Louis C.K. and The Flea

I really enjoyed to “MOMO” today. Louis C.K. was exceptionally funny while delivering some great points. The biggest point he made was everything is amazing and nobody is happy. If you really think about it, he is absolutely right! We experience the best technology known to man and yet we continue to gripe over the little things. Instead of getting frustrated over slow service, you should appreciate the cell phone even exists. Just give it a second! It’s retrieving information from space! I also really enjoyed his airplane story. We really should be ecstatic to travel via an airplane, because it is after all, amazing. It made me think back to my flight to China. I was a bit disappointed with some of the food served on the plane, but now that I think about it, I was being served hot food thousands of feet in the air while traveling over 500 miles per hour! How incredible is that!

Comics do the same thing as poets: they bring to light issues in life but with a lot more swearing and humor. Mr. Delacruz also noted how even comedy needs a thesis statement like an essay does. Imagine if there was no premise in an episode of Modern Family. You wouldn’t understand the jokes as much as you would if there was a lead in to introduce the conflict for that specific episode. This “MOMO” goes to show how crucial a thesis is.

Today we also looked at the poem The Flea by John Donne. We were asked to use the SOAPSTone principle to decipher what Donne was trying to say. SOAPSTone means:

Ø  Speaker: Who is telling the story?

Ø  Occasion: What is the time and place of the piece?

Ø  Audience: The group of people to which the piece is directed at.

Ø  Purpose: What is the reason behind the text?

Ø  Subject: Who/what does the author talk about in the work?

Ø  Tone: What is the attitude of the author?

I had a very hard time understanding The Flea, but alas this is what I came up with:

Ø  Speaker: A man, probably middle aged.

Ø  Occasion: A breakup or trying to date someone. An event that includes two different people.

Ø  Audience: Possibly talking to a friend or family member about the problem.

Ø  Purpose: To get feelings out/to vent.

Ø  Subject: Flea, blood, and two people.

Ø  Tone: Angry and frustrated?

After we completed this, people volunteered and used other classmates to act out what they thought the poem meant. I realized there were so many ways to interpret the meaning of the poem, and there is no right answer. Mr. Delacruz raised the argument The Flea is about a man trying to get a woman to have sex with him, and he uses their blood inside of the flea to make the point their blood is already together in a flea, so they should just combine their bodily fluids in real life. If Mr. Delacruz did not bring this up, I would’ve never looked at The Flea from this perspective. It actually makes a lot of sense. The man is trying to woo the woman and uses the flea to make his point they should just get it on. A weird way to try to get a girl to bang you, but hey, whatever works. He could be considered the first recorded “YOLOer” because he simply tells the woman to just have sex with him and it’s not a big deal. What a guy!