more than yesterday, less than tomorrow

i still remember one distinct afternoon in freshman year, coming home from school after being dropped off my neighbor who happened to routinely chauffer me to and from school on days when my parents jobs stretched across the majority of the hours in the day, and sending myself into a sort of panic as i punched in the code to the garage door. as an adult reading this, it may be funny to think about how high schoolers tend to perceive levels of seniority as more mature or deserving of respect (or fear). i get that all four years are still babies on the grand scale, but i do believe that there is a large difference between a younger teenager who is closer to 10 and an older one who is closer to 20. personally, i spent my "closer to ten" years being told that i was very mature for my age in comparison to my peers. of course, i did not understand until later that this was not because of some grand disposition that i had been born with or admirably raised to be, but from traumatic ...

this is something i already wrote a little bit about in my discussion post. didi and gogo are maybe not consciously but purposely providing these placeholders for themselves as they wait for godot, even though we don't know what or who godot really is. writing as someone who is yet to see the full story play out, i feel like there must come some point in time in which they are brought to question their motives and reason for constantly extending their waiting in hopes of godot's arrival. i'm waiting for a moment of doubt and reflection that will make some sense out of the varying stability and flow of this plot, but now having familiarized myself with the basics of absurdist media, i know that most likely will never come. .. just like godot. that's the thing that i keep coming back to with absurdism, i immediately provide myself with a conclusion because it's the answer that i would search for in my personal perspective. and then absurdism comes in and throws whatev...

 sitting here with my potato chips fighting for my life trying to think of a good blog idea rn lol ok i got one (it's been 15 minutes) believe it or not, it's actually easier to write an essay when you have two other people helping you write it and only a handful of hours before said essay is due to be turned in. you'll never believe the type of stuff you and some group project members could crank out when running against a deadline!! that's what happened to me and my pals last week, sorry to snitch and possibly disappoint you mrs feldkamp, but it's the truth for most likely the majority of your students. but you're a teacher, so you probably already know that. i definitely would have endured a lot more mental distress and turmoil and suffering And And And if it had just been me writing that essay, so it's very nice to have people to experience communal suffering with! i love that we have a lot of partner projects in this class, it takes a lot of the academi...

shocking and revolutionary statement-- i think i'm starting to figure out ways that i can enjoy poetry! the mentor poet assignment actually helped me discover a lot of poetry that i really enjoyed. doing research on audre lorde made me realize that maybe not all poetry is just boring symbolism and metaphors about nature or the vagina by annoying and dusty white men or suffragettes, and that's the type of poetry i'm going to keep an eye out for. after learning a lot more about her for my project, i have such a huge respect and admiration for audre-- as a writer, as an anti-capitalist, as a queer woman. it's strange how much someone can imprint on you in such a short amount of time, i really did not start working on this presentation until last night. this poem specifically , when i was reading it i just went.. damn . i don't know, i guess this is literally so simple and i guess i'm just an idiot for not thinking about it, but maybe Looking For Themes That Entice ...

the following is the notebook entry i wrote last week after we were asked to reflect on poetry and what it means to us on a personal note. there are probably going to be format issues since i wrote it on my phone.  I  think I resist poetry because i don’t understand it and i am too lazy to try and figure it out. I guess that makes me look pretty good if i’m willing to admit it but that’s the truth. I have gone through my academic career ignoring poetry as much as possible. I remember my dislike for poetry beginning in the 8th grade. I hated learning about sonnets and lyrics and AB AB or whatever, it was annoying to try to memorize and it made me angry. And then we had to go and write poems and it’s like, I’m thirteen what do you want from me, and then my poem got reported to the counselor for being concerning. Like goddamn I can only express my trauma I don’t have anything else to write about!!! AND THEN Mr. Bodick's class rest his soul truly but i remember once again trying t...

alright so i have not seen any three of the movies suggested to write this blog post because i dont care about them and i was originally just going to let the senioritis overcome me and take the L on this assignment, but ridaa has convinced me to do it. therefore, i will be utilizing the informational and educational resources of google and wikipedia to write this week's blog post about the parallels between siddartha and star wars .  me looking at the prompt for this luke skywalker is just a sad orphan living on a farm with his aunt and uncle, and siddartha is the son of a brahman who is following in his father's footsteps and is full of potential. in siddartha , the call to adventure will be classified as when siddartha, as a young man, decides to leave his family and the life of a brahman to embark on a pilgrimage to find himself and reach enlightenment. in star wars , this happens in a similar manner when luke skywalker discovers that his aunt and uncle have been killed and...

when this year first started, i wasn't exactly confident in the educational merit it would bring as my last year of high school in a newly-normal period of history. while this wariness is still prominent in a handful of my other classes, this english class has actually proved to be a pleasantly surprising challenge. something that immediately comes to mind is my improvement with the in-class essay. though nothing can ever change the sinking feeling of dread and horror that one feels when sixty minutes are allotted for you to somehow transform your muddled thoughts into expectedly eloquent words, i really think that i've gotten a lot better at the ICE in this one semester than i have over the span of a couple years-- and i'm pretty confident in my explanation as to how. the answer is technology. i've always hated hand writing essays, they always end up way too messy and my thoughts are never put down onto paper the way they are arranged in my mind, and i often find mysel...

Introduction: Retrospective reflection  When I first sat down to work on this project, I told myself that the thesis I am about to present to you will be what I structure this essay around. It goes like this: Those who are able to set aside the intricacies of life find freedom in the knowledge that they are an outsider-- unconcerned with the burdens that come with being an emotional human being or what said beings may think of their methods of obtaining freedom-- and have a deeper feeling of content with the universe's general indifference towards all people, without any emotional obligations. After I gave this thesis out to the open arms of the universe, I knew that I had somehow forgotten the way my brain functions . There was no way I was gonna write this upsettingly lengthy blog post without finding the loose ends that the unfortunate Thesis Version 1.0 inevitably contained. So with this, I present to you the disclaimer that point A is going to end up looking very different fro...

this has spoilers for uncut gems sorry last week, as i was wrapping up my reading of death of a salesman , it was terribly difficult to ignore the ways in which arthur miller wrote the script to signify willy's exponential descent into madness. and i thought to myself, if simply reading the lines as a text gives me a headache, i can't imagine what seeing this on stage would be like, with all the lights and effects and enunciation and props. what really communicates willy's feelings, in my opinion, is the increasing appearance of the voices that willy hears. the scene in the restaurant in particular was the breaking point for my brain-- so much was going on, with the sons, and willy's nightmarish train of thought, and the girls, and stanley who happened to be a waiter there (?). yes, this occurs throughout the entire story, but it's easy to tell that the more times the flute begins to play, the closer we are as the audience to the climax. to say it was hard to follow...

as someone who struggles to focus on and complete simple tasks, i find myself dreading reading assignments despite being in the advanced english program since middle school. no matter how interesting, short, or long, a piece of literature may be-- it is scientifically proven that i will somehow distract myself at least once per page. that's why, on wednesday night, i procrastinated on reading three girls by joyce carol oates until eight thirty p.m., which is dangerously close to my bedtime. my suffering was eased by the relative ease of the piece to read; there was no academic jargon or words that just seemed   like academic jargon because i had no idea what they meant; nothing too conceptually new or confusing that would definitely take a handful of minutes of re-reading and staring blankly at the page. the more i read, the more enjoyable and entertaining the story became to me. i could relate to the girls in their struggles with personal identity, aspirations, and place in t...

stories may be structurally the same but individual's experiences and personal character is what adds flourish to them and makes them more unique and intriguing  my response to this week's question, are all stories the same?, is the following: no. let me expand on that.  while most stories follow the handful of skeletal structures that have existed since the beginnings of written word, they also have unique authors that shape these blueprints into something more like a personalized human experience rather than a robotic set of rules. i think that it takes a specially powerful mind to be able to take something that everyone has given their piece on, and rework it into something new and exhilarating. many people try and fail to carry out this task, and i think that is because they are trapped in the belief that they have to produce something that fits into the classic structure-- artists do not become acclaimed because they exactly replicate something that is already famous. the...

does anyone else feel like the stranger is an unrealistic portrayal of human character? how does mersault have friends, and a sort-of girlfriend who wants to marry him, have sex, or let alone spend any time with him? i feel like if he was a real person-- not to say that existentialists do not exist-- he would be generally disliked by those around him. by me especially, because indifference is something in a person that really irks me. i actually remember mrs. feldkamp introducing the stranger to us and explaining that the title itself is already a rough translation, which more likely means outcast in french rather than stranger . so if mersault is supposed to be an outcast, how does he go about life with side characters? is he not, in the grand scheme of things, the side character in a world of main characters?  this book first gave me the hint that i would quickly learn to hate mersault when i began to listen to its audio on my text-to-speech website. the rather boring stream of c...

while watching little miss sunshine , ridaa, jacob, and i had a lot of commentary to give in our group chat. something that we talked about a lot was the fact that a lot of the themes in the movie, which came out in 2006, would not be reacted to in the same way if it was released in 2020. some of these things i actually thought to be quite funny, such as gay and suicidal steve carell, so i think it just depends on the audience. though people on the internet will always be mad about something, i don't believe that there was anything in this movie that would cause mass condemnation or is retrospectively offensive, such as slurs or other discriminatory language. and despite that, many movies from the early 2000s have dialogue that is more wholeheartedly considered to be offensive in modern times. take mean girls for example: though it's been over a decade, people just cannot seem to get over it. i re-watched it about a year ago, and i remember being able to point out specific sc...

watch out, parents! with halloween just two days ago, countless children will fall victim to illegal-substances-or-items-hidden-in-candy-by-evil-people-related-illnesses. this may be found in, but is not limited to: candies such as twix, starbursts, fun dips, organic/non-gmo gummy bears, snickers, skittles, m&ms (peanut excluded), old bags of chips that old people throw in the bowl after they run out of candy, and anything purchased from target. an anonymous mother submitted these horrifying images saturday night after her children returned from trick-or-treating. a dangerous substance was maliciously hidden in her daughter's rolo.  the mother in question had smartly trained her children on how to thoroughly examine all of their halloween candy to prevent this when the time came-- and her three-year-old daughter put those skills to the test when she discovered this and presented it to her parents. "my husband and i never would've been able to catch that if she hadn...

seed: stuff that makes me laugh for no reason While we were discussing the personalized obscurities of comedy this week, I kept thinking about this one particular video that fit very well with my sense of humor. I think this music video could be classified as low burlesque, because basically every major societal issue is treated with mock respect. The lyric, "you better f*****g knock it off, ISIS (ooh ooh)", makes me want to scream simply by reading it. This, combined with the composition of the song and the emotional beach scenery in a boyband esque fashion really ties the whole satire together. For the sake of the assignment, we all know that simply chastising an international terrorist organization will not stop the organization in question from "doing bad s**t". Personally, I find stuff like this to be really funny because I find joy in making fun of other people's ignorance. This video does just that because not only does it provide commentary on how these...

If I, the well-read teenager, were to describe Oedipus the King in a way that my fellow well-read teenagers would understand, it would be with this image: Pictured above is a meme that teenagers on Twitter use to poke fun at their own willful ignorance . Even though we may be able to laugh at this flaw in ourselves, it feels much more difficult to laugh at Oedipus for his same mistake because the consequences of his story are much more dire. In the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is quick to condemn the mystery murderer of the former king of Thebes upon discovering his death. He publicly shames whoever would be brave enough to do such a thing to an honorable man, meanwhile he actually is the shameful murderer in question . This stood out to me as a red flag when I was reading Oedipus Rex to find ways to prove his guilt. The theme of Oedipus being physically seeing but "mentally blind" is now a basic analysis of Oedipus Rex in literary textbooks. In the play, Oedipus makes every ...

When the minimum wage paid employee at Meijer tells you “have a nice day!”, after bagging what must’ve been hundreds of groceries in only a couple hours, do you think they really mean it? Or when you, the customer, mumbles back “you too”... Will it be imperative to your ability to function throughout the day if the clerk does or does not have a “nice day”. It is safe to assume the answer is no. Do not let this be confused with an argument against altering the basic humane treatment of service employees, but a test to the meaning of words and their genuineness. Most socially aware people can understand that the employee does so because they have some sort of obligation to treat all customers with kindness, as anyone who has ever worked in a job revolving around customer service is aware of. It is simply a matter of unsaid yet enforced social courtesy and obligation. Now let’s begin again at where we started. Except you are the employee this time, instead of the customer. Also, you h...

i would just like to say that i hope everyone is considering all people in their community during this strange situation we're living in right now. it is most important to practice compassion and empathy when our normalcies are stripped away like this. ---------------------------------- Woolf's inherent purpose is not simply to state the observed and short-lived activities of a moth, but rather to present a highly saturated and curated "pure bead of life", and its counter: death. The moth flies back and forth in front of the window without purpose. Should the moth "choose" to fly outwards into the city, it would be able to open itself up to a never ending expanse of earth for exploration. When Woolf presents her story of the moth, she attributes blatant human characteristics while making it a mindless or bothersome insect. Woolf establishes its humanity, noting "his zest in enjoying his meager opportunities to the full", while in tandem writing...

News In Brief WOODBRIDGE, NJ-- Overwhelmed and exhausted, 42 year old Build-A-Bear Workshop store manager Karla Donnell quickly rushes out of the Woodbridge Center Shopping Mall employee entrance to take a smoke break after having to ask several pre-teen aged girls to stop filming TikTok videos in her store. After arguing with the middle schoolers back and forth, while they actively ignored her in favor of practicing their "Renegade" dance remix for the camera of an iPhone 11 Pro Max, she finally got them to leave once she threatened to have them banned from the mall for breaking the no filming policy. Taking a drag from her cigarette, Karla dazedly explains the issue. "This is the 3rd time this week I've had to threaten these kids to get them to stop filming TikToks here.. and it's only Tuesday. Do these kids even have school? Or parents?" This isn't a Build-A-Bear central problem as well, almost every store in the Woodbridge Center has reported being...

in ancient greece, it was believed that cohesive proportions of facial features were the secret to a beautiful woman. during the victorian era, features like tiny lips were considered the epitome of beauty. in our modern day, i personally believe that standards of beauty are constantly being redefined and uprooted every day in order to fight back against restrictive and harmful frameworks for physical representations of self. bruce norton, a political science professor at american university explains, "what is considered a beautiful face is often influenced by what is going on in society." this is evident, at least in the united states, under the current system of consumer capitalism. industries thrive off of creating and forcing insecurities upon (not limited to, but addressed in this post) women everywhere. for instance, cosmetic surgery has become an immensely profitable industry worldwide because of the normalization of getting surgical procedures done onto someone unde...