Scaring Voters in the Middles- September 23rd

First, I apologize for not posting yesterday. There is no excuse for my forgetfulness, and I am sorry for any inconvienience that I may have caused you. That said, I have written a post and would love to have your feedback on it. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-scaring-the-voters-in-the-middle.html?ref=abortion&_r=moc.semityn.www Scaring the Voters in the Middle The details in this piece are stunning. It is a political piece, and a contraversial one, and the details that they chose to incluede do try to persuade the reader to come to their side. The author leaves out Obama's stance on abortion and instead focus soley on the opinions of the Republican party, painting them in a shady light. "Mr. Romney, if you don’t know your own position on abortion, how are we supposed to understand it?". It's a running joke that Romney is a horrible flip-flopper, and this quote is meant to invoke feelings of dark amusment. "When teenagers in places like Darfur, Congo or Somalia survive gang rapes, aid organizations cannot use American funds to provide an abortion." The imagery in this is that of a young woman in a third world country, beaten and horribly abused, is presented with the news that she is carrying the child of one of the men who raped and tortured her. And there is nothing she can do about it. She'll have to have a constant reminder of what happened to her. It's a very dark and deep and horrifying scene to imagine, and even more so when we know that there might have been something we could have done to help her. The author is skilled in the way they paint this picture to stir our emotions. Its the last line of the piece that really puts the icing on the cake though. "Some Americans don’t even seem to have had any sex education by the time they’re elected to Congress. Like Todd Akin." Obviously, Akin must have had some sex education in his lifetime, but in the author's opinion he isn't acting like he has had any at all. They wrote like this is all ridiculous, and by the time I was finished, I agreed with them. This is an excellent persuasive article.

September 16th

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is about a plane full of beauty pageant contestants who crash land on a deserted island and need to learn how to survive. This is a comedy that is a satire of women in today's society. The way that we keep trying to say that women are equal and that we accept everyone that is really just a lie. There is so much in there about racism and stereotypes and how in America's culture today there are so many double standards and false meanings. When the girls first crash, many of them die, as well as all the adults. But they make jokes, like when one girl starts to pray "dear lord Jesus, thank you for getting us all here safely" when another girl shrieks that one of the others just died, and the first girl says "well, most of us here safely." The thing is, a lot of people would react like that. There wasn't that much mourning or anything, they just sort of went from being in shock to moving on. We treat our opponents (the pageant contestants) almost as harshly as we do our worst enemies. There is also "commercial breaks" throughout the book, and while they are obviously there for comedic relief it also does poke fun and seriously does turn over the leaf that we've been using to try and cover up the way America feels about women. One commercial is about Lady 'stache off, and the daughter says "will it hurt?" and the mother says "of course it will, pain is beauty". Women pluck, wax, cut, trim, paint, polish, buff, grind, file, and inject ourselves to appear beautiful, so it's no wonder that this is a common saying. A lot of the story is sex focused, especially on the double standards between men and women. It's incredibly sexist and awful that a man who sleeps with a lot of women is a stud, while a woman who sleeps with a lot of men is a slut. Women lack the sexual empowerment that society bestows upon men. We also lack the freedom to speak out with anger without being accused of being hormonal. So much of this book speaks in humorous words but with a serious undertone. This is an excellent coming of age story that every young woman should read.

Course Response #1 (September 9)

The main thing that suck with me this week is how very very many vocabulary words there are. I still don't understand why we have to learn all of them, except to sound conceited and snooty. I'd far prefer to say "surprise ending" than "paraprosdokian". It's much simpler and quicker to say, as well as far more understandable. But I guess teachers can't let everything be all fun and games, and we actually have to learn something. It was really helpful to play the games, even though there were so many words that it was difficult to process them all at once. It would have been better to do it in smaller groups as well, because quieter people like myself couldn't get a word in edgewise when it came to trying to answer.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Before I set out with writing, I'm going to warn the reader that The Nuts and Bolts of College writing has been one of the most difficult and tedious readings that I've ever had to struggle through. That said, this is my essay: Me Talk Pretty One Day has been a wonderful story to read, and I love the voice of the main character. In the beginning, when the teacher brow beats the entire class, I can feel his exasperation and slight terror for what she will say when she gets to him. And when she says "Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section" I had flashbacks to my own days in French class. I don't know what this piece would be like to someone who has no difficulty grasping foreign languages, but with each word I chuckled to myself, thinking that I know how he was feeling. Thankfully, my teacher did not poke me in my eye. The first sentence of the entire piece follows Harvey's suggestion that an introductory sentence give some sort of introduction to the context of the piece. For instance, we know that the speaker is the narrator, 41 years old, and has already gone to school. The flow of the piece is very good too. It doesn't get dull, and keeps you rooting for the protagonist to triumph and learn how to speak french. And at the end, even though he cannot quite speak it, he still has a rudimentary understanding of it, and we all cheer for his accomplishment.

Peterson's AP English

~To get a better feel of rhythm in poetry ~Not cross my eyes while trying to look for rhymes ~Soak things in instead of letting them wash over me ~Feel the symbolism better ~ Acquire a greater appreciation for the poets of the past