Blaaah Creativity

I seriously dread the word creativity. I hate doing school projects where any sort of arts and crafts is involved because my mind goes blank. I wasn't a creative child either. My imagination doesn't go far. I guess my brain just isn't wired that way. I think creativity is an awesome thing and maybe I just have to learn it, or maybe people are born with it but either way I lack creativity.

Since its like 10:30 and I decided not to write out a story about my video that I found because I'm really tired and lazy (judge me). So I decided that I would just do a short condensed version of what is coming to my brain as I'm watching this.

Basically, it's the year 2020 and the world has been attacked by Aliens who come from Mirror Planet. They cause chaos by flipping everything upside and creating a mirror image on top of us. People are trapped on one side with all the aliens who are basically releasing a "Purge" type lifestyle and the goal is to get to the other side of "mirror". It's not that easy though because these aliens are trying to kill you/ turn you into kung fu zombies. Once you complete the tasks that are set for you, you're safe and live on the other side like nothing ever happened. Catch is, you have a week or else you're turned into a kung fu zombie. THE END!.


https://vimeo.com/70573323

Observations

• A turkey has an average of 3000 feathers
• Lots of TV shows are focused on nationalities --> Russian Dolls, Shahs of Sunset, Jersey Shore
• Girls bathroom is always on the outside of the hall
• Trojan head has the names of cities in the district around it
• Quizzes/Tests on Fridays or Mondays are really annoying and I tend to do worse on them
• More houses put up decorations on Wednesday night
• American Girl Dolls are waaaaay too expensive
• I hate people who come into Caribou, sit down, and don't buy anything *cough, cough. Stupid, annoying middle schoolers*

Too early for Christmas

I love Christmas more than anybody on the planet. Seriously. I love the twinkling lights of the houses, and the Christmas trees, and the cookies, and the music, and the movies. I love pretty much everything about Christmas but what I love most is the timing. In my opinion, Christmas-y behavior is appropriate after Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is when the movies should start, and the music can be played and the decorations can be put up. But, what I have noticed recently is that Christmas came too early this year, way too early.

I didn't really notice that Christmas was all around me until Saturday at the Mall of America. My mom and I had just walked in and a heard a little snippet of a conversation a middle aged man was having with his wife. "WHAT IS GOING ON?!" He yelled half laughing half serious. "I don't get! It's not even Thanksgiving yet! Why are the tree's up! What is this music!?". I didn't even know what he was talking about until I looked around. Christmas trees everywhere, ornaments hanging from the ceiling and Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" playing in the background. I was shocked. My first thought was "Damn, why didn't they just start this in September". And then I remembered, they did. Well not the MOA exactly, but Costco has had blow up snowmen since late September. A house just down the street has had lights up since Halloween. This is ridiculous. As I get older, I get more and more upset when people start celebrating Christmas early. Does this make me a Scrooge? I hope not but seriously, Christmas before Thanksgiving is just not right.

I don't know what it is. Is it my age? When I was little, I would have celebrated Christmas before Thanksgiving, hell, I would have celebrated it before Labor Day but now it just seems wrong. I think celebrating Christmas before Thanksgiving makes Christmas a little less special so stop. If you're one of those people just stop. Thanks and happy holidays.

Outliers- Final BLA

For my BLA my group and I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. The book focused on the stories of successful people in our past and what it was that made them successful. Gladwell's stories ranged from why the Beatles are successful to why the greatest hockey players are all born at the beginning of the year. There was not really a common factor to every successful person he mentioned but Gladwell did give numerous examples for many of the "variables" that contribute to a successful human. The book was split into two parts: opportunity and legacy.  Gladwell also mentioned that it is important to focus on not what a successful person is like but where they come from. The second part of the book focused more on the cultural aspects of successful people while the first part was based purely on opportunity/luck.

As mentioned Gladwell's book focused on a number of important people in our world. Because it was difficult to find one documentary about "successful" people my group and I decided to focus on one particular story. We decided to watch a documentary on Bill Gates and see the similarities and differences in how he was portrayed in the book vs. the documentary.

In the book, Gladwell focused primarily on the beginning of Bill Gates' career. Bill Gates was in the part about opportunity so a lot of focus was put on the opportunities that Gates got. Gladwell put a lot of emphasis on the a young Bill Gates and the head start he got at his high school. As an upperclassman in High School, a mother's club donated a software/teletype to the school for the kids to use. Gates and his friends spent a ton of time in that room often until about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. After a few years, it was estimated that Gates had reached the 10,000 hour mark- the "expert" number. Gladwell said that anybody who practiced an instrument for roughly 10,000 hours became an expert. Many studies have been done on the elite piano players, or the elite athletes and usually they all have one thing in common; how much they practice. They all usually practice for upwards of 10,000 hours of their life and that is exactly what Gates did. Those 10,000 hours were what made Gates successful in the eyes of Malcom Gladwell.

I decided to compare this to how Gates was portrayed in the documentary. The teletype was mentioned in the documentary but only in passing. They mentioned that Gates spent much of his free time in that room, plugging away at software, but how much time was actually spent was never mentioned. This particular story (the most important one according to Gladwell) was only mentioned for a brief 2-3 minutes in the documentary. The rest of the time, the documentary focused on what happened AFTER Gates had dropped out of Harvard and AFTER he had already practiced for 10,000 hours.

I may be a little biased because I have just finished reading the book but I think the time that Gates spent in the computer room was incredibly important to the success he is currently experiencing. The documentary leads people to believe that Bill Gates is just naturally smart and he got all this success randomly. But, Outliers really focuses on the root of what made Gates the billionaire that he is today and that is the opportunity. The teletype and the 10,000 hours spent in that room is the key to what made Gates successful. Without all the practice he might not have ever been able to do the things he later did. If the Mother's club hadn't donated the teletype well then Gates would have never discovered his love of software and would have gone on to become a lawyer like his parents wanted him to.

I personally think that the book does a better job at getting to the root of what makes people successful. Most documentaries and films and other books make it seem like all these people are just naturally smart, and naturally have all these abilities but in most cases that is not true. There is some great opportunity hiding in the history of that person and Malcolm Gladwell does a great job at figuring out the root of successful people. I really enjoyed the book and think that everybody should read it because the facts and ideas that Gladwell brings up are just so crazy and hard to believe but when you really think about them they are true and can be applied to most successful people!

AIRPLANES

Everyone is afraid of something. If you tell me you're absolutely fearless you're a filthy liar. EVERYONE is scared of something, EVERYONE has something they are uncomfortable with. It's the truth.

Now, I could type up a list of every little thing I'm scared and that would range from spiders, to frogs, to haunted houses but that would just be boring. So, since I'm in a class where analyzing is key, I decided that I would analyze my fears and see what exactly is it that I'm scared of. Is it truly frogs or something completely different?

I am incredibly afraid of flying. This is rather ironic because I have flown over the Atlantic Ocean 15 times and am on an airplane at least once a year if not more. I'm not one of those weirdo's who the second the plane starts moving begins screaming bloody murder and insists on being taken off the plane. If that was the case, I would never have been able to fly across the ocean that many times. But seriously, I am really scared. I can't really calm down until I am completely off the plane on solid ground. It's not a fear of enclosed spaces or a fear of heights. It's a fear of having the plane

break down and hijackers. Now, I know this is rather ridiculous because I have a greater chance of getting into a car accidents than having my plane break or getting attacked by hijackers but those statistics don't help. I still can't help thinking that the guy sitting next to me on the plane is about to whip out a gun or that noise I just heard is the sound of the engine failing. I think that the reason I'm truly scared is because I am not in control. I don't know what is going on inside of the cockpit or what the person next to me is doing. I am rather independent and nosy so I like to know anything and everything. When I'm on an airplane that is just not possible. Also, living in a country where 9/11 caused so much pain and damage does not help me while flying. Also, not gonna lie but I'm super scared of dying and for some reason I associate planes and dying. 

Also rather ironic, my goal in life is to travel the world so I have no idea how I plan to do that if I'm scared of flying. Better learn to get over that. 

Here Comes Another Garbage TV Show

It's not a secret that TV shows have been progressively getting stupider and stupider. Whatever happened to those great long running shows like ER and Law and Order? It seems like now, all people care about is what dress Kim Kardashian wore or who that oh-so steamy guy from the bachelor picked to be his fiancee. Now, I'm not completely immune to the plague of reality TV. I have watched my fair share of the Kardashians and have watched all seasons of the Jersey Shore, but there is one show, just one reality TV show that I will never, ever, EVER watch again. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is a new type of garbage. Unfortunately, I am not analyzing the content of the show (which is awful) rather, the effects of such a TV show and the possible frameworks for interpretation.

So I think everybody here knows who Honey Boo Boo is so I'm not going to go into a deep summary because frankly it's not necessary. I think the effects of a show like Honey Boo Boo can be both positive and negative. I know many people who for some weird reason actually like watching Honey Boo Boo and think it's a great show. But why? Not going to lie, but it's probably because they are funny people. But not funny like ha-ha nice jokes. Funny as in ha-ha you did something dumb so I'm going to make fun of you. And that to me is not OK. In my opinion the show's producers have this show just to make fun of and stare at the family, like animals at a zoo. Who wants to be treated that away? Also, this show is adding unnecessary stereotypes to our culture. People who don't understand might think that all Americans act like that when many clearly don't. To me, shows like these only give negative stereotypes to Americans and I don't appreciate such shows appearing on my TV screen.

Also, lets inspect this through a classicist point of view. Some people might view this to be very rude and disrespectful because we are making fun of the poor people of our nation. I don't know how to look at this. I mean yeah, we do have a TV show where we are basically ridiculing a family but it's not BECAUSE they are poor. The show is for a different reason the purpose that I personally don't understand. So, I think now that the show has been going on for some time it can be seen as though a poorer family is being made fun of but I don't think that was the original purpose.

Like I said, I think the show is dumb but my opinion doesn't matter. I think the content is dumb and I don't get why these people are on TV but that doesn't stop me from believing that these people are being exploited for the wrong reasons. It doesn't matter if the producers say it's just for "fun". It's rude and offensive.

Analysis of Lyrics

I'm really lame and have absolutely no taste in music. I honestly listen to anything that KDWB plays and if that makes me "basic" I really don't care. Fight me. I definitely have a few songs that piss me off because they are over played and annoying (Roar by Katy Perry) but there are some that I also really like. Recently, I've been listening to "Alone Together" by Fall Out Boy and I just sat down to listen, to actually listen to the lyrics. Not gonna lie but this was kind of hard.

First of all, the title is an oxymoron. I'm really proud of myself for being able to notice that. Alone together.. what? How does that work. Yep oxymoron. 

I also just read through the lyrics and realized that there are only 5 parts to the song and the rest is being repeated. I don't know what's up with that. Is F.O.B lacking originality with this song? Come on. 5 versus? Kind of disappointing. Also, the main point of this song is that this guy wants to be alone with this one girl. Just the two of them. Ok. That makes sense. There is also a metaphor because F.O.B compares his heart to a stallion, which I personally don't get. Anyways, like I said in my opinion this song kind of lacks creativity because there are only 5 versus. But I still really like it. Why? Because of the message. Of only one of the 5 versus. I think it's super cute to just be alone with one single person whether it's your boyfriend (blech, mushy i know) or with your friend. I also think it's super cool that the song's title is an oxymoron. But, my favorite part of the song is the instrumental version, not the words. And I know that kind of defeats the purpose of this assignment because it's supposed to be an analysis of the language but hey, I just really like the song and the message. 



"Alone Together"

I don't know where you're going
But do you got room for one more troubled soul?
I don't know where I'm going but I don't think I'm coming home
And I said I'll check in tomorrow if I don't wake up dead
This is the road to ruin
And we're starting at the end

Say yeah
Let's be alone together
We could stay young forever
Scream it from the top of your lungs
Say yeah
Let's be alone together
We could stay young forever
We'll stay young, young, young, young, young.

You cut me off, I lost my track
It's not my fault, I'm a maniac
It's not funny anymore, no it's not

My heart is like a stallion
They love it more when it's broke in
Do you wanna feel beautiful?
Do you wanna?

I'm outside the door, invite me in
So we can go back and play pretend
I'm on deck, yeah, I'm up next
Tonight I'm high as a private jet

'Cause I don't know where you're going
But do you got room for one more troubled soul?
I don't know where I'm going but I don't think I'm coming home
And I said I'll check in tomorrow if I don't wake up dead
This is the road to ruin
And we're starting at the end

Say yeah
Let's be alone together
We could stay young forever
Scream it from the top of your lungs
Say yeah
Let's be alone together
We could stay young forever
We'll stay young, young, young, young, young.

My heart is like a stallion,
They love it more when it's broke in
Do you wanna feel beautiful?
Do you wanna?

I'm outside the door, invite me in
So we can go back and play pretend
I'm on deck, yeah, I'm up next
Tonight I'm high as a private jet, yeah

Yeah
Let's be alone together
We could stay young forever
Scream it from the top of your lungs
Say yeah
Let's be alone together
We could stay young forever
We'll stay young, young, young, young, young.

I don't know where you're going
But do you got room for one more troubled soul?
I don't know where I'm going but I don't think I'm coming home
And I said I'll check in tomorrow if I don't wake up dead
This is the road to ruin
And we started at the end