Fuck Everything And RUN

So I played F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origen last night. I finished the game around 6A.M., took a shower, and went to sleep just as my mom woke up to get bro and sis ready for school. Halfway through the game I was responsible and did my school paper. Yes I should've gotten it done earlier, but hey, I finished it(and I don't think I did a terrible job). I think that right there is the definition of perfect timing.

F.E.A.R. 2 is fuckin creepy. I'm just gunna say it. I was actually scared a few times.

Anyhow. I'm laying in bed typing this, and my sister just flicked on the bathroom lights. I'll admit, I jumped... That game is the scariest shit I've ever played. That's just what I wanted. It's been so long since I've actually felt scared of anything like that. Playing alone, in the dark, with Alma Wade trying to eat my face really was the best way to go. I know it's been out for a while, but I figured I'd try it and see how it ranked against it's hype. Maybe others have played it and found it boring. Idk. What I DO know, is that it actually gave me nightmares. I couldn't remember them when I woke up, I just had that shimmering recollection of real fear, and the feeling that I'd just had a nightmare.

Not many people know me this well, but I have trouble dreaming(or more probably just trouble remembering my dreams). This bugs me. My gf described some of her dreams to me, and mine seem completely different. Not just different in content, but like an entirely different level of dreaming. I've had less and less, and I don't really recall when I noticed it. It makes me sad . Knowing that I'd had a nightmare when I woke up was actually nice. It's like I now have proof that I'm not just dead when I go to sleep. I really can't explain it, and I doubt you'd understand the feeling unless you've gone through this. I used to have dreams that I'd wake up and smile about. That hasn't happened to me more than twice in the last 2, maybe even 3 years. I want to dream again. I want to have a recollection of those dreams.

On a completely separate, and non-depressing note, school is pretty great right now. I'm glad I decided to type this, because I just realized I have to finish the homework. We're in J-term. We get a month straight of in-depth study on one of a list of subjects. I chose Fairy tales this year. Last year was Disney. I've already learned a lot, and it's fun. We're not just doing the pretty little Disney-esque fairy tales. We're doing Grimm Bro's. We're doing all those horrific ones with death, and sexual themes and all that stuff that was ok to talk about way back when.

Gunna go finish that hmwrk now. I think I'll finish the blog about my concussion tomorrow. It turns out it's a lot worse than I first thought, and the dr. won't let me play soccer for a while. Headaches are plenty. Sadness :'(

G'night

Tashi vs. Celie

Tashi and Celie are both going through very tough times. Tashi, along with the rest of the Olinka tribe, have been forced from their homes, to plant rubber trees. The Olinka’s town was destroyed, and they now have to work in the rubber fields. They must pay taxes to live on the land they have lived on for generations, and Western influence has invaded their way of life. Many of them now want for things that they were perfectly content without before the tyrants took their land from them.

Tashi wishes to mark herself, showing her link to her heritage, yet, when the facial scarring is through, she is ashamed of these same scars she wanted so badly a few days before.

Celie is having troubles of her own back home. She learns that Shug is in love with a young man, whom she met a year ago. Celie is crushed that Shug would leave her, and chase after some man, when they both know it’ll end soon. Celie also learns that her stepfather has recently died, and this revival of the fact that he was not her real father, and her own situation nearly parallels that of her children, Olivia, and Adam.

Celie’s mother died, her father was actually not her father, her sister, Nettie, has been away in Africa, as a missionary for the past 11 years, her children were stolen from her and sold, and now Shug is chasing after a 19 year old. Her family has crumbled, and she shares a problem of identity with Tashi, who’s lost the trust of Adam.

DuBois, Da Boys, Duh Bwah

According to Dubois, the Negro problem in America’s south leaves African American slaves with a split conscience. While the black male worked out in the field, he was quiet and served his master dutifully, but in his mind he was rebellious. The constant hiding of true emotions made them constant liars, leaving their soul split. A conscience and a soul, I feel, are closely related, because if you have a stronger conscience, your soul is pure, and unmarred by guilt. Those with weaker consciences are more susceptible to committing some sin, and as one becomes more comfortable with the sin or action, the soul is altered or damaged.

Dubois explains that the constant need to hide ones emotions puts up a barrier between the one hiding their emotions and the one being lied to. A veil is placed between them, and this constant lie that Negroes were forced to tell each day slowly damaged and altered their souls. Where the average person would fight back at acts committed regularly by white masters, the Negroes were forced to check their anger.

The thing is, not every soul is the same, and thus, different people would inevitably be affected in different ways. Some may become hopeless, falling into a dull schedule laid out for them by their masters, whereas others would do the work given to them, but rebel in their minds. Some may build up hatred in their hearts towards their white masters, twisting their soul into a knot of scheming anger, rather then what a normal soul should be like.

Either the Negroes’ spirit was “broken” and their soul left in the middle, or the soul was contorted into the loathing that they kept off their faces.

The last five years of my life have been spent at an all guys’ school. The way guys act when there’s no one else around for that long really is different then what others see. The whole “in” group “out” group thing really shows here.

The language used amongst a group of male, 16 year olds with no adult supervision is slightly different then the one used by that group to figures of authority. If you were different then you were made fun of. You wore what everyone else wore. You did what they did. You spoke how they spoke. The new kids quickly learned to act a certain way to become “popular”.
I made a small group of close friends that I hung out with. One of them was a bridge between us and the “popular” kids that kept them from picking on us much. I made sure to have a few people around most of the time. I tried to keep aware of what was going on around me as much as possible, which helped to keep me out of trouble, and avoid the troublemakers. Last year, not paying attention turned out poorly. I didn’t make that mistake again.
Going to that school shaped a lot of my current habits and actions.

Booker T. Washington's Plan

Booker T. Washington’s stand on the problem of what would happen to blacks in the south, after the civil war, was one that whites looked on more favorably then the newly freed slaves. Washington did not want to do anything. His plan was to have the freed slaves return to the work they’d already been doing all their lives, but for pay. While this may seem like a decent idea, because the whites were in no shape to look after everything they had slaves for, and they would already know the trade very well, this would only keep them at the lowly level they were fighting to rise from.

He had the right idea about blacks not leaving the south, because that would give the southerners what they wanted. An all white community where they weren’t disturbed by the blacks. Earning respect and climbing the social ladder would be difficult if things basically just went back to how they were before the slaves were freed. Booker T. Washington’s plan was to do nothing. The south needed some change with the end of the Civil war, and Booker T. Washington would not have brought it.

Powerful

Let me start off with this poem was long and confusing. That said, I found it very interesting. The imagery Brooks uses bring some profound pictures to mind, such as the newspaper rugs. Every day there is a new rug, each with a new headline. How could a place be so poor that they use newspapers as rugs? The things we take for granted, these families would beg for. Grease stains on the wall, and little children clinging to their mother’s aprons in the hallway.

I can picture in my mind babies clad in diapers worn the day before. The ladies walking down the hallway trying not to get any of the filth on their perfectly clean dresses.

The residents of this slum are so dirt-poor, so disgusting, that the ladies from the Ladies Betterment League are reluctant to give them the clean money they raised for these families. They want to find a more “worthy” poor family. The not-so-poor poor.

In the poem, they ask if there’s a way to just mail the money to the families that are so desperately in need of it, so that they don’t actually have to look at the unsightly apartments. If they could just mail the money, then they can say, “Oh, WE donated to these poor families, because that’s how wonderful we are.” Then they don’t have to know how badly off these people really are.

The money they were going to give them would have helped them a great deal, but they need REAL help. The kind that can get them a decent meal every day, and education for their children.