Normal Is Weird
Friday, May 27, 2011
HW 59 - SOF Prom 2011 & DSPs
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
HW 58 - Prom Interviews
"its gonna be like science class but with fancy dresses I am going because my friends are going and I don't want to regret not going In all honesty though I am looking forward to the day after prom more than the actual prom itself, it has become way more stressful then it needs to be." - Sarah L.
"prom will be fun, but it wnt live up to the expectations that people hold because of the movies but i went because who doesnt go to their high school prom thats so sad." - Sarah H.
Everyones end reason as why they're going to prom is because they don't won't to regret it later on and feel bad about it.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
HW 57 - Initial Thoughts on Prom
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
xc-COTD3
Six Feet Under 101: Season 1, Episode 1, June 3rd 2001: The Pilot
The first episode of Six Feet Under starts with a man named Nathaniel Fisher talking on the phone with his wife smoking a cigarette, his wife was suspicious of him smoking and told him to stop. He than after getting off the phone with her, decided to light another one, causing him to cross an intersection and get hit by a bus. Most movies when ever someone does something that can impair their driving you already get the message that something bad is going to happen, because the camera angle focuses on the window of the car to let viewers see the problem coming. When the husband was hit by the bus, his wife accidentally cut her finger; I think the director did that to symbolize something wrong. Some can argue that when the husband lied about not smoking and than promising he wasn't anymore, he had sinned which caused him to get hit, or it was a freak accident that could of been avoided if he wasn't on the phone or smoking. The other symbolic thing was when the wife cut her finger, and felt a feeling of worry, after that. Can be seen as metaphysical symbol, many believe that when our love ones die, we'll sense something because of a spiritual bond of some sort.
After that scene, you get to see the whole family and what they all do for a living. Surprisingly the fisher family works in the funeral industry. When starting this unit I assumed that funeral directors or anyone who deal with dead people, can handle death better, and live their lives a bit differently by not fearing death. But like anyone, it's hard for anyone to recover from a lost of relatives. For example one of the visitors, who came in the other say, took a 3-day break from work (funeral directing), after his mother passed away. Like most things in life, it's hard to understand how people feel, until it happens to us.
Six Feet Under 101: Season 1, Episode 2, June 10th 2001: The Will
The episode starts out with a family at a get together around a pool, people are talking and socializing etc. Chandler Swanson (the person who’s going to die in this episode) dives into the pool, and drowned, leaving behind a wife and baby daughter. The episode switches back over the Fisher family where Nathaniel Fisher's had a will left for his family read by his widowed wife to get money, stocks and insurance money. And the funeral business is passed on two his two sons Nate & David. His wild and experimental daughter received college tuition, but chooses to trade it in for cash. Nate (the eldest son) wanted to help out the widowed wife of Chandler Swanson, because of the debt her husband had left her with, and started learning a few things about the funeral business.
After watching two episodes of Six Feet Under I got pretty hooked on it, for many reasons. One of them is that it’s really well written; it deals on many different types of deaths, and family issues that are so common to many and not so much to others. It also show’s how there’s no such thing as a “normal” family, because every family has their own problems, the fishers have a lot of secrets from Mrs. Fisher cheating when her husband was alive, their second son David being gay, their eldest Nate who recently decided to come back because he sees that his family is broken up, and their youngest child and only daughter Claire who’s a confused girl and doesn’t know what she wants in life (typical young adult) who experiments with drugs. One of my worries is Claire dying; she seems really easily pressured and doesn’t handle things to well. The show also does well at showing the different reactions people get when they hear of a death of a loved one, some of the reactions were calm, but than they freaked out, some freaked out and than calm down, some kept calm, but stayed calm but in a docile manner.
xc-COTD2
Harold & Maude is one of those movies that are witty, clever and serious. It’s also has a peculiar way of making viewers have different opinions on what the message of the movie was, and it’s also one of those films that has to be watched beginning to end, and carefully watched to get it. I first watched Harold & Maude last year when I had to watch and read different literatures on existentialism, which has been a great help in this death unit. When I watched it last year my conclusion of the movie was that it showed two different age periods in life, youth and elderly. The beginning of the movie started out with the protagonist Harold faking suicides and seemed very interested in death, a bit too interested more or less obsessed, causing me to believe that he was suicidal. He than later meets a woman named Maude, at a funeral. At first when Harold & Maude spent time together talking about people, cultures, dreams, questioning, basically talking about life. I thought Maude was a mentor to Harold; as the movie progressed you saw the transition in Harold’s behavior, he was more happy around her, and embraced death, almost as if he were the same age as her (79) and soon about to die as well. He turned the Porche his parents bought him for his birthday into a hearse. Harold’s family, a wealthy one wanted Harold to choose a career to follow, they’ve attempted to have him meet generals doctors, anything that was a bit high class they wanted him to do, but he always blew them away by doing something weird, like faking a suicide, his parents tried to get him a girlfriend (young attractive women) he also blew those off as well, and only instead wanted to hang out with Maude. Those were when the tell-tell signs that Harold was very interested in Maude we’re becoming obvious. Harold later on in the movie kisses Maude after talking by a pier, and seeing she was a holocaust survivor, and slept with her. Full of joy he asks her to marry him, and than she breaks out that she poisoned herself, Harold rushes her to the hospital, but it was too late Maude wanted to die for a long time because it was “her time”. Harold panics, causing viewers to believe he was going to kill himself you see him drive his Porsche hearse towards a cliff, and than the car crashes straight down a cliff to the bottom by the water, he appears on the cliff playing the banjo, wearing colors. That was significant because it showed how Harold, decided to throw his views of death away and enjoy his life while young and get old, until that day comes.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
HW 56 - Culminating Project Comments
Sam,
I liked your blog because you had a really clear beginning that was interesting and had good points, which made reading the rest of your blog easy to read. One thing i found interesting about jewish faith is that it's more natural than christianity, for example things such as kosher. There's also some similarities between the two, for example they both believe that the dead will resurrect. I personally believe the reason people believe that is because its a way for people to cope with a death, by believing they'll come back, but there's a contradiction with that, all the people who believed that before they died and than they're relatives when they died kept believing that, meaning that many generations are due to resurrect. Other than that you had a great blog, good work.
- Rigel
Here's a link to Sam's blog.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Your blog was pretty good I like how you analyzed what life and death really is by focussing on how technology plays a role at keeping someone "alive", and how we view of life and death should be updated. You had a lot of strong points, such as open heart surgery, because 100 years ago that was something a bit fictional, and now it's done only regular basis with positive results. Their's a few things about your blog I was a bit puzzled about one being, you didn't go in depth on some of the topics your brought up, also I think you had many good ideas and thoughts, but rushed them and got lazy. For your next blog you should give it your all and enjoy it so it's more engaging, proof read as well, other than that not bad.
-Alix
xc-COTD1
I went on a small trip with my classmates Brendan, Chris and Christian to the cemetery to observe what we saw, and the ideas we got from our visit. I visited two cemeteries; of two different religions two compare and contrast what I noticed. I went to the Trinity church cemetery (Christian) on city hall, and the Washington cemetery (Jewish) on Bay Parkway and Ocean Parkway (it’s huge). When I went to the trinity church cemetery it was pretty peaceful but it being in city hall made it a bit annoying to be, so many tourist, cars, and tight space, it seems a bit un-peaceful for the dead. One somewhat obvious observation was that the trinity cemetery, is very old, some of the gravestones date back all the way to the 1840’s and older, Thomas Jefferson has a tombstone in the trinity, but his body isn’t buried their. The good thing about the trinity is that there is a lot of historical aspects to it, like most of lower Manhattan because its one of the earliest, parts of Manhattan and New York City when it was forming. The Washington cemetery was much, much quieter than the trinity; one of the reasons is due to the area, less people, and more rural neighborhood. Another difference is that the Washington cemetery is mainly for people of the Jewish religion, meaning that every decease person in the cemetery was buried following Jewish tradition, buried in 24 hours, no embalming, etc.
Some similarities that were interesting was that both cemeteries, uses tombstones, they can be made by however way the person’s family choose it to be so they’re not all the same, some have pictures of the decease, some are glossy (marble material) some are hard concrete, etc. The only small difference is that in trinity and most catholic cemeteries there’s a cross, and for Washington cemetery, they use the Star of David, which I thought was cool and interesting, shows each religions emblem. I my little trip to the cemetery, for a few reasons, first one being I pass cemetery’s all the time, I was never scared of them but never found them interesting, but after all this it’s a bit interesting it’s more or less like a trip to a park, but with organize concrete figures, lots and lots of them. I think everyone should go to a cemetery for two reason’s even if the people in the cemetery aren’t related to you, you’ll notice how different and how similar all dead people and their families are. They all die, grieve move on, like everyone else.