#43. Standardized Mentality

I think it would be wrong to have standardized tests to test for mental stability. It would be too easy to cheat. Pretty much everyone knows how to behave whether they choose to act in that manner or not.  The answers could be easily fabricated too. Also, answers could be passed down from those who passed. To avoid this, society would have to be segregated to a point of impossibility. In "SQ" by Le Guin, this turns out to be the case as everyone is eventually in an asylum except for a secretary and a janitor. the thought of living in an asylum like that would be weird when everyone in the world is is the asylum too. Eventually people would start to just leave the unguarded facilities, but society would devolve to an extreme.Towns would have to look something like an Orwellian nightmare, where each class is put into its own separate part of town. With the threat of living an a bad segment of town people would be compelled to cheat on the test too. If I had to take a test like this I would probably try and cheat. I would not want to be considered lower class and would try as hard as possible to be in a higher caste.  I don't know why a mentality test would even be needed to implemented. I don't think mentality would have an effect on the ability of a person to perform a job. Many of the math geniuses in history have gone insane toward the end of their lives.  A mathematician could perform pretty much any job that anyone else could do, so I believe sanity should not effect what job you get. In conclusion, I think that a standardized mentality test would be ridiculous.

#41. Hero

A hero is generally the protagonist of the story.  However, sometimes the protagonist is the anti-hero, so the protagonist is also the antagonist.  An example of that is in A Clockwork Orange.  The protagonist of that is obsessed with ultra-violence. Usually heroes are outstanding symbols of morals. The stereotypical hero is like a paladin. They represent good morals, courtesy, chivalry, and fighting evil. They wear huge armor and have buff spells and get sweet battle cries.  The motivation for a paladin-like character is simply to fight evil. However, sometimes these paladin characters are stereotypical enough that sometimes story lines will make the paladin turn evil in a role reversal. This can be seen in Blizzard's Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, when Arthas becomes the Lich King. Another example of a paladin like character is Aragorn from Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. The stereotypical example of heroes comes from classic and folk tales taken from Anglo-Paganist stories and Arabian lore. These stories were passed down, elaborated, and exaggerated. That is actually how we got most archetypes in literature. Outside of the paladin there heroes who are morally grey at some points. An example of a sometimes morally grey hero would be Anakin Skywalker from Lucas's Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.  I mention specifically Episode 2 because in it, Anakin begins to see the power of the dark side of the Force and conducts morally grey actions as he descends toward becoming Darth Vader. I did not use Episode 3 because in it, Anakin, while actually becoming Darth Vader is more like the antihero mentioned before.  An example of a very morally grey hero can be seen in John Travolta's character in Pulp Fiction.  Travolta is drug using man for hire, and during the movie he does his share of drugs and killing to get his pay.

#42. False Hero

Today's journal is about a hero who does something for the wrong reason. Today, as it would happen, is a Friday  and I am just about mentally dead. I apologize for the awfulness of the blog that is about to ensue...

Katie Hayes was a pretty normal person. Except that she was a devil-woman. It was her job to torture people, and she was good at it.  She would swoop in, gliding on her devil-wings that had a seven foot width. Her talons would tear at her victims face. She would stare with delight in her blood red eyes as the mutilated corpses would drop to their knees, screaming their last words.  When the mutilation was done, she would sink her fangs into the unfortunate soul and suck the remaining life force from its body.  Katie was very good at being a devil-woman; she once ate the crusader of the month from August 1272. The crusader was named Conner. Katie was sent to eat him by Lucifer himself, but she ate him for the wrong reason. She really did not like Conner; he was really annoying. Instead of just eating Conner, she kidnapped him and took him to a cave.  In the cave she tied him up and threw him in a corner while she prepared a fire in the main chamber. This fire was for cooking the crusader, naturally. Katie the devil-woman was not about to catch a disease from an uncooked crusader. Every demon knew crusaders were riddled with plague, so they had to be cooked instead of eaten raw.  In all irony to the crusaders, it was most common for them to be cooked at the steak. Once the fire was prepared, Conner was tied to the steak and set ablaze. The only sound in the that could be heard for a mile were the final shrieks of Conner's life.  When Katie deemed the charred corpse to be done cooking, she began to play with his corpse as an insult to Conner's life. Lucifer hated when the demons lollygagged, so Katie had only a short while to throw the burnt corpse around the cave before she had to eat him and go on to other people who needed killing.

Spring Break

This spring break I did a lot of homework.  I wrote a five page essay about Upton Sinclair's The Jungle after having read it, I did three twenty page packets of AP chemistry, and I have had to work on an English project. However, I did do a few other things over break.  On the first Sunday, I went to my grandma's house for Easter. We had a big roast ham for dinner, and the kids hunted Easter eggs and then went to the park.  On Thursday, I went to a friend's house and we had a LAN party with several other friends. LAN stands for Local Access Network, so basically we all hooked up our own computers to my friend's Wi-Fi and played video games on closed local servers. Much fun was had. Unfortunately I spent most of the party typing my essay. It was awful. A few times I met people for coffee during the week, and over the second weekend, I took care of another friend's dogs.  Most of my days were spent doing homework from about 1 pm, when I woke up, to about 7 pm.  Most evenings, I could slip away to hang out with friends and watch a movie or go get fast food. Overall, it was a pretty good week, but I may as well have just stayed in school and had class. At least then I would have had motivation to do my work.

Job Shadowing

Job Shadowing was awful. Absolutely awful.  I sat at school and did nothing all day. Absolutely nothing.  I should have just stayed home, or rolled over and died.  That would have been just as productive.  While at school I only worked on some of my AP chemistry homework.  It should have taken me about two hours to do the work I did, but I was just so unmotivated, it took me five hours.  Really I should have just died. Then I wouldn't have had to sit the the most boring and disappointing day of my life so far.  I also wouldn't have to be remembering the awful experience for this crummy blog.  Any thought of this event just makes me mad. I've also had an extremely frustrating day. I go on my spring break tomorrow, and I was totally expecting to do whatever I wanted and to not have to worry about school for a week. But no. Instead I am finding out that I have two full AP chem tests to take plus an AP chem lecture, a chapter to read for AP US with a twenty page packet plus an eighty question multiple choice packet, a five page paper to write over a book I haven't read, and now I learn I'm going to be assigned a group project in honors English.  In total that's probably 10+ hours AP chem, 5 hours AP US, 25+ hours reading and writing that paper, and at least 5 hours of English project. That's 45+ hours. Two full days with no sleep. My break is 9 days long. Assuming I only sleep for 8 hours every day, that is 3 days with no breaks for distractions or even eating. If I work as hard as possible with a realistic pace, that is 5 days of work. This spring "break" is broken. its not a break, its self driven labor.  The time required to do this work would fill the time of a regular school week. I hate everything. I would not be surprised if I wind up dead with a rope around my neck before the end of break.

Listenting to Blue Monk

Today we are listening to Blue Monk by Theloneous Monk and Miles Davis.  This song sounds care free, but something about it is restricted and holding back. I suppose it feels like walking down Beale St, Memphis, TN, but it doesn't exactly feel like Beale St. It has more of a New York blues feel than a Chicago or Memphis blues feel. So I guess we are in New York.  We are happy about something, probably just happy in general, but the bass line is blue. If I were to describe the solos, I would say they are a bright grass green and sunny yellow.  We are in a park. Central Park? We are enjoying life in Central Park. A bass solo is starting.  It returns to a more mellow tone, but still up beat. It has changed and felt like walking through a mechanized part of town.  A factory district perhaps.  The rest of the band joins back in and with the identification of the bass tone, I now get the feeling that this is taking a breaking during or getting off work after a long day at the factory. It is a blues because the protagonist has a hard job at a factory, but the happy-upbeat feel comes from the relaxation at the end of the day.

Comparison

I will be comparing my literary analysis of the Declaration of Independence to my literary analysis of Whitman's Self.  In comparison between these two, in both of my writings I provide reasonable analysis and support for my theses.  I do have applicable quotes in each work, and the quotes are from reliable sources.  Other than that, most of my writing has change. In my analysis of the Declaration of Independence, I am much less formal than I am in my analysis of Whitman's Self. I think this is mainly attributed to the fact that the Declaration of Independence analysis is written in a blog, and is therefore in a more blog- formal prose, whereas my Whitman analysis is actually written as an essay and is in essay- formal prose.  In my blog formal prose, I use the first person pronouns I and me to refer to what I found and how I feel.  A reaction was intended to be part of my analysis, so I forgive myself for those as they were only appropriate. However, I should not have said, "The only fault I find..." in the introduction.  Another difference is that I have learned to use more sources in my analyses than I used had previously. My Declaration of Independence analysis only sites the document, but my Whitman analysis uses three, and my comments site a criticism from another scholar.  Overall, I think my works have improved.