Contemporary Poem

The Assassination

 It begins again, the nocturnal pulse. It courses through the cables laid for it. It mounts to the chandeliers and beats there, hotly. We are too close. Too late, we would move back. We are involved with the surge. Now it bursts. Now it has been announced. Now it is being soaked up by newspapers. Now it is running through the streets. The crowd has it. The woman selling carnations And the man in the straw hat stand with it in their shoes. Here is the red marquee it sheltered under. Here is the ballroom, here The sadly various orchestra led By a single gesture. My arms open. It enters. Look, we are dancing. (June 5, 1968)


http://www.palace.net/~llama/poetry/assassination

Flash Fiction

In the beginning was the word. I discovered this word when I was researching ways of putting people under hypnosis faster. It was part of a PhD paper I was preparing. Anyway, this word really worked.

The special word seemed to act like a sort of login that immediately made the subject susceptible to suggestion and cut out the need for couches and long routines of preparation.

In the origins of humanity, if ever the human mind had been programmed, this would have been the programmers quick access system that gave absolute control for urgent program modifications.

I'll call the special word blabberpop. The word isn't blabberpop but, if I told you the word, believe me, it would be a really bad thing for the world.

Using this special word was as simple as this:

"Blabberpop. You will pick up any rubbish that you drop. Blabberpop."

The first use of the special word hypnotized the subject and enabled the suggestion to be effective. The second use of the special word unhypnotized them and then they would act on the suggestion at a later stage.

Anyway, I got to thinking about the wider possible uses of this and came up with a master plan which I set into action last month.

The idea was that I would use the secret word to tell someone to do a random act of kindness each day but also tell them to use the secret word themselves to require someone else to do a random act of kindness each day too. The special word would then be forgotten by both.

I thought the idea was brilliant. Doing random acts of kindness would seriously make the world a better place for everybody. I must confess the idea of promoting random acts of kindness wasn't original. There were already lots of sites on the Internet promoting the idea. All I was doing was making it, sort of, more efficient and mandatory.

The hypnotized command would effectively program people not only to do an act of random kindness each day but also to pass on the requirement for others to do random acts of kindness too.

So it was self propagating. It was truly a human kindness virus and I was very proud of myself for thinking of it.

That was last month.

I'm not so proud of myself this month because everything has gone horribly wrong.

The drive in front of my house is littered with several unwanted cars and a basket of stray kittens has just arrived.

I dare not go down into town for fear that I will be forcibly helped across the road by lots of strangers, whether I want to cross the road or not.

The Government Tax department has already contacted me three times this week asking me where the large sums of money from mysterious benefactors has come from. The clear suspicion seems to be that I'm involved in some sort of money laundering.

The same sorts of problems are already happening to ordinary people across the whole of the Western world, according to what I read on the Internet.

The human kindness virus has proved so virulent and so disruptive that, yesterday, in desperation, I threw it into reverse and started another viral command to counteract the previous one.

I used the secret word to tell someone not to do a random act of kindness each day and also told them to use the secret word in their turn to require someone else not to do a random act of kindness each day too. The special word was, of course, then to be forgotten by both.

Thankfully, I think it's working. Admittedly, crime statistics are up across the UK and America this morning, according to the News Channels, which could indicate perhaps it's working rather too well.

Hopefully, everything will soon return to normal.

So what is the moral of this story?

Well, personally, I still believe Random Acts of Human Kindness are a good thing but perhaps it's not such a good thing to force people to do them.

Perhaps the most fundamental human act of kindness is to leave people with their own freedom of action to do kindness as they will.

The End


http://www.onlineflashfiction.com/2007/11/human-kindness-virus-virus-short-story.html

The Red Convertible

This story is about two Indian brothers they are part owners of a red convertible. The oldest brother goes off to fight in the a war, and when he comes back he is a changed person and not in a good way. "But he was quiet, so quiet, and never comfortable sitting still anywhere but al­ways up and moving around. I thought back to times we'd sat still for whole afternoons, never moving a muscle, just shifting our weight along the ground, talking to whoever sat with us, watching things." His brother had PTSD and he didn't know how to deal with it, his mother didn't want to take him to a non-Indian doctor because they only give out drugs and don't fix the problem. So the younger brother beats up the car to give his brother something to work on. this shows us the love that he had for his brother.


They take a trip after he fixes the car the oldest brother tells the younger one that he wants him to have the car that it was his. When they get to were they are going, they get into a fight, then they make up. The oldest brother dies i believed he killed himself because he couldn't take the PTSD anymore The little brother drove the car into the river as well, i'm guessing so that the brother can have it. 


I think the theme to this story is self-sacrifice. The older brother goes off to war. When he comes back he is a changed man; its like he sacrifice himself while fighting. The car also plays an important role as it stands for freedom, (ie traveling around during the summer.) it shows the connection that the two brothers share.

Feed Part 2

After utopia  things return to so what of a normal life Titus in the beginning that is. There seems to be a disconnect between everyone in his family. They are all doing their own thing listening and watching the feed. He starts to date Violet and she takes him to meet her father. He is a very strange man would at times uses an older version of the feed system that has a backpack unit. When reading this book it looks like to me that the world is falling apart all around him and he doesn't notice it at all. Like he is a drone going to School(which the companies now own) then going to buy things that the feed suggest.

Violet shakes up his world to this way of thinking, she'll go into stores and ask for big ticket items and ask all of these questions and then not buy them (to throw off the feed) Titus friends think that she is weird that she is always asking questions and saying dumb things, Titus defends her.Violet finally tells Titus that her feed unit is messed up and that she will die if she doesn't get a new one. The book carries on and she gets worst and worst they break up and the failed attempt to have sex.

Violets father calls Titus when Violet is basically brain dead he tells her that the global alliance had issued more warnings about the possibility of total war if their demands were not met. I think Titus finally got what Violet was trying to say the whole time. "It turned out that my upcar was not the kind of upcar my friends rode in. I don't know why. It had enough room, but for some reason people didn't think of it that way. Sometimes that made me feel kind of tired. It was like i kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and i could never exactly catch up to it" The feed kept selling them things to make them cool, (see the girls and their clothing styles) but the moment the changed the "cool" thing to do was wear something else. I used to feel the same way maybe if i bought this shirt ill be cool, and you still see it in today's TV/Radio Ads.

EB White Charlotte's Web

This is an excerpt from Charlotte's Web, its after Wilbur wins the ceremony. Wilbur finds out that Charlotte is dying and that she will not be able to make it back to the farm. So Wilbur comes up with an idea to get Charlotte's eggs and take them with him. He try's to get Templeton to help him with the egg sac but Templeton puts up a fight and doesn't want to help. Templeton brings up all of the times that he has helped Wilbur in the past and never has gotten a thank you. Wilbur makes a deal with him and Templeton helps him, Charlotte dies knowing that her children are safe. 

I Think that this story was put here for us to see how Templeton treats Wilbur and Charlotte. Charlotte is about to die Wilbur is trying to help save her babies, and all that Templeton can think about is what is in it for me? He isn't wanting to help because its the right thing to do. This goes along with the theme of the individual and not helping to serve the greater good.

From Blossoms

Li-Young Lee's poem is a very nice poem i like it a lot. this poem is about buying and eating peaches. i really don't know what else to say about this poem though. maybe we don't worry about death during the summer because "from joy to joy to joy from wing to wing from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom" is my favorite line of this poem. i plan on writing more after class on monday

The School

This story is told from the teachers point of view, on the first page the teacher is going through the list on class pets they have had. Telling us how each of them i died right after the class was assigned to take care of them. On the second page we start to hear from the children "They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don’t know, I don’t know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of – 
I said, yes, maybe."

I like the part when they say "is death that which gives meaning to life?" i agree with these children death does give meaning to life. We all are headed to the same place we need to enjoy each and very day we have on this planet. They would like to see their teacher and the teacher assistant have sex because they have heard about it, but they would like to see it done before they die. She tells them no, then the new class pet is brought in, they forget about what they were talking about and run to the door.

A Sliver Dish

Woody is a businessman in south Chicago, he wasn't a ignorant man. He had went to seminary school for two years during the depression. Once woody left school he begin to travel the world seeing the different sights and he brought back some hashish from Kampala, he was afraid that the customs agent was going to find it. Then the story takes a different turn and starts talking about his family and to me it seems like woody is the only one that is "normal" everyone else in his family everyone seems to have a problem.

Then he talks about he death of his father, and how to didn't let the undertaker's assistant to dress him, woody did it himself. Graveside Woody rolled up his sleeves and began to cover his father with dirt, he called it the final duty of a son.

I'm confused with the 1st part of the story, but once we start the paragraph with "Woody," then i'm good to go. this is a good story it flowed real easy, and i like what he said about "its the final duty of a son" that really hit me, and made me want to call my father just to say hey, because he wont be here forever.

Howl

In section 1 of this  poem Allen Ginsberg talks about  "the best minds of my generation" "which were destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix" This to me doesn't sound like what i would consider to be the best minds of a generation, this sounds like a crack head looking for a fix. In the 2nd Section he talks about Moloch, i look this up this was an "idolatrous god to whom children were sacrificed by placing them in fire" "Moloch is associated with war, government, capitalism, and mainstream culture"

I'm going to have to continue to write this blog after class on Monday, so ill actually have some ideas to continue to write about.

Harrison Bergeron

This story takes place in the future and everyone is equal. No one was smarter than anybody else, no body was better looking than anybody else, and no was stronger or quicker than anybody else. You have George who was  average intelligence he had a mental handicap radio so he wasn't smarter than anyone else. His wife hazel was just your normal every day person. Long story short the government comes a takes away their son Harrison for no apparent reason. They said it was tragic but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Harrison escapes from jail and gets on the TV and says that he is taking over. and Takes all of the Handicapping things they put on him off. Which is illegal, the government comes in and kills him. The TV dies so the mother couldn't see it and George was in the kitchen getting a beer, his mental handicap radio kicks in and he forgets what he saw and Hazel cant think for very long so she is upset but doesn't know why.

We are always fighting for equality and this shows us a darker side to this equality. Were they didn't make everyone smarter, they make everyone dumber. And we have to think is this the equality that we want when we talk about equality.

The Short Happy life of Francis Macomber

First off the marriage is a wreck from the get go. So they decide to go on a hunt in Africa to see if they can rekindle there lost romance. Its just Macomber his Wife Margot and their guide Wilson. during the hunt with Wilson macomber runs away from a loin they had shot when it jumped at the two when they tired to finish it off. Is wife hates this and runs away crying from the dinner table. later on in the story Margot sleeps with Wilson because Wilson is more of a man than her husband and she is turned on by that. The story ends when they are hunting buffalo and this time when they go in for the kill macomber doesn't run away but stands his ground and his wife shoots from the car and kills him.

What i think about this story is Margot didn't want a husband that wasn't going to be a man that's why she slept with Wilson. When macomber finally got a hold of this idea and he started to change the way he acts to stand up for himself, she didn't like that. Margot had gotten used to the idea of a weak husband and didn't want to give up that power. So i believe she killed her own husband.

A good Man is hard to find.

WOW this story was really dark, i was about a family taking a trip to Florida and the grandma says they shouldn't go because of a misfit that got away for jail. Well they run into this misfit and his gang, they kill everyone that was in the car, they leave the grandma for last. He shoots her in the chest 3 times. I really don't understand what the author was trying to say with this one. with all of the killing it kinda of got in the way of my understanding.

langston Hughes Harlem

Again i can see what langston had went through as a young child growing up in the south. He talks about dreams deferred, that could tell us that "hey when i was growing up i had to place my dreams on hold. to help the parents with bills get a job, not like all of the white kids i see they get to continue to go to school" He wants to know since he put his dreams on hold want will happen to them? Then in the 3 section he says this "Maybe it just sags like a heavy load." I think he was trying to show us that when people put their dreams on hold, it weights over them and they will always say... "what if"

what do you think?

Langston Hughes Theme for English B

Langston Hughes is living in the north and going to school in Harlem. He grew up in western North Carolina, which at that time was a very hard time for a black person to grow up in. Segregation was fully in forced during that time, so even living in New York he still feels that present.  In the second part he talks about all of the things that make him no different from his instructor.

"But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me---who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach. "

But later on in the poem he talks about how his instructor is white and all of the difference that are between them. But as much as they don't like each other they are part each others lives. The last few lines he talks about what they learn from each other, and even though the instructor is older and white and somewhat more free he is still learning from Hughes. Also i think he feels alone in this "I am the only colored student in my class." what do you think??

Countee Cullen

I liked "Yet Do I Marvel" i get the feeling like Cullen doing what some people do when they say this line "I'm not trying to be rude" But they know what they have to say is rude and about to hurt that person's feelings. Cullen i believe is questioning God for some of the things he does. But Cullen understand that he can't understand God's motives when he says this "To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune" This line is showing what i just said, he is asking why but he understands that he can't ever know.

In Heritage i get the feeling that he thinks he is alone this world. The poem talks about the jungle being a track, maybe he feels like he his going around and round on the same thing nothing ever changing. Cullen also talks about not being able to rest and that he finds on peace. Could this be a love poem? Maybe of a love lost, or maybe he never had the courage to tell that special someone. My thought is found correct with this line "Come and dance the Lover’s Dance!” "

 

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

J. Alfred Prufrock is a middle age man going through a middle-age crisis. He is talking to a unknown person all through out the poem. I think he is talking to himself because he is doubting him self and i know sometime when i doubt myself i internalize self doubt. example "To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”" another example of his mid-life crisis would be this quote "For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,         50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.   So how should I presume? " He already knows whats going to happen, and he doesn't see his life being with much. Another example of self doubt would be this line "Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?"

I also thing that he wants to die, if you read this line "The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes" the first thing that comes to my mind would be mustered gas they used during WWI. Maybe he is hoping that the gas will reach him and it will end his suffering. At the end he starts to hate on himself "No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use,         115 Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool." This man is alone in this world and he doesn't like it.

the quote at the beginning was translated to this

"If I believed my answer was

to a person who'd ever get back to the world,
this flame would keep still without moving any further.
But since from those undergrounds
no one has ever come back alive, if I hear what's true,
I answer you without fear of infamy."






*sparknotes were used again, and an online translator was to translate the quote at the beginning.  

Wasteland

Okay first off i had to use an outside source to help me understand this poem, i just didn't want to write well i didn't understand and leave it at that. The first part of this poem is 4 different short stories the first is about a wealthy woman thinking about her childhood. The second story talks about shadows and a hyacinth girl i'm not sure what that was suppose to mean. Third shows us a tarot card reading, the final i thought was the best of the three, the speaker is walking through London and there are ghost all around him he calls out stetson and he asked him if the corpse he planted will sprout.

Game of Chess: what i found was this section was to show stages in seduction, one story showing you the upper class version and the other the lower class. She is sitting on her throne waiting for her lover to arrive, and while she is waiting her thought overcome her. In the lower class version the bar is closing for the night and the woman recounts a conversation with a friend named Lil. Her husband had giving her money for false teeth(line 145) but she didnt buy them so she thinks that he will seek out company of other woman. She blames her bad looks on pills she took (line159)

The First Sermon:
I had to use my outside source for this because i didn't understand it. It was taken from a sermon given by Buddha which he tells people to give up earthly passion( this can be seen on line 250) and seek freedom for earthly things.

Death by Water:
The name says it all Phlebas the Phoenician died by drowning, and he has forgot about his worries ( line 313) I like the part at the end were he says "O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,  320 Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you" i think he is trying to get us to think about our own death.

What the Thunder Said:
again had to rely heavily on the outside source for this section. he talks about people suffering and how cities are being built and destroyed again. Then the holy grail sits atop a chapel and no heroic figure appeared to claim it. Scene shifts to Ganges were they talk about thunder. The poem ends with a series of fragments from Dante, and for Elizabethan drama.


Without Sparknotes this would have been a very hard read. But with sparknotes it seemed to clear up alot of things that i might have had questions on. I cant wait for our class talk about this tomorrow

Feed

I've read up to chapter utopia. This story is about Titus a teenager and his friends go to the moon for spring break. Everyone now has what they call a feed which is a computer chip they put into their head, he says on page 47 that it makes you super smart without even trying. This has put a stop to writing with a pen and paper in the dead language chapter page 65 Titus was shocked that Violet used a pen and paper to write down ideas, he had become so dependent on his Feed. At first Titus has withdraws not having his feed, but after a few pages be begins see what life is like without his feed, and i get the feeling that he doesn't mind it at all. I think this will play a major role later on in the book, once they turn their feeds back on they were really happy information flowed into them. Titus said it felt like spring rains and they were dancing in it.

The War Prayer

This was a really good read. It was about a town celebrating a war and the people being so proud of the young men that were going to fight in it. The next day comes shipping out, but before this everyone is in church the preacher asks God for his help with this upcoming battle. Then a man walks up next to the preacher and starts talking to the church he said that he had a message from God himself! He said that God will grant their prayers if they listen to the message he has from God.  Basically from the pray they uttered just a minute ago, was not one prayer but two, the one a blessing the other a curse. The blessing would be for the troops to do well in the war, kill many people and then come home as heros. But the curse would be the families of those other dead troops from the other army. Those women and children would be grief stricken and wouldn't have a roof over their heads because their husband/ father wasn't there.

We talked in class about how Mark Twain became very cynical in his is old age, and this story is a good example of it. I think the old man in this story could be Mark Twain, he was trying to show people that war is wrong no matter who wins. At the days in there still will be a family that is fatherless and a wife that is made a widow to early in life.

Huckleberry Fin

This was the first time i got the chance to read this book, and after finishing it i wish i had read it along time ago! I like to think this is a coming of ago story, a young boy sets out to find adventurer and boy does he! In the beginning of the book two women try it "Civilize" Huckleberry they were Window Douglas and Miss Watson. Huckleberry doesn't like it very much neither does his dad, she he takes him away from them. Huck stages his own death and decides to ride the Mississippi looking for adventurer. He runs across Jim who is running away from miss Watson and they both ride the raft. They run across a cast of different types of people along his way, the duke and the king, the Grangerford family, the Wilks family, and Sally and Silas Phelps.

The duke and the king our two people that swindle people out of their money and they do this with Huck and Jim along, but Huck and Jim both know that it is wrong. They continue to do this until they reach the Wilks family were they act like a death person's brother and try to steal his money away from this girls. They end up being caught and get run out of town, the float down river with Huck and Jim to the next town were they get feathered and tared. The Grangerford family is in an on going feud with the Shepherson family, this feud really gets bad when one of the Grangerford girls runs off with the Shepherson boys. Huck played a part in this, the girl got Huck to run back to the church to bring a piece of paper that had a time on it. Huck didn't know at the time what it meant, but turns out it was the Shepherson boy letting the girl know when they were going to run off together.

Now Sally and Silas Phelps are the people the king sold Jim to when they were in need of some money. Huck gets wind of this and wants to help Jim, so go goes to the farm and gets mistaken for Tom Sawyer. When Tom does show up they both play along to try to get Jim away from the Phelps, but Huck doesn't know why Tom is helping him, he thought Tom was raised better then that. Well turns out Miss Watson i died and released Jim from slavery, that's why Tom helped Huck he was freeing a free man!

I think that through out this whole journey Huck really did become civilized like the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson wanted the whole time. Through out the journey Huckleberry had many chances to turn in Jim and get a reward and go on with his day. Huck fought with this problem for awhile, he even lied to a few men that were looking for runaway slaves. I believe that Huck saw Jim not as a black man but i true friend and that he was an equal. While on the boat Jim would often do double watch so Huck could get some sleep along with being good company with Huck these are the reasons why i believe that Huck had changed through out his journey. maybe Mark Twain was showing us that Huck was not going with the "mob" the mob being white people that thought slavery was okay. Which we can tie back to the Sherburn chapter were he called everyone out saying they weren't men that they were cowards, for being part of a mob when they came to attack Sherburn for killing boggs.