Am I a Transcendentalist?

Transcendentalists are generally open-minded folk who are quite idealistic. They dream of a bright future where everybody is a good person with a conscience. Though this would be a lovely world to live in, I doubt it will happen any time soon.
I agree that everybody should trust themselves and rely on themselves more than anybody else. It is good to be independent. I agree that people should be educated and peaceful with others. I agree that people should be patriotic to their countries, to a certain extent. (Citizens shouldn't support unjust countries.)
I disagree with the religious stuff, mainly. From my understanding, transcendentalism has a lot to do with religion, which is chill, but not my kind of chill. I am also not a fan of all the men in transcendentalism who care more about man's progression than woman's. A true transcendentalist should promote equality among everybody.
I am a very skeptical person, so I would not call myself a transcendentalist. My idealistic world would be a world of peace and equality and justice, which does include some key ideas of transcendentalism. My problem is that I do not believe that everybody has good in them. Obviously there are corrupt people out there who are unjust and all-around bad guys. I would like everybody to be great human beings, but I simply do not believe it.

The Great Gatsby (2013) - Music

Before watching the film, my father had warned me about the music. (He thinks he is a music expert because he listens to "good music" instead of today's popular music.) I was expecting the worst. My father was only partially correct. Some of the songs worked, others did not.
The one song that I specifically remember my father warning me about is the Will.i.am song titled "Bang Bang." I'd heard the song before in the commercials for the movie when it first came out, and I was not impressed. The song is just such an ugly one, it did not go well with The Great Gatsby film. The beat is somewhat catchy, but the repetition of the word "bang" is mainly obnoxious and slightly gross to listen to. The song is ultimately quite cringe-inducing.
As for the rest of the music, I thought the movie a fairly good job with making it easier for today's audiences to realize how the parties were, whether I actually enjoyed the music or not. If the movie chose to use music that was popular then, today's audience would think that it was kind of lame. I imagine that the two kinds of music would display very different atmospheres for Gatsby's parties.
My favorite part involving music was the Lana Del Rey song "Young and Beautiful." At one point, there was a character at one of Gatsby's parties performing the song in a "old-timey" way, at least compared to the modern-sounding version. The lyrics were the same, but the instrumental part was different. I like the original version of the song, but the movie did a good job of transforming it into a song that sounded like it fit with the time period.
This doesn't have much to do about music, but it was really weird to see Tobey Maguire, AKA Spiderman, as Nick. He worked better as Peter Parker.

Bowling for Columbine

In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore asked why it was only Americans who continuously made such poor decisions regarding firearms and gun control. Americans have the "right to bear arms," according to the Bill of Rights. The main reason people purchase and keep guns is for "protection." Though, what are we protecting ourselves from? Other people with guns?
I do not believe that a gun is a good source of protection. If we never had the right to own guns in the first place, not unlike Japan, then maybe we wouldn't feel it necessary to possess a gun to protect ourselves. Japan's police officers are armed, though they believe that the gun is the absolute last resort. These police officers are trained in different martial arts for self defense instead of just gun training. They have nearly no need for a gun because almost nobody else in Japan owns a gun. Police officers would not have to open fire at somebody because that somebody likely does not have a gun themselves. Unarmed civilians are a lot less harmful to the public than civilians with guns. In the end, using guns for protection appears to be a vicious circle. We arm ourselves against the armed, hoping to fight fire with fire.
Now, it is said that guns don't kill people, but people do. For the most part, this is true. If people didn't have such easy access to guns, maybe they would just find an alternative way to murder. As for the case in Flint, Michigan, the child did not understand the severity of the gun that he used to kill an innocent girl. If that gun had not been present, that little girl could still be alive. The boy did not kill her. He had little to no understanding of the importance of life and death, there is no way he understood the permanence of what he did. The gun he had access to killed her. Guns being so easily accessible is not only a concern for the young. According to the article "A Land Without Guns," in 2008, 587 people in the United States were killed by a gun. On accident. That kind of sounds like a gun did kill somebody without a person doing it intentionally.
Unfortunately, it would be extremely difficult to change the United States' gun policy for the better. I hope one day we could live in an essentially gun-free environment, mainly because not much good has come from the violent ways of guns.

Sound and Fury

The documentary Sound and Fury brought to light a controversial topic that I had never considered before. I personally do not know anybody who is deaf, nor did I know of the cochlear implant before watching this documentary. I do not belong to the proper Discourse.
There are two different sides to the implant. The people involved were either all for or against it. Both sides had valid and interesting arguments. If I were presented with such a difficult and important decision, I would most likely be able to come to a conclusion. As for right now, I do not have a definite opinion on the topic.
Peter and Nita, as well as Mari's parents believe that the deaf culture is a significant part of their lives. If the parents were to take that away from their child, that would be considered abuse. It would be offensive to take the deafness away from anybody--if a child is born deaf, it should stay deaf.
For Chris and Mari, their main concern was communication. They wanted the best and brightest future for Peter, and his future did not look so bright without the implant. It is true that deaf people in the "hearing world" is more difficult compared to people who can already here. That is definite. Although, there is a whole deaf community out there that is amazing.
Peter and Nita found one of those communities and it is completely possible for the deaf to be successful, even aside from their communication difficulties. The problem for Little Peter is that he is the only deaf person in his immediate family. It would be less rational for his family to move to a deaf community, unlike Heather's family. Since Heather's immediate family is all deaf, it would be more natural if she stayed deaf and progressed in the deaf community with her deaf family.
Getting a cochlear implant could either be a good thing or a bad thing, it really just depends on the situation. At the end of the documentary, I believe that both families had made the right decision for their children and their futures.

Irrational Fear

I don’t mind water when it is low enough that I can touch the bottom of whatever is holding the water. Unfortunately, being such a short person, there are many collections of water that I cannot reach the bottom of. I’ve never been a good swimmer, but I would like to believe that I would be able to swim like a pro if my life depended on it. It’s not really the swimming or not swimming that I am scared of -- even though I am also afraid of drowning, that isn’t exactly irrational for a poor swimmer. I’m just not a huge fan of the vastness of water. Even an innocent public swimming pool has it’s frights. I fear the deep, dark waters will pull me under and reveal the viciousness underneath (like the lack of air for my lungs). Though I’m not afraid of heights, I am afraid of deep waters, as though they were great heights but with water in between. I once had a dream that I was flying through the sky and I looked down to see a lake. The lake was crystal clear, revealing a couple of giant whale-like monsters at the bottom. I’m not saying that swimming pools deeper than five feet contain mysterious aquatic animals, but lakes and oceans could be homes to just as creepy creatures. I am mainly just afraid of things that are big and kind of empty, like outer space. It scares me to think that there is so much emptiness, and it also scares me to think that there could be, and are, living things that can survive in that emptiness. Even a typical sea-dweller like a whale is frightening in its own way. Those bad boys are huge. Whales are definitely fine by me when they are far away or in photographs. I just cannot imagine being confronted by a massive whale that may or may not mistake be for krill, without me having a heart attack first. Of course, I probably wouldn’t be close enough to an ocean for that to happen. I’ve only been to an ocean once in my life, and I did not go swimming in it. Maybe I am more afraid of water animals than the actual water itself. When I was younger, I was camping with my family. I was in the shallow parts of a lake with my brother and sister, and I stepped on something sharp. I reached down and picked it up. At first, I thought it was a toy lobster that somebody had accidentally dropped into the lake, then, a split second later, I realized it was a dead crawfish so I screamed and threw it simultaneously. Obviously I got out of the water at that point, and stayed out. I do not think I have gone swimming in a lake since that incident, but it’s more because lakes are kind of gross. Despite their beauty, I dislike large bodies of water quite a bit.

Blurred Lines Critical Review

When I first heard the song 'Blurred Lines,' I found it catchy -- and I still do find it catchy. But like most popular songs today, it isn't very modest. Songs like this should not be "okay" just because there are many like it. I personally do not think the song is "rapey," but it is most definitely not fair to women. I also cannot say that the song and video are "far from being 'rapey' (Lai)" because of the analysis from Romano. She had some nice points that Lai had tried to disprove, like the uncomfortable repetition of lyrics and the content of the video. Like mentioned in both articles, the women in the music video were featured without clothes while the men were fully clothed. That just shows inequality from the get-go. Yes, "a woman's body has been painted and sculpted and talked about since the beginning of man, (Thicke in Romano's Essay)" but that does not mean that the men can't also be painted, sculpted, and talked about. I believe that either the men and women should both be fully clothed, or not -- equality is key. If we as a society continue to overlook these cases of objectification, we will never reach that true equality we have been striving for. If men (and women) like Robin Thicke continue to make music and videos like 'Blurred Lines,' I hope they can at least try to make them a little more equal, and think about the different kinds of backlash that could possibly occur.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

When I had finally gotten around to visit the public library to pick up a nonfiction book, I had other books in mind. Just Kids wasn't even on my radar, though I'm not upset to say this was the book I found and ultimately got stuck with. Being a person who usually reads fictional books instead of nonfiction, it was slightly intimidating to start reading this book, even though it was fairly short. I'm glad that this is the book I ended up with.
I didn't know who Patti Smith was when I first picked up the book, but my father filled in for me that she was a well-known poet, singer, and visual artist. I found it easy to relate to Patti when she struggled with procrastination when creating some pieces of art. As a fellow artist, I know it's easy to get a finished piece of work in your mind and have it go all wrong by the time you've finally finished it. Patti obviously had more determination than I because she would try again, making several different drawings of the same thing at one point. I can say that I sometimes start a drawing and never finish it. With Patti, she had done that with her poetry. She would have many unfinished poems sprawled out on her floor as she worked on another never to be finished poem. Artists need inspiration and I am proud to say this book has in fact fueled me to finished one or two of my drawings.
Patti Smith had a friend named Robert who had gotten into photography closer to the end of the book. I enjoy photography myself, but I can't say I enjoy capturing the same images as Robert. Although he was into some pretty heavy and artistic photographs, he also liked to take modest portraits of people. He would photograph Patti for her book covers. One of the fun things about this book is it includes some of the images mentioned in the book; there are several photographs, drawings, and even a tie rack. It's cool to be able to actually see what Patti was seeing, it makes it more personal.
I'd say the worst aspect to the book is Patti Smith did a large amount of name dropping. At many points in the book, she would just list off a bunch of names that I did not recognize, and sometimes they weren't relevant and never came up again in the book. I did recognize a few famous people such as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and Janis Joplin. I was just a little surprised that Susan Sontag was mentioned. I believe she was present at a poetry reading that Patti and her friend were preforming at. Susan Sontag was one of the authors of the articles we read, if you recall, she wrote a piece about 9/11. Unfortunately, Sontag's piece hadn't left a good impression in my mind. Though I did search her up on Wikipedia and she was known for writing about photography and culture, so her being present at a poetry reading isn't very shocking. The connections one makes from reading is pretty neat.
The main reason that this book was difficult to get through was the vocabulary. It wasn't difficult for me to find all 40 vocabulary words, but it was a pain to have to stop what I'm doing to write down an unknown word and then look it up. Having little patience with my on-the-fritz-phone, I used a real dictionary to look up the words. At the time I realized that I had more than enough words, I just ditched the notecards and dictionary to enjoy the last of the book without the distraction. Although it sort of got in the way of my concentration, it is still good to widen my vocabulary, mostly because mine is fairly small. I don't mean to mentally belittle myself because of this, but I could definitely get better. The other reason it was difficult to get through was that I was reading other books at the same time.
I mentioned a confusing character earlier: Robert Mapplethorpe. When Patti first met Robert, they had been lovers. At one point, Robert cheated on Patti and he turned out to be homosexual. Patti was totally okay with this, she didn't even seem to care. Robert and Patti had continued to be close friends, looking out for each other throughout the rest of the book. At the very beginning of the book, there was a part that was also in the end of the book -- Patti mourning after Robert's death.  From the very start readers had known that Robert would die, but wouldn't know his exact relationship with Patti. I honestly still don't understand what went down with those two. Patti ended up getting married and moved away from Robert. Near the end of the book, both of them had reached the point of fame that they had been striving for during the times they had been together, as lovers and as friends. Patti visited Robert often when he was bedridden. When Robert died, Patti knew, even though she wasn't there with him when it had happened. The saddest and sweetest part about Robert's passing was that Patti was at peace with it. She knew that she had been with Robert as a close friend for many important things that had happened in his life. She viewed his death as just another milestone that they had shared together.
This book Just Kids is an interesting tale of a young adventurous girl who grew up chasing her dreams and succeeded. If that's not an inspirational true story, I don't know what is. Overall, I would give it a solid 8.5 out of 10. Good job, Patti Smith.