I liked the Beard story a lot but I found it awfully sad. It was very descriptive and genuine so it was easy for me to imagine every detail. It reminds me of stories I would have to read in my AIDS and Epidemics class written about individuals dying of HIV from their doctor’s point of view. The story was beautiful and the part I liked most was when Jo Ann said “no matter how much you miss them they never come back once they are gone”. Literally, she was talking about the deceased, but figuratively she could have meant her husband or her collie or anyone who wasn’t playing the same role in her life that they used to. And even though her husband came back to console her, his love for her never came back. It could never come back because he didn’t love her anymore. He looked at his wife like he looked at the collie on the damp blankets. And for some reason I can visualize exactly what that must have felt like.
"The Midwest is very brown isn’t it?” says Chris’s mother to Jo Ann on the phone. Brown is the color of dead leaves and shit which makes perfect sense in this story. When you mix all the colors in the spectrum your allegedly get black but anytime I’ve tried I always got brown. This reminded me of a quote from On the Road. “There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded. At least that’s what I thought then…”

The Richards story immediately struck fear into my heart thinking that someday my mother could be like this. I’ve never had any experience with grandparents because they all died before I was born but the idea of my parents becoming senile frightens me. I could see myself becoming annoyed with my mother were she to do this and that frightens me too because I should be mature enough by now to not lose my temper with her. “But we’re not really angry at her, we’re angry at it. Whatever it is.” I hope I am mature enough by the time it happens.

I guess this is a good group of stories to read over Thanksgiving so that I can be thankful for my life and my family’s and how neither of us has reached any of these states yet.

I enjoyed the Sedaris and Strayed stories the most because I could relate to them. Not to their circumstances but perhaps to the authors’ thinking. Whenever I like a quote I write it down. These are the passages I wrote down: “It’s so rare when one knowingly does something for the last time: the last time you take a bath, the last time you have sex or trim your toenails. If you know you’ll never do it again it might be nice to really make a show of it…There must exist some middle ground, a place where one was tortured on a daily basis but still allowed a few moments of pleasure, taken wherever one could find it. That place seemed to be Raleigh, North Carolina, so why the big fuss?...You can’t brace yourself for famine if you’ve never known hunger, it is foolish to even try. The most you can do is eat up while you still can, stuffing yourself, shoveling it in with both hands and licking clean the plates, recalling every course in vivid detail…”

I liked the satirical nature of this reading. I hated the father and the way he tried to dominate and manipulate everyone else but I figure he only did that because he was scared and trying to control his wife so as not to lose her. The story’s mother reminded me somewhat of my mother, unconventional and non-conformist, minus the cigarette smoking. I think if my mother got cancer she wouldn’t tell us either. I remember a few years ago she got into a car accident and the only way I found out was when I noticed she didn’t have a car anymore. She didn’t want to scare me by telling me.

I wrote down a group of passages from the Strayed story as well: “We are allowed to be deeply into basketball, or Buddhism or Star Trek, or jazz, but we are not allowed to be deeply sad. Greif is a thing that we are encouraged to ‘let go of’ to ‘move on from’…. And if they don’t – if they have loved too deeply, if they wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live – well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease. We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help… We act as if all losses are equal. It is un- American to believe otherwise…But it was not to be…We loved each other but love was not enough…I thought about how if you lose a ring in a river, you are never going to get it back, no matter how badly you want it or how long you wait…But this isn’t fiction. Sometimes a story is not about anything except what it is about. Sometimes you wake up and find that you actually have lost your nose…”

I liked this story because the author was young. She just went through a tragic loss and she was confused and messed up and I think that everyone has stages of their life like that. Frankly I don’t believe that all losses are equal. Any losses I’ve suffered have not been as devastating as having to lose a mother however a loss is a loss and quantifying a loss doesn’t create a different reaction to the loss.

All of these stories share a similarity in losing someone you love. But for the most part they all seem unresolved as in the learning to accept this loss has not been achieved yet and may never be.

Push was the most disturbing book I have ever read. I thought A Color Purple was tame compared to this. I’m really glad this book was fiction although it scares me to think that things like this I’m sure have happened in the world. I feel like every harmful and hurtful thing that could possibly ever happen to someone happened to Precious. I think I still am severely disturbed by the idea that she was being molested by her mother. I’ve heard about girls being molested by their fathers and although the thought frightens and troubles me, I’m no longer as phased by it. The part on page 21 where Precious describes the sexual interaction between her mother and her still nauseates me. I first read it when I was in my bed about to fall asleep and then I had to get up and put a Disney movie on to take my mind off of it.

I was equally appalled by the description on page 135 where we hear Mama’s confession and learn that Precious was being molested by her father since she was a newborn. I can’t wrap my mind around this concept. I hated Mama. I knew she was just a character but I still hated her and blame her for the disasters in Precious’s life. Mama was jealous of her own newborn daughter when her father molested her. I can’t even believe the mentality of someone like that. It seems that her entire life Mama held this against Precious and enslaved her as punishment. Even the descriptions Precious uses when describing her Mama’s appearance are vulgar. She is fat, disgusting, dirty, smelly, greasy, eating a whole ham hock. When she opens her legs it reminds Precious of a can of haddock left open on the counter on a hot summer’s day.

The book is very graphic. Nothing is simply implied. And the broken English and Ebonics contribute to the pain of the character. After finishing this book I thanked god that I didn’t have to deal with any of the trauma that Precious did in her life. Ultimately it was a success story but Precious had to go through a lot of rain to find some kind of rainbow.

I think my favorite part of the book was the end when we got to read all of the girls’ stories written in their own language. This helped to further develop their characters and allow the reader to experience what they had.

I think its interesting to mention that when Nicolas Ealy came into the class he talked about how desire was the ultimate cause of all pain. Many of the songs I listened to were written as a response to unfulfilled desire. Sarah McLachlan literally says in her song "Possession", "Would I spend forever here and not be satisfied". This song, like many other songs, is describing a situation of unrequited love, which is really unfulfilled desire and is indeed one of the most painful lessons to learn. Alanis Morisette knows what I’m talking about too. "You oughta know" is a song all about being replaced. One side moves on and the other side is left pining. Taylor Swift’s song "Teardrops" is about unrequited love in the sense that the person she loves will never know or love her back and yet she can’t give up her feelings for him.

I find a lot of pain comes from feeling isolated and lonely. Like in the Travis song he thinks he is the only one persecuted by the world. He asks "Why does it always rain one me? Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?" as if his pain comes as a result of some karmic retribution.

I found the Eamon and Frankee duo very interesting. They sing to each other and like Frankee says "There are two sides to every story". They are both on the defensive about each other and I’m sure Frankee really ripped into Eamon’s ego when she released her song. Its funny because after you put your walls down and get defeated by love its natural to be on the defensive, building back your walls in attempt to not get hurt again.

Top fourty songs don’t really inspire pain in me. I think it’s because I feel like these songs are fabricated and not necessarily written from experience. They have ulterior motives of making money and I don’t trust the singers so I can’t feel their pain. But I had never before heard the song "Soap and Water", or a song so bluntly talking about divorce so it was more poignant than many others. And I clearly know that Kurt Cobain was a very distraught individual so I don’t feel like his songs are faking. When I think of the most painful songs I immediately think of Jeff Buckley. He has some real tearjerkers I’ve cried along to.

The timing of having to read Beautiful Boy could not be more ominous. My best friend’s little brother has always been a mixed up kid. He’s a senior in high school failing all his classes with no motivation to do anything other than smoke pot and hang out with his friends. I had taken Steve’s senior pictures for his yearbook so I dropped them off last Sunday when I was in town. When I saw him he looked about forty pounds lighter than the month before, when I had taken the pictures. He ran in and out of the house, not acknowledging anyone, just running into his room to grab some clothes and money and he was off. His hair was disgusting, he looked like he hadn’t showered in a week, he was gaunt, pale, dark circles under his eyes. Then my best friend broke down and told me the whole story.

Steve hasn’t gone to school in weeks, he’s been suspended and hasn’t bothered to come back. He doesn’t sleep at home, he doesn’t eat at home, he lives with his friend. The last time he came home he stole a credit card and four hundred dollars from his parents. The last time I saw him was when I was taking his senior pictures. None of this had happened yet. This downward spiral snowballed out of control in a month. It’s obvious that he’s doing some type of drugs, how else could you explain his rapid weight loss and stealing money? When my friend told me this I was halfway through reading Beautiful Boy.

I was terrified for Steve. Because I was reading this book I was learning all this information and seeing it through a parent’s point of view. I felt horrible for my friend and her family. I didn’t want them to go through what I was reading about in this book. I told my friend about the book and suggested maybe he should go to rehab before he turns 18, remembering what David Sheff wished he could do to Nic. I couldn’t believe something like this could happen to a sweet boy like Steve. I couldn’t believe that this could happen in Granby, CT, to someone from a small upper-middle class town, someone from a close family and good upbringing.

As of this weekend Steve is in the hospital. He was forced to go after his parents called the police. After this weekend he will move to an outpatient facility for 10 days but from reading this book I don’t think that will be enough time. I fear he will revert back to his old ways and continue to hurt himself and others. Everytime I read I get so depressed. I want to keep reading, hoping to learn more and more, but at the same time I feel twice the pain because I can witness it first hand destroying my best friend’s brother. I just hope that his story ends up like Nic’s, a happy ending.

I found this article much more interesting that Murray’s but the scene that Rehling starts out with is silly. I know the article says that 90% of serial killers are young adult, white males but what percentage of young adult white males between the ages of 20 and 35 are actually serial killers?

I thought it was coincidental that the article talked about the genre of a "white trash" serial killer, since for Halloween my costume was white trash and Halloween is the ideal time of year for fear and horror. I think what Thomas DiPiero mentioned about the white male protagonist was interesting. He argued that these characters are dependent on women and people of color to define their identity. So in essence white masculinity "is not represented so much as an identity as a hysterical response to a perceived lack of identity".

I like how covertly these stereotypes are placed within horror films and yet as the viewer we still don’t even realize it. It’s like a math equation where the stereotypes follow a certain pattern and I love how Rehling breaks apart the equation and analyzes them in this article. I.e. "The female detective, as Carol Clover has noted, has her roots in the slasher genre, in which increasingly the male rescuer/survivor function has been rendered "marginal or dispensed with altogether."

I love the archetypal framework for every character and plot that is examined in this article. For instance, the protagonist in each movie is always a foil of the antagonist. I think I will be more aware of the patterns and stereotypes after reading these articles. I may even be able to predict the plot of the next slasher movie I see.

In her article Hostel II Representations of the body in pain, Gabrielle Murray comments that teenagers who were 10 when 9/11 happened are now 16 or 17. They are "grown up being told you are going to get blown-up. Terror Alert Orange… They want something to scream at" that is as shocking as the events of their lives. I think this is an interesting point to bring up. It says something about that generation which I think could be true. I’ve heard that my generation has a three minute attention span because that was how long it used to take for a modem to dial up to the internet. I think it could be the same reaction. When these children are brought up watching the news with topics like 9/11 and bred on orange, yellow, and red alerts, they will need horror equivalent or greater to entertain them in movies. It only makes sense.

In Edelstein’s review he claims ‘fear supplants empathy and makes us all potential torturers, doesn’t it?’ which is true, especially in relation to Abu Ghraib. I said this in a previous blog post and I think that when humans are in a situation of fear they will turn on their morals, logic, and better understanding in order to save oneself. This is the common archetype of ‘torture porn’. Murray writes that torture is not used to ‘unearth secret information’ in times of war and hostility, but torture serves the sole purpose of isolating and therefore controlling a group through their bodily vulnerability. We see this statement supported by the predicament in Abu Ghraib.

The label "torture porn" repulses me a little. Murray defines it as ‘the representations of mutilation and torture in films are pornography because they are illegal or at least unacceptable to contemporary cinema audiences’ while Susan Sontag claims that torture has predominately a sexual nature.

I really enjoyed the part in the article in which Murray discusses the exhibit in the art gallery, Blind Light. I would have liked to see and experience it myself. I think the disassociation between mind and body happens so often that we forget we function as one. The mind controls what the body does, the body controls what the mind thinks. It takes a piece like this in which one is totally incapacitated visually to create a connection between body and mind once again. And just thinking further on this idea, Sontag says "the Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one", which I agree with. But take away our visual dependency such as in this piece of art and we are panic stricken. I imagine myself in this glass cube terrified, heart palpitating, trying to escape, clawing at the sides like a rat. Though horror and torture porn movies depend on visuals to frighten and entice, there is much to be said about a new degree of horror that is created by obstructing our vision.