DNA kits
An ethical question[ is whether someone else has any right to own another's DNA, which a 2013 court ruling prohibited in the United States.
DNA kits
An ethical question[ is whether someone else has any right to own another's DNA, which a 2013 court ruling prohibited in the United States.
this lava pit
We're already killing your kids
Line 102 of our shared copy.
ochre

as an E.S.L. student from a family of illiterate rice farmers,
Here are the student demographics from Spring 2022 Semester at EVC
Surrendering
Why would Vuong entitle their article/essay so? What does this word mean in relation to the essay's contents?
I didn't understand anything on this page! Nicholas G.
dogs
I like dogs!
THE SKINNY WOMAN WHO IS BEAUTIFUL AND TONED BUT ALSO GLUTTONOUS AND DISGUSTING
One need look no further than 2001's Shallow Hal for an embodiment of our nation's obsession with stereotyping (a harmful type of classification thinking), or prejudging based on body image.
(Josh Lucas. Is that his name? I know it’s two first names. Josh George? Brad Mike? Fred Tom? Yes, it’s Fred Tom.)
What is the purpose of this section of this paragraph?
Vulcans
Allusive: where do Vulcans appear?
Katherine Heigl
Ripley from Alien
allusive: the scene that gave us mechsuit fervor, maybe?
2011
Bonus content: read Sinead O'Connor's open letter to Miley Cyrus. How does she write of fame and control?
And so we have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow. I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.
Is it obscene? What do you think, angel/reader?
Asking that my name be removed from your biography is not sabotaging your career.
Notice a direct addressing of the reader here, as if she knows the subject will read her blog post.
This person has created a space in which social media followers have – and this I find unforgiveable – trivialized my parents’ death, claiming that the sudden and devastating loss of my parents within months of each other during this pandemic, was ‘punishment’ for my ‘transphobia.’ This person has asked followers to pick up machetes and attack me. This person began a narrative that I had sabotaged their career, a narrative that has been picked up and repeated by others.
Grounds/data/evidence
ugliness of the energy
bad vibes!
ungracious tone
Does tone actually matter?
d not been asked for permission to use my name,
If someone did this to you--used your name without getting your approval--say as a reference on a resume, how would you feel?
After I gave the March 2017 interview in which I said that a trans woman is a trans woman, I was told that this person had insulted me on social media, calling me, among other things, a murderer.
What is the argument belying this ad hominem?
P1: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie declares a trans woman is trans woman P2: Labeling trans women in such a way promotes physical violence that leads to murder against people who identify this way. Conclusion: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a murderer
You can call your opportunism by any name
The name can be changed, but the essence is the same: https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-doublespeak.html
fame taints our view of the humanity of famous people
How do you relate to people of fame? Are there any celebrities you stan? Why? If you met them, what would you talk about with them?
I hope mothering X is everything you hoped and prayed for and more.
Mothering: a gender-limited set of skills?
noxious
noxious vs. nauseated (look it up!)
I fully support the rights of trans people and all marginalized people.
Why do we lump trans people into the categorization "marginalized?" What other communities could fall under this umbrella term?
Then I gave an interview in March 2017 in which I said that a trans woman is a trans woman, (the larger point of which was to say that we should be able to acknowledge difference while being fully inclusive, that in fact the whole premise of inclusiveness is difference.)
The debate:
Is a trans woman a trans woman or a woman? Should we refer to the woman first as we do when referring to other ways of existing (often uncontrollable), such as melanin production? Why do some people argue that a trans woman (likely assigned male at birth) is a woman or not in the first place?
feminism
Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it, as Jonathan Swift wrote.
silence makes a lie begin to take on the shimmer of truth.
When is it better to speak up to defend your reputation, and when is it better to stay quiet?
people will write and say false things about you.
It's not untrue: many big time celebrities have won cases against people.
THREE PARTS
In art, three-panel paintings or images are called triptychs.
OBSCENE
ob-- word-forming element (prefix) meaning "toward; against; before; near; across; down"
obscene-- Legally, "any impure or indecent publication tending to corrupt the mind and to subvert respect for decency and morality." In modern U.S. law, the definition hinged on "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest."
As for the young women at the New Jersey clinic, they are visibly upset by one aspect of the egg-donation process: they can’t have sexual intercourse for several weeks after the retrieval.
A con
And the market continues to zip along.
https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/us-egg-donation-market.html
female fetuses as a source of donor eggs.
One day, donors may not even have to have lived.
What fallacy does this sound like?
the family.
a value: what does family mean to you?
Center for Surrogate Parenting and Egg Donation
Unfortunately, the future looks bright for the egg market.
Tone!
transaction is only “a slightly macabre version of adoption.”
Metaphor anatomy: vehicle and tenor
Vehicle: Adoption Tenor: Egg donation compensation
“If it is unethical to accept payment for loving your neighbor, then we’ll have to stop paying baby-sitters.”
What fallacy is evident here?
More recently, women past menopause have begun to make use of this technology.)
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/09/10/oldest-mom
It was twenty years ago this summer that the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born.
Some infertile couples and independent brokers are offering even more for “reproductive material.” The International Fertility Center in Indianapolis, Indiana, for instance, places ads in the Daily Princetonian offering Princeton girls as much as $35,000 per cycle. The National Fertility Registry, which, like many egg brokerages, features an online catalogue for couples to browse in, advertises $35,000 to $50,000 for Ivy League eggs. While donors are normally paid a flat fee per cycle, there have been reports of higher payments to donors who produce more eggs. College girls are the perfect donors. Younger eggs are likelier to be healthy, and the girls themselves frequently need money—college girls have long been susceptible to classified ads offering to pay them for acting as guinea pigs in medical research. One 1998 graduate of the University of Colorado set up her own website to market her eggs. She had watched a television show on egg donation and figured it “seemed like a good thing to do”—especially since she had spent her money during the past year to help secure a country music record deal. “Egg donation would help me with my school and music expenses while helping an infertile couple with a family.” Classified ads scattered throughout cyberspace feature similar offers.
https://www.supermoney.com/how-much-do-you-get-for-donating-eggs/
But it’s good money—and getting better.
Pro
It is not a pleasant way to make money. Unlike sperm donation, which is over in less than an hour, egg donation takes the donor some 56 hours and includes a battery of tests, ultrasound, self-administered injections, and retrieval. Once a donor is accepted into a program, she is given hormones to stimulate the ovaries, changing the number of eggs matured from the usual one per month up to as many as fifty. A doctor then surgically removes the eggs from the donor’s ovary and fertilizes them with the designated sperm. Although most programs require potential donors to undergo a series of medical tests and counseling, there is little indication that most of the young women know what they are getting themselves into. They risk bleeding, infection, and scarring. When too many eggs are matured in one cycle, it can damage the ovaries and leave the donor with weeks of abdominal pain. (At worst, complications may leave her dead.) Longer term, the possibility of early menopause raises the prospect of future regret. There is also some evidence of a connection between the fertility drugs used in the process and ovarian cancer.
Cons
o forbid, warn, suggest, and persuade.
C koi la difference?
sagacious
a: of keen and farsighted penetration and judgment : DISCERNING sagacious judge of character
b: caused by or indicating acute discernment sagacious purchase of stock
obsolete : keen in sense perception
Demon,
Here's a link to the etymology of this word, which is actually quite an intriguing read! But don't take my word for it.
[1864]
It's worth brushing up on your memories from this year, don't you think?
they are all dethroned kings.
Have you heard of people calling their friends King or Queen? Ever heard "yass queeeeen!" Here's an article you might read.
the books fashionable at that time (sixteen or seventeen years ago)
Bring it to the present: what books are "fashionable" now? 16-17 years ago?
prose poem
Did Charles Baudelaire invent the prose poem?
Let's Beat Up the Poor
If this is the title, what can you expect about the tone and speaker of the poem?
[citation needed]
Let's find it!
November 7 – The capital of Idaho Territory is moved from Lewiston to Boise; North Idaho declares the move illegal, and proposes secession.
That time when North Idaho tried to secede! :P
a threadof vital light
An interesting visualization of what the French call "l'essence de vivre," or the essence of life/living.
a quee
This means strange in this context.
his
The moth has a gender.
bare-backed down
Downs -- (n.) undulating, usually treeless upland with sparse soil —usually used in plural sheep grazing on the grassy downs.
vociferation,
Can you see the beginning of the word vocal in this word?
rooks
Ever seen a rook other than on a chess board?
the share
What do you think Woolf means by "the share?"
benignant,
Have you ever heard of tumors being described as benign?
ga
Remember that this was written during or prior to 1941. This is an excellent example of a word whose semantics have greatly shifted since Woolf's writing it.
y like butterflies
Why would Woolf use this simile? Is it accurate, in your mind?
Hint: the tenor is moths and the vehicle is butterflies.
commonest yel-low-underwing
are not properly to be called moths
Definition by negation
Hi, Professor Goodwin's students! This is a page note--an annotation of the entire webpage. Cool feature, huh? One other cool feature of this is that you can attach images, hyperlinks, lists (bulleted or numbered), as well as make your text bold or italicized.
run a retail company
I want to run my own retail company! Nicholas G.
This is one of Prof. Goodwin's favorite essays that he teaches.
ty sociology departments sho
blah blah blah Nicholas G.
a fat-faced fellow named Obsle. He wasgross, genial, and inquisitive.
Genly meets Obsle
Mr. Ai! Nowhere near it. Tall as astreet-lamp, they said, thin as a sledge-runner, soot-black and slant-eyed—an ice-ogre Iexpected, a monster! Nothing of the kind. Only you're darker than most of us." "Earth-colored," I said.
I slept an hour and woke in the grip of a nightmare about explosions,invasion, murder, and conflagration.
Commence dream-sequence
I sent the Regent a note in which I quoted to him the question I had put to the Foretellers ofOtherhord and the answer I had got. Tibe made no response
Oh, hey!
We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes. The perfection that the human mind has been able to give to astronomy affords but a feeble outline of such an intelligence. (Laplace 1820)
Meshe
hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity,
What other problems should we be attempting to solve as a society?
exhibitions are a distraction that results in pregnancies, dropouts and the contraction of AIDS and herpes.
This is like a because clause--what are the grounds for this type of enthymeme?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/teen-births/teenbirths.htm
it is expected to die.
personification, a type of trope popular in writing.
bawdy
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
“We are not blaming any pharmaceutical company,”
The, perhaps, first impulse would be to blame in such an instance. However, sometimes we must think through blame. Interestingly, you may have never heard of the reason why all pill bottles must, by law, contain childproof seals, but it's a pretty sad story: https://time.com/3423136/tylenol-deaths-1982/
an upset stomach and trouble breathing
I wonder what the medical terminology for these would be.
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
Ascent
The capitalization gives this the status of being a proper noun.
empathy
The golden word!
You mean a live lobster?
Does this make you think of anything? ;)
Maybe a piece we read last week?
Oh, also this is a link to an article about a curious lobster related news item!
https://www.urbo.com/content/your-new-god-worshiping-a-facebook-group-lobster/
Emigrate
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emigrate
A commonly confused term (immigrate/emigrate/migrate)
1968,
A fascinating year!
bored
personification
siren
sirens were from Greek mythology
badinage
humorous or witty conversation.
somnolence
the quality or state of being drowsy : SLEEPINESS
sacerdotal
relating to priests or the priesthood; priestly.
cavil
an objection seen as petty or unnecessary.
N
Personification
pot, but
Here is a comma preceding a coordinating conjunction, or we can just say it's a comma before a FANBOYS separating two independent clauses. GRAMMARBOMB.
Hello, English 001A/101A/101AX students! This is your host with the most, Prof. Goodwin! GO RENEGADES! GO HAWKS!
Password for in-Zoom assignment: Lorca
coolie
A coolie is not what we call people anymore.
euthanize
To kill it/to put to sleep (euphemism)
sands stretch
personification--the sands stretch
Nothing beside remains
Read this two ways with different emphasis--how does it have double meaning, or "double entendre" as the French would have it?
Nothing beside remains
Read this two ways with different emphasis--how does it have double meaning, or "double entendre" as the French would have it?
Nothing beside remains
Read this two ways with different emphasis--how does it have double meaning, or "double entendre" as the French would have it?
sands stretch
personification--the sands stretch
Nothing beside remains
Read this two ways with different emphasis--how does it have double meaning, or "double entendre" as the French would have it?
yet survive
The passions/features survive
well those passions read
can also be read as "read those passions well"
All these features tell this.
visage
Visage - n. the face, countenance, or appearance of a person or sometimes an animal
I
This is indicative of the poem's speaker. It's unclear who it is distinctly, but it's not very distant from the poet himself. Remember that poets don't write poems from their perspectives, necessarily. Often they write from a mask, or persona, or character's point of view.
a gigantic Leg
Both poets were likely inspired by seeing actual statue fragments. When you write poetry based on art, it's called ekphrastic. One famous ekphrastic poem is Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
trunkless
Sometimes what is absent is as poignant as what is there.
aid: T
Notice that the rest of the poem past the colon is relayed via the traveler--a narrative.
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
https://interactive.wttw.com/playlist/2017/08/02/colossal-booboo-incredible-story-chicago-picasso
believe Graham laid an egg.
Of course, it's not literally an egg.
intended
Robert Graham is commissioned to do an Aztec serpent-god statue. He was a Mexican-American artist.
April 14, 1995
I am sure some of you were not yet born, eh? Let's think . . . Clinton was in office; this was five days before the Oklahoma City bombing; the Unabomber was active; congress passed the Child Protection and Obscenity Act; O.J. Simpson was found not guilty for murder . . .
annals
A diction choice that imparts humor:
annals vs. anal
turning California’s forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources.
A carbon sink? Well, a place that all the carbons "sinks" in and is held there. Permafrost is a great example of a carbon sink.
f the Siberian Arctic.
If you recall, we briefly discussed the role of the forests of Siberia in carbon absorption. If each sapling can
rhetoric
anti-conservative bias implemented via shadow bans and rigged algorithms.
Is there bias on social media? Indeed, but it may not be on behalf of the companies--or is it?
founder and CEO of Twitter,
soon fade into a little cry room for the leftists babies who need a safe space from words
The Far Right
Right vs. Left: an ages-old tradition established in the French parliament.
‘Free Speech!’ cry the snowflakes seeking a place to vent about their triggered feelings.
Does this phrasing indicate tone? What are the specific words/places that show how the author may feel about this topic?
echolocation
If you really think about what she's writing here, it's bleak. Essentially, these dying whales cannot see each other and cannot speak to each other.
symphony of echolocation
moon, at the orb that pulled the water out from under its fins
The moon, the murderer!
he knew he was going to die,
"Those whales knew they were dying," she wrote in the earlier part of the essay.
Four hours until high tide
Fragmentary (It was four hours until high tide = ind. clause)
Last year a non-profit spent $10,000 transporting a whale to an aquarium in Florida, where it died only three days after arriving. That same $10,000 could have purchased hundreds of thousands of food rations.
What could you accomplish with $10,000?
When we hear that the lady on the next street over has cancer, we don’t see the entire town flock to her house. We push and shove and wet whales all day, then walk home through town past homeless men curled up on benches — washed up like whales on the curb sides. Pulled outside by the moon and struggling for air among the sewers. They’re suffocating too, but there’s no town assembly line of food. No palpable urgency, no airlifting plane.
Disparities in health outcomes • Life expectancy at birth in low-income countries is 18.1 years lower than in high-income countries. Much of this difference is attributable to preventable and treatable conditions. • In low-income countries, one in 41 women die from maternal causes. Such deaths rarely occur in uppermiddle and high-income countries. Maternal deaths contribute more to differences in life expectancy in low-income countries between men and women than any other single cause. • In low-income countries, more than a third of children are stunted (short for their age), reflecting long- term nutritional deprivation, and one child out of every 14 born will die before his or her fifth birthday. • In 2016, life expectancy in men was 4.4 years lower than for women, with higher death rates for multiple causes, especially cardiovascular diseases, road injuries, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and stroke. Men are generally exposed to increased occupational risks, and have higher prevalence of tobacco use and higher per capita consumption of alcohol. In many settings, men use health services less than women, even after taking into account reproductive-related consultations. The health gap between men and women is widest in high-income countries.
“Free Willie”
Another allusion!

Flipper
And another!

camaraderie
a spirit of friendly good-fellowship
It’s the “My Dog Skip” effect. The “Homeward Bound” syndrome.
How do these two allusions bolster her claim?
imminent
imminent: ready to take place : happening soon
immanent: INDWELLING, INHERENT
eminent: PROMINENT
Intelligence
Moby Dick
Jonah
Margo Schlanger, a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, in her essay "In The Story of Jonah, an Urgent Lesson About Solitary Confinement," retells the Biblical tale to which Keegan refers in the following passage:
Jonah’s first chapter tells us about God’s call to the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh—an enormous, distant, and non-Jewish city—and inform the Ninevites of the errors of their ways. But Jonah does not do what prophets do. He does not answer God in words; he does not inveigh or argue. He simply disobeys, running away as fast and far as he can. He hires a ship to Tarshish, at the other end of the Mediterranean. On the ship, too, Jonah declines the prophetic role of speaking to God. As all the sailors cry out to their gods to save them from the deadly storm that threatens, he sleeps. Even when the lots are cast and it is apparent that he is the source of the storm, he explains to his shipmates what is going on but does not deign to pray, or even talk, to God. He has them throw him into the water, and when he is in the water, drowning, again he fails to seek salvation, intercession, explanation. But then things change, the text tells us: “God appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish.” So we learn from the Book of Jonah the possibility, the aspiration, that stress and discomfort, hopelessness and fear can lead to some kind of redemption. Jonah uses his three days alone with his conscience to good effect. He ends them with obedience in two ways: First, he re-embraces his relationship with God, by calling out in prayer to him. And second, he goes to Nineveh, as commanded.
sheer immensity
Sheer: unqualified, utter Immensity: enormity, massiveness
People are strange about animals. Especially large ones. Daily, on the docks of Wellfleet Harbor, thousands of fish are scaled, gutted and seasoned with thyme and lemon. No one strokes their sides with water. No one cries when their jaws slip open.
Do you agree that "people are strange about animals," as Keegan claims?
Activity!: Respond to the above question by putting a "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" into the Zoom chat!
palpably
I know this because I watched as 23 whale mouths unhinged
Anecdotal evidence.
As 23 pairs of whale eyes glazed over.
An intentional fragment--why do you think Keegan gets away with this?
Although their ancestors lived on land
conscious breathers
Are you consciously breathing now? XD
bathymetry
find their footing
whales are often beached in groups, huddled together in clusters and rows
A scholarly article on bias in reporting MMEs (Mass Mortality Events)
jittery
moon watches
personification
oscillating
Remember this word when we encounter the word vacillating later on in the course ;)
moon pulls waters
personification
Pay Per Article - You may access this article (from the computer you are currently using) for 2 days for US$25.00
Only 25 dollars for 2 days, woo-hoo!
sepsis
discriminate
Personification
centrifugal
Remember "centripetal" from Daisy Fried's poem, "Econo Motel, Ocean City?"
it kills
Personification
worm
Used as a verb
O You——
Ach, du--
Taroc
Taroc = tarocchi (tarot cards)
wars, wars, wars.
Why the repetition?
Frisco

Ach, du
Plath’s father Otto was a German immigrant. This line translates from German to “Oh, you”, sort of like a sigh.
Nauset
![]()
Marble
about 170 lbs per cubic foot
have had
The present perfect form of have is have had.
‘Have you had your breakfast?’ ‘I have had a cup of coffee, but I haven’t had anything to eat yet.’
I haven’t had any rest since morning.
The past perfect form of have is had had (had + past participle form of have).
The food he liked was broughtto him without hesitation by the attendants; he seemed not even to miss his freedom; his noble body,furnished almost to the bursting point with all that it needed, seemed to carry freedom around with it too;somewhere in his jaws it seemed to lurk; and the joy of life streamed with such ardent passion from histhroat that for the onlookers it was not easy to stand the shock of it
Why does Kafka include this sentence about the panther?
Many more days went by, however, and that too came to an end. Anoverseer’s eye fell on the cage oneday and he asked the attendants why this perfectly good cage should be left standing there unused withdirty straw inside it; nobody knew, until one man, helped outby the notice board, remembered about thehunger artist. They poked into the straw with sticks and found him in it. “Are you still fasting?” asked theoverseer, “when on earth do you mean to stop?” “Forgive me, everybody,” whispered the hunger artist;only the overseer, who had his ear to the bars, understood him. “Of course,” said the overseer, and tappedhis forehead with a finger to let the attendants know what state the man was in, “we forgive you.” “I alwayswanted you to admire my fasting,” said the hunger artist. “Wedo admire it,” said the overseer, affably.“But you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger artist. “Wellthen we don’t admire it,” said the overseer,“but why shouldn’t we admire it?” “Because I have to fast, I can’t help it,” said the hunger artist. “What afellow you are,” said the overseer, “and why can’t you help it?” “Because,” said the hunger artist, liftinghis head a little and speaking, with his lips pursed, as if fora kiss, right into the overseer’s ear, so that nosyllable might be lost, “because I couldn’t find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should havemade no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.” These were his last words, but in his dimmingeyes remained the firm though no longer proud persuasion thathe was still continuing to fast.
How is this artist's view toward his art affected by society?
no one, not eventhe artist himself, knew what records he was already breaking
What could have prevented the artist's sad state of being?
obstinate self-assertiveness
What is this?
he could astound theworld by establishing a record never yet achieved, a statement that certainly provoked a smile among theother professionals, since it left out of account the changein public opinion, which the hunger artist in hiszeal conveniently forgot
What, logically, would taking hunger artistry to its extreme entail?
adopting another profession, hewas not only too old for that but too fanatically devoted to fasting
Does this remind you of anyone you know?
on
[one]
And he looked up into theeyes of the ladies who were apparently so friendly and in reality so cruel
Why, do you think, are these ladies considered "cruel?"
there were no limits to his capacity for fasting
Artists, what is the limit you put on yourselves when creating? Why are these limitations important (or not)?
is bet
[his best]
To fight againstthis lack of understanding, against a wholeworld of non-understanding, was impossible
Why does the artist feel this way?
The impresariocame forward, without a word—for the band made speech impossible—lifted his arms in the air above theartist, as if inviting Heaven to look down upon this creaturehere in the straw, this suffering martyr, whichindeed he was, although in quite another sense; grasped him around the emaciated waist, with exaggeratedcaution, so that the frail condition he was in might be appreciated; and committed him to the care of theblenching ladies, not without secretly giving him a shakingso that his legs and body tottered and swayed.
How many sentences do you count in this section?
Why stop fasting at this particular moment, after fortydays of it?
What, if any, significance does 40 days have?
continuous
No one couldpossibly watch the hunger artist continuously, day and night
How has technology allowed this to change?
the honor of his profession
Ethos
have some secret recourse to
have...recourse to = an elevated way to phrase the expression
suallybutchers, strangely enough
What kind of irony is apparent here?
ribs sticking out so prominently
Imagery, appealing to pathos
it was the children’s specialtreat to see the hunger artist
Would you take your children to watch someone starve for entertainment? How much would you pay?
torch flares
A torch--that's something out of Game of Thrones!
effect
Notice the proper use of the noun effect.
season tickets
Have you ever purchased season tickets or a season pass for a team or institution? Did you use them as much as you had intended? Did you purchase them out of pressure from a sales artist? Reflect upon this!
fasting
To fast (verb) - 1 : to abstain from food 2 : to eat sparingly or abstain from some foods