1A Agenda 9-6-17: Cooked Lesson 2, Denial, Signal Phrases, Comma Splices

Essay #1: Based on Cooked by Jeff Henderson: Due 9/18/2017

Choose one of the Following 

Choice A

Apply the wisdom of Arthur C. Brooks’ essay “Love People, Not Pleasure” to develop a thesis that analyzes the personal transformation of Jeff Henderson rendered in his memoir Cooked.

Suggested Outline:

Paragraph 1: Summarize Brooks’ essay in 250 words.

Paragraph 2: Summarize Henderson’s memoir in 250 words.

Paragraph 3: Your thesis that shows how Henderson’s transformation illustrated Brooks’ ideas: 150 words. (650 subtotal)

Paragraphs 4-8 will support your thesis with 150 words each for 750 words and 1,400 subtotal.

Paragraph 9, your conclusion, will restate your thesis in dramatic form.

Choice B

A wise man once said that when we think we're rising in life, we're really falling and when we think we're falling, we're really rising. In a 6-page essay, apply this wisdom, in all of its psychological complexity, to Jeff Henderson's journey and compare to someone from a personal interview.  Use blog, book, and personal interview for your sixth page, your Works Cited page.

You can use the same outline for Choice A for Choice B except for your first paragraph you will write a personal narrative of a time you thought you were rising when you were really falling and vice versa.

Sample Thesis Statements

The wisdom from Arthur C. Brooks' essay is illustrated by Jeff Henderson's journey from misery to redeemed soul evidenced by _________________, _________________, _______________,_________________, and ________________________. 

The wise man's rising-falling paradox applies to Jeff Henderson's hell-to-heaven journey evidenced by ___________________, _________________, _________________, ____________________, and ______________________. 

 

To understand the wise man's saying in the context of Jeff Henderson's memoir, we must focus on Henderson's character arc from immature hustler to mature man evidenced by a radical re-defining of happiness, the drive to put family over selfish needs, the need to take an account of one's misdeeds in order to clear a path for redemption, __________________, and ______________________. 

Arthur C. Brooks' essay complements the memoir Cooked in five major ways, which include ___________________, ________________, _______________, _________________, and ___________________. 

What is the hero myth? 

We must begin with our hero mired in a world of banality and mediocrity; our hero is overcome with ennui on one hand and wanderlust on the other. “If only I could get out of his boring, monotonous hell hole.” 

Then there’s a trigger event, a visitor, a crisis, some kind of catalyst that sets things in motion. 

Sometimes the hero’s talents are called upon but he says, “Screw this, I’m going to stay in my apartment, drink beer, eat apple pie, and watch cartoons.” He is the archetype of the reluctant hero. In this case, the crisis escalates until the hero is forced to take on an effective and urgent action. 

When the hero embarks upon his quest, be it self-discovery, the conquering of evil, or whatever the case may be, he or she is often accompanied by a companion, a helper, which can take the form of a wise man, a witch, an elf, a homunculus, a mysterious visage, a ghost, a shadow figure, an officemate, a long-lost friend, a former enemy, etc. This person becomes a sort of mentor, helping deliver the hero from his tangle of confusion and unreason. 

Then the hero must transport into a special world where he undergoes a radical transformation from ordinary to unordinary. He may become Other Worldly, Super Human, or remarkable in some other way. 

However, the hero cannot undergo this transformation without being subjected to a series of greater and greater hurdles and obstacles that test his character. 

Along the hero’s journey, he must hit rock bottom, languishing in despair, self-doubt, and perhaps outright nihilism, concluding that he is a loser and that the world is too evil a place to attempt to impose any meaning or goodness on it. 

During this “black moment,” however, the hero finds a spark that “gets him off his butt.” He somehow finds his special power, perhaps with the help of his mentor, that resurrects him from his spiritual death and with his rebirth and can now “seize the treasure,” whatever that treasure may be. (Before we go on, let us recognize that this hero motif informs every folk legend, myth, and religious fable known to the human race because the hero motif is universal.) 

Once the hero acquires the treasure, whatever that might be, he must now return home, but not without a chase from his opposition. In movies, this is often the third-act chase scene. 

At the conclusion of the hero story, we must see that our hero is a changed person, wiser, smarter, and stronger than before. Along with this transformation, we find our hero is now re-integrated into society. 

Henderson's memoir also contains the healing myth. 

We begin with our hero crushed by a broken spirit. He is a broken person. He may want to die or at least he has lost the will to live and the will to assert whatever talents cause him to flourish in this world. 

Then the hero suffers some kind of outer or existential wound that incapacitates him and forces him to confront his brokenness in a radically different way. I once spoke to a student from the Caribbean who said they have a folk story that says this: We are going along in our life on auto pilot, not really examining what we are doing, but eventually we get a surprise visit from the bald muscle giant who ambushes us and forces us into a wrestling match. We come away from the wrestling match with some kind of limp or injury, but in nursing our injury we rebuild our lives in a way that makes it superior to the lives we had before we had our encounter with the giant. Only when we try to heal from our wound, which has become so life defining that we can no longer ignore it, do we begin the process of transformation and healing.

Jeff Henderson's Fall Results in Too Much Denial 

Some Denial Is Necessary for Sanity, But Too Much Denial Leads to Insanity and Moral Dissolution 

We need a certain amount of denial to be sane. For example, we should not face the raw, bald reality of our most egregious personal defects and weaknesses.

Otherwise, we'll be bogged down in the paralysis of self-obsession and self-loathing and we would be worthless. Let's say we're not as kind as we'd like to be.

We can't go around muttering to ourselves, "I lack the milk of human kindness" over and over. Otherwise, we'll go insane.

Another example is ugly photographs of you. I'm talking about photographs that make you look so ugly you cringe and wince with disbelief.

Photographers say most of us are more photogenic on our left side.

THROW THOSE UGLY PHOTOS AWAY NOW! Before people put them on the internet.

If you walk around life with an image of yourself based on the ugliest photographs ever taken of you, you'll never leave the house; you'll never get a date; you'll die lonely.

Try to focus on the more flattering photographs of yourself.

Is this a form of delusion? Maybe. But it's a good delusion, one that preserves your sanity.

A personal example: I hate the sound of my voice when someone plays it back on a tape recorder.

Solution?

I DON'T LISTEN TO MY RECORDED VOICE.

Otherwise, I'll reel in self-disgust.

Take peanut butter as another example. It's full of cockroach parts, but we eat it without thinking about that disgusting fact. 

Or when we eat meat. Few of us contemplate the agony the animals suffered to become meat on our plate. 

Or cheap clothing. It's cheap because underage children are making it in a third-world country at slave wages. Still enjoying your Gap T-shirt?

To a certain degree, self-delusions are necessary. Otherwise, we don't do much. We'll criticize every move we make.

Fly to a green summit on who to reduce the world's carbon footprint and the private jet you take is blowing carbons into the atmosphere. 

Another example is natural disasters. Even though an earthquake, a tsunami or some other disaster can destroy us in the blink of an eye, we have to live our lives as if we have a good shot of living a full, healthy life. Otherwise, we'll be paralyzed by fear.

So we all engage in some denial to some degree.

Taking Denial Too Far

But there is a point where denial no longer preserves our sanity, that denial goes too far and plummets us into the depths of illusion completely disconnected to reality.

We see people on American Idol who think they have the talent to be superstar singers.

Such is the fate of successful drug dealer Jeff Henderson who believes, one, he's invincible and, two, he isn't doing anything wrong: He's just a businessman.

 Sometimes When We Think We're "Rising," We're Really in Denial

Examples of Denial

 

1. A woman sees gradual warning signs that her boyfriend is jealous and controlling, but she denies it and before she knows it, she is in the chapel about to give her vows, what will be for her a prison sentence of unbearable hell: physical beatings and psychological abuse.
2. A man is a major drug dealer but minimizes the harm of his actions by telling everyone he is not a drug user, a gang-banger, or a killer. He’s just a “business man.”
3. A man doesn't believe he has a snoring problem until his wife plays him a tape-recording of his sleep apnea.
4. A man cheats on his girlfriend, convinces her that he did not cheat and has a hard time “forgiving” his girlfriend for questioning his fidelity.
5. An El Camino student hangs out with college dropout buddies who never really grew up. Their lives center on “having a good time,” which is the usual fare of male bonding, bragging about their endless series of immature relationships, gossiping about their latest exploits, etc. This student can’t acknowledge that his “buddies” are emotional retards distracting him from his more important goals, such as succeeding in college. Even more disturbing, he fails to admit that his “buddies” are haters who want him to fail because crabs always pinch the top crab straddling the bucket and pull the crab back in before it can escape.

Two. The Causes of Denial

1. When you lie to yourself enough times, you begin to believe that your lie is a truth. This is the beginning of insanity.
2. When your whole life becomes a collection of lies that you’ve convinced yourself are truths, you are walking on Planet Earth with your head up your butt.
3. Denial is also brought upon by the gradual worsening of a situation. You acclimate to gradual developments so that you don’t see what is happening to you or your don’t want to see it. We can call this Suffering Acclimation. The pain is so gradual we can get used to it.
4. Acclimation allows you to adapt to an extreme situation so that it doesn't seem extreme to you. Making $100,000 a month in easy money isn’t normal to us, but it was normal to Jeff Henderson during his drug dealing days. In other words, craziness becomes the “new normal.”
5. Denial is caused by the ego, which says, “These things can’t be happening because of me. I’m essentially a good person. I don’t deserve this.” Such is Jeff Henderson’s position during his initial arrest and imprisonment.
6. When the ego embraces denial to escape personal accountability, the result is nihilism, the death of morals and meaning. In other words, “you don’t give a damn about anything.” That’s nihilism. See page 110 in which Jeff Henderson says he doesn’t care about anything. He doesn’t want to get his life together. He just wants to lift weights and “kick it” with his homies. That’s nihilism.
7. When you're surrounded by sycophants, they tell you what you want to hear, not the truth, so you live in a bubble of denial.

Jeff Henderson interview with Tavis Smiley (about 11 minutes)    

Writing an Introduction About Your Personal Struggle with Denial  

I’ve been working out most of my life. As a kid I remember family and friends looking at photographs of Arnold Schwarzenegger and other bodybuilders and exclaiming how “gross” and “freakish” these “muscle men” were. In contrast, I thought these bodybuilders looked normal. From my point of view, it was the average guy, a tomato with four toothpicks sticking out it, who looked woeful.

At 13, I was a Junior Olympic Weightlifting champion. At 19, I took second place in Mr. Teenage San Francisco. I know the confidence and satisfaction that results from looking muscular and lean and I know, ever since my metabolism slowed down in my early thirties, the chagrin and displeasure of having a Pillsbury Dough Boy coat of flab over my frame.

No time did I experience this humiliation more than in the summer of 2003 at the age of 42. My wife Carrie and I were walking back from the brunch buffet at the Sheraton Inn in Kauai where I had just ingested a 7,000-calorie breakfast of macadamia nut pancakes, French toast made with Hawaiian sweet bread, turkey sausage patties, and scrambled eggs with melted cheddar all washed down with several tall glasses of freshly-squeezed orange juice. As I strutted my 259-pounds outside the buffet room and past a hotel window, I saw the reflection of a portly gentleman, dressed in safari shorts and a turquoise tank top, which sported the striking image of the iconic sea turtle. This unsightly man I gazed upon looked like the stereotype of an overfed American.

I walked closer toward the bloated image and I was overcome by the shock and anxiety that the reflection was not some other guy for whom I could judge with gleeful ridicule but was me. I was that dude, the type of person whom I had mocked and scorned most of my life.

This was a huge moment for me, what literary people might call an “epiphany,” and I was fortunate to have experienced it. Most people are denied, or deny themselves, such moments of clarity. It is my belief that something like 95% of the human race walks around Planet Earth with their heads up their butts and this is how they die—never knowing what the hell is really going on. But on that summer day in Kauai when I saw that the corpulent man in the window was, in fact, me, my head uncorked from my butt and I was able to see reality for what it really was. And this reality—me being a chubster—was totally unacceptable. Something had to be done.

Jeff Henderson, too, suffers from having his head up his butt as he denies the evil of his "business endeavor," that of a silver-tongued drug dealer. We see that denial was just one factor that descended him deeper and deeper into a life of crime and made him believe that when he was rising, he was actually sinking. Conversely, when he thought he was sinking, he was actually rising. . . .

 

 

 

 

Review Major Points of Cooked Essay Options 

Choice A

Apply the wisdom of Arthur C. Brooks’ essay “Love People, Not Pleasure” to develop a thesis that analyzes the personal transformation of Jeff Henderson rendered in his memoir Cooked.

Suggested Outline:

Paragraph 1: Summarize Brooks’ essay in 250 words.

Paragraph 2: Summarize Henderson’s memoir in 250 words.

Paragraph 3: Your thesis that shows how Henderson’s transformation illustrated Brooks’ ideas: 150 words. (650 subtotal)

Paragraphs 4-8 will support your thesis with 150 words each for 750 words and 1,400 subtotal.

Paragraph 9, your conclusion, will restate your thesis in dramatic form.

Choice B

A wise man once said that when we think we're rising in life, we're really falling and when we think we're falling, we're really rising. In a 6-page essay, apply this wisdom, in all of its psychological complexity, to Jeff Henderson's journey and compare to someone from a personal interview.  Use blog, book, and personal interview for your sixth page, your Works Cited page.

You can use the same outline for Choice A for Choice B except for your first paragraph you will write a personal narrative of a time you thought you were rising when you were really falling and vice versa.

Major Points of Arthur C. Brooks' "Love People, Not Pleasure"

One. People who have attained the highest pleasure possible have failed to find much happiness.

Two. Avoiding unhappiness is not the point of life. It is natural, even for happy people, to have strong levels of unhappiness because unhappiness is not the opposite of happiness. Both can occur simultaneously. 

Three. Pleasure is addictive. Addiction creates isolation, fear, and dependence. These things create misery, which far outweighs any happiness the addict may find. 

Four. Pleasure is a foolish substitute for connection and meaning, resulting in compelling us to use and manipulate other for our own ends (worship of pleasure is called hedonism).

Five. Self-curating on social media is a life of self-absorbed vanity, a form of addiction of its own, which results in depression.

Six. Jeff Henderson soaring the heights of pleasure, money, and privilege is a prime example of someone who thinks he is flying when he is really crashing. 

Seven. Jeff Henderson is not only unhappy; he doesn't even know he's unhappy. That is the greatest kind of unhappiness of all. 

 

About 80% of your essay should be your writing and 20% should be quoted, paraphrased, and summarized material.

4 Steps of MLA In-Text Citations

You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.

Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase. Use the templates:

Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.

Verbs in Signal Phrases

According to . . . (very common)

Ha Jin writes . . . (very common)

Panbin laments . . .

Dan rages . . .

Dan seethes . . .

Signal Phrase Templates

In the words of researchers Redelmeier and Tibshirani, “…”

As Matt Sundeen has noted, “…”

 Patti Pena, the mother of a child killed by a driver distracted by a cell phone, points out that “…”

 “…” writes Christine Haughney, “…”

 “…” claims wireless spokesperson Annette Jacobs.

Radio hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi offer a persuasive counterargument:  “…”

Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.

Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material. 

Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).

In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).

Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis. 

 

 

Comma Splices

A comma splice is joining two sentences with a comma when you should separate them with a period or a semicolon. 

Incorrect

People love Facebook, however, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy. 

Corrected

People love Facebook. However, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy. 

Corrected

Though people love Facebook, they fail to realize Facebook is sucking all their energy. 

Incorrect

Patience is difficult to cultivate, it grows steadily only if we make it a priority. 

Corrected

Patience is difficult to cultivate. It grows steadily only if we make it a priority. 

Corrected

Because patience grows within us so slowly, patience is extremely difficult to cultivate. 

You can use a comma between two complete sentences when you join them with a FANBOYS word or coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).

Correct

People love Facebook, but they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy. 

Student Comma Splices Part One (the second sentence feels like a continuation of thought from the first sentence, which it is, but it still requires a period before it) 

1. My department decided to set up another office for me to do my work, I was no longer sitting out front like the permanent receptionist.
2. The permanent receptionist never spoke to anyone in the offices, he just answered phones.
3. He said, “You have a few choices, they need a coordinator at the new jobsite or working the business side as a coordinator.”
4. I was lucky, many opportunities came to me and now I had the required experience to get the job I wanted.
5. There was no stopping me, all my achievements were completed on my own.
6. I was promoted quickly, I went from coordinator to senior executive within a few months.
7. The drug dealing lifestyle was insatiable to Jeff Henderson, he believed he could elude the feds.
8. Our methods paralleled, my method was legal, his was illegal.
9. Jeff Henderson rose to the top of his game, he had established his fortune.

10. Jeff Henderson had no choice, it was either work or stay confined in his prison cell.

11. She was going to marry her high school sweetheart, what better way to spend the rest of your life in bliss?

12. He asked me to marry him, he was a Marine after all stationed in Japan.

13. Her life was finally beginning, she could leave Los Angeles.

14. This was her life, she did what she wanted.

15. Now she had nothing, she had given up her job to move overseas.

16. Life was too much of a challenge, she accepted that fact. 

To Avoid Comma Splices, Know the Difference Between Coordinating Conjunctions (FANBOYS) and Conjunctive Adverbs  

Examples

Jerry ate ten pizzas a week. Nonetheless, he remained skinny. 

Jerry ate ten pizzas a week, but he remained skinny. 

Barbara didn't buy the BMW. Instead, she bought the Acura. 

Barbara didn't buy the BMW, yet she did buy the Acura. 

Steve wasn't interested in college. Moreover, he didn't want to work full-time. 

Steve wasn't interested in college, and he didn't want to work full-time.

I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me. However, I do want you to help me do my taxes. 

I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do want you to help me do my taxes. 

I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do, however, want you to help me do my taxes. 

I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid. Consequently, I think we should break up. 

I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid, so I think we should break up. 

Students hate reading. Therefore, they must be tested with closed-book reading exams. 

Students hate reading, so they must be tested with closed-book reading exams. 

Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons 

Fused (run-on) sentence

Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.

She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.

A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.

Comma Splice

I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.

We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.

A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because or restructure the sentence.

After each sentence put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct. 

One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner. 

Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer. 

Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain. 

Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem. 

Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline. 

Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham. 

Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books. 

Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May. 

Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world. 

Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless. 

Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus. 

Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office. 

Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack. 

Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.