Julia

In Owl, people did not date; if you went on a date, you were dating. If you went on two dates, it was an exclusive relationship. If you went on three dates, it was a serious relationship and there was potential for marriage. You could hang out with members of the opposite sex whenever you wanted, and you could get drunk with them in public, and you could even find yourself having clandestine sex with one of them, possible on multiple occasions. But you couldn't make plans. Going on a proper, recognized date was different; when someone asked you on a date, they were actively asking if you'd be interested in a committed relastionship. When all theose curiously nicknamed men asked julia to see movies, they were really asking if she might consider sharing her life. Because-if a shared life was the life you wanted, and you wanted to share such a life without leaving Owl- there were no other options. If Julia didn't like you, no one could ever say, "Well, there's a lot of other fish in the sea." There was one fish, and it lived in a lake with no tributaries, and all the completing villagers read Field & Stream with extreme prejudice. The arrival of an unattached female teacher was a romantic race against time. And no matter how much she enjoyed her insular celebrity, (and regardless of how nicely these desperate, lonely men seemed to treat her) Julia knew that was perverse. She thought about it all the time
(Klosterman).

I chose this passage because it reminded me of Decatur. Decatur is some what the same. You can't really date someone unless you really plan on going out with them. And nobody really dates. In the beginning of every relationship you call it dating but there are never actual dates involved. There are certain steps to a Decatur relationship (and I guess an Owl relationship also). You hang out for however ling it takes, your friends begin to relise that your spending and uncanny amount of time with this one person, then your friends start asking you about it and you eventually call it dating. I guess this passage just reminded me of how Decatur really is a small town. A small town that just not in the middle of nowhere like Owl. Of course no one in Decatur High is really expecting that dating someone will lead to a life time with them but in a way thats kind of what happens. I've gone out with different people but I've only ever been on two actual dates and that relastionship lasted for about 5 or 6 months. So maybe the auther wanted Owl to seem complex (and maybe it is, and the only reason I can read between the lines is because Decatur actually is a small town) but it's not really. Everybody knows every, or has some restated impression of them, and normally that restated impression leads to how you feel about them up until you actually meet them. This related to Owl because Julia has two friends and every time one of these men asks her on a date, gets declined, and walks away, her two friends always give her the feed back on that person. Which is EMENCLY like Decatur. I just wonder why Decatur students try to act to adult, I mean all the adults in the midwest seem to be doing the exact same thing.

Mitch

"Mitch will you intercede here?"
This was Mitch's deepest source of personal pride: For reasons that had never been clearly defined, he was universally viewed as the intellectual authority on who would win an imaginary right between Grendel and Candy. It might have been because Mitch had spent more time thinking about this theoretical conflict then anyone else, or it might have been because he just seemed like the kind of person who would spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about an event that had never happened. But regardless of how this assumption came to be, Mitch loved that it was believed to be true. He loved that this was an issue that everyone had an opinion about, but-somehow- his opinion counted more. Whenever people discussed the Grendel vs. Candy Hypothetical, he never had to interject himself into the conversation; he always knew someone else would eventually ask him what he thought.
"As I have often noted int he past," began Mitch, "context is everything. If you locked Grendel and Candy in a room and said, 'Okay, start fighting,' I'm sure Candy would win. Locking him in a room would be more then enough motivation to make him go wolfshit, because he wants to die. If you locked up Candy in him kitchen and said, 'Okay, start fighting,' he would beat the shit out of the oven. That's just who he is. He's like Gordon Kahl. But we have to assume this fight would be happening for a reason. Something would have to be at stake, and it would have to be something Grendel was extremely emotional about, because he doesn't have the capacity to get pissed off intellectually. SO if this ight did happen, it would have to be because Grendel went insane. And if Grendel was insane, I don't see how anyone could stop him. Candy could hit him with a bottle. Candy could hit him in the chest with a sledgehammer. It wouldn't matter. Grendel would always win."
"I dissagree," said Curtis-Fritz.
"This conversation is over," said Drug Man. "Vanna has spoken."
(Klosterman)

I find this passage funny, mainly because the feeling that his friends are giving him is just random satifaction. He, along with his friends, don't really know why Mitch has been bubbed the most intellectual but they just know he is. Mitch is the kind of guy that doesn't really get much recognition for a lot of what he does, and when his friends just assume that he is more intellectual. Sometimes my friends think I'm just good at something and even if I'm not it just feels good to now that they think I am. I play soccer and my friends always ask me if I'm good at it,and the way they say it you can tell they assume that I am (and I'm really not). But its just satifying to know that they think I am. And I feel that Mitch has that same feeling in this passage. His friends just know that he would be best to really anylize who would win the fight, and Mitch (being the person he is) uses big words and miticulous descriptions on his opinion. Because he doesn't want his friends to realise that maybe he really isn't the most intellectual, because theres not really much else that he could excel at. Leaving him with the sense of satifation. Simple, random, satifaction.
I guess my only question would really be to ask what would happen if his friends realised that he wasn't intellectual. And how Mitch would then feel.

Curious Dog #4

"It's like computers. People think computers are different from people because they don't have minds, even though, in the Turing test, computers can have conversations with people about the weather and wine and what Italy is like, and they can even tell jokes.

But the mind is just a complicated machine.

And when we look at things we think we're just looking out of our eyes like we're looking out of little windows and there's a person inside our head, but we're looking out of little windows and there's a person inside our head, but we're not. We're looking at a screen inside our heads like a computer screen(64)."

As I have pointed out Chris functions extremely different than most other people. He views thinking and the mind differently. He bases decisions very little off of emotions or feelings. He tends to always make logical decision using his abilities with math to decide what is the best route, kind of the way a computer works. However sometimes he finds loop holes through instructions given to him by his father, and knowingly disobeys him, but only when he can find a loop hole.

Curious Dog #3

"The next day I saw 4 yellow cars in a row on the way to school, which made it a Black Day, so I didn't eat anything at lunch and I sat in the corner of the room all day and read my A-level maths course book. And the next day, too, I saw 4 yellow cars in a row on the way to school, which made it another Black Day too, so I didn't speak to anyone and for the whole afternoon I sat in the corner of the Library Groaning with my head pressed in to the join between the two walls and this made me feel calm and safe. But the third day I kept my eyes closed all the way to school until we got off the bus because after I have had 2 Black Days in a row I'm allowed to do that(53)."

This passage characterizes Christopher, in that it shows how he copes with every day. It shows the reader that unlike most other people who just go day by day letting what ever happens to them happen, he likes having a control over his days, and he controls his days by the color's of cars. As the passage says if Christopher sees 4 yellow cars his day is a black day which basically entails that he purposely makes it a gloomy day. He does not talk to any one at all during the day and he just keeps to him self. Christopher enjoys having so set rules over his every day life, he does not seem to enjoy out of the ordinary occurances, or talking to strangers.

Curious Dog #2

He said, "where have you been?"

and I said, "I have been out." This is called a white lie. A white lie is not a lie at all. It is where you tell the truth but you do not tell all of the truth. This means that everything you say is a white lie because when someone says, for example, "What do you want to do today?" you say, "I want to do painting with Mrs. Peters, " but you don't say, "I want to have my lunch and i want to go to the toilet and I want to go home after school and I want to play with Toby and I want to have my supper and I want to play on my computer and I want to go to bed." And I said a white lie because I knew that Father didn't want me to be a detective(48)."

I picked this passage because not only does it help the reader understand how Christopher's mind operates, It also helps in characterizing him. As this book progresses you begin to understand that Christopher is very different from every one else and that because of this he gets into trouble more often than not. He often views and uses things differently than us like a white lie for instance. However, even though Christopher differences from other people some times get him in trouble I am willing to bet that he will solve the mystery of Wellington the dog's murder only because he sees and views everything differently.

Curious Dog

"you seem very upset about this," he said.

He was asking to many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where uncle terry lives. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes a slicer is not working fast enough but bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it(67)."

I picked this passage because the narrator of this book obviously functions mentally very differently most people, and this passage does a good job of showing how his mind works. He seems to get confused easily and looks at things differently, he looks at things some what numerically. He also does not seem to understand simple emotions given by people around him, he is unable to understand why certain actions evoke these emotions. Because this is a murder mystery, and is some what of a puzzle, we need to be able to interpret correctly all of the information that is given to us, and sense all of the information and clues in this book will be coming from Christopher John Francis Boone, the narrator, we must understand how his mind works.

Klosterman Blog #4

"Still, we are are products of our environment, even if we like to pretend otherwise. So let's say you are the smartest sixteen-year-old in town; let's assume you're reactive and introspect and philosophical. You still have finite number of social intellectual qualities to the redneck paradigm that already exists. You may indeed be having "deep thought," but they're only deeper versions of the same idea that are available to everyone else.
This is were Axl Rose fits into the equation. Musically and visually, Axl stayed within the conventional metal zone. He had a Jagger strut and a Plant howl, long hair and leather pants, and he got quoted in Kerrang! As a musical, Rose appealed to the same contingency that was rooted in Toys in the Attic, British Steel, and Theatre of Pain. Axl existed within the one artistic paradigm that a midwestern white boy was going to consume: Far lack of a better term, he "rocked"(38)."

Klosterman is tying together determination in with his theories on Axl Rose. And I must admit he does it pretty nicely. Through one huge theory Klosterman is creating his own. Generically Axl Rose is the crem de la crem. He basically optimizes what heavy metal rock stars are supposed to look, and act like. But as a musician Rose blew that out of the water all whilst creating his own individual metal persona. Not just rednecks listened to his music. Not only city folk played it on the radio. A variety of listeners liked and valued him.

Klosterman Blog #3

"This paradox is what I find so perplexing about the way young males perceive verbal messages in heavy metal. I'll never understand why music that only made me want long hair is the same product that made some kids want to die. Normal people don't care what Ozzy has to say about anything; however, it seems the handful of people who do care inevitably get confused and kill themselves. And since the mood of the music tends to be more persuasive then the actual lyrics-and since the words to most rock songs are almost impossible to understand-kids are forced to interpret heavy metal in any way they can. This is a substantial problem, because the kind of kids who truly love heavy metal evidently suck at artistic interpretation(47)."

The meaning, or interpretation, I took from this passage is some what comical (but with a rather dark sense of humor); unfortunately, there are teenagers that listened to this heavy metal music and decided that the next best thing for them to do was to kill themselves. Which, realistically, appears to be a complete misunderstanding. And although these poor kids comitted suicide because of, what seems to be, a musical misunderstanding, Klosterman slyly cops in humorous undertones. The people that care about this music don't seem to have the capacity to fully take in it. And, as Klosterman states, "...it seems the handful of people who do care inevitably get confused and kill themselves." Klosterman really controls the readers mindset. Meaning, the humor keeps the readers attention on the music analysis rather then allowing the readers thinking to veer off into the reasons that the music may or may not have influenced kids to kill themselves. By treating these suicides will little emotion Klosterman is allowing himself to talk more about the music and inevitably stay with his purpose, which is to explain to me (or just the reader) what heavy metal really is.

Klosterman Blog #2

"But sometimes what seems obvious is not, particularly when you're trying to categorize what an artist represents culturally. That certainly seems true with Ozzy Ozbourne, who doesn't seem obsessed with power at all. In fact, he seems more obsessed with weakness, particularly his own.
As a public character, Ozbourne is the wildest of wild men. During the height of his career, he was constantly chomping off heads of birds, pissing on historical landmarks, and generally acting like the most berserk, messed up lunatic in the universe. It's not an act, either; what's more unique about Ozbourne is that many of the stories about his behavior are at least partially true. But as he's grown older, another side of Ozzzy has become more and more obvious: He is an incredibly vulnerable person who plainly lacks confidence(33-34)."

I chose this passage because it's just strange to read about the ultimate prince of darkness being characterized as "vulnerable". Another thing I noticed which I have never really been clear on grammatically is the capitalization after the colon in the last sentence. I've never been taught to capitalize after colons. Now I know. This passage is in the middle of a chapter but it also introduces a new subject. So, the first paragraph is close to an introductory paragraph and the second paragraph could therefor be categorized as the first bulk paragraph. This might come in handle when I start my annotative bibliography.