My Web Journal 
10/21/2025
Well, Canvas is up and running again, thankfully! I was able to finish and assignment I was working on last night and get it submitted just fine. Right now I'm in my office on campus gathering some notes and ideas for an essay I have due at the end of the semester. I really wanna make sure the idea is honed in, since this essay is eventually going to becomes a chapter in my dissertation. It's going to be about Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin.
10/20/2025
Today is the day the internet shat itself! The AWS outage took out Canvas, which is a major online school platform where assignments, grades, etc. are posted. Basically, Canvas is the tool I need to do my job, so having it go down is a real pain! Hopefully they can get it back up and running soon!
10/19/2025
I really appreciate Chappell Roan as an artist because she can give me three back-to-back unstoppable club bops and then hit me with a song about lesbian situationships that cuts so deep that my only response is "What if I killed myself?"
10/18/2024
Last night I finished another book for my reading list: Montage of a Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes. Along with that text, I also finished White Noise by Don DeLillo a few days ago. Both books are absolutely fantastic, though to call Montage a book would be a bit generous. I don't mean it's bad-- Montage is a series of short poems which serve as Hughes's ponderings on the nature of being black in America in the early 50s (this was published in '51 to be exact). Hughes questions the seeming inability for people of color to achieve the ever-so-sought-after "American Dream". More importantly, he raises the question of what that failure to achieve one's dream can do to a person socially and psychologically. He asks in the poem "Harlem",
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Fun Fact: The title of Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play, "A Raisin In The Sun", is a direct reference to this poem! I'm actually going to be reading Raisin In The Sun for the class I'm in. Not this week, but next week. So I may give you my thoughts on that shortly.
White Noise is a very different kind of text. This 1985 novel tells the story of Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler Studies (it makes sense in the context of the book, I promise) and his family as they are forced to evacuate due to an "Airborne Toxic Event", and matters only get more bizarre from there. All throughout, DeLillo's characters consider the ramifications of rampant consumerism and the increasing isolation that comes from living our lives of modern luxury. The "White Noise" refers not only to the literal white noise of the television the family is always watching, but the constant noise of living in modern society, where we are constantly being inundated with noise, news, threats, and most importantly, PRODUCTS!!! This novel's themes of consumerism actually reminded me a bit of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, another book on my list. Both books, in my opinion, highlight the horror of the mundane; the idea that being stuck in a perpetual loop of consumption and social performance is inherently terrifying. I think that idea is especially relevant today. Hell, I think some (if not most) of us come to a platform like Neocities to get away from exactly that. We're a generation who yes, may be nostalgic for a past culture we may or may not have been alive and/or cognisant to witness. But more importantly, we are a generation who has officially become jaded with the social media rat race, one in which you are told by massive companies what to consume and even how to respond to what you consume. That kind of thing has been on my mind a lot lately and I'm sure those thoughts will only grow more vitriolic as I become older, more wrinkly, more cronish, and more bitchy.
All of that aside, I would reccomend any of the books I just mentioned. Montage of a Dream Deferred is only about 40 pages and I read it in about half an hour. Lovely stuff, really. I will continue to update as I either read more or simply have more thoughts on the book's I've already read. If you want to check out my progress on the list, check out the "What I'm Reading" tab!!!
10/12/2025
This is going to be my web journal where I'll occasionally post interesting things going on in my life. I'll also be posting links to stories I've written and projects I'm working on!
Well, Canvas is up and running again, thankfully! I was able to finish and assignment I was working on last night and get it submitted just fine. Right now I'm in my office on campus gathering some notes and ideas for an essay I have due at the end of the semester. I really wanna make sure the idea is honed in, since this essay is eventually going to becomes a chapter in my dissertation. It's going to be about Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin.
10/20/2025
Today is the day the internet shat itself! The AWS outage took out Canvas, which is a major online school platform where assignments, grades, etc. are posted. Basically, Canvas is the tool I need to do my job, so having it go down is a real pain! Hopefully they can get it back up and running soon!
10/19/2025
I really appreciate Chappell Roan as an artist because she can give me three back-to-back unstoppable club bops and then hit me with a song about lesbian situationships that cuts so deep that my only response is "What if I killed myself?"
10/18/2024
Last night I finished another book for my reading list: Montage of a Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes. Along with that text, I also finished White Noise by Don DeLillo a few days ago. Both books are absolutely fantastic, though to call Montage a book would be a bit generous. I don't mean it's bad-- Montage is a series of short poems which serve as Hughes's ponderings on the nature of being black in America in the early 50s (this was published in '51 to be exact). Hughes questions the seeming inability for people of color to achieve the ever-so-sought-after "American Dream". More importantly, he raises the question of what that failure to achieve one's dream can do to a person socially and psychologically. He asks in the poem "Harlem",
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Fun Fact: The title of Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play, "A Raisin In The Sun", is a direct reference to this poem! I'm actually going to be reading Raisin In The Sun for the class I'm in. Not this week, but next week. So I may give you my thoughts on that shortly.
White Noise is a very different kind of text. This 1985 novel tells the story of Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler Studies (it makes sense in the context of the book, I promise) and his family as they are forced to evacuate due to an "Airborne Toxic Event", and matters only get more bizarre from there. All throughout, DeLillo's characters consider the ramifications of rampant consumerism and the increasing isolation that comes from living our lives of modern luxury. The "White Noise" refers not only to the literal white noise of the television the family is always watching, but the constant noise of living in modern society, where we are constantly being inundated with noise, news, threats, and most importantly, PRODUCTS!!! This novel's themes of consumerism actually reminded me a bit of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, another book on my list. Both books, in my opinion, highlight the horror of the mundane; the idea that being stuck in a perpetual loop of consumption and social performance is inherently terrifying. I think that idea is especially relevant today. Hell, I think some (if not most) of us come to a platform like Neocities to get away from exactly that. We're a generation who yes, may be nostalgic for a past culture we may or may not have been alive and/or cognisant to witness. But more importantly, we are a generation who has officially become jaded with the social media rat race, one in which you are told by massive companies what to consume and even how to respond to what you consume. That kind of thing has been on my mind a lot lately and I'm sure those thoughts will only grow more vitriolic as I become older, more wrinkly, more cronish, and more bitchy.
All of that aside, I would reccomend any of the books I just mentioned. Montage of a Dream Deferred is only about 40 pages and I read it in about half an hour. Lovely stuff, really. I will continue to update as I either read more or simply have more thoughts on the book's I've already read. If you want to check out my progress on the list, check out the "What I'm Reading" tab!!!
10/12/2025
This is going to be my web journal where I'll occasionally post interesting things going on in my life. I'll also be posting links to stories I've written and projects I'm working on!