. And you know something, I'm really proud of my brother, because he's finally taking control of his life and his health. Now I wish I could say the same for me, but um...well, I still like meat.

Oh and! I also saw Pazza Gelato, a gelateria that Giada di Laurentiis featured on her show, Giada's Favorites, which made me very excited because I love Giada...

Five Minutes of Film: Gone With The Wind

2008-11-17T20:46:00.000-08:00

In the finale of the film, Gone With The Wind, the forlorn protagonist, Scarlett O’Hara comes to an ultimate realization. Everything that she has worked for, the strife and hardship means almost nothing when she loses the true love of her life, Rhett Butler. The final scene is one of the most groundbreaking and memorable endings. It is also has its place in controversy. Rhett utters the line, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” which had censors in the 1930’s wringing their hands in protest. Such things were not said before a Depression-era crowd, for it was considered offensive and vulgar. The studio that produced Gone With The Wind had to pay a fine to keep the line in the film. Not only does this scene depict Scarlett’s determination and exceptionalism, it also represent the ultimate defiance in the societal standards of its day.

(I can expand on this, but I could honestly talk about GWTW all day. I'm sure you don't want to hear my drivel...)

The Happiest Place on Earth? Response Paper ENGL 312

2008-11-06T17:25:00.000-08:00

As technology and the means of production increase and evolve, modern society now has greater access to everything. From pornography to exclusive art galleries, grape juice to vintage wine and everything in between is available at our disposal. Directly due to the advancement in quicker communication and discoveries in scientific research, mass production enables us to have all the commodities we need. Does all this easy access come at a price? In exploring the novel, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, it is apparent that having things quickly and easily affect the way people feel, act, and think.

We will begin by addressing the premise of Bradbury’s story. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a firefighter, whose job is to burn all the books that he and his fellow firefighters find (58). This is what firefighters do in the world of Fahrenheit 451. They are not the heroes people usually associate them as, but as mediators of the so-called peace and sanctity of the culture. Montag then meets people that change his mind about the life he’s living and the world around him. He starts questioning everything. He is having a personal quest to find the truth. It is interesting that he finds dissatisfaction with his life. Chief Beatty is Montag’s superior at the fire station, and he says bluntly:

People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these. (59)

Essentially, Beatty means that the firemen’s job is mass production. Burn the books, abolish philosophy, complicated thought, and reason because it doesn’t make people happy. If one person knows more than the other, they are not on equal playing ground, which is discouraging for the lesser.

Mass production, in this case loosely defined as making something rapidly and efficiently for all to consume. Philosopher Theodor Adorno, comments about mass production in relation to art: “The stunting of the mass-media consumer’s powers of imagination and spontaneity does not have to be traced back to any psychological mechanisms; he must ascribe the loss of those attributes to the objective nature of the products themselves.” If we are given poor quality entertainment or taught with a lack of substance or intelligence, then our imagination and creativity suffer. In Fahrenheit 451, the mass production of happiness and equality tries to permeate in all aspects of life. People now want instant gratification. This comes in the form of abbreviated television shows, movies, known as “parlor” television or family (Bradbury 82) and pills for sleeping, waking up, and every ailment in between (Bradbury 43).

There is a memorable scene in the film version of Fahrenheit 451 where Montag’s wife, Linda (Mildred in the novel), overdoses on her pills. Montag is distressed and tries to call for emergency help. The emergency line answers nonchalantly, asking him what color the pills are. They come in simple colors like white, blue, and yellow. Then two technicians come to Montag’s house and pump her blood with a machine, which will revive her and they simply shrug it off as routine procedure. What is interesting is how simple the pills are—basic colors—and a doctor does not come to check on Linda. The technology is simultaneously advanced and primitive. Everything is done at a fast pace. Interestingly, why does Linda feel compelled to take so many pills if everyone’s lives are meant to be happy? This is far from a picture of happiness.

Book-burning is the cornerstone of Bradbury’s novel. To burn books is to burn thought, ideas, imagination, creativity, inequality, and suppress revolution. Beatty says that books encourage inequality because, “Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico” (Bradbury 57). This is all in hope that equality will mean contentment for all. However, the scene where Montag and the firemen burn a woman with her books is an example of how much they affect people. She is so attached to her books; she is willing to die with them. She strikes the match herself and the entire house ignites around her. (Bradbury 36-40) The old woman finds her happiness, not in the parlor television screens, or in simple entertainment, but from her books. She rejects her own society. This is echoed here: “The culture industry did away with yesterday’s rubbish by its own perfection, and by forbidding and domesticating the amateurish, although it constantly allows gross blunders without which the standard of the exalted style cannot be perceived” (Adorno & Horkheimer). Therefore mass production borrows from its former elements and churns out low-quality results for all to consume. This explains the old woman’s attachment to her books, her need for something deeper and meaningful, and Montag’s disillusionment with society.

Today, mass production is meant to deliver the things used every day to people in the fastest way possible. The assembly line and the quick communication are optimal for saving time and money. However, it is apparent that mass production of happiness or art, things that are abstract or ambiguous suffer from the exchange. Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, gives a glimpse into a society where everything is instant and devoid of thought and imagination. The philosophies of this world have good intentions: to create equality for all. However, equality does not automatically translate to happiness or satisfaction. Rather, the people are vapid, find nothing meaningful, and in the case of Montag, are on a search for fulfillment but never seems satisfied. One cannot produce results or happiness with the flick of a switch or by popping a pill. It comes from within—from a functioning mind.

WORKS CITED

Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1944. CSUN WebCT.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1953.

Fahrenheit 451. Dir. François Truffaut. Perfs. Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack. Universal Pictures, 1966.

(Pictures come courtesy of googling images).

Also...Prof. Wexler, I'm sure you know, but just in case, anything written for your class has the label, "english 312" on it. You can just click on the label and it will all be on one page for you.

This Is the Future

2008-11-04T20:14:00.000-08:00

Not so dystopic now, are we?

<3

408 story: In Circles

2008-11-03T21:17:00.000-08:00

Here's a silly story, from an exercise we had called "The Sky's the Limit." You and a partner write one sentence, something that's really out of the ordinary. Take for example, the first line of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis where a man wakes up as an insect. Then you and the partner trade the sentence and write a story about it. This is what I came up with. Comments, criticisms, outright bashing are all right! Stealing is not.

IN CIRCLES

She stared at it for a long time, trying to clear the glare in her eyes. She waited for it to take her on as it has so many nights before. The small, circular, white device on the wall of her apartment hallway had one single red light that blinked constantly. It wasn’t the light that bothered her so much, but rather the drawn-out, high-pitched beeping that it emitted any given moment during the day. The nights were always the worst. The beeps drifted from the circular device and seeped into all the crevices and every inch of space of the apartment. It beeped when she watched television, when she was contorted into mangled yoga positions, and when she had dinner dates. It blared loudest in her bedroom, tapping against her ear drums like a drill.

She was hoping for a quiet evening, an occasional and rare treat that she savored. She protected her ears with swimmers’ ear plugs; the kind that molded to the unique contour of her ear. She slid into bed wearing red and green flannel pajamas and opened a crisp copy of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories. After reading the first five sentences, she grew bored and opted for the latest Self magazine. She came across a quiz, “Are You Mentally, Physically, and Spiritually Stable?” and grabbed a pencil, lured in by the prospect of psychoanalysis.

In the midst of her excitement, the beeping started again. It drifted into her room, and crawled into bed with her, under the covers, and traveled to the opening of her ears. There, it burrowed its way through the tightly compacted gel of the ear plugs and resumed its jackhammer-like drills. Her eyes widened in fright, and she clenched her comforter in tightly in a heated frenzy. She threw the covers off of her and bolted from the bed. She went to her closet and grabbed a sneaker. She opened her bedroom door, and saw the circular device, beeping and blinking maniacally. She flexed her bicep muscles and held the shoe with tight tension.

“Shut the fuck up!” she yelled hysterically, as she beat it furiously with the sneaker. It was knocked from the wall and smashed into fragments, electronic pieces that shone like glitter on the bland, beige carpet of her hallway.

It continued to beep. The intensity of the beeping increased, as it was no longer covered by the white circular shield. She screamed at a volume that rivaled the beeping but the humanly yelps were no opponent to the unworldly noises coming from the broken circular device. She went back to her bedroom, searching for a shirt, a blanket, something to muffle the decimated mess on the floor of her hallway. She found an old wool blanket and dropped all the pieces, even the batteries, into it, and wrapped it in a tight bundle. She went to living room, then to her balcony, where the night air seized her, taking her aback from the sudden chilly blast. She looked down the five floors from her balcony to the street below. The city lights twinkled and the cars breezed by unbeknownst to the abject horror she felt in her bloodshot eyes, crinkled hair, and restless rage. She held the package over the side of the balcony, readying to drop the load.

“Goodnight…bitch!” she called out, her breath visible in a long steamy stream, as she released the bundle and allowed it to fall to the concrete.

She had the soundest sleep of her life. A week went by without the beeping circular device and she slept so deeply that she finally felt revitalized. The kinks in her hair ironed out. Her eyes, once sunken and black, were bright and alluring. After a 40-minute yoga session and a breakfast of granola and yogurt, she felt more limber and energized than ever.

There was a knock at the door after she finished washing her dishes. She muttered her recognition to the visitor, and took a moment to dry her hands on a kitchen towel. She approached the door and looked through the peephole to see the stranger. There appeared to be no one at the door.

“Who’s there?” she asked through the wood, perhaps in the off chance the visitor had stood away from the narrow vision of the peephole.

“It’s Tom,” the voice said. He was the apartment manager.

She opened the door cautiously and when she saw the outlines of his brown boots and khakis, she poked her head through the ajar door. He smiled and waved at her.

“Hi Nina,” he said. “I’m not sure why, but I found this on my balcony this morning and I was wondering if it was yours.”

He held out a gray, woolen blanket that wrapped in a tight bundle. Nina’s eyes widened, horrified.

“I opened it. It looks like a fire alarm,” he said, shuffling the balled up blanket from one hand to the next.

She took it from him and unraveled the folds. When it opened, she saw the decimated contents of the circular device—the fire alarm—and then beeping began again. She let it drop to the floor to cover her ears with her palms.

“Turn it off, turn it off! I can’t stand it!” she cried out, panicking. Tom bent down and rummaged through the parts. He found the piece attached to the batteries. It was brown and beginning to rust. He fiddled with a switch and the beeping stopped. Nina pulled her hands away from her ears and looked down at him, heaving out a quick breath of air.

“You know,” Tom said, his face growing with concern. “It’s illegal in this district to disconnect your fire alarm. And you broke yours...”

“You know, Tom. It’s illegal to disturb the peace and quiet of a tenant’s rented property.”

He huffed out a breath of air. “I’ll buy you dinner, and we’ll call it even?”

She smiled. “Sure! And oh, I’m gonna need a new fire alarm…”

Guitaaaaa!

2008-10-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

Check out some of my guitar playin' here:

http://www.myspace.com/melanrock

I composed the music, played the rhythm guitar, lead guitar, and bass guitar, and there are lyrics, but I haven't got a fantastic voice right now so I haven't laid down any vocals yet.

Right now, there's only one song on there, because it's the only one that's really polished. I will be adding some more, soon, because I have several tracks laid down, but are still rough. I'm hoping to spruce the page up, as well, and start networking. Any musicians out there, by the by? I'd love to network and jam.

Short Story from 308: The Local Drugstore

2008-10-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

All right, short story time! Not that anyone reads these. They're mostly for my own entertainment, but really...if you have the time, please do read my stories and leave me comments, critiques, anything. I really would love input on my writing and I haven't gotten much around here.

Except, this isn't really a story you should be critiquing. The exercise here is called Plot Potential. You are to write five "mini" stories, to lay down the foundation of a larger story. Here's three mini stories. Check, check, check it out. :)

"The Local Drugstore"

Ava wasn’t used to the wad of toilet paper bunched between her legs. She stood in aisle four, in the feminine products section, across from the vaginal lube and XXL condoms. Her ten-year-old eyes glazed over the abundant stacks of maxi pads, tampons, panty liners, diapers, and napkins. She pinched one of the tightly bound plastic packages with her fingers, poking at the ribs of lined pads. Which to choose?

“Daddy,” she said timidly. “I need help.”

Her tone flounced through her father’s ears, like a whistle to a soldier, signaling the call to action. Dave had been standing off to the side and Ava noticed his hands in his pockets were disguising a nervous shake. He sputtered out guttural mumbles and picked up a small package of super maxi pads.

“Um, well baby,” he said, his voice quavering. “It depends on how heavy your flow is. And…yeah.” She watched his eyes scan over the hundreds of possibilities, trying to find the solution, as though the right package would suddenly illuminate like a carnival prize. She turned her gaze back to the boxes. The names of the packages on the top shelves were hardly visible. She shifted her weight to the tips of her toes and pushed off with her calves to read their descriptions.

“Are you sure Mommy didn’t have some left over at home?” Ava asked.

Mommy hadn’t had her period for several years.

“No baby,” he said. “Sorry.”

Ava eased off her toes and planted her feet firmly to the vinyl floor. She blew back a strand of dark brown hair with a quick gust from her lips, then tucked it behind her small tanned ear. She looked to her father. Her almond eyes twinkled back at him and glistened with a heavy teardrop. Dave opened his arms and let Ava collide into him, and the few tears in her eyes dotted his jean jacket, darkening the spots in a polka dot pattern.

It would’ve been easier with Mommy.

“Here,” he said, once he let her go. He quickly scanned the aisle again and chose a variety pack of maxi pads from Always. “This one has light, medium, and heavy in case you aren’t sure.”

Ava took it and hugged it close to her body. “Thank you, Daddy.”

They started walking towards the cash register when Ava stopped them. She clutched Dave’s arm with a gentle squeeze. “I want to visit Mommy after this. Can we?”

“We went yesterday, hon,” he said, scratching the scruff on his beard. He hadn’t shaved in weeks. There was no need to shave anymore.

Ava nodded. “Okay. Then tomorrow? I’ll pick out the flowers for her and then we can decorate the grass…”

Dave’s throat tightened. Ava saw his face and the red tinge that shone through the gruff on his cheeks. She then felt the toilet paper wad bunched in her crotch, dampening with an unwelcome sticky warmness. Though she felt it uncomfortable, she no longer cared if it leaked and stained her pants. It wasn’t time to go home. Mommy wasn’t home.

***

Mr. Bishop came in with a stainless steel cane, hunching over it gingerly, with careful footsteps. He made his way to the back of the store in five minutes. He smoothed his soft white hair down with a black handkerchief. He came to the pharmacy window and he smiled at the young pharmacy girl. A golden brown ponytail hung high up in the air.

“Hey Linda,” he said to her. “Is my prescription ready?”

“Let me check, Mr. Bishop. Just a sec.” She whirled around and looked at the A-D files, searching for the white paper bag full of medicine. When she found B, Bishop, she plucked it from its place and brought it back to the counter. It was the usual, the familiar package of meds for his ulcers. He had a second bag. She blinked several times to make sure and Mr. Bishop curled his lips into a devilish smirk. Viagra.

Mr. Bishop let out gusts of belly laughs. He wheezed the air in and out of his lungs rapidly. “Yep. I owe Mrs. Bishop a treat, especially since my hip’s not so bum anymore.”

“Well, just be careful,” Linda said, laughing along. She handed him the bags after he paid for them.

He lingered for a moment, then leaned on his cane to gear up for the painstaking walk.

***

Zack walked into the store while whistling a humble tune to himself. He was casual, cool, and collected. Keeping anticipation bottled was difficult when the cork was loosened.

He remembered lying in bed with Emily, just moments earlier. He had stripped off her T-shirt and her boot-cut carpenter jeans, leaving her in a turquoise bra and panties. He knelt beside her on the bed and laid his hand on her belly. She held his head in her hands and pulled him towards her to kiss him hungrily on the lips. His hand started to migrate, reaching in beneath the thin panties and played with the crispy bristles of her pubic hair. He ran his fingers through them, parting them into five aisles. Emily jerked his hand away when he started to dig farther down. She twisted her index finger lifted and right. No condom, no nookie.

Zack stood in aisle four, facing the condoms. The hoards of latex laid out in front of him were like a museum of keys that led towards a treasure trove hidden away in a far off village. He chose the ribbed and lubricated, specifically designed for her pleasure, apparently. He walked off and as he left the aisle, he spotted a young Asian girl with inquisitive almond eyes, followed by a man in a jean jacket. She looks so scared.

Before leaving with the condoms, Zack spotted the ice cream bar by the cash registers. He sat down next to a pungent man, the only seat available at the time. He asked for a pint of chocolate malted crunch, Emily’s favorite, and the bearded man clapped him on the back with a celebratory cheer.

“Congratulations! Never heard o’ that flavor before in my life!”

Zack flipped his thumb up swiftly and smiled at the stranger. Something was pulling him, bonding him to the seat of his chair. Though the urges in his body wanted him to return to Emily’s soft embrace, he stayed in the store, sitting on the stool and let the world go by in nimble flashes.

Web CT 10/23: Why Books?

2008-10-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

Prof. asked us today in ENGL 312, opening our discussion on Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, “why books?” Why burn the books? If we go back about two centuries in our history, remember that during slavery, slaves were kept illiterate to keep them ignorant, because literacy = power. The power to read gives one the power to attain knowledge. Burning books, as is the case in the dystopic world of Fahrenheit 451 is a way to keep people ignorant and free of thought.

I’ve always loved to read. As a young child, it helped me to foster a very keen and vivid imagination. I questioned everything around me, because books, specifically works of literature take you to a world that is beyond your own. Captain Beatty, a character in the novel, says “Books say nothing! Nothing that you can teach or believe. They’re about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they’re fiction” (Bradbury 62). As an aspiring writer, that line stopped me dead in my tracks. A life without imagination? That’s no life to lead.

The novel examines this same line of thinking. For example, there are no porches because people sit out on porches to think. This “big brother” figure, the government, whoever does not want people to sit and think, to brood, or to ponder. It’s all a scheme to keep people in their place. That smells of totalitarianism. What a sad, sad world.

Tina Fey = Maverick

2008-10-19T16:10:00.001-07:00

If you missed Sarah Palin's appearance on SNL last night, well I bring a clip!

I loved the "cordial" glances Tina and Sarah made when passing. :P

Self-explanatory. :)

Doggone it, you betcha!

2008-10-17T20:45:00.001-07:00

Sarah Palin will be on SNL tomorrow night. It'll be a maverick night, I am sure. Perfect fodder for a night of good jokes.

In the meantime, this will satisfy your craving, hehe.

WebCT: Mass Production

2008-10-16T23:01:00.000-07:00

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
"The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses."

Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception"
"The assembly-line character of the culture industry, the synethetic, planned method of turning out its products...the easy yet catchy, the skillful yet simple; the object is to overpower the customer, who is conceived as absent-minded or resistant."

Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451
"The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of pastepudding norm, do you follow me?"

Interesting discussion this week, concerning the Benjamin, Adorno, and Ray Bradbury’s quotes. Essentially, I do think that the quality of art, which encompasses the visual and performing, or actually anything really, is going down in standards due to mass production. Yes, I’m on that side of the fence.

My reasoning is because I’ve watched a lot of documentaries on the Discovery Channel of how items are stamped out by the millions by machines. Clothes, food, musical instruments, what have you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the same T-shirt on a person because they sell dozens of the same shirt at a particular store. Or what about food made in factories, like packaged or processed foods, where a human hand has never touched a single aspect of the cooking? I guess you can say I’m much more partial to products where a lot of care and attention has been paid to each individual item.

I realize that today’s big factory machines are programmed to ensure high quality standards and maintain consistency. And that most companies would lose money if things were manufactured without the machines, because of time and labor. But then it starts to become a cookie cutter. Wouldn’t we get bored of it after a while? Or are we already bored of it? The mass production that we have in America is a huge contributor to making us such a dominant country. The simple laws of supply and demand have made our lives a little simpler and have made everything more accessible to all people.

However, in David Harvey’s interview, which I thoroughly enjoyed for his magnificent insight into America’s future, he spoke of America’s dominance in production will eventually waver and no longer be the dominant. I just think if we keep simplifying everything, making everything cookie cutter, things lose their uniqueness.

(I recommend watching the last 20 minutes of this video).

We’re not currently in danger of losing our own individual identities and uniqueness, like the people in gray jumpsuits of Orwell's 1984, but I do think that it is a form of streamlining into something more uniform. Besides, cookie cutters are a necessary evil. So that when we do have something come out, a movie, for example, that is brilliant, it stands out among all the others. That’s what makes something special.

Chaos Again!

2008-10-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

We all stood by our emails last night, to check the campus status for tomorrow. At 5:00 a.m., we were alerted that CSUN would be open for normal operation.

So it seemed fine this morning, but I couldn't help the eerie ominous feeling. Right after I switched from the 5 North to the 118 Freeway this morning, I saw flames licking the mountains to the right. It was a tremendous sight.

The smoke off the Reseda exit was stifling. Orange and brown covered my vision. Really, was it safe to go to school? I wanted to turn back, but I wanted my education. Seriously.

When I arrived to campus, the air was clear and I smelled no smoke. It seemed fine. But no one was at school today. I had about 10 students in my 9:30 class and the professor seemed reluctant to teach that day. She didn't. We just sat and workshopped stories.

Then Prof. Wexler's class, my 12:30, was cancelled. I actually bumped into him and it was a funny sight. The sight of a fleeing teacher and student, running away from chaos. The smoke came back. The fire had spread to Granada Hills and was in full force on campus. The wind wasn't helping. It picked up the smoke I had seen earlier that day and settled it right into the center of school. It was a terrible smoking dust storm.

I think it's an absolutely heinous for campus to be open today. It is so dangerous out there and the smoke is really debilitating. I really wished that they had just left campus closed today. It's a danger to the students' health and because dammit, I live far. I feel so cheated when I don't get to take my classes. It feels like a waste of my time and a waste gas.

On another note, let's continue to be vigilant and show our care and compassion for the evacuees and victims of the fires, which has now spread to Granada Hills. :(

There Now, Doesn't That Look Much Better?

2008-10-13T23:51:00.001-07:00

I decided to spruce up the blog a bit. With classes cancelled today, I had a bit of extra time (which I did not have this weekend!)

So goodbye, golden vomit page!

The color scheme of the new page suits me better, anyway. Somber colors are so much more soothing. :P

WebCT post for 10/9

2008-10-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

Didn't get a chance to put this on WebCT.

American Psycho and A Clockwork Orange

I saw a connection between the two films we have watched in class: more recently A Clockwork Orange and American Psycho. I saw them both as an allegory, a “what-if,” when people become disillusioned with society and find some sort of outlet to act upon their estrangement. The similarities between these two films are striking. Both Alex from Clockwork and Patrick Bateman from American Psycho have a taste for something finer than what they already have. I think that they were both searching and searching for something but they just didn’t know what it was. They were both fed up with everyone around them and acted out. Homicide and rape, complete disregard for human life. The films were chilling and put me in a state of unease. It made me fear the future because we already live in a society where many people are quite disillusioned with the government, economy, standards of living, and etc. It’s unsettling what the disorganized mess can do to affect others.

What I find interesting about A Clockwork Orange (and possibly American Psycho, as well) is that the movie and its characters are now fad or trendy. It’s the “cool thing” to like Clockwork and to even look and dress like Alex. In fact, there is one particular rock band that comes to mind and they are very popular. They are called Panic At The Disco and their look earlier in their career quite resembled the gang of Clockwork.

My point is that films like these have such tremendous cultural impact that I fear they will lose their novelty and people may become desensitized to the true meaning behind the films. That screams dystopic to me!

(Now they’re ripping off Beatles and the Sgt. Pepper era, but I won’t get too far into that).

Feel free to combat me on this issue. And I am not ripping on Panic! I actually enjoy their music and their look. I'd dress like them were I a dude. And gay. :D

Draft for 408: Opulence

2008-10-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

This week's exercise focuses on dreams and the imaginary--and their plausibility in the real world. Basically, it's about dreams grounded in reality: like Harry Potter. A boy believe he's normal, but he's actually a wizard. Or a little girl learns she can talk to her hamster, but no one else can. Fun stuff, isn't it?

"Opulence"

It was the drones that sent me over the edge with their talk of liberal smack; how to save the country one abortion at a time, let the gays marry, legalize pot, and fuck your mother. And every day, they would sit behind their dark cherry wood desks, puffing on a pipe or a fine, hand-crafted cigar while I sat opposite them in a less comfortable, pleather-covered office chair, clutching onto a briefcase. I often left sweat marks on the briefcase, but it didn’t matter because I didn’t keep anything in there except my resume. All for show.

So I slipped one of the bastards my business card: Gleason, Joseph. Stanford University 2001, UCLA Law 2005. They always asked me if it took me four years at law school. It didn’t. I took a year off. Wasn’t that the smart thing to do? Most gave me the wink and the nod, but others just coughed. It killed me. I wanted to know exactly what they were thinking, at that precise moment, at that precise interview. Every one I felt went swimmingly, but they always ended with an arm reaching across the table for a handshake and a rehearsed speech:

“This looks good, Mr. Gleason. However, I’m afraid we won’t be able to offer you a position at our firm this quarter.”

Then I would find out some Yale yuppie got the job instead. Pricks.

~~
I always drove the same route home, Santa Monica Blvd all the way, then north on Saltair. I shot up seven floors on a shaky elevator and when the doors opened, I always covered my face with a handkerchief. Someone was always cooking some piece of shit like dog or whatever. I opened the door to the condo and was met with the odor of burned sage. My fiancée appeared in her Haight-Ashbury throwbacks. I kissed her on the lips, which were always caked with that cheap, cherry-flavored, Chapstick.

“How was work today, lovely?” she asked, dancing around to the sounds of Cream echoing from the iPod deck. I plunked down onto the couch that we always covered with thin cotton sheets. Unless we had company, they remained covered. I wanted a white leather sectional, but she wanted something environmentally friendly. So we settled on synthetic.

“I filed papers. Like I always do,” I replied, leaning back into the couch. I started to undo the tight Windsor knot on my tie when she came over to me and straddled me, clenching her thighs tightly to support her weight. She untied the Windsor the rest of the way.

“When are they gonna make you a partner?” she asked, whining the last few syllables.

“When you start eating foie gras. Now wouldja get off me, Deb?”

She rolled left onto the couch, pulling the sheets off and turning it disarray. I sighed vehemently.

“You’re no fun anymore, Joe,” she said. She clicked her fingernails against one another. I couldn’t stand the sound, the irritating clicks banged against my ear drum. Click. Click. Then she started talking and rambling. About her girlfriends at the yoga place. The douche bags at work. The CD she bought on 3rd Street. Ramble. Ramble, she went on.

“God damn it, Deb. Don’t call me Joe! It’s Joseph. I’m a lawyer.”
~~
We ate dinner in relative silence and I pushed around the edamame on my plate. I loved Deb for trying, but the grilled soy steak was nothing compared to a porterhouse. It was a noble effort on her part, too, when she poured chianti into wine glasses for the both of us. I rubbed her thigh tenderly under the table.

“Sorry for earlier,” I said, cooing at her. When I spoke, tears dribbled from her eyes and fell onto her plate. “Aw Deb, don’t cry. The edamame tastes good. Doesn’t need any more salt.”

Her eyes narrowed and her forehead wrinkled into an unruly pattern. She forked the edamame beans and then took a bite of warm potato salad. She added extra green onions. They were her favorite.

After making love to her in her favorite position, her on top and giving her ass a few playful pinches, we lay side by side together heaving and panting. I was lucky. She didn’t like to snuggle too much after. Minutes passed. I was thinking about work. I pushed paper. I put paper in steel cabinets. I brewed the best damn cup of Maxwell House. Then a snake bit me.

“Deb!” I said, turning around to face her. She was beginning to drift away from me, but the quick thrust of her name from my lips peeled her eyes open. I took both of her hands into mine and kissed the finger tips. “I’ve figured out how to be fun again.”

~~
Deb wore the only business attire she’d ever owned. She looked beautiful, not that she wasn’t, but in that conservative way I liked. The plan was simple. At 10 a.m., I stepped out of the office for a cup of coffee. She came in with her best high school drama skills, acted as a fake partner at the firm. She planted the bomb in the ladies’ bathroom. We met by the coffee machine and she gave me the thumbs up. I smirked happily and took her hand in mine. We walked out of the office, briskly but discretely. I felt dandy with that cup of coffee in my hand, my steaming alibi.

We were well out of harm’s way when I heard the crash and bang, then the flames flew up into the sky, puffing like a devilish marshmallow. Deb and I grinned and her lips curled into an evil snarl.

“This feels good, Joe. We sure gave Bonnie and Clyde a run for their money. And now I’m starving. I feel like a steak.”

“Steak!” I cried out. “It’s 10 in the morning, hon.”

She held my hands and did a playful jig. We weren’t far from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. I’d been there on lunch appointments, but there was never an occasion to go with Deb. If we ever ate out, it was vegan.

The maître d’ warned us that there was no steak service at lunch. I took him aside, like he was my best friend. I slipped him a fifty and told him to bring us a porterhouse and a bottle of chianti.

“Sir,” he said curtly. “Would you like to eat steak or just look at it?”

I sighed. “Damn it, man.” I gave him thirty more and he kept his stupid poker face.

“Porterhouse rare and chianti. Foie gras on the house,” he murmured and stepped away casually for the kitchen.

The porterhouse arrived and we divided it between the two of us. It was deep red and the juice that poured from the meat was still red. It was a glorious sight to watch her slice open the meat with such relish. As we chewed, the succulent rare flesh wriggled in our mouths.

Chaos in the City

2008-10-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

Here's another good dystopic observation. Campus was closed today, due to the fires in Porter Ranch. I am wishing for everyone's safety out there, by the way!

Well I noticed that there was something eerie in the air, and I don't mean the smoke and ash floating around. Everyone had a solemn look, and walked like zombies. Weather-beaten and exhausted, it was just another manic Monday, right?

I noticed things were extra fishy when my broccoli cheese soup from Subway just didn't taste right. Then there seemed to be plenty of parking in the parking structures. This was very odd behavior, indeed!

Then hallways were empty. At 1:45, the hallways of Jerome Richfield are never empty.

I went to my professor's office and she said that the entire campus was closed. No classes today.

No classes?! You mean I drove all that way, worked my ass off this whole weekend to get everything done by Monday, and...classes are cancelled?

So I fled! I fled campus and people were driving worse than normal. Intersections were blocked. Ambulances and fire trucks blasted through the lanes, weaving in and out of the way. I got on the freeway. And here was something that I had never seen before.

Traffic was backed up horribly on the 118 West. I literally saw cars pull over to the right and drive in reverse to the next exit, Balboa Blvd. It was like synchronized driving; all the cars in one line at the same speed backing up to Balboa Blvd. It was surely a sight to see!

This was chaos. This was dystopia in action. This is what happens to people in these bizarre moments that throw off your day. It's lunacy, I say. Sheer lunacy!

One-Page Reflection for Planet of the Apes Presentation

2008-10-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

I contributed to the group the scenes from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I pointed out that the story in this particular book/film of the series is related to our talk of eugenics and Planet of the Apes because here is an instance in a fictional world that discriminates against a person based solely on what they are born with. Certain wizards and witches want to kill off the ones who were born from normal people and there is an air of superiority over the pureblood wizards and witches over them. It’s a genetic cleansing. The same thing happens in Planet of the Apes when they realize that Ulysse (Taylor in the original film) is an intelligent being—but he is a human, not an ape. They are unwilling to accept this fact and disregard his intelligence as nothing more than excellent imitation. How ironic, though, because in the novel, we learn that apes are excellent imitators, as well.

I also tried to figure out an answer for why Planet of the Apes is dystopic; and that is for the very same reason stated above. (I wasn’t able to share this in the presentation, because of time constraints.) It’s unfair to discriminate against someone who is intellectually and physically qualified to do a task. When we start trying to figure out who is the best, smartest, or strongest then it leaves no room for variety. For example, take Ethan Hawke’s character in Gattaca. He wants to go to space, but biological tests determined when he was an infant relay him to working janitor shifts and cleaning “spaces.” We will not have variety, because if we are all six foot, blonde, and blue-eyed, there would be nothing special to differentiate one individual from another. We would all be cookie cutter.

WebCT post: 10/02: Planet of the Apes

2008-10-02T20:17:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed Planet of the Apes. It might be because I have an overactive imagination, but when I read a story that I enjoy, I like to immerse myself fully into that world. It’s how I get a feel for the story, the setting, the surroundings, the characters, the action, and the plot. I saw the ape society described in the novel and it was actually frightening to me. I didn’t want to see a world where humans are low-class heathens, whose intelligence is undermined. I didn’t want a world where someone was discriminated against because of blood, genetics, or species, as we saw in the Heston film, Gattaca, and even the snippet from Harry Potter. :P I think, had the apes lived harmoniously with the humans and accepted them as intellectual equals, then I wouldn’t be so hung up about it. Then again, we wouldn’t have much of a story, would we? Even so, the fact that I was so immersed and so horrified at the close-mindedness of the apes, I think that’s a good thing because it shows just how affecting the novel is.

It may play into my own insecurities because I somehow don’t want to believe that humanity is fragile—but we are. Here is an allegory for what we can become if we crumble and fall apart as a society. There could be an uprising during vulnerable times. Maybe not by apes, per se, but by anything: dictatorships, anarchy, what have you.

First Draft; Story for 408: A Yellow Submarine

2008-09-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

Comments, criticisms, anything in general are always appreciated. Don't steal. I worked hard.

"A Yellow Submarine"

His jeans are crispy. He doesn’t use fabric softener. He lifts my favorite powder blue cami over my head. Did I shave my pits? I hope they don’t smell. He doesn’t look repulsed, so maybe I’m okay. I don’t know why he thinks I like it when he kisses my neck. It is a snail slithering its slimy, snot-covered body on my skin, leaving a sticky trail behind it. It is marking its path and its territory, wondering which flower in the garden it can terrorize next.

He has amazing hands, though. He knows how to use them; he knows how to flutter his fingers just the right way that sets the bumps on my skin rising to the height of a skyscraper. If I could only have his hands, the two faceless, lifeless servants then I’d be eternally satisfied. I like it when he leaves the TV on in his bedroom whenever we fool around. I always get so bored with his incessant tonguing, but at least I’m caught up on episodes of Lost.

He’s fiddling with my bra; he’s clumsy. I reach around behind me and unhook the clasps for him, then throw the white lace cups at his face. He thinks it’s playful and endearing, but I roll my eyes with indifference. I lie on my back, on top of the sheets of his double bed, with my breasts bare and all he can do is stare at them. It always seems to be a sub zero temperature in his room and now I’m shivering. I try pulling his arms towards me, but he’s too stiff and won’t budge. Maybe he doesn’t want to get too close for fear that I’ll gouge out his chestnut eyes with the shriveled and taut raisins on my chest. I wish he would just man up, grab a hold of them, and conquer me like a Viking brute, but he’s more like a Victorian gentleman steeped with brandy after a cocktail party.

On our first date, he suggested that we play an icebreaker game. I was mousy and so quiet that he might have been losing his patience trying to strike up a conversation with me. The game was to tell one another a vulnerable secret or experience from our past. I scanned my brain and examined all the events of my youth, which raced through in microsecond flashes of images. When I didn’t say anything right away, he cleared his throat and began to talk.

There was an insecure girl and she began with occasional slaps to the face. He couldn’t always physically be there for her, and she resented that. Then she became violent. She swung right hooks to his jaw. Her elbows dug into his ribs. He was too ashamed to call the police and believed all dignity and manhood relied on his ability to handle her, but she overpowered him. So he walked away beaten and broken-hearted, reluctant to touch and to love, and she quickly found someone else to happily drown with her fears.

When he was through, he was red in the face and stared blankly into space. I didn’t know him that well, yet, and I wasn’t sure how to console him. So I blurted out my icebreaker.

“I first masturbated to orgasm when I was 13,” I said, darting my eyes to him. “I felt so ashamed of myself that I actually prayed to God, asking for forgiveness after I did it.”

I was expecting an eruption of laughter, but his beautiful browns only looked into mine with an amused smile. He patted my arm tenderly and said, “That’s very cute.”

We had planned for the simple dinner and a movie date that evening, but we sat in his jalopy canary yellow Volkswagen. We went nowhere. We remained huddled close together, unveiling confessions and submersed under the protection of our solitude.

Now as I lay topless on his bed and he loosens the buttons on his crispy jeans, I start to have jitters coupled with nervous girlish giggles. He pulls off the blue jeans, followed by his heather gray boxer briefs. Oh Jesus—it’s like a rifle. I cover my mouth, hoping he doesn’t see the abject horror splayed upon my face. I feel like I’m about to meet my impending doom, like the crew aboard U-47. He starts to work on my jeans and successfully pulls them off, along with my bikini panties.

I reach to my right to his bed stand and reluctantly grab a box of condoms. I hand him one from the package and as he is rolling the slippery latex on himself, I fight the urge to laugh in his face. It is utterly ridiculous. It’s a submarine, gearing up to plunge into the deep caverns of uncharted waters. His body looms over me and he supports himself on his knees and arms. When our eyes connect, there is a moment of clarity, like a sip of red wine paired to accent a meaty meal. I see his face, an old soul marred by a lifetime of feeling inadequate. I can’t laugh at him; I shouldn’t. He smiles and lays a kiss on my lips so powerful that dozens of colors dance behind my closed eyelids. I brace my hands on the top of his broad shoulders and right before we take the plunge, I ask him to turn the television off. He returns to me and his hips meet mine. I am no longer laughing or afraid. Down, down we go.

Dystopic Observation (updated to include reading)

2008-09-22T23:12:00.000-07:00

I spent about an hour on Sunday afternoon, driving around my neighborhood in Eagle Rock. I stopped at a red light, just a mere half a block away from my apartment. I was in the middle lane and there were a few cars in the right lane. When the light turned green, the first car wasn’t moving, so the driver behind honked their horn, probably thinking they didn’t see that the light had turned green. The driver signaled for them to go on ahead. So the first car stayed stuck there at the light and turned on their emergency lights while everyone behind them passed by.

We have all had instances where we’ve passed someone who has car trouble and/or is stuck on the side of the road. What I think is dystopian about the actions of the drivers, and the point that I am trying to make is that here is just one example of our society. We can be more or less selfish; and care about our own actions and our individual selves—not necessarily a Good Samaritan type of world. I know that we’ve been talking about socialism and the egalitarian types of societies in dystopia, but this is the opposite of that. No one is really equal. Some people can afford to have their cars running in tip top shape. Some can’t afford to keep their cars reliable.

In a true dystopian society, I think that’s citizens might be; in fact, they may be even worse tenfold because under a totalitarian government, you would do everything you can to stay on the good side of the law, and disregard everyone else. There’s no equal ground. You’re out to save yourself from getting chained and to achieve your own individual success.

This is related to our reading in 1984, particularly the portions that describe the citizens of Oceania. They watch the beheadings and are completely desensitized by it. It's more like sport or entertainment. That's how we react to traffic accidents on the side of the freeway. It's just another thing that makes us spectators.

Fiction in Bits: ENGL 408

2008-09-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

Fiction in bits...I think that's rather self-explanatory. The bare bones of it means that a story is written in fragments that the reader is meant to piece together. To some, this might seem a very disjointed and disruptive way of reading a story, but this is something that we are looking at and discovering in my 408 class. So here's a story, using pictures provided by our professor. We were to create a story using the pictures. I am not going to post the pictures here because they are not my property, nor am I entirely sure if my professor would want others seeing the photos. With that said, I hope that my story is informative enough where you don't need the photos to see it.

"The Chicken or the Egg"

17 06 2005 12:17
Stanley Theotokis stands before his late father’s old grocer mart on the exit Razor Rd, off the 15 Highway. It is the last day of business before he closes up for good at 4 p.m.

Stan had just put out the last of a cigarette butt, from the last carton sold in the store. He squashed the paper and ash mess with the bottom of his sneaker, erasing with it the years that had faded into a garbled mix of highs and lows, but mostly middle at best. He didn’t want to live with regret or sorrow but felt little inspiration to pursue anything else except to wallow in his own sweat on the dusty stoop of the abandoned mart.

Anatole “Arnold” Theotokis came from Greece thirty five years ago and only brought with him a taste for Ouzo and a baby named Stamitos Theotokis.

“I insist on Stanley now,” he always told strangers when asked about his real name. “Or Stan. Some people call me Stan.”

Two hours before closing, Stan realized that no one else was coming to see the last few moments of Arnold’s Market. He had not bothered to tell people about it, anyway. One customer had come in, named Bud, and he purchased the last bags of old sunflower seeds and a 9V battery. He was a scraggly character, with a few stray gray hairs in his curly mane and his navy blue T-shirt was riding up and exposed a furry, tanned belly button. It appeared to be dry and encrusted with dead skin all over the hair.

“Shoulda sold gas!” he said to Stan, busting over a few chuckles before ending abruptly to cough out phlegm shots. “Yeah, yep. Gas is good money right there. I predict it’ll one day come up to four dollars per gallon. Yes, I am not a good-lookin’ feller, but I’m smart and I get NPR on my little radio.”

His breath was rank when he spoke, and Stanley did his best to hold his head back and hold his breath peacefully. The disheveled man reached into his back pocket, not for his wallet, but for a beat-up handheld radio, stained with black grime in the little crevices and oily streaks all along the back of it. It was once canary yellow, but looked like a light orange to Stan’s eyes. Bud pulled out the antenna swiftly and it was long and rusted. He nearly punched Stan when he did that.

“Heh, see this here’s my radio,” he gleamed with pride. “I get the Vegas radio stations, too. Heh! Give it a listen!”

Bud began to roll the dial through stations, static giving way to static with each and every notch he fiddled. He kept reassuring Stan that he indeed could hear NPR, but was only met with the scratchy dead air.

18 06 2005 3:03
Lizzy Gordon takes Stanley on a hike through the Las Vegas desert. She is pointing to the massive mountain on her right, suggesting that they climb it. Stanley would rather jump off that mountain.

Lizzy spent three years of grad school with Stan, collectively drudging over thesis proposals and hunched over late into the night researching in the dusty aisles of library stacks. He always closed himself off never revealing himself, raising a wall of concrete slabs and stiffening when she started to delve into his feelings. He would brush her off nonchalantly when she did, by a subtle change of the subject, or lapsing in a moment of clumsiness to distract her. Lizzy’s years of tapping his egg shell never produced a single yolk. Stanley was hard-boiled and an impenetrable ghost.

After Arnold’s Mart closed, Lizzy invited Stan for a walk through a hiking trail she frequented. He was reluctant at first, but followed along. She noticed his awkward silence and sensed something wasn’t settling with him. She stopped hiking and outstretched her long arms to embrace her best friend, but he shied away, pulling her shoulders off of him and continued to walk forward without saying a word. She skipped her feet to catch up to him and yelled to his turned back.

“What’s the matter with you!”

He faced her, and suddenly the years began to fill his throat, choking him into the same feelings of vulnerability he never wanted her to witness.

“Talk to me, Stanley,” she said, trying to coax him into her confidence.

He shook his head and muttered a few coarse words under his breath.

18 06 2005 5:42
Bud takes a drink from a tiny pool of water on the ground, a Vegas Oasis or God’s gift to desert scumbags.

“Good. Clean. Natural. Heh!” He chuckled to himself once more.

Along their trail, Stan and Lizzy vowed a semblance of silence between them. She was afraid to say anything and he was afraid of lashing out at his only friend. Then he saw Bud, the NPR guy from yesterday, and he actually felt comforted in seeing a familiar face. It was an unpleasant face, but a familiar one at that. About forty feet away, Stan saw his head bent down sucking the ground.

“Stanley, I don’t want to walk that way. That guy is a Charles Manson crony, or something,” Lizzy said, holding her arms in front of her chest protectively.

“It’s okay. That’s Bud. He was my last customer yesterday,” Stan said with a big grin overcoming his face. “Hey Bud! Bud!”

Bud looked up from his desert oral and the water dripped from his chin. He looked forward, right into the sun’s rays and was blinded for a second. Then he saw the curly-headed boy with the funny name he remembered from yesterday.

“STAMITOS!” he cried out excitedly. “Stamitos Ryokos Papabaklakavich!”

Stan furrowed his brow at Bud’s bizarre attempt to pronounce the Greek names. Then his core began to fill with worry when Bud came forward, unkempt and with an ogling stare at Lizzy.

18 06 2005 6:10
Lizzy and Stan stop at Love’s gas station and marvel at the intermittent cumulus clouds in the sky. They are floating so low to the ground, Stan feels that if they had climbed that mountain, he would be able to touch the clouds.

Bud yelped, from the backseat of Lizzy’s Cavalier. He rapped on Stan’s shoulder repeatedly, pointing to the gasoline price sign.

“Heh! Toldja ya should’ve sold gasoline! Lotsa money, see. And you get pretty girls coming in here. Mmm! See you could’ve made a fortune. If I’da known you were gonna close, I’da helped you with yer business. I know a thing’r two about it. I listen to NPR! So is she your girlfriend?”

Stan shook his head no, then retracted his statement with a gutteral yelp, then shook his head again. His final answer was a shrug. Out of the corner of his eye, he angled his head to glimpse at Lizzy leaning against her car and watching the numbers scrolling rapidly on the gas pumper.

“Don’t matter! I’ll have ‘er if you don’t want ‘er.” Bud said, also leaning over to leer at Lizzy.

18 06 2005 8:28
Just outside of the Circus Circus hotel, Lizzy and Stan spot the billboard for free chips and salsa, and half off a pitcher of margarita.

The two of them caroused with Bud and humor his somewhat witty conversation at the bar in the Blue Iguana restaurant. They treat him to the beer, the pitcher of margaritas, the chips and salsa, while he yammered on about how he invented pencil sharpeners. Bud pats Stan on the shoulder, again very roughly. His already foul breath began to merge with the cheap beer and he was like a dragon, firing off dank and heavy shots of slurred speech laced with foul fire breath.

Bud, caustic and babbling, became completely incoherent and Lizzy and Stan used this as an opportunity to slip away from the table, leaving behind a wad of cash for the drinks. Bud’s head was down, buried in his shoulders, and Stan prodded him on the shoulders the same way Bud did.

“You’re a true pal,” he said smiling, though Bud didn’t bother to look at his fleeing friend.

18 06 2005 10:22
Lizzy and Stan have a moment on the escalator outside of Bally’s hotel. She budgets herself to an evening of gambling only five dollars.

Lizzy never had the chance to gamble her five dollars. They both realized they had filled up on the chips and alcohol and began to exchange lusty looks before locking lips in lime and salt-flavored kisses.

Late into the evening, long after Stan had fallen asleep on his belly, Lizzy was burning and crawled out of bed to blast the air conditioning. She noticed that Stan had left his rolling suitcase open, revealing his personal items. Her eyes darted to Stan, sound asleep. She could make out the curves of his behind using the dim light that seeped through from the Strip through the eggshell curtains. Then she fell back to the suitcase, and in a backhanded attempt to understand her friend, she began to search through the contents.

She could barely see the paper from the sparse light in the room, but noticed a document, and discovered the death certificate of Anatole Theotokis, claiming the cause of death was by natural causes. She dug deeper, moving aside T-shirts and cargo shorts and then discovered a note written in Stanley’s mangled cursive handwriting. It was a lengthy wad of papers, front and back, with ink blotches dotting the pages sporadically.

She began to read, scrunching her eyes together closely to make out the scribble of letters on the blemished and stained pages. In the letter, she finally discovered the person inside of Stanley Theotokis and it was a detestable soul, full of self-loathing and hurtful language. He spoke of wanting to kill his father, but the stroke beat him to it. He hated his friends, and felt all people were vapid and superficial, and no one wanted real substance to any relationship. She resented his resistance and hated him back, if his words were truly his because all the years of trying to crack his shell were for nothing and ended on that night. Lizzy could have killed him there in his sleep, but didn’t want to deprive him the pleasure of doing it himself.

“Sure, jump off that mountain, Stanley,” she uttered with contempt. “And fly with the wings of a chicken.”

ENGL 312: WebCT post due 9/11

2008-09-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

Note: This was posted on WebCT discussion board for my ENGL 312: Film & Literature. We are required to do weekly WebCT posts to explore a topic discussed in class. I am speaking in reference to George Orwell's novel, 1984, so if you aren't familiar with it, it might be confusing. However, it's also very relevant to modern pop culture.

Internet & 1984

First off, I just wanted to point out something that had occurred to me
last night. 1984 deals with these issues of Big Brother. He is always
watching you. In that world, someone is always watching your every move
and even your "comrades" are watching you. Children are trained from a
young to spy on their parents. It's a world that wants to create a state
of fear, or we talked about a state of war, to keep every single person
on an even playing field.

Last night, my friend encouraged me to join this network called Twitter.
(http://www.twitter.com). It's a website where you basically type in
your status update, like the status updates you might find on Facebook
or Myspace, but it's simply only a status update. They had told me a
story of a guy who was in prison abroad somewhere. He had his mobile
phone and used Twitter to send a message to all his friends that he was
in jail. He was able to get the American Embassy to intervene and he was
eventually freed from jail.

I joined Twitter. I did it possibly out of curiosity, boredom, or maybe
because of the fact that it's a way to let my friends know what I'm
doing. I think this relates to 1984 because it's basically a website
that lets your friends know what is going on in your life, especially
when you can't see or speak to them on an average basis. On social
networks like Myspace and Facebook, you usually add someone to your
Friends list to branch out your network. I was trying to figure out how
to befriend people on Twitter, when I realized that they didn't call
friends "friends." They are called followers. People who follow you are
your friends, and they can see your updates. You can also be followed so
that other people see your own updates.

I know this sounds like a bit of a stretch, but I thought it was somehow
connected to 1984. I said to my friend that it was a "sad world when
friendship was synonymous with following.' To me, "following," doesn't
sound like a quality of friendship. It sounds more like suspicion,
stalking, and just general insecurity of another person. This is exactly
the type of world that we see in 1984. Nobody has real friends. They're
all just followers or followed.

Why I Like and Don't Like Hooters

2008-09-13T17:33:00.000-07:00

I will say I don't like Hooters because of reasons that aren't so obvious. I'm not bothered by busty women clad in short shorts and tennis shoes serving sallivating men. I have a lot of respect for those women. Being a server is hard enough, so that can't be an easy job and I'm sure it's taxing not only physically, but mentally as well. I can't imagine having to sit down and flirt with men I'm not particularly fond of, or find attractive.

With that said, I am going to start with why I do enjoy Hooters. I don't eat at Hooters often. In fact, I have only sat down to eat there once. I enjoy chicken wings. I enjoy that man food. I enjoy that greasy, salty, cholesterol saturated mess because it's damn delicious and my tongue sings when I taste it. I don't care that it's deep fried in oil chicken wings, smothered in a mixture of hot sauce and butter. God, that's good. I digress...the point is that that is a delicious wing and though I don't eat it often, it is a sure treat when I do.

I wouldn't say the atmosphere at Hooters is too cozy. It's reminiscent of what would happen if a women's gym met a sports bar and bore a love child. It will do, though. I went there a whole year ago with a friend of mine and we shared a plate of wings and fries. She ordered a beer to wash it all down. I had water, *sigh*. Unfortunately, I hadn't reached the grand ol' age of 21 yet.

Our server was a beautiful brunette lady, buxom and spry. I am confident enough with my sexuality to say that yes she was beautiful, buxom, and spry. She was very nice, and it didn't seem forced, superficial, or fake at all. I can usually see right through superficiality, too. Either that, or she's a pretty damn good actress. I think for her, serving my friend and I was a nice break because she didn't have to go into flirt mode. She could be one of the girls for just a short moment in time. When we left, she even told us that we should come back on Sunday, for a football game.

"All these young, hot boys will be there," she said excitedly. Now this really tickled my fancy and titillated my hormonal insides. How else is a young, single gal in L.A. supposed to react to a statement like that? So it was nice that our server was relatable, she felt human, and she felt, well...almost like a friend.

Here's the real downside. After our nice meal, my friend and I decided to top off the meal and buy Hooters shirts, because we were so impressed with our experience. I decided to buy a T-shirt that was on sale for $9.99. Normally, the shirts cost $23.99, A week later, I looked at my bank statement and noticed that I had been charged $35.00 at Hooters for my T-shirt! I knew it wasn't from my meal, because I had paid for it in cash. They had basically charged me the sale price in addition to the normal price, which is why it cost $35.

I went back to the store to take it up with a manger. She took my name down and said that she would send it over to corporate and that they would give me a call. They never did call me and I never did get a chance to go back to that Hooters.

What could have been a 5-star experience for me turned out to be merely a 2.5. I had had all faith in Hooters, but it was slashed when I never got my money back. The shirt I own is now tainted with the memory. It doesn't say Hooters to me. It says $35 T-shirt. Maybe I'll come back again when I'm not a poor college student and money is no object.

Movie Review: Smart People (2008)

2008-09-13T16:46:00.001-07:00

Here's the basic jist of this film: We have a douchebag English professor (oh gee, I don't know what that is!), played by Dennis Quaid and his dysfunctional family. There's his neglected poetry-writing son (Ashton Holmes), his no-good adopted brother (Thomas Haden Church), and his overbearingly smart Republican daughter (Ellen Page, of Juno fame). Sarah Jessica Parker also contributes as the love interest of Dennis Quaid.

I have been craving offbeat, out-of-the-ordinary films because I find the mainstream blockbusters to just be terribly blasé and the same old clichéd shit. This is not to say that I don't enjoy them. I just search for something a little more cerebral, something to tickle my fancy.

So I wanted to like this movie, truly. There's an English professor, there's a lot of talk about literature, the guy's wife died, leaving a young daughter and a son, who are both messed up. It relates to me a on a personal level. The problem with this movie is that it really lacks substance. This movie fails to connect with its audience, even myself, who can relate to the premise of the film. Dennis Quaid's character, for lack of a better term, is an asshole from start to finish. He finds a love interest and that's the part of the movie where you see the character's evolution from ass to class. He never goes through that--he stays the same very unattractive person and only gains a fraction of heart through his love with Sarah Jessica Parker's character.

Another thing I had a problem with was Ellen Page's character. I've got to admit, I enjoyed watching her in Juno. She plays this character the same way she played Juno, with that smart tongue and know-it-all bravado. She's a conservative Republican and it is apparent that she is very scarred by her mother's death but hides it. She never does what she wants, always inhibits herself. By the end of the film, we see her wanting to break out of her self-imposed shell but still...we as an audience feel absolutely no sympathy for her. There is no character evolution.

Finally, the film itself is pretentious. The title, Smart People, suggests a very holier-than-thou attitude right off the bat. Yes, I picked up the movie because I was drawn to the holier-than-thou title, but like I said, I wanted to see smart people. These were not smart people. These were bland characters that spouted off intelligent words and phrases to sound smart. The writers liberally sprinkled the script with these "smart" words to make it stand out but it fails miserably because it sounds so forced and unnatural.

Like I said, I wanted to like this movie. The soundtrack fit the scenes well and sounded solid, like Juno's soundtrack. So if you're thinking, "well it's an indie film. Of course it's not going to be all roses and candy." A successful story has to relate to the audience, it has to stir the audience to elicit sympathy or some type of emotion, be it fear, happiness, love, sadness, whatever it is. But it's such a slow-paced film, with nothing endearing that I have to give it a big thumbs down. Now I kind of feel like watching Juno.

Temporality: Second Story for ENGL 408

2008-09-08T20:29:00.001-07:00

Another story I have written for my ENGL 408 class, focusing on temporality of time. Please read, enjoy, (not enjoy), comment, criticize. I'd love it.

"Cheat Fate"

Jane doesn’t know it, but she hasn’t seen Adrien Lynch in years. She sits in a stiff, plastic leather chair, at a lonesome gray terminal at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, waiting for her connecting flight to LAX. The minute the plane touches down she knows she has to rush and be ready to meet with Mr. Adrien Lynch for a senior copywriter position at 3 p.m PST in Santa Monica. It is 11 a.m. CT in Dallas. Jane has a boarding time of 11:45. She stands up from the plastic leather chair and feels it prying away from her skin in a quick ripping swipe. Appearing embarrassed, she checks the faces around her, hoping none of them think that she has broken wind. Jane quickly walks off, rolling her suitcase behind her, and humming a tune to herself. She stops into a souvenir store and decides to buy a half-liter of Arrowhead, two postcards, a hot pink T-shirt with an Etch-A-Sketch-like drawing of downtown Dallas, and a Danielle Steele novel. No one has ever complimented her on her taste.

She returns to Gate 27 at Terminal C and sits down in the very same plastic leather chair that clung to her things. It is uncomfortably moist and warm and she hopes it was from her own body heat. The ringer on her cell phone then starts to go off, the phone vibrating violently against the side of her purse. She fumbles around, searching for the noise and manages to find her old Nokia two rings before the voicemail answers. Then the phone fumbles out of her slippery fingers and under the seat. The message left in her voice mailbox:

“Hi, is this Jane? This is Mr. Lynch’s assistant. He just called the office and informed me that he will be running a little late this afternoon. I’m calling all of his appointments to push them back a half an hour. Your appointment now will be at 3:30. Thanks, bye bye.”

***

Adrien Lynch was feeling self-important the morning he nearly cancelled his appointments. He rolled over in bed and the cotton sheets twisted around his ankles. He accidentally elbowed his companion in the small of her back. She groans with discomfort, but otherwise doesn’t awaken from her deep sleep. Adrien pushed his disheveled blonde hair back, and fiddled around looking for a clock or his Blackberry, anything that told time. His eyes were clouded and his head felt heavy. He blinked his eyes around the room, trying to orient himself. The clock read 10 a.m. PST on his Blackberry. He recalled he had made a phone call about an hour ago to his office in Santa Monica. Terry answered the phone. Terry took down his messages. He was in the clear for a few more hours.

The girl lying next to him in bed began to wriggle, feeling Adrien’s shuffling movements. She twisted around to face him and smiled. She perched her head onto his chest and pressed her body against his. Adrien felt the soft breaths escape from her body as they grazed the lumpy expanse of his stomach.

“Did you think about what we talked about last night?” she asked him, with a soft, sleepy voice.

“About what?” he asked.

“The divorce. Are you going through with it or not?”

“Carol, it’s a little early in the morning for this,” he said, slightly irritated. He was gently trying to pull her body away from his. She giggled again, through a breathy voice, thinking that he was trying to tickle her. She hoped he was going to change his mind.

“Right. I’ll make some coffee and then we can come back here and talk about it,” she said, flashing a bright, cheeky smile. Adrien shook his head, brushing her off. He tossed the blankets off of him and knelt down to gather his clothes. He started to dress with his back turned to her, quickly pulling on all of his clothes.

“You already know what my answer is, Carol. I’m not going to repeat it.” He turned to face her, hurriedly buttoning his baby blue collared shirt. He shook his head once again. He picked up his wedding ring from the night stand and put it on in front of her. Then he slid it off again and tossed onto the bed I front of her.

“Look honey,” he began to say. “I love … what we’ve got right now, but I think you’re getting your hopes up a little too high right now. I think it’s best that we just break it off. Think of me as being a good guy, saving you all the misery before it gets way too complicated.”

Carol pursed her lips together, in an effort to keep her lips stiff. She tried to fight the heavy lead feeling in her throat and forced her eyes close together. Realizing that she had left herself completely bare for him to see all of her, she no longer felt safe with him. Instinctively, she brought the sheet over her body, modestly covering herself. She pushed her long, chestnut hair back and solemnly looked down, not wanting to face him. She wanted him to take his ring off. She knew he didn’t mean any of it.

“Just leave, Adrien. Before I start saying things I never mean to say to you, because I love you that much, leave now.”

“I’m sorry--”

“--I hope you find the woman who’s worth leaving your wife,” she added, wanting the final word.
***
Jane’s mind is a racecar track, constant circuits of thoughts breezing by, preoccupying her mind on the drive from LAX to home. She wants to see her mother, but she’s at tea. She wants to see her brother, but he’s at work. She passes by the McDonald’s on Colorado in Glendale, where she remembers playing in the playground. A boy, a year or two older than she, had hazel eyes and blonde hair with a rat’s tail, and wore untied BK Lights shoes. He tried to show her all his secret passageways and all the different tunnels that were like mysteries yet to be untapped. All Jane could say to him was: “You shouldn’t be wearing your shoes in the playground.”

She freshens up and makes a cross-town trek to Santa Monica, just in time for her 3:30 with Adrien Lynch. She enters the room and sits across from him. To Jane, Adrien is neither intimidating nor a friendly face. She spots a 32-ounce cup of soda from McDonald’s, condensing on his desk. This, she figures, is probably why he was late for the appointment.

Through the interview, Adrien fiddles with his golden wedding ring, pulling it on and off. He is immediately taken by Jane, who seems like a stiff, but a stiff he’d like to break. Then he finally leaves the ring on his left finger, letting it glimmer against the harsh lights of the office. No woman, he thinks to himself, is worth leaving Carol.

(End note: Do not steal! I am not Maya Angelou or Stephen King.)

Swindled! Hustled!

2008-09-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a fancy pants trick to pull a fast one on your schoolmate brethren. Watch how a girl wins back her money, preying on the weak and cloudy-headed.

If you go to a commuter school, (which I do), you know that finding a parking spot is an elusive treasure hunt. It's a touch and go situation, where timing, strategy, and hunting, are used to track down a wary student and follow them to their car. Sometimes they'll catch your eye and tell you exactly where their car is, everything down to the type, color, maybe even year (from the car enthusiasts). Or if they're not leaving, just going to the car to refresh themselves, some are courteous enough to wave away the "I'm not leaving finger." Some understand that just a shake of the head means that the student is not leaving.

Conversely, some students will downright give you an evil eye. They might not acknowledge you. They press their greasy ears against cell phones to appear to look busy just so they can avoid you and your anxious need for a parking spot. Or as I see it these days, they talk into bluetooth devices now, which just makes you look crazy, in addition to being slightly bitchy. I've seen all and more of these types of things.

Yesterday morning, I was rushing to school. I had a family emergency to take care of and I left my home a little later than I needed to get to class on time. At my school, parking on the street is available, but there are zones that prohibit parking for more than few hours. So if you need to stay on campus for a long time, you have to park several blocks away. I decided to bypass parking on the street and to pay the ripoff price of $5 for a day permit on campus.

The problem with that was the fact that there was a gigantic car pileup so it was difficult to efficiently drive onto campus without long waiting times. I was already late by the time I arrived at the parking lot. Luckily, I tracked down a girl who was leaving. One of those "on-the-cell-I'm-busy-types" but I really didn't care. When I parked, I ran out of the car to a ticket vending machine to buy a permit when I hear "hey!"

After a few moments, I realized it was that same girl whose spot I had taken. She offered to let me buy her parking permit because she wasn't going to use it. I was already late, I was having trouble with my personal problems at home, I wasn't thinking straight. I decided to take her up on the offer. I only had a $5 bill but I said, brushing her off "Just keep it. I was going to pay five bucks anyway." She just let me have it for $4, so I received $1. As she pilfered through her powder blue wallet for change, I spotted a bulging amount of twenty-dollar bills. I guess it was a win-win situation, but in retrospect, that girl hustled and her win was greater. She basically got her money back for the permit she bought and I was down $4. What a smart bitch! This is an example of how the rich get richer and the poor stay poor in our so-called advanced and capitalist society. I was played like a fool. I have got to work on my hustling skills. I'll bet you're really loving capitalism now.

First story for ENGL 408: Advanced Narrative Writing

2008-09-02T19:52:00.000-07:00

All right, this is my sort-of final draft for a story I was assigned to write in my ENGL 408 class. The name of the exercise was called "Constraint Writing." Basically, you are to write a story with certain restrictions.

1) Either omitting the use of the letter "e" or "o"

2) Every word must contain the same letter.

3) Only one-syllable words may be used.

My group came to the decision to strike out the letter "o," and this is what I came up with. Let me know what you think, please! Criticisms are very welcome. It would be highly appreciated!

The Klutz

My best friend had sex the first time at my 18^th birthday party. I was a sputtering and bleeding baby, apparently. I came in just by midnight and wasn’t up and breathing until minutes later, when the day started anew. I came appearing purple, lungs filled with birth fluid, and perhaps an umbilical strangling my neck. I’m entirely unsure of the exact details, but this is what has been detailed thus far. My birthday is technically August 5, but my parents decided I was truly alive and breathing August 6. That means my friend Anne crawled up in a furious pile, blankets and sheets, the night I turned 18, August 6. Anne has been evading me. I haven’t seen her in weeks, since my birthday. As a friend, her best friend, I believe I am entitled to hear her risqué tale.

She was lying in a clump in her family’s kitchen, limbs bent, with her head buried in her hands when I finally caught her. I said I was her best friend. I said I was listening if she needed me.

“I’m stupid,” was all she said, mustering the strength between hiccupped gasps.

“That isn’t true! Anne…”

Well, I can’t lie. She wasn’t a very bright girl. Anne treated myself and a few friends with Disneyland tickets last summer. Her aunt apparently had reduced rates, maybe free tickets, I wasn’t quite sure. My friend Benji and I were waiting restlessly, right by the Disneyland gates. The day was turning blazing and I was beginning to feel uneasy. After waiting what seemed an eternity, I finally rang her cell, asking why she wasn’t in Anaheim and what was keeping her.

“Hey Jamie! We’re all in the park already!” She sounded like she was screaming in my ears. “I can meet up at the gates. I have the tickets.”

I stared at Benji. We exchanged exasperated gazes, and I sighed heavily.

“Benji and I are already at the gates. We’ve been waiting awhile.”

“Ah,” she screamed again. “Well, I’ll be there then.”

We hung up. Benji and I kept waiting and didn’t see Anne at all. Minutes later, my cell rang again and I was quite frankly delighted in hearing that screeching Anne again.

“Where…at the gates?” she asked, a little quieter, thank heavens.

“Right where it says ‘Disneyland Park.’ At the bag check…”

“Disneyland?” she said, trailing the last syllable.

“Yeah, isn’t that where we’re meeting up?”

“Did I say Disneyland? Hmm. My bad…”

The girl meant Six Flags! All her friends, and my friends, were at Six Flags, because she neglected discussing with me her change in plans. Benji felt bad that I was near tears, and the fact that I was upset with Anne and her flightiness. He paid my way in Disneyland and I managed my anger at the “happiest place” with him. Besides, I liked it better than Six Flags, anyway.

After that incident, it didn’t take that much time disregarding Anne. These things were exactly her, erratic and unchangeable. I tried relying trust in her later in the year. I was having a fire at the beach and asked her if she might bring, essentially the basic item needed in a fire.

“Hack a tree, find it at Ralphs, the hardware place, wherever, just please bring it. And please be there early.”

When she arrived, timber-less, but arms full with graham crackers and candy, I had seen it all and had little patience. Yet I didn’t stay mad at her. She did have endearing qualities, I guess. I can’t be heartless. I was utterly sympathetic when I witnessed her blubbering mass in the kitchen. I wrapped her arms in mine and tried calming her.

“It was just that single time. The birthday party,” she said.

“Mine,” I muttered dully. She flinched a bit. “I didn’t expect this, Anne. Was there a breakup? Please tell me that he used—”

“He had rubbers. But that isn’t why I’m upset.”

She had me in a riddle. Why was she depressed and why had she neglected speaking with me all these weeks?

“Well why then?” I asked, feeling like pulling teeth.

“I’m upset because I didn’t reach the Big…” She whispered the last bit in my ear. She didn’t want it heard by her family.

“Ah, it’s an elusive um…letter, isn’t it?” I huffed, suppressing giant guffaws and a grin that reached my ears.

(Note: Please don't steal my work, or anyone else's work. And really, if you're going to steal something, make sure it's Stephen King, geez!)

Upper-Division Writing Proficiency Exam

2008-09-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

It's acronym is UDWPE. This exam is a test where you write an essay because some omnipotent overlord has mandated a certain standard of writing. This test shall determine if you have adequate writing skills before you can be sent off into the real world. I have actually heard stories of students that fail the exam. Sometimes students fail the exam multiple times. On the flip side, I have had people tell me, "Oh, it's such an easy test!" and "You're an English major. It'll be nothing for you!"

Will it really be nothing? It is writing, something that I might have a little bit of experience with...but it's still a test. I am not a fabulous test taker. I actually passed my driver's permit test the first time, with almost a perfect score. Well, I missed five questions, and that's not near perfect, but I still passed on my first try. The driver's exam behind the wheel is another story. I failed the exam twice before the third time was the charm. I took the notary public exam twice and failed them both and decided to not retake the test because who would trust a notary public who knows nothing? I wasted about $80, (that included class fee + two tests) and felt very ashamed. Even when I took my Catholic high school entrance exam, I didn't even finish the test, but somehow I was still accepted to high school. Yeah, I'm a very uneven and inconsistent test taker and the times that I do pass, it's down to some kind of luck or a guardian angel ushering me the right way.

Essentially, I'm nervous. I need to pass the UDWPE in order to graduate, and I would rather not take the exam multiple times and shell out $20 per exam. Ridiculous.

It's a Start!

2008-08-31T23:03:00.000-07:00

I never know how to start these things without seeming all self-righteous and in love with the sound of my own voice. But I'd hate to be so mechanical and say:

Day 1- I am Born!
Today I started a blog for my English 312: Film & Literature class. It was a load of fun.

Hmm, quite frankly, "that is all I have to say about that." (Forrest Gump) I hope creativity strikes somewhere down the line...