Recalled to Life/On the Reservation

WHOOOO!

It's good to be back!
Also, let's see if anyone gets the reference to a certain Charles Dickens book I'm reading.
Hello faithful reader who may or may not have checked The Blog,
If you're wondering why I haven't posted, there's two reasons:

1) My english teacher does not allow us to post things extraneous to english on our blogs, but I swear to ... well, whoever that if he does a pause this long again, I'm posting no matter what.

2) My busy social life (that's sarcasm, BTW). It's actually that I've had a ----load of homework and projects to do, and I also got a bunch of new games.

Anyways, on to the important, english-y stuff.

This week's blog is called "On the Reservation", which relates to this book we're reading called Montana 1948, and it's about a boy who finds out his uncle (who's a doctor) has been abusing his Native American patients. Given that this blog is about reservations, let's start by talking about what a terrible idea they are. I wonder what idiot woke up in his bed one morning and thought "Oh, let's relocate hundreds of thousands of people from their lush, fertile, productive lands and stick them in the most barren, crappiest parts of the desert, and see what happens". I mean COME ON now, could you be any more boneheaded? In any case, they're crappy plots of deserted land that people can barely grow crops on. Then, they're forced to go out and get terrible jobs so they can earn a meagre living!! Not only that, they never paid them restitution for the total value of their land, so they essentially stole their land. Do people really think that them being tax-exempt is fair repayment?

Think about it.

--Noah

P.S. The word of the week is:

adoxography

noun

fine writing in praise of trivial or base subjects; "Elizabethan schoolboys were taught adoxography, the art of eruditely praising worthless things"; "adoxography is particularly useful to lawyers"

PROPAGANDA 2011 *dramatic music*

Hey everyone,

Finally, a post I can actually enjoy because I can heap a ton of abuse on Fox news.

Hey, it's the best example of propaganda I can think of.

So, I pulled up the definition of propaganda:

–noun

1. information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement,institution, nation, etc.

2. the deliberate spreading of such information, rumors, etc.

3. the particular doctrines or principles propagated by an organization or movement.

4. Roman Catholic Church .

a committee of cardinals, established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, having supervision over foreign missions and the training of priests for these missions.

b. a school (College of Propaganda)  established by Pope Urban VIII for the education of priests forforeign missions.

5. Archaic . an organization or movement for the spreading of propaganda.

Now, let's think. Which of these definitions apply to Fox?

 

Not the Catholic Church one, that's for sure. How about the " rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement,institution, nation, etc."Well...

Anyone remember the "Death Panels"?

Also, I'm absolutely sure that the spreading of those rumors were intentional.

And, I think that Fox is just devoted to spreading these rumors.

 

I actually believe that they're only doing it because they hate the fact that an African-American guy is president. I also think that's why the Republican top priority is "to make sure Obama is a one term president".  It just sickens me. 

 

Now, what do you readers think? Is Fox secretly overtly trying to destroy Obama? I'd honestly like to see some debate... 

 

Anyways, til' next week

-- Noah

P.S. Word of the Week!

malinger

\ muh-LING-guhr \  , intransitive verb;

1.To feign or exaggerate illness or inability in order to avoid duty or work.

 

"Black Boy" Response

Hello readers,

I'm sitting here and blogging, even though I feel like crap, or more accurately, my throat does.
Ah well.

So, for those of you who haven't read 2/3rds of the way into the book:


SPOILER ALERT! Be forewarned, the following text might contain spoilers!
There.

Now, on with the blog.

           I actually really like this book (as evidenced by the fact that I read 2/3rds of the way into the book...). It's a far cry from "The Scarlet Letter". I don't want to say it was boring, but I mean COME ON, the guy spends 3 pages describing a BROOK!! This one, however, is different, and I like that. I also like the way that he did an in-depth analysis of everything he's feeling at the moment. It really brings across his emotions, and the way he was thinking at the time. Consequently, it really makes you sympathize with the character, despite the fact that's it's almost as if everything Wright has done in his life has been to make his younger self unlikeable. He also is able to justify all of his actions with a motive, and I think that also helps to make him more sympathetic. For example, the system he rigged in the movie theater was justified because he was trying to get enough money to go north and escape the persecution of the South. It also has that sort of gritty, realistic quality afforded to it by his detailed description of how horrible white Southerners are to him.

Well, that's the blog for this week. Stay tuned for more, feed the fishies, and check out the RSS feed.

-- Noah

P.S.

Word of the week:
    Prosopagnosia:
    A disorder in which one is unable to remember faces

Reader Response Journal "Civil Disobedience" Edition, w/ Digression About New Blog Setup

Hey everyone, exciting new development in "The Blog" history:

NEW TEMPLATE AND NEW EVERYTHING!!!!

Now, I know, I know, but I'm getting to the post in just a sec. Now, THE BLOG comes equipped with an RSS feed on it. If you somehow are totally enthralled by my blog, you can add it to your bookmarks bar and thus get new updates for the blog every Thursday, and when school ends, possibly every day. Now,it also has a few new addons, like the most popular post addon, the "fish" addon (feed the fishies) etc. Don't get carried away staring at the ...SHINY... new template though, because the real meat and potatoes of THE BLOG are the posts... I think...

Now, on to the real portion of the blog:

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Now, this essay (at first) kind of seemed like the Tea Partiers would be all over it like flies to honey. It's got so many "anti-government" statements in it that it seems like it would fit their agenda perfectly. Now, reflecting on it, it would seem like it would actually hurt their agenda. You see, they talk about the Constitution with reverence, so this essay, with its anarchist tone, would only appeal to a small subset.

Now, do I agree with it? No. I know he was doing it to stop another slave state from entering the U.S, but he did the wrong thing. I'm not saying that the government back then was the most morally righteous, and that Thoreau was a horrible demon, but what you need is a huge, coordinated effort, not a small-scale "one person not paying their taxes" thing. That helps no-one, and injures the government, which then has less money to provide services. Also, you go to jail. What he needed was a large-scale protest, one that would shake people to their senses. I don't really know what a good alternative is, so I'm opening it up to a reader discussion. Win, and you get 100 points.

--Noah

P.S.
   Word of the week:

Grangerize:

1.To add to the visual content of a book by inserting images not included in the original volume, often by mutilating other books.

2.To mutilate books in order to get illustrative material for such a purpose.

 

King... still king?

So, Martin Luther King Jr...

Inspirational, greatest civil rights leader of all time, etc. But.. the million dollar question...

*drumroll*
Is he still relevant?

I think yes. He provides a great, homegrown example of what one man  can do with a vision and some good speechwriting. He's an example for kids everywhere. Heck, he gives us a day off from school! Just for that, he should be relevant today.

Also, there are still racists and bigots.People that want to destroy the foundations of equality that this country is built upon (okay, not exactly true, but still). I mean, no offense to Gandhi, but we need a homegrown idol of equality, so to speak. Especially today, with these crazy people going around listening to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh's racist rhetoric, and then going around shooting people (yes, the Tucson shooting was not a race-related shooting, but still, if we leave things like this, it'll happen eventually). We need a positive icon that people risk serious damage to their self-image by attacking.

We need MLK.

At least, that's my humble opinion.
By the way, why is the word monosyllabic more than one syllable?

Also, yes, I know, this post is a little short, but don't worry, i'll have the next post up to scratch...

--Noah

P.S: Word of the week:
Logorrhea
      

–noun

1. pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech.

2. incessant or compulsive talkativeness; wearisome volubility.

Reader (Journal? Response? Whatever) to "Children of the Sea"

Hello all,

Today's post is ... well... not so good a topic, let's say. The "Trick of Writing" one would have been better, but we have to do the reader response journal.

However, I do have one thing that's interesting that i noticed while reading Children of the Sea. If you notice, the guy on the boat says "Now they'll never mistake us for Cubans". From that comment, I thought I could pinpoint the precise time, however, I needed to do some research. So, where did I go?]

 THE 1NT3RW3BZ!!!!
(that's "interwebs", for those of you who don't speak 1337(leet)speak.)

So the first place I went? The place EVERYONE goes to check stuff out: Wikipedia. Because I have a short attention span, however, I ended up clicking on random links for a while, until I finally remembered what I was doing. So, let me give you the background: Basically, at various points in Cuban history, people have left in order to escape the economic conditions blah blah blah, and they usually came across in boats. Sometimes, the U.S. government was complicit in these acts, for example the Pedro Pan incident. The U.S. government thought it could destablize Cuba by taking the brightest Cuban kids and essentially kidnapping them. They took them to the U.S. with the promise that they would bring the families later. For most, that never happened. Anyways, I thought that the story could be taking place during the mass exodus that took place in 1980.

So, naturally, I checked the history of Haiti.

Bingo.

The year 1980 took place during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, or "Baby Doc", son of the previous tyrant, "Papa Doc" Duvalier. In 1980, he married Michéle Bennet, and kicked his father's widow out of the country. However, I ended up not being able to find any record of violence on a scale that the book was talking about, so I went to the next chapter in Haitian history: 1996-1991, the transition government. The military took over and committed terrible atrocities, like the killing of thousands of voters across the country. It was probably then. Then again, it could have been any time in Haiti's recent history. *sigh* Oh well.


Anyways, if you somehow made it this far, congratulations!
You're not lazy like some people who might not even have read the whole thing *cough* *cough*

This is Noah, signing off.

P.S. The word of the week is "Stochasticity". Don't believe it's a word?

stochasticity

noun

the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan [syn: randomness]

You might say my choice of this word was very "Stochastic"
although it really isn't, I came across it listening to RadioLab on my iPhone.

Music Review

Okay, everyone:

Today I want to tell you about a band that I heard about quite recently, called "Los Ilegales"(which translates to "The Illegals") All of their music is really catchy, and even if you don't understand Spanish, fail at Spanish, or are a native speaker, you'll enjoy the music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PQATa34TrY

Pay no attention to the video, it's kind of stupid.

The beat is nice, and it's kind of reggaeton-ish, especially with the car and the gas pumps, which is probably a reference to "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee. Nice beat, nice music, and fun to listen to.

Anyways, life is good now. Holidays are here, and the world is somehow a better place now that school is out.

Also, funny new Onion headline (satirical newspaper) "States Quietly Raise Speed Limits Near Failing Schools"

That's all for now,
-- Noah