My main reason for starting this new blog is a series of comments made by my wonderful grandfather in regards to my old online journals - they are admittedly quite immature and by definition inappropriate, being, as they are, meant for the eyes of other teenagers and young adults, as opposed to serious and ever so dowdy people such as my family. So yes, we are all serious and sophisticated people here, which is why I am writing this post instead of doing yet another practice test for my midterm tomorrow. Imaginary numbers are bleeding out my ears. Supposedly the square root of (-1) was given the name 'i' based on the sounds made by the people it was inflicted upon, e.g. "Ayayayayayayayay!!!".
Today is Veteran's Day, and the college is closed, so I have spent the entire day at the kitchen table, curled up in a warm bathrobe and doing practice test after practice test since 8 o'clock this morning. There has been improvement in my scores, but unfortunately the slightly sore throat I woke up with has deteriorated and acquired the companionship of a headache. 2 Vitamin supplements, three oranges and 5 cups of tea later, I am still sniffling and wincing when I swallow. Oh well.
Am helped by Jon Stewart's coverage of Fox News' fraudulant coverage of the Anti-Health Care Bill Rally in Washington this Thursday.
Speaking of genius political commentators, I am almost at the end of my Heinrich Heine 'The Romantic School and Other Essays' book, and am trying to draw it out as much as possible. Here is a brilliant snippet from Ludwig Bรถrne: A Memorial, a letter Heinrich Heine wrote his longtime friend from Helgoland on July 1 1830, in regards to where he would settle himself:
Or should I go to America, that monstrous prison of freedom, where the visible chains would oppress me even more heavily than the visible ones at home, and where the most repulsive of all tyrants, the populace, hold vulgar sway! You know well what I think of that accursed land, which I once loved, before I knew it well…. And yet I must publicly laud it, merely out of professional duty…. You dear German peasants! Go to America! There are no princes or nobles there; all men are equal – equal dolts…. With the exception, naturally, of a few million, who have black or brown skin, and who are treated like dogs! Actual slavery, which has been abolished in moth of the North American states, does not revolt me as much as the brutality with which the free blacks and the mulattoes are treated. Whoever is even in the slightest degree descended from Negroes, even if this is not betrayed in his color, but only in his facial features, is forced to suffer the most frightful humiliations, which we in Europe would scarcely believe. At the same time Americans make such a to-do about their Christianity and are zealous Church-goers. They have learned this hypocrisy from the English, who incidentally have bequeathed to them their worst characteristics. Worldly pursuits are their true religion, and money is their God, their only Almighty God. Of course, there may be many noble souls who in secret deprecate this universal self-seeking and injustice. But if they fight against it, they expose themselves to martyrdom, the like of which is inconceivable in Europe. I believe that it was in New York, where a Protestant minister became so upset about the mistreatment of the colored people that he, in defiance of this horrid prejudice, married his daughter to a Negro. As soon as this truly Christian deed became known, the people stormed the minister's house, and he was only able to escape death by flight; the house was demolished, and the minister's daughter, poor victim of the affair, was grabbed by the mob and had to endure its wrath. She was lynched, that is, she was stripped naked, coated with tar, rolled around in an open feather bed, and in this sticky feather covering dragged through the entire city in ridicule….
O Freedom! You are a bad dream!
And now, unfortunately, I must go back to doing practice tests and encouraging my immune system. More tea and unfortunately things that look like this:
the answer is D
ReplyDelete