more than yesterday, less than tomorrow

Welcome, dedicated readers. Today I am quitting my job. And also I think I have food poisoning. So you may say that the vibes are severely off on this fine Saturday afternoon. I am just not feeling it. Therefore, please excuse the absolute nightmare that is about to be today's blog post. Toni Morrison has been making someone (me) feel very heightened emotions this week (confusion, anger, despair, etc). Do you ever read or hear something really freaking smart and important and you're like, wow this is amazing. How would one come up with such an abstract yet aligned idea? Then the more you think about it, the more heated you get, and then you're just having a mild breakdown over the complexities of literature? Very common human experience. I just want to know how someone can come up with a way to equate an EGG. AN EGG. As a symbol for something so rooted such as (deep breath) race relations...????? Not even in a way in which you may think, she's reaching, your honor...

I'm sleeping peacefully, dreaming about the wonders of literary analysis, until my rest is rudely awakened by the howls of a Dyson vacuum accompanied by the high hitting notes of Umm Kulthum ("The original diva of Egypt" - My brother). My mother, Umm, and the vacuum all make their entrance into my room, where I am yelled at to get out of my warm and comfortable cocoon and down to the kitchen, because dad made ful for breakfast. For me, that is where I find my own culture: in the disarray of the supposedly peaceful early hours of the morning.    ur arab mom coming to wake u up at 8am on a saturday moodboard In general, culture is found wherever you may peek into. It can be found in the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the way you speak or present yourself. Culture appears in our lives like this because our ancestors planted those seeds which manifested over years of growth and division of life, and were passed down to each person. Some people may not feel the...

I believe that like the way we have a responsibility to share information that could procure action, we also have responsibility to consider whether or not the images we choose to share are "effective" because they hold shock value, or because they have the potential to make a viewer do something productive. I feel like a lot of times people forget that there's always a real human being behind the photo they're pitying. It's hard to actualize the concept of human suffering if one has not suffered, and easier to just imagine that it's all one giant horrible movie set. But the truth is that people suck. I do not agree with the notion that people are inherently evil but a lot of them sure do seem like they were born with devil horns. I can agree that shock factor does hold value to an extent, and images of violence are photographed and spread for the sole reason of trying to make one giant wake up call to humanity, but it's important to not take these images ...

At the last pages from Volume 2, Chapter 3 of Maus, Francoise stops on a drive home from the store to pick up a hitchhiker. Let it be known that the hitchhiker is black, and that Vladek is very much outraged. Vladek very outwardly expresses his discontent with the situation, saying Francoise "went crazy" and calling the man a "shvartser". At first I inferred that shvartser was the equivalent to the n-word, because most languages something similar, but after some googling I read some say that it's just the Yiddish word for a black person, and some others say that it has derogatory connotations as well. For the premise I will assume it could be both. The Holocaust is one of the most gruesome and horrifying genocides in the history of mankind, and not only did Art's father suffer through it, but he was forced to survive with the aftermath as well. To generalize and judge an entire race of humans based on a handful of experiences is a very similar mindset of th...

At a school as competitive as ours, countless students load up their days with hour after hour of extremely difficult and occasionally pointless classes. Maybe after school someone will go to a club that they hate participating in and only attend because their parents forced them. The real party doesn't even start until once you get home, ready to spend your youth sat at a desk doing homework for the rest of the night. Maybe some super students can't relate, and to them I have respect with lowkey hatred. But for the majority of kids like me, it sucks, and we all hate it. Throughout my educational career I've noticed a very continuous theme of students doing educational activities that make them lose all passion for life, just to get that spicy college acceptance letter and then bathe in student debt for the rest of their lives. Literally... why. The culture we've adopted as students, the mindset that we can't achieve anything worth respect or honor unless we c...

Believe it or not, I wasn't always this glamorous. Every day I thank theoretical god that I somehow equipped myself with an interest in self presentation. Some of my Boulan comrades may remember my emo days. For me, sixth grade style was my horribly neglected poofy hair cut very short and clipped back. I chose to wear badly designed My Chemical Romance shirts from Hot Topic, paired with some old black jeans that were 4 sizes too big for me, and a DOLLAR STORE Fall Out Boy belt that I wore RELIGIOUSLY, despite the fact that it gave me a RASH??? It's something that I don't like to reminisce on. (As a lover of personal style and expression, I like to think that I have a pretty "you do you" mindset. So I'd like to clarify real quick that this is a self roast, and not an attack on any 2019 emos out there.) My mother is a very glamorous woman. I grew up watching her doing her makeup, red lipstick applied so flawlessly and matching so well with her leather ou...

This week I noticed a continuous theme throughout our readings: all of the pieces we read largely referenced freedom and the author's perspective on the concept, and all of those authors were Americans. Despite this, the writings of Douglass, Vowell, and Wallace all defined freedom in a different way.. Douglass' definition was physical freedom. The ability to be your own person, not the property of another person. At first glance, I thought that this concept was irrelevant to the modern American, because we're all here and free anyway, right? Then I thought deeper about the undocumented immigrants in overcrowded "accommodations", and the people who have to suffer through the deeply flawed U.S. prison system. You can probably think of even more examples of this here in our country.  Vowell defined freedom as the ability to have an expression of self and opinion. As long as you're not doing anything illegal or inherently wrong/harmful-- yolo, right? ...