more than yesterday, less than tomorrow

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...