Flash Facts

When I say you, I am talking to every single one of you that will read this, and even then those who will never read it. I never know what to expect from you all, sometimes I find myself thinking about Gatsby or Walt Whitman, a sense of being within and without. I will probably cover it later in this blog post if I remember to get to it... I have a lot a want to cover but don't know how to say all of it. Normally I'm very good at making myself sound way smarter than I am, and writing like I always know what I'm talking about. You all probably knew me first as Chris Vogel, the really smart dude, or Chris Vogel, that quiet nerd that was in some class I had freshman or sophomore year. Yeah that was... or is me. It's hard to tell if I'm anything like that kid some of you may have first met. I keep losing track of time. I get ahead of myself or fall behind. I get distracted, I miss out on things, I make mistakes. I try not to but often times I blame myself and end up...

If the bad pun in the title was not enough to let you know... this is, in fact, a freebie. Nothing to see here except for this picture of an adorable Huskey eating a book... I thought it would be funny considering the context. You can find that picture here by the way if that's what you really want, or you can just look at it here. It really makes no difference either way. Since the required things are now out of the way... to whoever may be reading this, how was your weekend? Did you do anything fun? The fact that I am dragging this blog post out will tell you that today is a boring day for me. Yesterday was fun though, and so was Friday thanks for asking... Before this becomes more uncomfortable I will end this blog post here, with no clear or definitive end...

Image source One would have thought that in roughly 100 years of history, the "American Dream" would have drastically changed. Surely, we have different ideas as a nation of what the ultimate goal for our lives should be, right? On the surface, we really have not changed much at all. If you watch television at all, you will see that many of the car commercials and vacation advertisements will show a nice nuclear family in their nice car living a nice middle-class lifestyle. Rarely do you see advertisements involving people of the extremely poor or extremely rich, with the exception of celebrity appearances for the sake of ethos. Even in commercials for luxury items, the advertisement is normally geared towards giving one the appearance of wealth, but without possessing actual wealth. This is the American Dream of today and of the 1920s, to appear as though you have wealth, and to live a wealthy lifestyle, without necessarily having to be wealthy. The ultimate...

My IOC Preparation for the Practice IOC: Self Scoring: A: 8/10 The awareness of the text was supported by the initial summary of the story, as well as by further explanation of terms and characters in the text. Could have further explained foreshadowing in terms of the novel, in order to show that the suggested foreshadowing would prove to be accurate later in the text. The commentary does make good reference to the passage given, and the introduction of quotations and the links made between them is accurate to the text. Reference to the Aunts and their purpose is also effective, if somewhat brief in its use. B: 7/10 Not all literary terms are explicitly stated, but rather are implied through the suggestion of "speculative diction" and tone. While specific words are stated and described, they could be further stated in terms of specific literary devices incorporated into the text. The literary devices that were analyzed, such as diction and tone set by the author,...

Image Source In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis , Gregor Samsa faces the interesting predicament of waking up one day to find himself transformed into a giant bug. The novel explores the absurdity of existence and is a staple of the 20th century. When this novel was translated from the original German it was written in, there were several different translations done by various people. In each translation there exists different word choice, syntax, imagery, structure, and use of punctuation. Each gives their own tone to the text and creates a different feeling for the reader who reads this book. Four of these translations will be analyzed and then their effectiveness will be compared alongside a discussion of the impact of translations on texts. #1: Gregory Samsa woke from uneasy dreams one morning to find himself changed into a giant bug. Diction Words with moderate impact: uneasy, giant. These are not intense words, they do not carry much emotional weight. Changed ...

Shown above are four alternate covers for the novel Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Each cover represents its own element of the story and does so in its own way. Particularly with the use of color, each cover prefaces the book with a different tone.  The first image (the one in the top left) pictures an orange/tan background, resembling old paper/papyrus. In front of this background color is a blurry image of what appears to be a girl. This image suggests motion as if the girl in the image is spinning in one direction. Her face cannot be seen she appears to be in a blue dress of some sort. This cover may serve to allude to the theme of identity and individuality present throughout the novel, as shown by the girl in the image being faceless. By not giving the girl a face, the artist is intentionally preventing the girl from having an identity, and thus she becomes just another model for a girl, not any specific character. The motion in the image may suggest t...

Image Source:  https://www.ted.com/ Tyler Cowen (in his Ted Talk found here ) tells his audience that he believes we as humans should be more comfortable with living in the chaos of our lives. He contends that we too easily fall back on the simple structure of a story to talk about something that happened or in order to justify ourselves. Mr. Cowen cites a book by Christopher Booker, which states that there are only seven types of stories: monster, rags to riches, quest, voyage and return, comedy. tragedy, and rebirth. Cowen claims that these seven story archetypes dominate are how we most commonly recall events, talk to others, and justify our decisions. The problem with this, Cowen claims, is that stories take a lot of information and proceed to leave some in and take some out. When stories act as these kinds of filters, they tend to leave the same things in and essentially boil down to the same aforementioned story archetypes. This means that we are, in a way, telling...

Chapter 3: "To this rule...This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop" (pg. 12-13) (Keerti) In this excerpt, Mr. Utterson talks to Dr. Jekyll for the first time in the book. Dr. Jekyll is characterized as a large, good-looking man of around 50 years of age. He is described as caring and kindhearted, especially towards his friend Mr. Utterson. When Utterson talks to Jekyll about the will, Jekyll brushes it off and seems to be very lighthearted about the topic. He tries to deviate from it by bringing up his thoughts about Dr. Lanyon and their disagreements. Utterson, however, is very serious about the matter. When Utterson questions Jekyll about Hyde, the panic is clearly visible on his face and he becomes cold and reserved in appearance - "The large, handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes". This shows Utterson that there is definitely something suspicious about the matter. In comparison...