Eavesdropper

For Easter weekend I went to visit my family down in Spring Branch.  Not expecting to get much done in the realm of schoolwork I indulged in quality family time and good eating. Little did I know these things would eventually lead to the perfect eavesdropping situation. My aunt and I were in the kitchen cooking with the screen door to the patio open letting in cool spring air. My uncle, cousin and the neighbor were all having guy talk out on the patio and in just a few moments of quiet/alone in the kitchen I was able to eavesdrop on their conversation.

My findings? Guys are weird.

 The conversation was about 50% guns and airplanes talk and 50% random movie quoting. (You will not survive 5 minutes with my family if you don't have a huge repertoire of random knowledge and witty one-liners to throw out.) This bizarre family dynamic is even more amplified when the women aren't around to mediate (in other words dominate) the conversation or ruin the manly quoting banter with sheer confusion. I'm still not really sure what I eavesdropped on. Jason, the neighbor, went from talking about his golf game (laughing and making self deprecating remarks about his golf abilities) to talking about going to fly a plane this afternoon both randomly strung together making no sense. 

I was not the only one confused by this shift in topic. The rapid shift caught Jason's conversation partners off guard eliciting a chuckle. Laughing was interspersed throughout the conversation flowing from quote to random stories from the week. My cousin is the master of quoting any humorous movie in the last 3 decades and was just on fire, or at least my uncle and Jason thought so, for the few minutes I could hear. 

I don't know that this is a fair representation of what an average conversation is really like. My family considers Spring Branch a little slice of heaven with family, near perfect weather year round and great food. We are all so at ease on the weekends we get to spend together. The neighborhood that they live in is also extremely close-knit (Jason literally just walked through the front door and joined in on our afternoon.) I think these factors led to a very personable and laid back conversation where laughter is mostly expected and doesn't seem out of place, even to an eavesdropper. Other than the fact that guys talk about weird things, like pop-up backpacks and pawn shops they frequent, I wasn't surprised by my findings and the frequency of their laughter.

We have said humor is very contextual and social. My cousin's use of movie quoting made me think about these aspects of humor. Quoting things by nature takes something out of its original context and into a whole new element. Sticking these well-know witticisms into a new light is often funny and I think that this is for 1 of 2 reasons. (1) the quote actually fits into the current situation and the irony just makes you laugh or (2) it just reminds you of it's original context and you laugh thinking back about whatever the quote's source is. 

In my eavesdropping both forms of "quote humor" were exhibited. For the latter, my cousin randomly threw out a completely irrelevant Talladega Nights quote in a brief lull in conversation that led to a 30 second back and forth quote-a-thon with the 3 conversationalists.

Like I said, turns out guys are weird.

Reading 3

Vonnegut’s Slaughter-house Five is filled to the brim with instances of cruel irony and dark humor. After completing the novel, I still don’t really feel a sense of closure or an inclination to label the book as one thing or another. Vonnegut switches from war novel to allegory to science fiction and back again far too many times and in such and intermingled and delicate way for the book to be given one simple label. Although this makes the book a bit hard to follow and completely digest, Vonnegut really does employ some effective literary tools.

Perhaps the greatest example of irony is the passage when the Englishman is speaking to the Americans before they leave their camp about Dresden and proclaims, “You needn’t worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden is an open city….” This is very tragic and really made me cringe as I read on about the rambling of the elated Englishman. Going into the book almost every reader knows the fate of Dresden and there are many small instances when the reader and Billy Pilgrim alike are tortured by this foresight.

Another device that Vonnegut employs to help keep the readers cringing is simply his diction. There are many passages in Slaughter-house Five that are so saturated with description and vivid imagery that even though they may be immensely morbid or grotesque you can’t help but read them twice to really appreciate them. Descriptions like, “Next to Lazzarro was the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, mournfully pregnant with patriotism and middle age and imaginary wisdom.” Pregnant with patriotism, both the alliteration coupled with just bizarre and not often associated terms made me really appreciate this passage. This type of passage is not in poor company. There are many grotesque war descriptions or other bizarre perspectives on the people around Billy to keep the reader enticed. One of my other favorite descriptions that Vonnegut used was the description of Dresden after the bombing as the moon. This image is utilized throughout the second half of the book and ties in the reality of what happened with the delusions of Billy’s extraterrestrial life. I think that although Vonnegut’s writing is undeniably scattered there are certainly passages and even whole parts of the novel that deserve recognition for skilled diction and imagery.

In my last post I talked about the effectiveness of the use of repetition in this novel and the last half and end of the book certainly upheld my belief that this is one of the devices that Vonnegut frequently and effectively employs. I noticed that there are two times in the second part of the novel (at least) where passive Billy talks about everything being all right. This repetition really drives the point home. On page 200 when Billy is being taken down the mountain from the accident and is looking at the chairlifts his delusional thoughts are narrated as this, “He supposed that they were a part of an amazing new phase of World War Two. It was all right with him. Everything was pretty much all right with Billy.” This shows both his passiveness in an extreme situation as well as his declining mental state. Later Billy tells Rumfoord in the hospital “Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does, I learned that of Talfamadore.” He again is referencing the war. There is such tragic understatement in both of these instances, but I think that Billy simply feels that he is powerless to do or be anything but passive after his life experiences. As the story is winding down Vonnegut also uses the repetition of soot and chalk, which build some of the closing images, especially of Montana Wildhack. These images are a part of what I would call the final unveiling of Billy’s declined mental state which occurs predominately in the final detailing of his trip to New York.

You find out where a lot of the bizarre elements of Billy’s delusions, like Montana Wildhack and Kilgore Trout’s novels, in such a subtle yet not-so-subtle manner. Billy’s trip to New York therefore is really symbolic of the last of Billy’s sanity and dignity really being taken away from him. Dark is this book indeed. There are glimmers of humor but this novel is not something I would choose for a light and laughable read. I’m not sure that I am much of a fan of dark humor although I can appreciate the instances of irony that are used for such means.

My thoughts on Slaughter-house Five are still a bit disheveled, perhaps because of the book’s format itself. The ending with the repetition of ‘Po-tee-weet?’ was simple and honest and one of the things that sticks out to me in retrospect.  I think that this simple ending is just what the book needed. Vonnegut couldn’t have had an elaborate ending with the glory of the war’s end detailed. That would have been generic and mainstream. Instead, the use of the bird reference and repetition of ‘Po-tee-weet?’ end the book engaging the reader to keep thinking even though the novel has ended.

Conversation 7

Guilherme and I met for our last time yesterday and neither of us could believe it. Seven meetings have already passed by? This semester is moving by way too fast!

We used the majority of our last meeting discussing stories from break and catching up since it had been almost ten days since we last met. Guilherme is all moved into his new apartment and loves being able to be more independent now. His break consisted of far more than just moving into his apartment as he had originally suspected. He and his girlfriend’s 3 day trip turned into a tour of many stops in Texas including Abilene, New Braunfels and a few other smaller cities.  Guilherme was relieved that his girlfriend’s mother gave a couch and table to him for his apartment, saving him some money. He laughed as he detailed he and his girlfriend attempting to move the couch and table upstairs—needless to say it was not a successful event.

Guilherme is pretty much settled into his apartment at this point and was excited because yesterday the cable and Internet company was finally coming to install his cable and Wifi. Guilherme and I laughed about how hard it is for people our age to get by without these things and he told me about how he has been occupying his time with reading. He then proceeded to ask me about my Spring Break and laughed in his usual polite manner at all of my stories from Destin. He seemed to be shocked that I survived a road trip for 26 hours in a car with six girls, I can’t say that I blame him much because I was pretty surprised, too.

We both agreed that Spring Fever is in full force (after I explained to him what I meant by this) and got into talking about our plans for the summer. Guilherme bragged about his girlfriend’s internship that she got for this summer in Atlanta. She was one of five student picked for the program so I guess his bragging was within reason. Guilherme plans to volunteer more with Destination Imagination this Spring and Summer for the state competitions. He was not sure how long into summer IEP goes or if he even gets a break from the classes since he has to maintain the criteria for a student visa. This was mind blowing news to me- a student who isn’t counting down the days until summer...what kind of person is this?? I told Guilherme about my summer plans and he was delighted to hear that I was also going to be doing some volunteer work this summer in my free time.

Before we knew it the meeting was coming to an end so that I could make it to class on time. We left Union Grounds and walked together through the commons as Guilherme insisted that we become Facebook friends so that we can somehow stay in contact without our weekly meetings. I don’t know why neither of us thought of this earlier but he now has a friend request from me awaiting him once he logs in on his newly installed Wifi.

The conversation partner experience was an enjoyable component of this class for me. I was lucky to have a partner who was skilled in English as my partner, and who I feel probably taught me more than I was able to teach him. I normally love to use travel as a means to connect with a different culture but the opportunity to learn about the people of a different culture right on campus proved to be worthwhile and quite interesting.

Reading 2

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Not really knowing what to expect I opened up Slaughterhouse-Five on the beach over Spring Break feeling pretty indifferent about the assignment. After reading the first section of the book I closed it not feeling much different. Vonnegut’s narrative both of his own struggle to write the book as well as the struggle of Billy Pilgrim are captivating and easy to read. However, it took me a while to really get into the style of Vonnegut and to really enjoy the story. The more that I learn about Tralfamadore and Billy’s struggle, however, the more I have enjoyed the novel.

 “It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.”

I know that critics of Slaughterhouse-five frequently bicker back and forth about if the book is anti-war or not, and I certainly am not really sure what I think at this point. Regardless of their opinions on the matter I think that this quote is very telling of the author’s opinion on war. I also think that Vonnegut uses the style of writing and jumbled thoughts of Pilgrim to portray the chaos that is war, and he obviously uses Pilgrim as the very embodiment of the chaos caused by war. I feel that there are intriguing arguments both ways as far as the books stance on war up to this point, and I look forward to seeing what side I take in the end.

Vonnegut is also skilled at enticing the reader with strange perspectives on time and life as offered by Billy, those he encounters, and especially the Tralfamadorians. These are the concepts that are most interesting to me. The whole Tralfmadorian view of time as a series of moments viewed similarly to a mountain range and these moments coexisting, and never changing or able to be changed is strange but entertaining to say the least. Vonnegut’s use of both the bizarre and unfamiliar through Tralfamadore in unison with the grotesque reality of war and the hardships of life are cleverly juxtaposed. There is never a moment that is allowed to continue for too long before Pilgrim is suddenly whisked back on to Tralfamadore on back into the war.

One of the gleaning examples of juxtaposition in the book thus far is the passage about Billy’s serenity prayer. “…It went like this: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference." Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change: were the past, the present, and the future.” For a second you think “oh how nice” or “hey, I’ve heard that quote before” but then the optimism in the quote is quickly mitigated by Billy’s perspective. I think that this is especially interesting because this shows how the Tralfamadorians have influenced Billy, and it portrays an interesting intermingling of fantastical ideals with reality.

Vonnegut again shows this intertwining of Tralfamadorian ideals with Billy’s reality in his repetition of the phrase “so it goes” throughout the book. Billy utilizes this phrase after explaining that this is what Tralfamadorians say whenever something dies. I have always thought that repetition is an effective tool in literature. I also think that since death is such a huge component of this story that this repetition of “so it goes” really ties together all of the bizarre elements of Slaughterhouse-five well. While things can get far-fetched and jumbled in the story of war, having this recurring element is effective to ensure some consistency for the reader.

So far I have had a hard time identifying the comedic presence in Slaughterhouse-five; the book is well written and in many instances very ironic, but never extremely comedic. (Just perhaps a chuckle here or there at a minor anecdote.) My strongest reactions to the novel have been in disgust or in empathy for Billy. I have not gotten to the point of laughter in a superiority theory type of way because I just feel downright bad for the guy. I really hope there is something good ahead for Billy, although things don’t look great so far.

Conversation 6

Guilherme has really discovered some cool things to do in his time in the US. He has done anything from weekend trips to various volunteer endeavors with his girlfriend around Texas.  This week we talked even more about his weekend adventures.

Guilherme and his girlfriend attended a comic convention a few weeks back. We were talking today, for some odd reason, about people being stingy and conic convention is where our conversation ended up. The story behind this odd sequence of conversation was Guilherme’s experience at said comic convention. After waiting in line for an hour to get a comic book signed by one of the authors attending the convention, Guilherme and his girlfriend were disheartened to learn that the author was charging every person for a signature. Outrageous, right? I couldn’t help but wonder to myself if perhaps the guy was joking and Guilherme just misunderstood the joke because this seemed like such a strange thing for him to do. Guilherme must have read this on my face because he quickly whipped his phone out of his pocket two seconds later to show me proof of his bizarre encounter. He handed me his phone and on the screen I saw a picture of an absurdly small sign denoting that the author will charge a variable amount for his signature depending on the item on which it is signed.

This story perpetuated into some discourse about our shared surprise about this convention, and me barraging Guilherme will a plethora of questions about the comic convention (quite a foreign idea to me.) I thought that this story was interesting because we shared such disbelief over the stingy author. I also noticed that as we talked about the comic convention Guilherme definitely exhibited moments of self-deprecating humor, which I have started to notice everywhere since we have heard so much about it in class presentations. Guilherme kept joking about how weird he was for liking things like a comic convention and being “nerdy.”

We also talked today about Guilherme’s apartment situation. He was really excited to report that Friday-if all of his information is approved-he will be moving into an apartment on Hulen. He was telling me all about all of the amenities of the complex, a pool, gym, small library, and a tennis…tennis…he didn’t know what to call it. This stood out to me because this was one of the few times that he hasn’t been able to think of the word he wanted to use, or didn’t know it. “Court,” I filled in. He smiled and accepted the help graciously—I always get nervous correcting people or helping out in moments like this, but Guilherme was in no way offended.

Also while on the topic of his apartment, Guilherme brought up that the apartment comes unfurnished.  This part of our conversation also started off kind of funny because he pronounced Ikea in a bizarre fashion (I wish I could convey it in the blog.) But after he said it a second time and due to context, I knew exactly what he was referring to. We connected about this topic because my duplex that I am living in next year is similarly unfurnished. We both intend to fully furnish our new homes with the help of Ikea. We told each other funny stories about Ikea-mine about my envy of my younger sister’s room being completely decked out in Ikea-and giggled about it. Guilherme also found it funny how my sisters and I were always obsessed with decorating our rooms.

Naturally Spring Break also came up again today. Guilherme and I are both anxious for the upcoming break and both luckily only have one more day of class left after today. Although Guilherme’s class is supposed to go bowling this Friday for their field trip, he doesn’t consider this school. Although he may have to miss this outing to move into his apartment, Guilherme was telling me about how much he likes to bowl and that they also have it in Brazil. He also got a kick out of my stories about learning how to bowl in “gym” in high school. He especially enjoyed hearing about my mix up with which fingers you use to bowl.

To end our conversation today we reminded one another of our respective plans for the break. Guilherme is going to Abilene with his girlfriend to see her family and also to New Braunfels for a few days to a house that her family owns there. Guilherme is an extremely polite conversationalist and once again giggled as I told him a story about my uncle’s confusion by the New Braunfels High Scholl mascot—the unicorn. He literally laughed for about three minutes when I told him this story, ending our conversation in a similar state of disbelief as we started it—and he even Googled it to make sure I was right.

Our meeting today was light-hearted and amusing per usual. We met on Wednesday to accommodate for our schedules with the upcoming break. I honestly think that my coming straight from my speech therapy session for the day made me more attentive to Guilherme’s pronunciation differences and mistakes, which made this session especially interesting to me. I look forward to hearing about Guilherme’s apartment and trip to the land of unicorns when we return and have our last meeting.

Humor 2

“Well this just got awkward.”

This statement often applies to my life in many situations, and this week it definitely was right on par. Thomas and I were studying with two of our friends in my sorority house chapter room on Tuesday night. We had finished preparing for our presentation on Wednesday and were all just doing our own homework and casually chatting intermittently. Then 11:30 comes around and I am ready for bed (for those of you who know me well you know that this is actually uncharacteristically late for me to study, lame I know.) I had completed my to do list for the day and began to pack up my backpack so that I could go upstairs and go to bed.

This is where things started to get awkward. I had mentioned to Thomas like “hey I think I am done studying” before I began to pack up, but he didn’t pick up on this hint. Thinking that he might not have heard me-because this often occurs with us- I repeated myself again, “so yeah, I think I am going to go to bed.” He acknowledged me and then kept just chatting with our friends across the table. Growing impatient, I finally just blatantly blurted out, “are you going to pack up or what?”

(1) In my defense, this seemed like the natural thing for him to do since I was done studying. Normally when I am done studying at like 9:30 (don’t judge me), he will pack and go back to study on his own until the wee hours of the morning. Not this night though. And (2) What’s about to happen is even more comedic because just a few hours earlier when we had finished preparing for our presentation Thomas had started to pack up. I was under the impression we were studying together for the night, while he thought that I was probably going to bed.

“What, can’t Thomas stay and hang out with us?” my friend Kiley asked inquisitively. This definitely took me by surprise. Why would he want to hang out in our stuffy, girly chapter room for longer than necessary? Looking back I guess it wouldn’t have been weird for him to stay and chat and study with our mutual friends downstairs, but in the moment this caught me completely off guard. I’m pretty sure I gave him a look like he just had ripped the head off of a teddy bear or something completely terrifying because he immediately started packing up. “Well this is awkward” Kiley pointed out-she always makes a point of reminding me about how awkward I make situations or am as a person.

This awkward assumption that I made perpetuated to what is now a series of inside jokes about Thomas being in the house. “Thank goodness I got that dangerous man out!” I joked with Kiley as I walked upstairs after Thomas left. To which she responded something like, “phew, yeah I knew you couldn’t trust him down here alone.”

These funny moments of miscommunication and assumptions, plague my everyday life. They make for funny stories, but when they are with unfamiliar people things can get really uncomfortable. Thankfully, Tuesday was in the company of good friends and nobody got too offended or was too surprised, as I mentioned miscommunication tends to happen a lot for me somehow. This situation was funny to me because I was the one person out of four who didn’t think about the situation similarly, creating a definite (you guessed it) cognitive shift.

Conversation 5

I woke up Thursday morning to an email from Guilherme. My first instinct after seeing the subject “meeting today” was that something had come up so that our meeting for the day was to be cancelled. Oh contrary. Guilherme had emailed me two video links to one of his favorite funny YouTube hits. Since my day was so packed I didn’t get a chance to watch the clips before we met, so we started our meeting in Union Grounds this way this week.

These clips instantly reminded me of “Whose line is it anyway?” Guilherme explained to me that this a skit group out of Brazil that does live performances that are not actually aired on TV, but instead are only put online. This forces their faithful followers to go and watch the show live. Similar to “Whose line is it anyway?” “Os Barbixas” (the show) has the stage with color paneling and even four chairs for each of the four comedians in the back. Guilherme defined “Os Barbixas” roughly as “the moustache men—or something along those lines!”

Unlike German humor that we learned about this week, the Portuguese jokes translated pretty well into English. We both giggled as we watched these clips, I proceeded to show Guilherme clips from “Whose line is it anyway?” because of the strong association that I had developed in my head. He was bummed to hear that this, too, would have to be purely a YouTube entertainment source since “Whose Line” isn’t on TV anymore.

After we watched the clips Guilherme gave me more background about the show. Watching them again, there are a lot of things in “Os Barbixas” that the comedians referenced that were either in English or were straight from our culture. One of the things I noticed watching these clips a second time is that in one video when the prompt is “a conversation between cereals” two references that we can understand are made. 1. Frosted Flakes: “How about some milk, tiger?” and 2. One comedian shoots at the three others and proceeds to say “cereal killer.” Something that Guilherme and I both laughed about. We did discuss at our meeting the references to Santa and the North Pole and Danny Devito that I caught the first time watching these clips.

Guilherme also explained to me the “funk” referenced in one of the skits. (The context of this was that one of the prompts was something like “things not to do at a Funk.”) A funk in Brazil is the equivalent to a rave in the US. Guilherme struggled to describe to me the wardrobe of the “funk” population and became visibly uncomfortable—we were both able to laugh about it though. This led us to talk about how neither of us really likes the rap music scene. Not surprising. Watching these clips a second time, the part about the funk was hilarious.

In class and in my discussion with Guilherme it has been interesting to both compare and contrast humor on a global scale. I think that the bonding aspect of humor that we discussed when reading Morreall definitely came into play in Guilherme and I’s conversation today. It is cool to be able to sit down and enjoy something like that with someone of a completely different cultural background.

We mostly enjoyed talking about humor this week and laughing at the one liners in the clips we watched. At the end of out meeting Guilherme did get the chance to tell me about his long-anticipated weekend of volunteering for the Destination Imagination competition. Guilherme had a blast judging the project of 1^st to 3^rd graders in this competition, and retelling the story. We got into a very interesting conversation about how this was a great English learning opportunity for him to see children’s written English and really interact.

I have attached the clips we discussed, enjoy and be sure to put on the English subtitles!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAu1mIFoZSw


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_G870dZ31k