The Awakening Themes

This was seven hours worth of our lives. Enjoy. Or don't. We're not your mother.

Edna's Death

"It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell."

-Buddha

     Throughout most of the story, one of Edna's main goals was to become independent, as evidenced by the joy she expresses while swimming and painting alone, and by the unhappiness she feels anytime she has to do things without being given options. She realizes she will never truly be free as long as she lives, and kills herself to escape the cage that is life itself. Though she is technically speaking free, this is neither a victory nor a defeat. 

     For someone to achieve victory, there has to be an opponent to win against. The only people who actively push Edna away from her goals are only in the novel for short periods of time, with the major example of this being her father attempting to force her to come to her sister's wedding. Her husband only puts up slight resistance due to the lack of care she gives towards the house. Since they were not "fighting" against her, it is impossible for her to have achieved victory against these characters. However, there is a single character in the novel that Edna has constant arguments with. 

     Throughout most of the novel, Edna is constantly asking herself what she should do and internally debating what she wants. As stated, her main goal is to become completely independent from men, yet she can not shake her love for the ones who want to have control. She doesn't want to give up Robert; she can't resist the temptation of Mr. Arobin. The only character in the novel she can truly defeat is herself. She both fails and succeeds in this regard, as her suicide brings about the end of her attachment for men who want control. As such, Edna's suicide is a stalemate: no one can win, and no one can lose.  

3 favorite Christmas Movies

     I'm usually not a big fan of Christmas movies; they just don't have enough explosions for my tastes. Personally, a lot of the movies I've seen are either mushy garbage or sequels (and therefore just plain garbage). That said, there are a few that don't make me want to throw my Christmas tree out a window.
     First on my list is How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey. The major reason I like it is the silliness throughout the entire movie. The scenes with the cat attacking the Grinch have always been hilarious to me, as have the scenes with the Grinch's dog Max. The animation style's fast pace and the color choices are also interesting to me.
     My next favorite Christmas movie is the classic Home Alone.  Though the sequels eventually got out of hand, the first (and depending on my mood, the second) movies are still fun to watch. The slapstick humor and overall silliness of the plot has always made me enjoy watching it, and look forward to seeing it a few times when the Christmas season comes around.
     My third favorite movie is the Polar Express. I know I said I hate mushy stuff, but my first time watching this movie was one of the relatively rare times everyone in my family wasn't completely freaking out about preparations for dinner or anything, so it gets a special place in my mind. Also, I saw it in the Imax at the Carnegie Science Center recently, so it gets some bonus points for style from that.
   

5 Favorite Blogs

     Most of my favorite blogs are just because they're either cool or cute, so don't expect anything super analytical or anything in this. I like cute animals, funny jokes, not-so-funny jokes, even less funny jokes, puns, and blogs about psychology, sociology, economics, and strange math things, because if you actually believe for even a second that I wasn't quite that nerdy then you are sadly mistaken. 

     My first favorite blog is http://cutest-cats.tumblr.com/. It's a blog with tons of photos of cute cats, which is awesome because cute cats are awesome. 

     My next favorite thing that is at least kind of a blog is explosm.net. It isn't technically a blog, but it's pretty funny and therefore also awesome. The Cyanide and Happiness youtube series is pretty popular, and these comics are the basis of those videos. Xkcd.com is another website like this, its jokes are just more complicated. 

     http://memesalldaylong.tumblr.com/ is a blog filled with memes. This is simply because memes are just the best things ever. Also, it's pronounced "mim" not "me me" and nothing anyone says will ever change that.

     http://buildingpc.tumblr.com/ is my next favorite blog because I have an unnatural love for computers. It has tons of PC building logs, and the component lists in most of them fill me with joy. Seriously though, some are garbage because people need to learn how bottlenecking works.

     The last and craziest blog that I like is http://illuminatiwatchdog.blogspot.com/, which is a blog explaining the methods the Illuminati is using to control the public. As an Illuminati-built android, it is extremely important that I collect data on which of our methods have been discovered, so that they can be replaced with less noticeable methods as soon as possible. 

     Most of these blogs (or blog-like things) are probably blocked on the school's network. Most of them are simply for humor or for relaxing after I get home from school. I realize that a lot of them are completely cheesy and/or generally stupid to most of you, but you can just deal with it. 

Gender Roles

     Men and women are equal in the same way that two plus two and three plus one are equal. However, humans have managed to divide themselves over differences much less noticeable than actual physical differences, so it's relatively easy to understand that men and women would separate themselves.
     Nature had a major impact on how gender roles formed; after all, only one of the two genders is incapacitated for months on end when in preparation for childbirth. It is typical in nature that the mother of an animal (most common in mammals) is far more attached to it than the father. This combined with the excessive power of the human brain, about which you should ask Professor Newcomer, led to many humans assuming that this should be the only role of women. Due to the need for the species to continue existing, this role has been extremely difficult to break, until recently, where the population's steady growth has lead to many women no longer feeling that this role is accurate.

Most Relatable Character in Spoon River

     For me, the most relatable character in Spoon River Anthology was George Gray. His fear of taking chances struck home with me almost too well; I do want to be an actuary after all. The job of an actuary is to minimize risk, to avoid failure. That's why no one knows what they are.
     For a while, I was about as afraid of rejection as a person could be. The fear isn't completely gone though; I have four other blog posts drafts that I haven't posted, most of which will likely never see the light of day. After all, if there are zero views, there are zero people who can make fun of its length, say that my jokes aren't funny, or just plain say it's stupid.
      At the beginning of the year, when we were all signing up for Google Classroom, someone noticed that I was signed in as "John Doe," and a few people wondered why. Though the simple answer is that the account is for Craigslist, the reason I have that account for Craigslist is that if I message people as John Doe and they refuse my offer, they won't have rejected Stephen Barr, student, they'll have rejected John Doe, anonymous entity from the internet.
    Writing this was, to be frank and honest for once, utterly h*llish. I just erased two paragraphs of typing. They were risky, so they were deleted. Some of them involved people in this English class, some of them involved other people, some of them go clean back to elementary school. All of them are regrets: things I've done that completely overwhelmed any victories around them. Over time, both groups have started to shrink. No reward means no risk, after all.
   

The Massacre that Didn't Happen

     The article about John LaDue is extremely disturbing for a large variety of reasons.  It demonstrates the ease with which someone can keep a dangerous mental illness well-hidden, an important part of most massacres. It also presents a massive issue in the American criminal justice system, which, while more applicable to individuals with mental illness, shows an underlying problem with the rest of the convicts as well. Lastly, the article shows a massive problem with the American media, an issue which helped make the article itself exist.

     Firstly, the article shows what an issue mental illness is, and why it's so important that it is studied further. John LaDue was confirmed to be mentally ill, but far too late and with far too little certainty on the specifics of his illness. Had his illness been discovered later, it could have been after another school shooting. Yet had it been found earlier, Mr. LaDue could have been given proper treatment sooner and possibly experienced improved mental health as a whole.
     One of the major points of the article was about the American justice system; the author implied that LaDue should have received a harsher sentence for his planning. However, there's a much bigger problem. John LaDue will be given much less psychological help in prison than he needs, majorly due to the fact that the American justice system is based on punishing criminals instead of reforming them. Revenge certainly feels nice, and makes sense for torts, yet it doesn't help society recover from the damage done to it by criminals. Reforming criminals and helping the mentally ill recover is the only way to prevent criminals from costing prisons more money.
     The author referenced the Columbine killings multiple times because John LaDue was attempting to mimic them himself. This shows a massive issue with the media: had John LaDue not known about the Columbine killings and been inspired by the killers, he couldn't have been inspired by them. The media talked far more about the killers themselves than it did about the families, because that made them more money. Recently, in certain killings, most news sites refused to say the names of the killers. However, this was caused by police officers asking them not to and the knowledge that viewers would be angered by the station for doing so. Even so, this is only certain killings. Many killers receive massive fame because of their killings, and this shows youths that killing other people can get them attention.       

most useless thing ever

Yup, Pet rock 2.0 is finally here! It's the most valuable computer part on the market: it doubles your frames in CoD, types essays for you, and is adorably soft and fluffy! Okay, maybe not, but at least it won't send your information to every company on earth, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.

Hierachy of Disagreement

     If only for the reason that I love using words more than once in the same sentence repeatedly, I disagree with the hierarchy of disagreement. The Internet ceased being a place of calm and civil disagreement when the first person commented "First!" on a youtube video.
     Originally, of course, the Internet was made for the spread of knowledge. Then, it became popular. Now it's infested with trolls, flame wars, and other various forms of stupidity incarnate. However, the people who want to use it for research are still easily capable of doing so. On youtube itself, the comments don't even load unless you actively scroll down to make a comment yourself, or if you want to read them and laugh at all the trolls.
     The fighting does very little harm, but is entertaining in most cases. A common trend in humans is seeking entertainment, much of which frequently involves violence. In the past, this violence has been quite physical and resulted in the deaths of many people. "Are you not entertained?" is a movie quote that evidences this mindset. Though internet fights can cause carpal tunnel if done too frequently without an ergonomic keyboard, they do not lead to the decapitations that were the outcomes of the fights of previous entertainment forms. And seriously, Facebook would be basically worthless without the fun of watching people argue pointlessly.
Normally this is a pretty worthless point, but in this case it's more applicable than in others: on the internet, no one ever obeys all of the rules. No one even knows the rules, because no one reads the terms of services of any websites. No one will care if this hierarchy is used in various sites. There are already rules on most websites against name-calling, and no one cares because if a user does get banned, he can just make another account and keep on trolling.
     The concept is incapable of being universally applied due to the concept of Russell's teapot: if someone makes an indisputable claim that is outstandingly ridiculous, it is completely impossible to attain the highest level of disagreement or any of the other levels involving evidence.
     Even though the hierarchy itself really means nothing and isn't very beneficial to anything, it is sort of based on concepts in use in the internet and the real world as well. Ad hominem and name calling are two of the famous logical fallacies, and both are generally frowned upon and likely to get a person banned from most places on the internet. A person responding to someone's point by calling him an ---hat is going to be yelled at by a mod/admin; in real life he will be either shunned and eventually left friendless or beaten up for being a terrible human being.
   

High School Police Issue

     A person will never have an honest view of themselves, and no one in the media will ever have an honest view of anything done by anyone. The girl was in the desk, she moved her arm in a manner that the officer could have considered threatening, he pushed her to the ground. Those are the facts of the incident itself. However, these are not the only facts that need to be considered: if they are, a city court would be much more likely to decide the cop was innocent than a rural court due to the former likely considering teenagers more threatening. So, instead of judging anything about the incident itself or what any articles have to say about it, this post is an examination of the other people in the room, whose firsthand reactions to the incident can be used to determine whether the officer was justified in feeling threatened by the student's actions.
     The first individual to examine was the student seated to the right of and behind the girl in the white, orange, and grey shirt (Note: he is much more visible in the "raw" footage lower in the article). As the person physically closest to the girl at the time of the officer's actions, he remains seated calmly in his desk and does not even appear to flinch. This implies that violence is not a particularly uncommon occurrence in the school the officer was called to, which would mean that a reasonable person would feel at risk of injury when a student made a gesture perceivable as threatening.
     The second person whose reaction is important in the case isn't shown in the video, but (judging from the sound of the individual's voice she sounds female) at the 6~7 second mark in the video, she is heard saying "Ooh" in a tone that sounds quite typical of a teenager witnessing a fight, and not a tone that would imply distress. This lack of worry over the officer's actions can be interpreted to show that a policeman being in the school isn't that uncommon either.
     Going through every other individual at the scene is the job of a lawyer, and I'm not getting paid to be a lawyer, so I'll simply finish by pointing out two specific traits of the rest of class as a whole that imply a lack of distress: multiple students recorded the incident in a manner that was obvious to the officer, which shows they weren't worried about him being angered by the recording; and the class as a whole was fairly quiet without most members looking away from the officer, hinting that this form of interaction is not a one-time incident.
     Overall, the reactions of the students in the class show that there really wasn't anything that unusual about this incident. No one seems worried that the officer will hurt anyone else; they simply seem to be waiting for it to be done so they can tell their friends next period. In Franklin Area High School, a policeman using this type of force against a student would likely never be considered justified, but this event didn't occur in FHS. News companies were quite rapid in formulating their opinions on the incident, but they must remember that while all people are created equal, all schools are not.  

An analysis of Bohemian Rhapsody That is Absolutely Not a Poorly Disguised Attempt to Use Vocab Words

     "Is this the real life, is this just fantasy,..." Did I get it stuck in anyone's head yet? If so my mission in life is complete. I want to finish off what's left of the vocab list analyze this song with a very deep meaning for fun, so I decided to make a blog post. The song is quite famous BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME due to its fantastic instrumentals, amazing applications of harmony, and impressive usage of action changes to keep the attention of the listener. So, what exactly is the point of the song so tenacious that it is arguably the best-known song among teenagers from before our time? Is there one? This writer Googled and read the Wikipedia on found out exactly what the song is about through a long period of difficult research, and found that conveniently, Freddie Mercury and friends have all completely refused to explain what the song means, so I can make up whatever I want if I can provide evidence for it.
     One of Queen's goals in Bohemian Rhapsody was to make a piece that was as large and epic as it could be. This much, at least, was allowed to be known by the band members. Even if the band had wanted to keep this information private, the immense amount of money and effort they put into the piece makes it quite obvious. The members of the band used methods considered practically ludicrous at the time to make the piece, resulting it in being a more complicated piece than almost any other pop culture song to date.
      Considering the massive amount of energy put into it, it seems extremely unlikely that Queen just wrote the song for fun. There are many theories; my personal favorite is one where a perfidious gangster wrongs the main character in some way, which results in the main character killing him, saying goodbye to his mother before running away from the rest of the gang, getting caught by them before he can escape, and killing them all before returning to say goodbye to his mother again. Though I couldn't find that exact story online, I found this similar story which takes the lyrics even more literally.
       So, was there really a point to Queen's masterpiece? It seems we'll only know if the band itself lets the information slip, and I personally highly doubt that will happen anytime soon, but people will argue about it until the end of time anyway because this is the internet. In any case, it's still objectively one of the best songs ever made, and you'll still get strange looks if you don't like it.
   

The hardest book I ever read

     Discounting Twilight, I can honestly say that I feel most of the books I've read have had at least some value. It should be noted that I include entertainment as value. I know what most of you are thinking, but no I'm not going to say Silas Marner, because in my opinion that wasn't hard; it was just awful. I am not going to say the dictionary, which I read in elementary school when I had even fewer friends, because the pages consisted only of a cacophony of definitions and lacked symbolism, motifs, themes, and every other part of literature.
     So, now that I've gone through things that aren't the hardest book I've ever read and spent a large amount of time forcing a vocabulary word to fit somewhere in the paragraph, I'd have to say the hardest book I have ever read was Egg Monsters from Mars, part of the Goosebumps series. It tells the story of a kid interacting with egg monsters from Mars. This, obviously, was not the hard part of the book.
     The easiness with which I read the book, which I was in either second or third grade while reading, abated gradually as it went on. In the book's climax, (if a post is created on a blog no one will ever read, is a spoiler alert still needed? Either way SPOILER ALERT) a scientist attempts to contain the egg monsters from Mars and the child who interacted with them. The reaction of the egg monsters to this action was to form a blanket when the child got cold, sacrificing themselves in the process. Also the narrator laid an egg. For reasons based around all science that has ever been done, this confused me to no end. The librarian had a dearth of time to read it, let alone explain it to me, so I went without any sort of explanation until I remembered the book in middle school, when I finally Googled it while avoiding actual work. It makes sense now of course, but I have not been confused by a book that badly ever since. Yes, I'm counting Heart of Darkness when I say this; however, it was close.
     
      

Based on the circumference of the Sun, the sacrifice of what living creature can be traded to Satan in order to create a test to kill students' brain cells?.... Now pick the quote from the reading that backs up your answer. Seriously, how long can I make these titles?

     Though I am quite circumspect to break the oath I signed and discuss the test - but not really because that was just a perfect way to use a vocab word - most of the questions on the test can be summarized with one word: stupid. But wait, are they really THAT terrible? Everyone who immediately said "Well, yeah" can shut up, something's only bad or terrible if it fails at accomplishing its goal. With that in mind, are the PSAT's actually that bad?
      The goal of the PSAT is literally in the name: it's a Practice for the SAT. Annoying and completely awful to actually do as it may be, it at least kind of makes students think about the SAT's, even if it itself really means absolutely nothing in and of itself. Oh it's also meant to bring its completely altruistic company tons of money, which it unequivocally does quite effectively.
       For reasons unknown by top scholars, the layout was reading, writing, math, math v 2.0 (Now with even more SUFFERING). For reasons also unknown, math v 2.0 was approximately 150% more difficult than three times the difficulty of the combination of the reading and writing sections combined together. However, my mechanical pencil broke in the middle of this test and I hated the non-mechanical pencil I had with me so much that I spent about 1/2-34n^3+7  minutes attempting to fix it.
     So, to put it simply, the PSAT's were like every other standardized test, just with a timer. Also, about 1/4 of 73% of the test was developed by Satan, and the remainder was developed by his best friend Todd.

SQUIRREL!!!!!!!

     I saw a few people doing posts on their writing process and said to myself, "Hmm. Can I make this funny?" The answer is no, but it probably won't be too soporific. That said, here's a summary of my writing style.
     Conveniently, my mom needed something right after I finished that sentence at around 9:30. It took about five minutes, but then I didn't feel like doing anything. It's now almost 11:00. This is pretty close to my normal strategy of assignments.
     It's now 9:30 of the second night of my attempt to write this blog post. I have Pandora open and am switching between five different 80's radio stations. I was working on the second reading list, but felt like a break and decided to finish this post instead. Once I get home, I'll get a cup of milk and continue the reading list and keep listening to Pandora.
     That is my typical process in writing essays: starting one, getting called to do a chore, then not touching it for another few hours. Occasionally, I forget how time works and can do most of a paper while making myself death with music if my parents aren't home. Oh and then there's anything other than a major assignment, which is either done immediately after the class it's assigned in or a minute before the class it's due after someone asks me how well I think I did.
     The reason I suddenly chose to update this post is an enigma, even to me. I definitely did not do it just to force vocab in. Though, technically speaking, that is indeed a part of my writing process in many cases.

Huck Twain is as static as a wooly rug...I think. Twain likes confusing people. How long can these titles be anyway?

     Huck Finn goes through no changes morally whatsover. He- did every single thing Mark Twain ever wrote have to be so controversial? It seems like his favorite activity in life was making people argue then just grabbing a bowl of popcorn. Next time that comet comes around we're all going to hear a crap ton of laughing. Anyway, Huck's a lazy bum from beginning to end.

     Huck Finn, throughout the novel, goes through no moral changes. There are, admittedly, times when he considers whether what he is doing is right, but he proceeds in every one of these instances to just go on doing whatever it was anyway. The most important example of this is when he is considering turning Jim in, and by this point in the novel he had already been on the raft for a fairly long period of time.
     Some people feel that Huck took more control of his life, but in reality he only took control when no one else was controlling him. This makes him a situational leader, but this status doesn't really develop throughout the book: at the beginning, he chooses to escape his father and at the end he makes the decision to help Jim escape the Sawyers. This is the only trait that it seemed like Huck might have changed in to me, and he obviously didn't change in it to me.       

Vocabulary.com is a thing that exists

     Vocabulary.com is probably the best vocab site I've seen so far, but that really isn't saying very much. Using competition as a way to encourage people to actually study is a great idea, but I feel that it will also eventually result in people making fun of the person who did best that week. Also, this is the number one person on the site this month. And last month. And quite likely the month before. Competition stops being fun or interesting after a certain point and I am still trying to figure out how it is humanly possible to master that many words and have literally anything else to do ever. 
     As with basically everything that has ever existed in this universe, vocabulary.com has its pros and cons. It seems like a relatively useful learning tool, but it is definitely worth noting that while most of the definitions are well-written, a few of them would make more sense if they were written by a gerbil. Nothing about the site other than the competition factor is interesting. It feels like I'm just forcing myself to answer enough to get to the top. Then again, the only way to make vocabulary interesting is to give definitions in Samuel L. Jackson style. 

Heart of Darkness Book Review

Heart of Darkness is a good book with an important theme that is made utterly unreadable due to the author's unique writing style. The story about Marlow's search for Kurtz could have been as action-packed and impressive as Indiana Jones and Literally Anything But the Crystal Skull if it had been written in a different way. However, it was not meant to be an action-packed, explosion-filled adventure movie with heart-stopping action and intense car chases. The book's style is slow and feels muggy to read; this was intentional. Joseph Conrad used slow pacing, with more linking verbs than action verbs with the goal of making it seem slow. He uses so much symbolism that googling every paragraph is basically the only way to understand all of it. However, Heart of Darkness was not MEANT to be read quickly; it wasn't meant to be actin-packed and interesting. Joseph Conrad wanted to force the reader to take his time to read the novel so that his point could truly sink in. The book is extraordinarily well-written and overall excellent when viewed from the proper angle. Unsurprisingly due to the nature of the curriculum of an Honors English class, the book is still relevant to modern times. One nation taking advantage of the resources of another, while accomplished with different methods, is still a commonplace event in our time. The treatment of the people living in multiple Middle Eastern countries by the United States, and many other countries, for oil is likely the best example of this issue today. However, while the book is still relevant, the style it was written in is no longer as effective as it once was. The mistreatment of the people in the Congo was done in an extremely noticeable manner, but in more recent years, the method has changed to be done with cloak and dagger. Therefore, the methods used to expose these actions must change as well. People nowadays are more focused on efficiency than perfection. Whether this is a positive or negative change is irrelevant in this issue; it is a change that happened and must be accounted for. A novel written in such a way that it must be read slowly with research just to understand it is no longer able to be as impactful as it once was.  Just as slideshows have been made largely obsolete by movies, slow moving books are no longer considered relevant in this time period. So, while Heart of Darkness remains a fantastic novel, it is in desperate need of a successor, another novel written in a style that people in this time period will want to read. People and their ideas change with time, and if a book doesn't keep with the times it and its ideas will eventually be forgotten.