Future Literate Me

Well this is it guys, the final blog. I would like to use this blog as a chance to express some regrets as well as paint a (hopefully accurate) picture of the future of my literacy. Let's start here, first of all future literate me is certainly NOT typing this blog a day late because he procrastinated and planned to start the assignment at 10 PM, but instead fell asleep on the couch watching a Tarantino movie for the second time this week (two separate occasions, two different movies, same director, crazy, I know.) Now that that is out of the way here is what future literate WILL be doing, and I apologize if  this gets redundant.
Future literate me is relaxing on a sturdy but comfortable wooden chair with a slight incline, at an undisclosed location, somewhere close to a mid-size body of water. Future literate me is leisurely turning the page of some eastern religious text. Or maybe a study on insects of the American North East. Future literate me has read the Qur'an. Future literate me has read seven different translations of the Tao Te Ching. Future me knows the exoskelletal differences between a katydid and a cicada. Future literate me will tell you the difference, but only if you ask. Future literate me is thinking about how the feeding technique of the Northeastern woodpecker applies to his life. As future literate me raises a glass of cold but not too cold seltzer, he ponders the concept of there being no gravity at center of the earth. Future literate me is writing a children's book that he does not intend to publish. Future literate me has paired each of his top ten favorite novels with corresponding albums, and ice cream flavors. Future literate me is cutting pictures out of The National Geographic and pasting them into The New Yorker. Future literate me has learned the secrets of time travel and in a series of Bill and Ted like events has gone back in time to edit this post to make sure the details are correct. Future literate me realizes that past tense illiterate me got all the details right in the first place so time warps back to the future without editing a thing.

Listen up you uncultured swine! (the music of The Velvet Underground)

Cultural literacy, to me, is a dangerous concept because it implies that there is a cultural "language" of people, events, and ideas that you have to know about in order avoid becoming an uncultured loser. To tell someone what they need to know about in order to be culturally literate is kind of a balancing act, which if unsuccessful, leaves you drowning in an ocean of pretentiousness. While on the subject of things that are sometimes misunderstood as being pretentious, I'd like to talk about the music of The Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground was an American rock band that embodied the late sixties New York City underground music scene. The Velvets were one of the first groups to start making Noise Rock music. They often blurred the line between music and pure noise via screeching guitar feedback, which was usually set to simple solid song structures. Their lyrics, written by singer and poet Lou Reed, often detailed the events of no-income New York City life, including tales of transvestites, drug deals, murder, prostitution and other savory subjects that your grandparents probably don't want to talk about. Although late sixties rock music is sometimes thought of as a colorful psychedelic sing and dance along, The Velvet's music is more like a black and white movie about a sexually ambiguous criminal, who is actually really nice. The combination of a game changing musical style, and real raw lyrics, result in music that is strange but beautiful and kind of makes you realize that the world is a scary place, and that your parents are just trying to protect you until it's too late and then you're on your own, and that you don't really know what you are doing, you could totally get killed at any second by anyone, and come to think of it they're probably in your room right now. Did you check the closet? No? It's too late now. This is how it ends. All alone at your computer, tablet, fablet, (nook? Kindle fire? Kindle fire HD?) or mobile cellular device, reading my blog. Was it worth it? I hope so.

Entry 6

The task of reforming public education is kind of a tricky subject to talk about, because most of it seems to center on a general disagreement between people who have different perceptions of what public education provides, and should provide in the future. For the most part people disagree over parts of the public education system that are directly related to what these people are looking to get out of their education. As a student it's obviously slanted and maybe even a little shrewd (although satisfying) to lob criticism and generalizations at those in charge and the people who are responsible for the current system. For starters I think it's important to stress that every student is unique as an individual and that the role of public education should be to give them the tools they need to learn not just at this stage but throughout their lives, and encourage (not force) them to use these tools. Not every kid wants to go to college, and that is ok, as long as they have the opportunity to do so. A good place to start reform of education would be to put the teachers, who have spent years of their lives and lots of money in order to learn how to do their jobs, back into the state level education system. We should also strive to eliminate any corporation that is able to make a profit off of test making from the educational system as a whole. No more Pearson question writers, we can easily use real teachers with real experience to write better questions. Just because we live in America does not mean that we automatically are able to develop an educational system that adapts to all the changes in the country and in our world, we need to work toward developing that and it would seem fairly obvious that a one-size-fits-all method of testing is probably not a great start. Rant over. I am going to sleep.

Entry 5

Traditionally English class has always been a class in which I didn't have to stress out over terrible assignments or looming tests. I payed just enough attention in my sixth grade reading and language arts class (and I mean barely enough) to know how to write essays on broad relatively vague prompts, and as for the tests, my slogan has always been "I know how to read, I'll probably be ok." Seems like a terrible way to approach any acedemic subject, but honestly it worked out totally fine. I'm not bragging, I know that there are people who struggle as constantly with English as I do with Trigonometry, and I feel for them. For this reason it's difficult for me to think of a defining literary experience in my life. I think that the time that I really enjoyed reading and writing outside of school was in fourth grade. My teacher Mrs.Woodburn was asked by one of the kids in our class who her favorite author was, and she said that it was J.D Sallinger. Obviously nobody knew who that was because we were all in fourth grade so she described how his books became very popular and then she claimed that he "disappeared." That took me by surprise as a kid because it seemed to be against anything I had ever heard about becoming a famous something-or-other, especially an author. It seemed like a very mysterious and even magical thing to do and I was instantly interested. Through all my years of slacking and semi-slacking through English classes and reading books inside and outside the classroom, that image always stuck with me, and I realize now that that was the first time I saw a writer as something more than a person doing a job. Even though I was really young, I think at least subconsciously I must have taken note of that and buried it in one of the relatively few "Save: Do Not Delete" folders inside of my brain.

Entry 3

One book that everyone should absolutely be required to read is Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger. I know that this is kind of ironic because in our class we were required to read this and it is kind of a standard in literature anyway. But after reading it I would recommend it to anyone who is in high school, because it generates strong reactions from anyone who reads it. Most teenagers who are in high school will identify with some of the angst and feelings that Holden has. Even after you realize that he is hyper critical, hypocritical and a pretty tough guy to be friends with, he also embodies the insecurities of  the average American teenager. Or maybe not, there are probably some people who read the book and wonder why he's such an anti-social loser. For me it showed an extreme version of things that naturally occur to any teenager. For instance its natural to sometimes wonder how certain peoples personalities could possibly be real, and imagine that they might just be a front to protect that person for some kind of insecurity. This is a very Holden thing to observe and after reading this book that is all I can think about whenever a thought like that pops into my head. One of the reasons this book is so popular (and should be) is that it not only acknowledges the confusion and anxiety that lots of people have experienced, and points out an extreme version of it, essentially telling people that it's normal to feel that way sometimes and that it could be much worse, just look at how bad this guy has it.

Entry 4

Reading a picture is something much less literal than the word "reading" implies. When someone reads a book, they interpret the words literal meaning, and then their other implications, whereas, with an image there is no implicit literal definition to be found. The only way to really read a picture is to try and describe the feeling that it gives you when you look at it. My favorite example of this is a picture of a vase of flowers by Vincent Van Gogh. About a year ago I found a print of this painting sitting in a "free stuff" bin at a record store. I picked it up because I thought it was appeasing to look at, not really anything crazy going on, just some flowers sitting on a table. I took it home and put it on the back of the door to my room. Because of this, I end up staring at it quite a lot. It is often one of the first things I see in the morning and the last thing I see before I go to sleep, because it is directly opposite my bed. The feeling that this picture gives me is a really calming one. I think that this is because it is almost a palate cleanser of sorts, in that, it doesn't really have any hidden meaning or deep concept, it is just a really simple really pretty vase, with some nice flowers in it, sitting on a table doing absolutely nothing. The flowers aren't extremely life like, in fact I have observed that if you look closely they don't even look that much like flowers. They aren't too abstract either, just detailed enough for you to understand that they are just flowers, and very nice looking flowers at that. I think that the real message that I get from reading this image is that even when I get confused or feel uncertain about things, I can kind of take comfort in the fact that not everything g is unclear, and that sometimes flowers are just flowers.

Entry Two

I have never experienced a single failure in my entire life. My existence has been nothing less than a continuous series of successes and achievements that will never end, because I am in fact a reptilian Illuminati entity that will never die. With that being said I think it's pretty obvious that I experience failure all the time, and I'm not complaining. It is impossible to wake up everyday and accomplish ones every task and desire with precision and grace. As much as it may seem like some people posses this ability in their lives, they don't. It does not exist. Or maybe it does, if you are religious. When I was a kid I played a lot of sports mainly baseball and basketball, I was not particularly good at either. It used to bother me when I was really young, but I quickly realized that I didn't care about being good. I played those sports all the way through middle school, and I had fun, because if I wasn't having fun, I wouldn't be there. I was on some winning teams, and lots of losing teams, I learned that to me it really didn't matter that much. Once I stopped caring about winning so much as a kid I actually got better at some sports too. The same thing would happen to me later in middle school, when I became obsessed with playing guitar and would frequently spend hours in my room sweating over Frank Zappa guitar solos and jazz guitar wizardry, trying to figure out how to do it on my own. I obviously couldn't (and still can't.) If I had never experiences these failures I wouldn't have learned that you can't set insane expectations for yourself, and if you do, you do so knowing that (at least for the short term) you won't achieve them. Or maybe you will. I don't want to sound discouraging. This entry just got really self aware and uncomfortable. I should seriously just stick to the whole reptilian Illuminati shtick.
 

Entry One

One of my first memories of reading as a child was when, sometime around kindergarten, my Mom read the book Where the Wild Things Are to me. I remember at first enjoying the part about the boy refusing to take off his wolf costume, but as soon as the actual wild things came into the picture I was terrified. The illustrations in this book are amazing to me now, but as a little kid they scared the crap out of me. The monsters in the book are depicted as wild and fun loving, but also viscous. There is a part towards the end where the monsters basically tell the boy that they would rather eat him alive then see him leave them, because he is their king. This is obviously really scary, but also really depressing. Just look at the monster on the cover, he looks downright depressed. This book seriously freaked me out as a kid, not just a little bit, after my Mom read it to me I think I started crying and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Also, in a terrible twist of fate I went to school the next week and the teacher announced that the tomorrow she was going to read this book to the whole class. That gave me some crazy anxiety because I thought I was going to freak out in front of my hyper cool squad of kindergarten friends. I think I ended up staying home from school on the day when the teacher was going to read it, but I know for a fact that I avoided reading it again somehow and that it really terrorized my life for about a week of kindergarten.