A lengthy defense of Lil Wayne.

Now, you may have seen that stories floating around about how the smartest kids listen to beethoven and the dumbest listen to Lil Wayne. Well, what the stories don’t take into consideration is that the standard for a kid being “intelligent” was based on high school grades. And in my experience, that only barely correlates with grades. Secondly, kids who aim to appear smart will probably be more inclined to both listen to Beethoven and report it for the social rep. Basically, I’m saying that the study is more or less bullshit. That being said, Lil Wayne does have tons of stupid ass fans. But maybe that just means he’s clever enough to ensnare them all. And before you respond with something not-so-clever about how shitty he is, here’s WHY you should just swallow your words and concede the point.

First, you need to be open-minded when Wayne says he’s a “martian”, “misunderstood”, and tries to distance himself from the rest of mainstream hip hop. It is always valuable to give someone/thing the benefit of the doubt, the chance to argue their case, etc, before you pass judgement.

Second, you need to approach lyrics as you would poetry, literature, or anything else of the sort; with a critical eye, aware of potential, underlying meanings and subtle connections that may not be immediately or readily apparent. Think of songs and albums as chapters and volumes. Lil Wayne loves sound. He loves nonsense wordplay and non sequiter metaphors, religious references, ambiguous allusions, and streams of consciousness; surreal, non-linear, but with a method to the madness. But most of all, he loves combining all of the above and playing tricks on the pseudo-intelligent, disguising brilliance in plain sight underneath a veil of self-promotion and what those rapper folk like to call “swagger”. And all the while, he matches the beat like they’re soulmates. Or not, if that’s what he wants.

Third, keep this quote in mind: “Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.”

Fourth, it helps if you smoke weed because you can better relate to the state of mind needed to appreciate this

Now I’m going to basically (over) analyze one of Wayne’s songs. However, I won’t even touch on things like flow, sound, or anything stylistic like that. Merely the lyrical content. And that’s where most of the criticism leveled at him aims at.

“Don’t Get It (Misunderstood)”

[Nina Simone]

Baby, you understand me now

If sometimes you see that I’m mad

Don’t you know no one alive can always be an angel

When everything goes wrong, you see some bad

[Chorus- Nina Simone]

But I’m just a soul whose intentions are good

Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

All right, so there’s the thesis; I’m just trying to do right, so “please don’t let me be misunderstood”.

[Verse 1- Lil' Wayne]

Uh, misunderstood ain’t gotta be explained

But you don’t understand me so let me explain (heh heh)

This opening is, obviously, a play on the idea of understanding. Everyone knows what that means, but since the listener doesn’t understand Wayne, he’s going to explain.

Stood in the heat, the flames, the snow

Please slow down hurricane

The wind blow, my dreads swing

He had hair like wool, like Wayne (huh)

“Stood in the heat, the flames, the snow” refers to all the shit he gets, ie being flamed, but also notes with “the snow” that being misunderstood and with such hostility is cold, which has connotations of being alone, alienation, etc.

“Please slow down hurricane” refers most obviously to Katrina and New Orleans, but also the storm of hositility, etc. The next two lines paint a picture of someone standing before the storm, hair in the wind. I say someone because first he says “my” and then changes the perspective to “he” and lastly, with “like Wayne”. We’ll solve this mystery soon, never fear.

Dropping ashes in the bible

I shake em out and they fall on the rifle

Here, he’s smoking weed, dropping ashes on the Bible, reflecting on the connection between violence and religion, or at least Christianity. So this line touches on hypocrisy, weed being enlightening, his religious conflict, and another dualistic image (the first being flame and snow). As a sidenote, he often relates things in dualities, very yin-yang kind of thing. But he also connects them, in a sense removing the space between them, which to mean, seems Taoist.

Scary, hail Mary no tale fairy

All real very, extraordinary

Perry Mason facing, the barrel if he tattle

My god is my judge, no gown no gavel

The things I just went over are scary. Hail Mary, except this is no fairytale. Here he’s plays on prayer, but that this situation is no joke, no tale, fairy (referring Mary as a fairy?), but is “all real, very extraordinary”

Now, Perry Mason is a reference to a character: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Mason

I haven’t read or seen anything relating to the character, so I can’t really vouch for this, but the character is a lawyer, so if you don’t want to check the wiki, I guess that’s good. Anyways, it seems he’s comparing himself to Perry Mason facing doom if he caves. But like I said, without knowing the background, I’m just staying outta this line.

The last line here is great. Notice he says MY god as opposed to just God. This illuminates an aspect of his spirituality that he also alludes to in numerous other songs. Basically, his idea of God is different from most people’s. And just as importantly, his judge, his god, isn’t the court system. So in addition to his spirituality, he’s conveying a dislike, disrespect, for the court system. Probably for corruption, racism, and general bullshit. I hear you, Wayne.

Uh, I’m a rebel, down to battle

Now or never, or whenever, in the ever

Fucking fantastic, fuck if you agree

I’m bright but I don’t give a fuck if you see me

Here he further stresses his divide from the mainstream, and says he’s going to combat that bullshit whenever and wherever, or never if need be. Just that he’s going to do what he has to.

Next, he reiterates that he IS smart, and that while he may be misunderstood, he knows his true colors, and that’s what matters. Veiled moral lesson there, kids.

[Chorus- Nina Simone]

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good

Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

[Verse 2- Lil' Wayne]

Uh, what’s understood ain’t gotta be explained

So for those who understand meet Tha Wayne

Perry Mason These two opening lines for the second verse reflect the same of the first verse, but shift from talking to those that don’t understand to those that do. So since we understand, we can finally meet/see/understand Wayne Carter as a person, not just a commercialized. pre-packaged rapper.

For eight and a half months I gave Ms. Cita pain

Now it’s Young Money baby, keep the change

My momma say fuck ‘em, and we the same

So, hello motherfucker you got some sheets to change

Huh, he was born early, cool. Anyways, these four lines are saying that his mother gave him life through blood and sweat, and he’s repaid that debt by lifting his mother out of poverty and being the best he can be “young money baby, keep the change”. Also, baby can be the generally used slang or as in being born; a young money baby.

His mother says fuck the haters, and he’s his mother’s son.

And ain’t it funny how people change like Easter Sunday

You know church fit them outfit

Though I lose him in the next two, these two lines are clearly referring to the hypocritical nature of (Christian) people, likely how they preach love, peace, tolerance, etc and then turn around and judge, how they just change back and forth on whims. And then he says that “church fit them outfit” which I take to mean that (the) Church matches their hypocrisy. Although:

Bright pink and green chest look house lit

Bright pinky rings but that ain’t about this

I honestly don’t really know what he’s going for here, but besides being a continuation of the previous thought, obviously he’s gotten off topic and says so.

What you ’bout bitch?

Excuse my French emotion in my passion

But I wear my heart on my sleeve like it’s the new fashion

First, he’s challenging/calling out his critics to say what they’re about, what they stand for.

Next, there is a play on the expression “excuse my French” in which he explains that the reason for his blunt honesty is that  he wears his heart on his sleeve “like it’s the new fashion”. That backs up the idea that he often has depth, hiding in plain sight. Half of what he says is meaningless (read: Lollipop), but he says it so that the other half may reach you.

What are you asking, if I don’t have the answer

It’s probably on the web, like I’m a damn tarantula

These two lines can be interpreted in two ways, I think. First, he could be referring to specific answers that are theorized by fans (such as this one), or he could be saying that if you’re asking about who he really is, what he believes, anything that you want to understand about him, it’s probably on the web. If that’s true, I would say that he would be using web to mean both internet, and reflect the idea that he is a product of many ideas, all of which are connected at least indirectly, like points on a web. I’m having trouble verbalizing this one, but hopefully you see where I’m going.

But I know you don’t understand

‘Cause you thought Lil’ Wayne is Weezy

But Weezy is Wayne

And here is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. And the answer to that mystery earlier. He expects the listener to be slightly confused (unless you understand, of course), but summarizes his entire point with the idea that Weezy is a part of him and not the other way around. Wayne created Weezy, just as Marshall Mathers/Eminem created Slim Shady (you’ll find that Wayne attempts to synthesize the best/unique aspects of most good rappers). You see, the thing is, Wayne is a director and an actor. He realized, unlike a lot of less-popular but socially-conscious rappers, that if he just straight up preached, he wasn’t going to succeed in doing good for him, his family, or the world. So instead of rejecting the system, he embraced it. And now he’s come to point where he can even influence it.

As he so cleverly says in the remix to Lollipop (which I see as a response to the understandable criticism of the original), he is everywhere, he’s it. Hide and go, he can go anywhere, eenie meenie meinie mo, he’s in your neighborhood (his influence on the suburban youth), be it a stereo, cd, iPod, your girlfriend’s fantasies, etc. And then as a proof of his fuck-you to the government/media/society that wants to control your kids, he tells the kids listening to wear a condom. His last lines of the song could be society saying “wrap it up”, as in knock it off. But, he’s so sweet, she wants to lick the rapper (read: he already has the youth in his palm)

“I am everywhere I’m it like, hide-and-go and I can go anywhere

Eenie-meenie-meinie-mo I’m in your, neighborhood

Area, CD thing, tape deck, iPod your girlfriend

And she say I got great sex

Safe sex is great sex, better wear a latex

‘Cause you don’t want that late text

That “I think I’m late,” text

Eh heh, so wrap it up

Bu-bu-but he’s so sweet, sh-she wanna lick the rapper”

Anyways, in the rest of “Don’t Get It”, Wayne goes on to talk and slightly ramble about racism in America, jails/prisons, the unfair sentences for powder cocaine vs. crack cocaine, how sex offenders are tolerated more than crack dealers, pointing out that the crack dealers sold crack to excape poverty and make it to the suburbs and asking why it’s anyone’s business whether that was HOW they got there, the illogical War on Drugs, how much Al Sharpton sucks, ending with a pretty clever bit on humanity, good and bad.

Now, this song is one of his more open, more consistently introspective, and one that focuses more on a particular theme than flow or soundplay. Also, this song was probably conceived in a moment of blazed brilliance and fully realized in a matter of minutes. At least that’s how my writing comes to me.

If this isn’t enough, I’ll come back with breakdowns of other songs (there are plenty to choose from) and even comparisons to songs from hip hop artists loved by those pretentious elitists who so naively hate Wayne.

Basically, this whole thing is a symptom of a larger problem. Well, probably many problems. First are the obvious (and not-so-obvious) ones, like the ones that Wayne addresses in “Don’t Get It” and his lines about his life in/and New Orleans, and the ones that all those underappreciated socially conscious rappers discuss. But to me, both the unthinking love for Wayne shown by his less thoughtful fans and the semi-thinking hatred of Wayne by his more self-righteous critics are both equally dangerous, for both proudly display their colors of ignorance in a world and country already overwhelmed.

In a word; work your way up to my level.

Shit, you can’t get on my level.

Lastly, if you just hate him because you think he’s gay; if that matters to you, then fuck off and kill yourself so that good people can sleep better. And if you hate him because you think he’s gay because that’s what the Bible tells you to think, that “fuck off” comes in a double dose.

My Elastic (Mind’s) Eye and Rubber Soul?

I don’t think I ever seen so many headlights,

they claim to light my way, but something’s not right,

nowhere to run, so I guess that counts out flight,

ah well, I could handle a fight, but what will I think in hindsight?

I can’t decide whether to join them or fight them.

Maybe the best way to destroy something is from within,

like the soul, elastic, it’s funny how much we relate to plastic,

although we use it every day.

 

My eyes are elastic and my soul is made of rubber.

Butterflies and Hurricanes: College Material?

Brittain Sluder

Shimer Application Essay

 

Describe an educational experience which you found to be rewarding or frustrating.

 

Butterflies and Hurricanes

 

I hate school.

I never used to, but since I entered high school, my school record has gone from the A/B range to the B range…to the B/C range….then the D/F range*. As this occurred, I continued enlisting in the most advanced (except science, no AP there) classes of whatever subject I was required to take next. I realize that a declining GPA and nosediving academic record isn’t exactly a grand slam method for getting into college. But the way I see it, in modern education, a man is worth no more than his ability to do what he’s told to do and learn what he’s told to learn.

I was raised Catholic. I went to a small Catholic school from prekindergarten through middle school. It averaged, I’d guess, 250 students at any one time. We had religion class, most of us were academically advanced for our age. We wore uniforms, wrote in cursive, and went to Mass on most Fridays. And our parents paid a few hundred dollars a year for this educational experience.

I then made my shift to public school, which was both terrifying and exciting at the same time. Mostly terrifying. I was ahead of most of the kids in academics, but way…way behind in the social world of teenage life. But slowly, I met people. And some of those are today my closest friends and brothers.

It was Luke Farmer who started changing my mind. He was into martial arts, samurai, and was somewhat of a Tom Sawyer to me. It was with him and the rest of our group (Wil, Lee, Jarrett, Byron, Tanner, Ross), called Pandas Wang Film Crew (a typical teenage joke that stuck), that I began to think of life in a different way. We talked about other time periods, Star Wars, fighting, and what’s important in life. Luke loved and still loves film and nature. There was something about roaming the countryside and woods with the Wang that was enlightening.

Most kids go to football games; we’d go fight with bamboo, hike and explore our lands, film, play pool, watch good film, and lately, try our luck with various instruments. We defined our lives with our music and film, we satisfied our appetites with exploration, and we fell asleep to dreams of glory, of freedom…and still do. We lived for the fun of it, but still…we all felt like there was a greater aspect to it all.

An example is death….we have talked of it, often in regards to the large questions of life, and we concluded that it is not to be feared, but accepted. Luke and Ross have studied the idea of consciousness and death a great deal of late, and after many conversations with them, I came to a conclusion. The worst thing that could happen if you die, I said, is nothing. And the best? Anything. Death is but another adventure. Luke and I are fond of the quote, “Death is the road to awe,” which is both a line from the film The Fountain, and a piece of music from the score, both of which I love.

My friends and I grew tremendously from watching great films and reading great books. They would spawn our conversations and inspire our ideas. Fight Club, Lord of War, Blood Diamond, Jarhead, Requiem for a Dream, American Beauty, Pleasantville; films that helped us begin to discover our thoughts on life and our world. Documentaries like Baraka gave us our awe of the natural world. I personally grew a lot from books that were assigned in class, but I could discuss more deeply outside of school; The Great Gatsby, Big Fish, Watership Down, His Dark Materials, etc, as well as poetry I have found inspiring; anything from Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” that I heard in The Outsiders to “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by Yeats. As such, we have often talked of life, death, humanity, purpose, religion, and everything in between. We only mention school when we’re annoyed about its utter uselessness and are in need of a good rant.

As our talk of greater things and issues of real importance took hold, we gained a true desire to learn and the general love of knowledge. But the kind of things we enjoy reading about and learning about aren’t prevalent, nor even touched upon in school. The irony of it all remains that all I have learned about life, myself, history, and our world has come from outside school. In spite of it. School, as I find it, has wasted way too many hours, days, and years of my life that I feel would have been better spent actually doing something worthwhile. Although, on the other hand, without my realization of that, I might never have come to truly love the pursuit of knowledge, purpose, and meaning in the world.

I think schools should teach the youth how to think, not what to think. There is far too much emphasis on testing, and the very approach to education is entirely wrong. And that is that modern education revolves around preparing students for a working life in servitude to the economy. I believe that education is about learning how to think for oneself, how to decide what your path in life will be according to what you believe in. And the kind of education I want, the kinds of classes that appeal to me, they are nowhere to be found. AP English has provided me with some of my favorite books, but this is in spite of the lessons on said books. The classes were sickeningly laughable. We’d read a work, discuss the most obvious theme, making believe we were thinking deeply. But usually, it was the teacher delegating to us what we should think. I managed to make it through during junior year, as it was paired with AP United States History, which was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken. My teacher, Doug Jones, remains one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. His ability to interrelate all the various happenings and undercurrents of history left me with a newfound love of the subject, as well as boosted my already rising passion for current world affairs.

I started out doing very well in math, but after a bad experience in Pre-Calculus, I let that slide as well. I feel like I would have cared more about Statistics and Calculus (both AP), if I had learned something about the history, impact on history, and theories of mathematics. I started senior year with AP English/AP World History (you have to sign up for both), but English is given a much higher value than history, so we rarely did World History, and when we did, it was much, much less helpful and informative than a Wikipedia article. Even in AP, it seemed, the test was king and the work seemed trivial to the overall point of the subject. So I dropped them, and am now in English IV Honors. Its no better, but its less busy work and the teacher is much friendlier.

In AP Government and Politics, it was nothing but worksheets and tests on the various facts about government. While it is important to learn about our government, we never…ever touched on theories of government or compared our system to any other.

This same disappointment came in AP Psychology, where all we are doing are worksheets, long study guides, worksheets, and videos of Philip Zimbardo. The latter aren’t so bad, but we never discuss anything we are told to learn. Our teacher says we do, but not really. With Zimbardo’s prison experiment, we never talked about the criticism of it and potential biases. In fact, I might have always accepted his conclusions as a fact about human nature if I hadn’t just now looked it up on Wikipedia and found that there are a multitude of alleged problems with his experiment. Such is the case in modern education, though.

The other day, we talked about learning. She asked us if computers could learn, all done with a true/false worksheet she printed off. She said that it was a fact that computers learn. I tried to explain that computer engines in games, for example, even the ones that aren’t scripted…they don’t learn the way a human learns. There is no consciousness to it. Computers just use extremely complicated algorithms that allow it to decide on the outcome that the programmer has decided is the preferable outcome. She essentially told me I was wrong and to be quiet. While that is only one teacher, its been my experience in education. Any opposing views is seen as an attack. Now, I don’t understand computers very well, never have, but that seems like a topic worthy of significant debate. Debate that would further the ability and experience of thinking for oneself.

Now that I have discussed the past and present, let’s turn to the future. As for college, most of the colleges I’ve looked into and once thought of attending have recently seemed revolting to me. High school 2.0? I’ll pass. If I am to spend a fortune I don’t even have, as well as my first-born son on higher education, am I not entitled to expect a real education? People tend to go to college these days because that’s what they’re expected to do, not because they truly wish to learn. They go, pick a major that will make them money, and get their degree. This mass production of degrees and mass standardization of education has turned many colleges into, as I read on a Shimer student profile, “job training schools.” Until I heard about Shimer, I had gone from dreams of Duke to being entirely apathetic about college at all. But that discovery have restored my hope.

What do I want in life? I don’t know. This is why I have been so interested in Shimer. It seems to be a place where the big questions of life and time are addressed. I want to figure out what I believe, what I think, about how life came to be, why it came to be, and that…that will help me figure out just how I want to live my life and how I want to spend it. For instance, if there is no afterlife, if this is our only shot, then the only way for us to live on is through history. By making an impact on history. And if there is an afterlife, or anything at all after death, than I will decide what to do then. I…I just want to figure out life. It blows my mind. I can’t put my faith in science alone because science comes together so conveniently that I have to know what is behind science. Yes, I understand what an atom is, but WHY is it that way? I want to better understand what it is to be human. I am doing my Senior Project on education and teaching, and did my research paper on intelligence. I think the fact that those in the field disagree on what exactly intelligence is, that in and of itself is an astounding testament to the complexity of human nature and life in general. What do I want in life? To understand.

As it stands, though, I am very much interested in humanitarian ventures, in cultures, in people, in humanity. I want to join the Peace Corps after I finish college. I would love to go to Africa for those two years, as I incidentally have a most extreme case of “wanderlust.” I want to travel, and I want to work with the afore mentioned fields. But what exactly do I wish to do? I believe that an education such as one I feel I would come away with at Shimer would help me enormously in my Peace Corps service, which would in turn help me decide what specific calling I want to make my life’s work as I continue my path towards understanding. Then I hope to attend graduate school for the path I choose.

The fact that you, the reader, have managed to sift through this rambling, more-than-slightly bitter, and ultimately lackluster excuse for writing and can still follow my thought progression is impressive. I must say I didn’t really stay on topic at all. But I have always detested the format that we are always asked to write in. And these unedited and free-form narratives often allow for the best glimpses into a person’s mind.

I think that the potential for destiny, for greatness, is inherent in many, but that one isn’t fated to walk any certain path; we still control our own destiny. Sometimes, I believe our little band of brothers were all born in the wrong century, that our talents would be more at home in some ancient empire where our lust for freedom and to make our own destiny, for a time when heroes still walked the earth, and we could have walked with giants.

But we don’t live in some long-lost empire. We live now. And as such, we have to make our mark on a world that suppresses both the masses and the individuals that belong to them. The giants of old; the Alexanders, the Achilles, and the Aristotles, even the Napoleons, that was their time. This is our time, and we must be the giants.

 

*Mono was also a factor; I came down with it at the end of 1^st semester and am still recovering.

Here I Dreamt I Was an Orator

We had to write and give a speech in Latin. Cicero style. I don’t really know what Ciceronian Oratory really is, so I just wrote a rant about life.

Here I Dreamt I Was An Orator

“Modified Ciceronian Oratory”

Brittain Sluder

I. Exordinum

A. Principium: I have been told for years that the real world is like high school and college, only harder, stricter, and way more expensive. They lie. My friends, life is what you make it. No one can make you do anything. These goals they set for you, they hold you back. I will not stand here and pretend to be Cicero, MLK, or Jesus, I merely wish for you all to see that there is a larger world out there. A world that you never learn about, questions they never pose for you to ponder, and people that deserve all that you do, but do not receive it.

 

B. Insinuatio: Now, as I said, I am no orator. I’m a writer, a thinker, and a damn good liar when need be. I have had my share of BS jokes. You, my peers, are not the firefighters, accountants, and workers of tomorrow. Forget that. You are tomorrow’s human race. The entire future of our world rests in all our hands. And, though there are many obstacles, if we are in the correct mindset, we can more than meet that challenge.

 

II. Narratio: It has been present throughout history, culture, civilization, and in modern society. The desire/lust for power, money, land, women. You can see it in capitalism-which is inherently selfish. In education, which I shall emphasize, as you are in the midst of your own. Education: Everything you’re taught is taught to you so that you can succeed just enough. Just enough to be content with your possessions and your lifestyle. Never are you seriously tasked with contemplating the real essence of humanity. You see the genocide, the immense inequality in wealth distribution. You see quasi-governments in South America bow to American corporations, you see tyrants dripping the blood of innocents, draped in the cause of God, Allah, justice, security, democracy and freedom. And I speak not only of America and her allies, but of the rebel groups in African nations, the dictators in Venezuela, Cuba, China, all over our world. The interests of the few outweigh the good of all. You see, this is all because man has, even in the rapid globalization that is today’s world, lost sight of what made him human.

III. Partitio: And no, I’m not talking about global warming. What I’m talking about is the

ever-dwindling awareness of the larger world, the larger questions, goals, and ideas of life. The larger phenomenon that is the human condition. The big-picture education, the big-picture life.

IV. Confirmatio: The focus is on celebrities, clothes, cars, possessions; what that hot girl with the plastic tits thinks about you. Most of the American public, including some people in this room, doesn’t have a clue about half the atrocities in the world, doesn’t know what’s going on in the world. I’m sure there are people in the room, and if not the room, then absolutely the school, that have never given serious thought to the timeless questions. Why are we here? Why does science work? Did God create man in his own image, or did we create Him in our own image? If there is no God, no afterlife, no higher purpose…what then is life? What IS morality? Curiosity and the ability to understand and adapt to our seemingly random world has forever brought humanity progress. That mindset has brought into existence the very things that are inhibiting it now.

So this is what I suggest, think, envision. I want to see a world where men think rationally and where the nations of the world work together to end genocide, war, and disease, rather than pretending its not happening, sending some aid, all-the-while funding the wars that brought about the conditions in the first place. We need to wake up, forget the video games, the cars, the plastic tits, and realize that humanity has to band together. The past hundred years have borne witness to the worst wars the world has ever seen. The worst weapons, and humanity is getting less and less human.

It has always been our nature to think, to theorize on our existence. In education, however, we are taught nothing of that. Nothing. We are taught the skills that the government believes we need to succeed in the job world. A job world full of corporations that continually exploit everyone and everything they can. A job world where minimum wage is not enough to support one man, let alone a family. A job world where you are slaves. Sure, you can get all your fancy gadgets, but that’s fine. As long as you pay off your credit.

Education should be about teaching youth to think for themselves, to be able to arrive at a fork and make a decision from their own standpoint, analyzing the choices and consequences. We should be taught how to question, how to seek out the meaning in life, rather than trudging through it, pretending our destiny of work, loans, and bosses are as good as we’re going to get. I want learn how chemistry came to be, how man discovered the atom, not how to balance an equation. You may be asking what this has to do with the topic at hand. You see, the idea is that you’d be receiving an education that focuses on the big picture. And part of that is understanding that we are all in this together and that whether we think we have an obligation to our fellow man or not, we have to understand that we’re all interconnected.

V. Refutatio: The reason adults always tell you to suck it up, that you’ll understand one day, the reason they say that is because they didn’t believe it, and were unprepared. They were idealistic like we are today, but they didn’t know better than to just do as the rest did. And now their dreams are long-gone, dropped dead when they found out you were on the way and they were unemployed and living in a hostel in Romania. They are jaded, cynical, and resigned to their fates. We are not. We are free to make our own way.

But, you say, what of doctors and other people who do good things and happen to make money and did all that school stuff? Well, they’re in the midst of not only a career or job, but a life’s work. They are among the relatively few who do that. The people I’m referring to are the rest of us. The middle class. The ones who the few have ridden to the top and then left to fend for ourselves. The working-class. Marx’s proletariat. The ones whose sons work, fight, and die for those who benefit from this self-oriented system.
And this so-called “real world,” who the hell are they to tell me what the real world is? Their vaunted experience they so often flaunt? The world is what I damn well want it to be. School isn’t necessary, just as a job isn’t necessary. They’re only necessary because the people who rule this world said so. I hear time and time again that I should stop complaining about school and just do the assignments I find pointless. But I can’t. I won’t. This is my life and its ending one minute at a time. One class at a time. One year at a time.
VI. Peroratio
A. Enumeratio: –awkward and pointless to have here.–

B. Indignatio: I will not be delegated meaningless tasks to complete on someone’s whim. I will decide what is best for me. If that is aligned with what they think, then all is well. And, of course, sometimes compromise is what’s best in the end. But I will not sit idle while my life is wasted in school, the workforce, servitude, until I am too weak and feeble to do what I want. And what do I want, you ask? I want to travel. I want to know. I want to understand. The world. Life. Death. Everything. And this real world, its in my way.

C. Conquestio: If you haven’t, watch Fight Club. Watch Lord of War. Hell, watch The Fountain, Requiem for a Dream. They address so many aspects of the human condition and illuminate so many struggles in today’s world. They help put things in perspective, I think.. Perhaps I am wrong, God knows I didn’t stay on topic. I just made you sit through a long, rambling diatribe so I could vent about how much I hate being told what to do, how to live my life, and that the real world is going to wake me up. Like I said, that’s just me, I could be wrong. Perhaps this way is best. But I do not believe that is true. We have to wake up, we have to understand that we’re the future, and unless we decide to take a stand, we’ll be no different than our parents. We know so much less that we think about life, death, and the nature of existence. I won’t tell you that we are not born for ourselves alone. Why we’re born…well, that is for each of us to decide for ourselves. What I’m telling you is that we’re not alone, that while I feel a kinship with my fellow man and hope that you do as well, that there is no right answer because we don’t know. All I can rightly ask of you is that you realize that we all go down together.

Here I Dreamt I Was an Author

Describe an inanimate object:

Brittain Sluder

AP Language and Composition

Ms. Hooper

February 8, 2007

Here I Dreamt I Was An Author

I was there at the beginning. I was there with Einstein, sitting at his desk in the wee hours of the morning jotting equations by the light of his bedside lamp, and with Hitler, laying in his jail cell telling the world his thoughts. I was there when Rome fell. I am the harbinger of the harshest tirade and the bearer of the softest whispers. I am the poet’s closest friend. I am common among all nations. I am the herald of revolutions. The tides of progress are driven by my hand. I unite the world.

You can find me sitting upon the crest of a hill, gazing out into the sunrise. You can find me in a candle-lit room of a monastery. You can find me in every household on the planet. My forefathers rests now in the endless sands of the East. It is through me that social movements gain footing and sweep a nation. I am the gavel through which history is decreed. I am change.

I was Cobain’s scribe; it’s better to burn out than to fade away. I am the only one who has seen the mind of madmen, and I have been the means by which they perished. I carry the power of life and death within me. I am the word of God, and the rantings of Lucifer. I created the Bible, the Koran and the Torah. And I can destroy them.

I was there when Ballou composed his immortal love letter. It will whisper your name. I was present the morning the United States accepted its destiny. I was there with Lincoln in Gettysburg, the last full measure of devotion. I was there when the boy who lived was born, and at the return of the king. I am the first rule of Fight Club. I was there in the beginning, and I’ll be here at the end.

Does carrying lipstick make me gay?

Describe the contents of your wallet and what they say about you.

 

Brittain Sluder

AP English III

Ms. Hooper

March 19, 2007

Does Carrying Lipstick Make Me Gay?

What makes a person who they are? Is it their sarcastic personality? Their selfless bravery? Their totally hot new iPhone they got as a end-of-the-week present from their parents? But I digress. My point is this: what do the contents of a person’s wallet and contents of his pockets tell you about him? Nothing. Unless it happens to be a gun, which might imply a murderer, cop, suicidal dentist, etc. But I’m referring to the everyday items. For instance, I often bring my yamaka to school. It serves as a daily reminder of the suffering that people all over the world endure while I live my privileged life. Or my lipstick. Just because I like to carry lipstick in my pocket and dress up like a girl on the weekends doesn’t make me gay.

But in all seriousness, I should make this satirical essay more believable. I carry, at all times the following: my phone. Most of the time, however, I also have my wallet, iPod, and pencil. First off, my pencil. This primitive, yet elegant shaft of power is representative of my love of writing, my passion for words, and my undying obsession with language. The fact that my fingers grip wood and not the dull plastic of a pen refer to my disgust for synthetics and my deep respect for the natural wood. Even more so, this suggests a love of the land, and perhaps even history. Basically, you could read all this from merely seeing me hold a pencil. However, it might just be that my pen ran out of ink.

Next, my phone. Now there’s something that really makes me stand out. All those customizable features. I am so unique. Man, I’m cool. But, again, I digress. I guess my pictures are unique, and my vast inbox is impressive. But everyone has a cell phone nowadays. Tells you nothing except I talk. To people. Moving on.

 

Our next stop is my iPod. Okay, I’ll concede this one. I love music. That’s something that anyone could assume if they saw me walking around with headphones and a sleek, polished iPod in my shirt pocket. They would instantly mark me for what I am, a music junkie. Unless, of course, I really love books on tape-I mean audio books. My bad.

Lastly, my wallet. Now, my wallet is not the wallet of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. Mine does not say “Bad Motherfucker” on it. Which is regrettable. Nor does it have any fake IDs or anything of the sort. I have old movie tickets, a gas card, and a Driver’s License. So one can assume I drive, own a car, and enjoy cinema. Upon further inspection, one might notice one of my tickets is from Pursuit of Happiness, which stars Will Smith. Now, he also starred in I, Robot. He had a shower scene in both. So naturally, one might surmise I enjoy the sight of a half naked black man. Who knows?

The long and short of it is this: unless they carry something out of the ordinary, such as a mail bomb, you can’t tell much about a person by what they carry. Now, how they act, talk and something extraordinary they might have on them, those things speak volumes about someone, can even define them to an extent. But carrying a wallet and a phone don’t quite count. And for the record, carrying lipstick would make me look gay. And I don’t really have a yamaka.

Suicide Note

Topic: Describe a slang word and how it has come to evolve over the years. (paraphrased)

 

Brittain Sluder

AP English III

Ms. Hooper

March 15, 2007

Suicide Note

Dear World,

Why do you hate me? What have I done to deserve the hard iron javelin that you have so thrust into my empty heart? My soul bleeds black and I weep. Night finds me alone in the world, sitting on my bed, bleeding out my suffering to the sorrowful melody of Fall Out Boy. The blood trickles down my arm, meandering as if to mirror my listlessness in life, my anguish. Slowly, a drop coalesces at my elbow, whereas it and the tear on my chin both tumble in free-fall to the floor, as my hopes and dreams sank when she left me. Now this dulled razor is all that remains to remind me of her passion. This is Hell.

I wasn’t always like this. I used to be a happy, rebellious non-conformist punk rocker. The weekends would find me not wasting away in my basement, but rocking out to the likes of Rites of Spring and I Would Set Myself On Fire For You. Then I began to meet new people at these bars, charming men who dressed like homosexuals to show the world how non-conformist they were. I became intoxicated. So I burned my old cds and adopted a new way of life. I had transformed.

But before I graduated from high school, my dad and I fought. He said I was “dressing like a fuckin’ queer” and that I was “more like his bi-curious daughter than a son.” From then on, my life would slowly deteriorate into a hell so complete that it would soon consume my entire soul, walking the line twixt “emo” and “goth.” My old friends grew older, went to college, and came back corrupted. Wearing the clothes of the oppressive capitalist pigs, no less! They called me naïve, and my heart was torn asunder. I was lost!

 

I reached the tipping point. Goth vs. emo. Any tormented soul such as mine eventually faces such a decision. The hatred of others or self-hatred and depression. My choice was largely one made in light of my personality. I was never strong. I am like a butterfly, half-trapped in its cocoon, its wings soaked in the melancholy rain of despair.

But even the emo have their own form of love. Emo guys and girls, though many further our suffering by suggesting that its really more like two girls than a straight couple when they see the emos courting. Nevertheless, I met this girl who I thought would care for me. She became my only beacon of light in the deep abyss that was life. This was shortlived, however, and I often still marvel at why she was drawn to such a pathetic soul as my own. O cruel fate!

So here I am, carving my arm for the fourteenth time this day. I grow dizzy. My life is worth nothing, and no one loves me. I am done for! O woe is me. I am Juliet, who succumbs in her despair. I am a broken poet! And so I depart this world a failure. The ink slips from my pen like the pain from my heart. Where else shall I turn? There is no one! So I wipe away the tears that have flown freer than any waterfall….I wipe them away, and I give my life to my razor.

 

-xXtormentedpoetXx

Clan Sluder

The wind blows lightly, sending a parade of leaves spiraling all around me as I walk up the path of old. Stopping a moment as I reach the crest of the hill, the gentle sound of Yo Yo Ma finds my mind. I let my eyes wander across the landscape, taking in the imagery; the leaves in varying shades of dull red as they waltz across the backdrop of Brooks’ Hill, the massive oaks standing tall even in their exposed state. My eyes slowly fall towards the overgrown brush that once was a oft-traversed path. Smiling contently and taking in yet another breath of the cool morning air, I start down the path.

Eventually I find that the trees are thinning in number and the path vanishes completely. I have reached the Barrier. Glancing downhill, my eyes behold, only yards away, a line of trees known as the Barrier that separate Field Superior and Inferior. As their tall grass gently rolls with the wind as if they are oceans, I begin to ascend to the top of Field Superior. As I reach the apex of my trek, I slowly turn and behold the Empire. My eyes rise from the humility of the Fields and find their way across the Road and up to the opposite mountains. My eyes meet rolling hills, covered in some areas by more of the proud trees that inhabit my side of the Road. Blissfully relaxed, I sit down on a stump nearby and take in the land’s beauty. Before long my mind wanders and I am lost. I begin to write, to solve, to theorize, to think. I hear Howard Shore’s score from Lord of the Rings in my mind and I envy the Hobbits.

But eventually I rouse myself and stroll downhill, taking a darker, less scenic path. I shiver slightly as I round the bend at the bottom, just shy of the Road. Venturing up this smaller hill, I have come to Brooks’ Cemetery. I wander amongst my ancestors, past my namesake, past my grandparents whom I never met, and then I reach the one whom I did. Kneeling at her grave, I notice the wind has ceased. I gaze thoughtfully at the gravestone. And I smile. To be laid to rest here, I think to myself, is perhaps the best thing that could have happened to her.
The wind picks up and I shiver. Glancing up into the waning blue, I rise and begin the journey home. Tomorrow, I think as I reach the tree line, I’ll head up to the Citadel.

And so my tale comes to an end. The best times of my life have been there or on nearby Hammer Hill. I feel as though I have somehow failed the reader, as I do not think I possess the eloquence nor diction to truly do this justice. The land that my family owns has always been a part of my life, from the worn paths to the elderly mountains that form a barrier around our house and the rest of the world, is my sanctuary, where I am free to walk and think in peace.