Memes and Whatnot

I saw a yellow butterfly flying in my opinion the wrong way, flying across the sound to Connecticut I saw a cormorant oily-looking flying close to the sea’s surface precisely as I floated on it on my back in the attitude of the crucifixion minerals in my body in conversation with the minerals of the sea about the sun how can I possibly add to what’s already been said so well by the ancients and said with an austerity I’ll never know it is an honor to take a backseat to the ancients who knew how I was a fat white fish dissolving under the sold-out stadium sun like a god but like a god I could live through anything. I refuse to do annotations on this poem. It's too soon. Let me procrastinate till the due date for the Mentor Poet Project. In any case, here's a picture of Timothy Donnelly:  This man and his beard exude so much swag; I'm truly jealous. While this reasoning may seem a bit superficial, albeit it is, the reason that I picked him was just because he caught my attent...

As I've written more and more of these blog posts, I've realized just how far I've strayed from my given title of a "Confused Political Compass." Maybe it's because these prompts don't cater themselves too well to politics; what can you do? On the topic of prompts, I'm super confused by what it means to put the pieces back together. Gut instinct was to write about playing with Legos as a kid, but something tells me that wasn't in the spirit of the prompt. I guess we'll have to settle with some discussion over my BBC book. My topic of interest is Emil Sinclair, the protagonist from Demian . Demian chronicles the intellectual and emotional development of Emil Sinclair, the protagonist and narrator of the story. Sinclair begins the novel as a mentally precocious ten-year-old boy. He has a sense that there is more to the world than what he learns in school and from his parents. At such a young age, he is in no way prepared to move into the world of...

I absolutely love the word eloquence. The way it rolls off of one's tongue is very beautiful. Any word that has the "qu" sound found in the word eloquence feels expensive and important. Take for example the word quail. Quail meat and quail eggs are considered a delicacy: both expensive and highly sought out for. Another characteristic of the world eloquence comes down to its lack of hard sounding consonants. The main consonant sounds of "l", "kw", and "s" all are very soft sounding; this contrasts with other consonants like "d", "t", or a hard "g". Words that contain those aforementioned sounds sound quite ugly, and often have ugly meanings associated with them. Words such as spite and bitter and come to mind.  Though the formal definition of eloquence relates to oral speech and written speech, by virtue of the sound of eloquence, it can be used in various contexts outside of that. Often the mannerisms in which o...

To be honest I didn't have much to write about Demian  so far. I'm lucky to have the creative liberty to write about whatever has been on my mind this week. Luckily, I do have something for that: the stock market.  I've been a long time follower of Reddit's Wall Street Bets. When I heard about the plan to try screw-over Melvin Capital and other hedge funds who shorted GameStop, I figured it was time to get my feet wet into the stock market. When GameStop's stock (GME) was at $45 per share, I put a decent chunk of change into it. Last week when its value soared to over $350 per share, I sold it; this ending up giving me 600% ROI and I made quite a bit.  There's a far more interesting conversation to be had other than me making some money on the side. It's the politics and economics that's behind it all. The entire reason that it was possible to short squeeze GME was that hedge funds had shorted it over 140%. Simple explained, when a stock is shorted over ...

 Honestly, this has been a very good English class so far. I enjoyed the variety of books, plays and short stories that we read together as class. Likewise it was to fun pickup books that I had a personal interest in reading. There's no doubt that the literature that we read together and discussed had a larger impact than that of what I read on my own; knowing that I'll have to actively engage in discussion upon completing a text meant that I put more effort and care into what I was reading. That quality was often lacking in my personal reading books as it was more for enjoyment and less of analysis. My prefered type of reading isn't novels or plays or anything like that. I find articles and research papers that are tailored to my interests in politics and engineering to be far more interesting. These texts provide information in a easily digestible manner — unlike the convoluted English found in the texts we read — and I enjoy that.  I thought that the work for this class ...

To understand the situation in the Hill District during the 50s, it's absolutely necessary to understand the factors that created said situation. The two main factors were the Housing Act of 1949 as well as the Great Migration. Together, with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement enabled Troy to get his promotion as a garbage truck driver, rather than a lifter.  The Housing Act of 1949 was the brainchild of the president at the time, Harry Truman. The conditions in which he was brought up and his early career choices helped to shape the choices that he made during this presidency. Truman was born to a father who was a farmer and livestock dealer; he was clearly not brought up in anything more than lower-middle class conditions. This was no more evident then when he had to drop out of college in his first year due to insufficient funds. He was able to secure a job with his meager business college experience, but made no where enough to afford adequate housing, and thus, spent most o...

Maybe it's because my family is too Indian, but we don't really have many memories that are associated with storytelling. The best I can do is a an old video of what I think was my birthday party from when I was four years old. Some context is necessary for the significance of this story to make sense. As a kid, and even now, I didn't express my wants. Whenever we'd go outside and my dad would ask do you want this or do you want that, I'd consistently say no, even if its something I wanted. I'm not sure where that behavior started, but it's something that has stuck with me until now. This video takes place twenty or so minutes before guests started to arrive for the party. You could see little me crying and complaining that we still didn't have a cake. My dad was filming him teasing me by asking why I wanted a cake. I snarkly responded with "I want a cake! Don't ask too many questions!" I think that was most assertive I've ever been in ...