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Matthew Patterson

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Matthew Patterson
By: Matthew Patterson on 4/7/2002; 10:05 PM

(E-mail Matthew Patterson) (Weblog)



I am I. The rest will take care of itself.

Okay, that kind of jerks you around, doesn't it? I mean, you come here expecting to find out at least a little about the guy who wrote whatever it was you just read, and that's all you get. Not really very fair. I'll give you a little... but not very much.

My favorite author in the world is Madeleine L'Engle. She has this way of writing things that make me feel as though everything is really all right. Even though it doesn't last (nothing ever can), it's a wonderful gift she has, and I eagerly partake of it.

My favorite poet, on the other hand, is Poe. His work carries exactly the opposite emotional message as most of L'Engle's, but it's so well put together that I don't mind at all. I've often compared his poetry to a Bach organ fugue. The structure can quite complex, so much so that it often doesn't seem like it could possibly work together to produce anything beautiful. But then you hear it, or read it, and you're stunned. I won't cop out and say that all this complexity really reduces to something quite simple, because the plain fact is that it doesn't. The beauty lies in the complexity. To destroy that would render it meaningless.

I'm also quite a serious musician, which is why I tend to make analogies like the above. ^_^ In addition, I'm rather a history geek, and I can't abide people making up facts to put in place of things they can't remember. It just bothers me. (I'm a great advocate of actual reality, and pretending to know something you don't is another way of distorting reality.) Therefore, I try not to do that myself. I won't hesitate to say that I don't know something, even though not knowing things really bothers me.

And that's all you're getting, because it's always more fun to find this stuff out gradually.



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RE: Matthew Patterson
By: Evan on 6/26/2001; 7:13 PM

You didn't like "A Separate Peace"? Good for you, I wish they would assign more interesting books and stories at school. Of course that wouldn't work because everybody has a different view of interesting. However, my entire class pretty much hated Emma by Jane Austen (although probably not as much as I did, its the only book I've ever torn into chunks with rage at how horrible it was and how stupid that I was forced to read it). With the new summer reading system it won't be read over the summer unless it is chosen, but it will probably still be read in class unfortunately for English students. Perhaps they could consider giving the students some input on what was read throuhoout the course of a year, maybe create a small list of some twenty books for each year for which, let me think I guess we averaged five books a school year, so five would be picked. The difficulty with that would be that teachers would have to teach varying material between years and somebody probably wouldn't like that, plus they couldn't get the books in as early. Oh well I guess everybody has to suffer through the horrors of those books.

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RE: Matthew Patterson
By: Matthew Patterson, the Paranoid Minister on 6/27/2001; 12:07 AM

I kind of like the way the curriculum works now. There's too many books on the syllabus for each grade, so every teacher gets to pick and choose which ones to teach. They still order enough copies of the books for everyone, we just don't wind up getting them all.

A reasonable compromise might be to decide a few months in advance what the class will read next so there's time to get the books in. I dunno, what do you all think?

Hey, is it just my imagination, or is this thread now officially ON TOPIC? Literature, writing, and such? Amazing!

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RE: Matthew Patterson
By: Chie Theresa Fujioka on 6/27/2001; 2:11 AM


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remember mamma said cant hurry love

GIBBER!



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im weird.



only vaguely.


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RE: Matthew Patterson
By: Evan on 6/27/2001; 10:02 PM

Random digressions are fun! So are sing alongs. How about the comet song?

Comet, it makes your teeth turn green! Comet, it tastes like gasoline!!! Comet, it makes you vomit! So get some comet and vomit today!!!!!

Or perhaps Ick von schpielman?

If you like the musica, come and see mein count, Ick von schpielman... Ick von schpiel man. Schpiedel on the viola, Vio vio viola violaa violaaa vio vio viola vio vio la, Hey!

It then repeats with different instruments, trombone oompa oompa oompapa, base drum, boom boom boom boom, bag pipes, wer wer werwerwer wer.

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