Blog Questions & Answers!

I decided to go through and answer the comment questions to all my previous blogs this week as my blog. Thought it would be interesting to go back and revist some of the books.


But how do we separate ourselves from technology? Or is the impulse to separate from technology a technological desire in itself?

I think that it would be tricky to try to separate ourselves from technology because yea we have become so dependent on it. I think it might be in our best interest to separate from it, or be careful how attached we become to it. We could attempt to keep less technological devices in our homes, or places where we could “avoid” having to use them. I think a lot of the things we use are unessential to our lives. So many years people went without cell phones, personal laptops, and other devices. I would actually assume the opposite with the second question. The technical desire is probably for us to become attached and for us to become dependent on it, its so hard for us to realize that life is doable without the technology that we have in it. It would be really a challenge for us to get rid of our cell phones, and to try to hand write everything, or mail someone instead of e-mail. An example of something that many college students hate is when we are required to write a paper we have to find sources outside the internet. This is really a challenge to get to the library and find articles, or books. Often times we resort to online databases that work as sources off the internet, yet we found them on a form of technology.


But we still desire to change? I find it really interesting that you see books as more intimate than other forms of media. Why do you think that that is?

As I have been able to think about why I see books as more intimate than other forms of media I think its because books are powerful and can either relate to our lives or not, and we give meaning to books. We always are searching for the moral of the story and we are always reading for a purpose (even if its for fun). I think when you are going to be entertained by the media you are not looking to relate it to your life, you tend to watch movies and forget about them about an hour later. Even if it was a heartbreaking story in a movie, I think it doesn’t pull at your heart quite like a book can. Books we imagine our own picture, we imagine the characters and what we think is happening. Movie’s are images and meanings that are given to us, and we do not find them educational, like we might find a book. I think it’s a lot easier to persuade someone to do what you want them to do, or to create intimate emotions in someone through a book than it is through a TV show, movie, or other forms of media. I know for me reading books that are nothing like my life is most interesting because those books will help me form images of what someone else’s life might be like. If I were to watch a movie it might just be because it looks interesting or entertaining or funny.



I greatly appreciate the difficult work that you are doing here. I have been thinking more about this might it be the Burroughs gives the reader a view that he assumes they already have of homosexuality? I think of buzzwords like "gay agenda" and when put with this novel it seems like the author is making a satirical point about the cultures view of homosexuality.

Yea I think it is very interesting that he seems so open and honest in homosexuality. I once again think, its not necessarily the homosexuality part that threw me off, but how grotesque and disgusting he presented sex itself. He made it seem like it was not a big deal at all, and he just explained it how it was, and the descriptions were too vivid and gross to read.



The moral center of the movie has to do with getting it right in order to break out of the repetition cycle. Other films such as Run, Lola, Run and Blind Chance deal with this in different ways. But is it that it is a comedy --and as that genre needs a resolution--makes the morality be the only acceptable way out of the loop?

After I wrote this we had a class discussion on what the “real” reason was why he was able to break out of this loop. I started rethinking my opinion, but part of me still believes that morality was a part of it. Another part of me started realizing, “Oh yea, he did break out the second he got the woman in bed.” So the moral of the story to us viewers is, once you break even the strongest woman, and “become a better person” for her than you have won. Its interesting I think a woman’s perspective and a man’s perspective might be different after viewing the movie. I think that a woman might not pick up on the fact that he finally got to the next day after he won over the woman and did everything that she wanted from him, where a man could easily see that. I think the woman wants to believe that there always is a good guy and you can find him if he is willing to do all that work for you and change into a better person for you. The class never came to a conclusion, but it did make me think a lot more about it and I did laugh at the fact that it probably wasn’t because he became a better person that he got to the next day.