Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Brave New World II & III

II

Creepy book, isn't it?

Everything's so cold, so clinical.

Every aspect of the human experience reduced to a science. And the vision of the typical family life? Forget about it, "Mother" and "Father" are reduced to smutty words that make the kids blush. And "good Christian morals" are undesirably portrayed and looked down upon. Psychology itself is deemed obsolete, because of the new philosophies taken its place in the hypnopeadia.

But you know that the part that stood out the most was the conditioning of the 8 month old babies, and why wouldn't it? We nurture babies, we cradle them, we protect them from harm. It's ghastly to imagine purposefully hurting babies.

I don't know about other people in my age group, but kids are conditioned like this all the time. How many children's parents do they witness reading? How many times do the smart kids get picked on in school? We're always subconsciously learning where we fall socially. In this Brave New World it's just more formulaic.

III

There's a part at the beginning of the chapter where the Director is talking about how strange it is that games used to be played with simple equipment and now they're all complicated...video games anyone? This was a prediction that came true.

What shocked me the most about this book when I first read it was how flippantly they spoke of little kids engaging in sexual activity. I mean sure, little kids always have and always will experiment but it for it to be encouraged and passed off as normal is so alien even in our culture today. I imagine in Huxley's time this was not well recieved at all.

"Our Ford" also spoke on the evils of family life which is particularly interesting to me. They live by the rules that everybody belongs to everybody else, so exclusiveness is unheardd of. This becomes important once the Savage is introduced.

Lenina is also looked down upon for only having one lover. Completely backwards.

They produce the question of before Ford, "how could anyone be stable?" Instability is the spice of life, we need it. It's what makes us, us.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

First Quarter Review

'Sup Bloggians?

I write this after the first of my last weekend of performances of Busybody, and I'm upset that I have school in the morning.

whine, whine, whine.

My two rats are currently scurrying about my bed and occaisonally jump on the keyboard to see what I'm doing. But they don't really care. They're rats, you see.

Anyway, I feel like I've done pretty good as far as assignments go. I've been reading and stuff, and stuff I've had trouble doing (such as vocab remix) I hacked to make it work for myself by using other blogs as resources. Yay opensource learning!

My smart goals are still moving towards being completed, and someone commented something psuedo intellectual on my big question. So I guess that stuff is going pretty okay.

Well, I'm off to catch as many "Zs" as possible before friday gooses me.

Also my rats are fighting. I REALLY have to go now.

Goodnight Blog world!

Monday, February 18, 2013

I am here.

This semester.

This semester I have gone through some interesting changes.

For one thing, I'm going to Europe after graduation because of a dear friend's love and generosity. And I'm more excited than I could possibly express without profanity and nudity in a combination not suitable for even MY school related blog.

I've also made some great health decisions. I'm exercising daily, eating healthily, and living more purposefully. I've decided its time to grow up a little bit, maybe not all at once, but enough to say I've tried.

As for goals and things, Busybody at the Santa Maria Civic Theater is almost over. I've sent out scripts for my senior project (SNL Night! Woo!) TODAY actually. Clue the Musical is moving along quite smoothly. I'm taking acting classes with Peter Frisch, who's a pretty big deal. Google him. Seriously. To add a new development in my theatrical life, I'm going to attempt to direct a "Fairy Tale" at the Civic Theater if the board will accept me. Things are looking not bad.

I've been casually browsing Junior's blogs in first period because I'm trying to be an AWESOME T.A.. I even did my virtual T.A. assignments and I have to admit that it didn't suck. I could get used to this teaching thing. 

Remember how I said I wanted to find direction this semester? 
Probably not, but I did.

I'm still waiting for the dust to settle. But I'm feeling good as of this moment. It's like the calm after a storm, and next time a storm hits I plan on being more prepared.

I'm here. 

But I won't be forever.  

Monday, February 4, 2013

I brought you some hack.

I overheard Hayden talking about how he did an analysis on Tale of Two Cities on his blog last semester. After about 4 minutes of browsing...

Thank you Hayden, and you're welcome.