3/31/20 Henry Chen Pd 2

Henry Chen, Blogger #7 3/31/20 Gods, Monsters, and the Apocalypse (Period 2) - What is it like working from home? As it stands now, online learning is working wonders for me. Since the school day has been cut short, and I don't need to spend time commuting to school, I have much more free time. Furthermore, the structure of most online lessons fits my style of learning and allows me to work at my own pace. In general, the school day has become much more relaxing for me. In many cases, I can interact with classmates and teachers during classes, so my state of "quarantine" has not significantly deterred input from other sources of thought.  Initially, I had a slight fear of having to transition to online courses, predicting that I would never make it on time to classes and that my work ethic would suffer. Neither has become a serious issue now. Since physical movement to/between classrooms has become irrelevant, making it to class on time is quite trivial. And because teachers allot generous amounts of time to students for assignments, much of my work ends up complete one way or another.  Although I must say, my home is not the ideal environment for physical exercises.  - Your own personal feelings and thoughts about what is happening right now.  I don't completely understand the prevailing obsession with hoarding toilet paper. I use toilet paper, napkins, and the like at alarming rates, but I mostly attribute that to germaphobia and OCD, and the rates haven't changed as a result of  the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus. I imagined that other people wouldn't care as much about toilet paper supplies as I did, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  Logically, a hoarder should seek out goods that will eventually become unavailable to them. As such, the stockpiling of toilet paper might seem reasonable at first glance, since people will eventually be unwilling to leave the house (and expose themselves to the virus) just to buy toilet paper. However, not going out essentially bars you from buying anything, so hoarders' focus on toilet paper doesn't make much sense. A person might also accumulate items that would help them combat a threat in the future. In this situation, such items would offer defense against or relief from the coronavirus, like surgical masks and hand sanitizer do. No type of toilet paper out there does either. I'm sure of it. The only other reasons (that I can think of off the top of my head) for a person to hoard would be to ensure survival or the preservation of lifestyle. The former can be ruled out. You can't eat toilet paper. The latter might make sense, but it would imply that people really do use toilet paper so quickly that they have no choice but to stockpile.  But, as many have already said, people don't actually need all those rolls--or at least those who hoard. Seems people want to act, in any way possible, to fight the pandemic, and obtaining toilet paper is the most popular option. After all, buying a roll of toilet paper is easy enough, right? I do miss the good old days, when people didn't enter mortal combat or commit armed theft over paper.  Toilet paper is the future. Throw away your dollar bills and coins and digital money. It's a smart idea to stay ahead.  - Write about your thoughts regarding the reading. It took me a bit, but I noticed that Claudia never goes through any sort of ritual to complete her transformation into a vampire. She simply draws blood from Lestat and becomes undead. That bothers me, since I always thought the murder involved in Louis's ritual was invariably necessary for one to transform themselves. To me, it is his rejection of humanity (through killing) that actually turns Louis from a mortal into an unholy creature. Claudia does no such thing, and though that results in some interesting character growth (as Lestat forces her into a life she doesn't accept), it makes Louis's whole ordeal seem a bit unnecessary.  So why does Louis despise his existence more than Claudia and Lestat do theirs? One could argue that he regrets having taken all the lives he did, but that regret, to me, is largely absent in his own description of his thought processes  in Part I. If anything, Claudia and Lestat should be the self-loathing ones, since they didn't even make the choice to become vampires and are still subject to the dark implications of their undead state. I suppose the reason they aren't is  because one was a child, likely with little moral education, before transforming and the other feels little for those he kills. My theory: Louis is simply in self-denial, as Lestat suggests. He doesn't understand that, deep down, he's fine with taking lives to satiate his thirst. After all, he lost his morality when he was still a human and participated in the murder of the overseer. All those thoughts he has about his nature and sins are empty. All that drivel about suffering to live must be, since we know he fears death. Deep down, he's just as evil as Lestat, and he should either accept it or die. What will he do? Become like Dio? Pull a Straizo? Or perhaps continue to sulk like Edward? I'll have to wait and see.