The Stranger theme card

Quotes:
"...two little boys in sailor suits, with trousers below the knees, looking a little cramped in their stiff clothes..." (p. 21)
"And I nodded, as if to say 'Yes'" (p. 23)
" The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes." (p. 59)
"'Why did you pause between the first and second shot?'" (p. 67)
"...I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world." (p. 122)
Vehicles: Imagery, symbolism, irony, diction
Conflicts: Religion vs. Logic, Individual vs. Society, Physical vs. Emotional
Subjects: Individualism, Rebellion, Existentialism/Absurd
Themes:
1. A unwillingness to conform to society's standards is to form one's own ideals, but with the risk of persecution.
2. Rebellion, though looked upon as extreme in nature, stems from enlightenment and a drive to transcend archaic ideologies.
Plot: Mersault goes through his life lacking emotion. By absurd chance, he finds himslef questioned for past actions and his perseption on events deemed sacrosanct by society. Enlightened, he accepts this absurdity and his small role in the physical world which rules all.
Title: The Stranger highlights Mersault's role as a character "on the outside looking in". Throughout the storyline, he cannot relate to the emotional stimuli surrounding in and focuses solely on the physical, tangible world, which in his world, makes logical sense. As the Stranger, he is easily targeted for differences in ideology.
Characters: Maman, Mersault, Thomas Perez, Marie Cardona, Salamano, Raymond, Celeste, The Arab, Masson, The Magistrate, the Chaplain

Peace is Fragile

"A picture is worth a thousand words."
- Old Chinese proverb

With the use of an antiquated and rococo-styled grenade (the antithesis of what someone would think of as pacifist related) made of porcelain and the words “Peace is Fragile” written on it. This ad by the UN evokes a sense of ethos. Like the porcelain, peace is fragile and there is a thin line that can cross into conditions of war. The simple façade contains underlying thoughts and ideas left to be thought over by the reader. The irony of something so minute and aesthetically beautiful also prompts the reader to cogitate on the state of the world today. Is war just or are we encasing it in something more pleasing and easier to swallow? The logic is conspicuous : Peace is fragile. We must unveil it, not disparage it.

• Antiquated: Out-dated.
• Rococo: Fanciful but graceful asymmetric ornamentation in art and architecture that originated in France in the 18th century.
• Antithesis: The juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas to give a feeling of balance.
• Pacifist: Opposed to war
• Facade: The face or front.
• Minute: Infinitely or immeasurably small.
• Aesthetic: Sensory or sensori-emotional values
• Cogitate: Consider carefully and deeply.
• Conspicuous: Clear; straightforward.
• Disparage: Express a negative opinion of.

One Love by U2

Is it getting better?

Or do you feel the same?

Will it make it easier on you now?

Now you got someone to blame?

You say

One love

One life

When its one need

In the night

One love

We get to share it

It leaves you baby

If you don't care for it

Did I disappoint you?

Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?

You act like you never had love

And you want me to go without

Well it's too late

Tonight

To drag that past out

Into the light

We're one

But we're not the same

We get to carry each other

Carry each other

One

Have you come here for forgiveness?

Have you come to raise the dead?

Have you come here to play Jesus?

To the lepers in your head?

Did I ask too much?

More than a lot?

You gave me nothing

Now its all I got

We're one

But we're not the same

We hurt each other

Then we do it again

You say

Love is a temple

Love a higher law

Love is a temple

Love the higher law

You ask me to enter

But then you make me crawl

And I can't be holding on

To what you got

When all you got is hurt

One love

One blood

One life

You got to do what you should

One life

With each other

Sisters

Brothers

One life

But we're not the same

We get to carry each other

Carry each other

One

One.

U2’s “One” is a love anthem depicting struggle in relationships and healing wounds of the past caused by a significant other. This is testimony to the saying “Love is blind.”A false semblance is worn until time and truth has revealed their true intentions and the hurt they have committed, yet they continue the relationship.

The song opens with various questions asking “Is it getting better? / Or do you feel the same? / Will it make it easier on you? /Now you got someone to blame?” Filled with verbal irony, it sets a picture of hurt and distrust. This is the followed by directly saying “You say”, shifting the focus from the general audience and pointing the finger to a particular person. Their reciprocated love was “One love/ One life” These disyllabic phrases are repetitive, emphasizing the importance of being one and literally sharing a life with another. The strong affiliation continues until “…it’s one need/ In the night.”; the night representing darkness and the lovers failing to see through the extraneous nature of such specious love. Taking it for granted “…it leaves you baby/ If you don’t care for it.” It continues with other seething questions. It even goes so far as to compare them to religious figures with biblical allusion. Derisive since the opposite of healing was performed. They were not raised, and were metaphorically left for dead and humiliated after the relationship. Also, like "...lepers in [their] head", they carry the illness of past memories, slowly eating away at them until “…we do it again.”

The song’s repetitiveness is similar to that of a love/hate relationship. It is also illusory in the moderate and repetitive rythm. As soon as it is apparent they will leave it, they return to “One life/ One blood/ One life”. Love is also repeated in “Love is a temple/ Love a higher law/ Love is a temple/ Love the higher law”. The exertion between life and love’s unfair love is hung in the frangible balance. In the end, it is left up to the audience, us “Sisters/ brothers” to decide. “You got to do what you should” for we are all entangled in the variegated web as “One”.

Semblance- Outward and often specious appearance or show.

Reciprocate- Having the same relationship each to the other.

Affiliation- The state of being associated.

Extraneous- Unneeded; irrevelant

Specious- Misleading

Derisive- ridiculing

Illusory- means based on or having the nature of an illusion; apparent.

Exertion- The act of putting into play.

Frangible- Easily broken or damaged.

Variegated- diversified; varicolored

Stoic (sonnet)

You think you have the whole world in your hand?
Well, young sage, what will you do with it?
You say logic and emotion cannot fit
And to bury your love into dead man’s land.
Your head is a bust preserved by years spanned.
Oh the day when your tough exterior will take a hit
From the little fat boy who shoots an arrow into the pit!
Alas, you may never call you heart Custer’s last stand.
But a Stoic never had shown so much concern
for my affairs…
Could it be that you have strayed from the status quo?
And your soul, like mine, yearns
For someone who cares?
Well, sorry to say to say that I already have a beaux.

Feminine/Masculine poem

Colours in motion like thoughts.
Blue bangles break the silence,
Teal taxis shatter silver ice puddles,
The essence of sandalwood wafts through the cruiser.

A Flash of fuchsia,
And there she is.
Blood pumps like racing rubies.

Heart-beat, heart-beat, heart-beat…
Always ascher, never pear cut…
Heart-beat, heart-beat, heart-beat…
Give her rose quartz, red velvet cushions, maybe something blue…
What comes in the horizon?

II
His black eyes pierce the window.
I wonder if his heart is that way too.
This one man may show his love to be,
Hopefully.

It feels as if a kilo of anxiety is upon my shoulders.

Heart-beat, heart-beat, heart-beat…

Colours, colours, colours…

This is the true Romeo and Juliet.

This is blind love.

The Dreamer, The Creator

Ride the elevator to the top floor. A bit shaky but secure. The good kind of anxiety hits. Run to the familiar door. It is white and sterile, but inside…
Press the button. “Quien es?” asks he. “It’s GABY!” The smell of expensive cologne wafts through the air. A running start and my legs and arms are everywhere, only to be contained in curvilinear arms. The usual crisp linen shirt is a bit scratchy, but I shrug it off. Then, it is time to look around and explore through all the treasures. My own secret Louvre awaits me. The statues stare back salaciously. I snicker for they must be cold standing so high on their pedestals for all to see. Charily examine each painting closely. My nose almost touches the canvas. Such unusual paintings they were. Disfigured humans, spats of paint thrown, hidden shapes and animals. They are the dreams no one speaks of for they make no sense. Imagination runs wild, colors pour out in every direction. Up to the balcony, the top of the world I go. Up the cold marble steps and touch the chalcedony walls for support. So shiny I can see my younger self. On one side, cars whiz by and the apartments are my height; the other, the ocean. Oh, the beautiful ocean! Let me stay up here forever! Please? But there is a surprise. Let us visit him. Take my hand and off we go. We pass the lissome palm trees and the quaint houses while the guitar serenades. Air turned all the way up to escape from the torrid heat, though the leather still burns. Redolent paints of caput mortuum and gamboge. Different. Blotch here and brush there. The artist talks with mellifluous voice of his paintings. They are the paintings of the unusual dreams. I have found the dreamer, the creator.

• curvilinear: (adj.) consisting of or bounded by curved lines
• salacious: (adj.) appealing to or stimulating sexual desire; lascivious
• charily: (adv.) carefully; warily
• chalcedony: (n.) a microcrystalline, translucent variety of quartz, often milky or grayish
• lissome: (adj.) easily bent; supple
• torrid: (adj.) oppressively hot, parching, or burning, as climate, weather, or air
• redolent: (adj.) having or emitting fragrance; aromatic
• caput mortuum: (n.) also known as Cardinal purple, is the name given to a purple variety of haematite iron oxide pigment, used in oil paints and paper dyes. It was a very popular colour for painting the robes of religious figures and important personages
• gamboge: (n.) a brownish or orange resin obtained from several trees of the genus Garcinia of south-central Asia and yielding a golden-yellow pigment
• mellifluous: (adj.) flowing with sweetness or honey

The Dichotomy of Marilyn Manson

With “The only major performer who can justifiably call himself an artist” and the “Antichrist” as some of the titles given to him, Marilyn Manson has certainly been called many things. Yet, with the many controversies surrounding his stage name (including the tragic Columbine school shootings), he continues to up-root the MTV generation from its monotonous hinges and slither his way back time after time. His music questions society, religion, politics, and everything deemed moral. He has down right raped the genre of “shock rock” to where it can never return to the more innocent times of Alice Cooper and KISS. His music videos (at least from my experience) leave us queasy and unsure. “Unsure of what”, you may ask? Well, I’m still trying to figure it out myself. Despite these numerous things and the questioning feed back from my peers, I’ve decide to write on this artist who has shaken the music world for the last decade.

To say Marilyn Manson’s childhood had no effect on his present life would be beyond false. Born into a middle-class family (Don’t they all start out that way?) in Canton, Ohio, Brian Werner was influenced by Ozzy Osbourne, David Bowie, comic books, the occult, and surprisingly, the King James Bible. He and his father were subjected to physical and psychiatric testing for his father was part of the group assigned to drop Agent Orange over Vietnam; a highly toxic bomb feared to have many side effects on those who were in contact with it. His grandfather was a cross dresser with a basement reminiscent to that of Buffalo Bill’s in The Silence of the Lambs. Only after various attempts, Werner was expelled from the Christian school he attended. One such antic was selling bootleg albums, and then stealing them back. It was not until he moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where he organized Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids in 1989. At that time he was studying journalism and writing music reviews which led him to meet future band mates such as Daisy Berkowitz, Olivia Newton Bundy, Madonna Wayne Gacy, Gidget Gein, Sara Lee Lucas, and Twiggy Ramirez. Their stage names were formed by combining the names of women sex symbols and infamous murderers; emphasizing the dichotomy of good and evil. Manson is quoted as saying “Marilyn Monroe had a dark side just as Charles Manson had a good, intelligent side.” Manson is continually shape-shifting like his idol David Bowie. His latest album, Eat Me Drink Me, contains allusions from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

Such bands (new and old) to draw comparisons to Manson are: My Chemical Romance, Slipknot, Dresden Dolls, KISS, Alice Cooper, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix. Theatrics in their performances are used to shock and prove a point. The majority use heavy imagery to portray mainly death and evil. Marilyn Manson has used piñatas filled with animal parts, alluded to sexual acts, and exposed himself in many of his concerts. Needless to say, he defies everything. In response to the many protesters from parent and Christian advocate groups he says, “We merely present the audience with a mirror so they can see themselves. People need to connect with something that represents how they feel. I'm not on some moral crusade to do that in particular, but ... everything is coming apart at the seams, and I'm just here to record for posterity.”
I also leave you an interview with Bill O'Reilly: