scottie

Despite all of the conversations not regarding the English curriculum in Mr. Wasserman’s class, we actually achieved a lot. I really enjoyed the activities we did, mainly the competition against McGeary’s class. The beginning of the year was relaxing and we eased our way into evil, I honestly didn’t know we were actually doing work until we received that ginourmous packet about evil, and should it be taught in our curriculum. A Lesson Before Dying was a lot more fun for me, because I thought it really was a good piece of literature. I liked the way those lessons went, and I liked the class discussions that we handled ourselves. Macbeth really wasn’t the most enjoyable book to read, but the activities we did were really a lot of fun, and that Scrap book we made was pretty cool. This brings me up to about this time, and reading Huck Finn which really was also fun to learn about. I’m looking forward to doing more acting, and hands-on activities in English, and I think it would also help if I got to meet people from the other class. Mixing up the classes would be fun.

Listening to Sacha Baron Cohen on NPR news and WHYY Fresh Air, I find this interview pretty funny, too. His interview is completely true, and Sacha goes on to say how Borat started, and how people reacted to him as this character. When he approaches the skateboarders in his first time at doing this type of comedy, people didn’t know that he was in character. People don’t really know how to react to him sometimes, and that’s where he gets the most “kick” out his characters in Ali G, or Borat. I’ve seen Ali G a couple of times, and Mr. Cohen gets some very important people to appear on his show, and the funniest part about it these questions that he asks them, and their reactions. This is why his movie “Borat” is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen. His way of making fun of society really catches a lot of people’s attention such as myself and others my age, but he also mad to deal with people that were completely against the showing of this movie. During the first day of production, he had two people arrested and staying a night in jail. Also, while he was filming around the White House in a green van, he got pulled over, because it could have been “ Al Qaeda.” He still stays in character with the policemen just to see if he will be able to add more to his shows. I hope his character on Ali G remains as funny, because I really enjoy this type of comedy.

I just finished Huckleberry Finn, and I realized that this book didn’t really need to happen in the first place. I mean Ms. Watson turned out to be dead the entire time, which essentially means the Jim was free all along, and Tom keeps that a secret. This really isn’t fair to Jim because he really didn’t need to go through all of this commotion. Jim is constantly being mistreated by white people, and he feels terrible a lot of the time, and his living spaces aren’t comfortable and he lives a terrible life. In this article, http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/12/23/163044.php it also talks about how there is racism still in soccer, everywhere. It’s terrible to see that there is racism in the “worlds” sport. It’s really unfortunate and one of the terrible things is that the governing body of soccer, UEFA, doesn’t really know how to handle the issue. They aren’t handing out heavy enough fines, and black players are still being mistreated. “Players from black ethnic backgrounds playing their trade in
Poland,
Hungary,
Slovakia, and
Romania are subject to monkey chanting and being pelted with bananas every week.” People everyday try to say that racism isn’t really present into today’s society because we don’t really hear out roars from minorities that much. Minorities will never live a proper life because in our society, almost everyday stereotypes.  This ties a lot into Jim’s life because if Jim were ever to be seen in the raft or canoe at anytime, people would already have false conceptions about Jim just because he’s black. The funny thing is though is that Jim is the only “real man” in this book.

The segment of The Colbert Report that I just watched was very satirical and very funny. The entire time Steven Colbert makes fun of the fact that
Iraq is a complete mess. He is dealing with the issue of how the
U.S. is going to “keep its course” in
Iraq, and he satirically comes up with the idea of The Draft. Now obviously, you can tell the Steven Colbert doesn’t agree with the war in
Iraq and that’s why many of his comments are very funny. He references the war in
Iraq to
Vietnam saying that these two are so similar, just like Mary-Kate, and Ashley being similar, and the Olsen twins. The message behind this clip of The Colbert Report is that the
U.S. is doing more harm in
Iraq then good. He’s promoting the idea that this entire war is stupid and should have never been fought in the first place. The entire time while Colbert is making fun of the war he puts up clips to the right side of his face showing blurbs of other up surd things, that have happened or will never happen. Overall, this clip of The Colbert Report was very funny.

We had an interesting discussion today in
Iraq and the point that I remembered most was about Dick Chaney and his partial ownership in the Oil Company of Halliburton. It seems almost ridiculous for our Vice President to be apart our war through his oil company. For the war supplies, the
U.S. buys their oil from his company. Even though he froze his stock, it is still growing, and once he is out of office, he will still be a very rich man. His company is obviously an independent company and has nothing to do with the government except for supplying them. His company has boosted the price of their gas that they are giving to the
United States up to 25 dollars a gallon. For all of the tanks, and cars that we have spread out in
Iraq and other middle-eastern countries, that is a lot of money flowing into Halliburton. It seems that he wouldn’t mind if the U.S. held their course in Iraq because he is gaining from the
U.S. being there everyday. 25 dollars is a ton of money for a machine that will burn up that gallon in less than 15 miles maximum. About the war in Iraq in general, I’m completely against the idea of adding more troops because I feel that the more troops that we have in
Iraq, the more soldiers that will die. We aren’t completely anything, and it’s not helping them out much either. 70 percent of the people here that are not in the war in
Iraq are against the entire war in general, and thinking President Bush has handled this issue terribly. I hope we pull out soon.

Racism will always be an issue in the world. Even if something isn’t meant to be racist, there will always be the thought that the action could have been related to race. Sometimes the kids on my soccer team joke about if they weren’t picked to demonstrate in a drill in practice, it’s because of their race. It’s obviously a joke, but some people will not make a joke out of these things. In the article I found about race and violence, http://www.rnews.com/Story_2004.cfm?ID=44315&rnews_story_type=18, they speak about ways to reduce both of them. There are many preconceived notions about people of many races, and if everyone from all races could unite, we could be a great race of one. <blockquote> For Blue reducing violence in
Rochester is all about making personal connections. “If we got to know people more than there would be no reason to go shoot someone. If you’re friends with someone you’re not going to shoot your friend,” said Blue. </bockquote>This issue is interesting because race is constantly being brought up in everyday society even around here. People have to go through racism everyday and people loose lives everyday because of people being racist. This could definitely relate to Huck Finn because Jim is a black man that should be in slavery in the book, when in fact Jim should have a chance in life. He is a really nice man, and he and Huck are really nice people. They could both be in a great deal of trouble because Jim is supposed to be working on a plantation, and Huck isn’t allowed to free a slave. The article I read tried to deal with trying to stop racism and how to deal with it, and if Huck went into a society asking for Jim to be free, he could be hung.

Racism will always be an issue in the world. Even if something isn’t meant to be racist, there will always be the thought that the action could have been related to race. Sometimes the kids on my soccer team joke about if they weren’t picked to demonstrate in a drill in practice, it’s because of their race. It’s obviously a joke, but some people will not make a joke out of these things. In the article I found about race and violence, http://www.rnews.com/Story_2004.cfm?ID=44315&rnews_story_type=18, they speak about ways to reduce both of them. There are many preconceived notions about people of many races, and if everyone from all races could unite, we could be a great race of one. <blockquote> For Blue reducing violence in
Rochester is all about making personal connections. “If we got to know people more than there would be no reason to go shoot someone. If you’re friends with someone you’re not going to shoot your friend,” said Blue. </bockquote>This issue is interesting because race is constantly being brought up in everyday society even around here. People have to go through racism everyday and people loose lives everyday because of people being racist. This could definitely relate to Huck Finn because Jim is a black man that should be in slavery in the book, when in fact Jim should have a chance in life. He is a really nice man, and he and Huck are really nice people. They could both be in a great deal of trouble because Jim is supposed to be working on a plantation, and Huck isn’t allowed to free a slave. The article I read tried to deal with trying to stop racism and how to deal with it, and if Huck went into a society asking for Jim to be free, he could be hung.

Racism will always be an issue in the world. Even if something isn’t meant to be racist, there will always be the thought that the action could have been related to race. Sometimes the kids on my soccer team joke about if they weren’t picked to demonstrate in a drill in practice, it’s because of their race. It’s obviously a joke, but some people will not make a joke out of these things. In the article I found about race and violence, http://www.rnews.com/Story_2004.cfm?ID=44315&rnews_story_type=18, they speak about ways to reduce both of them. There are many preconceived notions about people of many races, and if everyone from all races could unite, we could be a great race of one. <blockquote> For Blue reducing violence in
Rochester is all about making personal connections. “If we got to know people more than there would be no reason to go shoot someone. If you’re friends with someone you’re not going to shoot your friend,” said Blue. </bockquote>This issue is interesting because race is constantly being brought up in everyday society even around here. People have to go through racism everyday and people loose lives everyday because of people being racist. This could definitely relate to Huck Finn because Jim is a black man that should be in slavery in the book, when in fact Jim should have a chance in life. He is a really nice man, and he and Huck are really nice people. They could both be in a great deal of trouble because Jim is supposed to be working on a plantation, and Huck isn’t allowed to free a slave. The article I read tried to deal with trying to stop racism and how to deal with it, and if Huck went into a society asking for Jim to be free, he could be hung.

I think satire is the funniest thing, and the great thing about satire that amuses me so much is that, all of it is fact bases. In the movie Borat, many of the people at the Rodeo show, actually believe that when Borat will go out to sing the national anthem that he is a terrorist, and he is from Iraq. The guy before that scene told Borat to shave his moustache and also to expect that from the crowd. Many people are fond of satire for the only reason that it is true. When The Daily Show makes fun of The White House and other political procedures, all they are doing is poking fun at how stupid our mistakes are. I find that Borat can be a scary movie, because our country has so many people that act this way, and I find this to be the worst part. They actually have these believes, and all Borat is doing, is exploiting this people’s beliefs, and show how messed up our country really is.

After finishing some parts of the slave narratives, it just made me look back on my past, and try to see if my life was hard or difficult physically at any point in time. If i looked hard enough, I’m sure I could look for some moments when I completely didn’t enjoy life, but overall, life is pretty sweet. I mean I live in one of the richest towns and communities in The United States. Life couldn’t get any better on the big scheme of things. These slave narratives made me see how easy my life really is. These documentaries are almost disturbing because of the pain and harm they had to go through. “Whipping was done at these markets, or trader’s yards, all the time.” This quote was from Louis Hughes in his documentary. The first time I read this sentence, I thought to myself, it seems like he is a professional at going through the pain of whipping. This sentence seems like it rolls off of his tongue. In fact, I’m sure he was just stating the facts, and actually what happened, but it’s so terrible to see and read about people that actually had to endure this type of treatment. These passages made my views of slavery a lot more clear, because I could sense the day-by-day life that each slave had. I mean in some cases, I thought the story would have a little happy part, in which, the slave enjoyed their lives, and I thought I had read a part when Annie Burton says, “If a slave man and woman wished to marry, a party would be arranged some Saturday night among the slaves. The marriage ceremony consisted of the pair jumping over a stick. If no children were born within a year or so, the wife was sold.” Imagine having to have that pressure on yourself. I mean I can’t believe these rules and behaviors that these slaves had to abide by.These narratives will be a good tie into Huck Finn because these narratives really get deep into the lives of slaves, and Mr. Wasserman said that this book was pretty much the first book that explained the life of a slave, and everything that was on his or her mind. I’ve read parts of Huck Finn, and I really enjoyed it, but after reading these narratives from these slaves, I think I will benefit a lot more from the book. I really hope that it will be a lot like the book Night that I read, because that book had a lot of meaning to it too.