Judge a Candidate by a Cover

Neil!

I am so excited to receive my New Yorker in the mail this Wednesday. For once I saw the cover before the mail arrived because it is so controversial the news is having a field day.

As you can see this week’s New Yorker cover deserves controversy. The news’ reaction is mainly filled with disgust and other appalled emotions. As you can see the illustrator packed in the most outrageous details of Barack Obama’s campaign. Some details are scandalous lies that blossomed into false facts that the average American believes such as “Barack Obama is a Muslim and is connected to Islamic extremists terrorists”. Some details are superficial entities of who Obama is, such as his decision not to wear an American flag pin on his lapel.  But honestly, you have to look past what is on the cover and think about what it says about America’s politics, and our culture’s use of rumors that effects how we vote. This week’s cover is illustrated by Barry Blitt and the title is “The Politics of Fear” and I think the title of the illustration says a lot about the message.

Obviously The New Yorker does not believe that Obama is how Blitt depicted him in the illustration. All one needs to do is open every issue to “The Talk of the Town” section and read the first article on the page. In my New Yorker experience the presidential candidates have been featured here every week this election season, so it will not be difficult to accumulate what The New Yorker believes about Obama.

The title clearly indicates how the artist and the magazine want to point out with this cover how ridiculous the rumors and speculation about Obama are. On the Daily Show with John Stewart they took the media frenzy as an opportunity to make a media montage of all the coverage the major news networks give to rumors about the Obamas. So what is wrong with a well know, and highly respected publication giving attention to these far-fetched lies in their own way.

Also I doubt that many people who take current events, and politics seriously or even just read The New Yorker believe rumors put out by untrustworthy sources. My interpretation of “The Politics of Fear” is the attempt to throw the image of who America thinks Obama is. The ridiculous cover is trying to point out the ridiculous view of politics we Americans have.

If you really want to know about a candidate do not trust sound bites and what your neighbor thinks. Read about them, listen to them, and listen to your gut instinct. Also, in a week or two everyone is going to forget about this cover; the controversy will be replaced by something else.

Don’t Forget to be Awesome, Neil
Love, Pam

Real Life and Fairy Tales

Dear Neil,

Last night Mom and I watched “Dan in Real Life”, a recent Steve Carell movie. I really liked it, and I think Mom liked it a lot too. Critics could argue that the family reunion is too perfect with cross word puzzle competition, morning aerobics and talent shows. But I believe the extended family’s dynamic is the best backdrop for the hilarious misfortunes of the main character, Dan. I really do think it is absolutely funny. You should watch it. The only complaint is the end; they ended it the way every romantic comedy ends… oh, I do not want to ruin it… oh, I will not be ruining anything. It ends with a wedding reception, everyone is dancing and happy and paired off with their loved ones. Every romantic comedy ends this way, and I wonder if there is positively no other way to end romantic comedies.

I read some more of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales. And I do not like him any more than the last time I read some of the collection. Oh well. I thought for, like, two minutes that I found another story that I liked like I liked the stories before they got weird, but then it got weird. This story in question is called The Bell. It starts out with a description of a town near a forest, and in the town the people can hear the ringing of a bell. They think it is coming from deep inside the forest, so those adventurous enough travel inside the woods. But when they come to a clearing they do not want to go further, and are content to just stay in the meadow where they can hear the beautiful bell ring loud and clear. I thought that the story was romantic at this point. Imagine something so lovely that would draw you away from everyday life. I think that is what Fairy Tales are made of, and that is what makes the good ones interesting to read. Maybe I am and escapist; when I read a book I want to be in the world of the story. I think that it is a very romantic notion to escape to another place in your mind. Even if the story takes place in my home town, good writing can transform my mind and take me anywhere. That is what I think Fairy Tales should be.

Don’t Forget to be Awesome, Neil
Love, Pam

P.S.- Wow, I am bored, playing Spider Solitare and Neil, something amazing happened:

The Desert of Summer

Dear Neil,

I am writing to you from a strange land: Boredom Desert. All I see is a hand-held tetris game and a Project Runway marathon. All I hear is the constant running of the broken toilet. All I feel is the emptiness of my stomach. Boredom is a desert.

Boredom is dry and lonely. Boredom is the absence of hope; I need Barack Obama here. I need a big tall tropical drink of fun…with those little umbrellas! I need friends to hang out with during the day, I need summer lovin’.

I need a vacation. Where should I go? I hate the beach. I could go to New York or Boston or some place where I could do some real exploring. But I want to go on a road trip in which I drive and I do not want to drive to a city. And I do not know if I want to go on a vacation alone. The only two candidates I can think of to go on vacation with me are Emily and Kate, but they have vacations of their own to go on. I could go all on my own, but do I want to do that? Do I want to subject myself to that loneliness? If boredom is loneliness then it is arguable that loneliness itself invokes boredom. And I do not want to be bored on my potential vacation!

Neil, where is your favorite vacation place? Do you think I should just go on a day trip somewhere? I could save money on “room and board” if I do not have to get a motel room. Where can I drive to all alone for just one day and not be bored? Neil, I do not want to be in a desert.

I wish I had some grade and middle school aged children so I could take them to Cedar Point or Six Flags. Oh, speaking of amusement parks, Neil, I have not been to Hershey Park this summer yet. And I also have not been to the Boardwalk Water Park part of the park yet. Maybe I should plunge in and go to the park, Mandy will be able to join me, right? Neil, what is the least busy day at the park?

Hershey Park is not a desert. I can ride Lighting Racer for two hours straight. Who needs friends? I have racing roller coasters!

Don’t Forget to be Awesome
Love, Pam

Bagels, Toasters, and Ovens

Hey Neil,

I woke up with something in mind to write about. And now I forget it. Maybe if I go back to sleep…

I got a new pillow, it is down. Today I found a feather on my sleeve. That is not what I wanted to write about when I woke up.

I am hungry I am going to have a toasted bagel with cream cheese… toasting… toasting… okay we do not have cream cheese. We have Neufchatel Cheese. Sounds German, those crazy Germans. It is EXACTLY like cream cheese but it has less fat. Wow it is actually French, those crazy Europeans. Cool, according to Wikipedia, “In 1872, a New York dairyman, in the township of Chester, created cream cheese as the result of an attempt to create a batch of Neufchâtel. In the United States, French Neufchâtel is called farmers’ cheese”.

Toasting update. I put my bagel in the toaster oven for five minutes, but the things in the oven that get hot are not red yet. What do I do?!? I hope I do not burn my bagel, but I want it nice and toasted. What a toasting dilemma! I put my bagel in for another four minutes. Errgh! We need a new toaster oven… badly. Here is a funny story: we used to have a nice toaster oven until I was making toast and the crumbs on the bottom caught on fire. NOT MY FAULT. Mom did not clean HER Christmas present from Janet, so it is mom’s fault! Luckily it was a contained fire (in the toaster oven after all) so we let it just die down. But then the whole house smelled like burnt yucky yuck, mom went on a air freshener shopping spree, and we bought a crappy toaster oven. Now this toaster oven needs to be replaced!

Okay, bagel update, just ate my bagel. It was not toasted at all! Did Mandy break the toaster oven last night? But bagels and toasters were not what I want to write about today.

BUT I can not remember what I wanted to write about this morning. Grr.

I just saw a commercial in which a man buys an eclair and a cup of coffee with a credit card… maybe it was a debit card, but still… I do not know what point I am trying to make with this… and this is not what I wanted to write about when I woke up this morning!

Well, I guess we can not always get what we want.

Don’t Forget to Be Awesome,
Love, Pam

Judge Some Fairy Tales by Their Cover Club

Dearest Brother, Neil,

I am sloooooooooowly reading some more of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales. His stories are slooooowly getting on my nerves. They seem to require more and more thought, like this one about a mother.

The mother’s child is dying, and Death comes to visit and takes her little child. She loves her child so much she goes after Death in search of her baby to save him from Death’s grip. She walks for miles, and she comes to a lake. She wants to cross it, but the only way she can think to get by is to DRINK the LAKE. But the lake says Wait that’s not going to work Crazy Lady…give me your eyes and I’ll help you across. So she cries her eyes out for her dying child.

And now the blind, grieving mother finds Death’s green house where he cares for all of God’s children in the form of plants; every soul is a plant. And there is an old lady there that tells the poor mother that she will help her find her baby’s plant if she gives the old woman her beautiful hair in trade for her gray, thin hair. SO the blind, bloated, aged mother finds her child’s plant, and Death comes into the green house.

The mother threateneds Death that she would tear up some of the plants if Death does not save her child. But Death shows her that her child might be saved from a terrible and painful life if the child dies.

I think the moral of the story is going to the great beyond is (possibly) a better fate than living. Life could give you lemons, and the afterlife most certainly will give you lemonade. So do not mess with fate!…I guess.

And then there is The Little Match Girl. She suffers and then she suffers, and then she suffers some more. But in the end she dies and her suffering stops forever. So, if you are suffering go and meet your grandmother in the sky, and everything will be happy all around. So…death is the end of all suffering. Does not sound like Buddhism to me.

It is not the depressing view of suffering and death that bother me. It is more the writing style that bothers me. Andersen uses very linear language. First this happens, then this goes like that. Then everything comes together at the end. His Fairy Tales are not poetic, it is prose after all, but I enjoy some poetry in my stories now and then. Just like I like some salad dressing on my lettuce now and then.

Don’t Forget to be Awesome
Love, Pam

Hearing the Forever Plops of Potatoes

Hey Neil,

Hey it’s July. That’s cool. I am sitting in the living room with the ceiling fan on high and the window by the television is open. Mom tied back the curtain and I can hear birds chirruping, but it is kind of muggy. I can not wait until fall. Fall is when the light jacket weather comes and the leaves turn pretty…er prettier…and the school starts up! Yay I am excited for fall!

School is when I do not have to be home all day. School is when I get to learn. Oooh I can practically feel the enrichment of my brain already. HACC is where I can see my friends. School is so relaxing. I love walking around campus. I do not have to talk to anyone, and no one has to talk to me. This is the life:

anonymity.

Ha, I pasted that word from dictionary.com so it is HUGE…and italicized.

Today is July Fourth. Dad is going to making potatoe…potato…salad. He is about to cut up the potatoes, but first he had to pick some “Potatoe… Potato… Cutting Music”. Before he put it in the player I asked him what he chose, and he said, “Something you probably did not even know we had”. And he turned it on what what do I hear coming from the speakers? Nothing but the beautiful sound of Micheal Stipe and R.E.M. Shoot I did not know we had this, well, honestly if I went looking for it I probably would not be able to find it considering the breadth of our parents cd collection. Not that we have a lot of cds…but they are all spread out around the house. Any way this cd, “Out of Time” has all the R.E.M. songs I enjoy…except for “It’s the End of the World”. Anyway if I knew about this cd and its whereabouts in our parents house I could have saved money putting R.E.M. onto my iPod.

Eww, the sound of Dad cutting potatoes is really disgusting. Each piece plops down into a pot of water for boiling. Ehh, it is so gross and I do not know why. Ugh, I think if I ever had to answer James Lipton’s stupid survey I would tell him that the sound I hate most is the sound of pieces of potatoe… potato… plopping down into a pot of water. It sounds like someone is eternally taking a bath is a toilet… ugh I can almost NOT stand it! If you want to hear what forever sounds like, Neil, just listen to Dad cut potatoes. Thank God for R.E.M. or I would not be able to sit here and write this.

Neil, what is the sound you hate most? Ugh! I can not stand it!!!1

I have got to go to work in five minutes.

Don’t Forget to be Awesome, Neil
Love, Pam

P.S.- Happy Birthday Mandy!

Swimming in a Sea of Gross Nasty Bath Water

Dear Neil,

Today’s New Yorker cover is sort of bland. I do not know if I can get four hundred words out of it. Oh, well here it goes.

There it is. A man on a beach with a dog. I do not think I can squeeze any social commentary out of this cover. Except, maybe the illustrator, J.J. Sempe is trying to say that dogs are dirty…because I know I do not want to be that man who is about to get hit by the spray of the ocean water flinging off that dog. Yuck. Or maybe I just do not get this cover.

The artist titled it, “First Bath”. What is that susposed to mean? Whose bath is it? The dog’s? Maybe, because he will need a fresh bath to get the ocean water off of him. The man’s? Maybe, because he may be getting a second bath from the dog’s flinging water. But that would mean that the man’s first bath was in the ocean. Double yuck yuck. Who wants to bathe in the ocean? Swimming in the ocean is fine, anyone can put on his or her swim suit, swim in the sea, get out, go home and shower and be normal. But who wants to put on his or her bathing suit, bathe in the sea, get out, get sprayed but the dog’s flinging water and be all yucky and salt watery and gross. I hate the beach, if you can not tell.

So why on earth, whenever swim suits were invented did they name them bathing suits. Who wants to bathe in the sea. That is just dirty and nasty. Seriuosly, I know it is just a bad choice of words, but they should have named them swim suits from the beginning so Sempe would not have drawn this New Yorker cover and confused me and waste my afternoon. I am so freaking out about this for no reason, Neil, I know. But do you understand where I am coming from?… I can understand if you can not understand where I am coming from, Neil, because I am starting to not understand where I, myself, am coming from.

That’s is a bad place to be, Neil, not understanding where you are coming from. Neil, that is grounds to committ yourself in an institution for mentally ill people. I do not want to committ myself, Neil. Maybe I am overreacting, it is just a New Yorker cover after all.

Don’t Forget to be Awesome, Like I Just Forgot to Be
Love, Pam

!, ? and Aldus

Dear brother, Neil,

What prompted people to set Abba music to a plot? Why are they making Mama Mia into a movie? Ugh! Am I being too prejudmental? Yes. But no one can make me see that movie. I do not want to, so I will not! HA! Take that ABC’s the Insider!!!1 Neil, do not you agree with me? I do. Ha. Why do people even watch shows like the Insider or Extra? Hollywood celeb vacation locations ARE NOT interesting! Why am I watching this? Ugh, I am so stupid. And extremely bored.

What should I do to battle this boredom, Neil? Oh! I know! I will go to the shopping mall! Perfect!

I think I have broken my exclamation point record for this blog in just this post so far. Whoever invented the exclamation point is a genius. And the question mark…and the semi-colon. Ha, punctuation is amazing. Where did it all come from? According to a source on wikipedia, “Until the 18th century, punctuation was principally an aid to reading aloud; after that time its development was as a mechanism for ensuring that the text made sense when read silently” (Todd, Loreto. The Cassell Guide to Punctuation. 2000). Later, “Punctuation developed dramatically when large numbers of copies of the Christian Bible started to be produced. These were designed to be read aloud and the copyists began to introduce a range of marks to aid the reader, including indentation, various punctuation marks and an early version of initial capitals” (Punctuation). But as for punctuation as we know it today, “The use of punctuation was not standardized until after the invention of printing. Credit for introducing a standard system is generally given to Aldus Manutius and his grandson. They popularized the practice of ending sentences with the colon or full stop, invented the semicolon, made occasional use of parentheses and created the modern comma…” (Punctuation). So, there you go. Whether it is interesting to you…or not, it is interesting to me.

So we have Aldus Manutius to thank for punctuation. Thank you, Aldus. Maybe we should have a day to celebrate punctuation. It should be during the school year so kids can be forced…err…exposed to the importance of punctuation. Teachers should write sentences with no punctuation and have different students read a loud the sentences to show them how punctuation changes the meaning of sentences. And then, maybe we will have less Americans who abuse the use of exclamation points. Because, after all, is it really important to express something that way!?!!!1

Don’t Forget to be Awesome!!!1
Love, Pam

Judge a freaking Book by its freaking Cover

Ugh, Neil,

I am starting to get really bored with Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales. I am reading them, and there are starting NOT to make sense. Like this one particularly extruciatingly irratonal story called The Snow Queen.

The story does not start off with a woman or character called The Snow Queen, instaed it starts off with a random bad guy who makes a bad mirror. The mirror breaks a millions of tiny pieces of glass fly around the world and get stuck in people’s eyes a hearts.

What?

And the worst illogical part of the story is its length and narative flow. The story is long enough to be expanded (just a teensy bit) into a children’s novel. So why is this short novel a short story!?! And the narration does not make sense if you are paying attention, and let me tell you Neil it took immenseconcentration and will power for me to pay attention to The Snow Queen. Through out the story the main character, who is NOT The Snow Queen, meets a bunch of different characters and they all help her to het where she is going….which takes a really long time. So by the end of the story Andersen has to recap all the wheresabouts of the characters because this story took me three sittings to finish and I am getting the happenings all mixed up with other stories. So the author recaps the story, but the way he does this DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!!!1 Here is what I am so upset about with Hans Christian Andersen:

So the main character is happy that her part of the story work out well, and in case the reader was wondering what happened to everyone else (which I was not) the main character runs into one of the characters, The Robber Girl, that helped her a long her way with her journey. And the two girls are chatting it up and the girl asks The Robber Girl what happened to everyone else. And The Robber Girl answers her.

What?!!!1

The Robber Girl never ever MET the likes of the crow or the crow’s fiance who helped the girl get to where she was going. How the heck did she KNOW about the crows!?!

I am so glad i am almost done with this book. I am really glad I am done with the story The Snow Queen.

I have decided that the next book that I am going to judge by its cover is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I know you are probably asking, “But Pam what about the ABC order of your book reading?” And I will tell you: Barnes and Nobel does not have Chinua Achebe ont the self I am selecting from, but Borders does. I was in Borders look that the books which Barnes and Nobel does not have, and I recognized Achebe’s name from my literature class this past semester. So I bought the book. More on that after I finish this freaking Fairy Tale book.

Don’t Forget to be Awesome
Love, your loving sister, Pam

Judge an Illustrator by His or Her Cover Club

Dear Neil,

How did it get to be Wenesday again so soon? Does not it feel like Thursday was yesterday? Should not it be Friday? Why Wenesday? Why not Friday?

Well, at least I have a New Yorker cover to disect today. And it is a little strange in my humble opinion today.  Here is a man surrounded by oceanic water and islands. You can see, he himself is like an island, but not in the Simon and Garfunkelsense. And with closer examination you see a big sqaure patch of green on the “island man”’s chest. What could this be? Duh! It is the uber famous Central Park of New York City, home of Strawberry Fields, “rare tamarin monkeys, Wyoming toads, thick-billed parrots, and red pandas“, and a bunch of ice owned by Trump. So, we come to the wonderful conclusion that this “island man” is Manhattan.

But I do not think Manhattan Man likes being an island. I think he is in extruciating pain, because his face looks like he could use some codeine, or prozac or a lot of excredine. And, I think, the reason he is stricken with fear in his eyes and pain on his face, is because Manhattan has a lot of subways.

Can you image if your body housed huge tubes with tracks that run big cars along them? Ouch. So I understand if Manhattan Man wants a pain pill. So, what is the artist trying to say? Being Manhattan is painful? We should not under-appreciate that subway system? And for more insight to the illustrators thoughts, I turn to the cover’s title: Subway Man. Hmmm…so maybe the message is in the subways. Oh! I have just been struck by a little bit of genius.

Maybe the man is not physically the island of Manhattan, but instead he is demonstrating the anals and pains of the New York City subway system aggrieves upon humanity. And maybe the Subway Man’s distressed expression is a reflection of the grievence the  illustrator, possibly, feels himself.

So what do we do? Stop using the Subway? We should not do that; public transportation is nice, and necessary for big cities. Take the bus? How would that help? I have never ridden a subway, but buses have to contend with the traffic of this automobile obsessed society. Subways only have to deal with tunnels and tracks. So, my guess is subways might be faster…if you know how to navigate the system.

Or maybe the illustrator just needed something to draw, and he jsut had a bad subway trip. So he took his frustration out with water colors.

Don’t Forget to be Awesome, Neil
Love, Pam