sarcasm in hawthorne’s “minister’s black veil” ??????

so i have an essay due on friday. instead of writing an outline, like my ta wants me to do (as written on the freakin 2-page typed comments she attached to my paper telling me all about how it sucked), i will write one of those short survey things.
MY HAIR: light black. (not quite light enough to be brown)
MY MAKEUP: nope
MY DREAM: i’ll be your dream i’ll be your wish i’ll be your fantasy…. my dream… i dream of a perfect life where i didn’t have to do anything i didn’t want to do. “if there’s a way that you could be everything you want to be, would you complain that it came to you too easily”….
MY OBSESSION: don’t i have a lot of obsessions? …by calvin klein
MY MOST ATTRACTIVE FEATURE: MY SKI JUMP NOSE! YEAH YEAH FOR SKI JUMP CROOKED NOSES!!! *drips with sarcasm* hehehehe HEY! I BELIEVE YOUR MOST ATTRACTIVE FEATURES ARE YOUR HEART AND SOUL! (i’m on a savage garden overload. sorry. doris you understand me right?)
MY FAVORITE THING TO DO: stare at the wall. sing.
I’M WEARING: my favorite soft white pj pants with clouds on them (mommy got them for me from target) and hard rock cafe london grey tshirt.
I’M EATING: my retainer. yeah.
I’M DRINKING: my saliva.
I’M LISTENING TO: the RENT soundtrack, or rather, what i have of it in mp3 form. i REALLY have to go procure an actual cd. joan snoring. my keys hitting the keyboard base (or whatever it’s called), one after the other, aggregate tappings in the dark.
I’M FEELING: dry. i’m going to turn on my humidifier in a sec. and i’m feeling quasi-stressed (i don’t know if i’ve appended the modifier “quasi-” in the right way but whatever) becuase i’m so so so insanely behind, and i sleep during the day an dmiss all my appointments and turn everythign in late.
I’M THINKING: ok if you REALLY must know, right now i’m thinking “why didn’t ctrl+k do anything” because in emacs, if you want to delete an entire line from where your curser is onwards, you press ctrl+k and it’s much faster. (i’ve also been highlighting things and trying to paste them elsewhere, and pressing ctrl+f in word to open files, and pressing “home” expecting to turn to the top of the document, and being surprsied when the cursor doesn’t jump back and forth and turn purple whenever i type parentheses… hehehee)
I’M GOING TO: get really good at math all of a sudden and become a math professor when i grow up. HA HA HA! NOW THAT’S FUNNY! *weeps*
I SEE: vanilla skies, white picket fences in your eyes, a vision of you and me (you and me….) it’s just, ahhh, a little crush, crush, not like i faint, eeevery time we toouuuch. i also see the “african american male themed wall” that we have (since joan and naning and maria are into real underground hip hop), and the multitudes of pictures covering up the glass doors to me and joan’s room. behind me is my wall, covered with bsb and xfiles posters, and joan’s PROCRASTINATOR’S CREED poster.
I NEED: to get back on track. witf?! i’ve never BEEN on track! the last time i was on track academically must have been … well … my mommy tells me that when i was really really young, before i was in 1st grade, she bought me a 1st grader workbook (asian parents… sigh) and i just SAT there and did the ENTIRE thing, page after page after hundreds of pages, and finished it all. i was so diligent.
I FIND: new ways to waste my time. i’m good at finding new ways to waste my time. i’m good at wasting time.
I WANT: you i don’t know if i need you but ooh i’d die to find out… i want to go somewhere really far away and just chill, ALL by myself. preferably on a beach, or some kind of deserted island where it’s warm and sunny and i can lie there and listen to the waves roll in and out, and dance with dolphins and dip my fingers in algae and drink cool spring water from mossy-banked pools in the shade.
I HAVE: a lot of “STUFF” to do
I WISH: that i didn’t have so much “STUFF” to do
I LOVE: most of the “STUFF” i have to do, even though i wish i didn’t have to worry about it
I HATE: the fact that i don’t hate easily. “you’re too diplomatic” jenny says. (have i already commented on this in my livejounral? i forget.) i can’t choose favorites or least favorites. that goes with all aspects of my life. i’m so mediocre in everything, i don’t want to choose something to give up so that i can be better at other things, here i am sitting around trying to major in cs and english and i’m so bad at both it’s discouraging.
I MISS: my family.
I FEAR: my family. falling off my bunkbed. sleeping becuase i’ll never get up. deadlines. school. people and what they think of me. my voice being all fuzzy and shredded-sounding. getting run over by one of those insane drivers who whizz by 1.5 feet away from me when i’m standing in a crosswalk in the middle of oxford.
I SMELL: meat. yummy. joan’s a good cook, yo.
I WONDER: what it would be like to be a pop star. i don’t know if i want to be a pop star though. i want to perform in front of large audiences and be universally liked and admired for my poetry and my music or something. have i ever tried to create a song? no…. i just like being in the spotlight. i wonder why that is. and i wonder why i’m so shy, behind all these pompous aspirations.
I REGRET: well, i believe my dad lives with a lot of regret (god dont you know i live with a ton of regret, cuz you… JUDY SHUT UP!!! *whack*) ummmm. yeah. so i don’t want to turn out like him. i hope i don’t regret too much. i’m pretty easy come, easy go, little high little low, take me where the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me

well there ya go. (i can read your mind. you are thinking “short survey thing? my ass”) hehe. if you’re wondering where i got that from, i hit “find user by… random” on the livejournal.com sidebar (i’ve never done that before) and i got this little survey from one of her posts.

i haven’t read x-files fanfic for a long long while. i was on the sg bbs the other day and they write fanfic … about sg i guess??? i’ve never read one and i kind of don’t want to. i think it’s easier to write fanfic about fictional characters… writing/reading fanfic about real people sort of unnerves me…

so about my outline. here’s my idea for my essay. hawthorne uses these absolutely lovely little bits of sarcasm here and there in this short story that sort of jumped out at me last night (at 5 am) when i was reading it, so i decided to write on it… i don’t know if i can say “ha! he uses sarcasm and it’s funny!” in my paper… “verbal irony” or “literary irony” or something. i don’t really know the definition of irony–i’ve always gotten it wrong. when i say sarcasm here, i mean that he’ll say something and actually mean something else/opposite–he’ll say something and it sounds like if you could see him reading his story out loud, he’d be rolling his eyes, like he’s laughing at the character or at the situation–after all, parson hooper always ALWAYS had that scary smile “lingering” on his lips, even in his death speech accusing that “ON EVERY VISAGE A BLACK VEIL!!!!” … i’m thinking, i can connect this to the bigger “irony” (again i dn’t know if i’m using the word right) that runs thru the story–1)the minister is the one who has a terrible sin to hide, which seems odd because ministers are supposed to be the most virtuous or whatever of a community, 2)the fact that he wears a veil publicly reveals that he has something to conceal, which is kind of trippy if you think about it too much, 3)his veil shades his eyes (plenty of quotes about that) from the world–>sins and secrets shade and color our vision of the world, we percieve people as knowing what we’re up to, etc… 4)he can’t confess even though he keeps acknowledging that he knows God knows everything… i could go on forever.

dude joan’s getting sick, she’s coughing and i just gave her some water, and she’s cold. we’re all freaking out dude.

i should write shorter posts. sorry, reader. but who stumbles upon my corner of the big tuna can anyway? =)

KISS ME IT’S BEGINNING TO SNOW!!

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