kelly’s blog

You-Tube is a website in which you can look up anything from rap videos to mini clips of history events. I highly enjoy looking up videos on famous celebrities and/or interesting topics of interests of mine. For example, I enjoy looking up videos on the Kennedy family because I find their family history very intense and interesting. When we watched the clip on Sherman Alexie, I had no idea that his voice would even sound like that for one and I was very interested in what he had to say. After reading the novel to actually hearing him speak, I was surprised to see how sarcastic and humorous he is and very surprised I actually laughed out loud a lot of the times while watching it. It’s surprising to see that Sherman Alexie is that sarcastic being that his writing is quite difficult to pick up the humor from his analogies and the hidden jokes he makes in his story.

Trickster is a word that can have many definitions. It can mean pulling a prank on someone or a practical joke. When I think of the word trickster, I think of an old lady, perhaps even my grandmother saying to me when I was little while rocking on a chair saying, “Ohh that trickster”. On pages 56-57, an example of a trickster is when the Indian boys run by making Indian noises w/their mouths and pretend shoot one another and the one yells, “Bang, you’re dead Indian.”

Marriage is a big part of everyone’s life. Some people get married just for financial reasons or social status reasons to make themselves seem more important or happier with their social life. I’m taking a course now in “Marriage and Family Relations” and there are thousands of theories as to why couples get together to get married. The relationship between the couple in Blood Wedding is based on social ranking rather than love for one another. Their relationship reminds me of my friends parents marriage- her dad and her step mom’s relationship that is- where they’re not together for bonding or loving one another, they’re together for financial reasons and their only source of communication to one another is by cell phone. Even though that example isn’t that closely related to what happens in the story Blood Wedding because the couple barely knew one another before marrying each other and the only reason why they got together was because of social rank, it relates somewhat to status in society.

Even though when we first started watching the clips from the internet with the obnoxious Chinese music and the huge bold words that fly across the screen so fast to complete a small story that doesn’t really makes sense but in a way does, they do have some connection to literature and are in a way, art in my opinion. I don’t find them necessarily “fun” to watch because it takes some time to really grasp what you’re watching but for the artist or the author of the pieces of work, it was probably fun for him or her to create it. I found the first digital piece, with the Chinese music, very frustrating. My frustration was probably due to the music mostly but also from how fast you had to read the words to put the pieces of the story together. The second one, with the lies that everyone adds to the website, I found a lot more interesting because of the random people that have visited the website and added their own specific lie to add to it. It makes you wonder who wrote it, how they found the website, and why did they chose to write that lie. Although the clips when first viewed are confusing as hell and sometimes annoying, I think they should looked at as art because only the author or the artist will ever understand the real meaning behind the piece of work.

Literature can be found anywhere, especially in song lyrics. Music is definitely apart of my life. I listen to everything from country to rap. Every song has a meaning behind it and the artist who writes the lyrics writes about something going on in their life at the moment. It tells a story of what he or she is feeling and what happens at the end. I’m always looking up lyrics online and saving parts of lyrics that I can relate to or what I’m feeling at the moment. Certain songs go with my certain moods. Anything you gives you an effect or a feeling after you read it, I think is literature.

Right now I am watching the Steeler game and doing this quite fast so this is going to be short and probably not as good as it could be. When I first read the poems, I read through them fast and had no idea what I read at first. But once I went back and read through the poems slowly, I finally could see that all the poems connected and told a story. It’s the process of Tayo’s ceremony and the steps, feelings, and conversations, going on while the ceremony is taking place. There are a lot of graphic detailed things said in the poems where I almost stopped reading and was about to put the book down. But from the graphic details told in the poems, shows how angry Tayo is towards the white community not understanding or accepting the Native American culture. You slowly see how Tayo changes throughout his ceremony from the passages.

Fairy tales are meant to be told to children and are usually about dragons, goblins, elves, or any other magical creatures. Many children remember fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderalla for years and years. Kids however usually don’t notice the bad parts or the secretly hidden true meanings behind these tales though. From reading, “Why Theory”, and analyzing both translations of Little Red Riding Hood, it’s easy to say that some fairy tales really can be “scary tales” to children, if children picked up on the real meanings behind them.
In the second version of Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault, the moral of the story is so obviously blunt about the scary truth of the world and has very questionable meanings to it. For example, the first line of the moral says, “Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf.” When I first read that statement, I initially translated that as if attractive young ladies talk to strange “wolves” or men, they will be persuaded into doing sexual activities with the “wolf” or man (or “provide dinner for a wolf”) There are many interruptions you can make about this statement of the moral but is this a story children ages 5-8 or 9 should hear, even if they don’t comprehend the real meaning of it? I think some fairy tales are meant for older children and maybe adults.