United States Continued (Rather late): Oregon

I'm rather late continuing on talking about my US trip, but nearer to the end of it I simply did not have time to blog (you know, Vegas), and shortly after arriving back to NZ Laura and I found out that we were moving. We're just about all done moving now, thankfully.

After a few weeks in Garberville, it was time to go off to Oregon. Laura's uncle, Dan, and her cousin, Alex, came over from Hawaii for the trip. The purpose was an early thanksgiving dinner with extended family of Laura's.

Not wanting to be crammed three across in the back of Laura's Dad's truck, I opted to take a ride up with Laura's uncle. This, it turned out, was a rather good decision. Not only did I manage to have considerably more space than I would have otherwise, but the stops we ended up making on the way were well worth it. I'm afraid I don't have any photos of the trip at this point (will try put them up when I manage to get a hold of them), so descriptions will have to suffice.

First stop was another visit to the Founder's Grove (the redwood forest I had been to earlier). While I was certainly happy to go back for another visit, we didn't end up lasting too long as it was rather cold. It was finally starting to feel like winter there, and being out of the sunlight just got too much. I also (not surprisingly) was unable to make my way back to the albino redwood tree to show Dan and Alex, so there wasn't all that much keeping us there. Still, it was great to go back for another quick look. There really isn't anything quite like it in New Zealand, despite the fact we do indeed have some pretty massive trees.

Second stop occurred when we decided we were all rather hungry. Alex starting searching for good places to eat in Arcata on his phone, and a small taco truck outside a petrol station was settled on. I was a little skeptical, I must admit, even though I've eaten plenty of street food in Thailand, but I was up for pretty much anything at that point and decided to go for it, hoping I wouldn't end up needing to make multiple bathroom stops the rest of the way. Turns out, it was a great decision. The truck was obviously popular, there were a good 8 people at least outside it when we showed up, and another 15 or so would have come and gone in the time it took us to eat. A particularly enjoyable specialty they had was Korean BBQ meat on their food. A little odd for a Mexican place, but it ended up working extremely well. I must say, it's some of the best Mexican (and Mexican fusion) food I've ever had.

The third stop was very soon after the second. Alex and Dan had been to a micro brewery a couple of days previously, and one of the bar tenders there and recommended to them, Redwood Curtain Brewing. We opted to give it a visit, as it was on the way. This turned out to be another great decision. Dan bought us a taster pack each. 11 beers, and cups that held a surprising amount of each. If I'm entirely honest, I have to say that I wasn't a huge fan of the majority of them. However, the four or so I did enjoy made the trip more than worth it. In New Zealand American beer gets a lot of flak, and in all fairness, the mass produced beer is pretty terrible. But the micro breweries really do produce some amazing beer.

After that stop we realised it was getting rather late and decided that was it for the day. Well, other than a quick stop at a beach, but 5 minutes doesn't really count. While the rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, the view made it rather enjoyable. The coast line of Northern California/Southern Oregon is some of the prettiest I've seen, and that's saying a lot coming from a Kiwi.

United States of America pt. 2

Off to Oregon tomorrow, so I thought I'd write another blog post regarding to my time in Northern California. After we return from Oregon, we'll be in Garberville for one more day. After that we're off to San Francisco for a couple of days, and after that, Las Vegas. It's been a fairly relaxed past couple of weeks, and with how busy we're likely to be over the next couple, it's probably a good thing.

First off, as promised, one more photo of the apple trees:

Probably the most interesting day so far was last Saturday. Laura's friend Arturo picked us up in town, and took us to a redwood forest, and then on to a near by (kind of) city, Eureka.

I'm definitely not much of an outdoors person, but the redwood forest was nothing short of amazing. It felt very different to the bush I'm used to in West Auckland. While it was not very dense at all, the trees themselves were ridiculously tall. Some of the tallest in the world. Somehow the lack of density made the height of each individual tree more impressive.

After that, we went to pretty much the complete opposite of a redwood forest. Target. It's kinda like the Warehouse, but bigger. And cheaper. Soooooo much cheaper.

I did get some new clothes though, and clothes I actually needed as opposed to more black tshirts. Laura grabbed plenty of makeup that would cost a ridiculous amount in NZ, and I stocked up on snacks. We also went to Walmart, because it was apparently something I had to experience. It was depressing. Let's not talk about Walmart.

When at home rather than out and about, I've been helping more around the house a bit, and reading. A lot. Just about finished A Clash of Kings, and am thinking about moving on to Farenheit 45.

Will give an update about being in Oregon when I get the chance. :)

United States of America

And I'm back to blogging. Haven't posted at all in a few months, my second semester of university was really quite busy, and there was a slew of other things going on at the same time that lead to me just not having time for much writing that wasn't uni related. Anyway, I'm back to it.

On the 11th of November, Laura and I boarded a plane to go to the U.S. It's the first time I've ever been here, and has been pretty cool so far, even though we've mostly just been at Laura's house. The trip there was, for the most part, uneventful, although we managed to almost miss one of our flights. Lack of a boarding call can lead to issues it would seem. We ate Mexican food the night we got here and it was amazing. People weren't kidding when they told me about how huge the portions are here.

The past couple of days we've been working on making apple and pear juice. This included picking the apples, and grinding them up into a pulp before extracting the actual juice.

I'll see if I can get some more photos later on.

Today we also went to the nearby town, Garberville. It was very much a small town, with (as expected) rather a lot of hippies. Also got to try my very first burger in America, and I gotta say, it was pretty delicious. Surprisingly enough, I've actually LOST weight since I got here. I suspect that has something to do with the fact that I'm moving around a lot more as opposed to diet however.

What I've found to be the strangest here has honestly been the driving. I've only ever been in countries in which they drive on the left, and even though I've just been a passenger, driving on the right side of the road feels really, really weird.

I've also found the television to be fairly odd, most specifically the adverts. The main two that have stood out are adverts for prescription drugs, and an advert for a class-action lawsuit. Just not things you'd see in little old New Zealand.

The next few days I think will be more of the same. Hopefully going up to Eureka and Arcata with a friend of Laura's on Saturday, which should be fun. Going to tour a brewery and eat good food. 

I Just Don't Get It

I've been following Anita Sarkeesian for around a year now, since she started her Kickstarter campaign. In short, she's working on a series of videos discussing sexism in video games. While there are definitely things I disagree with her about, and I feel sometimes she does make things seem worse than they actually are, discussing sexism in video games is important. Currently it's still a pretty male dominated form of entertainment, and while it may be ok to, at times, show depictions of women that are not considered entirely appropriate, the trend of doing so in video games is somewhat concerning. This is essentially what Anita's series "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" talks about.

Today she posted this video on Facebook:

I have known that she has been harassed for her series since the start, and while the harassment was predictable, it is disgusting. I did not however, realize it carried on to the extent she talks about in her video.

My opinion of how fucked up people have been behaving aside, I just don't get why. Why are these men seeing her as a threat? Do they somehow think she's going to take their precious video games away from them? Or to take it even further, what would be so bad about having at least a few games that actually have strong, respectfully portrayed women? Sure, games are used to fuel male fantasies a lot of the time, but I'm sure games that facilitate fantasies of male strength and power will continue to be released as long as they make money, which will be for a very, very long time. So why do so many people feel threatened by Anita's video series? Or do they not feel threatened and are just using the behaviour shown in the video as a means to show off? Maybe it's both.

Ultimately, the reaction to what Anita is doing is really just proof that more people need to be criticizing our media. As has been shown, people are going to react badly at first, but maybe if enough people get loud enough, things will start to change.

What Makes a Classic

For the first time, I am going to post an essay that I wrote for one of my university classes. I had to discuss what makes a book a classic, and who (if anyone) gets to decide.

Classics: Who gets to decide?

by

Andre Landwer-Johan

When studying, or even discussing literature, one will often come across the term “classic”. It is a term used as a descriptor of a piece of writing, normally that piece of writing being a novel. When referring to a book as a classic, the speaker is regularly using it as a way to classify the work being spoken of as somehow superior to non-classics. What is it that makes a piece of work classic? Is there a set criteria of what makes a novel a classic, or is the question a purely subjective one? I believe that there is an objective means of measuring whether or not a book is a classic, but it may not be what you would first expect. For a book to become a classic, it must stand the test of time.

If one is to stick to using terms traditionally, “a classic is a work written in ancient Greek or Latin” (Lidden) and widely studied in scholarly institutions. Looking at slightly more recent times, books considered to be classic were used in schools as a method of teaching “Standard English”. (Guillory, pp. 235) When education began to become common place in the English middle class, a method of learning more refined, and standardised speech was considered a necessity. Thus, “works of English literature were collected into anthologies comprising a selection of the best in each genre; and these anthologies which looked very much like the Norton or Oxford anthologies of our day, were employed in the schools as a means of teaching and disseminating Standard English” (235). Essentially, the definition of “classic” began as a more objective concept as opposed to a subjective one. Books were selected for their perceived merits by a group of scholars, focusing on quality of writing and adherence to “Standard English”. By selecting specific books to be considered worthy of being taught in the classroom, scholars helped promote proper usage of grammar in speech and writing, through the medium of stories. This lead to the creation of a “canon” of books, and books in that canon were considered to be classic.

What makes a book a classic now? High quality writing, while desirable, is hardly an indicator of an enjoyable story. What reason is there to read a fictional novel if the story is dull? For a book to be widely considered as classic, not only does the writing have to be of high quality, but it must have a story capable of engaging a wide audience. I believe that a strong, engaging story is in fact more important than “correct” or “proper” writing. Take, for example, the beginning lines of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, a book widely regarded as a classic: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, an what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” (Salinger, 1) Salinger's style of writing can hardly be considered grammatically correct, yet The Catcher in the Rye is often referred to as a classic, and is even taught in some schools. However, due to the lack of grammatical correctness within the book, it would have been prevented from entering the classical canon used in schools in an older time. This leads one to conclude that books no longer need be in the canon of higher literature to be considered classic.

Despite many considering The Catcher in the Rye to be classic, there are also a great deal of people who, not only do not feel the book is a classic, but actually actively dislike the work. This is due to the fact that the fictional novel is a piece of art, and art is subjective. Yes, one can speak of art in objective terms, but these terms only serve to state basic facts, such as “the book is in English” or “the book was written in 1951”. In recent vernacular the word “classic” has started to be used more as a way of describing ones opinion of a piece of art as opposed to being used to objectively say a work is in the canon of books widely taught by educational institutions. Recently, even some graphic novels have been referred to as classic (Lidden), and one can certainly not say Watchmen is widely taught in schools. If someone does not like a certain book, whether or not it is widely regarded by the public as a classic, they are not likely to describe the book as such, and even if they do, it may be used in a slightly derogatory way.

This brings us to the question, what makes a book a classic, and who gets to decide? I feel Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve put it rather well: “A true classic, as I should like to hear it defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step.” (Sainte-Beuve) By this definition, for a book to be classic it must be worth something, in that it furthers the development of the minds of its readers. Once again, whether or not one feels a book has helped them grow in some way is a largely subjective matter. The most objective means of measuring whether or not a book is to be considered classic is simply time (although the amount of time required is once again, debatable). If a book can stand the test of time, and still be widely read long after publication, it can be considered a classic. I feel this is an accurate way to judge whether or not a book is indeed classic, as a book that is of poor quality, or simply irrelevant will fade away. For every Great Expectations there is bound to have been countless books written that we no longer remember.

In conclusion, it is simply time that makes a book a classic. No one person, or small group of people decide a book is a classic, it is a decision made by society as a whole. If a book can stand the test of time, and be widely read in a world it was not written in, that book is a classic.

References:

Lidden, Daniel. “What Are Classic Novels?” Wisegeek. Web. 29 July 2013.

Guillory, John. “Canon.” In Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (eds.). Critical Terms

for Literary Study. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 233‐249.

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York. Bantam. 1951. Print.

Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin. “What is a Classic?” Literary and Philosophical Essays. Vol. 32. 1909-14. Bartleby.com Print. 29 July 2013.