post 10

So I don't know what to think about Lenses.  At first I thought that lenses were a metaphor for something and I wasn't all that interested in what that something was but I decided to give it a shot.  I was pleasantly surprised when I found that lenses weren't a metaphor and that the story was actually about binoculars and microscopes.  As I read through the first part I became more and more interested in it as it transitioned from talking about the skill or looking through a lens to him watching microscopic life, talking about them as if they were his life's passion.  Then I read the second part.

The second part started to get a little weird especially when he talked about the urine samples but I didn't think to much of it since most kids have probably done equally questionable things at that age.  Then he began to talk about what happens when you replace the five-watt bulb of a microscope with a 75-watt bulb and all of the "Oh he's gust a kid." jot thrown right out the window.  I wasn't so much the fact that he replaced the bulb or that he thought them dieing was interesting because once again that doesn't seem too strange for that age but the way he writes about it referring to it as an apocalypse that he keeps repeating over and over again and his fixation with watching them realize that there's no hope for them chalked him up as a crazy mad scientist who's going to destroy the world in my book.  Then he said that this wasn't a story about the heartless genocides he committed to tiny aquatic life but instead about swans.  So I added a super in front of crazy.

The story took a turn for the more mellow life of a bird watcher and I was left confused and puzzled as to what was going on to the story.  As I read on I was convinced that he would use a tranquillizer on one or both of the swans and then take them back to his secret lab where he would commit horrible experiments on them while singing Poisoning Pigeons in the Park the entire time.  I have to say I was at least a little surprised when nothing happened but the swans flying away with him describing them in the creepy way mad scientists usually describe the thing that their fixated on being the only reminder of the previous part of the story.  All in all I don't know whether he was trying to sound like a super creepy mad scientist, he really is a super creepy mad scientist, or I'm just over reacting but I will say that if the world is ever destroyed by genetically modified man eating swan algae hybrids, I warned you.

post 9

While reading through The Best of Betty I had several questions as to what it actually is.  My first question was whether or not it was just a short story or was there an actual Dear Betty of some kind and this is a the best of compilation of it?  Secondly if this is a compilation of Dear Betty's and not a short story how long did it span or at least what was the time frame of The Best of Betty pieces?  Another big question I had in the event that Dear Betty was real is was it fictional piece of work or was there actually a Betty who wrote for a newspaper at some point?  I also have several other questions about it but those three were the only ones that had any real significance over how I viewed the work.

The Best of Betty show a transition in Betty's mood throughout the pieces.  The first few pieces show Betty as a little snarky  but she also has a cheery feel behind it that gives the sense that she is trying to give helpful advice but she is very blunt about it.  As the pieces continue her cheerfulness goes away and she begins to riff on the people who write to her.  In last few pieces she begins to express the fact that she's upset about the many problems in her life and her last response makes me feel like she's starting to realize that she has to pull through the stress.