Yo, listen up!

Cover Songs

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Kanye West (Original)

Heartless

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWzlD7Lc6w8

+techno style

+rap

+pronounces words differently (ex. "dawcter - docter")

+computerized voice & instruments

+meaning: upset with a girl for being heartless

+not much emotion

+repeats himself over & over again in the same way

+no emphasis on any words

+upbeat

Kris Allen (American Idol Winner - Redo)

Heartless

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZWif4Bo3e8&feature=related

+acoustic

+uses guitar only

+slower than original but still upbeat

+emphasizes "heartless"

+constantly changes the rhythm

+sounds like he's actually yelling at the heartless girl

+yells the word "me"

+sings more than raps

+more meaning

+doesn't repeat himself the same

+holds onto the notes longer

Written on the Body

VOICE #1:

Talking as a critic I believe that Written on the Body was a very confusing book and hard to interpret what the author was trying to convey most of the time. I was constantly trying to guess the gender throughout the entire book but every time I thought it was one gender something would make me think different. I really did not get into the book at all until towards the end when we find out that Louise has cancer. I think that is when it becomes more of a story. Up until that part I think the book is more like a bunch of quotes or poems thrown together rather than an explicit story being told. Overall I did not like this book much but there was one part that caught my attention though:

"When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation."

I think the author is trying to explain that when you love someone nothing else can get in the way. "Love is stronger than desires" means that you will never desire someone else if you actually love the person you are with.

VOICE #2:

Written on the body

Is full of words I do get.

Very confusing

Very twisting

&

weird.

First it is a guy

Than it is a girl

weird.

Neutral gender, I suppose?

No Louise?

That's sad.

=(

Okay, well I am not sure if I experimented correctly with 2 different voices, but I gave it a shot. The first voice was me just being a critic of the book and saying what I thought about it. The second one was basically just writing down whatever first popped into my mind, so I am not sure if that is exactly writing in another voice? It was fun though!

100% Skim Milk

The book, Skim, left me with many questions unanswered. I wondered about what actually happened to Ms. Archer and what happens to Skim in the future. Does she actually find love? What is it? or Who is it? It makes me feel a little uneasy not knowing.

I really liked how the pictures were setup in this graphic novel. There were many full page pictures with very little to no wording on them that I liked. I felt that made it more of a graphic novel than La Perdida in a way because I was actually looking at and focusing more on the pictures to tell the story in the novel Skim rather than in La Perdida where I was just focusing on the language. The graphics in Skim were much easier to follow. Maybe because most of them were extra large compared to La Perdida where they were fairly small in size and hard to distinguish what was going on most of the time.

The character Skim was very interesting. She wanted to be a witch and practiced with her tarot cards. I think she was in that teenage stage in her life where she was trying to find herself and it was difficult for her to fit in with a specific crowd in school. Maybe being a "witch" made her feel more powerful and in control in her life. Relying on what some cards said was easier to relying on others? She seemed very confused with the relationship she had with Ms. Archer. I thought it was bizarre to see a female teacher "hook up" with a female student. We never see or hear about that! So it really shocked me. I wonder, did this really happen or did Skim just want it to happen? Was the kiss a symbol of how she felt for Ms. Archer? hm.. was anyone else surprised by this?

What is Desire?

When I think of desire.. I think of shoes. I love shoes & like myself so do many other women. It's a materialistic desire that many of us have. That brings to question - can desire only fully be obtained by something that is physical? or can it be fully obtained by only a feeling? or both? & does it vary?

La Perdida

I thought it was very interesting to read this book, La Perdida. I have never read a full comic book like this before and at times I found it difficult to follow some of the text. I liked the pictures because they helped put the text into a reality. I did not like when she used Spanish because it made it a little more confusing to read.

Most of the visuals are set up in order for the reader to read from left to right. Some of the boxes are larger than others and as I read on, I noticed that I needed to pay attention to that, so I would be reading in the correct order. At times, I found this to be difficult but once I got the hang of the visual representation that was being repeated made it much easier.

All in all, I thought it was a very interesting comic book. I thought the way that "women" were being represented in the culture of this book was also interesting. They treated women as if they were an object or possession of the men. "Keep your hands off my woman," was repeated much throughout the text. The female did not stand up for herself very often and the men really would not let her. I'm not sure if that is just how it is in the Spanish culture because I know her brother kept mentioning that she should kick out her boyfriend and stand up for herself.

AhhH!

Okay, I don't know about anyone else but the exploratory essay was very difficult for me to write. I felt I was all over the place and had no structure at all. I basically just spilled all of my ideas out onto paper. Whenever something popped into my head I started to type away. When I thought I was finished I read over what I had written down & it was a disaster! Nothing I seemed to write made any sense what so ever, so I basically ended up re-writing everything.

I basically wrote about each term (love, sex, & desire) seperately and how I defined them. At the end of my essay and I summed each one up and tied them all together. Love was the most difficult for me to define because it is not simple at all to say the least. Love is difficult to define in general, which is why there are so many variations of definitions for it.

All in all, I enjoyed writing the essay once it was done & over with. It brought me to realize what I know and don't know about love, sex, and desire. The questions that I brought up also really made me focus on what I want to know more about.

Yummy.

Like Water for Chocolate

I really enjoyed reading, Like Water for Chocolate. I thought it was very creative how the author set the book up by recipes. I really liked how Tita's emotions were somehow molded into her cooking and everytime people ate her food the would react to those emotions.

Love, in this book, is much more "real" between Tita and Pedro. They have an emotional attachment to each other that they share with no one else. Even though they are forbidden to be together because of Mama Elena they still share a love for each other that they cannot find with anyone else. Love is also defined in this book as something that is forced by history. When Mama Elena forbids Tita to ever fall in love with anyone and instead marries Rosaura and Pedro together. She does this because of old views from their culture. The youngest daughter should never marry and instead take care of her mother.

I really wanted Tita and Pedro to work out from the very beginning. It was awful how Mama Elena treated Tita. She treated her as if she was her slave. Tita was suppose to be the daughter who took care of her mother for the rest of her life. If that was me, I would go against everything she would say. That is unfair for Tita to have to contribute all of her time and effort into someone else's life and never get to live her own the way that she wants to. If I were her sister, Rosaura, I would not want to marry someone that my sister loved and wanted to marry. I would feel awful if my sister or my friend did that to me.

I thought it was interesting how the book ended up. The ending was a bit weird. I liked that it wasn't a typical love story ending. I thought it was weird how they just basically burst into flames. The candle analogy was very beautiful. I have never heard that before but it was a different way to look at it.

All in all, this was a great book. I enjoyed every chapter of it and now I want to watch the movie. Hopefully it is as good as the book!