Hello, it's been forever :-"
NEVER LET IT BE SAID THAT FAMILY DOES NOT ROCK.
So you guys know how RED is in Newsweek, and how our sales have gone from ~4000 to ~1300 ish since then, right? WELL. My uncle, who works for the Washington Post, totally just suggested RED for the Washington Post Book Review! And the Deputy Editor of the Washington Post Book World said she'd take a look at it.
This is kind of thrilling, guys. KIND OF REALLY THRILLING. Even if it doesn't pan out, it's thrilling
In other news:
So in my English class, we read these Big Huge Novels and plays that are Literally (in the sense of literature) Important, and then we do Big Huge Group Projects on them. Projects consist of the ever-important theme statement, a graphic organizer (mostly for the class to take notes on), lots of nuggets (1-10 word excerpts from the book/play that exemplify an aspect of the book or play), class discussion, a song that aptly portrays themes in the book/play, theme statement, and novel... and a Critical Article Outline from each group member.
Critical Articles are essentially scholarly articles that you find and basically outline and turn in (okay, that's a sucky description, but whatever).
Our most recent Big Huge Novel was Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and my Big Huge Group Project was on the characters in the second half of the novel (~chapter 13 onward, or, from when he meets the Brotherhood till the end). The article I found was "Invisible Desires: Homoerotic Racism and Its Homophobic Critique in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man” by Daniel Kim, and, um. It frankly got kind of worse each time I read it -- the article basically said (direct quote) "by imposing a racist hierarchy, these white men seek to use black men much as men are inclined to use women: as objects to satisfy a whole spectrum of repressed erotic desires", and really stressed Park's Introduction to the Science Of Sociology and the declaration that the "innate 'racial temperament' of the 'Negro' is ... the lady among the races" and that sort of stuff :| I felt like less of a person after reading it so closely. It was absurdly hilarious... to a point, and then it just got to be all, "OKAY, MR. KIM, NORTON DOESN'T NECESSARILY LUST AFTER HIS DEAD DAUGHTER AND THE FACT THAT HIS MOST "PASSIONATE", "IMPORTANT", "SACRED" REASON FOR PHILANTHROPY IN REGARDS TO THE COLLAGE IS TO "CONSTRUCT A LIVING MEMORIAL TO [HIS] DAUGHTER," AND THE WAY HE VIEWS THE STUDENTS OF SAID COLLEGE AS A "MONUMENT TO HER MEMORY" DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN THAT THESE SUPPOSED LATENT INCESTUOUS FEELINGS TOWARD HER CONVEY HIS EROTIC DESIRES UNTO THE STUDENTS."
Um. Yeah. Okay. Now that that is off my shoulders...
I didn't get to bed until like three am, though, what with the outlining of the article :| and coming up with a final theme statement (ultimately 'society sleepwalks, stumbling through the dark for salvation; the nightmare ends only when dreamers awaken to the shadowed sun') for the project or anything. I think I've lost my ability to read today because of this. :| I certainly know I didn't have my ability to function as a normal human being when I woke up this morning:
(bear in mind that my usual IM conversations, though not necessarily replete with capital letters (except in the case of CAPSLOCK!abuse), do maintain appropriate SPaG - INCLUDING APOSTROPHES. ESPECIALLY APOSTROPHES -, and that this was just after I woke up and I turned all lights off and the screen's brightness and contrast as low as it could go and still be seen)
me: its like before seven freaking am
:|
god.
why does school start before NOON
6:50 AM idcare about sports teams and their needign to rpactice earlier on or whateber the harebraned resoning behind thsi is
ugh i can see how misspelled thatis
its horriblw :|
but im too lazy to fiz it :|
foxc
fix.
thats the one.
:|
6:51 AM J: i have no idea what you're talking about
me: how crazy it is that school starts before noon
and how whatever the reson for that is probably rly stupid
6:52 AM and how i can see myself misspelling bc this computer has firefox and being a bit too lazy and tird to bother going back and fixing things
You guys, I am so embarrassed by this -- both my misspellings and LACK OF APOSTROPHES and punctuation and stuff, and also my babbling about how insane it is that school starts before noon (what really gets me, though, is the part where I say 'im, off :|'. HELLO. MISSING APOSTROPHE AND TOTALLY UNNECESSARY COMMA. I am not a morning person. This is my excuse). Of course it has to start before noon! How else would they make money off of lunch? :|
I leave you to consider this.