The Audacity of Cats

-
The title from one of Obama's book keeps circling around in my head: The Audacity of Hope. And then also I keep thinking about his inaugural speech yesterday and how he said that every person needs to be strong and stand up and be accountable. And the cynic in me responds, "What does that even mean? Give me some direct examples, please." But then the moo-moo side of me argues back (moo-moo = hippie/optimist/do gooder), "Maybe that means doing your part to conserve energy and to make more intelligent choices about spending. Like, maybe that means you should spend $50 at H&M every other week to buy shirts I don't need that fall apart by the end of the month. Maybe instead you should save your money to purchase a house or to pay off your bills." And maybe if everyone did the same thing, squashed their impulses for immediate gratification through consumerism, then it actually would make a difference (here's where the swelling sound of "Khumbya" begins to be heard in the background). But you know, I think lots of us are still in culture shock from having a leader who is intelligent and thoughtful. It's so foreign. And someone who is respected by the global community. Someone with a brain who has a better than average command of the English language and practices diplomacy.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Based on my limited knowledge of our financial system, I was under the impression that hoarding cash will sink us deeper into an economic abyss, i.e. low consumer confidence will cause more storefronts to shutter. Probably a gross oversimplification, but I'm looking for any excuse to buy a Netflix Roku.
11:22 AM
Aimee said…
I'm certain you are right and you should have a Roku, whatever that is.
11:47 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Candyman: Race, Class, Sexuality, Gender, and Disability

-
Candyman hits on almost all of the sections we discussed over the last six weeks. Let's start from the most obvious and move from there.   Race: A large part of Candyman confronts the anger and rage of the Black community after years and years and years and years of systemic racism. Candyman is an embodiment of all of the men who have suffered at the hands of whites (white police man, the white community, white systems that have set them up to fail such as the housing projects of Cabrini-Green). The monster of Candyman is a tornado of retribution, a hive of bees swirling angrily and containing the men who have been lynched or tortured by whites, starting with the original death of a Black male painter who dared to fall in love with a white woman whose portrait he painted. This monster, like the original, can be summoned by anyone who dares to say his name out loud in front of a mirror five times. Until the very end, the only people who do this are white--and every one of them is
Read more

Short story by Lauren Groff, "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners"

-
Image
You have to maintain a much more focused attention when reading a good short story versus a novel, because if you skim, you might miss something.  For this reason, I find it a little more difficult on my brain to read short stories.  But if you're going to write in the form, you should read in the form (and others--I have yet to memorize a poem as was suggested in my workshop last week), so I've been trying. Lauren Groff has a story called "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" in Best American Short Stories, 2014. You might have read her novel The Monsters of Templeton, or her other short story from a previous Best of collection, "Delicate Edible Birds" (also the name of her book of short stories), I have a vague recollection that that story was about World War II or possibly World War I and a dinner party where the people invited are living it up . I seem to also remember a line about the crunching of tiny bird bones. The Monsters of Templeton
Read more

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

-
Image
It’s all about the recaps. It’s a show made of recaps from previous shows. I purposefully skipped the first 40 minutes. These guys are all a bunch of idiots. They are turning on one another. Wes has not shown up, because he will probably come in at the very end for some kind of surprise. They are all trying to humiliate Jake because he is too perfect and too sweet (however, he just referred to himself in the third person; kind of irritating). I don’t remember any of these guys, to be honest. Who are these women in the audience? Oh, okay time for a short break because the show has been on now for three minutes. You know what, I’m going to go ahead and time the difference between the commercials and the actual airtime of the show. >Show returns at: 8:47 p.m. Don’t forget the 20 minutes of clapping in between the scenes. I can’t tell you how much hair mousse has been used in the making of this show. Dave is the crazy dude who has decided to grow a beard for the recap Juan is being atta
Read more