The Tortoise and the Hare Race… for a drank and gang supremacy in South La

It was a warm summer day and the tortoise and the hare, bitter rivals, decided to go out for a walk around the woods to enjoy such beautiful weather. The wind was blowing, sun shined on the tortoise’s back, grass on their feet, and each others company as they talked of the lady tortoise next door and hare’s latest and greatest of lovers, Shaniqua from downtown Compton back near the old Wal-Mart that shut down after the massive gang fight around 5 years ago and as they walked along the path, their homie Jamaal the black bear told them of a race to the local forest bar and ale house, the winner would get a specially made drink by the tavern barista himself.

Extremely intrigued in the idea of this drink, the two alcoholic best friends made for the starting line and got ready for the race. Shaniqua watched from the spectator stands as Hare, who runs a 3 minute mile, got ready to kick his good ole hefty old enemy the tortoise in a race for the ages. Tortoise as a kid was the type who never ran, only ate bon bons and drank excess amounts of beer, all day long regardless of the weather.

The race began as Jamaal the bear fired his 9 milli burrp burrp the gun went as the smoke from the shot came off the gun and the sound rang in both tortoise and hare’s ear for quite sometime. Hare got off to a fast start and got way ahead of the tortoise, as the race path took them through the main streets of south LA to a bar on the North side. Along the way, despite his fast running, the hare got himself into a number of predicaments with bloods, crips, and latino gangs alike, significantly slowing him down each time. After one of the altercations, over hare allegedly stealing Shaniqua from notorious gangbanging blood Cardinal Moses, the enormous amounts of gun fights turned into an all out riot, today known as the riots of 1987, which forced Hare to have to hide in a run down shack along the main road. He was forced to hide out for over 5 hours until the gangbanging thugs stopped fighting. However, he fell asleep in the process and didn’t wake up until the next day.

All the while, Tortoise, a notorious gang kingpin leader of the Los Angeles area since the age of 6, knew to stick to the back roads to avoid altercations and potential run ins, moving slowly he stayed out of trouble, and by the time the hare woke up, the tortoise was only a few paces from the finish line, dripping from head to shell in sweat, gasping for each breath as usually, his homies did the running for him. Hare was too late, so he stole a local child’s bike as well as the child’s 8 sack of marijuana and picked up Shaniqua as they rode back to his small home on Grove Street, thankful to be alive and still frustrated that he hadn’t won the race due to a lack of judgment and his own cockiness despite his division 1 caliber speed now so helplessly wasted due to his lack of commitment to academics while in high school.

As for the tortoise, this gangbanger enjoyed his drink, as he drank he tapped into a new hidden talent of his, rapping. He worked on his rap game, and eventually his rhymes and beats got him off the streets and “out da hood” as he became a millionaire, today known as Rick Ross, not fat tortoise, although still fat he enjoys pears and his women, often times dissing his old arch rival the hare in many of his songs, and boasting on his win in their legendary race back in the 80s, that for him was forever life changing. 

Brave New World Persona

"Friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears..." There will never again be orignality, never again will there be love, honesty, or respect. Everything is manufactured, everything unreal. There is only the two extremes, both equally as bad as the other.
Violence and terror on one side, used to fuel those to work and conform. Outcasting those who bring individuality and creativity to the table. Like my mom for example, a woman that created her own morals, her own code, only not to be accepted.
The other place, this brave new world, was one I hoped to have been different. One that accepted all, encouraged individuality and creativity. Instead, this society is dominated by an abuse of power, discouraging emotion and love. Promoting a sick, comatose state to forget ones problems and encourage immorality all at the same time.
My mother was wrong about it all, there is no other place. What makes the reservation so much different and so much better than this new world.
Lenina, Hemholtz, Bernard.. I thought they would all understand. But they don't. All of them blinded by the lifeless society they live in. Every aspect of their lives controlled with no motivation at all. They lean on social stability, have completely out casted love, marriage, parental figures. Look at the Director for gods sake, exiled for being a father. With no one to turn to, no one to love, what's the point? Don't they see that?
I still remember the day I went to the factories. Watched the Epsilons embryos gassed, the chance at creativity destroyed before they even had the opportunity to use it. Forcing a predetermined caste system upon unborn potential, upon change just waiting, wanting to happen.
As I stood there, Shakespeare's complete works in hand, and watched as newborns were taught to reject the idea of reading and the simple beauty in nature. It was plain and easy to see that a chance at change and individuality was further taken away by removing the ability to notice beauty. I noticed beauty with Lenina, but why should that matter. To her, I was viewed as a prize, a trophy. A one night stand.
Couldn't these people notice how worthless their lives and the lifestyles they lead were? Lacking drive in all aspects of life. No motivation to change the status quot, break free from the technological warps they were so tightly wrapped around. Truly these people were playing fire with fire. But to me,  ignorance is bliss, and to me what I've seen cannot be unseen. "What has been done, cannot be undone."

Rivaling Elements in Frankenstein

Enlightenment rationalism and romantic irrationality are pitted against each other early and often in Shelly’s Frankenstein. As stated, beginning with Victor’s character and his desire to break the rules of nature by finding the key to life and death (Enlightenment thought process) against the immorality that Victor’s creation brings.

Shelly’s writing and Victor’s personality as its portrayed throughout the novel suggest that perhaps Shelly questioned the ideals and irrational thinking that Romanticism brought along. With the creation of the monster comes the question of why one should respect the mystery of life and death as a romantic surely would.

While Victor’s character takes, for the most part, a rational and enlightened stand, the monster he creates is quite the opposite. The monster at the conclusion of the novel goes out of his way emotionally to state that despite Victor’s death he so desperately coveted, that he has “nothing left to live for without my creator,” (Shelly 300). In addition, romantic aspects in the monster’s character and actions include his desperate pleading for a companion as well as his murdering of Victor’s brother and wife.

Culturally, the monster and the idea of rivaling Romantic and Enlightenment principles our important in our pop culture era because an event as far fetched as the creation of the monster may not be so irrational at all. As modern day technology expands, once unchallenged societal views are poised to be changed and redefined each day.