Why It’s Always Sunny is the Most Brilliant Thing Ever (Wildcard)

An immutable fact is that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the greatest, most funny thing ever to be produced. The show follows five people, three of which are related, and the bar they run: Paddy’s Irish Pub. There is not a single character in the show that is the least bit gracious; rather, every one of the protagonists has their own faults. Mac is a want to-be badass who thinks that he is the sole master of karate and that everything in his daily life would be enhanced with scissor kicks. Dennis is an extremely haughty pretty boy who takes every chance to show off his mad pecs. Dee is a gross girl that no one really cares about too much. Frank is the father of Dee an Dennis, played by Danny Devito, who is just so extremely gross that it is beautiful. He used to be extremely rich but lost it all for some reason, probably a stupid one. Lastly, and without a doubt most important, Charlie is an illiterate maniac who is just the best. The fact that I find it hard to describe these characters shows how deep they actually are.
But now let’s do some analysis! I watched a really interesting episode this summer and it only seems fitting to talk about it in a blog in which Ms. Morgan is my teacher. In episode 10 on season 4, “Sweet Dee has a Heart Attack” there is an allusion to “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” So cool! By a series of events only able to be done by the writes of Sunny, Frank ends up in a mental hospital, just like the role he played in the movie based on the film. There we meet all the characters, Nurse Ratched, The Big Broom Guy… and more. It really took me by surprise and I was proud of myself that I got the allusion; it made me feel smart. The episode ends with Frank getting Broomden to pick up a water fountain and throw it out of the window. Some of the characters are messed up but the fact that Sunny made a reference to a piece of literature that had an effect on society made me proud of it. Good on you It’s Always Sunny!
Here are some more fun facts, but I guess they would only make sense if you watch the show. In the show, Charlie is obsessed with a girl “The Waitress.” The feeling is not mutual though and the woman hates Charlie. However, in real life, the two are married. Along with that, Mac and Dee are married in real life too. It is not as cool as the Charlie one though. I just recently watched the third episode of the sixth season and it was pretty funny. Apparently there is going to be a movie coming out soon, but the Sunny guys will only be writing it, not so much acting in it. Along with that, they are going to be starting a new show which takes place in space, sadly though, once again, they will only be producing it.
There is no doubt that Sunny is a fabulous show, but there is one thing I wonder… Is Charlie Day and the other actors who play (and produce) the show smart? I wonder if they are like the characters they portray in Sunny. Are they actually the worse people in the world? I hope not. The only thing wrong about It’s Always Sunny is that all the characters are Phillies fans; I hate the Phillies. But It’s Always Sunny makes up for all of Philadelphia’s sins… it even makes up for them not being man enough to be capitol of America.
So in conclusion, watch Its Always Sunny but do not download it illegally.

The Road Blog

The Road by Cormac McCarthy at first was very mundane. It was difficult to read and I found it very dry, but it isn’t until you look back to you realize the beauty of it. The simplicity of it, the absolute lack of superfluous details makes it brilliant. In the book it is clearly evident that the boy and the father really love one another and that they would do anything for one another, yet in the movie, the story is extremely different.
After reading the book, I was eager to watch the movie; I was let down. When reading the book, I felt that there was more of a dependency on the father and the son. I did not get that from the movie, the two weren’t “each other’s world entirely.” Also, I always imagined the boy to be much younger than he was portrayed in the movie. One of the biggest things that makes this book successful is the relationship the father and son share, I feel like it was not achieved in the movie. Another thing that was not captured in the movie was the desperateness of the human race. The scene in the book in which a group of people eat a new born baby is significant to the picture I draw of the human race in this post apocalyptic world. I feel like that scene should have been in the movie in order to achieve that picture, but I do realize that it would be too explicit for movie goers. It is a pretty gross thing to imagine.
Another good thing about the book was the foreshadowing it had, which more often than not, come during the boy’s dreams. Firstly, in one of the boy’s dreams he talks about a wind up penguin that is walking but it is not wound up. At first, this flew right over my head but then I realized what it was. The penguin represents all the people on the road because they are moving without any fuel and without any purpose. It foreshadows what is to come for everyone in the world. Next, in another dream, the boy dreams that he is screaming in his sleep but his father does not come and get him. The father apologizes for not coming to help him when the boy explains the dream, thinking that the dream he is explaining actually happened. The boy responds by saying, no it was the dream in which I screamed in. this foreshadows the father’s death.
Overall, The Road was a very good book, but it was a bit dry in places and it seems to me that the only reason some of the interesting parts were so interesting was because they are interesting juxtaposed to the rest of the banal text. Out of all the books we have read this quarter, I would say this is my third favorite book after “We” and “1984.”

Why 3+ Syllable Words Do Not Make You Smart

In James Wood’s How Fiction Works, the main idea that is expressed is adoration for the third person free indirect style of writing, or something like that. This style of writing focuses on more of speaking like the character would speak. The author gives examples from books of a single word such as stupid that has a tremendous effect on the development of the character. The author of the book is thinking like his character and his character would think like that. That single word lets us introspect on the character. Why does she think it is stupid? I found many examples of this in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The dialogue the father and son share is extremely annoying but also, after reading this essay, very insightful. The two speak in one or two word sentences. Words such as “Okay Papa” etc. must have shown up at least one hundred times. But those two words have more depth than any elaborate sentence could hope to achieve. Their dialogue shows the simplicity they live in but at the same time, it shows the love they have for one another. It shows the sons respect for the father and vice versa. I know there are too many levels for me to even begging digging for. The author could have said “Okay Father, thank you for getting me food, but I would rather not go on the Road again, well, I guess it is plausible that we should because you know what is correct.” (Over exaggeration). But whose words would they be? Wood also talks about the words authors use and who they belong to. The simple words “Okay Papa” 100% belong to the little boy. I did not imagine the obviously erudite McCarthy thinking deep into his memory for words that were more eloquent than those. The boy wouldn’t be looking back into his memory for words to substitute the simple words. Firstly, he probably does not have enough energy to think that far and secondly, probably has an extremely limited vocabulary. The words the authors use are chosen carefully, there is reason for every single one. When I used to think of characterization I thought of the first few pages of the book which describe the protagonists but things have changed. Every single word a character speaks lends to his characterization; he says the words he says for a reason.

Handmaid’s Tale Commentary

In this excerpt from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred is talking to the Commander about her past, more specifically, her views on love. At this point in the novel, Offred has been secretly seeing the Commander in his office and has been learning about the reasons for the creation of Gilead among other things. By using diction that relates to falling, a change in tone from content to disgust, and irony, Atwood foreshadows the immutable dominance man was to have over women.


Firstly, whenever Atwood says the word love, it is not far from the world love.

• “Still loving, still falling”
• “Falling in love, I said. Falling into it, we all did then, one way or another.”


Atwood uses this peculiar diction to show how women were already subject to man’s abuse. Offred can now admit that love was her downfall but at the time, she was oblivious to it. The same could go for most women. This helps with the essence of foreshadowing because it shows that women had been, for a long time, being hindered by man. Nowadays it is because they are only permitted to work in certain areas and it is much more drastic, but if you water this down, you get what women consider love. Women like to fall in love but it is something that is abusive to them. It is something that one has to get out of, but once they fall in too deep, it would be hard to remember if they ever had any role of power in society. Atwood uses the words love and following in succession to show that love was one of the beginning signs of the subjection of women.


Next, Atwood changes the tone from the first stanza to the second stanza to show how women were oblivious to the detriments of their love when the first fell into it.

• Before: “It was the central thing; it was the way you understood yourself; if it never happened to you, not ever, you would be like a mutant, a creature from outer space.”
• After: “… through the window onto his sleeping face, making the shadows in the sockets of his eyes darker and more cavernous than in daytime, and you’d think, Who knows what they do, on their own or with other men? Who knows what they say or where they are likely to go? ... What if he doesn’t love me?

The piece from the first stanzas shows how women thought that love was an integral part of their life. They needed it to find themselves and they were happy once they did. The tone of this is much happier than the following. The next piece from the second stanza shows how women began to feel insecure and see the flaws that a man has. Although these faults have been there the whole time, the women are credulous when the first fall in love. It is only when they sleep with them do they begin to think what if, but by then it is too late. The tone in the second stanza is much more solemn and it relates to the society Offred lives in now. There is nothing the handmaids can do now to better the society they live in now and the same would have gone for a women who sees the true side of a man.


Lastly, Atwood uses irony to show how oblivious women were.

• “We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion; so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely.

The use of oxymorons helps demonstrate how women were subject to abuse yet they still lived with it. The same goes on now but in current day Gilead the women have a lot less chance to revolt than they did back in the day. This piece is ironic because the women liked to fall in love but at the same time were somewhat aware of the negative effects it had on then. Nonetheless, they still went for it.

Feminist Movement: The Most Ironic Thing Ever

“Women are unhappy precisely because they are free. Women are enslaved by their own liberation.” I could not have said it better myself. Throughout our whole unit on the feminist movement, I was never able to clearly express how ironic the movement was. Their own yearning for freedom ended up castrating them; but was this just me being overly analytical? The feminist movement truly is the worst thing that could have happened to the sex. How does this work? How do the freedoms a group of people gain end up hindering them more than helping them? A survey said that “men’s opposition to equality is a major cause of resentment and stress and a major irritant for most women today.”Women are blaming men for the hardships they face. This chapter in the book gives facts about how when a certain goal for women was being advocated, the government tried to deter it. In all honesty, although it may sound extremely sexist, I believe that feminist groups use the idea that men are the bad guy as a scapegoat. They are upset that they have not achieved the same level of power as man, but man has been working to achieve this power since the founding of America. I do not know if this next argument is either relevant or politically correct, but the same goes for all types of races. You do not see very many Latin Americans or Indians in super high positions in America. The white man has been groomed for a position of power since 1776, so how can you expect a new “type” of person to be as well suited for this position of power if they have just been told they can do it not even 100 years ago. Women get mad at men and think that they are taking away their positions but, more often than not, the man would be more suited for it. Women have the right to run for a seat in government so why don’t they do it? Is it because “America is not ready” or “they will be looked at poorly”? That is not true at all. Women have the opportunities to rise up but when they get to afraid to do so, they instantly blame the man in power. What benefit would man have from stopping the feminist movement? No man wakes up and thinks “Oh no, what if I lose my job to the new tier of women who are becoming successful.” If both a boy and a girl grow up in Country A, with equal opportunities and level of schooling, and they are both equally as smart and equally as committed, it is farfetched to say that the boy in Country A is going to succeed in life much more than the girl. Women and men are equal in every sense of the word, its only when the women realize that it takes more than rallying for abortions and writing books about how stupid men are to become successful. The first step is getting your rights, so now go out and use them to your full ability. Don’t just sit back and blame someone else for something that you are afraid to acquire. I hope that does not sound to sexist, but it is my opinion.

The Beauty Myth

Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth touched on the idea that all women based themselves on a certain criterion. Now that women are free and can vote and do more things than they could before, they must be suppressed some way. “If the beauty myth is not based on evolution, sex, gender, aesthetics, or God, on what is it based? It claims to be about intimacy and sex and life, a celebration of women. It is actually composed of emotional distance, politics, finance, and sexual repression. The beauty myth is not about women at all. It is about men’s institutions and institutional power.” I believe Wolf is touching on the fact that men began to feel threatened by the amount of power women had been getting. As they grew older, they were establishing themselves in society. Women have been freed from the shackles from their yesteryears but only to be placed on even heavier constraints by the current generations. “We are in the midst of a violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement.” The idea that the beautiful women are good women is used as a deterrent to hinder the whole sex’s progress. This relates to The Handmaid’s Tale very strongly. The reason that there is a coup is so that women become subjective to men. When the revolution first happens, all the women’s cards and means of accessing money is cut off. They need to rely on men to do anything. Along with that, all women’s jobs are ended. The men of Gilead are much happier with this being the situation. When the women work for the men, the men do not need to install this idea about beauty. The women have already been suppressed enough. The use of the perfect beautiful women is destroyed, the actually destruction of every opportunity for a woman to succeed is enough to placate the men. That is not to say that a certain type of beauty myth does not exist in A Handmaid’s Tale. The women are indoctrinated to believe that a perfect handmaid is one that bears children and does not complain about it. There is still a criterion on which they can compare themselves to and, in the end, feel unsatisfactory about. I do not believe that this is present in present day Gilead, but it will be in the future generations. Once the initial hump of distress is passed and the world they life in is considered normal, the beauty myth will turn into the perfect handmaid myth, and the perfect econowive myth etc.

Barbie and Things

In these two passages from Part II: Becoming a Woman in Our Society, one main idea is advocated. The ideal image of a woman, whichever way it is spread, is detrimental to the actual women. The two ways discussed in these chapters are through Barbie dolls and women’s magazines. One woman recounts that “if you didn’t look like Barbie you didn’t fit in.” All women to some extent strive to become the perfect woman, and Barbie really did set the limits way to high. “Barbie is the only toy in the Western world that human beings actively try to mimic…” Women are becoming suppressed by a doll that is supposed to portray their gender. My favorite part of the first chapter is when the woman relates the Barbie dolls to the Third Reich. Because every single girl wants to become a blonde haired blue eyed replica of Barbie, the doll did what Hitler could not succeed in doing. For young girls to believe that becoming Barbie is the only acceptable way to live is an extremely sad circumstance. How is it possible to set your dreams solely on a plastic doll? The next chapter talks about the effect that magazines have on women. “Teen magazines’ glorification of boy-focused, looks-based, prom-obsessed idiocy reinforces every negative stereotype that has ever been used to justify – and ensure – women’s second class status.” These magazines paint an impossible picture for women that they turn into their dream. They teach women how to be perfect, a goal that is impossible for every person. Both these outlets have created a perfect image for what a woman should be. A class mate of mine, Nina said:

I couldn’t if I were a Handmaid because I would have to wear the red uniform. But maybe Uniformity is the only way to eliminate the irrational despair that goes through the minds of all girls who throw up on purpose and starve themselves.

http://3nina.wordpress.com/

I cannot help but agree with this statement. We are reading the dystopian novel A Handmaid’s Tale and in that, all the Handmaids are forced to wear a red uniform that covers their whole body. I think to some extent, the people who started this revolution whole heartedly felt that this new world they put on women would be beneficial to them. Nowadays, women will go to extreme measures to become beautiful only because there is that shining what if. If this perfect woman is either destroyed and uniformity is achieved, women will not yearn for the Barbie girl figure, rather, they will just be content with who they are.