Twenty Images

I think I got increasingly sarcastic as I went on...

1. old and withered face, not unlike the pages of a water-stained book
2. still and broken, like the chiseled surface of water in a summer rain
3. most boys have handwriting that looks like the Hoover Dam collapsing
4. most girls have handwriting that looks like a tall glass of bubble tea
5. a bronze sky, cast in the mold of ideals
6. a frayed tablecloth of tree stumps, shrubs, and decaying rodents
7. the graying of burnt charcoal
8. the sun, hidden by clouds, looked like a bowl of soup reflected in a bent mirror
9. slowly, like a stream of water rolling down an unusually muddy hill
10. as if expecting the open drawer to yield up a redwood
11. arms swinging over the side like pendulums with hinges
12. The iron gate pronounced itself on the landscape, curling and spiking with a tenacity generally reserved only for matriarchs interrogating prospective sons-in law.
13. fingers with the appearance of pickled glass shards
14. a regiment of babies brandishing pacifiers
15. The hat was being crushed, it's brim rising upwards in protest as Carson dropped his prodigious weight downward.
16. a conspiracy of post-it notes designed to strangulate in the oblivion of adhesives and yellow paper
17. convulsing like a tickle-me-elmo on fresh batteries
18. The roadkilled squirrel was dried, still, and bearing a startling resemblance to a brillo pad.
19. A forest of toothpicks blossomed above the fruit bowl.
20. Her chest is flatter than my grandmother's vintage champagne.

Rhetorical Modes

My apologies in advance for my broad interpretations of the rhetorical modes. My chosen topic is truth:

1. Truth cannot be divined, nor can it be extracted, purified, or subdivided. You will never find a vivisection of truth, for as soon as the truth is split, it ceases to be truth. It can only be recapitulated, and even then, one must be careful to leave it unaltered. A skewed version of the truth is not the truth. A part of the truth is an untruth. An absence of truth is darkness. There is no particle of truth.

2. Truth is the actual state of a matter, as opposed to a fact, which is what actually exists in reality. Philosophy is the quest for truth and various truths have been sought out for thousands of years. The truth of the meaning of life, the truth of the universe, the truth of individual pupose. All these have been investigated by means of science, religion, and philosophy. Truth is the thirst of the soul.

3. Those who fail to understand what separates truth from fact fail to see the difference between what is real and what is actually true. To quote Tom Stoppard in The Invention of Love, "He is spoiled, vindictive, utterly selfish and not very talented, but these are merely the facts. The truth is...he is the only one who understands me." One can walk about in fields and find facts everywhere. The grass is green and skies are blue and if a meteorite hits you, you will probably die. But none of these are the truth until they are applied to one's life and the broader concepts which lie beneath living. Try it for yourself and see.

4. I told him that truth is like ice held in the hand, melting and slowly vanishing until you are unsure of whether it is still there or whether it existed at all. But you cannot open your clenched fist to see, I said, because you are afraid. Afraid that by seeing, you will be forced to accept the unwanted facts that are so much less true than the truth you must believe. He smiled. I pressed on. A failure of belief is a failure of soul. The betrayal of one's self is a small matter, but the betrayal of others is the highest of crimes. Truth is the measurement to which all is compared. It is the means of our ascendance and our downfall. He laughed. I never finished.

5. There is no decided-upon method for discovering the truth. Some people have always circumvented the issue by attributing a knowledge of truth as possible only in some non-human, often divine, entity whose omniscience so overshadowed humanity that any longing for understanding was futile. Some philosophies, despite thier purpose, subscribed to this view, but eventually, many adapted it or abrogated it so as to be able to pursue truth for themselves. Nothing can be agreed upon and nothing is definite, but the search continues, as it shall always continue. That is the truth.

6. The simplest form of truth is what is merely true, and we call this fact. Fact should never be taken, for truth, however, becuase the truth can be applied to much more. In Latin, fact referred to something that had been done or performed. It is simple to see how the word has evolved. Fact is now something. Anything. Provided that it is true. Truth is what is true, as well, but in the grandest of ways. A fact is what is true, but the truth is what is actually real.

Maggie Steber

http://imagedeconstructed.com/post/spotlight-on-maggie-steber

Maggie Steber is an award-winning American photographer noted for her work with National Georgraphic magazine. The website The Image, Deconstructed ran a feature on her body of photographs, especially in regards to an article she did for National Geographic on the subject of memory. The images shown in this feature are touching and saddening, many of them shot in a sepia color scheme to evoke wistful and nostalgic emotions. The image of an old, withered, and apparently disembodied hand appearing from within a sea of bedsheets, for instance, is just as disturbing as it is depressing, though one is unable to explain exactly why this is show. There is something metaphysical about Steber's photographs which make them seem superior to the normal experience of man. They are magical, aetherial, and entirely human.

It's All About the Grandmothers - Part the Third

After their various entrances, flourishes, and squawks, both grandmothers (actress and eccentric) settled in the living room to consume bread and hummus. They muddled through fairly well, considering they had nothing in common, and before long were on the topic of singing.

Eccentric Grandmother: I find that my voice isn't nearly as good anymore. I just don't have the range.
Actress Grandmother: O, I learn new song. Practice all the time. Moon River.
EG: Oh, really?
Actress Grandmother: Yes, it's simple. You should try it. I sing for you.

Now when someone sings, especially if they are elderly, you don't really expect much of a voice. The phrasing and the rhythm can get knocked around a little and no one notices. If the singer decides to switch keys between the verse and the chorus, you forgive them. No one really expects much in the way of vibrato, either. One does, however, expect words.

AG: Wait...how does it start.
EG: [sings] Moon River.
AG: Right! [sings]

Moon River

Wider than a smile

EG: Mile.

AG:

Wider than a mile

I'm crossing you in style some way

EG: Someday.

AG: Someday.

 

Father: [poking head from kitchen] Is that the Hallelujah Chorus?

 

AG: [ignoring son-in-law]

Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker

Wherever you're going, I'm going your way

[decides to quit while she's ahead]

 

EG: That was lovely.

AG: See? Easy.



 



It's All About the Grandmothers - Part the Second

The second (eccentric) grandmother arrived twelve minutes late in a car that I didn't recognize. After denying me the right of helping her, she trucked her twelve bags into the house, ignored the slippers we'd bought for her, and handed us a twelve-pack of sparkling water. Eventually, the small talk began to bore her and she launched into an update of her home's renovations, which she described as if relating the procedural steps entailed in a lobotomy.

Before long, the topic of dinner was introduced. We mentioned that the turkey would be ready around 6.00. She balked. Her response to our inquiries as to her reaction: "I have a date at eight."

Did I mention she's sixty-six?

And at eight she went.

It's All About the Grandmothers - Part the First

The first (actress) grandmother was scheduled to arrive at two o'clock.
The first (actress) grandmother was scheduled to arrive at two o'clock, but arrived at three.

A small, Asian lady in the essential small, Asian mode of transportation (the Toyota Camry), I stood watching in the window as she parked in the driveway. I also stood watching in the window as she did not exit the Toyota Camry, but sat placidly for over a minute. Finally, she exited, and proceeded to walk down the street in the midst of snowfall.

Did I mention she's seventy-four?

When she returned ten minutes later, I opened the door and attempted to take her bags. She unleashed a broken English harangue in which I was repeatedly reprimanded for not immediately throwing the door open upon her crossing of the driveway threshold.

The actress grandmother had made her entrance.

Political Cartoons

http://www.cagle.com/2012/11/bye-bye-birdie/

This political cartoon, wittily titled after the wretched 1961 musical, is a humorous commentary on the 2012 presidential election. The cartoon depicts the Sesame Street character Big Bird driving a car, to the top of which is strapped a kennel containing Mitt Romney. During a presidential debate, candidate Romney said that he would cut funding for public broadcasting, despite the fact that he loved Big Bird, a comment which raised almost as much ire as it did eyebrows. The point of the picture is to put a comical spin on Romney's loss of the election, showing Big Bird as the victor with an imprisoned Romney.

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/politicalcartoons/ig/Political-Cartoons/Seceding-From-America.htm

In this cartoon, the various post-election secessionist movements are lampooned in the figure of an overweight tricorne-wearing idiot exiting a house labeled "America" whilst shouting the valediction, "Don't beg me to stay, I'm seceding!" Those inside react with the murmur, "Quick! Change the locks." The cartoonist is satirizing those who wish to secede from the union in reaction to Obama's victory by portraying them as unwanted dolts believing they are making a massive statement in leaving a group who can only be thrilled by their absence.

The Dumbest Generation

was written by the most frustrating author. In particular, while the argument is fairly cohesive overall and supported by backbreaking quantities of evidence, I found that it was organized in a spectacularly strange manner. While each chapter was a neatly synthesized brick of information, I found the finished piece lacking in the structural elements necessary to piece the argument together. In particular, the book lacks much in the way of a conclusion, instead substituting a historical and literary rant that quotes Thoreau, Lincoln, and Emily Dickinson, all which the author uses to bemoan the sad state he has described in his book without really tying anything together. Bauerlein also fails to return to the motifs he used at the argument's outset, and the whole segment of the younger population as described in the introduction, a problem which Bauerlein himself calls "no less disturbing," have apparently, with the exception of the collegiate political organizations which he endeavours to discredit, disappeared into oblivion, obscured behind the two hundred pages of statistics he has carefully assembled. His argument may be a profound one, and his points may be sharp, but it has been lost in a swirling ocean of numbers and facts which neglect to align themselves with the overarching theme of the treatise, and which are thus only significant if the reader chooses to make them so. Regardless however well supported and truthful, an argument that structurally unsound will always collapse.

Hallowe'en

Although I regrettably have no pictures to show for it, I distinctly recall one Hallowe'en in my younger years where I was determined to dress as the Headless Horseman, with whom I was obsessed. This was a short-lived endeavor, however, as no one opening the first five doors I went to showed any recognition at the sight of a headless body holding a jack-o'-lantern. I went home. That's how a lack of culture on the part of my neighbors ruined my Hallowe'en. That's also how I suffered from a candy deficiency for the rest of that week.

I recently attended a cocktail party wherein I attempted to make something rhetorical out of Hallowe'en by bringing a grave-shaped box labeled "The Tea Party" in which I spun a top labeled "William F. Buckley". Buckley, a truly intellectual conservative, is thus spinning in his grave due to the actions of the Tea Party.

Network

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! We know things are bad - worse than bad, They're crazy! It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad! You've got to say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

There's a reason this speech is #19 on the American Film Institute's list of the best movie quotes of all time. This speech is rather novel in comparison to other movie speeches, as it is delivered by a television personality on live broadcast. As a result, there is no particular character or set of characters that it is meant for, and it might just as well be addressed to the film audience as it is to the audience in the film.

Often has it been said that the television is a propaganda machine illustrating the fact that if anything is said often enough and loudly enough, it will be believed. Repetition, then, is both the act and the counteract in this case, as the character delivering the speech uses it in protest of the current state of affairs, as portrayed through media propaganda. By repeating the phrase, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore," he successfully drives home the point of his fury at the lack of efficacy of the general populace.

It must be remembered, however, that this speech is the collective ramblings of a half-crazed maniac, Howard Beale, who is broadcast only for shock value. Still, the exploitation of his words by the institution he wishes to destroy only makes his diatribe all the more poignant. Indeed, what starts out as an impassioned, but articulate speech on the dire state of world affairs gradually descends into an incoherent tirade, repeating the same sentence. This repetition is equally powerful when used in this way, as it apparently overtakes Beale himself and becomes him. The character is the phrase and the phrase is the character, an attitude which is never really dropped for the remainder of the film.

Darkness

I have a friend that had his right eye partially stabbed out in a rather absurd accident the summer after his eighth grade year. Sticks and sensory organs generally do not mix well, but the doctors put on their Merlin hats and conjured up an artificial lens through which he can now see. Except that he can't. He reads with his right shut and his pupils are unable to dilate or constrict, meaning that he has to close it when he walks into bright sunlight, as well. However, this means he can see very well in the darkness.

For some reason or other, I adjust very slowly to the darkness. Maybe my eyes can't dilate quickly enough, but I stand blinking long after everyone else has started running hurdle races at dusk. For an actor expected to run offstage as soon as the lights black out, this can be a problem. My friend, also an actor, were in a show together last summer and found a solution to this problem. Whenever the lights would go out and everyone rushed into the wings, he'd find me and the one-eyed invalid would lead me offstage. How I love irony.

Snowball

Is not Napoleon. Unfortunately, I still have not procured a copy of Singer's essay. This makes what is asked of me rather difficult. However, I went to the opera Nabucco this weekend, and, in the absence of a better replacement, I think I'll write about that.

I have never felt less affected by an opera. The production quality was spectacular, the scenery dazzling, costumes gorgeous, music beautiful, but the difference is that there was almost nothing to connect to. The scale was too epic. Granted, many of the greatest artistic achievements were of an epic scale, Lawrence of Arabia, for instance, but they at least centered on the struggles of one particular character with whom the audience could identify and sympathise with, if they so choose. Nabucco does not focus on the struggle of an identifiable person and is thus an impersonal struggle. I did not cry at the deaths of the characters, nor at their plight, nor at the poignant encore. Fish.

Imagery

1. "The eternal note of sadness"
2. "Heads of the characters hammer through daisies"
3. "A team of white robots descended from the sky like dandelion seeds drifting on the wind in tight military formation"

Small Talk

In England, the small talk is about the weather and everyone's health.

In Scotland, the small talk is about the heather and everyone's wealth.