There once was a Rhinoceros named Ricky, he was Ricky the Rhinoceros. Ricky was always trying to meet girls. Ricky was girl crazy and was always hanging out with some elephant bimbo or the new giraffe in town. Ricky had a very big problem though. No matter how many leaves he bought the girls or how shiny his horn was none fot he girl would ever go on a second date with ricky. This made Ricky very sad he was crying to his friend Alfred the Ape one day when Alfred finally decided to tell Ricky something he had never told him before. Alfred sat Ricky down and in a very serious tone told Ricky "Your a super duper jerk and no one likes you." Ricky was devastated, "Why"? He quietly asked. "I am always nice and I always buy people lots of stuff and I impress them with my shiny horn." Alfred told Ricky that he should go talk to all of the girls he had gone on dates with and see what they said. Ricky went to the first girl, Patty the Platypus, and asked why she did not call him back. Patty said " All you did was try and impress me with your shiny horn, you never even asked about me." After Patty told him that Ricky went to the next girl, Betty the Baboon, she said "You were so rude, all you did was talk about yourself!" Finally it began to dawn on Ricky that it was not that people did not like him or his horn for that matter but that e could not only talk about himself. Everyone want to be heard and that if he wanted people to like him more he would have to talk about them more. Later that night Ricky went on a date with Darla the Duck. Rather than talking about himself for the whole time Ricky asked her what she thought about things. He asked what she wanted to do with here life. Darla called Ricky back the next day and they went on more dates. Ricky became a better person, always placing others before himself.

Native American Culture

I know a fair amount about Native American culture. I know for instance that the Indians have lived in North America for like 20,000 since they were nomadic people who lived in Asia and decided to follow the animals that they hunted for their livelihood. As the animals migrated the nomadic tribes followed the animals to the Americas. Indians were pretty cool, they had a lot of technology that the Europeans did not have and they did not have a lot of things the Europeans did. The Indians that the Europeans met were pretty normal Indians, there were all kinds of Indians in America. In the south the Anasazi and other cool Indians were really good at farming even though they lived in like a desert area and farming was hard. They got really good at irrigation and the Europeans were surprised about how sophisticated it was. There are still a lot of Indians left alive now but there used to be more. Lots of Indians live on reserves, that is land they the government gave them for killing all the rest of them. Indians also get to have casinos now on their reservations. They have a bunch of cool laws that say they can gamble as much as they want or something since the U.S. was so mean to them a long time ago. Native American culture is pretty cool and contains a lot of fascinating things form the Cahokia mound builders to the Pueblo to the Iroquois. Native American culture has been lost to time for some time but a lot of fascinating rituals and ceremonies are still performed by the descendants today and will probably go on to fascinate people for a long time. Indians are really cool and I wish that I could learn more about them and their culture so that when I have to type another journal about them I can put a lot more cool information in it.

Summer Novels - Symbolism

This summer I read the Old Man and the Sea and Fahrenheit 451. Both of these book were chalk full of symbolism. From a fish standing for trials and tribulations to a wall-to-wall television screen representing societies indulgences. In the Old Man and the sea I felt their were a lot of symbolic meanings having to do with life. The fish's life ending, Santiago's life ending, the fight before his life ended. It really seemed to me that everything sort of came back to life and death.

In Fahrenheit 451 there was not as much symbolism but still quite a large amount of it. I got the feeling that the Firemen represented the fear and prejudices of society, rather than learning about the books and embracing them they simply burn them and hide. Something else I sort of felt the whole book was symbolic for was racism. In the same way a lot of people hated books, some people seemed to have an open mind and be willing to learn about. Others were willing to die for the books believing they were wonderful. In the end the hatred and fear killed them by destroying their life. Both these books were full of symbolism for sure and I could probably keep going but I am pretty tired right now.

My Final Blog

Well it is finally here. The long awaited long anticipated final entry. To say I have been working towards this is an understatement. After writing a lot of words about both Ray Bradburys american classic Fahrenheit 451 and Ernest Hemingway's nationally acclaimed The Old Man and The Sea I am finally on my last blog. This blog will be about why I am glad I read both of these extremely unique novels, and even though I may not have like both of them I am still happy I read it. Like I said I am glad that I took the time to read these two novels and very glad these were the two novels that I read. The Old Man and the Sea was not my personalty favorite book as I am sure any one who read my blogs can attest to. Even though I disliked it I still am glad to have read such a classic novel. When I was in preschool I was taught the expression I liked it but it is not my favorite. We were told to us this for something we disliked and it was a nicer way or saying it. So I must say I like this novel but it is not my favorite. next up is the best book to ever be put on a summer reading list. I am thoroughly glad I read this awesome book. I positively loved it as well as the message. I thought it was just such a cool book to read. I am overwhelmingly happy that I chose to read this instead of any of the other novels as I heard from several people that they were exceedingly boring and tough to read. It was the exact opposite it with this novel. It was easy as pie to read and very hard to put it down! Well that wraps it up for my blogging. It has been a very interesting experience though I think I prefer essays to blogging as they seem to be much quicker. In parting I will just say See you tomorrow.

Fahrenheit 451 - Final Thoughts

As the end of my blogging draws ever nearer I figured it would be a wonderful time to say the final thoughts I had as far as the book Fahrenheit 451 goes. In my own opinion I thought that Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was a pretty sweet book. I really loved all of the plot, the settings, all the small details and I adored the character development. This was really my kind of book, a lot of information, some action and tons of cool stuff. I must say my favorite part had to be how everything was different than one would think it would be in the future. The technology was better, the living was better but... The people were worse and more oppressed than ever. It seems like society as a whole regressed backwards towards more primitive times. Another really cool fact was how bent on figuring it all out for him self that Guy Montag seemed to be. He really understood that be self aware you can not really ask people how to do it. You mostly have to do it and deal with your mistakes as you do it. I would suggest this book to anyone who likes to red. It is really a fantastic story that can appeal to all types of people old and young. Do not take my word for it, take the millions and millions of copies in print and how loved the book is around the world. Movies have been made about it, cultural references and much more have been spawned from this gem of a book. In closing I would just like to say that this is a great book and most likely my favorite book I have ever had to read for English summer reading and I am immensely glad that I chose this rather than any of the other options which I think would have definitely not been as good as this book.

The Old Man and the Sea - Final Thoughts

Sadly, well not really sadly, this will be my last blog on the Old Man and the Sea. As after this and two other I shall be done with those fifty blogs I was assigned. Do not be sad for someday I will probably be assigned to blog about something again and I very well may come back to the old man and the sea. As for my final thoughts on the book there really is not a lot I have not already discussed but a few parting words might be... I thought this book was really really dumb and boring. I did not like the story line, the ending or the characters. I found few redeeming qualities about this book. BUT, that does not mean I would tell other people not to read it Inf act I strongly suggest that everyone reads this book. Just because I did not like it or it's message in no way means that you would not like it either. That is something you rally should find out for yourself. There is a reason this book has become so popular and that is because a lot more people like it than people who dislike the book. How knows maybe you will get something out of the book that I did not. Maybe you read it and it clearly addresses you and your own personal issues. You could instantly fall in love with the book. Even though I did not like the book I still appreciate the message that this book tried to convey. I understood and respect the message, why I may even like the message that the book tries to get across. Millions of people all over the world love this book. I know I would trust millions of people over one person any day. The choice ultimately falls to the reader. In my own opinion I would suggest you read this book and decide whether or not you like it for yourself.

Fahrenheit 451 - The Other Countries

In the story Fahrenheit 451 at one point Guy mentions the fact that his country had already been in two nuclear wars since like 2000 or something like that. What caught mt attention was the fact that there were other countries. It really got me wondering what the other countries were like. What I came up with really resemble 1984 by George Orwell. In that book there is totalitarian government that control every single part of every ones life. This government run state is always in war. They are in war with two other countries who you get the idea that they are fighting for freedom. In my own opinion I get the same feeling when reading about the other two countries that Guy's country is fighting. Would it not make sense that if there is an evil government there is probably also a good government fighting to stop the evil one? My guess is the evil government want to control more and more land and it started messing with the good governments. Finally the good governments had no choice but to declare on the evil government. Most likely they figured hey while were at it we may as well free all these people who are lied to by their government. In all probability I am reading in to this story way to much. It was probably something used by the author as simply filler. It just happened to be something that really caught my attention and I figured I could expand on it a little more as well as draw some parallels to a story I feel is very similar which is 1984. Maybe Guy's government is the good one though and the other ones are even worse than Guy's or maybe it is a best of the worst sort of situation where all the governments are bad but one is less bad than all of the others. I do not really know either way.