Henry Kraatz's Blog

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I Love Shrek, It's a Great Film, Please Watch Shrek

Dreamworks’ Shrek is one of my favorite films. (If you haven’t seen it, spoiler alert, don’t read this post. Drop everything and watch it in its entirety.) There are many reasons I like Shrek so much, not the least of which is the memes that it is the subject of. The film has more to it than a few meme-able moments, however. The characters in Shrek are well-developed and three-dimensional. They challenge the archetypes of fairytale characters. For example, the main protagonist who rescues the princess is not a generic “prince charming,” but rather an ogre named Shrek. The prince, Lord Farquad, on the other hand, is comically short and has bad facial hair. The viewer, however, is allowed to see past the exteriors of these characters. In a famous scene, Shrek states that, “ogres are like onions.” Shrek has layers: beneath his mean, ugly exterior is a lonely soul with emotions just like us. Lord Farquad, the prince, has layers as well: beneath his princely ext

Why I Do Dumb Stuff All The Time

If you go to Uni, you’ve probably had the experience of seeing me do something stupid. You may have thought to yourself, “Why did he do that? Has he no shame?” In reverse order, the answers to those questions are: I have no shame, and I probably did it on a dare. It would take forever to list every development that led me to become the idiot I am today, but I will try to explain some of it in one post. I used to get annoyed at my little brother. Sometimes there would be real annoyances, like when we first shared a room. He refused to sleep unless a light was on, and he constantly asked me nonsensical questions like, “what are tigers for?” Other times I’d get very angry over small things he did. If he chewed with his mouth open, refused to blow his nose, or talked too loudly around me, it could send me into a screaming fit. I don’t know exactly why I had such issues with him. Maybe the small things he did annoyed me so much because my parents would let him get away with them while

My Wonderful Weekend

Most of you have probably had the experience of losing something important. Maybe it was your wallet, your phone, or your dad’s car keys. You went through all the stages: first the initial realization when your heart drops into your stomach, then the panic, and finally the frantic searching. Perhaps fewer of you have had the experience of having something important stolen. In some ways, it is better to have something stolen. Instead of taking responsibility for your irresponsibility, you can pin all the blame on someone else. Your feelings of guilt and shame for having done something so stupid can turn into anger towards someone else. It’s always easier to fault other people than it is to fault yourself. As nice as blame-shifting is, having something stolen from you is also much worse than losing something in a few obvious ways. The tried-and-true method of retracing your steps will no longer work since you do not know whose steps to retrace. It’s harder to r

I'm sorry meme man

Today I have a confession to make. I was mean to a person who really did not deserve it. At the time I didn’t realize what I was doing or the effect it had on him. I may have even thought I was right to bully him. Looking back now, however, I see that I was just being a dick for no reason. I know I wasn’t the only person bullying this man, because I jumped on a bullying-bandwagon. Recent events would lead me to believe I’m not the only person who is looking back, horrified at their actions. To explain how this all started, first I have to talk about memes. You may have seen a meme. It’s often a funny image with a relatable caption, but especially in recent years memes reached far beyond this specific example. Memes have become obtuse, abstract, and even surreal. They are no longer about being relatable to the everyday human experience. Typically the only way to “get” this kind of meme is if you were there at the beginning. In other words, memes have become a big, stupid inside joke

Cough Syrup Man

Last week I read Mariano’s blog post about how riding the bus was a terrible experience saved only by an amazing bus driver. I realized that my first experience had been nearly the opposite; it was an amazing time tarnished only by the bus driver. Maybe I’m being too harsh on the man, after all we barely noticed him most of the time and he was only human. I’ll let you judge him yourself. For some context, this was when I was in 8 th grade in England. I had never ridden the bus before since I used to live close to my school. This new school was pretty far from my house so I had to take the public bus. Going to a new school in a foreign country was terrifying, but the other kids on the bus took me in. As we spent more time together, we became best friends. I would often dread school, but the bus ride there and the bus ride home were highlights of my day. We would sit either in the very back of the bus or on the top deck (yes they were double-decker buses) an

August 30th: Soundcloud Rap

On Tuesday night I had a very vivid dream. I remembered the premise of the dream after I woke up, along with a few details. This is rare for me, so I knew it must be an important dream. In my dream, the rapper Lil Pump died. He did not die of a drug overdose, a murder, or anything so sudden. He died of cancer over a period of several months. Everyone was overcome with sadness. People all over the world came together to support him and his family, whether they had been fans of his music or not. When I woke up, I had to google him to make sure his Wikipedia page was still in the present tense. I exhaled deeply in relief when the search results said he had been arrested for driving without a license and not that he had died tragically. As the day went on, I took a step back to consider why this had been so important to me. I had never cared or even thought much about Lil Pump before. Besides that, I thought his music was terrible. I came to two realizations about what my dream meant