In the past week, even on the same day, i have heard 2 very different authors speak of their writing. Now the difference in there speaking was that Toibin talked about a certain book, Brooklyn, that he wrote and shared no sections of the book, while merely talking about the story behnd the book. Keret talked about his short stories, even shared some, and talked about them in context.

I found that Toibin’s Presentation was much less entertaining and much less engaging than  Keret. One thing that Toibin lacked was the comfortability that Keret seemed enjoy with his audience.  Toibin seemed not only nervous, but out of his element as he recounted his tale of how the story of how the story of brooklyn came to be, and made little effort to insert humor to entertain his audience, while Keret injected all his humor and had his audience engaged and laughing while maintaining a serious undertone of his stories.

Granted, Toibin’s audience wasn’t as mixed in age, and not everyone was as inherently excited and engaged to listen as the audience was for Keret, and that can affect the speaker greatly in terms of how much effort they needed to put in. Toibin seemed forced and seemed to be going through the motions of the story, as if it was a monotonous task.

All in all, Keret seemed much more engaging, and had the humor to keep his audience entertained even through his read of short stories, which were also seemingly long and monotonous, but he never let his audience tire.

Hey everyone, I really need some help. I can’t think of anything! For the last couple days I’ve been trying to think of a topic and my mind just draws a blank. I have been trying to lean towards something involving animal rights/research with animals, but I have no idea how to connect that with media! Please, I just need some brainstorming ideas, if anyone can help out. And if anyone needs the same, I’ll try my best to help you guys out too. Thanks everyone.

You know we live in a society that enforces that “technology is what makes this world go round” and how it’s so amazing and it brings about better lives for us. Of course the technology that we have today is amazing and the people that contributed can be considered geniuses and none of this is bashing against their bright minds. However, is society using technology in the best sense? I think not! To most people technology is just so accessible and easy to get that we don’t think much of it and we become spoiled towards it. Especially in today’s world, everyone that is in my age group will agree that they needed to work for their phone and when they got it it was not a top of the line one…I don’t know about everyone else but I kind of get pissed when I see a little child with the latest damn Iphone, Ipad, and Apple laptop walking around pretending like they are doing something worthwhile on it. What can a little child do with such a phone!!!! Play games, take thousands of photos of themselves, text, call mommy and daddy..wait sorry…TEXT mommy and daddy? It’s insane and then mommy and daddy bitch that their precious child isn’t healthy, doesn’t go outside enough, doesn’t do homework, gets cyber bullied. I mean you are giving them the right tools.

          Also in my most recent essay I said how people are more willing to destroy then create with this new technology. How it was so much easier. Why is it that we as humans take the easy way out? Why don’t we create with that technology something that we can be proud of? Yeah sure we build buildings and stuff that we would enjoy as humans but where is that selfnessness of giving back to others. Something that doesn’t entertain us? In the same essay I wrote how instead of helping out with animal habitats we just tend to destroy them if they get in our way. That ain’t right! Think about it 🙂

Since I was having trouble thinking about what to write for this blog post I decided to Google some of Charles Bernstein poems. I couldn’t think of anything else so why not right? After looking up a few of his works Its pretty amazing to me how his writing of poetry completely goes against any ideas of what I thought poetry was. Some have no rhyming or “flow” and are more like short stories with really short sentences (like “Dear Mr. Fanelli”).

One poem that caught my eye was “Questionnaire” (you can see it here). It’s very similar to something we did in class a few weeks back (I don’t remember that exercise fully, I just remember us reading lines, so they may actually be the same), but again, you would never think of this as a poem. I mean, if answering a questionnaire is considered poetry then I read poetry every time I go to the dentist. Of course those questionnaires aren’t poetry, yet somehow this is. This got me to thinking why.

After answering the questions posed and thinking for a few minutes “what in the world is this” it dawned on me why this might be poetry. The goal of this is to make us think, something I found to be expressed in the very last question: “14.a) Art is at heart political in that it can change our perception of reality.  b) Art is at heart not political because it can change only consciousness and not events.”

That is what I think Charles Bernstein is trying to say. That there is no definition of art. Art, and poetry is a form of art, can be anything, something that changes our lives or how we live them. It gets us to think about how we see the world and what we really want.

Of course, I may be completely crazy here and completely off base and all he did was write a simple questionnaire. Any thoughts?

So today’s the day that I’m considered by western civilization to be an adult. It could be the same in eastern civilizations but I don’t know about that so I just won’t make a comment on it. From the time my eyes opened at 8:30 to now, I’ve been constantly bombarded with phone calls and texts congratulating me and wishing me the best which I wholeheartedly appreciate. However, there’s one line that came up in each message too many times for me to not address it. “How do you feel?” To which I replied everytime, “The same way I felt yesterday.” It began to puzzle me. Am I supposed to go through some sort of mystical transformation which completely changes my entire outlook of my life? Maybe it won’t happen until the time today is synchronized EXACTLY to the moment I exited my mom’s womb and took my first breath. I could just be reading too much into a commonly asked question, or I’m gonna be in for the craziest ride of my life later tonight.(Since i was born at nighttime.) Oh boy, now for the rest I’m gonna be in anticipation. This metamorphosis better live up to the hype I made for it literally seconds ago.

All i can think about right now is how hectic and stressfeul yesterday was for me. As a commuter, traveling for about 3 hours total each day is pretty exhausting task. However when weather conditions start to interrupt things are just totally out of control. Due to the “storm” warning yesterday my main attempt was to get home quickly and safely as i can. Rushing out of school i quickly tried to speed walk to the R train on broadway while experiencing what felt like hypothermia on my feet since like the idiot that i was (or atleast thats what Phil who was walking with me made me feel like…thanks Phil), i decided to wear moccasins to school and bring no gloves or a scarf or hat.  Finally after the longest walk and drenched shoes..pretty much drenched everything,,,and mascara running down my face since of course yesterday i wasnt wearing water proof i finally made it to the station. Anxiously bouncing in place waiting for the train, and maybe to produce more body heat the R train finally strolled in.

As the doors opened i stood there with my mouth dropped after seeing how tightly the people were packed in there already. Instantly reminded me of chinese rice in a carton. Tightly packed stuck to each other. I was also pretty hungry at the time. The jerks before me managed to push and shove their way through and then there was me to tried the same and charged but bounced right out, Doors closed and train left. Glaring at the clock i panicked even more when i realized that only had 15 min until the 6:16 LIRR train left. Once again eagerly waiting for the R which took its SWEET time to finally get there i hopped on then got off at herald sq trying to get my feet which i practically lost feeling in to sprint that highly crowded block against the winding and snow flakes in my eye only to watch the 6:16 train pass right before my eyes leaving me there. And so i stood there right by the gate prepared and confident for the 6:35 to come and me being one of the first ones to enter…which i successfully was. Sitting there on the seat in relief the announcement was made “Due to weather conditions all LIRR lines are suspended” The rage that i felt inside of me after hearing that is indescribable in any language. After a detour to queens me and my friend who i thankfully met up with took, we ended up catching the 8;30 train (the first line to run after the suspension) and got to our home station. Of course my car was buried in snow and the only option was to brush it off with my bare naked hands, so i did. i FINALLY made it home and took the hottest shower of my life until my purple hands and feet and frozen body was fully thawed. What a great day

Lukasz you stole my idea. Music from the 90’s was the best! I can’t believe how dumb music is getting. I mean I appreciate almost all types of music but I’ve been missing the old school jams. I thought this video shows how R&B has evolved so much, and how it’s become so bad now.

Thank you Kim for bringing up the treatment of animals because it gave me an idea of what to write about for my blog post!

EVERYONE READ THIS: http://eloquentanimals.wordpress.com/farm-factories/

Over the weekend I was reading Chapter 7 for philosophy and it brought up how cows intended for veal were treated. It said they were placed in such confined areas that they can’t lay down, can barely move their head, and stand in their own filth. They’re also malnourished in order to keep their meat so tender. They also can’t produce any sort of cud to chew on due to the fact that they don’t feed these cows hardly any roughage. The list goes on with the countless cruelties they must endeavor  on a daily basis until the day they are taken to be slaughtered.

(look at their poor little faces!)

This is just not okay! Ever since I looked up that dairy cow cruelty video that Phillip had talked about in class I have been more and more sickened by what happens to the animals that we rely on as food sources. Did you know that there were no laws regulating the treatment of dairy animals? What is that?! ALL animals deserve good treatment, and above all, the ones that provide us with nutrition. What I think is overall so terrible about all of this is the fact that so much of the pain and suffering that these animals go through isn’t necessary.

I’m no vegetarian and I hope I don’t sound heartless in saying this, but when animals are killed swiftly without being dragged out or tortured, after a lifetime of wandering pastures and what not I believe that to be ok. It’s the circle of life and it’s just how the world works. They deserve to lead a decent existence though before they are slaughtered. Let them be animals, living things.

It’s so horrible how selfish we are! When dealing with living things, there needs to be a serious crack down on the treatment of these beings. The greed of the people that just want to make as much money as possible without caring how they go about doing that need a serious reality check.