After all the recurring class discussion about sexuality, I’d really like to see some individual reactions and perceptions. What does sexuality mean to you? Is it a conscious or unconscious decision? What was your impression of the sexuality of each of the characters in Makai? And do you think sexuality can be fluid over time in general, or only when affected by specific events?
I would love to hear your opinion on this. It is a topic worth exploring. (I’m certainly not looking for a specific answer, and won’t be offended …

I’ve been thinking some more about our discussion in class yesterday. I wasn’t especially coherent at the time, but I think now I know what I was trying to say.
Simply remembering an event like the Holocaust is no guarantee that it won’t happen again. Memory is subjective, revisionist, and easily manipulated. Although saying so is a little cliché, history does tend to repeat itself.
But even so, I do believe in preserving details. Facts are cold, lifeless. They enable trivialization and give you everything except what is needed most to effect …

This is gradually becoming my catch-all creativity blog. My latest Bullet article!
–
A Plague on Both Your Blouses: Renaissance Festival for the Modern College Student

Think of Maryland, and what comes to mind? Seafood? Mediocre baseball teams? Bad drivers? How about thousands of people running around in Elizabethan costume?
The Maryland Renaissance Festival is the second-largest fair of its kind in the United States, running every fall season from August to October since its opening in 1977. The festival itself takes place in a recreation of an old English village just northwest …

This reaction could be a by-product of my fluctuating inner cynic, but there was something about the ending of My Year of Meats that I found really disturbing.
In a book where nothing comes easily and each issue is multifaceted, conflicting motivations abound, and no character is infallible, it seemed a little too easy to conclude the narrative with such a simple resolution. The way everything works out so perfectly is deeply unsettling. Akiko  finally escapes her abusive relationship and enjoys the freedom of exploring America and new experiences. Jane, upon …

When I was doing research for our presentation, I came across the following YouTube video of Filipino prisoners dancing as part of their prison physical fitness program.

Curious, I kept searching on YouTube and found a news broadcast about it.

As strange as this seems, it may actually be a good idea. Music is an excellent way of creating connections between people. Now is this unique attitude towards methods of ‘getting to’ prisoners reflective of a significant cultural difference, or simply an …

I’d like to carry Michelle’s discussion of the female hero a little further. I’ve done quite a lot of writing about the problems with strong female characters, especially in fantasy novels and fairy tales, so I’m going to leave that angle alone for now and approach this from a more personal standpoint. I really love the story of Fa Mu Lan as told from the narrator’s point of view (rather than third-person as many of the other stories are presented), and as a folk tale, it seems to be fairly …

Dreams, or at least half-dreams, are seductive things. Forum post for 295 that I’m re-posting here because it ends with a question, one that I want to keep thinking about.
–
I fell half asleep re-reading Possession and I think at some point my subconscious began to blend me with the characters. You know that state that’s nearly sleep but not quite, when you begin to see flashes of the day’s activity as you drift off? And then it spirals away towards other things, blending everything together and inventing new identities, locations, …

Maybe I was just feeling overly sentimental when I finished it on Sunday night, but I’m sorry to admit that I actually cried at the end of this story. And I’m not even quite sure why.
There are so many things about A Japanese Nightingale that really bother (and occasionally offend) me. The fact that Yuki has blue eyes and Western hair may at first be appealing to us, until we realize that the author has set it up like that to attract a Western audience. She’s not unique; she’s engineered …

My friend just showed me this and I had to share :)
Enjoy!

I was working on a film blog post yesterday afternoon when the internet distracted me again (pesky internet) and I discovered something pretty spectacular.
Ever wondered how to make a laser flashlight? Or a snazzy pair of homemade infrared goggles? How about a miniature bow and arrow from a pen? You could even view sound waves in fire!
As if you didn’t have enough online distractions…