"I wish she'd go back into the Woodlands, back where she came from." - a person talking about the town called Woodlands in Texas.
"A play of the Seven Deadly Sins." - a line from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
"Beer-soaked kiss."
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Junkyard Quotes (4/28/10)
Since we aren't technically doing journals for class anymore, I'm going to tag my posts by date from now on and continue with my writing, especially since I'm still hearing language that I want to write down and remember, so here are some junkyard quotes:
"All I said when I met him was, 'Oh, there you are.' It was like he had always been a part of our lives." - Sandra Bullock in regard to her recent adoption of a baby.
"Horses not hookers." - I don't even remember now how this one came about, but I know it was when I was talking with Kate yesterday, and she was telling me about a friend who is moving to Montana to live on a ranch.
"They're all dancing in Detroit." - a friend of Mike's mother who was visiting last weekend. She had a lot of these little gems that I kept typing!
"All I said when I met him was, 'Oh, there you are.' It was like he had always been a part of our lives." - Sandra Bullock in regard to her recent adoption of a baby.
"Horses not hookers." - I don't even remember now how this one came about, but I know it was when I was talking with Kate yesterday, and she was telling me about a friend who is moving to Montana to live on a ranch.
"They're all dancing in Detroit." - a friend of Mike's mother who was visiting last weekend. She had a lot of these little gems that I kept typing!
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Strategy Essay, Week 15
Allison Joseph's poem "Teenage Interplanetary Vixens Run Wild on Bikini Beach" is a fun and exciting read that is both serious and somewhat fantastical in its language and imagery, a skill which I would very much like to learn to duplicate. One cannot necessarily call this poem absurdist, though it seems to be so at the beginning, when Joseph writes about scantily-clad green women landing in a spaceship on a beach to find "hunky" men to take home with them. However, through her imagery and language, we quickly find that she is instead describing a movie scene with faulty backdrops and bad makeup and lighting. It is interesting to note the change from absurdist to a simple critique of the theatre industry, to what eventually seems to turn into a critique of theatre-goers themselves.
She writes all throughout the poem about how the "vixens" run across the beach in their bikinis, trying to find men with whom they would like to mate. She goes into detail about the constructedness of the set and the ways in which the film is set up badly. She ends, however, by saying that "you" do not care, that the bad effects of the film are not the interesting part. Rather, it is the sex that interests "you," as "you" sit in the theatre next to a girl and hope that it inspires the same type of sex within her.
This poem is very fun to read and is interesting in its execution. What seems to at first be an absurdist work turns into a serious (but still playful) critique of the men who take women to see these silly films in the hopes of inspiring feelings of sex, playfulness, and adventure, just like the green, scantily-clad, alien ladies who come to take Earth's men away on their poorly constructed spacecraft.
She writes all throughout the poem about how the "vixens" run across the beach in their bikinis, trying to find men with whom they would like to mate. She goes into detail about the constructedness of the set and the ways in which the film is set up badly. She ends, however, by saying that "you" do not care, that the bad effects of the film are not the interesting part. Rather, it is the sex that interests "you," as "you" sit in the theatre next to a girl and hope that it inspires the same type of sex within her.
This poem is very fun to read and is interesting in its execution. What seems to at first be an absurdist work turns into a serious (but still playful) critique of the men who take women to see these silly films in the hopes of inspiring feelings of sex, playfulness, and adventure, just like the green, scantily-clad, alien ladies who come to take Earth's men away on their poorly constructed spacecraft.
Improv/Imitation 2, Week 15
From "Little Epiphanies" by Allison Joseph
"The difference between what's required
and what's desired is the difference
between" fall and spring, the cold and
the colder, depending on which you think
is which. I do not pretend to hold a
distinction for you, wishing for release
for your bragging and clanking of keys
all musical, technical, and mobile.
On the far side of the shore of Cabo,
there is a cabin in which I think you
should stay for at least two or three
weeks, thinking on which glasses clink
and which glasses read. Is a difference
there, anyway? Or are they the same
in the first and last place to begin with,
or end with, you might say. I want you to
figure out which orb rises and which falls
at which time of day and which season is
which, but only for you. Do not express
philosophical movements to the contrary
and attempt to define these patterns for
the world. You can only do so for you.
"The difference between what's required
and what's desired is the difference
between" fall and spring, the cold and
the colder, depending on which you think
is which. I do not pretend to hold a
distinction for you, wishing for release
for your bragging and clanking of keys
all musical, technical, and mobile.
On the far side of the shore of Cabo,
there is a cabin in which I think you
should stay for at least two or three
weeks, thinking on which glasses clink
and which glasses read. Is a difference
there, anyway? Or are they the same
in the first and last place to begin with,
or end with, you might say. I want you to
figure out which orb rises and which falls
at which time of day and which season is
which, but only for you. Do not express
philosophical movements to the contrary
and attempt to define these patterns for
the world. You can only do so for you.
Improv/Imitation 1, Week 15
From "Extraction" by Allison Joseph
"If there is a poem in you,
get it out by any means necessary--"
said my teacher when I begged her
for advice on how to write, how to
scream and pull the hair from my
throat that seemed to block a
passageway to words and thought.
I couldn't release the tension,
perhaps because of her class
and constant insistence on my stark
writing, or what I thought was such.
She recommended cutting open my arm,
just below the shoulder, and pulling
with tweezers to see what would come
out. She claimed that that was one
place words liked to reside, in the
arm. I cut and pulled and searched
until I finally found where they had
been hiding all along. Now when I
need to find my words, I reach
from my back, finding the words
written there in ink and pulling
until the poem is out of me.
"If there is a poem in you,
get it out by any means necessary--"
said my teacher when I begged her
for advice on how to write, how to
scream and pull the hair from my
throat that seemed to block a
passageway to words and thought.
I couldn't release the tension,
perhaps because of her class
and constant insistence on my stark
writing, or what I thought was such.
She recommended cutting open my arm,
just below the shoulder, and pulling
with tweezers to see what would come
out. She claimed that that was one
place words liked to reside, in the
arm. I cut and pulled and searched
until I finally found where they had
been hiding all along. Now when I
need to find my words, I reach
from my back, finding the words
written there in ink and pulling
until the poem is out of me.
Free Entry 2, Week 15
If Natural Born Killers got a gritty reboot,
it would have to star the Jonas Brothers instead
of Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, the internet
instead of Robert Downey Jr. That would be frightening
enough: tweens ravaging the Southwestern countryside
for no other reason than to kill, fame not an option,
because fame comes with the territory of the internet.
The meme, as I'm told its called. What does that word
really mean, anyway? Is internet fame the ultimate type
of fame, because anyone in the world can see it?
(Unless, of course, one lives in a country in which
there are restrictions placed upon the internet
viewership.) I wonder if Anchee Min sees everything
on the internet. Though she now sees the strangeness
of Mao's teachings, does she still have a tug to follow
the things he said, to respect the Red Army and destroy
any bourgeois ideals within herself? I read a Mao quote
once; it claimed that America was a paper tiger, and that
it was his followers' job to tear it to pieces. Yet another
article on Yahoo! News questioned the Tiger's authenticity,
its truthfulness. It seems that even America itself must
face the white tiger that its claimed to be.
it would have to star the Jonas Brothers instead
of Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, the internet
instead of Robert Downey Jr. That would be frightening
enough: tweens ravaging the Southwestern countryside
for no other reason than to kill, fame not an option,
because fame comes with the territory of the internet.
The meme, as I'm told its called. What does that word
really mean, anyway? Is internet fame the ultimate type
of fame, because anyone in the world can see it?
(Unless, of course, one lives in a country in which
there are restrictions placed upon the internet
viewership.) I wonder if Anchee Min sees everything
on the internet. Though she now sees the strangeness
of Mao's teachings, does she still have a tug to follow
the things he said, to respect the Red Army and destroy
any bourgeois ideals within herself? I read a Mao quote
once; it claimed that America was a paper tiger, and that
it was his followers' job to tear it to pieces. Yet another
article on Yahoo! News questioned the Tiger's authenticity,
its truthfulness. It seems that even America itself must
face the white tiger that its claimed to be.
Free Entry 1, Week 15
When I woke up this morning, everyone was floating,
legs suspended in the air, heads just below, arms
holding their own against pockets on the ceiling
that we never knew existed. We tried driving into
Atlanta, our seatbelts fastened tightly against our
arched backs and puffed-out chests, hearing that a
doctor had a cure, knew why we all suddenly decided
that now was the best time to learn how to fly.
But it turned out that it was only a casting call
for a new telenovela, starring whichever young lady
the good doctor decided had enough potential despite
her sudden ability to fly. I wonder how the girls
on America's Next Top Model are doing. Do they float
with more grace than we do? Does it matter? Why not?
I lie on the floor like we used to do in the pool
when I was a child, sliding down the water to land
belly-down on the bottom of our personal lake in
Heather's backyard, but this time it was dry,
and I laid my hands flat on the floor to push upward
and found that I could float through the air just
as we practiced doing when we were tweens, showing
off our backflips and handstands in weightless fashion.
legs suspended in the air, heads just below, arms
holding their own against pockets on the ceiling
that we never knew existed. We tried driving into
Atlanta, our seatbelts fastened tightly against our
arched backs and puffed-out chests, hearing that a
doctor had a cure, knew why we all suddenly decided
that now was the best time to learn how to fly.
But it turned out that it was only a casting call
for a new telenovela, starring whichever young lady
the good doctor decided had enough potential despite
her sudden ability to fly. I wonder how the girls
on America's Next Top Model are doing. Do they float
with more grace than we do? Does it matter? Why not?
I lie on the floor like we used to do in the pool
when I was a child, sliding down the water to land
belly-down on the bottom of our personal lake in
Heather's backyard, but this time it was dry,
and I laid my hands flat on the floor to push upward
and found that I could float through the air just
as we practiced doing when we were tweens, showing
off our backflips and handstands in weightless fashion.
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