President Barack Hussein Obama
The 44th President of the United States of America
America finally has its first African American president, and I couldn’t be any more happier (of course that isn’t the ONLY reason I support Obama, but that is besides the point). Congrats, Mr. President-Elect.
AC/DC: Black Ice
AC/DC's Latest Album
Black Ice, in my opinion, is definitely a hit or miss. You won’t see people saying “I liked a few of the songs, but not all of them…” because AC/DC will always be about WORSHIPPING Rock N’ Roll. Their songs all sound similar, have similar undertones, and some even have similar riffs. But this is what draws a true AC/DC fan to AC/DC. They refuse to conform. They refuse to evolve. Since Back in Black (their first album without Bon Scott), they have kept this consistancy which fans have grown to love. My message for this blog is simple: If you’re a fan, get this album, if you hate AC/DC, this album most likely won’t change your mind, and if you haven’t heard enough AC/DC to have an opinion……………..get this album.
Favorite Tracks
Rock n’ Roll Train
Black Ice
She Likes Rock n’ Roll
Wheels
Decibel
Seven years later…We move on.
For those who have forgotten, it has been 7 years since the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Since the attack on America. I remember, every year since then, during school, there would always be a moment of silence for those who lost their lives that fateful day. The media would always have some documentary or archived footage playing throughout the day from 9/11/2001.
What happened today?
School. The announcements come on. We stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. We sit. The announcements are made. We wait for that moment when they say, “and now, if you will, a moment of silence for those who lost their lives x years ago…,” but it never comes. “Have a great day, Gateway.” That’s it. Some students don’t notice. Some students make their, “Gee, that was strange,” look. Me? I was maybe the only one who realized that this could very well be the year that we have finally moved on.
School ends. I go home, and immediately turn on the television. I change to MSNBC, expecting some kind of footage from that day playing, and some 40-50 somethings discussing the impact. What do I see? Oil price gouging. Normal news. This goes on for a while, then it is mentioned that Obama and McCain would be at Ground Zero today to visit those families who were affected that day. Strictly political. Then, the news carries on.
Is this whole “moving on” thing…a good thing? Sure it is. “Moving on”. Putting it in the past, and looking toward the future.
But, by moving on, do we sacrifice something greater? Do we start to forget? They told us to “Never Forget” though. I saw the pins and the buttons and the bumper stickers. I also saw them disappear, slowly.
“Never Forget”? “Moving on”? What will we do? You surely can’t move on without forgetting…and if you never forget, you can never move on. Those two phrases don’t work together. So which will America choose?
Judging by experience, we got our answer today, during those announcements, talking with friends, watching the news.
I got an idea. From now on, let’s just choose to remember during the years with the nice, round numbers. 10th anniversaries…15h….and so on. It’s worked for us in the past.
The Spawning of Blogging
It's "Pay It Forward" gone wrong...horribly wrong.
I have made a realization. The reason why Blogging has exploded recently is because of the way it is spread. Person starts blog, friends see blog, friends see that it is easy to keep a blog, friends start blogs, repeat. I can see why the internet “veterans” are annoyed by this. It kind of annoys me, and I am in no way a “professional” Blogger, nor do I think I am any good at Blogging.
On the flip side, who am I to talk, seeing how I got the idea in kind of the same way. What annoys me are inconsistant blogs (people who make one post every other month or so) which are the result of the phenomenon which I will now refer to as Blog Spawning.
Sensationalism
Sensationalism in the media...
Sensationalism in the world.
There is one thing any intelligent person can say: people really love to exaggerate. Why do they do this? Well everyone knows why it’s done in the media: ratings. When one channel is reporting a fire, and the other channel is reporting a blaze happpening near schools and nursing homes (which are, in fact, 50 miles away), which channel do you tune in to? Sadly, because we live in the days of “infotainment”, we would tune into the “blaze” channel.
Nowadays, you can’t turn anywhere without someone heavily exaggerating a story. Today, on Digg.com, a website which serves as a kind of platform where you can post up news stories, funny pictures, inspirational videos, and various other things and have them kind of voted on (or dugg). When a story is highly dugg, they make it to the daily top 10 stories. The story I have linked in the picture above threw me over the edge, and has now made it to the top articles of the day. This person linked to a video on youtube, saying “Martial Law in the USA! It has started! Can you believe it?”. For people who may not know, martial law is defined as “the system of rules that takes effect when the military takes control of the normal administration of justice”. The town described in the linked video is not, in fact, under Martial Law. The mayor of the town implemented a strict curfew due to the high rate of crime in the area. I have my own opinions on how this mayor runs his town, but that isn’t the point of this post.
My point is that there are people out there who buy into sensationalism so much that they actually believe that the world is coming to an end, or that someone is secretly taking over the world. For these people: don’t you think we have the means to take over the planet as it is, without all of this cloak and dagger nonsense that you think is going on? We have the means to DESTROY the planet if we wanted to, but the fact of the matter is that it hasn’t happened. If it hasn’t happened yet, chances are it won’t happen, and if it was going to happen, we would definitely know about it.
I am just so sick and tired of these people. I’ve reached the point where I’d rather watch sensationalist news than get on the internet, exposed to these insane people who think the moon landing was a hoax, George W. Bush is some evil genius mastermind behind world domination (are you KIDDING me?), or 9/11 was staged by us. Again, we have nukes and politicians, we don’t need this whole elaborate plan which involves a whole web of lies or Freemasons or the all seeing eye…just to dominate the world. All they are doing is talking crap, scaring the innocent, confusing the misinformed, and pissing off the rest. If they want to be surrounded by this nonsense, there are proper forums, websites, and park benches where they can converse amongst themselves, without bothering people who actually have real and solid problems to worry about, like their family, or the economy, or which president will get us out of a 9 Trillion dollar debt, not which president will stop the NWO from happening.
iDon’tPod….iZune.
My Zune....kind of.
I was reading an article (found HERE) and it made me realize why I love my Zune so much. If you ask a person nowadays what kind of mp3 player they have, nine times out of ten (well, seven out of ten according to this article) they will say that they have an iPod. It’s like a movie that just about everybody likes. It’s like The Dark Knight (one of my top movies, I must say). What seems to draw me in more, however, are cult classics (for example, the movie Animal House which, again, is one of my favorite movies). So an iPod is to The Dark Knight as a Zune is to Animal House. None of them are necessarily better, but I prefer my Zune because it’s a pleasant break from the mp3 mold. I like to be one of the three who can say “I don’t own an iPod” and be looked at with a deer-looking-at-headlights look.
Report Card =/= Value as a Human Being
These things actually ruin lives!!
Student A and Student B take the SAT, which is supposed to be a telling of his intelligence. An academic IQ test. Student A and Student B both have SAT books to study from. Student A reads the book cover to cover 20 times prior to the test. Student B uses it as a paper weight. They take the test. Student A gets a 1080 and Student B gets a 1270. Mind you Student B didn’t study at all. Take a stab at what the two Students’ GPAs are.
Student A: 3.8 Unweighted
Student B: 2.6 Unweighted
Student B would be me. I have a 2.6 GPA and live in a lower middle class family (which means scholarships are a must-have-but-can’t-reach). It is obviously not because I don’t understand the material, on the contrary, I understand it well. What is the cause of all of this? Well, first off I must blame myself for not working hard enough. Secondly, I live in Kissimmee, Florida, home to hicks and people who can’t read english let alone teach it. I know it is the classic excuse to blame my teachers but I think I have some kind of credibility coming from a school district where the average school grade is a D+. Not all of my teachers are below par, just a select few who have no business doing what they are doing. Lastly, and this is only a minor factor, we start school at 7 30 in the morning. The classes that I usually have low marks on are my 1-3 period classes.
I could keep on complaining but the fact of the matter is is that I am a Senior in High School and it doesn’t matter who is at fault; what matters is that I am in this situation. It is just an extreme injustice to think that there are geniuses in this world who can’t go anywhere because they are judged based on their GPA. They aren’t looked at for the fact that they aced their SATs without breaking a sweat. They are put into the same category as the idiots who can’t read Dr. Seuss books correctly (again, I live in Kissimmee, Florida, I am NOT exaggerating). Why do grades=a person’s value to society? This should be a system that is changed, so the right people get scholarships and go to college while the rest can stay where they belong: bumming off of Daddy’s many resources or popping pills on their stoops.
Chronic Future (Net Neutrality)
The universal symbol for Net Neutrality
It is interesting to grow up in the so-called “MySpace Generation” because of the evolution of the internet. I remember a time when the internet was non-existant, and the common household computer was the calculator. Let me remind my readers (and viewers) that, at the time of typing this blog, I am 17 years old. This seemingly distant age of Yore was the early-mid 90s. A decade and some change is definitely not a significant amount of time. Now, computers dominate the world. They control economies, weaponry, and the social lives of millions of people.
Personally, I am a very anti-censorship kind of guy. If there is cursing on television then it’s the responsiblity of the parents to shield their children from it. If there is violence in a video game then it is the parents’ jobs to make sure they know what they are buying for their kids. If you personally don’t like violence or explicit language then leave the theatre, change the channel, or get a refund. The internet is a beautiful thing because of its freedom. There are practically no bounds to what you can do on the internet. It can be heaven for teenagers, hell for sex offenders, and a virtual brothel for those in between. This freedom, a freedom we take advantage of everyday, is on the verge of extinction. The regulation of the internet is becoming a not so distant reality and crushing Net Neutrality would destroy what little faith I have left in this country. I can deal with the perverse censorship we have today, but censoring the ‘Net is one step too far. With the current Net Regulation plan in the works, it would cost me 50 dollars a month just to browse sites such as this, MySpace, and YouTube. It is a rediculous fee to pay, especially during an economic Recession. What would I be without my blog or my vlogs?
One sad puppy, that’s who.
