Could you be loved?

I guess I'm still to young to really understand what the word "love" means. Or perhaps I'm trying to understand what it means, but it really doesn't mean anything beyond just the word that it is. Maybe its a word like death where you hear it and you have a good visualization of what it is but never really experience it, because I mean you can't experience death, you just die. But I wonder what it is that makes people love each other, like what goes through one persons mind. Is it really because they love that person? Or is it because both people are at a point in their lives where they just want to settle down and they are just very compatible with each other? I've had two longer relationships for my age, one for 9 months and another that is currently at 17 months. I have told both of these girls that I love them, but I know I couldn't marry either because I just would not be able to put up with them all the time. But, maybe its just because I'm not ready for that stage in my life yet. At some points I guess I do feel like I am just playing the role of being in love and I would designate those moments of when I don't really want to be with my girlfriend but I know I don't want to lose her. For example, when shes angry at me or whatever I pretend to be compassionate and promise to make things better, but sometimes she is angry at me for things that I feel are ridiculous. Or she'll demand that I change or we won't work out. Of course I say I will, but maybe I don't want to at all I am just pretending I am going to. There are other times though where I feel like when I'm with a certain someone I don't need anyone else in the world. But then there are the other times that I am more so role playing a perfect boyfriend just so I can have those previously mentioned moments again, or so that I have someone to hang out with when there is nothing else to do. There are also other things involved in role playing a boyfriend, for example, overreacting and being overprotective at times. Like, sometimes I have to make a huge scene when she does something I don't totally agree with just so she gets the point that I don't like it. In reality sometimes I could really careless, but I do it anyway to get my point across. Or if some guy I don't like talks to her or something, of course I have to be intimidating toward him just so reassure that nobody is trying to step in. I guess that kind of sounds like an animal that protects their territory. Anyway, from my experiences I think love is a lot of role playing and I'm not sure if "love" is something that really exists and can be felt or if it is just an idea and ideal that people aim for. It could be easily confused with settling down and being comfortable and I guess in a pair it makes life a lot easier to manage and to achieve goals perhaps. It's probably just finding someone that just continues to intrigue you and make you happy and is compatible at the same time, I wouldn't really know though.

Don Quijote played by Alonso Quijano

I have chosen to write about the topic regarding whether Don Quijote is mad or just an act. For a while now I have had the view point that Don Quijote is just a character being played by Alonso Quijano, which was prevalent in my second paper. Today's reading gave me a huge insight and argument for why Don Quijote is a character played by a man. So I will be arguing on the side that Don Quijote argument with the puppet show incident and Don Quijote reimbursing Maestro Pedro for breaking his puppets. If Don Quijote were truly mad he would have never paid the puppet master for what he had done. To me this definitely shows that there is a man playing a character. I can come up with many arguments for why he is merely a character, but I will have to think more so into why he may be mad. Perhaps I could state specific events and argue the mad side and the character side. I mean I can see how some people see him as mad, even though I personally see it as acting. So I figure either I debate both sides over particular events or I try to demonstrate moments where he seems more so crazy than acting and vice-versa. I don't know exactly what I'll do, but I do know for sure that I'm a believer that Don Quijote is played by Alonso Quijano and not a complete madman.

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Hallucinations

I think that the entire sequence when Don Quijote was lowered into the cave was all a figment of his imagination. I mean, its possible that he could be insane and hallucinating and saw all of that in a hallucination, but that doesnt really correspond to how I view the story. From the way I see it, Quijano is playing the character of Don Quijote, the chivalrous knight. As his journeys progress he is becoming more imaginative and better at the role he is playing. I think that he is just making up the entire story up as he goes. He has a large wealth of knowledge of how typical chivalrous stories go and then uses his own imagination to create the story. It is easy to argue whether Don Quijote is mad since he talks about things like this that are obviously not real to a common person. But, I think it is also easy to argue that he is just running with the role he is playing, he knows how to be a knight-errant in fiction. One thing that I picked up from the latest reading that I found interesting was the encounter with the cousin on the way to the cave. The cousin began to talk about how he writes about different sides of modern topics and modern books almost like a parody of those books, so it seemed to me. I found it interesting because Cervantes himself is writing a parody of chivalry books.

Lady Dulcinea

Since Don Quijote is role playing a knight-errant, his love for Dulcinea is part of the role play. He created her as part of his role play. Since Don Quijote takes interest to stories about love and ladies, he himself needs a love. His character focuses upon serving Lady Dulcinea and she is the reason for his knightly duties. In some of the chivalrous novels he had read the knights had their princesses that the knights honored and wed. In order to be the ideal knight that he dreams of he needs a princess. When it comes down to all the actions that he does he relates to Dulcinea. She is what makes his knight-errant character make sense and worthy. He could have used other ideals or objects for his reasoning. Such as the love for God and Christianity. He also could use his service to a particular monarch. Instead of telling defeated enemies to go pledge their allegiance to Dulcinea del Toboso he could have told them to go pledge the allegiance to the Church or to King so and so. But being a knight, Don Quijote must have a purpose for his doings. Perhaps he chooses to focus on love as opposed to the Church or Monarchy because it is more appealing to him in his readings. So when the character of Don Quijote was being created, it was based upon what the man behind the character has found most appealing in his readings of chivalrous knights.

Apocryphal

While flipping through Don Quijote today in class during discussion, I noticed something at the beginning of chapter five of part two. In the pre-text heading it uses the word apocryphal (I had to use the dictionary) when describing the chapter, because of the way Sancho speaks. Yesterday when doing research on Amadis de Gaul, I noticed the same thing was mentioned about the sixth book of the story, which was the first by an author other than Rodriguez. When I saw it in the novel today my mind was like "a-ha!" Because since much of my research has taught me that Don Quijote is a parody of many chivalry novels. Earlier in the novel there was another reference to Amadis when the priest and someone else that I'm forgetting were burning Don Quijote's novels. So I thought it was cool to have the word "apocryphal" appear to describe the chapter as a way to parody Amadis. It has also been interesting to see how Sancho Panza has changed from part one to part two. In part one Sancho had small dialogues and for the most part he was portrayed as not being very smart. However, right from the beginning of part two Sancho comes off as being much more smart, deep and goal-oriented than originally portrayed. Now he has extensive dialogues and the readers see more into his thoughts. In the first part he was more focused on gaining an island and questioning some of the crazy actions of his master, but yet eating up all of Don Quijote's reasoning.

Knight of the Dark Face

I don't know if later in the novel Don Quijote encounters a "dark knight" figure but I think it would be cool. Today in class we assumed our roles for Friday's exercise and I decided to be the antagonist of Don Quijote, my character will wrong the rights instead of righting the wrongs. Really for my role to effective I will need the person that portray Don Quijote to be present in much of the dialogue because I will essentially base my character on doing the opposite of Don Quijote. I'm thinking that maybe since Don Quijote is known as the "Knight of the Sad Face" then perhaps my character could be the "Knight of the Happy Face." Actually scratch that my character will be known as the "Knight of the Dark Face." And in reality he would have an all black armor suit including a black steel sword. As the dialogue continues I would just like to do the opposite of whatever Don Quijote does, but behave in an equally mad way. For example, if Don Quijote were to save a beautiful damsel from being robbed by a group of criminals, I would save the group of mistakenly convicted from the heathen devil woman. Also it would be neat to create a battle between Don Quijote and his dark nemesis and have them end in a tie. Of course since they are equal matches they find out that they are long lost brothers. The "Knight of the Dark Face" is also named Francisco Quijote de la hampa de La Mancha. I mean I guess that I have a plan going into the role play, but we'll see how it goes because after all there are plenty of other people playing characters within the story.

SmartCars and Bombs

To go along with some of the things discussed in class, I also feel it is ridiculous that all Americans do not have health insurance. I feel that is a governments responsibility to maintain the health of their nation. I would have no problem with a few more of my tax dollars going into my personal health insurance provided by the government. Perhaps some of the money that is pumped into the military could be rooted towards national health insurance. The US leaders are just more concerned with leaving up to the ego of being the most dominate nation in the world in terms of brute force. We've always figured that if we can blow 'em up then we have the upper hand. Perhaps this is why nations like Spain have developed much faster in the social sphere and why we have the most technologically advanced military in the world. When we started talking about how European countries develop faster than America I immediately thought about how for over five years SmartCars have been all over the European streets because of their efficiency. Just now plans have been made to have the cars sold in America next year. Another thought that came across my mind during class is how a nation like Spain funds education in relation to America and how the education systems compare as far as percent of people with college degrees and so on. Perhaps education or the way that they are educated makes a difference in how one society develops both technologically and socially faster. But if any nation with more ATMs or legal gay marriage tries to mess with us we'll blow them into smithereens, because we're the United States of America and we like blowing things up and being the protectors of the world. And if any other nation tries to gain power through weaponry or tries to challenge our power then we'll blow up everything and sacrifice thousands of our soldiers to show how "badass" we are.

Ans.Elmo's Fire

It seems to me that Anselmo is either crazy for wanting to test is loyal wife or he just feels that things might be too good to be true. At the beginning of chapter 33 he speaks of how his life and been so blessed and so on and that he has this great family and perfect wife and everything. But, then he speaks to Lotario of how he wants to test Camila’s purity. Of course Lotario refuses just like any best friend would and basically calls Anselmo crazy. The fact that Anselmo would approach Lotario with such a plan in the first place displays some kind of insecurity in Anselmo’s character. Maybe he figures that it would be best that his good friend that could surely never deceive him test her so that he might avoid deception in the future by someone else. Although Lotario refuses, Anselmo continues to pressure him to the point where he actually does attempt to “woo” Camila. At first Camila protests against this like any loyal wife would, but when the attention continues and with Anselmo away, she begins to fall for Lotario because he’s there for her and has taken Anselmo’s place. Unfortunate for Anselmo, he never thought that his best friend could betray him. Things continue to unfold as Camila’s maid takes up a lover and Lotario and Camila continue to lie to Anselmo, stating they are not having an affair when in reality they do. Things persist until the climax of the story when Camila fakes her stabbing and in the next morning both Camila and Lotario run away and Leonela and her lover as well. Anselmo forced Lotario to dishonor himself in order to play out his plan. After Lotario and Camila began to love each other and felt honor for each other, Anselmo was now the odd man out. Anselmo’s friendship was no longer important to be loyal to when he desired such crazy things from Lotario. Once Camila found out of Anselmo’s crazy request she too confirms her loyalty to Lotario over Anselmo. Ultimately, what come to hurt and betray Anselmo is that he asked Lotario do be disloyal to him and expected him to actually stay loyal. Unfortunately, with Anselmo being away, this disloyal “playing” becomes real as both Camila and Lotario begin to enjoy each other’s presence. Anselmo took for granted what a perfect life he had and let his insecurities get the best of him. His desire to find a flaw forced the flaw to occur and this is what led to his demise.

Sancho

I really don't like the idea of having a boss at all. At every part-time job I've had I've always felt like my boss is either A)not as smart as me or B)really doesn't enjoy their job at all and just does it to get by. To me, being an adult and working in a cubicle or meeting quotas and just doing mindless work to pass the time would just be stupid. I already go to school and enjoy classes and just go mindless through other ones that I don't enjoy but need to graduate and what not. Why would I want to spend a part of my life voluntarily being mindless in order for some company I don't care about to become more efficient. Really when someone commits themselves to a situation like this its like they are living in someone else's dream and not their own. After all, whoever it is that's calling the shots in the company is the one making the blueprints and delegating the orders and then the people on the way down are just doing what they are told to make some buck. I just don't want to spend my life being a servant to other people and living in their dream. I'd much rather play out my own dream. Don Quixote plays out his own dream, just as people that start up their own businesses do. But, these people also need people to serve them like Sancho or entry to senior level employees. In the film Office Space, the main characters absorb their minds in a dull job that is essential the company, but completely meaningless to their lives and just stay around everyday for the money and a hope of promotion. This is much like Sancho sticks around to serve Don Quixote in hope of one day getting an island. I mean I know sometimes its necessary to impress and prove your worthiness to other people to accomplish dreams, but I just don't understand how some of the 45 year old employees at Taco Bell are satisfied.

I work for the Mafia

During the lecture in class today, part of the notes listed the jobs that were associated with particular religions of Spain during the time of Don Quixote. This made me start to think of some of the jobs or professions associated with certain religions or races in the United States today. The first thing I thought of is Indian/Pakistani people and being doctors. Over winter break I worked valet at a university hospital and it seemed like half of all the med students and doctors were of Indian background. Another link that I've noticed is between Jewish people and lawyers. This may not totally be the case, but in the couple of times in my life that I've encountered or dealt with lawyers, they've been Jewish on both occassions, and I often see billboards for lawyers with Jewish names. Also, as discussed in class, there is the immediate connection between Mexican immigrants and landscaping/restaurant jobs/anything that is hard work without great pay. Then the final correlation that came to mind is Japanese people and tech savy jobs/engineers. I wonder what the stereotypical job would be for a person with a background of Irish, Italian and Lithuanian/Polish..(me)? I guess another stereotype would be an Italian that either is a)in the mafia) or b)owns a deli or pizzeria.

Persona

If I were to be an actor, I forget what the term we used in class was it was some russian or polish name regarding to a school of acting, but I would want to be that. It was the style where you completely become the character. I'd think that after a while I would become so familiar with the way the character acts that I would also know how others react to the character and how to make the character obtain the appropriate reactions. During junior high and earlier in high school I would have fun by just acting like a totally different character and playing it out until my friends would get really annoyed. I thought it was real cool though and I'd change my voice and everything. Sometimes I would even unintenionally start talking like the character because I'd pretended to be that for so long. For the most part people would get a kick out of it until I just drove it into the ground. This was around the same stage when doing prank phone calls was the rage and I was always the best at that. I'd call people in one of those goofy voices and play out an outrageous story until the person would hang up or the voicemail time would run out. I remember one of my best ones was when I would pretend to be a young refugee from Chechnya and I would call this same guy that had the old Papa John's pizza phone number and I'd act like I was leaving a message for my Grandmother and that I had no idea it was the wrong number. Yea, I was pretty lame. So I guess thats one of my experiences with a persona.

Spicoli

I was thinking about what we were talking about in class in regard to if we could be any identity, what it would be. For the longest time, I've always been facinated with characters like Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and total burnout but happy-go-lucky characters in fiction. I think it would be a whole lot of fun to be a person like this in real life except for that a person like this wouldn't exactly be successful in the academic world or business world which is also something that I aspire. But if there was a way that I could make a lot of money and provide an awesome life for my kids while being real chill and happy-go-lucky I would totally take advantage of it. I really enjoyed the people in highschool that would show up to school just to make people laugh and have a good time and be people persons. It seems like people like Spicoli or the characters in Dazed and Confused really just enjoy their lives to fullest, however its likely that most people like this in real life just turn out to be burnout middle-aged men. So I guess I'm caught between my fun ambitions and economic ambitions. Thats why I think it would be awesome to just be that kind of chill beach bum but also have a bar and a boat and some kind of service to people. Another down side to the 'chill dude' image is that people would immediantly label this identity as being either a 'pothead' or a 'burnout'. But this is definitly not entirely true. I would want to convey the attitude of a laidback beach dude but would definitly not be a 'pothead' or 'burnout' even though some may tag me as that. "Ahhh Gnarleyyyyy!"

Snowed In

THIS POST HAS BEEN DELETED BECAUSE IT WAS NOT RELEVANT TO ANYTHING SOMEONE WOULD FIND INTERESTING WHILE BLOGGING.

I Am Who I Am

I am who I am

I guess I'm a different person to different people and in different situations. As for who I think I am personally, I guess it changes depending on my moods or who I'm surrounded by or even the time of the day. So I'll describe how I see myself when I'm in different situations or under varying circumstances. It feels weird writing about myself and if I were to write in paragraphs it would be more weird so I'm just going to let this flow without them. To start off, I feel like I am two different JD's when I am with my own family and as I was growing up. My parents have been divorced since I was 4 years old and I grew up in two totally different environments while at my mom's or my dad's. Through my whole life while around my mom, step-dad, and step-brothers and sisters I've always felt like I'm the one the look up to and expect to do big things. I guess when I'm with them I've always felt like I've been the leader, more so I have always felt like instead of me looking to please and make my parents proud, that it has always been my mom trying to please and make my proud. On the contrary, when I am with my dad I feel like an ordinary person with an ordinary family. I've always looked up to my father and he is who I always go to for advice and in my mind he is the wisest person in the world. So when I'm living with him I would describe myself as being an ordinary happy-go-lucky kid that will have his mess ups, but also generally do well. Another situation that I think really changes the type of person I feel about myself is whether I have a girlfriend or not. I've found that generally, when I don't have a girlfriend I feel much more social and to have much more of a connector personality. It also seems to me that I find happiness in many places and much more fun-loving when I'm single. I still have just as much fun and enjoy my life as much when I have a girlfriend, but I find that I depend on that person extremely much and hide part of my personality that normally everyone would see, so that only they can see. It makes me feel comfortable when I have a person that I can share the more funny and carefree side of my personality its like something special I share with them. But, it also worries me that I can't be this way toward other people, which would make me much more sociable and so on. Sometimes as much as I don't want a girlfriend when I have one I just can't end it because I become used to that comfort zone. I could probably write about how I feel about myself for pages and pages, but I'll leave it at those two examples.
I'm not entirely sure what people think about me because I cant read minds or anything, but I can tell you what I think people see me as being. My parents probably see me as being very motivated and eager to be successful in whatever endeavor I pursue. They probably also still see me as the same charming child I was. A significant other would see me as being totally weird and unique. They appreciate my weird since of humor and spontaneity and admire my sincereness. My friends of childhood and high school see me as being a leader that has always been reliable. These have been the guys that have seen me go through many things while growing up and know how well-rounded I am. My friends I've met in college also know how well-rounded I am and also appreciate my randomness. However, I feel that they've yet to see what kind of leader I can be and may think that my personality fluctuates between boring and insane. My college friends also have seen a broad range of JD's considering there aren't places to hide or be unseen within Shorney Hall. Co-workers that I've had see me as a leader and a team player, but probably not as much as a friend. Strangers either think I'm quiet and reserved, or they think I'm outward and fun-loving, depending on my mood during our first impressions. Some people may see me as a tough nut to crack, but those that have taken their time know that I am reliable and good-hearted. To a casual friend I seem very consistent because I don't show much outward emotion, but good friends and family can see through to my vulnerabilities. I like to always display myself the same, almost as if extreme emotion is a weakness, but those who really know me know that I'm typically a happy guy and they can notice it easily when I'm not. Overall, I feel that people respect me, which is precisely what I want.