Blogging Portfolio!

Oh the blogosphere! Initially, I was terrified about the idea of blogging, because one, I didn’t know what it was, and two, I’m technology LACKING. But, wordpress is pretty userfriendly. Especially considering I have to blog for another one my English courses. At first I also thought of blogging to be an online journal, which it obviously could be. But I thought it as more of the “Oh my goodness, today I went to…,” kind of thing, when it obviously isn’t. Between checking out numerous peoples blogs, a lot of people are really serious about this! I think that’s awesome and I could really see blogging taking off in the future because of it’s easy accesibility. I actually like the idea of blogging now, especially after receiving comments. I’ve always been a notebook writer, collector of post-it notes etc; but the comments on our blogs is really nice, fast feedback. As for becoming a “blogger,” I’m not quite sure I’ve hit that level of expertise, maybe someday!

As for my most impressive blog posts, I’ll start with my piece about the rape satire. I wanted to write about this, because I was appauled honestly. But, what I think made it a good blog post was it’s availibility or, open ending to leave comments. I received the most comments on this post over all my other ones. I also enjoyed my piece about the video game. Still to this day, when I think of video game, I think of couch potato, but I received a lot of interesting comments on this blog post also! I’m very curious to see if this game ever materializes into a good, or popular game. (Not like I’ll be the one to try it out.) As for my third piece, it would be my blog post on Guantanamo Bay. When we had the substitute teacher come in, and he brought this up. I became very interested in this “prison,” which to me, is more similiar to some bizarre concentration camp. I felt I really learned a lot about the Bay from this blog post. I definitely acquired knowledge I didn’t have prior to watching the video and reading the small piece on it.

My least effective post would probably be my piece on, impersonating officers. Although I found the article comical, and ridiculous. It was a very short piece, and it didn’t really allow much room for analyzing, or furthering commentary. The length requirement for all the blogs was never a problem, but for this particular blog since the article was short, I was pressed for what to say. To improve upon this, next time I would look for a more developed story that I could write more on.

I was very impressed by what I’ve seen of the blogsphere. There are a lot of interesting, intelligent blogers out there that offer pieces with room for critcism or praise. It’s really nice to be able to contact an author, as compared to a book where your chances are little to none to being able to express your opinions with them. As for interesting blogs, I’ve enjoyed salon. I tend to check it out everyday now! But I’ve always been a bit of a online magazine junkie. Somehow I stumbled upon this woman’s blog and found one blog particularly interesting. So I found myself going back every once and a while to see what else she had to write about it. The comments from my fellow classmates I really enjoyed, it made me think further on my topic, and in some situations offered critcism and room for large expansion. At first when I heard along with our blog posts we had to leave comments I was like “UGH!” but, I definitely see a huge benefit in doing so now.

All in all, the blogging wasn’t bad at all. It was very easy, and offered me a little extra time every Thursday to complain and/or laugh at some ridiculous thing I had stumbled upon. I also learned a lot about my classmates through their blog posts, which was nice. We all had a nice community of social and culture. ! I really hope everyone enjoyed reading my ramblings as much as I enjoyed reading everyone elses. Everyone enjoy your summer, and for the seniors, congratulations!

Spiderman anyone?

I must be completely honest. I’m a movie junkie, which usually leaves my wallet empty to the ridiculous cost of going to the movies these days. Anyways, I’m very excited about the new Spiderman 3 coming out. I’ve seen the last two, both amazing.

In this article on salon.com about the release of the film. They haven’t made too many advertisements regarding the movie, but the ones I did see, made me highly anticipated. Before this class I really never took a second look at advertising, besides just viewing it as that ‘evil network’ if you will that ended up sucking my money from one thing or another. But it’s honestly amazing the capabilities (or lack there of) advertisments have. They’re fascinating really, and it’s a much more involved process than I ever imagined.

The article goes into great depth about the movie (I refuse to read the second page because I don’t want to ruin the movie for myself.) And, it’s outttttttt. AH. Beyond excited.

Frequency North

This post is rather late, but I attended the Frequency North poetry reading last week. I wasn’t really sure what to expect initially because I couldn’t go to the last one. Katie Degentesh, and Denise Duhamel both shared some of their pieces for about an hour.

Katie Degentesh shared pieces from her book The Anger Scale, which is all found poetry, based on a test questions searching in google. I really loved her style because she wanted to express how bizarre the test was, and that came across very clearly in her writing. The things that came up in google were completely ridiculous, and she received quite a few laughs.

Denise Duhamel had a bit of a different style but still offered humor. One of my favorites she read was titled, Kinky and it was about Barbie and Ken dolls. She touched on a lot of the stereotypical ‘barbie’ things, and I found it amusing. She also had this poem (I forget the name of the format) that started with every single letter of the alphabet, and each line , each word started with that particular letter. She must have really raided a dictionary on that one. Not to mention the obvious tongue twister to read it!

All in all, I’m glad I went to it. I kind of wish they had a few more poets but the two that presented were very good. I ‘ll definitely attend frequency north next year!

UM HELLO, Billy Joel anyone?!

So, my Tuesday night wasn’t like the usual where I do homework and watch House.  I went to see Billy Joel. Now, the tickets weren’t anything special (terrible for that matter.)  Nosebleed section, behind the stage, all in all, terrible.  But my mom got them for free, so I wasn’t about to complain. 

 While walking up to Guam to get to our seats.  This man came over to my friends and I and asked us where our seats were.  We mentioned wayyy up there.  He smiled and said how he worked for Billy Joel and, Billy Joel buys out the front two rows of seats for fan appreciation, and how he’d be honored to escort us down to front row seats.  UM YES I WOULD.  Needless to say, I moved from section 251 K-16. To Floor A-6.  Apparentely luck doesn’t always strike me in the form of walking out into a rainstorm with no umberella. 

 But it gets better.  We got to move right up to the stage, the whole time being no more than 20 feet away from Billy Joel and the band.  The guitarist tosses a pick, I catch it.  Then Billy Joel makes his rounds around the stage, I SHAKE HIS HAND.  I almost died. 

This probably isn’t very culturally significant. But it’s very socially significant to me. Ah, I still cannot contain myself.  Totally took this with my terrible camera phone.

You putting a stop to Global Warming

I’ll be completely honest, Global Warming has never been a huge first priority of mine.  Not because I completely don’t care, I just acknowledge that there are TOO many people out there with the mentality that I have.  That they are one person, and there are too many people out there who frankly don’t give a shit.  Sure, I’m all about the one vote makes a different.  But one person switching to a matchbox compact solar car isn’t going to rid the Vanderbilts from their Escalades.   Regardless I know there is a lot of interesting research going on about this real, epidemic in our society, so I checked into it.

MSN.com always offers me what I’m looking for.  In this piece by Ragan Sutterfield he discusses how we need to simplify our lives.  By simplifying, we will be able to lower our consumption, and therefore help this global warming problem.  Again, I’m all about simplifying my life, but it’s not as simple as selling my car and riding a bicycle everywhere. I live in Niverville, there’s no mass transportion here.  This author is from Arkansas, and I’m not passing a stereotype (well, partially I am) but maybe, sharing a BBQ is common there. IT ISN’T HERE. We don’t do that.  Frankly, in NY if you have a nice grill, you don’t want your neighbor to know because, they’ll probably take it.  I agree about energy efficient lightbulbs, we recently switched all my lights in my house over to that (against my dad’s wishes, they take a whole 2 seconds longer to turn on.)

 So I guess what I’m getting at is that, trying to make our country this ‘share with your neighbor,’ community is too fable tale for me.  It’s not going to happen.  But, if people start with small steps, maybe we’ll all be riding around on bicycle. Who knows, maybe unicycles will be popular?

Impersonating officers, peoples intelligence never seize to amaze me

The headline of this article in the timesunion immediately caught my eye. Woman charged with impersonating officer Are you kidding me? The woman was pulled over at 1:30 in the morning in Montgomery County for speeding and apparently flashed a badge. But, she was only a part of the auxiliary program.

Now, if she hadn’t faked being an officer she could have walked away with only a ticket, or possibly even a warning. But apparently, it was worth it for her to fake it and not get charged for only the speeding, but also impersonation. I get a large laugh at how people think they are going to get away with this. Now, I don’t know much about how officers treat other officers, but it’s quite apparent that when the officer ran the license plate number, it didn’t come up as, Sally Joe – Trooper. Or something along those lines. But whatever came into this woman’s head apparently thought it’d be a smart idea.

Hope she has fun explaining this one to the judge.

New inspirational novel

For this blog post I decided to write about something a little different than I would normally write about. I’m in fact quite an avid reader, I generally read a book every two weeks, give or take depending on length. But as for now, I’m reading The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. I had heard about it on Oprah and thought I’d check it out. Of course, Border’s didn’t disappoint me, and had it in stock.

I’m very often fascinated by life/inspirational books because I’m so set in my ways. I like reading something that makes me question my particular morals. So far, this book is doing this for me. So therefore, it’s worthwhile finishing. The book is about this way of viewing and picturing YOUR life. I stress your because if you read the book you’ll realize the large emphasis on you having control of everything you do. The book is based around many authors, doctors, and famous inventors quotes. Each offers a really interesting concept of the ability to control life.

I’m enjoying this book especially because it focuses on the positive. I’m really not a negative person, I live for passion and excitement, but sometimes I feel I lose that in the mess of what I consider to be, “my life.” This book insists that anyone can have whatever they want.

Here’s a short paragraph from the book, “Decide what you want. Believe you can have it. Believe you deserve it and believe it’s possible for you. And then close your eyes every day for several minutes, and visualize having what you already want, feeling the feelings of already having it. Come out of that and focus on what you’re grateful for already, and really enjoy it. Then go into your day and release it to the Universe and trust that the Universe will figure out how to manifest it.” (Jack Canfield)

Brings up some interesting ideas to me. Hope it does the same, if it seems interesting. I’d highly recommend it. ☺

The torture “outside” of our country

In our class discussion today our sub brought up Guantanamo Bay. After hearing a little about it, I felt insanely ignorant not knowing about it. So, I felt it’d be a good thing to look into. I hopped onto msn.com, Slade, and it was the main page. I watched this video, and short summary.

Torture, is obviously illegal in our country. Yet, under our command, our guards, our ‘system of justice to find information,’ we allow this to happen. Having an almost concentration camp, in Cuba doesn’t make it any better than having it in any of our states. One of the speakers viewed torture as a “lose lose proposition,” I agree. This idea brings me back to the martyr idea. If you’re willing to die for a cause, you’ll die for it regardless, under inhuman torture, or in a bombing.

In this video they discussed the setting of it, how the prisoners lose sense of what is day and night, because it’s either always dark, or always light. They’re supposed to be allowed “out” a few days a week. But they’re lucky if they get out once a week. No windows in their cells. One of the most disturbing parts of this probably is how they’re taken from their families, told they’re being detained and they can’t do anything to stop it. One child in particular came there when he was only 14 years old, and is still there today at 19.

I found it interesting how they brought up how even the guards become very dehumanized in this process. Witnessing forced feedings, and shackeling chairs to the ground with the prisoners in them. When asked questions, if they didn’t answer their lives were threatened, even worse, in terrible ways. One of which being gas chambers. Desensitized is modest for what happens to these guards and everyone who is a part of this process. A person said how if guards didn’t come into Guantanamo Bay as a radical, they certainly would come out of it as one. I have to agree.

Video games, now preventing obesity?

Sure, we’ve all heard the stories about what video games can do. Or, do not do for that matter. Possibly, instill violent actions in kids, or the exact opinion of this article I read, ADD to the obesity epidemic. But, I’m sure that this game titled, “Body Mechanics,” is a first of its kind. They use off base names related to health such as, ‘Obeez City’ (setting of the game,) and, the main character is ‘Jack Decayd.’

Not only do I find the idea of childrens obesity being reflected in a video game to be morally inappropriate, I bet it will be a laughing stock of the video game world. I picture this game crashing and burning. The game claims to target the 17% percent of US children between the ages of 6 and 19 that are obese. But really, is an overweight kid going to be playing a ‘fun’ game about an overweight and unhealthy character? When in reality, this child already suffers from this probably on a day to day basis?

If anything, I find this idea to help save the population from the epidemic of obesity ridiculous. In this sense at least. It is a serious issue and in turn they make it a fun game. Do justice to your cause you’re trying to help stop. Don’t create a video game to make this issue fun. Are they serious with this? Go cart racing, Mario, these games are appealing to kids. I can jus imagine this game having posters of donuts with ‘X’s’ on them. Who are they planning on buying this? I can almost guarantee young adults of the age of 19, surely won’t. But at least there will be no graphic violence unless I suppose, against junk foods?

I can see this article raising contraversy, wow.

While searching Salon, on daily basis (yes, I’ve come to be addicted) I stumbled upon this article, and I was shocked. The title alone made me take a second look “Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It.” The piece itself is a opinion editorial by John Petroski. I could go into depth into describing it, but it’s really necessary to read to get the initial shock and expression I received just from the short blurb they placed in this article. Petroski goes as far to say that rape has “advantages.” Such as, letting an “ugly women,” have the ability to “know the joy of intercourse.” That’s completely, APPAULING.

I’ll take a walk out on a limb to say that most women, regardless of appearance, would not enjoy some random man forcing anything sexual upon them. Virgin, or not, physically forced actions aren’t enjoyable. I’m completely disgusted that this man had the nerve to discuss this, sensitive topic for women like he has knowledge of it. I realize rape also affects males, but it is mainly an issue with women. Especially to assume they would enjoy it? Ridiculous. Apparently he totally disregarded the serious physical consequences, not only emotional consequences of rape. Unwanted pregnancies, and STD’s and others. This article has already gotten 16 comments, and I expect many more to be added to that.
This serious issue our society has, is one of those often left unspoken issues because it deeply affects a number of people in our society. So I’m very surprised he choose to write how bluntly and opinionated as he did with this piece.

Opinions anyone?