Vietnam Song-Country Joe and the Fish

Coming from a house full of hippies that are obsessed with music, naturally I know a couple good protest songs. I’ve heard many, but none of them can compare with “Vietnam Song” by Country Joe and the Fish. The “Vietnam Song” is full of sardonic humor and allusions to set a funny yet realistic tone of the war in Vietnam.
The war in Vietnam was a very touchy subject. The country was divided between those who supported it and those who were completely against it. Country Joe and the Fish performed “Vietnam Song” at Woodstock protesting against the war. The song uses a lot of allusions. It makes references to Uncle Sam, Wall Street, Vietcong, and commies. This song is also full of sardonic humor “now come on wall street don't be slow, why man this is war a-go-go, there's plenty good money to be made, supplyin' the army with the tools of the trade, just hope and pray that when they drop the bomb, they drop it on the Vietcong.” This chorus is another good example of how they made fun of the war “and its 1,2,3 what are we fightin’ for? Don't ask me I don't give a dam, the next stop is Vietnam, and its 5,6,7 open up the pearly gates. Well there ain’t no time to wonder why...WHOPEE we're all gunna die.” There is also a little situational irony towards the end when he says “come on fathers don't hesitate, send your sons off before its too late, be the first one on your block, to have your boy come home in a box.”
I love this song because it makes its point through humor of how pointless and sad the Vietnam war was. I recommend this song to every person who claim they went to Woodstock even though they didn’t to and to everyone else who loves a good protest song.

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

Last night I saw a production of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest preformed by the Central Carolina Community College and a few members of the local community. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, originally is a novel by Ken Kesey, is about an insane asylum and the men that have been committed to it and the challenges they face everyday with their very strict nurse Ratched. Randle P. McMurphy is the newest member of the asylum, even though he is not actually insane, just a little hot tempered and difficult to deal with. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest uses many literary techniques like realism, metaphors, and irony to create tone that leaves you feeling enlightened by its whit and disturbed by its realistic interpretation of an insane asylum.

The whole story is a metaphor comparing the struggle between the sane and the insane human being. McMurphy, just an edgy man with an attitude, is treated with electroshock therapy and a lobotomy because he was violent towards. Using the different treatments in the story is a realistic depiction of insane asylums before the movement in the 1970s towards deinstitutionalization, which moved patients from the asylum into a special community. The story uses irony throughout the story, After McMurphy has had his lobotomy the patients walk out and see him strapped to a stretcher saying he's not a real person and that it's not really McMurphy. This is an example of dramatic irony because the audience knows he is really McMurphy.

I love this story because it is so real and uses a lot of literary techniques to set a funny and depressing realistic tone. It has this great style of sardonic humor similar to Mark Twain's wrting. I recommend that everyone sees this play, watches the movie, or read the book because the story is very unique and risky.

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Kathryn Harrell
October 27, 2006


I am writing my blog this week on the book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. It’s Warhol’s outlook on life, every basic concept of life he puts his input into and makes some simple things much more complex. Each chapter is devoted to a subject and Warhol gives brief ideas one after another, some paragraphs are pages long and some are a sentence. This book shows a deeper and if possible even weirder side of Andy Warhol.
The first three chapters are about love and each chapter is his experience with love through different stages of his life. “When I got my first TV set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships with other people. I’d been hurt a lot to the degree you can only be hurt if you care a lot. So I guess I didn’t care a lot,” this section came from chapter one entitled “Love (Puberty).” This first chapter is talking about Andy’s awkward teenage years. In the third chapter, “Love (Senility),” Warhol really starts to show his true colors and his strange sense of humor, “When you want to be like something, it means you really love it. When you want to be like a rock, you really love that rock. I love plastic idols.” My favorite chapters is about death. It is one page, two sentences and one of the most honest parts of the book, “I don’t believe in it, because you’re not around to know that it’s happened. I can’t say anything about it because I’m not prepared for it.” I love this quote because it flips the mood from this sort of weird funny outlook on life to this completely honest and deep emotion that shows that he is truly scared of death. Art is what Warhol is all about. He says that a big empty wall with a hole in the middle is art, and that is what makes Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol. He has his own point of view and makes any ordinary everyday object beautiful and his own.
I love this book because I love philosophy written by people that have not studied it. It makes it more personal and bizarre. I recommend this book because it gives a new point of view that can change your opinion of basic everyday concepts.