I'm Calling Yet Another Hiatus

My blogging for this has hit a wall. I feel like I'm not putting enough into this blog to yield good results. Also, since finals are approaching, I feel like I need to reshift my priorities. Blogging stands out as a less important priority.

I might review the soundtrack for The Great Gatsby or post the weekly round-up, but for now, I hope that you have a good weekend.

Sorry for ditching you, but perhaps a break will let me reassess things and perhaps let me put in what this blog deserves.

YA Lit Really Screws Over Parents

In YA literature, parents rarely gets a lot of appreciation, especially if they're the protagonists'. In most cases, at least one of the MC's parents are:

1. dead; or
2. missing; or
3. otherwise out of the picture

I thought about adding "incompetent", but that sort of stretching it. Let's focus on the "dead/missing" aspect for now.

Dogtown Weekly: Umm...John Green?

Welcome to the Weekly!

Unfortunately, I have nothing much to say except that it's a month before summer break, I'm on my second John Green book in a row, and I barely got any writing done last night. But it's progress.

So on John Green...he's a great author. So far, none of his stories really blown me away, but he sure is a crafty storyteller who know how to write his teenagers in a sweet balance between "realistic" and "larger-than-life".

I'm exactly halfway through The Fault in Our Stars, even though I just started it today. I have high expectations for the other half, since everyone else holds it toward such a position. All I know is that it's going to end tragically. In what way, I don't know. SPOILERIFIC PREDICTION: I have a feeling that Augustus is going to relapse and die on Hazel. It's a little too easy for Hazel to die, but hey, it can happen. In any case, someone will die, since John Green seems to have a reputation of killing main characters, with what little work he has.

If you haven't already read my article on fallacies, I suggest that you check it out!

Take the jump to see what articles I have to present this week!

Let's Have Fun With: Fallacies

All right, instead of working on that polyamory post I promised, I decided to pull out something waiting for its turn as a draft, finish it, and brush it off.

This is something not directly related to literature, but it's still interesting! I'll be relying on TV Tropes to convey some of the information, but I hope you learn something from this.

Let's get funky with fallacies!

Dogtown Weekly: Prayers To Those Affected By the Boston Marathon

Mr. Rogers' wisdom is still relevant today.

First, the serious subject of the week.

We all heard about the explosions during the Boston marathon, how people were hurt, and the resulting buzz. It's a tragedy. The bad guys have had the largest victory, and even if we catch them, we can't undo what they have done.

The bombings were unexpected, and that's one thing that makes the entire event so bitter. How many people knew that 9/11 would happen on that day in that way besides the perpetrators? How many people knew that the Newtown shooting would happen?

That's the thing. We didn't. We expected that it would just be like any other day. I did, until I sat in front of the computer when I should've been doing my homework, got on Twitter, saw that "Boston Marathon" was trending, knew something big happened, and then got into the tweets...

Like with the Newtown shooting, I hoped that no one died, but like the Newtown shooting people did died. Not as much as Newtown, but when you throw in the severe injuries (people lost their legs!) and the fact that it was in public and got caught on camera, you can't really rank it.

What's striking about the aftermath was how the Internet exploded. My Twitter feed turned into mostly Boston Marathon-related tweets, juxtapositioned with automated promotion (although I wasn't promoting my own stuff, I pushed back Buffer tweets to the next day). It further shows how the Internet has radically changed our society. It has changed what we do in the face of tragedy. We don't just gaze at the TV, waiting for updates. We try to contribute. We communicate news with others, we link to useful sites, and we cope.

If there's one silver lining in this entire event, it's that it showed that people helped. When the bombs went off, the most practical thing for most people who weren't medics would've been to get out of the area. However, some people ran to the site of the explosions to help those hurt. Some went to the blood bank. Some provided food and comfort. Businesses freely lent their services.

Many people refused to be apathetic bystanders. Many people saved lives and helped others cope with the emotional shock that came with the incident. This shows that again and again, people help each other in the face of tragedy, and that's one reason why humanity has hope.

Now that's out of the way...

Look Out For These Music Tracks Soon! [yMusic]

Since I have a post going up this week on YA Confidential, I thought that I should bring back the old yMusic feature to showcase a few songs I think you might be hearing more in the future.

To keep it simple, I'll just put up the YouTube videos for each one of these, along with my thoughts on how it will do.

Ready? Embed time!

Note: Lately, I've been obsessed with the Billboard Hot 100. Every time I refer to the Top 40 or #10 or something like that, I'll be using that as reference.