On my way to class I heard a few people talking about the author and poet Edgar Allan Poe. They were discussing about their assignment on him and how if the police officers could hear the heartbeat why did they not say anything. I was confused when they said it so I decided to do some research on him. I figured out it was The Tell Tale Heart, which is about a guy who kills this old man out of paranoia. Throughout the story cops come to check things out. He than hear the old man’s heart beat as if he was alive even though he is under the floorboard. At the end he confesses to the police officers out of insanity.
Sympathy, Sex, and Backgrounds
While re-reading Logic for my previous blog post, I got stuck reading Body again to my friend who is a biochem major, while mostly we laughed about the pornographic nature of the poems, he understood them, the words made sense. I, on the other hand, had to look words up and decipher the poems. Due to his discipline, the poems were easily read by my friend, while for me, it was the opposite. They confused me. Then I brought up Grey’s Anatomy and how the poems kind of reminded me of the show. I’ve always loved Grey’s Anatomy and I’ve rewatched the series several times.
I did a blog post about the correlation between sex and science after our initial discussion about Body, then this morning I was watching season 8 of Grey’s and was thinking about one of the primary concerns that real doctors have about the show; the amount of sex the characters have in the hospital. Continue reading “Sympathy, Sex, and Backgrounds”
Forensics and Everett
Warning: This blog post contains content relating to sensitive topics, such as murder and suicide.
This past summer, I worked in a medical examiner’s office. A medical examiner, also known as a forensic pathologist, is a medical physician who examines the bodies of people who died suddenly, unexpectedly, or violently. Their job is to determine the cause of death by conducting an autopsy on the deceased. Through this experience, I gained a plethora of knowledge in anatomy and physiology through the examination of different cases and received a glimpse of the darker side of humanity. Majority of the deceased that arrived at the office had either passed away from disease or old age. However, there were some cases where the cause of death was not natural. Cases of murder, suicide, vehicle accident, and others occasionally arrived. Police officers or family members needed the medical examiner’s help to find answers.
Poet to College Student
As we arrived to class we started to talk about the reading that was assigned. It was to read Zulus in Re:f(gesture) by Percival Everett. We then split into groups and started talking about what the poems are and our interpretation of them. They were abecedarian poems but they were not exact like an actual abecedarian poem. Percival Everett had his own way of creating poetry. An Abecedarian poem is a type of acrostic poem that is arranged by alphabetical order, the initial line beginning with the first letter of the alphabet. When I first heard of this it reminded me of the alphabet song that we all used to learn in elementary school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-pZPvr2tY
Consolidate the Disciplines
The foundation of science is supposed to be about making new discoveries and forming theories, and then testing out those theories through experiments. It seems that many people often forget that so much of science is discovery and discussion, much like it is in humanities. For example, astronomers can look at the same night sky for their entire life and make new discoveries about it every day, just how a book can be re-read over and over and still new interpretations can be gained with each re-read. Also, certain technology is required to make scientific observations, similar to how we need supplementary materials such as the Bedford in this course. So, if so much of both science and humanities is about taking a closer look with the help of technology and forming explanations for why things are the way they are, then why are they often viewed as being so disparate?
A Tribute to Blogging
Over the course of my academic career, I can safely say that, I have written more essays, research papers, and response papers than I can count. However, those types of formal and conventional writings have restrained me from learning how to truly write. Therefore, as my tenth and final blog post, I decided to pay tribute to the blogging assignment for teaching me how to write and the many other skills I have learned along the way. Continue reading “A Tribute to Blogging”
The Sense in Nonsense
This semester I took a course entitled “The Great War in Literature and the Arts.” The class focused on the novels, music, poetry, and visual arts inspired by World War I. For the course, I wrote a research paper on the German invasion of Belgium that occurred at the war’s outbreak and how its brutality affected Belgian poetry of the era. Much of my research focused on the unjust execution of thousands of Belgian civilians by German soldiers. Reading about these atrocities was extremely difficult, especially since this was my first time learning about them.
In order to glean the invasion’s effect on poetry, I analyzed the work of the Belgian poet, Paul van Ostaijen, who witnessed the German siege of Antwerp and saw the chaotic carnage it produced. As a result of his experiences, van Ostaijen wrote Occupied City, a book of poetry that describes Antwerp at the time of the attack and relays the terrors that transpired.
MGM vs MTM
MGM stands for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, created in 1924 for the production and distribution of movies and TV shows in the United States. Known for their famous logo, Leo the Lion, who was inside golden film and would open every movie or show with a loud roar. MTM represents The Mary Tyler Moore show established in 1969 by Mary Tyler Moore and her husband. Her famous show logo was an orange kitten named Mimsie inside a circle of golden ribbon, that would meow at the start of every show.
Gaslighting as a Both/And
Today, while procrastinating, my roommate sent me a link to a very interesting TED Talk about gaslighting. I’ll link the video below if for any reason this blog post intrigues you. But while watching it and also simultaneously racking my brain for an idea for a blog post, I thought again of Not Sidney’s concept of fesmerization.
Gaslighting is defined by Ariel Leve in the video as, “an emotionally abusive tactic that makes the victim question their own sanity and perception of reality”. In the video she speaks about her chaotic childhood growing up with her mother that was a very successful poet. She explains several instances in which her mother would use various forms of gaslighting to convince Ariel that her outrageous parties and gaggles of insults were not real and that they didn’t actually harm her. After explaining these stories she shares four tactics that she had developed to cope with her mother’s abuse.
It’s complicated
Communication seems simple, so we keep it simple, but that is where it gets complicated. Percival Everett explains this better than I would with his quote in Erasure, “It’s incredible that a sentence is ever understood. Mere sounds strung together by some agent attempting to mean something, but the meaning need not and does not confine itself to that intention. Those sounds, strung as they are in their peculiar and particular order, never change, but do nothing but change. Even if grammatical recognitions are crude, meaning is present. Even if the words are utterly confusing, there is meaning”. Continue reading “It’s complicated”