Finding a book

So after studying for psych 454 for a good 5 hours I realized I had an English assignment. It was 2 in the morning and I was ready to just go home and sleep for a good 4 hours, but no, I had to find some stupid book. So, sitting in College Library, I did some searches for a book related to a topic and found something looking interesting and walked over to Memorial Library to get it. Let me state one thing right away: Memorial Library's stacks are really weird at 2:30am. There was another girl there who was trying to avoid me as much as I was trying to avoid her. Long story short - I couldn't find the book. It just wasn't where it was supposed to be. PN6153 B6713 1997. Checked and double checked, just not there. I didn't want to go find somebody to help me, because it was getting REALLY late by this point, and I just didn't want to deal with it, and I know some poor librarian didn't want to deal with it. I did, however, find the book later on in the night on google books, so I can actually write something down in this blog.




Breton, André, and Mark Polizzotti. Anthology of Black Humor. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997. Print.


Oh, yeah. Otto, I'm changing my topic. Not sure yet, just exploring some options. I'll email you some definite by the end of today.

Robert

Robert's How to Say Nothing in 500 Words was an exploration into the obvious. Maybe it's just me, but when I read the initial paper the student wrote, I thought to myself “wow, what a crappy paper”, and I wasn't surprised when the instructor gave him a D. Most of his advice is obvious to me, as I had been taught most of this since 8^th grade, but maybe I can understand that it may had been of value back in the 50's when he wrote it. How he wrote it, though, was brilliant. He illustrates an average writer's thought process (and also an average procrastinator) perfectly. The piece felt not at all like a self-help piece for most of it, and when it did, it wasn't as bad as many writer's guides I've read. All in all, the piece was okay, but not spectacular by any means.

Robert

Robert's How to Say Nothing in 500 Words was an exploration into the obvious. Maybe it's just me, but when I read the initial paper the student wrote, I thought to myself “wow, what a crappy paper”, and I wasn't surprised when the instructor gave him a D. Most of his advice is obvious to me, as I had been taught most of this since 8^th grade, but maybe I can understand that it may had been of value back in the 50's when he wrote it. How he wrote it, though, was brilliant. He illustrates an average writer's thought process (and also an average procrastinator) perfectly. The piece felt not at all like a self-help piece for most of it, and when it did, it wasn't as bad as many writer's guides I've read. All in all, the piece was okay, but not spectacular by any means.

Something Borrowed Response

In Something Borrowed, Gladwell analyses culture and when is okay and not okay to copy and sample other's works and call it your own. Citing instances in history such as the Beastie Boys sampling a short clip from a larger flute piece to make a beat, as well as a play script being pretty much a carbon copy of an author's book, and the author noticed it right away. Gladwell poses the question: "Does an author's words belong to the author?", and the answer is tricky, as in some instances, there isn't a clear distinction between having a physical sense of owning the words,like, they are mine and you can't take them, versus a more spiritual look at owning the words, such as I said them, so they are mine in that context.

I feel that this piece sees the whole issue and addresses it all, especially the part about influence and inspirational which sometimes leads to a close resemblance. However, I believe that there is a line that is crossed from borrowing to stealing, especially if it is on a word for word or idea for idea basis. To be honest, I didn't really read this whole thing, but I got the jist of it. I'm sitting on the first floor of College Library and class is in less than a half hour, so I don't really have time to really analyse the whole piece in great detail, but I can tell that I do indeed like this piece and the way it is presented, and how the a majority of the piece seems to be told like a narrative.

Ayn Rand

Rand's message is quite obvious and doesn't really take much thinking to figure out: Racism is bad, and fighting against racism is bad. For the most part, the government is bad, and if it does anything, it's bad. Rand says that racism is equal to the lowest form of collectivism, the needing to belong to a group, and to discriminate other groups is against human nature. According to her subjectivist philosophy, she thinks that doing so is makeing you less of a productive individual, and thus not as important to society. Also, fighting for a bill against racism, with reference to the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, is also against capitalism because it isn't lassiez-faire enough for her, and it strips business owners of their rights to discriminate.

I'm sorry for this, but I fucking hate Ayn Rand. I think she and her philosophy are childish, and her egocentric ways of looking at the world do nothing to help it along. However, as much as I don't want to say it, I do agree that being racist is a form of collectivism, which is in human nature, really. I completely disagree with her implications that the people fighting for thier rights in the south are no better than the people who are opressing them, as that's just terrible. All of her arguments are flawed, though. Not really anything in this piece is backed up with facts except for the reference to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.  I can see how it would be a decent piece if you didn't have a predisposition to how much of a bitch she is, because her point is an interesting perspective on racism that usually isn't looked at or even thought about. However, I am really unable to appreciate it.

Sedaris

The jokes in Sedaris's piece is actually a bit of a drama as well. He points out that people are way to quick to judge others, and when you judge them a certain way, things that confirm your bias actually emerge, which, in the psychology world, is called the fundamental attribution error. I thought it was brilliant how he used the crossword as his way to channel his negative, self- loathing thoughts though, as well as take the lady's own judgements on himself and somewhat go out of his way to actually be kind of an asshole. I thought the peice was great, because I act a lot like this in real life.

Now, for my joke. My favorite joke is actually a pretty long peice, so I'll just link to the youtube video, but I will actually tell a smaller joke afterwards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u2ZsoYWwJA&t=6m24s


Okay now, so i'm going to tell a terrible joke so if you don't want to be most likely pretty offended don't read it















okay now
























A terrorist walks into a bar. Nobody survives.

HAHAHA
ok that was terrible, I feel bad now

Ronson Reading

In Jon Ronson's The Klansman that won't Use the N-Word, the author narrates his journey to the KKK's annual national congress. What he finds, however, is not the blood-thirsty, xenophobic white supremacists that one would suspect, but rational and relatively level-headed individuals who are trying to shake the mammoth deal albatross that the KKK bears around its neck, and move on as an organization. To do this, Thom Robb, the KKK's grand wizard, or leader, proposes they clean up their image by not being so openly racist, namely, by not using slurs out loud in public. By this, he says, the KKK can become a political power, because people may stop regarding them as obscene bigots, and more like a lobby group for the white race. Ronson finds out that even while doing the most iconicly racist action that the KKK is known for doing, burning a cross, the people involved are just people. People with unpopular beliefs, but people nonetheless.

Personally, I really liked this piece, partial because of the message it portrays, and also partially because of Ronson's writing. The idea that a completely obscene corporation can clean up their image and become a legitimate political power seems unlikely but not too far fetched, as there are some "news" corporations existing right now that spread somewhat similar messages. Ronson's writing is superb, and he perfectly expresses the amount of tension he is feeling, being a Jew in the thick of people that hate him for that.