Facebook Friend

If I could be Facebook friends with anyone in the whole world it would definitely be Jesus. I think it would be so awesome because it would make things so much easier! He would be on 24/7 and would be able to talk to you anytime no matter how many other people were talking to him! So if I ever had a problem or didn’t know what to do I could just get on Facebook and chat with him or send him a message and get an immediate answer! It would be so great. And instead of a “like” button it would be a “love” button and he would love all of my pictures and everything because he loves me. He would have positive and encouraging wall posts all of the time, so I could just go to his page and just look at his wall if I were ever feeling down. Of course, this would kind of defeat the purpose of praying and having faith, but it would just be a more straight forward way of doing it. It would be sweet to see a bunch of pictures of him and like his disciples and everything. And yeah, they didn’t have cameras back then, but hey it’s Jesus, he can do anything! Haha. I think it would just be cool to get a very straightforward response because it would make things so less stressful and I could get good advice whenever I wanted. I definitely would love to get a friend request from Jesus!

Rich or Smart?

If I had the choice to be either rich or smart, I think I would choose to be smart. I believe that money isn’t everything in life, and I would hate to be rich but be downright stupid. I feel that if I were to have intelligence, then I would be able to use it to at least have a good amount of money. If you are rich but have no intelligence, then that means you probably would have gotten that way from inheritance. I think that a lot of people who don’t even work hard and have to build up to reach the top lose out on lessons in life. They wouldn’t learn how to work hard for things, which might cause them to be very spoiled and ungrateful for the things they have been given. I’m not saying everyone who is rich is like this, but many are. Also, I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice to have the luxury of being able to buy whatever I felt like and to have a lot of money, but I definitely think my character is more important than anything money could buy. Plus, I wouldn’t want to become so wrapped up with my money and buying material things because, again, that isn’t what is important to me in life. If I could have the best of both worlds and just be rich and smart that would be very nice, but I’m okay with not being rich, but I take pride in my intelligence so that is definitely the one I would choose.

"Tsotsi"

My CST teacher is giving us extra credit for watching a movie and writing a paper about it. She gave us a choice between four different movies, and I ended up picking one called “Tsotsi”. I just got done watching it, so I thought it would be a good one to blog about. Chances are you haven’t heard of it or don’t have any idea what is about because I didn’t either. Tsotsi is an extraordinary movie that portrays the gangster life in the hood of South Africa. The main character, who is known by Tsotsi which means thug or gangster, is the leader of a gang. His age is never mentioned for certain, but he looked to be a boy in his teens. Desperate for money and a sense of power, Tsotsi is willing to go to any lengths necessary to get money from people, even murder. The beginning introduces the characters and allows the audience to get an idea of their personalities, but the plot intensifies when Tsotsi shoots a woman in the process of stealing her car and then realizes that her baby is in it. Tsotsi, an orphan due to his mom dying of AIDS, is not a very loving or caring person. He decides to try and take care of the baby, however, and his character slowly grows as he faces taking care of a baby in the midst of the hood life. Overall, I thought it was an okay movie. I didn’t feel like it had a climax or anything, and it ends kind of strangely. It did a good job, however, at portraying the poverty and crime in South Africa.

I chose Life for my movie evaluation, as about half of the class did, so most of you know what it’s about, but for those who don’t I’ll give a quick summary. Two guys, Ray (Murphy) and Claude (Lawrence), who are from Harlem, New York, are accused of a murdered. Since it is 1932, they aren’t given a fair trial because they are black, so they are sentenced to life in jail. They have to adjust to their life in prison, learn to get along with the inmates, deal with the ruthless guards, and watch many people come and go. They attempt to escape a couple of times, but fail, and end up being in there for 65 years. I’ll leave out how it ends in case anyone wants to see it.
I have never been a big fan of Eddie Murphy; I’ve always found his acting in most of his movies to be over the top and just somewhat annoying. So I wasn’t sure how much I would like this movie, but I liked it more than I thought I would. I think this is the case because Murphy doesn’t play his typical “look at me”, comical character. He actually shares the main role with Lawrence, and he has some moments in the movie that are actually very serious. The movie is considered a comedy, but if you’re looking for a good laugh, I wouldn’t choose this movie. I didn’t think the movie was horrible simply because it was interesting, but I didn’t find it very comical. Yes, it did have its funny parts, but the fact that they were innocently given a life sentence in jail and had to spend their whole lives there was anything but funny. The overall movie wasn’t horrible, but if you’re Murphy fans and are in a mood for a comical movie, I wouldn’t suggest it.

Lady Gaga video

Not only have advertisements become increasingly sexual, music videos have had a turn for the worst as well. Sexual content and the idea of sex are starting to play a big role in recent music videos for popular songs. A main cause for this of course coincides with the fact that lyrics of many popular songs, whether it is straight forward or implied, talk much about sexual ideas or dancing or hooking up with the opposite sex. The music video I decided to analyze is Love Game by Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga is known by many, and there are many different opinions about her circulating throughout the country. Either way, she is popular in the music industry, and is known for her very interesting and unique style. Her music video for this song is definitely out there, but could be very controversial to some for its extreme sexual content.

In the beginning of the video Lady Gaga is dressed a bathing suit type outfit that is very promiscuous, and she is surrounded by several guys who are all dressed in black, all of them have their abs showing, most have alcoholic drinks in their hands, and some of them are grabbing their “stuff” while looking at her like they just want to do her. Throughout the video it flashes to scenes of her completely naked, with her covering her breasts. Nothing is actually shown, but it shows as much as possible. The whole idea to the song is that love is just a game, and she wants to fool around with guys. The men look at her like she is a piece of meat, but the thing that is shown by the video is that she likes it. She wants the attention from all of the men, as she dances and allows any one of them feel her up. In one part of the video one of the men blatantly cops a feel of her breasts, and again, they, including Lady Gaga, feel themselves up. This video portrays the idea that getting attention from several guys by being seductive and sexual is normal. It is definitely influential to many teenagers and young adults, and promotes sexual activity.

My favorite Authors

When I was little, I used to read quite often, but once I got into high school I became extremely busy and just found other things to do in my spare time. I kicked reading to the curb, not seeing any importance or interest in it, but I have decided to start reading recently. But even still, I do not exactly have one favorite author, so I will talk about a few of them. I started reading the Harry Potter series when I was in 4th grade, and I fell in love with the creative and imaginative writings of J.K. Rowling. I love how she creates a fantasy type world, but still makes it seem so realistic. There are 7 books in the Harry Potter series, and there are so many ideas and plots that tie into each other, and she writes in a way that makes you attached and able to envision the characters. Her imagination for the books just leaves me in awe.
Much like the Harry Potter series, I absolutely loved Lemony Snicket’s A series of Unfortunate Events, which include a total of thirteen books! And yes, I have read them all! I love how Snicket makes the books such a mystery, and every time you think you have it all figured out, he throws a twist. It was rarely ever what you expected would happen, and that always kept me on the edge of my seat, wanting to keep reading. He is such a clever author. Every time I read a new book, I couldn’t even imagine trying to think of all of it and tying it all together. His way of writing just always fascinated me.
The last two authors somewhat fall in the same category. R.L. Stine and Stephen King are both authors I really like for their frightening and scary sense of imagination. During middle school, I always read the Fear Street books by R.L. Stine. I wasn’t much into his Goosebump books, but I probably read all of his Fear Street ones. He never made them too long which was nice, but they were so suspenseful and I loved how he let you try to figure out the suspect or how everything was happening. I’ve never actually read any Stephen King books, but I’ve seen many movies based on his books, and I love his somewhat twisted imagination and unusual plot lines. People a lot of times think of him as creepy and sick, but I find his story lines intriguing and interesting.

For my Kennedy summary revision, I had a few things to change and add, but nothing major. I didn’t put a title on my first one, so I added that, and I had to fix my heading. A major thing I needed to change was using Ms. Kennedy instead of Caroline, and also I needed to make sure to include the title of the essay. Although I added some content to make the summary a little longer, I didn’t change the structure much at all. I felt like it was set up well, I just needed to add a little, and to spice it up. I used the “They Say I Say” book to try to change a couple of the words to make the writing more academic.

As for my “Just Be Nice” analysis, I had a bit more revising to do. I reorganize the structure a bit to go more with my thesis statement of my paper. I took the themes in my thesis statement and expanded on them more. I analyzed them deeper rather than just summarized them. I tried to at least. A couple of my paragraphs were pretty much just a summary, so I had to take a lot of that out. I was able to keep some of my original in there because it was analytical. I redid my conclusion completely. I wasn’t sure exactly what my thesis was in my first draft, so the conclusion didn’t go with what I made my final thesis. So I redid it and restated my thesis, and I tried to make the ending interesting.

I thought revising these would be worse than it ended up being. I’m still going to go through them again to make sure I have the MUGS part down, but finding the content and redoing it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Hopefully I did a good job at revising these papers!

As we all know, last Wednesday the lives of the people in Haiti were dramatically changed within an instant as a 7.0 earthquake struck the city of Port-au-Prince. What is very interesting to me is that the reason it caused so much damage was not because of the strength of the earthquake, but because of how close the vibrations were to the surface. Haiti was a country of extreme poverty before, so this earthquake has left the country in pure chaos. Dead bodies cover the streets, and parentless children wander helplessly. There simply just isn’t enough heavy equipment to clean the aftermath, and enough people aren’t able to be organized to properly bury the dead bodies, which is creating a horrible stench. I was watching Oprah tonight, and this guy on there went there to help, and he had to wear a mask because the smell was that bad. He described it as the smell of a rotting animal only intensified by a thousand. It is so sad to me that so many people have nowhere to go or to turn. Also on Oprah, the guy said that we are dropping food out of airplanes to the people in Haiti like they are animals. He feels that is not the way we should be going about it. He thinks we need to take a more personal approach, and I can see where he is coming from. I’m not sure what specifically we could do instead, but it is extremely sad that they have to rely on food being dropped from airplanes. Yes of course, they will be thankful no matter what, but I feel we need to be personal about it to and really try to show the Haiti people we want to help them. I would really like to go over to Haiti on a missions trip someday to be able to help in anyway.

Saving Sammy

Saving Sammy Video

I just recently decided I wanted to start reading again, and my first book on my list to read was one called Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD. I was browsing the books in the psychology section at a book store one day, and I stumbled upon this book. “What would you do if your child suddenly refused to bathe, burst into fits of rage, slithered along walls, and wouldn’t walk out the front door,” is the first thing written on the back of the book, and it caught my attention. The book relives the lives of the Maloney’s during which Sammy Maloney became very sick. Beth Maloney, mother of then eleven year old Sammy and author of the book, wrote this book in hopes to get help other families who may be going through the same heart aching experience Sammy and her family went through.

She doesn’t know who her audience is in particular. Anybody can read the book, so she makes sure to inform the reader on vital parts of their lives, and she explains the medical terms so that most anyone can follow them. She brilliantly ties in the medical information with creative story telling. The book is a true story that is told from a narrative point of view. She takes a very passionate and objective stance when writing this book. Her objective for writing this story is to hopefully help others and to get the news out about her son’s rare disorder. She is very passionate about what she is writing about though. This story is communicated through a book, more so by typed words. Italicized and bolded words are commonly found throughout the text to help emphasize or point out important things.

This video clip explains more about Beth and Sammy, the book in general, and the motives for the book. I found this story extremely interesting and inspirational, and I would definitely suggest it to anyone who is looking for a good read.

First day blog

Hello everyone :) Hope this class turns out to be a fun one! Make sure to bundle up because this stupid cold weather is relentless :( I hate it and wish it would just be summer already! Only 5 more months… yay!