HW24: A Room of My Own

Virginia Woolfe once stated, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” (Woolfe 4) I have a room in which I share with another woman, one of my best friends from High School. I only get half of the room because I’m in a dorm room. Is Virginia Woolfe telling me that I can write fiction? The place in which I write my work, is where I’m sitting right now; at my desk. On my desk there’s a postcard from Rome, phone numbers, pictures of friends, a mirror calendar, fortune cookie fortunes, a phone, and a light. This is where I write my work. “The rooms differ so completely; they are calm or thunderous; open on to the sea, or, on the contrary, give on to a prison yard; are hard as a horsehair or soft as feathers- one has only to go into any room in any street for the whole of that extremely complex force of femininity to fly in one’s face.” (Woolfe 87) My room can be described as lively, bright brilliant colors, and a wall filled with faces of people who I love the most. This is a calming place for me, and I like the way my room is set up. “There must be a freedom, and there must be a peace.” (Woolfe 104) She’s right there should be freedom, and peace.

HW 23: With apologies to Virginia Woolfe

Lately, I’ve been reading blogs online. It seems to be that everything is revolved around things that are not so important. I’ve been reading the Jezebel website. On this site is a bunch of “gossip.” One blog on this page I chose to look at was the one labeled, “Making Billions From Bad Sausage: The History of Botox.” The picture shows a magazine called In Touch Weekly.” On the front page there is a picture of a beautiful woman. The caption show below says “BOTOX AT 23.” What a vision of loneliness! (pg 62) This woman is trying to make her self feel better by fixing her natural beauties. Woman should be accepted just the way they are. They shouldn’t feel the need to better themselves just so everyone else can think they’re beautiful. Women should be proud of who they are, and not care about what others have to say.

http://jezebel.com/gossip/pretty-poison/making-billions-from-bad-sausage-the-history-of-botox-313573.php

HW 22: Is the US a patriarchy?

I think that Woolfe believed the paper in England was patriarchy. Throughout chapter two, she talks about how women have nothing to write or say about men, and all men have to do is talk about women. On page 33, as she’s reading the newspaper Woolfe is distracted by the headlines, “Somebody had made a big score in South Africa. Lesser ribbons announced that Sir Austen Chamberlain was at Geneva. A meat axe with human hair on it had been found in a cellar. Mr. Justice --- commented in the Divorce Courts upon Shamelessness of Women.” Since patriarchy means; a society in which fathers are the powerful responsible heads of their families and households, and by extension, a society in which men hold a disproportionately large share of power, Woolfe has a reason to think that the paper is a patriarchy. All it mentions is men, and the power that they have. I looked at the New York Times newspaper to see if it would give a transient visitor to our planet the impression that the United States is a patriarchy. In my opinion, I don’t think it does at all. On the homepage to the New York Times, there are mostly articles about what’s going on with the war. That doesn’t seem like a patriarchy because there are both men and women soldiers fighting in the war right now.

HW 21: Dear Jenny

Hey Jenny,

I know that reading A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf can be hard. It was even hard for me to understand. She has a way of writing where you know what she’s talking about in a sense, but you don’t know exactly what she means. In the first chapter, Woolfe is talking about women and fiction, and that every woman needs a room of her own to write fiction, and money. Woolfe mentions sitting on a riverbank at Oxbridge, this is where she writes her opening statements, and ponders about women and fiction. Throughout the chapter, she seems to be at a luncheon, and believes that “before the war at a luncheon party like this people would have said precisely the same things but they would have sounded different, because in those days they were accompanied by a sort of humming noise, not articulate, but musical, exciting, which changed the value of words themselves.” (p.12) Woolfe then found a poem by Tennyson who she believes does not depict women in a good way. She seems to be a very strong-willed women, and strongly against sexism. That’s what this chapter leads me to believe. Maybe your English teacher believes this is a good book because Woolfe believes that “it is not a matter of importance” (p.5) on who is writing it, but what the subject is about. Women, fiction, money, and I believe sexism. She’s trying to make a statement, and open up doors for women writers in society today. I think it’s really confusing and I don’t fully understand why a sophomore in high school would be reading this, but at least attempt to read it. Maybe it will make more sense as you read through more chapters. As Mom always says, “You can’t say you dislike a book after 25 pages, at least get to page 50.” Good luck Jen! If you need anything else, just let me know.

Love you!

Kelly

HW 19: Blogging Restrictions

After reading the article, “Web of Influence” by Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell, the most important paragraph I found is on page 93-94. Here, they talk about a Chinese blogger named Lui Di, a 23-year-old psychology student who “offended authorities with her satirical comments about the Communist Party.” She was released but two individuals who started an online petition on Di’s behalf were arrested. It amazes me that in China there are 300,000 bloggers that uneasily coexist with the government, and they all have to be secretive. It says here in the paragraph that, “Text messaging is much safer medium for the online Chinese community.” In other words, Chinese bloggers basically aren’t allowed to blog what they feel or like on the internet. This is why I chose this paragraph because I like the fact that it informs you on what’s happening on the other side of the world, and their restrictions on blogging.

HW 18: Amy Winehouse: Dirty?

I decided to look at Jezebel’s page. As I was searching through her site, I saw a picture of Amy Winehouse. The caption for the picture is “Amy Winehouse Never Lets A Good Fag Go To Waste.” In the picture, Winehouse is shown picking up a cigarette off the street. Not only is that disturbing in every way possible, but it gets worse because in the next picture she’s actually lighting it. Who knows where that cigarette has been, it could have been in someone’s mouth that has, lets say…herpes. Maybe it was hers, and she just dropped it. But, from the looks of it, that’s not what I’m assuming, and clearly, the person who took this picture isn’t either. It’s disgusting, and not only is her smoking a cigarette she found on the floor, but her hair is gross as well. Someone needs to hire a new hairstylist ASAP. If you’d like to check out this disgusting picture, it’s on this website: http://jezebel.com/gossip/snap-judgment/amy-winehouse-never-lets-a-good-fag-go-to-waste-307758.php

HW17b: Influence for elections

The first interview I read was with Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. Markos is a thirty-four-year-old former GI and committed Democrat who writes in a political blog called “DailyKos.” Throughout his interview he talks about his blog, and all the attention that it has gotten. As he states, “DailyKos has really gone through three main growth phases.” First there are the 2002 midterm elections, then the Iraq war, and lastly the 2004 Democratic primaries. Next, I read the interview with Ana Marie Cox. Throughout her interview I felt that she doesn’t really have anything to say about the elections. She writes freely, and she made that clear in her interview. To answer the question, “Which blog would be more likely to influence the way you would vote in a coming election?” I would go with DailyKos. Zuniga has a way of writing, it’s formal, and makes much more of a statement with elections then Cox does with Wonkette. Wonkette is good if you’re looking for a laugh or feel like reading up on gossip. For elections though, I’d much rather go with DailyKos.

HW 17: Keeping it in the family

http://jezebel.com/gossip/daddy-issues/-307685.php

As I was searching through Jezebel’s website, I found an article about a couple who couldn’t have a baby. She says that in London there’s a couple that are having sperm donated in order for them to have a child. This sperm is donated by their 72-year-old father/father-in-law. In my opinion, I think that’s disgusting. I don’t think I would ever ask my father to donate his sperm if I couldn’t have a child. I would much rather adopt. That’s repulsive. I honestly don’t believe that they would even think about that. The child is going to look more like the 72-year-old then his own father. The 72-year-old is now going to be fathering his grandchild. Gross. The woman is basically having a child with her father-in-law. Really, if people want to have children and can’t, then just adopt; do you really have to keep it in the family? Is it really that horrible to adopt a child?

HW 16: The five pillars according to Scoble

In an interview with Robert Scoble, in the book Blog! How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture, he explains the five pillars of conversational software. Here, he explains “RSS” “ a techie’s way of saying it allows a blogger to offer his Webog for people to subscribe to, as well as to integrate links and news from other websites.” (Kline & Burstein 130) Scoble explains “five things that made blogging hot.” They include ease of publishing, discoverability, cross-site conversations, permalinking, and syndication. I would say that ease of publishing is how easy it is to publish a blog, or post something on the internet. Discoversability, is kind of obvious, it’s how easy it is to find a blog or be “discovered.” Cross-site communications most likely means, that if you go to one site, it probably has a link to another site. Permalinking as Scoble explains is “a URL that will take me directly to a post.” And last but not least, syndication is to keep up multiple blogs.

HW 14: Interview with Nick Denton

After reading “Take an Obsession, Then Feed It!” (Kline & Burstein 150-156) I felt that Nick Denton puts a lot of hope into these blogs. Actually, Fortune magazine said the reporter created “the first “empire of the fledgling weblog industry’ – an empire that includes such hot name-brand blogs.” Denton actually mentions that the formula to having such a big blog is “actually quite simple: Take an obsession-say, a gadget obsession- and feed it.” In other words, he has writers put things on the blogs that are going to get a lot of feedback, but not too much, this way, readers come back for more. Denton also points out that in the near future people won’t be looking at the front page of the New York Times or Fortune as much as they do now because weblogs will allow people to “their own newspaper.” Although this doesn’t sound like a good idea, it’s much faster through a computer to get the news updates or look something up, rather then reading the newspaper.