For July 25 Fridays class...

So I seem a little back logged on the blog writing task... I will ask simply that you bear with me, for you see I had this laptop computer, but as fate would have it about two days after I decided to re-enroll in school it broke. Although the dollar is stronger than ever and China's mass purchase of raw materials is not raising the price of computers, I have to decided to do with out until a later date. This is not to say I don't like using the computer or internet it just means I have to be adaptive in my means to do so. Since quitting my job I have become what I like to call an "urban forager". This entails spending as little money as possible and finding the supplies I need and "procurring" them, or in the case of the computer "using them". Now I know what you are thinking and nobody needs to "forage" in this day and age to find a computer to use, what with libraries and friends and things. I just like to use the term because it lends a little sense of grandeur to my computer-less plight, and if we have learned one thing in this class it is try to live a life less ordinary even if it is in the slightest sense.

With that said I will speak about Ricky and my sonnet for Mr. Ricky. While I know of you may have thought upon hearing my sonnet for Rick that I was a member of peta or some other form of deviant, I assure you the love I feel towards Ricky is a pure and wholesome thing. I have not agreed to plight my troth to Ricky for all of eternity. My sonnet in a superficial sense was about what it says it's about, that little rapscallion Rick, but one could apply it really to anything unattainable in our lives.

Also this has nothing to do with class but I just realized that the word sprite, refers to either an elvish person or the disembodied spirit of a ghost. When I here the word sprite I first think of a delicious, crisp, and oh so refreshing lemon lime flavored soft drink. I also think of their ad campaign "for one to obey their thirst", now any time I drink sprite I am going to think of the ghastly implications of the name and not feel comfortable until I have had a young priest and an old priest perform the Roman Ritual over my beverage, casting the fascist spirits back into the maw of hell where they may belong. My mind wanders...

Three entries for Mr. Pip.
First one I chose was on page 24, at the bottom although through out the course of our discussion just about all of page 24 was selected. It refers to the ability of Matilda and the children to escape into the story and connect with Pip on a very intimate level.

page 191 is a passage that refers to the ability of Mr. Watts to accept Pip as real, and his in ability to accept Satan as such. This serves to illustrate the perception of truth one may have when dealing with fiction, it also serves to clearly contrast Mr. Watts against Matilda's mother who most certainly believes in Satan, a character from a book.

216-Matilda's salvation through Jaggers the log. This shows I guess the profound impact the book had on her, again her escaping into the world of the book to cope with disastrous occurrence
and also serves to show how her and Pip are intimately connected.

222- This passage is about Matilda flying in a plane and seeing her island from the air and it reminds me of Pip's carrage ride to london. While this passage is not as much of an abstraction as the othe one it still illustrates their connection. This is her travelling in a sense to meet her "great expectations".

page numbers and themes within as gleaned from the class discussion
64-fear, ok to appear stupid.
24-unknown, escape, curiosity
71-choice, free will the ability to create the self.
204-Daniels Grandma and her sacrifice
210-a gentleman
123-imagination
69-gain and loss
92-Mystery-"Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be experienced"
155-change. entrancement

"ALS OB" or as if-No I did not compile that information it is a cut and paste but you can view it in its original form at-http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/37587/philosophy-of-as-if#tab=active~checked%2Citems~checked&title=philosophy%20of%20as%20if%20--%20Britannica%20Online%20Encyclopedia

the system espoused by Hans Vaihinger in his major philosophical work Die Philosophie des Als Ob (1911; The Philosophy of “As If”), which proposed that man willingly accept falsehoods or fictions in order to live peacefully in an irrational world. Vaihinger, who saw life as a maze of contradictions and philosophy as a search for means to make life livable, began by accepting Immanuel Kant’s view that knowledge is limited to phenomena and cannot reach to things-in-themselves. In order to survive, man must use his will to construct fictional explanations of phenomena “as if ” there were rational grounds for believing that such a method reflects reality. Logical contradictions were simply disregarded. Thus in physics, man must proceed “as if ” a material world exists independently of perceiving subjects; in behaviour, he must act “as if ” ethical certainty were possible; in religion, he must believe “as if ” there were a God.
Vaihinger denied that his philosophy was a form of skepticism. He pointed out that skepticism implies a doubting; but in his “as if ” philosophy there is nothing dubious about patently false fictions that, unlike ordinary hypotheses, are not subject to verification. Their acceptance is justified as nonrational solutions to problems that have no rational answers. Vaihinger’s “as if ” philosophy is interesting as a venture in the direction of pragmatism made quite independently of contemporary American developments.

The above mentioned philosphy ties in very well with the book Mr. Pip (yeah I got my underline skills back. NBD), and it relates to our class and our lives. It certainly reminds me of our discussion of Santa Claus, we willing accept fiction as truth because in this world we live in we desperately need it. In the absense of magic, we need to believe in fiction that can bring it into our lives. It also certainly was true of Matilda's life, and Mr. Watts's life.

intentional fallacies-Trust the tale, never the teller.

Imagination-the faculty of producing ideal creations consistent with reality, as in literature, as distinct from the power of creating illustrative or decorative imagery.

Heterocosm-A separate or alternative world. Let me use it in a sentence, "The rebel alliance was fortified on the ice planet hoth, in an attempt thwart imerial scrutiny, man what a bad ass heterocosm"


In my perfect heterocosm instead of police we would have unicorns fighting to keep our streets safe, and writing tickets, and um you know doing other cop stuff. Unicorns can't hold a gun with their hooves, but who'd shoot at one anyways?