Influence

Favorite quotes...

“Love seemed all the sweeter when it was misunderstood, condemned by the outside world.”

“There’s the you that you present to the world, and then there’s, of course, the real one. And if you’re lucky, there’s not a huge difference between those two people.”

“Their house had real hard-cover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.”

“…but that’s the terrible power of a diary: it not only calls forth the person you used to be but rubs your nose in him, reminding you that not all change is evolutionary. More often than not, you didn’t learn from your mistakes. You didn’t get wiser but simply older…”

“As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts. By this I meant that I would stop living in a fantasy world; that, while standing in line for a hamburger or my shot at the ATM, I would not daydream about befriending a gorilla or inventing a pill that would make hair waterproof. In this regard too, my diaries have proven me wrong. All I do is think up impossible situations: here I am milking a panda, then performing surgery, then clearing the state of Arizona with a tidal wave.”

Last pages.

This is the last story in the book, it is a poem called "DOG DAYS"

Pepper, Spot and Leopold

were sent by God, so I´ve been told,

in hopes we might all comprehend

that every dog is man´s best friend.

Hail hyperactive Myrtle,

owned by folks who are infertile.

Her owners boast as she runs wild,

"She´s not a spaniel, she´s our child!"

Hercules, a Pekingese,

was taken in and dipped for fleas.

Insecticide got in his eyes.

Now he´ll be blind until he dies.

Rags, the Shatwells´ Irish setter,

doubles as a paper shredder.

His lunch was bills and last year´s taxes,

followed by a dozen faxes.

Petunia May they say was struck

chasing down a garbage truck.

A former purebred Boston terrier,

her family´s wond´ring where to bury her.

Most every ev´ning Goldilocks

snacks from Kitty´s litter box.

Then on command she gives her missus

lots of little doggy kisses.

The Deavers´ errant pit bull, Cass,

bit the postman on the ass.

Her lower teeth destroyed his sphincter.

Now his walk´s a bit distincter.

Bitches loved the pug Orestes

till the vet snipped off his testes.

Left with only anal glands,

he´s now reduced to shaking hands.

Dachshund Skip from Winnipeg

loves to hump his master´s leg.

Every time he gets it up, he

stains Bill´s calves with unborn puppy.

A naughty Saint Bernard named Don

finds Polly´s Kotex in the john.

He holds the blood steak in his jaws

and mourns her coming menopause.

A summer day and shar-pei Boris

sits inside a parker Ford Taurus.

He yaps until his throat is sore,

then pants awhile and yaps some more.

An average day and poor Raquel´s

being shot with cancer cells.

Among her friends she likes to crab

that she´s a pointer, not a Lab.

Each night old Bowser licks his balls,

then falls asleep till nature calls.

He poops a stool, then though it´s heinous,

bends back down and licks his anus.

Almost done.

“What religious people call fate, I call luck, and what they call God´s will, I call bad luck.”

The Happy Place...the last essay.

The last one is always the best. This is an essay about life; it all started with a reunion at a friend´s house and Dan, the son of one David´s friend said that the person who´ll reach the age of two hundred was already born. So those words made him thought about his father, with nighty eight years old and still without any problems, and just because he eats eight raisins every day and because he made a colonoscopy.

David decided to have one, so when he went, and when they put him anesthesia, they told him to think about his happy place, it was with his family.

When it was over, his dad called him and asked how was it, so David couldn´t resist to joke about having cancer, cause he wanted to feel protected in his happy place. 

NEW VOCABULARY

Harass: irritate or torment persistently
Can you stop harassing me?

Knead: mix and work into a uniform mass.
That bread needs to be kneaded.

Dough: mixture of dry ingredients specially for making bread.
Monica! Please go and buy me some dough for making your cake. Thanks you!

Diabetes?

“Hugh told me to ignore them. They just want attention. This is his explanation for everything.”

Rubbish..the fourth essay I chose to talk about...

This is a really deep essay, I mean, it has an awareness message, the story starts with David and Hugh moving into England, specific at West sussex so they bought a really nice house on the countryside, but the problem is that there is a lot of litter on the street and everyone seems to be okay with that, cause they are used to it, some of them call it art; watching a bottle of vodka next to a tree leaf is normal to them; so David starts picking up all the garbage on the road.

One day, they passed next to a McDonalds, so David said that the litter wasn´t the only kind of rubbish.
So he just said, maybe I am the problem trying to change people that live here.

NEW VOCABULARY

Beam: piece of timber, metal, or stone used as support in construction.
That house beams are stronger than the ones at my house!

Corrode: Destroy a metal.
The acid corrodes metal.

Bucolic: Characteristic of the countryside or its people.(Rustic)
You live in a bucolic zone.

Owls, Owls and Something more...

"The words silly and unrealistic were redefined when I learned that, in Holland, Saint Nicholas travels with what was consistently described as six to eight black man"

The next essay I would like to introduce is called "Standing By"

Sedaris tells us in this essay one of many of his experiences in airports; checking in, waiting for the planes, being on the line. He thinks that airline industry turns us into monsters; because there are always things that you hear, like once he saw a lady with his two grandsons buying tickets to San Francisco, but there weren´t flight until next day, so she started apologizing to his grandsons, that she would make it up to them. Also there was a big family and he started wondering what was the story behind them, if the baby that the teenage girl was carrying was hers, or why the teenage boy was wearing a shirt with the phrase "Freaky Mothafucka".

 Then he heard a voice asked Adolf Hitler to pick up a white courtesy phone, he was in shock, how someone could call their son like that.

So he got to the conclusion maybe the airports turns us into the person who we truly are.

NEW VOCABULARY                                                                                                                

Bailout: rescue from financial difficulties.

I need to know all about corporative bailouts.

Jogging: Move shaking

When you scared me, I couldn't stop jogging

Dealership: A franchise to sell some items in a certain area under authorization.

I had trouble with my car, I had to go to BMW dealership.

Let´s continue...

"Write relentlessly, until you find your voice. Then, use it"

Easy, Tiger

It starts with a guy on his way to Beijin, talking about the course he downloaded of Japanesse and Italian, he noticed that both audio programs took the same way; the teacher gives you some phrases and you should practice; so he was going to download again Pimsleur for learning Mandarin, but he was timeless, so he used his "Lonely Planet" phrase book, he remarked that it was hopeless; learning from a book with useless phrases such as; "I want to make love to you" or "How about going to bed?".

After he returned from China, few days later he started preparing for a trip to Germany. First time he went to Germany in 1999, he couldn´t speak with the correct pronunciation, so he spent most of the time talking in English. He didn´t like German, cause when they were Germans were ordering at a restaurant, it sounded like an actual order.

He had gone 10 times to Germany and he had learn many words like "Lebensabschnittspartner" that means the person you are with, not necessary means your lover, so fot this trip to Germany he wants to more prepare than other times, so he downloaded the thirty lessons of Pimsleur German.

When he went to Tokyo, a Japanese told him he needed to read some manga cause he was too polite, but he thaugh every foreigner talks like that and is not a problem.

NEW VOCABULARY

scraped: remove
spraped the wallpaper off, before you paint the wall.

harshness: severe or cruel
The harshness of my mother freaks me out.

bellhop: An employee at a hotel, who carries the luggage
Mom! Tell the bellhop to take our luggage to the room 2067.

Ditch: A long narrow trench or furrow dug in the ground as for irrigation
Don´t put anything on the ditch, or the plants won´t grow.

Exploring....

"Does there come a day in every man´s life when he looks around and says to himself, I´ve got to weed out some of these owls? I can´t be alone in this, can I?"

This book contains different essays such as Attaboy. The story starts with Sedaris being an old guy and he just got out of cinema so he heard someone screaming "help!", he got closer and realise that the reason why that person shouted, was because a boy was scratching an announcement on the street, so the parent´s boy started argueing to the man that he didn´t have the right to touch his son, so Sedaris started remembering how his parents were. Their family was really special in the way that it was no ones fault but them, like in the situation he just passed, his father instead of deffending him, he would have congratulate the man.

So he started thinking about a specific moment in which his father looked like a fool.

First of all his mother was driving one day and a guy shouted to her "Bi%&#h", so when they arrived home, she told her husband what had happen and he took it personal, little Sedaris knew who was the boy but he didnt want to tell it, so his sister told her dad who was, a guy named Tommy Reimer.

So one day at the dinner, someone knocked the door, it was Tommy, so his dad stood up and took him by the neck, raised him off the ground and his legs were flailing; Lisa his sister shouted, he is Tommy Williams! 

In that moment Sedaris remembered the embarrassment his dad suffered, and he had to swallow his pride and ask for forgiveness.

NEW VOCABULARY

Flailing: Move erratically

Oh my god! He is flailing his arms, he might be drowning.

Thawed: Defrost; change from frozen solid to liquid.

That ice cube has thawed before I could put it on my water.

Beneath: below

There´s my bag! Beneath your wallet.

Attaboy: (Informal) Used to show approval to a boy or man.

Attaboy! You won the game.