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| "I did not go to his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it." -Mark Twain |
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Welcome to my World.. Our C- essay project has the theme, "Monsters, Aliens, and Abnormalities. In keeping with this theme, I have fashioned my web page based on the cult movie classic, Rocky Horror Picture Show
READ ON! |
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Link to The Ghouls, the group project. |
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The cast of the movie doing the Time Warp!
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Drag your mouse here to see the video!
My own little Addams family is the most important thing in my life. Emma and Sebastian, twins, were born on September 18, 2000. My little millennium monsters surprise my husband and me every day. They have grown so quickly and are picking up language daily, despite growing up in a bilingual home. I guess we need to be careful what we say now! I rush home every day from classes to see what new skill they have learned. Their new favorite skill is walking/running/chasing each other. It is icy in Sweden in the winter, so they practice indoors mostly. By the way, this video is quite old. They were about 7 or 8 months when I recorded it, but you try to get two toddlers to sit still for a video when they are newly mobile! My husband, a wonderful man named Joakim, is a native Swede. He works as a civil engineer at Scandia Consult in Umeå, Sweden. He is training to compete this summer in the javelin, and we all are hoping to see him at SM again this year! Hold you thumbs...or if you are not a Swede, cross your fingers! |
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I attended the University of Alabama for 5 years. I received a Bachelor of Science in Education, Comprehensive Language Arts. Or, in lay man's terms, I am a teacher of English, literature, drama, and journalism. Alabama is a great state. It is abundant with wildlife that ranges from Cotton Mouth snakes and alligators, to deer and black bear. The geographical structure is also unique. The southern tip of Alabama is located on the white sands of the Gulf Coast, but the Northeast of the state contains the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. My state was, and still is, a center for civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous letter from Birmingham jail in Birmingham, Alabama. The weather in Alabama is an entity of its own. We can have sun, clear skies and 95F in the midmorning, and a rainstorm 20 minutes later that is so strong, you can not see your hand stretched out from your arm. It is rain like Sweden has never seen. We are also in the path of yearly tornadoes. In April of 1998, and F5 tornado ripped apart Birmingham. See this link for pictures of the aftermath. My husband and I moved to Sweden 10 days after I graduated from University, and when I was 5 months pregnant with Emma and Sebastian. We visited his parents in Skåne for a month before we traveled to Umeå, settling in Biologigränd, Ålidhem. We really like Umeå, and plan to stay here for quite a while. Umeå is close enough to town and also to the surrounding nature, that it is a wonderful place to raise children! This is an exciting time for all of us, now. Joakim is working and training to throw javelin this summer. Emma and Sebastian are growing and learning new things every day. I am supplementing my degree, and training for the Stockholm Marathon this summer. All in all, we are a busy, busy family! If you have any question or comments about this webpage, you can email me at stenin02@student.umu.se . |
We began our journey together as The Monster Group by watching three monster movie classics. The first, Metropolis by Fritz Lang, portrays humanity versus the machine as a central theme. The second, Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola, uses an undead to portray its version of monstrosity. The last film, Frankenstein by Kenneth Branagh, uses a monster created by man to explain the consequences of man placing himself above the “natural order of things”. The characteristics of the specific monsters are listed under their respective headings.
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Metropolis |
Dracula |
Frankenstein |
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Before watching these films, I had perceived a stereotypical monster to be someone who has no conscious. I did not consider a monster to be human, but rather a machine that did not know right from wrong. A monster is the antithesis of free will. Bearing in mind the later three different examples of a monster, I have modified my classification as to what characterizes a monster. A monster is not an entity unto itself; it is someone, or something, that performs monstrous acts. It begins its life as any being, with diverse feelings and needs. A monster can give and receive love, as any other “normal” person can. He or she is not the embodiment of “evil”, but rather acts evilly. More importantly, evil does not necessarily beget evil. Monstrosity, or more specifically the creation of monsters, deals with the age-old parable of nature versus nurture. Monsters are made, not born. If a serial killer had a child, that child would not inevitably be evil just because he or she is the spawn of what society deems a monster. In the slightly altered words of Forrest Gump's mother, "Monster is as monster does".
Continuing with the creation of monsters, one example of a monster “spawning” evil is the vampire. Although, one must keep in mind, the changeling is not of the vampire, but rather distorted by it; again, an example of evil being created, not born. The word vampire comes from an old Greek word that means, “to infect”. Therefore, the vampire is the perfect summation of breeding, or creation, within the monster category. All three of the above monsters were made such by outside forces. In the Metropolis, the humans were made into machines by technology/capitalism. In Dracula, the vampire made himself by renouncing his faith and inviting evil, in order to revenge himself on those who wronged him. Also, in Frankenstein, an eager doctor who did not weight the importance of the soul, created the unnamed monster.
A monster is not a freak of nature, rather a freak of nurture. Humans are naturally social animals. When a human is denied their basic needs; food, shelter, love, they revert back to a Darwinist mode of “survival of the fittest.” The newly formed monster will do what it feels is necessary to fulfil his or her needs, regardless of the consequences.
