Newsworld

Are there any prominent symbols in this story?  If so, what are they and how are they used?
There are several symbols in the story, among the most prominent being Newsworld itself.  It is representative of childhood, and more specifically, of the nostalgia that comes with revisiting objects from childhood.  When they visit Newsworld, it is abandoned.  Although they explore, tracing their ways through the encapsulated memories looking for something, they find nothing but a wall and the rush of reality as security approaches.

What connections did you make with the story?  Discuss elements  of the story with which you were able to connect.
When 9/11 occurred, I was much younger than the characters in the story.  In my childhood I had difficulty making emotional connections to events, particularly ones that felt so far away.  I did not understand what 9/11 meant for the world.  I understood that people died, but I could not grasp the magnitude of it despite the fact that there were others my age who fully recognized it.  In regards to that particular event in history, I can connect with the difficulty characters have with responding emotionally to the situation, although in my case it was for different reasons.  

What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium.  What medium would you use?
First of all, I would make it more obvious that the women-as-metaphors are just for show.  I would avoid playing it straight.  Heterosexual guy writers have been doing this for centuries and it is so tired that it makes me roll my eyes.  If a story needs to be from a perspective that has been put on a pedestal since people started regarding writing as an art form, it cannot be so dated.  The acknowledgement that these young men have been socially conditioned not to express their emotions and the poisonous impact this has had on each of them psychologically is far more interesting than repeated reinforcement of their masculinity and heterosexuality, which is why if these reinforcements are going to be used, it needs to be more obvious that the intent is to express the need to reinforce these ideas in order to hide and deal with the emotional impacts of the events of the story.  Being a filmmaker, my first instinct is to make it as a film, but I would also like to see it as a visual novel.  No dialogue.  Just images expressing the narrative and emotions of the story.

Godard as an Auteur

The concept of auteurship began to thrive in France with the new wave, so it is difficult to have a conversation about auteur theory without mentioning Jean-luc Godard.  Although his work has been criticized alongside that of his contemporaries such as Varda and Truffaut, Godard's films are distinctly tuned.  They each reflect aspects of his personal style, which are often alike not in aesthetic but in theme and social commentary.
It was Godard who was one of the primary figures to break film out of its strict narrative structure in the 1960s.  Breathless, a bizarre take on a crime film, is filled with jumps and fast cuts that read almost like mistakes.  The narrative is not straightforward.  It is filled with seemingly innocuous conversation.  And like Godard's other films, it completely bends the previous concepts of what is considered filmic artwork to create a unique vision of a film.
Pierrot Le Fou is similarly structured.  Another film following a man and a woman (both men played by Jean-Paul Belmondo) it features another pair escaping the law and delving into a newer and freer world- only to find that the world is not terribly interesting.  Even more than Breathless, Pierrot Le Fou is a film that wants to make the viewer extremely aware of the fact that they are watching a film. There are conversations that repeat lines as though they are being repeated in a new take.  Anna Karina and Belmondo break the fourth wall, address the audience, and narrate poetically numerous times.  And it is a musical.  But it is, of course, nothing like the musicals churned out by Hollywood in the 1930s.  Music starts and stops abruptly.  Characters start singing and stop singing and then sing again.  It looks as though someone was trying to make a musical by filming their friends and playing a stereo in the background.  It is more realistic.  And it is, I would assume, deeply sarcastic at its core intent.
Vivre sa Vie is a little different.  It is almost more polished and direct.  Karina chats with an older man about love and other unsubtle subjects for several minutes.  In all honesty, there is little I remember about this film.  Unlike Pierrot and Breathless, it felt lacking in punch.  And maybe that is because I watched it last.  Maybe the sense of auteurship ruined it for me and stole the excitement from the movie.  But I doubt it.  One particular scene, featuring Karina dancing to jukebox music as she is ignored by the men has a particular charm that was more reminiscent of her character in Pierrot.  Even still, the film is unmistakably Godard.
And in that tradition, Karina dies at the end.  Just as she died at the end of Pierrot Le Fou, along with Belmondo, who also died at the end of Breathless.  By the end of Vivre Sa Vie, the death almost felt like a long-drawn gag.  But these deaths carry the themes in Godards works beautifully.  They are wrapped in betrayal, hopelessness, apathy, and boredom.

The Medium is the Massage

Sleep Donation Response that I Forgot About

Sleep Donation deals with a very particular set of conflicts that are unique in that they are both fantastical and relevant to events in the modern world.  As people deal with real life epidemics, not just limited to disease, it is easy to find connections within the Sleep Donation landscape.  Fear of disease is tremendously common and is explored in fiction in a number of ways.  We have zombie films and vampire novels and apocalyptic pandemic games that all share the same web of fear; that this could happen to anyone at any time.  Sleep Donation is no different.  Although it would probably not be classified as horror, it takes advantage of one of humanity's most primal fears and exploits it to create an incredibly poignant narrative.  The inability to fall asleep can act as a metaphor for almost any widespread terror: AIDs and ebola, assault and murder, food shortages and homelessness.  They all rest in the vein of possibility.  Just like the insomnia, they are all real and terrible threats.
I work in a Pier 1 Imports store and for the holiday season we are selling UNICEF cards.  The idea is that for the cards we sell, all the money goes directly to UNICEF.  One box equates 302 immunity-boosting vaccines.  They send food and school supplies to children.  Etc.  Although I have tried to conduct research I cannot speak entirely to the ethics of UNICEF as an organization but from what I can tell they seem pretty clean.  Where the money to make the greeting cards in the first place comes from if the money all goes straight to helping kids concerned me at first, but I would guess that they have a deal with a card company, and I would hope that the card company pays well for all the materials and work and art and glitter and ink that goes into making the cards.
And from this I can relate two things: the first is that, like in Sleep Donation, even if you are trying incredibly hard to do a good thing, it is extremely difficult to find out if the good things you are doing could have possible negative consequences.  Does the glitter come from children forced to harvest micah?  Will UNICEF actually be using some of our donations to support their anti out-of-country-adoption ideals and prevent children from finding real, loving families?  Just like harvesting Baby A's sleep has negative consequences along with the good, so does real-life charity.
The second thing I can relate is that despite UNICEF's near-spotless reputation, it is damn hard to get people to buy cards.  I have caught my coworker, Linda, taking customers by the hand and looking them in the eyes and expressing from the bottom of her heart, "Please help the children and buy a box of our UNICEF cards.  You would be saving their lives.  You could prevent them from dying."  And although she has the highest card sale out of all of the associates, there are many who just do not want to hear it.  Another coworker told me that a customer had conveyed to her that they used to buy the cards but stopped because the new designs were not glittery enough.  So we have Linda, our resident Trish, pouring her heart out so our customers will buy a $12 box of cards, and many refuse to budge.  And of course most have personal reasons.  Maybe they came in for one thing and do not have the extra money.  Not everyone is able to buy a box.  Some people just have no use for holiday cards.  But this is a relatable point within the book.  Sometimes when there is no drawback, it can be tremendously hard to convince people to donate to a cause.

Logan's Run

Lizards

Never mind I cannot do this I give up.  I promise I will perform lizard Shakespeare someday.  I will not let you down.

Much Ado About Nothing

Listen to this awesome song with no music wow.
I wanted to make a scene using lizards but I could not catch any lizards.  I still am gonna try with stuffed animals or something though???  Even though is 10:30 at night.  Because I do not know if singing a song counts as covering the assignment parameters.  Do not play this song for the class.

Dewbreaker Response

In many ways, the situations dealt with in the Book of the Dead story of The Dewbreaker are almost universal.  From the beginning, Ka struggles with anxiety and unsureness when her father disappears.  Even her father's struggle to find a way to repent for his sins and to keep his family safe from his past is, although presumably far-removed from the situations of most readers, relatable enough that we can sympathize with the guilt and remorse he feels.  Ka's sense of identity is deep-rooted in her family.  From the beginning, she states that although she grew up in New York, she has always longed to share a birthplace with her parents, stating that she is from Haiti despite having never been there.  I am a white person who was born in the US, and the most I know about my family's history is that somewhere along the line we were disowned from French royalty for refusing to return to France from Canada.  I have the privilege of being an unquestioned American (not European American or French American, and certainly not Canadian American) in a country where white is considered the default.  The sense of belonging to a country I have never visited, of needing a sense of connection with my ancestors' origins, is something I will never know or thirst for in the depths of my identity because of America's gross racial bias in most aspects of our media and history.  Although I can read about Ka's desire to share an identity with her parents and with their home country, it is a sense of loss that I could never feel or truly understand.  I think it is also important that  Gabrielle Fonteneau is also Haitian and that she specifically wants Ka's artwork because she collects works from Haitian artists.  We can see a contrast between Gabrielle's pride and connection with her family's home country, and the sense of doubt that accompanies Ka after she discovers the truth about her father.
Ka's connection with her family is also prevalent in her art.  As was mentioned, her sense of wanting to be connected with her family is a major aspect of her personality, and this aspect was wholly represented in her art.  She wanted to feel connected with her father, to unravel a sense of what he was into a sculpture that was entirely her image of him.  When I want to create art, my instinct is to jump to the subjects that interest me at a given moment, which change rapidly.  I watch movies that I can feel igniting particular areas of my brain and I read books that make my heart pound and I look at pictures that draw my eyes into their dynamic worlds, and I become obsessed.  That Ka is a character that can create art around a single subject, a subject that has been present throughout her entire life, and not grow dreary of the repeated task of carving him free of the wood, is something to which I cannot relate.  I often jump between subjects before finishing my initial work.  An a ability to maintain interest and to continue carving passion into the same subject over and over is a trait that I only wish I could possess.  Of course, when the carving of her father is drowned, so is her idea of him, her sense of a real connection with him, and a pure idea of who he is.

Hell yea

Testing testing is this working