Skip It

The main thing Matthew Megerdichian skipped when reading this book was the Introduction. He knew this probably wasn't the best idea in the world, but he fell into the trap of being lazy because the pages were numbered with roman numerals instead of regular page numbers and thus not part of the assigned reading. Likely, Matt will only go back and read it based on the feedback he gets from the question he asked on whether or not it had significane or helped the reader understand anything.
The other parts he skipped were the parts with the red words crossed out and the blue boxes from page 109 onward. Knowing Matt well, I know he is the kind of person who is not willing to strain his eyes, or use a mirror to read a book. Reading the book at all was an accomplishment for someone like him. He probably thought that if the author really wanted you to read it, then the author should have just left it as plain text.
In the end, chances are that Mr. Megerdichian is not left wondering what he might have missed by skipping these sections. Instead, he is thinking that this virtual class was in many ways superior to the actual class setting. While it took him some time to think of examples and to formulate his exact thoughts, it helped his understanding of the book more. In class, he might have been attacked or felt lost if certain topics were not explained because having the ability to look things up gave him the oppurtunity to clarify some unclear things. Also, Matt didn't get back from track and field practice until 6:30 today so he would have been late to class.

When a House is not a House

If the house in this book is not actually a house but rather a metaphor for something else, I would have to suggest that it represents the strain of the relationship between Karen and Will. Karen was never sure about their marriage and so they bought the house to try to solidify things. The house's interior continues to expand like the tension between them, but on the outside (the house's exterior) everything appears status quo.
We see this right in the beginning on pages 11-12. Karen is watching her children and waiting for Will to come home. She constantly looks out the window into the driveway for even the slightest sign that her husband will be home soon. When he pulls into the driveway, she seems very excited at first but by the time she gets to the door to meet him, she is only concerned with the water heater.
Buying a house was hardly the answer for them. That scene shows that she is basically living moment to moment, day by day. The house was an attempt to save something that wasn't meant to be saved.

Character Sketch

Billy Reston: An engineer who was injured in a freak accident. He is brought in to help Navidson explore the labrynth in his house. We find out that while he usually just observes, he can also jump into action and start 'bustin caps'.

Page 37-38 : Describes the incident which crippled Billy. An inexperienced crane operater led to his demise by cutting an electrical cable and it struck Billy Reston with the ferocity of cobras in the Jungle Book. Good thing for footnotes or else I would not have gotten the reference to the cobras names.

Page 97 : Exploration #4 - Billy Reston acts as the monitor of all of the equipment which Navidson has set up. Page 98 provides a suggestion of why Exploration #4 is told through Billy Reston's perspective.

Page 208 : We find out that Mr. Reston is strapped.

Video

Fast forward to 45 seconds into the video and watch until the 1 minute mark to understand why I chose this video.
Seriously though, It's very interesting to see why he wrote this book. The thing that struck me the most about what he said is that writers not only have to reap but also sew. He seems to fit perfectly into the stereotype of a person who is different for the sake of being different; he claims stuff like what he has done with this book is what drives the evolution of culture...that's not egotistical in any way, shape, or form.

I thought the best way to start this would be to run a Google image search on the word HOUSE. Low and behold the above image appeared on the first results page with the caption "houses that defy physics". How appropriate for a house that, well, defies physics. Page 32, "The interior of the house exceeds the exterior not by 1/4" but by5/16"" It doesn't get more physically impossible that that. A little background info on the house pictured here: It is an actual house in Poland that was built as a statement against communism.

House

Okay, so I am sitting there trying to read this book and understand what its all about, but I am having trouble focussing on some of the words every so often. In particular the word "house". Then I realized that the word "house" is blue. I'm not sure why this is, but I'm guessing it will be explained later in the book? Also, I just noticed that the word "house" in the title on the cover is blue. I'm hoping this will have some kind of significance and is just not intended to throw my eyes off. I'm not saying I have an eye problem or a reading problem; just that its something you are not used to seeing and it can attract some of your attention away from the rest of the page.

Response to 'Bombin Brooklyn'

Gentrification is definately a shame. The prices of homes and apartments throughout all 5 boroughs have been steadily on the rise for as long as I can remember. My neighborhood, College Point in Queens, has experienced its own drastic changes. Growing up, grafitti was a popular thing amongst the youth of the neighborhood. Though, like you, I never took part in the art myself, I knew several kids who did. Now before you start thinking to yourself that I must have grown up with some thugs or troubled youths, know you're wrong. Most of the kids I knew that would tag up around CP were white, middle class, catholic school educated kids. College Point used to be an area inhabitted by German, Irish, Italian, and other Europeans. In the past 8-10 years, however, I have seen many of my friends' families sell their houses for small fortunes and move out to Long Island areas such as Masapequa. But they weren't selling their houses to other families, they were selling them to land developers who were eager to knock down historic victorians that had stood for in some cases more than 100 years only to be replaced by "houses" that could hold 6-8 families. Thus the demographic of the area has changed quite a bit over that time. A lot of the grafitti has dissapeared and as the neighborhood I up in fades away. Some of my friends from the old days that still either hang out in CP or still live here have tried to bring back taggin up. I say good for them because it makes me laugh everytime I see "WRD" on the stop sign on the corner of my house.

As for Miss 17 and Greenburg, I know someone who lives in Williamsburg and her parents are faced with the oppurtunity of selling their house, likely to developers who will probably try to use Banksy to drive the asking price up. Hopefully, both of our neighborhoods will retain some of their identity.

709 pages!?!

Please tell me you are not assigning a 709 page novel. In previous posts I have listed reasons why I do not enjoy reading. I would like to add to that list the length of most works of literature. After seeing that the novel we will next be dealing with in class is House of Leaves, I looked at the amazon page only to find that the book is 709 pages!!!!!!!!!!! So we are supposed to read a textbook in 2 weeks? I don't think there is a book I would be interested in enough of such a length to think that 709 pages could be anything less than a daunting task. To me, its kind of the same principle as when a teacher gives an assignment along with a length requirement. Why can't they just say, write as much as it takes you to fully explain your answer? I think books also fall into this trap. There is always so much extra material with little relavance to the story in most books, I am fearful of how much extra "stuff" there will be in the span of those 709 pages.
And just as we were doing so well with short plays and articles, what happened?

Why I haven't blogged until now...

In case you were asking yourself, "Matt hasn't posted any blogs since last week, and now it seems that he is posting all three of the required blogs on the Wednesday of the class that they are supposed to be done by. I wonder why that could be." Well, there are a few reasons. First, I am very lazy. Second, I have been busy with a few other things that have taken priority due to their time sensitivity (getting in last minute research to make sure I didn't vote myself to Iraq in a military uniform). Third because I have begun running my website. I have created a website dedicated completely to covering the Track and Field teams at St. Francis College. (Yes I know there is already a school athletics website. There are multiple sites for the same thing on the internet all the time so why not for the SFC Track and Field team?) Google is great because it lets you design and host your website for free using their Google Sites service. The only downside is that the url of the website is begins with sites.google.com/site which hardly rolls off the tongue as most traditional dot com names do. Check it out and let me know what you think if you want to. The first official story was posted last night and it dealt with the Northeast Conference Cross Country Championships this past weekend. I was on site in New Jersey to both cheer on my teammates as well as document the event for my site.
Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with the class so here is the connection. Blogger.com is owned by Google and my site is powered by Google Sites, there you go.

Pillowman again?

Do we really have to discuss this play again in class? Admittingly, I would rather we not discuss anything at all in class because I loathe over analyzing literature, but this play is ridiculous. I did enjoy reading through it, but talking about it just seems dull; probably because the stories in the play are so weird. I'm not sure exactly what Martin McDonagh was trying to express when he wrote The Pillowman, but I hope his intentions weren't to have it picked apart for hidden meanings about what he is really saying. I think that is the one major reason why I would never become a writer. I like to write for the most part and I think I can write well when I try to, but I would definately not in some secret code that would take an english professor and a class full of young minds to several hours to decipher. I write simply to tell a story or to convey a point, and as Katurian says in Pillowman, I think that stories should be taken as just that, stories. I would argue that this is the reason that many students hate reading so much in today's world. Here is an interesting link suggesting that I am wrong about people not liking to read.