The Rant Thread/My Life Sucks Topic [Don't be pricks]

[SlowPokemon]

looooool

[Zunawe]

Sigh. School starts tomorrow. Still gotta read a little for homework, but it isn't much. Not exactly looking forward to AP English. Never liked English.

[SlowPokemon]

AP Lang? You'll probably be fine.

[blueflower999]

burn the house down

With lemons.

[Zunawe]

AP Lang? You'll probably be fine.

Yeah, I've heard it's not bad, and it's just a lot of in-class-work with reading or finishing essays at home, I just don't like it. What really annoys me is how overly-analytical they teach us to be.

Book: It was dark in the room, kinda murky. The ceiling was cracked and yellowed, the carpet was dirty and worn, and the mattress was bent inward toward the middle.

Teacher: The darkness represents the character's abusive childhood and the bed is folded toward the middle because he's a middle child and the carpet is worn to symbolize his repetitive life!!!!

Us: But, the bed could just be folded to show how beat up the pla-

Teacher: NO!!!!

. . . Or something along those lines.

[SlowPokemon]

^For me, I had homework like once the entire year besides reading novels. It was a lot of in-class essays.

As far as the symbolism goes, a solid 90% of what the teacher says is true. Shakespeare barely wrote a sentence that wasn't imbued with subtext, and other writers like Faulkner or Salinger really did mean a LOT of symbolism that's not obvious at all.

Rarely, if ever, is a bed just folded to show how beat up the place is, if you see what I mean. Not in most literature you learn in school, anyway.

[Saria]

So, my cat has been missing since Thursday night.  He's the kind of cat who stays indoors during the daytime, and goes out at night to hunt.  All Friday, I didn't see him, so I started getting worried and put up a couple "Missing Cat" poster things.  I went out looking for him in the daytime (it's almost 110^o here) and couldn't find him, I went looking at night too and still couldn't find him.  Then again, he's not the kind of cat who hides at night or anything, so I don't see why he wouldn't respond to me calling for him.

Then, about an hour ago, I went to search for him AGAIN, checking the neighbors' lawns again.  I don't know how I hadn't noticed earlier, but... I saw a patch of dark gray fur on the grass, with a pile of intestines and such next to it.  My cat is a black cat, but still... I have a feeling that fur was his. Since he wasn't wearing a collar at the time (he's gotten rid of ten collars so far, he hates them so much) I don't know if I can confirm if that really was his remains.  There's this stray gray cat that wanders around here but I don't think it was that cat.

There's only one thing in this neighborhood that could kill a cat like mine: coyotes.  Damn coyotes (and raccoons) are always wandering into my backyard and stuff at night.

Are you sure that gray stray cat isn't yours?  Hope you find your cat soon in one piece.

[Zunawe]

^For me, I had homework like once the entire year besides reading novels. It was a lot of in-class essays.

As far as the symbolism goes, a solid 90% of what the teacher says is true. Shakespeare barely wrote a sentence that wasn't imbued with subtext, and other writers like Faulkner or Salinger really did mean a LOT of symbolism that's not obvious at all.

Rarely, if ever, is a bed just folded to show how beat up the place is, if you see what I mean. Not in most literature you learn in school, anyway.

I just feel like minute details aren't always as important as some people make them out to be. Dumbledore saying he set the curtains on fire as a student definitely has a purpose, but the fact that the curtains were red probably doesn't matter. Some of my teachers just seem to go overboard beyond making sense.

[SlowPokemon]

^I don't think Harry Potter has much symbolism like that, because I think JKR is a brilliant storyteller, not a genius. She made him set the curtains be set on fire because she needed something to put there, in my opinion. (And the curtains are red because of Gryffindor, no?)

Some of the writers once you start to study them in depth will appear as total geniuses. It's so weird.

[Mashi]

AP Language and Composition doesn't really focus on symbolism very much.  Painstakingly searching for symbolism is for AP Literature and Composition.  Language is mostly about rhetorical and literary devices (diction, irony, symbolism, plot, pathetic fallacy, enumeratio, straw man argument, and a myriad of others.  You won't ever need to know all of them, but you'll have a good slew of them to fit many situations in your readings) and explaining how they enhance various texts.

[Zunawe]

Okay, fine. The point is that I enjoy reading, and don't want to get too caught up in how to read, or how it was written. Right now I feel like it takes the fun out of it.

[SlowPokemon]

Oh I definitely agree with that. I think maybe you should read it for fun and then afterwards try to figure out some symbolism--otherwise it'll just seem like a tedious chore to read.

[Zunawe]

The problem with that is I HAVE SO MANY BOOKS THAT I WANT TO READ BUT DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO. I mean, I'm on book 8 of the Wheel of Time, about book 5 in the Ranger's Apprentice, somewhere in the Merlin series (it's been a while), book two of the Lord of the Rings, and halfway through book 3 of the Night Angel Trilogy. I don't really want to take the time to read any book twice, and by the time I decide I want to, I will have forgotten the book.

Of any of those, I think I'd rather do that with Lord of the Rings than any of the others. Maybe Wheel of Time. Ohsomanybooks.

[KefkaticFanatic]

what the fuck

[Jub3r7]

Sorry, I needed to borrow it for something. It'd be better if I didn't mention why.