Author Archives: victor.huang

On Thursday I went to Central Park to take some pictures as part of my digital essay. Fortunately for me, central park was so spacious and diverse. This allowed for good pictures to be taken. I felt like a professional photographer, just like Spiderman. On a side note, if you bring a camera to take pictures of central park, people will think you are a tourist. A man who handed out maps of central park thought I was from Canada. On another note, there was a homeless person I encountered who goes by the name “The Homeless Poet”. He explained that he made a living from selling poems. I did not bother listening to him beyond this point because I am not interested in the prospect of buying poems because in this digital age, almost everything that exists can be found on the internet. Afterwards I explored the Upper west Side a bit. I was not absolutely familiar with the neighborhood, so I walked in just one direction from 59st to 69st. Although the day was tiring, I got a good feeling from accomplishing so much in one day.

I have decided to do my digital essay with miaolong huang. Even though we are doing different poems, our ideas pose as a great antithesis. My poem deals with loneliness, while his deals with friendship. So far we decided to do a short video of picture slideshow reflecting the themes of loneliness and friendship. At first we start with a slideshow of a person alone in the park. The color tone is grey to add to an atmosphere of loneliness and the depression associated with it. Afterwards, we move to a slideshow of the person accompanied by a friend. suddenly the depression is gone and the mood is much more positive. That is our ideas so far, until we find even better ones. I am unsure about a good choice of music to accompany the video. Since the video is divided into two parts, the first part would make use of a more somber tone while the second part would be jubilant.

After browsing through many poems, I have chosen to do “An American Poem” by Eileen Miles. A good majority of the other poems i encountered were either too abstract for me to understand or too short to be analyzed in 5-7 pages. I believe the poem I have chosen contains many abstract as well as many obvious opinions. For example, the poem deals with the American dream, feminism, homosexuality, the arts and sciences of society among other themes. As for the digital essay, I am not entirely sure how I will do it. I tend to be most creative when I am not trying too hard, therefore I will try to be relaxed with the digital essay. So far, I find the other papers to more fun than this one.

This is one of my all time favorite inspirational songs. The moral of the song is that you should be honest with yourself in a world that isn’t. By trying to be someone else, you are forsaking your identity and living a lie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gFCW3PHBws

When I took a look at my 29 gallon planted aquarium today, I was reminded of my readings in class. In particular, I was reminded of The Birthmark. I always try to make my aquarium look absolutely perfect with the intention that an aesthetically pleasing aquarium will bring me happiness. Even though my aquarium might not be perfect, I am still somewhat with what I had. Prior, almost all of my aquarium plants died, so my present sucess more than makes up for my shortcomings in the past. However as I gained progress, I always found myself nitpicking for any possible imperfections: staghorn algae, green spot algae, brown algae, the plants are growing sideways, the midground plants do not offer a nice contrast to the background plants, unwanted aquarium snails, hydras,  some plants are growing too fast, some plants are growing too slow, the equipment that runs the tank is clearly visible, etc. Despite the imperfections, I am adequately satisfied with what I do have. Ironically my aquarium plants grow best when I do not do anything except turn on the lights and add liquid carbon dioxide.



The Story of an Hour and The Birthmark present subjective opinions about the concept of happiness. The first story presents happiness as the positive emotions associated with freedom. Although Louise Mallard grieves for her dead husband, she ultimately finds a sense of exhilaration knowing that she is “free” from her husband. The second story draws a relation between happiness and perfection. The second story relates happiness to perfection. Alymer’s goal in the story is to remove his wife’s unsightly birthmark, so that she can attain a state of “perfection.”

The ideas of happiness are not uniform in these two stories. The stories help illustrate that happiness is subjective to personal opinion. For example Louise Mallard’s feelings of happiness relate to her freedom from her husband. The Story of an Hour was written in 1894, when the movement for women’s suffrage was beginning in the United States. The story can be interpreted as a subliminal message in support of women’s suffrage. Alymer finds it in his interest to remove his wife’s unsightly birthmark despite the early protests from his wife. It is possible that his interpretation of happiness is different from Louise’s interpretation because of his occupation. Scientists usually strive to perfect their experiments in addition to their theories. The Birthmark can possibly be interpreted as a satire on the shortcomings of science. Scientists achieve their goals, but it is often at the expense of others. Alymer achieves his goal of removing his wife’s unsightly birthmark, but it came at the expense of his wife’s life.

Competition is defined as a contest between two or more parties when they strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Survival and prestige await the winner of such a contest while failure awaits the unfortunate loser. This is a central theme of Best in Show. Upon watching the first few minutes of the movie, I was unaware of what the movie was about. I saw a young couple discussing their personal problems to a therapist in the very first scene and I instantly thought to myself that this was one of those dramas about dysfunctional families that Hollywood churns out every year. To my surprise, I was not entirely wrong in my assumption.  Best in show is a mockumentary in a similar format to such films as Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. It involves several fictional characters and their canine companions in their quest to be crowned winner of a fictional dog show.

Despite being a fictional documentary, the actors bring a sense of realism to the picture from start to end. They represent archetypes of real life personalities whether it is the homosexual couple, the socialite princess and her wealthy old husband, the yuppie (young urban professional) couple, the odd couple, and the redneck stereotype. The humor is never dry and is always satirical in nature. I find the arguments between the young urban professional couple to be the most relevant to my life. I often find my parents arguing over the simplest things when it comes down to my life. I wasn’t expecting this movie to mirror the events that happen in my life, so the surprise was thoroughly enjoyable and hysterical at the same time.

The movie tries to be witty while maintaining a sense of satirical realism and it does not disappoint the viewer in the slightest. The dogs are equally as fun to watch as their dysfunctional owners and add even more visual appeal to the overall picture especially when you are a dog lover. The scenes involving the exploits of the redneck stereotype were by far the most fascinating in the entire movie. In one scene, he describes the life a Southerner to the yuppie couple. They stand in confusion and apparent boredom as he continues to mumble jargon. Overall the movie was equally hysterical as it was intelligible. It satirizes very real situations. Bottom-line this movie should definitely be watched by those who seek a funny and intelligible movie. I highly recommend it!

Section II of Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle examines the activities of a child; specifically a game of disappearance and return that revolves around the use of the words, “fort” and “da”. Although simplistic in nature, the activities of the child indicate a very analytical, physiological aspect of the “pleasure principle”. The child would throw toys away from his crib while attempting to say fort (gone) and da (there). The child would throw away the toy in hopes that his mother would retrieve it and come back to him. A brief analysis indicates that the actions of the child give away his motive for power, indicating that he gains pleasure in securing domination over his mother’s actions.
In some respects, the Freud’s analysis of the child’s actions has similarities with Plato’s Allegory of a Cave. Both works revolve around an unenlightened individual, the child and a chained man respectively. Both works attempt to speculate the comparisons between the person’s actions and his physiological motives. In both cases, both the child and the chained man may have acted according to their physiological motives, but may not have fully understood them. This brings into mind, Plato’s four stages of knowledge analogy: imagination, belief, thought, and ultimately understanding. Although Freud did not conjure up the child’s actions in his imagination, his belief that the child was acting on the power principle brought him to a breakthrough in thought. Since Freud cannot directly see into the child ‘sub-consciousness, he cannot fully understand the child’s physiological motive, however his analysis based on the four stages of knowledge indicated he tried to.
In the first section of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud speculates the prevalence of the pleasure principle: all individuals have an instinctive drive to experience satisfaction and to avoid pain. However, one may first experience pain of one endeavor to ultimately experience the satisfaction associated with such an endeavor. The example of the child provided in section II is a clear example: The child uses his measly effort to throw the toy away from his crib in hopes of his mother coming back to retrieve it. Although the child would be deprived of the toy due to his actions of throwing it away, he probably reconciles that his mother will come back to retrieve it. His mother’s presence afterwards would be the pleasure. Section II also introduces the concept of the “power principle” that speculates individuals can attain satisfaction from securing domination over the actions and beliefs of others.