Thursday, October 30, 2008
Vietnamese Food
I don't understand what it is with Vietnamese food that gets me. Okay, for example, tomorrow is Halloween and all I can think about is "well, I'm gonna be in Brooklyn, maybe I could talk Tom into eating Viet". It's so weird. I'm addicted. I guess I could just buy some vermicelli, scallions and peanuts and I would be perfectly okay but then who sneak that little salad under the vermicelli like the Vietnamese restaurants do? Who would bring out a gorgeous plate of food with that little clear carrot sauce? I want some right now! Maybe I should not be writing a blog about food... but, I mean, Oh Myyy God! It's so good. I want some right now. MMMmmMm It's kinda like when I crave only certain chocolates i.e, ghirardeli, lindt and/or dove, I hate that hershey garbage. I had some pizza for dinner, it sucked! I want Vietnamese food, hmm maybe some chocolate too.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau was born in Massachusetts in the early 1800's. He was a part of a poor family that sold pencils but attended renowned schools such as Concord Academy and then Harvard College. He worked as a teacher for short time before quitting because he could not punish the students. He was unable to find another teaching job at this time. However, this was around the time he met Ralph Waldo Emerson. Many people believe this to be the most influential event of his life. I believe it is because a lot of what he does later seems to have been influenced by this.
I believe that Ellen Sewall's rejection to Thoreau's marriage proposal in 1840 also impacted him tremendously. Not only did she reject him but she also rejected his brother before him. She was pressure from her family because they believed he was too radical and financially unstable. This, I think, would negatively impact any man. There's also the fact that he moved into a shack which was relatively far from the rest of society to be alone to write five years later. The sad part of it which is stated online was that "Walden was met with scant interest. He revised the work eight times before a publisher accepted it, and the book found only marginal success during Thoreau's lifetime."(Spark notes p.1)
If his life was not sad enough, Thoreau's relationship with Emerson slowly faded due to tension most likely caused by Thoreau being so close with Lidian, Emerson's second wife. He moves back into his family home and takes selling pencils. As the slavery debate was taking place at this time he took an active role in speaking out against slavery. However, in 1862 at the age of 44, he dies of tiberculosis.
Works Cited
Walden
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/walden/context.html
I believe that Ellen Sewall's rejection to Thoreau's marriage proposal in 1840 also impacted him tremendously. Not only did she reject him but she also rejected his brother before him. She was pressure from her family because they believed he was too radical and financially unstable. This, I think, would negatively impact any man. There's also the fact that he moved into a shack which was relatively far from the rest of society to be alone to write five years later. The sad part of it which is stated online was that "Walden was met with scant interest. He revised the work eight times before a publisher accepted it, and the book found only marginal success during Thoreau's lifetime."(Spark notes p.1)
If his life was not sad enough, Thoreau's relationship with Emerson slowly faded due to tension most likely caused by Thoreau being so close with Lidian, Emerson's second wife. He moves back into his family home and takes selling pencils. As the slavery debate was taking place at this time he took an active role in speaking out against slavery. However, in 1862 at the age of 44, he dies of tiberculosis.
Works Cited
Walden
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/walden/context.html
Friday, October 10, 2008
Aldous Huxley
I guess you're all wondering who I've chosen... it's Aldous Huxley. I chose him because he did drugs and admitted to liking it. He did not lecture about how it screwed him up, probably because trying a drug does not actually screw you up, getting addicted does.
Huxley had somewhat of a depressing life, so he is allowed a vice. When he was fourteen his mother died, which most people don't realize that in itself can impact a person tremendously. If that was not enough he went partially blind two years later. He was able to regain some sight in one eye and learned how to read braille, and to me, this shows a lot of character. However, he was unable to pursue what it was he really wanted to do, become a scientist or fight in the front lines of WWI. This must have been hard on him seeing as how his grandfather and brother were both biologists. Huxley decided to follow in his father's footsteps it seems with becoming a writer.
Aldous Huxley's first works were satirical/cynical pieces on society. After that he started writing about fictional places, which is somewhat ironic as he states in The Doors of Perception that he is not very imaginative. Writing about places that do not exist and so vividly as if you had been there not too long ago must take quite some imagination. Toward the latter part of his life he became known as a guru for Californian hippies (keep in mind this is the fifties and sixties). He experienced and wrote on mescaline and after trying LSD showed some interest in Hinduism, but then again who wouldn't. Not too surprisingly as his life started out depressing it too ended that way. His house and papers were burned down in a bush fire. Two years later he died but has left a lasting impression as it has been almost forty-five years since he passed and we are still studying him.
"Half of the human race lives in manifest obedience to the lunar rhythm; and there is evidence to show that the psychological and therefore the spiritual life, not only of women, but of men too, mysteriously ebbs and flows with the changes of the moon. There are unreasoned joys, inexplicable miseries, laughters and remorses without a cause."
-Aldous Huxley
Huxley had somewhat of a depressing life, so he is allowed a vice. When he was fourteen his mother died, which most people don't realize that in itself can impact a person tremendously. If that was not enough he went partially blind two years later. He was able to regain some sight in one eye and learned how to read braille, and to me, this shows a lot of character. However, he was unable to pursue what it was he really wanted to do, become a scientist or fight in the front lines of WWI. This must have been hard on him seeing as how his grandfather and brother were both biologists. Huxley decided to follow in his father's footsteps it seems with becoming a writer.
Aldous Huxley's first works were satirical/cynical pieces on society. After that he started writing about fictional places, which is somewhat ironic as he states in The Doors of Perception that he is not very imaginative. Writing about places that do not exist and so vividly as if you had been there not too long ago must take quite some imagination. Toward the latter part of his life he became known as a guru for Californian hippies (keep in mind this is the fifties and sixties). He experienced and wrote on mescaline and after trying LSD showed some interest in Hinduism, but then again who wouldn't. Not too surprisingly as his life started out depressing it too ended that way. His house and papers were burned down in a bush fire. Two years later he died but has left a lasting impression as it has been almost forty-five years since he passed and we are still studying him.
"Half of the human race lives in manifest obedience to the lunar rhythm; and there is evidence to show that the psychological and therefore the spiritual life, not only of women, but of men too, mysteriously ebbs and flows with the changes of the moon. There are unreasoned joys, inexplicable miseries, laughters and remorses without a cause."
-Aldous Huxley
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