I wrote a blog about some stuff

***Note***
This blog is best read whilst enjoying this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JGHI4TAC5U
It also helps if you time your reading so that you're about halfway done at around 1:05 in the song

What a swell year for blogs it has been. This year fulfilled my long desire to feel like a pretentious writer who blogs all the time and makes their people/family feel bad for not reading them. I feel as if I was able to make a real change in world events through my gritting and unrelenting blogs with such topics as: English, books, and even more English. Blogs mainly served as a way for me to reflect on the weeks happenings with relation to our class. Many things that we did seemed fairly laborious or boring at the time. (Talking about you Beloved and any in-class essay). But come blog time I was able to reflect on these tasks in a more positive light. Sure, reading Beloved may have been one of the worst experiences I've ever had reading a book. But blogs allowed me to reflect on my qualms and realize that I had much to gain from these tortures. Blogging about my ever lasting love for in-class essays helped me realize that many of my problems with those guys were intrinsic to me and could not be blamed entirely on the prompts. Blogging also provided additional opportunities for me to ponder on my independent reading books. Since everyone got to choose their independent reading books it meant that there was no time to discuss each specific novel in class. However, I could blog about my books and make realizations that weren't present in my initial reflections. I would also say how reading my fellow classmates blogs exposed me to a wide range of unique and diverse perspectives and helped me culture a greater appreciation for individualism but then I would be a filthy liar. I seemed to be notorious for forgetting to read other people's blogs so sorry about that other people.
Also, blogs=free points=profit?

I wanted to end this final blog on some super profound/emotional note but I really suck at those things and ain't nobody got time for that. So here's the next best thing: a photo of a guinea pirate of course. Nature's most feared animal/pirate hybrid.

sometimes I think no one reads these things, so I wanna put really dumb stuff for the title to see if anyone notices

The subject of this particular blog tonight is is something I think deserves everyone's appreciation: music in movies. Normally, when I'm watching a movie,  music is the one of the last things that I tend to notice. It's something that usually isn't in the foreground and plays more of a support role. However, without music, films would be absolutely abysmal. I was thinking about this recently as I've been nerding it up this week and watching The Lord of the Rings film series again. Howard Shore, the composer for the trilogy, is able to capture the emotions of what is happening in a particular scene and translate each feeling into music in a remarkably beautiful way. His music isn't something that you consciously hear as you watch the movies. It is something that you feel. Often the music is in the background and seeks to only enhance the emotions of each scene. This is exactly what I think music in movies should strive to accomplish. However, what is so brilliant about his composing is that he knows when to make the music the audiences main focus. This is often done in battle scenes or when there is little dialogue between the characters.  The music makes what the actors are doing something more. Their is a greater sense of what is happening could be real and isn't just being acted out by full grown men in make up.


This song perfectly exemplifies how Howard Shores composing is able to make a scene feel like more then just a movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAb-fqBrUsY

Space is a Pretty Cool Place

So if I'm not mistaken I recall you saying that we could occasionally have a few blogs that weren't totally related to English. And seeing as my recent blogs have been the paragon for all blogs I figured I would be a hipster and deviate away from the mainstream blog posts. Anyway, I came home today and was perusing the google news website and found an intriguing article in the science section. This one to be exact: http://www.space.com/20720-earth-like-alien-planets-discovery.html
For those of you without computers but who are still somehow reading this blog I will elaborate on what the article says. Basically,  it says "Science is like the coolest freaking thing ever and we should all do sciency stuff all the time because that would be rad". But actually, apparently 3 planets were discovered outside of our solar system that may have the perfect conditions for life. The zone in which these type of planets exist is known as the "habitable zone" and is considered a place where theoretically, and on a large enough time line, life should be able to evolve. The star around which these planets is 7 billion years. By comparison, our sun is roughly 5 billion years old, so these planets have had ample time to develop life. Of course this solar system is 1200 light years away so we'll never be able to visit it in my lifetime. But it is encouraging to think that life on other planets seems to be an almost inevitable event, especially when you realize the sheer amount of galaxies and solar systems in our universe. 


 SCIENCE!!!! WOOOOO!!!!!!

Hobbitssss

So I finished my third and final independent reading novel a couple of weeks and this of course meant only one thing: I could finally start reading The Hobbit!!!! I was finally able to open this beautiful book that had been left unattended next to my bed for nearly 4 months. I understand that The Hobbit probably isn't the most demanding book to read, but it's definitely better then reading nothing. I was especially interested in trying this book after I saw the film adaptation and thought "Wow, that kinda sucked." I was certain that Tolkien had written a better novel then that which was portrayed in the movies. And of course, I was right. I'm only 136 pgs into this book so far but I've read more then enough to form an opinion on it. When I first began this novel I noticed something about Tolkiens writing style. It was oddly simple in a way that brilliantly worked with the events occurring. I'm pretty sure that Tolkien initially wrote The Hobbit to be a children's book and this perhaps explains the more simplistic diction. This is of course, not to say that his writing style is inherently bad. Tolkien presents himself as an author who doesn't need to prove his merit through long ACT words and convoluted sentences that are free from order and relevance. Instead, he describes through an omniscient eye what is happening, using only words that a child could understand, but that a young adult could still appreciate. The Hobbit is a book rich in imagery and detail that finds the most adequate ways to depict a seemingly simple tale of adventure. It is also very different from the film. Mostly, in that unlike the movie, the first hour of the book isn't a dinner party

rant about drugs and stuff

For my final independent reading novel I chose DMT:The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences. This books focuses primarily on the psychedelic Dimethyltryptamine: an incredibly potent drug that immerses the user in a brief, but profound glimpse at another reality. I chose this novel because I had seen a documentary based on this novel on Netflix and was intrigued by this relatively unknown substance. What interested me even more was the claims that the author, Rick Strassman, made about this particular drug. Basically, he believes that DMT occurs naturally in the brain in the pineal gland. He makes this claim by asserting that tryptophan, an amino acid that is found in all living things, can synthesize with two other enzymes in the brain to form tryptamine, an essential component necessary to form DMT. I thought it was absolutely fascinating that an incredibly powerful psychedelic like DMT was produced naturally in the human brain. But then I actually read the book. In this book Strassman explains how DMT could potentially formed in the brain and what implications this would have on people's lives. From 1990-1995 he injected nearly 60 volunteers with DMT and studied its subsequent effects on the users. The effects of the drug could be felt in the volunteers only 30 seconds after the injection. The user would then see an array of geometric patterns and lights in the test room before being essentially transported to another realm. They would report encountering anthropomorphic beings who guided them throughout their trip. These beings would often communicate with the volunteers through non-verbal means and would grant them some new insight on life. This entire encounter lasted around 5-10 minutes to Strassman but appeared to be a lifetime to the patients. Strassman likened these events as being analogous to near-death experiences. He believes that endogenous DMT (DMT produced naturally in the brain) is released periodically through a persons life to assist them with stressful situations. This is where I started to think of everything in the book as completely ridiculous. Just because the necessary ingredients to synthesize DMT are produced in the brain doesn't mean it is actually created. And to speculate further on this erratic notion by claiming that this remarkably potent psychedelic is released throughout a persons life is naive and rash. soooo yeah. I was getting really tired of people saying that DMT is found in the brain when there is absolutely no discernible evidence to support that claim right now so I needed to get my rant in. but yeah, drugs are bad and what not so stay away from those pesky guys

I found a way to use the word 'fortnight' in my blog tonight.

Normally when I'm in a sour mood books seem to be the last place I ever want to turn to (making book puns already). It often seems difficult for me to focus on reading when I'm perturbed and this only results in further frustration. However, I have started to wonder that this problem isn't attributed solely to that I'm reading, but what it is I'm reading. I'm sure there are many people in this world who can manage reading multiple books at once. Or those who can breeze through novel's and reading requirements as if they were nothing. I, however, am different. I don't allocate too much of my free time for literature and is therefore problematic for me to read multiple stories simultaneously or even finish a book in under a fortnight. This ties into my earlier point because much of what I read these days is required for this class. Of course I have some freedom in my choices (the 3 novels we could pick for the independent reading project), but these novels are all essentially the same and offer no especially unique idea's. So reading in relatively recent time periods, since school started, has not helped me deal with or alleviate problem's since I don't have much control over what I'm reading. Trying to read The Road whilst in a chipper mood is simply impossible. Reading Beloved without wanting to jam a stake through my eyes was also pretty hard. And trying to figure out what is happening in Emily Dickinson's mind as she writes her mood shattering poetry is torture. But reading books I get to choose definitely helps my attitude. I don't think the content or genre of the books I read for pleasure much matters. I thoroughly enjoy reading when I can do so at my leisure and have an interest in subject matter. This being said, I can't wait to finish any reading requirements we will have for this class. The Hobbit  has been gathering dust next to my bed for nearly 3 months since I haven't had time for it. I'm also interested in No Country for Old Men, Fight Club, maybe some more Cormac McCarthy and  Tolkien if I have time before college starts.

Obligatory Poetry Blog

In class the other day I initially chose #19 from the list of definition's of poetry. This quote reads as "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things." I'm not sure why exactly I chose this quote. It just stood out to me. After much contemplation I decided that this quote meant that poetry isn't a form of expressing emotions; but instead a way to escape them. This of course only makes sense if you want to escape happiness for anger and frustration since poetry does nothing but annoy me. Another quote that really stuck out to me was the one by Isaac Newton: "(Poetry is) a kind of ingenious nonsense." I really liked this one because it describes exactly how I feel about the majority of poems that I read. At first glance, most poems seem vague and lack any inherent meaning. But upon further reading, it is usually likely to find implicit messages that were not visible before. Whether or not these messages were intended is often irrelevant since it only matters what people interpret it as. However, I still think that poetry is just a way for authors to string together incoherent and purposefully ambiguous phrases in hopes that people will mistake complexity for proficiency.