Below are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in glossie1205's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006
5:28 pm	Final Paper Help Hey everyone!! I know we started discussing some possible themes and ideas for our final paper in class today, and I had an idea. I'm a psych major, so I am constantly looking up journal articles for all of my classes. A lot of the issues we talked about in class could be referenced in psych or soc journals. I know we all come from different majors, but I feel these journals could really help you out during your search for paper topics and secondary sources. For those of you who don't know how to use the website, we will be going over it in class on Tuesday. However, I'll write it out here for anyone who wants written directions. 1. Go to temples homepage, and click on libraries under quick search. 2. Click on Paley Library 3. Click on find journal articles by topic 4. You can search alphabetically for topics under social sciences a.k.a. sociology/psychology 5. Enter your id and password, which is the same for your owlnet. 6. Browse through the thousands of journals that come up, I personally like psychinfo. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 26th, 2006
8:30 pm	Geeking After reading the first few pages of Geek Love, I was utterly confused as to what "geeking" exactly was. I figured many of you might have had the same question so I looked up the term in the dictionary and found this....."a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake." The circus sideshow is responsible for the term geek. Although it is sort of described in the novel, I still couldn't believe people actually paid money to see this as part of the circus. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
12:18 am	Assignment # 3 The End Justifies the Means Cookbook Hearty Hero Biscuits Ingredients 1 cup oppression 1 tablespoon freedom 1/4 cup sympathy ½ cup charisma 1 teaspoon compassion 1/3 cup fate A dollop of fight for a cause Sprinkle of accountability Start off with adding the one cup of oppression into a large mixing bowl. Let simmer for one hour. Next, add the dollop of fight for a cause. Stir. Next, combine one fourth sympathy and one teaspoon compassion with one half cup charisma. Beat with mixer on high for five minutes. Then, sift one tablespoon of fate into the mixture. Take mixture out of bowl and knead the one tablespoon of freedom into the dough. Separate into little balls and sprinkle with accountability. Terrifying Terrorist Toast Ingredients 1 cup oppression 1 tablespoon freedom ½ cup charisma 1/3 cup fate 3 cups religious fanaticism ¼ cup murder 1 teaspoon revenge Sprinkle of arsenal Begin with combining one cup oppression with three cups religious fanaticism into a large mixing bowl. Stir well until both ingredients are blended together. Next, gradually stir in one teaspoon of revenge. Combine one half cup charisma and one third cup fate into separate bowl. Combine the oppression and religious fanaticism mixture with one fourth cup murder. Combine all ingredients into large bowl and place one cup full, at a time, on skillet. Cook until crisp. Sprinkle with arsenal. How to choose which recipe to make for the family? We at, The End Justifies the Means Cookbooks, think both recipes would make for an intriguing and delectable breakfast. Therefore, we suggest making both dishes…or better yet, combining both. There are many of the same ingredients in each dish, so combining them would be a piece of pie. Be careful not to mix the arsenal and revenge at the same time or you might end up with no breakfast at all and a whole where your kitchen used to be. Commentary As a reader of V for Vendetta, it was easy to get lost in all the pictures and storylines going on in the backgrounds of the writing. However, one point I found evident and interesting throughout the entire novel was our main character’s status. Was V a terrorist or a hero? Webster defines a hero as “a man of distinguishable valor, someone possessing the qualities of nobility and intrepidity.” However, popular knowledge would deduce that a terrorist is exactly the opposite of a hero. Terrorism is much more than simply physically harming someone and the destruction of property. The goal of terrorism is to threaten and intimidate a target population, much larger than that of the immediate victims, with the objective of some kind of political or social change. Concerning the protagonist in V for Vendetta, the lines drawn are crystal clear as to what his intentions are, but his motives are fuzzy. As illustrated in the recipes given above, in V for Vendetta, the two normally very separate character dimensions are mixed into one character, V. We find this acceptable because this is fiction. What if this happened in the real world? What if the man behind the mask was a terrorist? In the wake of September 11th, 2001, Americans questioned their safety and security. We had never experiences such a threat so close to home, in the heart of one of the greatest cities in our country. Almost immediately, we had a name to go with our tragedies. We also didn’t have to look through a mask, we had a face, and without a doubt it was that of a terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. Osama and his followers had almost all the exact qualities of V. However we choose to consider V a hero, and even applaud him for his efforts in trying to return England to its natural state. Like Osama, V, terrorized millions of people, and caused thousands of deaths. Yes, V was trying to seven the nose and the mouth along the way, however how many innocent people were killed along the way? V murders and tortures people cold bloodedly. In our current state of affaires in this country, we would punish such behavior, however V is revered. Like the recipe I created, in fiction, a hero and a terrorist can be interchanged, however I feel it is the sprinkle of arsenal that makes all the difference. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
4:49 pm	for class discussion on Thursday Someone had mentioned in their live journal posting the idea of V using revenge as his motive for the circumstances that occur in the novel instead of bringing England out of its current state of political affairs. I never really questioned his motives until I read this post. I had assumed that every action V did was solely for the purpose of a better England, however was it revenge?? I think the two motives coincide....of course the people V murders are the leaders of the nose, mouth and other important authority figures...but those are also the people who tortured him while he was being held in the resettlement camp. I think it would be great to discuss this as a class....I would like other peoples opinion on the matter. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 16th, 2006
10:30 am	Questions?????? I just finished V for Vendetta last night and although I felt that I followed the main storyline completely, I still have quite a few questions. First off, I had a hard time following what was going on in the club/bar scenes. This could have been possibly because the language used was a little garbled, whatever dialect it was. I guess I just couldn't keep all of the guys separate or understand what they were saying. Maybe we could pick out one of those scenes in class and break it down. I also had a little difficulty with the ending. Who is the person the new V starts showing around the shadow gallery? And also what happens between Edward and Mrs Meyer, I get lost in that scene as well. I never thought I would like the book as much as I did, seeing as how I am not a huge comic reader. However I couldn't help but get caught up in it, it was definitely a page turner. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 14th, 2006
4:48 pm	Is He Serious? And Other Ironies. Now Hear This: irony triumps everything. This is the way Foster begins his chapter about one of the most important literary devices....irony. I found the first paragraph about journeys to be most intriguing. Foster brings about the idea of roads. What if the road leads to nowhere he questions?? He states that roads and paths only exist in literature only so that someone can travel it. However what if someone doesn't travel the road that is set before them? This was an interesting point and one I never considered. In "The Sisters", a road was set out for the girls to travel on. They should have grown up and moved on and out of the house like normal people growing up their age. However, they never take the road, they stay at home and cause the eventual death of their mother. Ironic? You betcha. At the end of "The Sisters" we are left with many unanswered questions. This mystery left many students in our class wondering how and why the story ended the way it did. With that said, Foster states that "irony doesn't work for everyone." I found that statement true when reading "Death Defier". The irony of the ending did not register with me until I was forced to see it in our class discussion. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 25th, 2006
8:55 pm	Geography Matters In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster writes an entire chapter on geography. Now, normally, when reading a novel or story, I skip over all the descriptive paragraphs about geography. I find these parts boring and not important to the overall plot. However, after taking this course for the past six weeks, and reading this chapter in Foster's book, I have a new appreciation for the setting of a story. I now know that, as a reader, I must take into consideration the geography of the story. Landscape features, such as high, low, steep, shallow or sunken can give important clues as to what the story is about. I can particularly relate this chapter of the book to Eight Pieces for the Left Hand. Each story relies heavily on setting, and I didn't even realize it until I went back and reread the story for the third assignment. Foster makes an excellent point when he says that geography is setting, however it can be psychology, attitude, finance and industry. He says it is anything that "place" can forge into the people that live there. Someone could say, we are where we live. People act and think completely different in each part of the world, country, state, or even town they live in. I can't imagine now, how I ever skipped over such an intricate part of every book I have ever read, for would we even have a story without the setting/geography. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
2:37 pm	more thoughts on The Girls After talking about the story The Girls in class on Tuesday, I started comparing the character of Arleen to a chapter in our How to Read Literature like a Professor book. Chapter 14, entitled "Yes, She's a Christ Figure too," talks about how living in Christian culture influences the type of stories and characters authors write about. I feel Arleen could be considered a christ figure in The Girls. Throughout the story, Arleen has a certain presence, even when she is not being discussed, very omniscient, very Christ-like. She also holds a certain esteem for nature, as she retells the girls her morning of activity of bike riding through the moors. She recites a quote about the moors, which to me, almost sounded much like a parable. There is one scene inparticular, that really painted the picture of Christ to me. Arleen and Father Snow are in the garden, Arleen at Father Snow's feet. His eyes were closed, and he was talking and crying. Arlene being the Christ-like figure, kneeling down at the feet of God the father. Also, Arleen tells the girls that their mother confides in her about her hopes and dreams. Almost like we pray to Jesus. Arleen knows that the mother is not well, and in the last scene she says "Your mother is not well, you are killing her." And with that said, the mother gets up and falls onto the fireplace. It seems as though Arlene willed her to do it, just by the phrase that she said. She then holds Clarissa's head in her hands, while Father Snow looks on. Christ was known to be the son on earth, the "people person", therefore he would be the one staring death in the face, while God watches on from above. Current Mood: stressed (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 21st, 2006
9:47 pm	Assignment #2 Eight Pieces for the Left Hand One The setting in the first vignette actually creates the basis for the whole story. The reader is brought into the story, right from the start, by a description of the town it takes place in. We are told about a town encompassing two subsets; the Flats and the Heights. The central conflict in the story is between these two opposite places. We are told the children who live in the Flats come from working class families, their parents being employed by the town’s restaurants, gas stations and factories. On the contrary, the Heights inhabitants are intellects with panoramic views of the city from high atop the rolling hills. Just by using the names of the Flats and the Heights we get a sense of why the children attending the two different schools are rivals. The Heights invokes the sense of pride, being atop a pedestal and looking down at the little ants scurrying below. The ants, also known as the Flat dwellers, are working hard below just to make ends meat and live a comfortable life. The internal conflict of the story lies within the students of each school. A feeling of superiority, from the kids at the Heights, is always hanging over the kids who attend the Flats. If you took the story out of this setting, there would be no conflict, no drama, and no need for a story. Three Story three immediately catches the readers’ attention with its first line describing “the drunken antics of some local youths.” However, one little word hid amongst the others in the first sentence automatically allows us to paint a picture; farmer. You can see a long stretch of dirt road, always seeming to have layers of dust hovering over it. This is the perfect setting for a bunch of teenagers to get into trouble. What else are they suppose to do in a farm town? The lack of activities for youths to participate in leaves room for goofing around and taking out mailboxes with a baseball bat for amusement. If the kids were living in New York City or Philadelphia, a large metropolis area, they would come into contact with other enjoyable and safe activities. This short story reminded me of the musical Footloose. The kids in the story were having the exact same conflict with their setting. Instead of using a baseball bat, they used tractors to entertain themselves and end up getting into trouble. Therefore, one could argue that the central conflict in the story is the setting; rural, boring, country America. Five “At a bend in a winding country road outside our town, there once lived a family who’s only child, a girl, was born deaf.” The setting of this vignette is told in the first line, and we get a picture of a large old house nestled away in the countryside somewhere. The most important part of the setting however, is the deaf child sign placed on the side of the road. As we watch our couple, newly pregnant move into the house, we see there anxiety over the sign go from non-existent to overwhelming. Although seeming unnatural to a normal person, this superstition concerning the deaf child sign and the unborn baby becomes the central conflict of the story. If the parents had not moved into the house, they would surely not have any concerns about their child being born with any defects. Once again, setting plays an enormous role in the telling of this story. Six A school play can be a fun and enjoyable process for all cast and crew. However, a school play starring a bunch of seven year olds can be a hassle and hard to maintain. No wonder why Jason, Heather, Kevin, Carol, Matt, and our narrator have a hard time remembering lines, never mind, new names for all of their characters. After weeks of practice, the performance date approached and came with chaos and tears. The audience hadn’t the slightest idea what the performance was about seeing as how most of the scripted lines were forgotten. Our main conflict once again was setting; the school play. The children all internally battled with memorization while trying to perform in the worst imaginable setting, an audience packed with parents. The children became dazed and confused in the other settings throughout the vignette, such as the classroom and playground. Perhaps, if they were never asked to be in the production, the children would have grown up to be successful and goal-oriented adults. Eight In conclusion, all of stories settings absolutely control the tale that was told. Without the setting, there would be no story. We could reduce all of the vignettes to anecdotes, the anecdotes to an aphorism, and the aphorism to this haiku and still have a setting that means everything: “Tiny upstate town, Undergoes many changes, Nonetheless changes.” Current Mood: full (Comment on this)
Monday, February 20th, 2006
9:43 pm	Thoughts on Stone Animals After reading Stone Animals I had no idea what to think. This intriguing story is one mystery after another. At first glance, the family seems to be relatively normal. They are just trying to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city when they come across, what seems to be, the perfect house. What most caught my attention about this story is the relationship between Catherine and Henry. Catherine feels the need to lie about cheating on her husband to strengthen their marriage. This baffles me seeing as I would consider something as terrible as cheating would drive any marriage apart. They seem to be living life from day to day, not really caring or considering the future. This is shown in the fragmented dialog between the husband and wife. They are constantly answering a question with another question or statement, never really getting down the root of their problems. Catherine also states that she wished Henry was having an affair. I feel that the volatile relationship between the couple has much to do with the family dynamic as a whole. Henry has obviously made work his number one priority, while Catherine is left alone for much of the time with the children. I think we all would agree the behavior of both children is quite bizarre throughout much of the story. They are very much living in a fantasy world, always in their imagination, perhaps trying to make up for the lack of interest they receive at home. I am still stumped about the rabbits and the fact that they keep calling the house, and everything in it, haunted. Hopefully we can talk about that more in detail in tomorrows class. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 13th, 2006
4:24 pm	The Cousins I absolutely loved this short story. From the start it caught my attention and held it to the very end. It's such a great tale of family, security and loneliness. I particularly enjoyed the style of writing the author chose. After reading "Death Defier," I was utterly bored and wanted to just put the book down, but "The Cousins" proved to be entertaining as well as an easy read. Rebecca's longing to talk to her long lost cousin is easily shown in her eagerness and optimistic letters. She is so honest and real. I had to laugh at her constant persistance. Even without hearing back from Freyda, she continues to share her stories and tell her innermost thoughts and feelings. I feel like everyone can identify with either on of these characters. Freyda, with her cold, selfish letters obviously wants to be left alone. The only reason she even responds to any of the letters is because she feels a sense of pride when reading her cousins letters. She enjoys being idolized and praised by Rebecca. I sometimes find myself acting this way with family members I don't talk to as much when I am at school. They will call and email with such long, in depth stories about their daily lives and congratulate me on grades and studying so hard, and I barely find the time to respond. Usually my responses are two sentences long, never going into detail about anything much. However, like Freyda in the end of this story, I always end up wanting the attention from my family. She eventually changes her tune, and she becomes the one writing incessantly, sometimes without a response. Family is something you can never get rid of, even with nasty letters, and this story illustrates it perfectly! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
9:50 pm	Assignment #1 "Until Bobby" The first shot came through the back window. The air bags were exploding, water barrels exploding, everything around me, exploding all at once. “What happened? Oh my God! What is happening?” I am pulled out of the car, dragged is more like it, we start running. Passed the exit ramp, through the woods, into absolute chaos where gun shots are in hot pursuit. I don’t look behind me, I don’t want to know what’s there. I just want to keep running with Bobby. Maybe if we run far enough away, we can leave all of it behind. It’s raining, but I can’t distinguish the drops of rain from the drops of tears cascading down my face. I lick my lips, expecting to taste the bittersweet drops and all I can taste is pain…blood. I stop suddenly, Bobby looks back and all I see is red. I know Bobby, I love Bobby. This part of Bobby is hard to take, hard to swallow. I remember Bobby in my car, and in the cornstalks, and in my mother’s bed, naked and rough. I lay there, silent, still, concentrating on his breath, trying to match mine with his. Our bodies are perfectly intertwined. I know he is awake, watching me sleep, thinking I’m asleep, but I was so awake. Sumner, West Virginia: every now and then someone finds a diamond. A plane went down near an open mind shaft carrying a crate of Israeli stones. Although the government claimed to have gotten every last one of the rocks there were always rumors flying around that someone found a diamond. George Brunda, a miner, was one of the lucky ones. He was at the local bar one night, buying everyone drinks, including me and Bobby. We shot pool with him. It was easy to see that good old George didn’t have much time left, either did his mother. She was in a rest home and George was making arrangements for her to get transferred. “Probably hasn’t been with a woman in twenty years,” I say to Bobby. “It’s sad, poor sad George. Never knew love.” “Never knew love,” I whispered it one more time into Bobby’s ear. Bobby had never known love either, until me. I knew love and it was Bobby. I had found my diamond in Sumner, West Virginia. That’s the thing about me, so easy to give my heart away. It is always on my sleeve. What made me want Bobby? He’s mysterious, an enigma wrapped in a conundrum. I wanted to be the one to fix him. Maybe fix is a bad choice of words, to show him love, to make him understand what it’s all about. That is what brought me to the nursing home. I was dressed as a nurse, Bobby an orderly, and for a second we looked like a normal couple working together, I felt completely safe. We walked into the old ladies room, and I shot her up with phenobarbital and valium while Bobby went to work around the room. Immediately, I noticed another presence in the room, it was George coming to check on his mother. He just smiled at us and backed out of the room. I shot Bobby a glance, and he looked back at me as if you say, “keep going.” With uneasiness in my voice, I started to say, “Maybe we-“when George came through the door again, nothing polite in his face, and with a gun in his hand. George squeezed off two rounds from the six shooter, when his mother said “Ooof,” and went ass-end up out of the bed. George said “You shot my mother.” I can see the sweat dripping off of Bobby’s body, we didn’t anticipate George coming in, we didn’t anticipate someone getting shot, and I didn’t anticipate falling in love with Bobby. We ran from that room together. Sirens rang out; they were trailing our get away car. Bobby and I were in the back seat, our faces inches apart. I realize that at the moment I can never live without him, never. He was looking at me, and he was seeing me, seeing why I had gone through all of this with him. I want to tell him, tell him exactly what I felt, I couldn’t find the words. The wind was blowing my hair everywhere, it encircled our heads and in that moment I thought, “I want to,” and Bobby said out loud, “Dissolve into you.” “I know, baby. I know.” I managed to say, and I did, Bobby had found the perfect words. We both were half people, always missing something, but if we could dissolve into one another, we could be whole. I had his face in my hands, still peering into his eyes, seeing just how close we could get, when the window came crashing down. I was the only thing holding Bobby’s head up, and once again I saw red. It was then I told Bobby that he just was who he was, and that he was beautiful. Bobby told me that he would never stop looking for me, that he would find me. But Bobby’s secret was safe with me, in me. I decided to retell “Until Gwen” from the point of view of Gwen. The flow of events stayed the same in both stories because they are experiencing the events together. I cut our certain parts of the story that I did not believe belonged to Gwen, however the ending remains the same with the diamond being buried in her stomach. In the original story the ending left me sad with the death of Gwen and the love the two had. I feel my story tells the tale of the woman behind the man. Gwen does perceive events in the same way as Bobby because she wants to be like him, think like him. She wants to be with him, do what he does, which is why she gets mixed up with him to begin with. The author’s choice of Bobby for the narrator was probably for the best, seeing as how the whole of the story revolves around him. As a reader, Bobby’s version of the story portrays bits from his childhood and family which better explains the circumstances of the story. However, every story has two sides, and the woman behind the man, Gwen, had a story to be told of her own. Current Mood: ecstatic (Comment on this)
Monday, February 6th, 2006
4:47 pm	Eight Pieces for the Left Hand Going to classes can sometimes seem so boring. However, I genuinely like attending our fiction class, and I can honestly say I am looking forward to this weeks discussion. The short stories we have read so far have had, for the most part, obvious plots and ending. This weeks short stories leave us with much less to be assumed. After reading both stories, I am stumped. I enjoyed the graphic, tell it like it is language of Until Gwen. But Eight Pieces of the Left Hand left me questioning all eight pieces. I started thinking about the title, at at first I had no clue, I was trying to connect the eight pieces with the left hand and was coming up blank. I then remembered story number seven about the professor who ended up losing his right hand after belittling and using a group of left hand extremists. Every story, one through seven, has to do with some sort of loss and the aftermath. Whether it was a joining of rival schools, a dead poets misinterpreted poems, a tragic death that left no one to blame or a lost cat with identity disorder, every story ends in disappointment. The man in story number seven was forced, after much humiliation, to utilize his left hand and became quite good at it. Maybe the eight pieces symbolize hardships and personal tragedies that can happen to anyone, and we are suppose to learn how to "deal" with them by using other means, meaning our "left hand." For us righties in the class, placing an object in our left hand can seem like foreign territory, but sometimes the only way to solve a problem or to "get over something" is to use other means and methods....our left hands. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 30th, 2006
3:21 pm	How to Read Literature Like a Professor How to Read Literature Like a Professor proves to be an entertaining and interesting insight into some of the most common ideas behind novel writing. While reading chapter 3, Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires, I was astonished to find that I didn't pick up on the whole idea behind the classic vampire novel. Although I knew that Dracula, for example, was written in the late 1800's, I only thought of it's meaning as something scary or frightening. I never considered the fact that writing about sexual activities was looked down upon in that time period and Dracula, although frightening, is full of sexual innuendos. Foster writes, "Always, he's alluring, dangerous, mysterious, and he tends to focus on beautiful, unmarried women." When reading any piece of literature, I certainly always picture the scenes in my head, as if viewing it in a movie theater. And when I reflected on my reading of Dracula, the vampire was never scary looking or ugly, he was always tall, dark and handsome. Even in recent film versions of vampire movies, the lead characters are often played by Hollywood's leading men: Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Gerard Butler. These men automatically turn the movie into "sexy" even if it's original intent was to be a horror film. Even though I was afraid to read Dracula in my room alone because of it's graphic scenes about death and destruction, I could have been just as scared with its portrayal of lust, seduction and temptation. It just goes to show that nothing in literature is what it seems, and reading between the lines if what it's all about. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 24th, 2006
8:55 pm	Introduction Hi, my name is Heather and I'm a junior psychology major at Temple University. I signed up for LiveJournal for a course I am taking called Introduction to Fiction. I am taking this class as a requirement for the universities writing intensive credit. We will be posting blogs and messages and communicating with our fellow classmates through the system. So far we are two weeks into the class and I love it, its really interesting and the time flies. (Comment on this)