White noise and Happy Endings

Margret Atwood's Happy Endings made the point that all plots end the same; we all die. The important question is how and why we die. The question in White Noise that is posed various times is when Jack or Babette will die. In this short story, we see that yes Babette cheats on Jack just as his other wifes did to him. Atwood would praise this because these small plots within this story relate to everyday life. This is reality. Actually, I like White Noise for the simple reason that it is so unpredictable and that's life, you never no what's going to happen and then in a blink of an eye its all over.

Girl scouts

I feel as though our society is training young girls to carry their weight in looking innocent and making people want to buy a product only because of the seller. In this case it would be the little girl in the cheap skate outfit with a billion badges on it, and the best thing about this is that the cookies that the people buy are actually really disgusting. I mean some person in China probably made those cookies. when you buy girl scout cookies you honestly do it out of pity for little girls being taken advantage of because their counselor tells them they have to stand in front of a Safeway in the ghetto and essentially sell their soul for the betterment of the organization. And the problem is that as a consumer culture we will buy just to buy. We consume our money on useless things when in reality we could be helping others. That's really about helping others, but our society has programmed us to focus on ourselves and I wish I could change that. Little girls learn at a young age to look appealing in order to sell products and succeed in a consumer culture.

What is assignment

Overall, this assignment just frustrated people. Unfortunately, these people were not as frustrated as class on Friday because once I started to frustrate Patrick Donovan; he just flipped me off and walked away. In class, we did not have that option. People who deconstruct words are useless people because in essense they should not be able to communicate with words. Their sentences should be thing thing thing thing?

Consequences of what you write

I think writers have the freedom to write whatever they want, but with this freedom the writer has to embrace the criticism of the viewers. When you put some piece of art on the air, you are subject to all the criticism in the world and people can make judgements about your values. I definitely agree with the statement that you can be held accountable for the pieces of art you publish. If you put something on national T.V., I would say you're responsible for what the public sees, and it should in someway show your view of life. Characters in some way or another convey the way we will see the author's view of the world. The reason lies in the fact when you write art it should in someway show your feelings about a certain subject.

Art

Art is supposed to evoke feelings within its viewers. I think art becomes art if the author intends it to either be art or pores their feelings into this piece of work. Feelings are closely linked to art. I believe motel art could be art if the artist pored feeling into it, but if the artist just slapped some paint on paper in order to make five dollars then yeah it's definitely kitch. For me, art becomes real when you can look at it or listen to it and it evokes feelings that move you as a person. Within each piece of art, I believe their is a deep reseviour of feelings that we must discover and it is up to the individual to experience these feelings.

Disorder me very much

Disorder is definitely celebrated in within the postmodern works we discussed in class. For example, in Travelling, Simon Ortiz makes the comment, "He is Guaguin, he is Coyote, he is who he is, travelling the known and unknown places, travelling, travelling." The disorder here as that the reader does not know if the author has been to these places or not. As a result, travelling becomes a state of mind. The mind is always moving and that is good. Society needs us to think of new ideas and thougts because that is were inovation breeds. Likewise, in Forgetfulness, Collins states, "the name of the author is the first to o followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel whic suddenly becomes on e you have never read, never even heard of as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the Southern Hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones." People have no idea why some of the things of human nature happen: for example, memory. As humans, this disorder is almost celebrated as being good. When people get old, they may forget somethings, but I would venture to say that people use the "I'm getting old and my memories fading" as an excuse. Our society accepts these disorders and accomodates the random thoughts in our mind to the forgetfullness of ourselves.

Forgetfulness by Billy Collins
Travelling by Simon Ortiz

Breakdown of words and meaning

The world is obviously post modern, which focuses on the subjective. For example, in "Toast," the author quotes "Toast is me. I am toast." Essentially, the individual has the right to make meaning for words. Toast is merely a word; the word's meaning must come from the individual. This is exactly where the breakdown of meaning and words occurs becuase the inadequetcy of our language can not understand reality. Reality is subjective. The author supports this by saying "Toast cannot be explained by any rational means." The rational means the author is aluding to is language. Reality is that 39 million trillion (whatever amount of people are on the earth) could possibly have a different meaning associated with a single word. Who is right? I would say the dictionary is right. But who wins if 39 million trillion people have a different meaning than the dictionary? I think our language is broken, and thus the individual has to clearly articulate why he chooses certain words. In essence, every word is boiled down to being a thing because thing is an abstract concept and allows for flucation in meaning and interpretation.