Midsummer

Midsummer - Manuel Arguilla

7.31.07


'Tis a quaint little love story set in, well, the past. There are no explicit references to time save for culture, so we can accurately date it to the year 1850, plus or minus one hundred years.


The whole thing was rather uneventful, but it is oddly reminiscent of a high school encounter with an attractive wimman, only the wimman in the story was much more accommodating than the contemporary wimman. It was all over the place - the torpeness, the passive observation, the awkward conversation, the even more awkward actions, and the utterly superlative awkwardness of the wimman inviting the man, whom she had only known for a few hours, to her home.

...

I have nothing to say on this matter.

I miss high school life's awkward situations. They often give rise to even more awkward yet equally enjoyable situations.

Lust

Lust - Susan Minot

7.31.07


Lookie, it's a story wrote by a wimman about some wimman's unerringly unsuccessful search for the elusive ideal of love.

Digression: "wimman" is in no way a derogatory term; rather, it is an expression of my/our ignorance of the nature of "women."


It's simultaneously amazing and infuriating how this wimman manages to hold a winning streak of crappy, sex-centered boyfriends. She ought to hold a record for "most crappy relationships in one lifetime." It is, however, infuriating that she seems to lack some semblance of self-control, insofar as she keeps on falling/sleeping for the same, sex-deprived class of man over and over again.

Perhaps she now equates love with some false sense of intermittent security, or perhaps as a void-filler of sorts after that amazing chain of hungry boyfriends. It is only too bad that she generalizes all boys to be evil machinations of the sex god. Such a tragedy is probably a result of emotional trauma in some long-lost relationship.

Emotions are quite destructive, and so are sweeping generalizations, like that phrase up there.

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien

7.29.07


It's a war story, but it is not told in the traditional manner of having a big, burly man mowing down rows of Commie bastards with uber-Capitalist fervor. It is in fact rather uneventful, as it concentrates on listing what the American soldiers carry according to "necessity" in lieu of of illustrating how bullet holes come into being. The list, however, goes beyond the burden of materials, e.g. guns, grenades, cats, etc. It goes on to list the burden of responsibility, being, and love, among others.

I can reasonably say that many of us can sympathize with First Lt. Cross, since a good number of us know just how psychologically heavy immaterial burdens can be. The way that we deal with such burdens, however, differs from how Cross handles them, since Cross cannot escape such burdens. We, on the other hand, aren't exactly in a war, and putting off such burdens does not have much bearing on whether one lives or not.

Take for example love. Cross' continued harboring of such insidious emotions for a "wimman" directly results in the demise of Ted Lavender. The average person, however, only harms himself should he do the same. It nonetheless sucks, however, for harming one's self is not exactly very enjoyable. Love isn't always about romance.

Anyway.

War is depicted as it is; there is no romanticism. War sucks, but some modern soldiers have found time to both fight for their lives and be entertained, seeing as how some of them have posted combat videos on YouTube. XD