Blogging Around

Kyle compared the sisters in King Lear to those in Cinderella, since they are both prohibitive and jealous of their sister's gifts. I responded.

If only there were a role from the step mother. How do the husbands/Edmund fit into the metaphor? Are the motivations of the two sets of characters in fact the same?
This seems awfully incomplete, but I do like the basis of siblings teaming up to take advantage of the sibling on the outside.


Brandon talked about how his favorite moment of the week was Mr. Allen's joke, because humor helps lighten serious situations, and make them more interesting. I sort of agreed.

I think the fact that you couldn't repeat either of the jokes you referenced within your blog post speaks to the reasons that teachers don't usually joke around with classes. Not only are they older, but their responsibility is to educate and enrich, and do so professionally, versus crack jokes.
I do like funny teachers, and I think humor can be a good tool in explanation as soon as providing relief, but there is a line.

Metacognition: Poetry

I recently wrote a poem for class. It was a fine poem reflecting on thoughts about a made up incident about something partially founded in reality with traces of a deeper meaning. Despite the poem's poignancy, I found, as Mr. Allen forewarned, the process to be very rewarding and interesting.
The process consisted of working through my work with Mr. Allen's guidance. Adjusting word usage, context, order, and meaning according to his advise, and my own sensibilities. Throughout, I tried to manage word efficiency and rhythm with the necessity of managing meaning. I did this by rewriting and rewriting phrases, as well as editing specific word order and location to maximize efficacy.
What I found surprising about my method of work was how, despite approaching the problem with a goal and rough idea of hwo to work through issues, my ability revise the poem came down to thinking, trying, and re-thinking individual phrases. Is there a better way?

Best of Week: Clothes and Status

I don't quite remember who said it, but at some point during our 3 day long discussion of King Lear, somebody pointed out that as Edgar recovers from the lowest lows to redemption in the second half of the play, his clothes progressively get nicer. This is a tool Shakespeare uses to not only physically show us Edgar's recovery, but also allow Edgar a way to recover his full dignity in all senses.
That makes me think about a couple of things. First is how the clothes I wear reflect on me, my personality, and status. Obviously, I'm a king compared to a man in rags, but more intricately, does my clothing choice actually reveal something about who I am? If it does, let's hope it's positive. In any case, I know that when I choose clothes it's because I want to give off a certain image, if not fit in with a certain social group. More interesting is that in spite of this different circumstances, vacation or home, football or debate, call for different clothes, meaning we all do shape our appearance around our objectives.
This is interesting to me, and something I'll keep in mind when I observe people, and when I get dressed.

Connection: King Lear and Saturday Night Live

In King Lear there's a Fool. On SNL, there are a bunch of fools. In King Lear there's King Lear. On SNL, there are a bunch of fools. In King Lear there's Kent. On SNL, there are a bunch of fools. In King Lear there's Gloucester. On SNL, there are a bunch of fools.
I wonder which is in need of a straight man?
It seems that Shakespeare can so easily master the combination of comedy and drama, straight men and jokesters. He does this to such an effect that each joke gets that much funnier, even though the deliverer becomes predictable, the style and method are so well-suited and intrinsic to the plot and drama the punch lines are that much sweeter.
Saturday Night Live's take is obviously different. It's a comedy show. Then again, it's not always funny with every attempt. Types of humor can get old, skits can fall flat, and, by the end of the night, it seems like they really have nothing left to say.
Maybe SNL can learn from Shakespeare. The one who is funny every time can help at the one who tries to be funny every time. SNL could benefit from if not having moments of high drama and tragedy then better mixing the flavors, pace, and punch lines to make you feel like your not watching the same bad joke over and over.
SNL might try to do this, and probably does to some extent on a skit to skit basis. But week to week is another story. 5 flavors repeated is just as bad 1 all the time. You know they're trying, but realize how sad the attempts are. Instead, maybe SNL should focus on really developing a few sketches, or angles. Better yet, they just be funny.

TED Presentations

It's over. The multi-month first-quarter-closing grand collaboration of all wishing to collaborate has skidded, ground, screeched, and glided to a resounding, sometimes painful, halt.

It was a decent ride, sometimes exciting, other times frustrating, but mostly, for me at least, dull and not engaging. A computer with people I get to see once, for planning and not working, doesn't suffice to entice me into actively and passionately participating in a project so simultaneously distant and almost completely unrelated to areas anything I've ever studied in school gives me background in. A one slide show stand.

Not that parts weren't fun or rewarding. Getting to work with peers both older and younger offered unique challenges, and, more importantly, an opportunity to meet some cool people, as well as understand how the dynamic of my Academy classes and classmates might change over the years. I also really enjoy public speaking. Public speaking under a pressure, a result of some time allocation issues that left me with roughly 70-90 seconds to cover three minutes of material gave me a challenge almost equivalent to the situations I deal with in my debating life, and a chance to meet that challenge at a pace the average person can understand. It was fun.

The system is far from perfect, and a running in-depth study of the issues the presenters cover with members exclusively in our class, or with continued organized collaboration with other classes could still be rewarding, but I feel that as long as the TED projects are oriented towards an end goal of the TED presentations, we won't get the full value of learning about these incredible people and the issues they discuss, or working with our gifted acadamates.

Captured Thought: Am I A Genre?

This morning I was listening to the radio, NPR, of course, and on came a man who's about to release a movie about a middle-aged man dealing with his life's problems, including being left by his wife and daughter, by reconstructing New York city and his life in model form. The movie's title is a fancy word basically meaning a symbol or metaphor that can be used on both a local and global level. The example they gave was "The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world."
In any case, the interviewer the host of the show called The Host's Name's Weekend, asked the famous movie maker, formerly a writer trying out directing, whether or not he was aware that other movies made in his style were being named after him, and are being considered an independent genre.
The writer/director answered that he really didn't consider his work and that modeled after it to be a genre so much as his work continuing to possess the trademarks of his personality and style, and that being a consequence of his concerns and values, not so much a deliberate effort to reproduce movies in the same model.
This got me thinking. Obviously, I'm not influential enough to have people outside of my immediate circle to consider any type of action or thought "Mitchel-esque," but what if I was, or more realistically, what if, in a post-modern twist, things that I did consistently or uniquely were packaged up, and used on some grander scale, to characterize a "Mitchel-esque" style of thinking or living or being. It's a bit heady to think that someone could be innovative, interesting, or important enough that they would be sucked up and their traits labeled, but clearly the instance of this writer/director shows that there is still room for innovation, and for that innovation to be modeled, in this cluttered world.
On a purely personal level, I wonder if I could be called a genre. Not whether or not my life would fit into "coming of age movies," but whether I'm predicatable and formulaic enough to be replicated. I probably am. In fact, I'm probably following a model right now.
So much for being a genre, now the question is can I break out of one?

What if?: I Never Get Out of Bed

In the poem Love Calls us to the Things of this World, Mr. Wilbur seems to reach the cynical conclusion that morning is beautiful until we realize we have to get. That made me wonder, what if I never got out of bed.
Would things be better if I never had to face the day? Wake up to take in the beauty of the morning, maybe have some breakfast, in bed, and then go back to sleep. Maybe not go back to sleep, maybe just lay there. I could even try just finding the paper, reading in bed, listening to the radio, and procrastinating. Either way, I'd never have to actually face the day. Does that fix or create problems? School, debate, and whatever else it is I do would take a back seat to pure relaxation and being at ease, but after a while those would be distant memories of a past more stressful. After a while, lying in bed would become a monotonous reminder of why people got up in the first place. There are things to be done, and, sometimes, a day to be won.

Blogging Around

Jenna's best of the week was about Margot's comment on how Hosseini used sugar in tea as a metaphor for worldview/outlook in The Kite Runner. She also commented on how she'd like to use this technique too.
I commented:

Jenna,
I think that the tea metaphor is very interesting as well. I've noticed that a lot of different authors use similar techniques to help with characterization.
These can range from the type of clothes someone wears representing their personality to the weather taking on someone's mood.
It's very useful for someone to be able to feel stormy without it explicitly being said.
I've noticed that in my own writing when I try to use these types of mechanisms to show mood and emotion, as well as reflect characteristics, they appear painfully obvious, and only later, when blended in with the story do they feel natural.
Better luck to you, and nice post.
Mitch


Kyle wrote about weapons manufacturing and distribution and the accompanying moral conflict, as well as whether it saves lives and how wars should in fact be fought.
I commented:

Kyle,
Gatling, the inventor of the first automatic gun, the Gatling Gun, thought that by creating a better weapon he would save lives by reducing the need for as many soldiers. Little did he know...
I think you touch on two very different ideas when dealing with the same umbrella title "weapons manufacturers."
First are the domestic weapons manufacturing giants with big time Department of Defense contracts. Companies such as these, domestically and internationally, manufacture most of the weapons across the world. Iron Man creates a fantastical character based on weapons developers and the like who work on creating the weapons of the future. Although some men like the character probably do exist, there's a reason it's a comic book superhero movie and not a documentary.
Second are the illegal arms transporters and states, such as China, who ship large amounts of weapons to rebels and insurgents, in places such as Darfur, to promote or protect US interests. The US of A has a long history of such activities, the first example I thought of being the Kennedys and Cuba. In to this category fall underground dealers in high-grade uranium and other potentially catastrophic weapons and weapons-grade materials. These people do not manufacture weapons, but do make them deadlier.
Certainly there is some moral conflict in creating things to be used to kill, but often having a better weapon is a matter of life or death for the good guys, and they make more than a pretty penny. It's immaterial whether better weapons save lives, the bottomline is that weapons are inevitable, as are people who will try to use them against us. We just have to stop those people from getting weapons in the first place, and fantastic weapons help us do that.
Mitch

360 Degrees: Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin was recently chosen to be John McCain's running mate. She'd be the first to remind you she's only been at it for 5 weeks. This might be a bit of an off-beat interpretation of what constitutes an "issue" that can or should be viewed from 360 degrees, but there is perhaps no issue more current or pressing than the choice of Palin, effect and how it will alter the presidential race.

There are four primary angles from which to examine Palin, those of the Democrat, Independent, and Republican, leaving me with 356 to dream up. Maybe some other time. Let's start with the Democrats. To them, Palin is anything from a joke to a threat. A funny-talking hick, picked as a last-ditch cynical attempt to knock of Obama, Palin represents everything that is wrong with modern religious right-based conservatism. Alternatively, she's a threat to Obama, who could do enough to rally the conservative base to win the election. In both cases, she represents something new on this level, and intimidating in her uniqueness and the potential it brings.

To the Independents. This key voting group's perception of Palin is often founded in their demographic background. For the religious Independents who had been waiting for a candidate of their conviction to enter the race she is energizing. To those who are truly open to either side, she's a fresh face brought into the race to show that the entire Republican party isn't over 70 years old, and can have a record of fighting corruption. Their judgement will be passed somewhere beyond her personality. For the final group of independents, the borderline Democrats nervous about Obama's lack of experience, Palin is the push over the fence. They resent both her religion-based views, as well as complete lack of experience in Washington, a selling point to others. Palin's selling points seem much more oriented to more religious, often rural, voters, as these same facts turn others away.

Final the Republicans. Evangelicals were by-and-large energized by Palin's selection, which probably solidified the party's base. The more highly educated Republicans, however, only begrudgingly accept Palin, and, although it won't cost McCain their votes, some have called for her resignation, because she has the potential to be so polarizing. Even with a base solidified, Republican strategists see this as Palin's only asset.

Sarah Palin's candidacy, like her platform, can be broken down fairly simply. The various interpretations and emotions different groups take and feel from this platform vary across the board. But it seems that even if the base is solidified and energized, the trade off of losing appeal with those concerned about Obama's experience and non-religious independents will only be counteracted if the Evangelicals do a lot of campaigning.

Metacognotion: Kite Runner

I'm writing an essay on The Kite Runner. It discusses the role of secrets and our pasts in driving and defining our current actions and thoughts.

In crafting the thesis and outline I found some unexpected but welcome surprises. Foremost among these is how I was actually writing about the central theme of the book. I was expecting to be able to find some text to support my claims, but the pure quantity astounded me. This changed my tactic in doing in-book research from one of quickly finding relevant passages to selecting and considering which passages had the highest quality. It became less about "is this a secret?" and more about "what does this secret mean?" My thought process benefited from this. I became enthralled in the hunt for evidence, and felt much more connected to Amir when I realized how every major movement of his life was driven by his past. This spilled over into my life, and helps my psychoanalyze, sometimes too much, the motives and deficits my actions attempt to cover up. Finding that was surprising. That being said, I also need to be careful not to become over-invested in psycho-analyzing Amir, the book does that already. Instead, I need to focus in on how specific actions at specific points of Amir's past, beyond Hassan's rape, correlate into specific actions in Amir's present. Then, I'll be able to appreciate Amir not only for a man with a haunted past, but a man defined by it.

Best of the Week: Keep it Short

The best idea of the week was that of contrasting long, often over-bearing sentences with short ones, to add meaning, emotion, and emphasis. How novel. It seems like we often lose sight of how useful these sentences can be, and would rather pack as many complex-looking thoughts into as little room as possible. In a way, it makes me resent many of the things I read in my daily life. Newspapers. Novels. Scholarly books. For the most part, they stick to longer sentences. Why haven't they seen the light? Why do I have to read through those elaborate phrases? Shorter sentences are clearer. More poignant. Expressive. You can't really be complex in eight words.

Still, like all things, short sentences should be used in moderation. Observe: I like English class. English class is fun. I have friends in English class. My favorite part of English class is reading books. We're reading The Kite Runner. (The blog won't let me underline, so I italicized.) As opposed to: I like English class, because it's a fun class I have friends in class with me, who's, like mine, favorite part of class is reading books like The Kite Runner. Or the lesson's: My favorite part of an enjoyable English class is spent talking and discussing a book like The Kite Runner. It's a good time.

I plan on integrated this idea into my toolbox of expressive writing wonder, although I certainly will overuse the technique as I get used to emphasizing it. You see that. I think.

Carry It Forward: Memoria Ex Machina

From Memoria Ex Machina, I will carry forward the idea that memory is selective, self-serving, and constantly changing. As explained in the paper, our mind plays tricks on us with our memories. Not only do we layer memories of people, to a point where we can only remember the most recent version we've known, but our minds also specialize in preserving that which is painfully static, like electronics. The essay recalls electronics from certain times, but not sounds of voices. The nature of memory is a vast science, but this one oddity is the thesis of the paper, and sticks with me.

Years from now, will I remember my brother's face, or my laptop? Probably the latter. Once this has been established, I wonder how I can use it to enhance my life now, knowing how sadly little of it I will remember. Does it mean I should spend more time with family and friends, whose roles in my life, and the way I will remember them, will change? No, I'm going to forget about it anyway. Does it mean I should spend less time with technology and appreciate the ever-changing-but-still-the-same outdoors? No, that will always exist outside my memory. Beyond cynicism, what will I carry forward? I know. I'll always remember that memory captures a shifty world in a shifty way. The disappointments and highs of yesterday and tomorrow will soon only exist, or cease to exist, in the way my mind and I deem fit. That terrible depression from that terrible let down need not exist for more than one day after I get over it. The happiest times mean nothing unless I actively preserve them in my mind. After all, I already can only recall scattered pieces of my summer, and school only started a few weeks ago.

I will remember to remember what has been good, and that both good and bad can vanish from existence as soon as they came in. At the end of the day, I'll know that tomorrow that day may not have to have been, and, just like my future, my past is my choice.