Famous Last Words Week 5

Beautiful Young Lady

You beautiful young lady,
Why do they advertise to you this image of attraction to sell you,
The lipstick,
The jewelry,
The fashionable clothes that make up the foundation of what they want you to believe will bring you popularity, beauty, and womanhood,
That foundation that sits on sand and pebbles resting on the grave of true womanly strength,
Their image of beauty is a,
Lie,

Lie,
Lie,
That they want you to believe so that they can sell you the fantasy through products,
And yet by millions you,
Lie,
Lie,
Lie,
Down on the operating table to augment what god has created,
Hoping to attain that dream of beauty that man has created,
Younger and younger each year you try to reach that false image of what it means to be beautiful,
I say don’t do it,
Because I think you are beautiful,
Do you hear me,
I say you are beautiful and I have never seen you,
Faithfully still I say you are beautiful because that is how you were born,
It is not you that needs to be changed, but rather it is our society that needs to be placed on the operating table,
Forced to augment itself to become beautiful again,
Because it is not your makeup,
Your mini skirts,
Your high heels,
The size of your breasts,
Or how willing you are to allow yourself to be objectified that makes you beautiful,
That is just what they want you to believe,
That is a perversion they sell you in hopes of getting you to prostitute your soul for their financial gain,
Trust my words young woman,
Your beauty lies in the person you were born to be,
Your beauty lies in the life you can create,
Your beauty lies in the hopes and dreams you created for yourself and not the dreams they sold to you,
Because your Prada purse is full, yet you feel empty,
Real beauty is not a name brand it is a name,
It’s your name,
And there is no need to buy what you already have…..

Author's Notes
I hate that young women are shown at a young age images of the "Ideal woman." I think young women are shown images of beauty that are an impossible fantasy. These images are altered to make these women look the way they do. This put women at a very young age under a huge amount of stress to try to achieve this image and I think that advertisers should stop flooding young women on a constant basis. I have three young nieces and I am appalled at the goals set for them by advertisers. Kids should be allowed to be kids and given time to develop their identities so that they can decide what they want in life. I am not saying that wanting these clothes,jewelery,makeup,and ect. is a bad thing. It is ok for a woman to want those things. It is not ok for women to be pressured to feel that they need those things or else they are somehow less of a human being than other women or worse yet somehow ugly because they don't have them.
















Picture attribution
"MICHALSKY StyleNite SS13 Stage" by LakeviewEN - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MICHALSKY_StyleNite_SS13_Stage.jpg#mediaviewer/File:MICHALSKY_StyleNite_SS13_Stage.jpg

Story telling Week 4

The Tabernacle, Sara Thompson, and The Bible

Where was I? Oh yeah I remember, it was that feeling, like the thousand needles pricking my entire body. That moment between being unconscious and about to come to, when the universes were playing with my mind. I started to remember things that I had long forgotten. It was Sara, yeah that was her name, Sara Thompson, and the summer before my senior year of high school.

The preacher came to my house and demanded that I go to the church camp. My dad, but wait I never had a dad, but that is not important, my dad was a bible thumper who never questioned the preacher. I had never gone to church much, I never saw the need for it, in fact one of my other brothers would have been better suited to go to church camp but he wanted me to go, was saying something about my souls and saving them from something or another. It never made much sense until…..well now, but I’ll get to that, anyway my brother Lance and I went to this church camp in the southern part of Oklahoma.

I don’t remember it being this hot, and I remember having longer hair. Things are like that now, all the things I remember are different, it is like I am watching everything happen all over again and the things are the same but different. Well not everything, take Sara for example. Here I’ll show you, see there I am in the Tabernacle, 

I should be wearing shorts and a tank top but I’m not, yet she is the same. Look at her, so beautiful. Long onyx hair, with olive skin and emerald eyes sitting in the choir behind the preacher. Even now as I watch it I can’t hear what he is saying, because somewhere between thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not lie she has me captivated. Oh wait yeah, hey look here it is the moment when she melted me in this heat. See look any moment now she is going to take her left hand and move her hair behind her ears, look up and make eye contact with me and smile. This is my favorite part of this memory, I swear I’d gladly devour a barrel of apples if she was Eve. Look at me, it is like looking at the moon in the night sky and suddenly realizing there are stars.

See the moment passes, no matter how many times I come to this moment time keeps moving forward. This is my fifth time here and every time it is the same, well not exactly the same, I look different each time but basically it is the same. I never saw her again the rest of the week, just that one time in the Tabernacle.

It is not just that one night in the Tabernacle I remember, it is other things from week. And what was the preacher saying?

Author Notes :

This is still part of a larger story but this is my take on the Sita and Rama seeing eachother for the first time.

Bibliography
Narayan, R. K. A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic. London: Penguin Classics, 2006.

Picture Attributions

Picture 1

By Amandajm (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Picture 2

"Harvard University Academic Hoods" by Joe Hall - http://www.flickr.com/photos/joebeone/537546224/. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harvard_University_Academic_Hoods.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Harvard_University_Academic_Hoods.jpg

Picture 3

"SPACInterior" by UpstateNYer - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SPACInterior.jpg#mediaviewer/File:SPACInterior.jpg

Picture 4

Created By Prairie Kittin Persephone, Goddess of Spring Created for Marcus Ranum Challenge #70

License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

Reading Diary B

This story in Exile seems to be less in depth than the other version

The encounter with Ravana sister seems to be the same except in the other version she seems to try harder

As with the first version Rama kills all of Kara’s army, but in this version he cuts off Ravana’s sisters ear

The story of Ravana kidnapping sita seems pretty much the same, though the golden deer in this story differs because the deer feels it to be an honor and I did not get that impression from the last version

Does Ravana actually touch Sita in this version, I know in the last version he could not touch a woman with out her consent or else he will die, but it appears in this version that curse is not present.

The Hansel and Gretel type of trail in this version is more profound, and the monkey’s seemed to be as described as actual monkeys and not a hybrid as in the other version

The story of Vali and his brother is the same in this story

Vali’s wife seems to be more concerned about his battle in this story

In the last version, when Rama killed Vali it seemed almost cowardly and the author seemed to explain that away so that Rama could keep his virtue intact but in this version it just seems like an assassination and the last version did a better job describing the battle between Vali and his brother in this version I’m not even sure if there was a battle

Ravana so far is playing a bigger role in this story than he did in the previous version, he could almost be as big of a figure in this story as Rama.

Reading Diary A

This starts out different than the last version we read. There is a lot more background on the gods and the description is more in depth.

So they are calling him Rama in heaven, I thought that was his human name.

A lot more Ravana in this version, this is good because it shows that the gods were scared of him and why Rama took human form. The backstory to this version is really improtant.

On earth the events seem to fall into place with the last version. Rama's father sends him with the sage.
Some of the dialouge at the point is exactly the same.

What happened to the Mother Demon and her two son's.

There is a lot more of the back and forth in the story telling, it is almost as if Rama is kind of a secondary character because the story seems to be more concerned with the exploits of others. Obviously Rama is not a secondary character but it reminds me of the stories of Arthur because though Arthur's presence is felt he is very sparringly used.

The Sita and Rama love story is told better in this version, even the story of Rama breaking the bow is clearer, in the last version they kept mentioning rama breaking the bow but when I first read it i did not get that image, I had to read it a number of times. In this version the bow breaking came across the first read.

This version of the kings choosing a successor is basically the same. Though it seems like there is less outcry for Rama when he leaves, by that I mean that the guards try to stop him but it is just because they are commanded to do so. Still much more information than the other version.

I think this version is more of a novel and the other version is more of an attempt to carry on the Oral story telling tradition.