Se7en

I totally forgot to blog about this crazy movie we watched one week in Sweeney's class called Se7en co-starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. At first I couldn't understand the concept of the movie until I watched for myself...& it is one crazy unbelievable movie. I was just in shock the whole because I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that some crazy psychopath would such things to people, especially how he killed the prostitute. *I know that had to hurt* Ugh!!!
 Honestly  I'm still confused about the movie..& I have to write a paper about.. grreat ! But at the end of the movie, the killer played both of the detectives in a way where I was left shock, like damn, #bow. *don't judge me*

But if you didnt get a chance to watch the movie, here is just a little summary & movie clip. Enjoy!!!

A film about two homicide detectives' desperate hunt for a serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world's ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins. The movie takes us from the tortured remains of one victim to the next as the sociopathic "John Doe" sermonizes to Detectives Sommerset and Mills -- one sin at a time. The sin of Gluttony comes first and the murderer's terrible capacity is graphically demonstrated in the dark and subdued tones characteristic of film noir. The seasoned and cultured but jaded Sommerset researches the Seven Deadly Sins in an effort to understand the killer's modus operandi while the bright but green and impulsive Detective Mills scoffs at his efforts to get inside the mind of a killer...This thriller portrays the exploits of a deranged serial-killer. His twisted agenda involves choosing seven victims who represent egregious examples of transgressions of each of the Seven Deadly Sins. He then views himself as akin to the Sword of God, handing out horrific punishment to these sinners. Two cops, an experienced veteran of the streets who is about to retire and the ambitious young homicide detective hired to replace him, team up to capture the perpetrator of these gruesome killings. Unfortunately, they too become ensnared in his diabolical plan...

College Fair @ Richard Bland Community College

So I decided to  attend the College Fair held at  my school this past week.  I didn't know what school I wanted to attend because of all the Universities that were there, but I managed to narrow my choices down to 2 schools, James Madison University and Christopher Newport News University. I chose those schools because of my major and the location. I love JMU because the school is so diverse and also offer Athletic Training as a major. I like CNU for just about the same amount of reasons but they don't offer Athletic Training as a major they offer Pre-Health as program. I was kind of iffy about it because I don't want to go to a school that doesn't offer what I'm looking for and I am stuck there for 2 semesters not having a clue.
As your're reading this you can probably see that I narrowed my school choice down too 1 school. JMU !! Yes, JMU is the perfect school for me and my major. The distance is a bit far away but that doesn't matter. I'm so glad that I was able to know what school was best for me from just attending the College Fair.

Saute` & Sizzle:

This past weekend(November 2nd)  I was invited to attend an AKA event in downtown Richmond. I didnt know what to expect because it was my first year attending the Saute & Sizzle Event. But to much surprise I had a blast. The event was for local amateur chefs to show off their cooking skills and for the attendees to taste them. They also had a private biding where the proceeds benefited local community projects and provided scholarships to deserving students. Sabrina Squire from Channel 6 News was also there as the Mistress of the Ceremony.
Some of the food that I had a chance to were curry chicken & cabbage, fiesta lime chicken & rice, wingettes & peach cobbler, haitian griot with red beans & rice, fried turkey with dressing, mini cupcakes (yummy, red velvet was my favorite), shrimp & grits, strawberry in a cloud, lasagna, beyond chocolate cake & bread pudding, smoked mac n cheese & lots of water !!!!
I had a great time at the event with my family, it was nice to just have a girls night out & enjoy the festivities.

Sabrina Squire (in the green)

The invite

She's an AKA...My wonderful cousin. Love her too pieces

My aunt & I ....dressed too impress

The mini cakes.red velvet was my faaaavorite !!!!

On the left were the Shrimp & Grits...On the right was Strawberry in  a Cloud

The Lasagna King !

Blue Roses

In class we had to get into peer review groups and discuss our papers we were suppose to write over the break....nah man !!! Didn't happen...we was too (the picture below in black/gold) . But anyways I decided what I was gonna write my paper about...Its gonna be a in-depth character analysis of Laura Wingfield. She's a shy lonely female wanting to feel love.... I can relate to Laura because I was that lonely girl in junior high/ high school looking for someone to come along and make me their priority. It wasn't until i was in my senior year of high I gained that confidence to find my own "Romeo".  After graduation I was determined to just be myself and let it happen in it's own. And that's when I met M.B.K (former boyfriend of ~8 months now) 

 While in high school, the simple misunderstanding of “pleurosis” for “blue roses” by Jim has a lasting effect on Laura (Williams, Glass 1844). Laura comes to treasure this moment and name because it represents one of the few times Laura speaks to her hero, Jim. However, this mishap actually gives insight to Laura’s personality. The name “Laura” is derived from the laurel shrub or tree from which wreaths used to be made to honor heroes and athletes (Cardullo 1). Laura is far from athletic or a hero; but the reader can see how Laura’s name reflects her connection with nature and how she parallels blue roses.

  The symbol of blue roses allows the reader to follow Laura as she goes from being a bud to blooming and closing up again. Roses are extremely delicate flowers and require immense care. Therefore, blue roses are even more delicate because they are not of this world. Laura is like a rose because she is just as fragile and needs a lot of care and nurturing. For example, Laura easily becomes “sick” when she learns that Jim is going to visit her house (Williams, Glass 1839). Both Amanda and Tom have to tend to Laura so she will not become too upset and faint or wither like a flower.

  When Jim arrives, Laura starts to bloom out of her shyness. Jim is able to persuade Laura to do things she would never do (Williams, Glass 1849). Laura’s petals begin to open revealing what is truly inside of her because she willingly accepts part of the outside world into her own (1849). However, as soon as Laura faces the real world, she is hit with an unpleasant element, like if a flower receives too much sunshine. Jim admits that he is engaged and crushes Laura to the point that she retreats back to the security her imaginary world, “Why, Laura! You look so serious!” (1851). By the time Amanda says this; Laura has already closed herself off from reality (King 1870). Unfortunately, Laura never has the chance to fully develop because Jim takes away the needed tenderness and sunshine Laura needs to bloom (Boxill 1868). Laura comes to realize that her need for love, someone to make her feel secure and build up her confidence, will never be satisfied (Prykop 2).

Although Laura is a quiet character, she is extremely complex. Therefore, symbols such as blue roses and the glass unicorn are needed to understand the development of her character during the play. Laura lacks what it takes to make it in the real world because everything she possesses is only suitable for her imaginary world. Just as a flower grows and develops, so does Laura. Ultimately, Laura has to face the harshness of the real world and live up to her doomed fate. The fragility and translucence of the unicorn portrays multiple aspects of Laura, as do the blue roses. Laura’s connection to these objects is profound. And when hope is lost for these objects, hope is also lost for Laura.

The Yellow Wallpaper..[This crayyzie biotxh]

The narrator begins her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the house and grounds her husband has taken for their summer vacation. She describes it in romantic terms as an aristocratic estate or even a haunted house and wonders how they were able to afford it, and why the house had been empty for so long. Her feeling that there is “something queer” about the situation leads her into a discussion of her illness—she is suffering from “nervous depression”—and of her marriage. She complains that her husband John, who is also her doctor, belittles both her illness and her thoughts and concerns in general. She contrasts his practical, rationalistic manner with her own imaginative, sensitive ways. Her treatment requires that she do almost nothing active, and she is especially forbidden from working and writing. She feels that activity, freedom, and interesting work would help her condition and reveals that she has begun her secret journal in order to “relieve her mind.” In an attempt to do so, the narrator begins describing the house. Her description is mostly positive, but disturbing elements such as the “rings and things” in the bedroom walls, and the bars on the windows, keep showing up. She is particularly disturbed by the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom, with its strange, formless pattern, and describes it as “revolting.” Soon, however, her thoughts are interrupted by John’s approach, and she is forced to stop writing.

Soon the wallpaper dominates the narrator’s imagination. She becomes possessive and secretive, hiding her interest in the paper and making sure no one else examines it so that she can “find it out” on her own. At one point, she startles Jennie, who had been touching the wallpaper and who mentions that she had found yellow stains on their clothes. Mistaking the narrator’s fixation for tranquility, John thinks she is improving. But she sleeps less and less and is convinced that she can smell the paper all over the house, even outside. She discovers a strange smudge mark on the paper, running all around the room, as if it had been rubbed by someone crawling against the wall.
By the end, the narrator is hopelessly insane, convinced that there are many creeping women around and that she herself has come out of the wallpaper—that she herself is the trapped woman. She creeps endlessly around the room, smudging the wallpaper as she goes. When John breaks into the locked room and sees the full horror of the situation, he faints in the doorway, so that the narrator has “to creep over him every time!”

Hills Like White Elephants...

Although “Hills Like White Elephants” is primarily a conversation between the American man and his girlfriend, neither of the speakers truly communicates with the other, highlighting the rift between the two. Both talk, but neither listens or understands the other’s point of view. Frustrated and placating, the American man will say almost anything to convince his girlfriend to have the operation, which, although never mentioned by name, is understood to be an abortion. He tells her he loves her, for example, and that everything between them will go back to the way it used to be. The girl, meanwhile, waffles indecisively, at one point conceding that she’ll have the abortion just to shut him up. When the man still persists, she finally begs him to “please, please, please, please, please, please” stop talking, realizing the futility of their conversation. In fact, the girl’s nickname, “Jig,” subtly indicates that the two characters merely dance around each other and the issue at hand without ever saying anything meaningful. The girl’s inability to speak Spanish with the bartender, moreover, not only illustrates her dependence on the American but also the difficulty she has expressing herself to others.
Both the American man and the girl drink alcohol throughout their conversation to avoid each other and the problems with their relationship. They start drinking large beers the moment they arrive at the station as if hoping to fill their free time with anything but discussion. Then, as soon as they begin talking about the hills that look like white elephants, the girl asks to order more drinks to put off the inevitable conversation about the baby. Although they drink primarily to avoid thinking about the pregnancy, readers sense that deeper problems exist in their relationship, of which the baby is merely one. In fact, the girl herself implies this when she remarks that she and the American man never do anything together except try new drinks, as if constantly looking for new ways to avoid each other. By the end of their conversation, both drink alone—the girl at the table and the man at the bar—suggesting that the two will end their relationship and go their separate ways.

A white elephant symbolizes something no one wants—in this story, the girl’s unborn child. The girl’s comment in the beginning of the story that the surrounding hills look like white elephants initially seems to be a casual, offhand remark, but it actually serves as a segue for her and the American to discuss their baby and the possibility of having an abortion. The girl later retracts this comment with the observation that the hills don’t really look like white elephants, a subtle hint that perhaps she wants to keep the baby after all—a hint the American misses. In fact, she even says that the hills only seemed to look like white elephants at first glance, and that they’re actually quite lovely. Comparing the hills—and, metaphorically, the baby—to elephants also recalls the expression “the elephant in the room,” a euphemism for something painfully obvious that no one wants to discuss.

Everything That Rises Must Converge...

   Mary Flannery O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, to Edward Francis O’Connor and Regina Cline O’Connor. Her family moved to Atlanta for her father’s work when O’Connor was a teenager but had to return to their home in Milledgeville, Georgia, after her father contracted lupus. He died three years later. O’Connor later studied at a private high school before entering George State College for Women, where she worked for the student newspaper and literary magazine. She had enjoyed writing since childhood, and the stories she composed in college merited admission to the master’s program at the University of Iowa’s writer’s workshop. There, she honed her craft and began publishing fiction. Her first story, “The Geranium,” appeared in Accent when she was only twenty-one and earned her both an award and a publishing contract for her first novel. She began working on the novel Wise Blood while working as a teaching assistant at the University of Iowa after receiving her master’s degree in 1947.
     O’Connor accepted an invitation to work on Wise Blood at Yaddo, a respected artist’s colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her publisher, however, disliked the initial drafts, so she switched publishers and submitted portions of the novel for publication in prominent journals such as the Paris Review. While visiting her mother in Georgia for Christmas, O’Connor’s health began to decline, and doctors ultimately diagnosed her with lupus, from which she would eventually die. Fearing that she would live only three more years as her father had, she left New York and decided to live with her mother on their Georgian dairy farm, Andalusia. O’Connor lived there quietly for several years until she completed and published Wise Blood in 1952. Critics condemned the novel as an affront to Christianity for its satire on American religious life but recognized O’Connor’s phenomenal talent as a writer.
         O’Connor published her first collection of short stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, in 1955 and then followed up with a second novel in 1960, The Violent Bear It Away. Although critics loved her short fiction, her second novel suffered as Wise Blood had. Nevertheless, O’Connor’s reputation grew, and she continued to write, lecture, and teach until her death in 1964. Everything That Rises Must Converge, her second volume of short stories, was published posthumously in 1965, and she posthumously won the National Book Award in 1972 for her Collected Stories. O’Connor’s popularity has increased since her death, and many now deem her one of the best short story writers of the twentieth century.