There are so many elements I could pick and choose out of this "sing-a-long blog", but some of the main ones were: love, comedy, hate, jealousy, and death. Love: defined in this story as the love triangle between Dr. Horrible, Penny and Captain Hammer. Comedy: How we view Dr. Horrible in the beginning, but we eventually see that his sarcasm hides something much deeper than simple jokes. Hate: Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer hate each other. (They appear to be villains.) Jealousy: Again, the love triangle and the jealousy that Dr. Horrible has for Captain Hammer's popularity, even though he's self-absorbed. And Death: This occurs in the story at the very end when Penny is killed because part of Dr. Horrible's gun breaks off and lodges itself in Penny's torso, leaving her to die. All of these elements are what make it a tragicomedy!
I had heard of this "blog show" before we were introduced to it in class. I had no interest in watching it, but I'm really glad I saw it. At first, the class seemed to get a kick out of the whole idea of an "evil genius" being in love with a chick at a laundry mat. This tragicomedy had me thinking about Beauty and the Beast for some reason. As I watched it I thought of Dr. Horrible as the "Beast" and Penny as "Belle" the Beauty. Here is a man who is a true "beast" on the inside, but on the outside he is just a simple young man falling in love. The tragedy in this, besides Captain Hammer acting like a self-absorbed idiot trying to take Penny from Billy's love grip, is the fact that from the beginning it seems as though Dr. Horrible sets himself up for failure. There are several lines that suggest that he "already is living a nightmare" and at the end of the first act he says a word at the end that suggests that he is unhappy with the result of his heist and that Penny is now further out of love with him than before.
It seems that Dr. Horrible just wants to be taken seriously. He doesn't want to kill anyone to become apart of the evil league, but he doesn't have another way to become part of a group. He says to Penny in the second act, "I want to be an achiever". His idea of achieving is just being recognized and taken seriously in life. He is overlooked too often and just wants everyone to see that he really can be "horrible".
I tried to apply this singing blog to my own life. Penny's song I feel relates to how I feel right now:
Here’s a story of a girl
Who grew up lost and lonely
Thinking love was fairytale
And trouble was made only for me
Even in the darkness
Every color can be found
And every day of rain
Brings water flowing
To things growing in the ground
Grief replaced with pity
For a city barely coping
Dreams are easy to achieve
If hope is all I’m hoping to be
Anytime you’re hurt there’s one
Who has it worse around
And every drop of rain
Will keep you growing
Seeds you’re sowing in the ground
This song gives a person hope, while at the same time realizing that there are definite needs in the world that need to be taken care of, which is Penny's case it was the homeless in that city.
The struggles between Captain Hammer and Dr Horrible really meant little to me. They seemed more like two brothers fighting back and forth over a toy. Neither of them were a threat to the other. Neither Captain Hammer, nor Dr. Horrible were "good" guys. The main issue was that Captain Hammer would get recognition for his actions that never had a good meaning behind them in the first place while "evil" Dr Horrible wouldn't get recognized at all. Simply put, this is not a story of good versus evil, it's about how our own thoughts/actions can cloud the judgment of many and how we can shape others around us whether it be good or bad.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Lake Bonny Trip
I went to Lake Bonny Park for this assignment, and I stayed there for at least 50 minutes.
The trip was interesting in itself. I had some crazy self-realizations while standing next to nature. I basked in the silence and just sat there with God. After the crazy hectic life I've been leading for the past couple of months, it felt amazing to just leave school/friends behind and just go away for awhile. I walked around for a bit alone and felt something near me the whole time. I kept walking and I couldn't shake this feeling that I wanted to be alone, but something was by my side (spiritually) and wouldn't leave me be. As I write this right now, I still have no idea what it was. I found that reading the State of the Planet by Robert Haas helped throw me right into the emotions that I needed for this assignment. I felt angry, sad, alone, depressed, and oddly happy. My anger stems from the fact that I'm not perfect. I want to be perfect in all that I do and then I just falter. I took a look at all the nature around me and it wasn't fair! I saw the perfection in all of God's creation, but I was not perfect...how does that happen? But then I took solace in the fact that God loved me just as I was in that moment. No more, no less. My sadness goes hand in hand with my loneliness. I become sad because I fear that I will never get better in what I am doing in life. Then I took another look around me and realized, if God could make a tiny flower grow from such a tiny seed, if I allow Him--He will help me grow as well. My happiness came from realizing how all of these things come together. My poem underneath explains how I felt in the moment and the ending is left to interpretation.
Calm and peacefulness surrounds me,
Yet, I'm reckless.
I enter into a world I take for granted,
Spiritual eyes open, I’m enchanted.
Steps of trepidation lead me into vegetation,
To memorize, I take pictures with my mind.
Holding the leaf in my hand, oh chlorophyll!
The wind in my hair has no comparison to the fear I feel.
It's tragic how the world has so many borders,
Yet the colors in the flowers seem to spill over into my imagination.
I wish I could break free and be wild like the flowers of God's creation.
The wind provokes my hair to dance, I hesitate.
The stick snaps beneath my foot.
I pick it up and look at its texture,
And realize that it is unique, yes a stick unique.
A small girl walks to me, she pulls on my shirt,
Not a word is spoken between us.
She leads me to the dock where it stretches out past the lake's border,
It was our Neverland.
She, my mirror, stood next to me,
She looked up at me and pointed outward.
“Just look,” she spoke.
I saw the beauty that had been robbed from me,
Oh! How the drones of everyday life deprive us of God’s love!
I look down only to see her gone, never to be there,
My imagination ran with me.
I look up again and God’s canvas is before me,
Wish I could recklessly love.
Lake Bonny Trip by Brittney TM Perez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
The State of the Planet
State of the Planet, by Robert Haas, in my opinion deserves to the Pulitzer Prize winning. It bring together very two crucial elements: simplicity and complexity. Some how he is able to mixed the two together and still have the reader come out with a clear understanding of what he was trying to get across to us in the first place.
My favorite line was:
"There is no silence in the world
Like the silence of rock from before life was."
How true is that? While reading more in depth on that particular verse I was mesmerized. It's hard to really see what life was like before we, animals or plants even existed on this earth. Rock and soil were here long before we came and I also find it interesting that we, according to Genesis, were brought up from the "dust of the earth." Maybe those two statements have something to do with each other. The fact that the entire poem starts out so simple, with a young girl and how rain is falling on her, then getting into thinking about life and our ecosystem...that blew my mind.
The line that reads:
"Poetry should be able to comprehend the earth,...
Something of the earth beyond our human dramas."
The first line starts out the beginning of stanza "2" and the last line ends stanza "2". That's the entire flow of the poem. What starts, must end, but it ends in the same way with the same idea being presented; much how a thesis is the beginning of a paper and the conclusion is the end.
Stanza six really brought out the biology side of things. Most of the poem deals with the beauty of what we see and how we may or may not interpret it, but this stanza tries to define the "state of the planet" as far as how we see it under a microscopic point of view. This is one of my favorite stanzas because it stands out from the rest of the poem, but still has a place in the ciaos of it all.
Overall, I see that our disconnection with nature is very much apparent. I think that with technology booming, cars running faster and people becoming less and less spiritual that we are going to continue to let ourselves disconnect from the very world around us. Eventually, we as human beings will totally disconnect from the world and ultimately God if we aren't careful. On the opposite side, those of us that love nature, that's awesome, but we should also try to look at who created all of this around us and understand that he holds a much higher understanding than we can even possibly imagine.
"It must be a gift of evolution that humans
Can't sustain wonder. We'd never have gotten up
From our knees if we could."
My favorite line was:
"There is no silence in the world
Like the silence of rock from before life was."
How true is that? While reading more in depth on that particular verse I was mesmerized. It's hard to really see what life was like before we, animals or plants even existed on this earth. Rock and soil were here long before we came and I also find it interesting that we, according to Genesis, were brought up from the "dust of the earth." Maybe those two statements have something to do with each other. The fact that the entire poem starts out so simple, with a young girl and how rain is falling on her, then getting into thinking about life and our ecosystem...that blew my mind.
The line that reads:
"Poetry should be able to comprehend the earth,...
Something of the earth beyond our human dramas."
The first line starts out the beginning of stanza "2" and the last line ends stanza "2". That's the entire flow of the poem. What starts, must end, but it ends in the same way with the same idea being presented; much how a thesis is the beginning of a paper and the conclusion is the end.
Stanza six really brought out the biology side of things. Most of the poem deals with the beauty of what we see and how we may or may not interpret it, but this stanza tries to define the "state of the planet" as far as how we see it under a microscopic point of view. This is one of my favorite stanzas because it stands out from the rest of the poem, but still has a place in the ciaos of it all.
Overall, I see that our disconnection with nature is very much apparent. I think that with technology booming, cars running faster and people becoming less and less spiritual that we are going to continue to let ourselves disconnect from the very world around us. Eventually, we as human beings will totally disconnect from the world and ultimately God if we aren't careful. On the opposite side, those of us that love nature, that's awesome, but we should also try to look at who created all of this around us and understand that he holds a much higher understanding than we can even possibly imagine.
"It must be a gift of evolution that humans
Can't sustain wonder. We'd never have gotten up
From our knees if we could."
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Lucretius
In the upcoming assignment for tomorrow I saw that there is a figure that we are supposed to know named: Lucretius. I found it very interesting that there were little known facts about Lucretius as a person. I suppose in those times, better records where not kept of people. There are six books accredited to him that have to deal with Epicurean philosophy/physics. He wanted to bring those two topics to the Roman public, seeing as he was a Roman of the Hellenistic Period.
In Lucretius' works he says that we have a role in the universe, but without any interference from "the gods". And basically that everyone feeds off of their own humanistic hungers/wants/tendencies in life. That we are somewhat left to our own demise. I really don't agree with his ideas. However I'm sure that his writings gave light to many new aspects of nature and how it is God's creation and not our creation. I firmly believe that we should look toward the Creator and not the creation for total inspiration.
I'm really interested to see where this story of "State of the Planet" takes us. I read a bit up on the fact that it is Pulitzer Prize winning and the author is Robert Haas. I'm really interested to see what the poem is all about and how Lucretius, and Venus interact with this particular text. I look forward to reading this tonight and getting a feel for what may be asked of us in class tomorrow.
In Lucretius' works he says that we have a role in the universe, but without any interference from "the gods". And basically that everyone feeds off of their own humanistic hungers/wants/tendencies in life. That we are somewhat left to our own demise. I really don't agree with his ideas. However I'm sure that his writings gave light to many new aspects of nature and how it is God's creation and not our creation. I firmly believe that we should look toward the Creator and not the creation for total inspiration.
I'm really interested to see where this story of "State of the Planet" takes us. I read a bit up on the fact that it is Pulitzer Prize winning and the author is Robert Haas. I'm really interested to see what the poem is all about and how Lucretius, and Venus interact with this particular text. I look forward to reading this tonight and getting a feel for what may be asked of us in class tomorrow.
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