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Brought to you by the Brooklyn College English Majors' Counseling Office.
It’s finals week, so we’re all busy studying up a storm and giving ourselves breaks every 20 minutes (deserved or not). On one of these breaks, when I had reached the limits of procrastination, I dragged myself onto Facebook to see how my fellow classmates were faring. Is it just me, or is everyone’s Facebook wall filled with graduation pictures of their friends? Seeing all my high school friends in their caps and gowns really hit home for me; with the end of the academic year, for some of us here at the Boylan Blog who are graduating, this is going to be our last post…like, ever. So, let’s raise our metaphorical champagne flutes to the seniors who are leaving the cozy walls of 3416 Boylan to embark on all the great things that come after college. Congrats guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I have to stop before my exclamation button breaks; I’ve still got papers to write!)
So with that, it’s time to wrap it up and say goodbye. The Boylan Blog will be taking a break for the summer, but will be back with your weekly dose of internet amusement in the fall. We wish you guys all the best of luck on your finals! This week will eventually end, I promise! So until the next time around, there are only two announcements you should keep in mind before digging into the posts:
1. Enjoy your summer! 2. Make sure you’ve done #1 (see above). Like, really make sure.
Eat fruit and don’t take rides from strangers (unless they have kind eyes),
Last week’s Time Magazine cover received much backlash. The front page displays Jamie Grumet, a twenty-six-year-old mother, breastfeeding. Instead of her son, Aram, being of the typical age for breastfeeding—a year or younger—the child shown is three years old.
Aram stands on a kid-size chair in order to reach his mother’s breast, while Jamie gives off a confident pose, with one hand on her hip and the other holding her son’s back. The picture is clearly meant to be “in your face.” Grumet stands by the magazine’s photograph selection. She notes that “there were other photos that were more nurturing, kind of like our daily life, the way we do it. I don’t think it would have been quite as provocative.” As a result of this decision, the audience is not presented with a realistic view of breastfeeding. Rather, the controversial picture negates the readers’ ability to form their stance on the social issue because they are more focused on the inappropriateness of the image. Grumet explains, “the statement that I wanted to make was this is a normal option for your child and it should not be stigmatized.” However, the overexposed picture does just the opposite. It’s not normal to be three and still breastfeeding. It’s not normal to make a private and tender moment into a public one.
Furthermore, the byline reads “Are You Mom Enough?” suggesting that if you don’t offer the nutritional value of breastfeeding to your children, you aren’t tough enough or a good enough mother. Questioning one’s parenting capability and dedication once again runs the fine line of appropriateness.
This isn’t the first time that the Time Magazine succeeded at pushing the boundaries. A cover dating back from November of 2010 illustrates a married couple, titled “Who Needs Marriage?” Rather than presenting a thought-provoking question, the magazine argues in subtitles that “men do more than women. And it works better for richer than poorer.” Apparently they missed the memo that attacking the female gender is not the best way to reel in your audience and bring about respectable debates.
If these types of covers continue, the buzz behind the stories will slowly morph into a Maury episode.
The topic of school authority has been put to question more often than usual this month. A previous blog post mentioned the arrest of a young child in school because of a tantrum. The parents of the child were not even contacted as the school’s first alternative. Closer to home, on the campus of our very own Brooklyn College, students were arrested when a peaceful protest against tuition hikes took a threatening turn.
Should school authority have a say in their students’ haircuts though? What would you do if you were suspended for a haircut you had? Maybe this action might have been reasonable if a student had shaved a phallic symbol onto their head but Patrick Gonzales is in this outrageous predicament for having shaved Matt Bonner of the San Antonio Spurs onto his head. This haircut is being deemed as “threatening” and “severe” by the principal of The Woodlake Hills Middle School.
The principal is in “righteous fear of the apparently inevitable anarchy and lawlessness in the school halls” that would result if Patrick walked the school halls with this haircut. This claim and his fear seem so exaggerated though because the shaving is benign and qualifies as a cool haircut. Its way cooler than the haircut I currently have. I can’t imagine chaos erupting over this student’s haircut, maybe a couple of head turns, approving pounds, and comments of the “Bro, that’s badass,” type.
From her seat on the stone of the hearth the girl had learned the stories of her grandmother. The grandmother went barefooted and rarely moved, her shriveled feet and curling toes merging deeper into the stone of the hearth as each year passed. Soon, the girl knew she would no longer sit at the feet of her grandmother. Her grandmother’s bones would become one with the stone, and everyone knows it takes a patient listener to wait for a skeleton to talk. The grandmother told the girl of the wild hunt. On thunderous nights, the old crone would swear to a shivering child that she was hearing the hoof beats of the eight-legged steeds of Gwynn ap Nudd, the soul-taker, urging his men through the Wild Wood. She must close her eyes, the grandmother said. Close them tight, and they cannot take you.
The little girl’s grandmother passed, with most of the trees and the stone walls from ancient times. And the little girl was no longer a little girl, and the Wild Wood was no longer so wild. Autumn leaves, like little women, would be torn from the trees and torn away by wintery winds. The girl remembered it was when the autumn winds blew the fiercest that the hunt came. Into the Wild Wood the girl went, a mandolin for company, strung with strands from her own head, strands so strong they would not break. The girl could pluck the sweetest melodies from her instrument, lulling all those who listened into dreamless slumber.
Night fell, and the birds went quiet. The girl was lost and she began to fear the darkness between the trees. Play a song, the wind whispered. Play a song, the trees grunted.
I’ve got to tell youLightclarityavocado salad in the morning how I love you alwaysafter all the terrible things I do how amazing it is I think of it on grey to find forgiveness and love, not even forgiveness mornings with death since what is done is done and forgiveness isn’t love and love is love nothing can ever go wrong in my mouth the tea though things can get irritating boring and dispensable is never hot enough (in the imagination) but not really for love then and the cigarette though a block away you feel distant the mere presence dry the maroon robe changes everything like a chemical dropped on a paper and all thoughts disappear in a strange quiet excitement chills me I need youI am sure of nothing but this, intensified by breathing and look out the window at the noiseless snow- Frank O’Hara At night on the dock the buses glow like clouds and I am lonely thinking of flutes
I miss you always when I go to the beach the sand is wet with tears that seem mine
although I never weep and hold you in my heart with a very real humor you’d be proud of
the parking lot is crowded and I stand rattling my keys the car is empty as a bicycle
what are you doing now where did you eat your lunch and were there lots of anchovies it
is difficult to think of you without me in the sentence you depress me when you are alone
Last night the stars were numerous and today snow is their calling card I’ll not be cordial
there is nothing that distracts me music is only a crossword puzzle do you know how it is
when you are the only passenger if there is a place further from me I beg you do not go
- Frank O’Hara
I’ve never been able to make up my mind about anything. Today, looking down the barrel of graduation, it might be worse than ever. Maybe you feel it, too? I don’t know where I want to live. I don’t know where I want to work. I don’t know where I want to go to grad school, or if I want to go at all. I don’t know whether I should say certain things to people while I’ve still got the chance or if sometimes I’d be better off keeping my mouth shut. It’s pretty easy to start feeling sorry for yourself when you don’t know what you want and every second you spend not deciding seems to put you further and further behind.
It’d be pretty silly to feel sorry for myself, though, when I’ve got all these choices. I’m pretty lucky to have all these kind of paralyzing decisions to make, just like I’m pretty lucky to have spent the last year and a half in 3416 Boylan with some of the best people I’ve ever met.
I’m also pretty lucky that I can’t choose my favorite Frank O’Hara poem to share with you, so I’m not going to choose. I’m going to start feeling good about having choices. Like when I was sixteen and not totally convinced by poetry and there were a lot of poets I could have read, but for some reason I picked Frank O’Hara. Got some of the lines from “Morning” stuck in my head, and now they’ve been there for seven years.
You can’t be a poet if you’re no good at making choices. Choices about what words to use, where to enjamb your lines, when to give too much, when to hold a little back. When to do small, peaceful things that make you love the world enough to write poetry, like getting up every morning the last few weeks and reading O’Hara’s “Lightclarityavocado salad in the morning” poem. Some of those choices are instinctual and some of them take a lot of time and thought. Sometimes things turn out the way we want and sometimes they don’t. But it’s good to love, want, and need things enough to care how they end up. It’s good to know that after all the terrible choices I make, I’ll still find forgiveness and love, and hold things in my heart with a very real humor that someone somewhere might be proud of.
It’s the beginning of finals week and I’m sitting here studying for my finals thinking about how I can’t wait to be done with this dreadful semester. At the same time, my thoughts go to some of my friends who are graduating from college and have plans (or lack thereof) to embark into the real world. What’s funny is that we all have this revelation multiple times throughout our lives; that that you’re growing up and things are going to be different: moving out; graduating college; getting married, etc. What we fail to realize is that books like The House at Pooh Corner prep us for change and growing up from childhood.
Whatever mixed feelings you might have about Brooklyn College (or whatever college you may be graduating from), it’s become your home away from home and you’ve left your mark here whether you’re aware of it or not. Just how Christopher Robin’s favorite thing is to do “Nothing”, we’ve all grown somewhat complacent with our lives as students and it’s a surreal feeling to take that next step forward. However, as cliché as it may be to say that things will be alright, it’s true. Whether you’re heading to grad school, taking a year off to work, or even living on a farm for a while, you’re going to end up where you want to be one way or another. So even if you hate: your college, the people who attend it, registering for classes, or the asshole professors who barely passed you, take a look back at the last footprint you’ve left before heading forward at whatever pace suits you best.
Summer’s almost here. It’s that time again. That time again, where I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to look back and think about a lot of things. Where we’re supposed to look back and it’s supposed to make us look forward again. Where looking back is supposedly like looking forward. But it almost feels like it’s always that time again, and I don’t know where the beginning ends and the end begins and etc. etc. But I do know some very good people are going away, not forever, nothing ever really is forever. But I won’t walk into the office at 10 am and see some of them anymore. And I won’t leave the office at 6 pm and say goodbye to them there anymore. And I won’t always be working on the end of this semester’s work anymore. But I will always remember some pretty good times I had at 10 am in the office. And I will always remember some pretty good goodbyes at 6 pm in the office. And I will never remember enjoying the end of this semester’s work (but nothing never really is forever). Summer’s here, but c’mon life, I’m almost ready.
This week, the Intern Magick Hat is a backwards Kangol that looks a lot like a comic written and illustrated by Brooklyn College’s very own Charge “Midnight Tacos” Sarsmel. It is about love. Take a seat, please.
First off, we at the English Office thank everyone who attended the Junction Function last Thursday. It was a memorable evening with floor touching ball gowns, awesome DJ-ing by our one and only Kernel Mustard, and The Junction which was the reddest of reds as compliments swirled and swirled in the lounge. If you were unable to make it, no worries! I’m pretty sure the awesomeness of the function diffused into pages of the Junction itself so come by Boylan 3416 to get a copy and be therefore awesome.
Finals are finally here. I have been waiting for this week ever since we came back from winter vacation. Goodness, haven’t we all? So let’s get through this week of classes, reading days, and exams being the strong that we are and see finals to their very end.
Here are this week’s announcements:
The English Majors’ Tea and awards ceremony will take place from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm on Tuesday, May 15 in the Gold Room (SUBO).
Keep an eye on our YouTube page at http://www.youtube.com/boylanblog as we slowly but surely upload videos from the last two English Majors’ Open Mics. Super big thanks to all of the performers who are allowing us to share their work!
Want to “Know 13 Simple Steps to Get You Through a Rough Day?” Visit our facebook page, facebook.com/the boylanblog. It is updated weekly with almost everything from events on campus to cool things happening around the world. Share our page, like the page, tell everyone you know!
We, at the English Office, wish you the best of luck with finals, the best of summers, and can’t wait to bring you new and exciting blog entries next Fall semester!
There are worse things than a primate playing with an iPad. This is something I know to be true, especially when I’m sifting through a world’s worth of often-terrible news. Still, when I saw a headline the other day about orangutans in Florida using iPads, my first reaction was that this was one of the worst things I’d ever heard, time for Armageddon, etc. It’s bad enough that almost everyone I see walks around with some kind of iProduct in front of his/her face, but now animals are going to do it, too? Is there a time in the near future when my dog is going to be the loser dog on the block, because his mom is broke and strict and won’t buy him the latest Apple product?
It turns out, though, that there are a lot of reasons why technologically active orangutans are not a bad thing. There are six orangutans at the Miami Zoo Jungle Island who have been trained to communicate with iPads in order to supplement the ape-to-human missives normally conveyed through sign language. They can press buttons, play games, and even learn some vocabulary (all while the trainer holds the iPad itself). The animals are normally capable of physically indicating their wants and needs and thereby letting their caretakers know if they’re experiencing any kind of physical illness or discomfort. Teaching the orangutans to communicate through touch screens, however, makes it possible for people who don’t know the proper sign language to still be capable of understanding the animals.
The program’s overseer, Linda Jacobs, is hoping that the zoo will soon be able to set up a huge screen through which the orangutans will be able to interact with guests by answering questions. Those involved with the program have stressed that the orangutans are being trained to use iPads purely because it facilitates communication, not because it’s a trick that could bring in spectators and, therefore, money. The animals are extremely intelligent, but because they can’t speak, they have no way of expressing their intelligence to other species. They get bored with nothing to do all day, and the iPads provide them with a means to be actively engaged in something. The probably-televised-because-everything-these-days-is-televised revolution is being spread by unaffiliated group Orangutan Outreach’s collection of old, donated iPads, which are to be given to various zoos across North America in the hopes of setting up video-conferencing between separated family members.
And that is why orangutans should be trained to use iPads. It’s a pretty good list of reasons with which it’s rather hard to argue. But I’m nevertheless going to make the fervent argument of a possibly regressive technophobe. Technology has long assisted human intelligence and facilitated communication, but that doesn’t change the fact that actually doing and saying things is the natural way of the world. Not to mention I’m slightly sick at the thought that there is already a significant number of “old” iPads to be donated and distributed (oh, good old planned obsolescence). If the orangutans benefit health-wise from the new methods of communication, that’s excellent, but I can’t help wondering if there are limits for a reason—that, whatever your religious beliefs, humans weren’t meant to one-up nature all the time. In other words, I just don’t want to see iPads near paws or, truthfully, near any hands at all.
It’s time to live your life. Don’t you agree? It’s your life and your life only, So let it take you by the hand. Drink it deep, and swallow hard. Swallow that pill that keeps you up at night, or keeps you up all day. Swallow that pill that makes your headache go away, or makes your sniffles go away, or makes your cough go away. Be sure to drink a full glass of water when taking it, just to make sure it goes down smoothly. Don’t take more than the necessary dosage, two pills every hour on the hour for the next twenty-four hours. Do not mix with alcohol, drugs, or sex. If an erection lasts longer than four hours, just keep going. It’ll go away soon I swear. Do not take if you are pregnant, may become pregnant, may think you are pregnant, or dating a pregnant woman. Side effects may include nausea, dyslexia, vomiting, barfing, hurling, gasping, choking, climbing, jumping, running, paying in cash, developing a rash, developing a cold, developing software, insomnia, somnambulation, impatience, incontinence, inefficiency, inexactitude, bad attitude, measles, mumps, bumps, rumps, humps, excessive humping, excessive bumping, rough housing, horseplay, fiddlesticks, drumsticks, chicken liver, gizzard souffle, counting, spelling, spitting, hugging, dreaming, scheming, jizzing, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating. Tell a doctor, nurse, or customs official, if you think you are showing any signs of these, or if you are having thoughts of suicide, aborticide, or genocide. Ask a doctor about Chinese People, and start living your life.
They say if you wait, the right one will come along… eventually. But for 70 year old cabaret performer Pam Shaw, time’s a-wastin’. “Now’s the time. “ Quips the artist ironically known as Sexational Pam. “I’m ready to take the plunge for the right bloke.”
And it’s not like she never had any offers, either. “Men saw the outfits I wore on stage and thought I would be easy. But I’ve never really been intimate with a man, just a bit of kissing. I had a sexy stage name and dressed sexy but that was all for my career.”
Throughout said career, Pam has rubbed elbows with some serious panty melters, including Roger Moore and virginity-annihilation soundtrack adonis Tom Jones; but as a proponent of chastity until marriage, Pam just hasn’t met anyone she is willing to settle for. “My standards are still very high.” She claims in an interview with UK Sun. “I’m hoping to bag a tall, dark and handsome millionaire.”
I don’t usually pander to sensationalized tabloid articles (unless they are of the truly essential and exceptional journalism outlets such as crop circles or yeti sightings), but this septuagenarian kamikaze of her own morals might be my most favorite person ever. I raise my mug-of-coffee-I-wish-was-veuve-cliquot-to-illustrate-the-magnitude-of-this-occasion to you, Pam Shaw. I raise it higher than a skyscraper stiletto. May your first time be as explosive as a sex bomb! May you be shaken and not stirred! And may you finally find a bloke worthy of your neon spirit and veracious self respect.
Okay, I git it. Lemme think, I guess it’s my turn…
Oh Nicki Minaj, how I loathe thee. It’s not just the fact that I never remember how to spell your name, or that your last name is a crude sexual pun, or that you have no talent, musical or otherwise. It is simply that you, like those forsaken Kardashians, seem to still be relevant. And I know, if I don’t dig you, why am I spending my precious time writing about you? I’ll tell you why. Because in my twisted mind, you and your impressionable fans represent everything that is wrong with this country (minus the Shakespeare pun).
Let’s begin by examining what made you famous (and I’m not referring to your “assets”), shall we? You announced yourself to the world of music with your startling verse on the hit song “BedRock”—a track featuring various artists from the Young Money family. Although I am reluctant to admit it, the song itself had a catchy beat. But that’s where it both started and ended for any person with half an iota of decency. It’s not just that every self-professed rapper on the track thought he or she would wrangle away the Hip-Hop crown from the likes of Eminem or Notorious BIG. Nor was it the fact that there existed a crude innuendo about Fred Flintstone and his hometown of BedRock. It was just your verse. Hip-Hop experienced its darkest hour with the airing of your verse. And just when we thought you couldn’t get worse, here you are, with all the guile in the world, consistently proving us wrong. YOU CAN’T RAP, so stop trying! Isn’t it bad enough that you rhyme the same words with themselves repeatedly? Guess not, since you then continue to repeat those lines in various voices. Some people say that’s you being innovative; I sez that’s just you being ridiculous.
And then you have the audacity to compare yourself with Lil’ Kim, the one and only Queen B. The nerve. Lil’ Kim did it first and she did it best. Did I mention that Lil’ Kim can actually rap? If we take away the colorful wigs and the revealing outfits (something that you clearly copied from her), her rhymes require a certain amount of intelligence to decipher (something you failed to copy from her). As for this Barbie image you are so obsessed with, Kim did that first, too, and she did it best. And now I know your fans, or Barbs as they are called, will say that you have become successful in a male-dominated industry. I won’t proceed to be crude and explain just why this is so, but I’m guessin’ that it had nothing to do with the lack of clothes, morals, or intelligence on your part (did ya get the sarcasm?). But the worst part about you and all of your different personas is that the youths of this country look up to you. They, being young and naïve, believe that everything you do is fantastic. They literally hang on every word you say. And that’s a real shame, because instead of doing positive things with this extraordinary power you hold over them, you insist on carrying yourself like an absolute trollop (harsh, I know). A real shame.
You, Nicki Minaj, represent everything that is wrong with this country. You do things without thinking or caring about the consequences they holdi for others, in this particular case, your young fans. As a result, you are here forth banished from being played in 3416 Boylan. Though I suppose that won’t bother you much, since you can always “beez in the trap” (what the hell does that mean anyway?).
Fuck is on YOUR biscuit Nicki Minaj? Fuck is on YOUR biscuit?
